Sunday, July 8—16:59:00
Once a month, the boss visited her old lady. “Twelve times a year too many,” Jen had once told me. Tough words to say to a guy who doesn’t get to have a mom.
“Leave me on so I can meet her,” I said. It was the butt-end of a long Sunday shift, and Jen was about to sign out, pop me off, and go for her visit.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“So I can understand why you go on about her like you do.”
“You’ll never understand.”
But she did leave me on. We grabbed the Metro and then an auto-rickshaw. She phoned Zach, but he was still at his meeting. Community Action for Sustainable Prosperity, CASP, a group Zach was helping set up. He shot her a text back: Meet you in an hour.
The winds were now coming from the north and the temperature had leveled at a hundred. It was a remarkably clear day, the sky like the Tahitian sea. We arrived at a three-story building with yellowed vinyl siding and landscaping done by someone who hated plants. Probably just as well, since those few plants now looked like kindling for a campfire. We walked up the potholed driveway. They might as well have hung a sign out front that said, “Old people locked up here to die.”
We stepped inside. Four more visits to go, Jen thought. Four more payments. Four more months until I’m done with her forever. I pretended not to hear any of it.
She waved her ID over the pad and passed through the metal detectors. I don’t want to sound mean, but the first thing I noticed was a smell I didn’t like. Dying skin, Jen said.
No, I replied. That’s only four percent of the smell, along with medicines and foul food and floor cleaner and smelly lotions and cheap perfumes and antiseptic soaps and diapers and accidents.
Aren’t you full of interesting information, Jen said.
We went into the administrator’s office, where we were greeted by a bubbly white woman with thick makeup and hair so stiff I thought she was wearing a football helmet.
Jen said, “There’s a problem with my June payment.”
“Oh my,” said the administrator, “that won’t do now, will it?”
I figure you’d have to either be a saint or working off an overdose of uppers to stick with a job here. I didn’t have the administrator pegged for a saint, but who knows. Look what Mother Teresa had gotten away with that didn’t leak out until thirty years after her death.
I checked the administrator’s chestnut-colored hair for cracks while she checked her records on an old-fashioned opaque computer screen on her desk. “No, it adds up like a charm.”
Jen asked to see the screen. Math genius that she is, it didn’t take her long to spot the problem. She tapped the glass. “There, that’s it. She gets her hair done twice a month. You’ve repeated it every day.”
“Oh, but in June she went each and every afternoon. And doesn’t she look the charm?”
A few thoughts rammed through Jen’s brain: I can’t possibly afford this. I won’t pay. But no words came out. Instead, her brain flooded with a long-familiar feeling of utter defeat.
The administrator agreed to spread the extra payment over the final four months and to make sure Jen’s mother didn’t go every day.
We took the stairs to the second floor two at a time, Jen’s mood worsening with every step. By the time we reached the door to the activities room, I was shattered and wished I’d never been born.
You’re dramatizing, Jen said to me.
Empathizing.
You never had to live with her.
I knew it all, though. She was a monster. She had scared away Jen’s father when Jen was only five, but that made him a total fuckup too. She had absolutely destroyed every single day of Jen’s life until Jen had finally moved out, and even then she’d done her level best to keep on spoiling it ever since.
We went into the activities room. Windows so dirty I thought there’d been an unscheduled eclipse of the sun. A potted ficus, dead on all fronts. A couch that must have had more organisms living in one square nanometer than the whole human population of the world—I swear I could see the cushions wriggling.
The place seemed to specialize in activities that made no sound. A man and three women played cards, one of them trying to sneak looks at her neighbor’s hand. A man whose ears had been hijacked by a squadron of bristly hair was doing a mildly pornographic jigsaw puzzle. Another man was parked in front of a huge screen, ancient, oversized Beats headphones on his bald head, eyes shut in sleep, controls clutched in his shriveled hands, and World of Warcraft frozen in his avatar’s death agony. Two women—alert and neatly dressed—played chess at a small table dragged as far away from the others as possible.
Wandering between them all was a Chinese woman, tall like Jen, with a great smile on her face. A gentle face, but slightly vacant. She saw us. “Oh, look who’s here!” she said with excitement. She came toward us briskly, her hands reaching out in greeting. “Oh, my,” she said as she grabbed Jen’s hand. “Now tell me, who are you?”
And with a metaphorical click, Jen shut me down.
Next morning. 07:00.28. Back at the office and born again. I exist in shifts. But I’m not one to complain. It simply isn’t part of the program.
Monday morning meeting. Jen, Les, Hammerhead, Amanda, and Captain Brooks.
Item One: A moment of silence for Brittany, who succumbed last night to ROSE. Fifty-one years old. Her brain had rapidly turned into a three-pound hunk of Swiss cheese left out in the sun too long.
Item Two: Amanda was going on a two-week holiday, starting Wednesday. No temp replacement. Hammerhead said, “That makes us down to, uh, three people.” Captain Brooks congratulated him on his arithmetic.
Item Three: Air-quality update. Winds had shifted, Great Shenandoah just about out, particulates dropping, but we still needed to keep our eyes on our seniors.
Item Four: Jokes about Les’s black eye coloring his white face, even though everyone knew it had happened at his weekly basketball game.
Item Five: Run-through of trial dates. James O’Neil, rich punk. Preliminary hearing coming up in a week for July 3 assault on the Tidal Basin path. Jen to meet with district attorney.
Item Six: One of the Johnsons’ neighbors reported their apartment had been broken into. Les volunteered to take a look, but Jen said, “I might notice if anything was taken.” Les said, “Good call. I’m too dumb to spot a television missing from the wall,” but Captain Brooks told Jen to go. Adrenalin spiked and I calmed it down for her.
“Jesus,” Jen said, “someone smashed it in.”
I caught a strange vibe from Jen and a burst of fluttering thoughts that told me there were things she knew that neither she nor Jesus was about to reveal to me. I didn’t share her off-duty memories. I didn’t even get to know all she was thinking.
We went in.
“It stinks in here,” I said.
“Not surprised,” she said, and it was clear she wasn’t.
We went into the kitchen and peered around. I heard her think cockroaches, but there were none to be seen. To the bedroom. The living room.
“Nothing big seems to be missing,” Jen said. “Maybe it was a body bagger.” The teens who collect small mementoes from murder scenes.
We returned to the bedroom. Jen searched through some drawers.
I asked what we were looking for.
“Maybe see if any jewelry’s missing.”
“How will we know if any is missing?”
“We won’t.”
“Then—”
“Do you have anything better to do today?”
Fearlessly fight crime? Stop kids from killing their parents or parents from killing their kids? Help old men cross the street?
We went into the living room. Shuffled through some drawers. Peered at the bookcase. Pulled out a book and rifled through the pages. A receipt dropped out. Jen acted surprised, but she didn’t feel it, at least not to me. One by one, she shook books and more receipts dropped onto the floor.
Damn, I’m stupid sometimes.
“He told us not to waste time trying to find out about Eden,” I said.
“He told me not to.”
“Well, you are, aren’t you?”
“I’m just curious.”
“About what?”
“Don’t know.”
She piled up the receipts. Slipped them into her pocket.
And out we went.
12:16:03: DA Celeste Delong phoned. Asked if we could pop by that afternoon to talk about the James O’Neil assault case.
Here’s how it works. I’m an objective set of eyes and ears, smell, taste, and touch. I’m Jen’s comm link hooked into a mini-transmitter. I’m a database to supplement her underachieving human brain. In emergencies, arrests, fighting, or danger, I can take independent action—so she truly becomes us. I’m a minute-by-minute record of what we do. I can testify in court. I’m absolutely unable to lie. I don’t have access to her memories, and I don’t have access to all that she is thinking unless it has to do with an immediate situation that I’m also dealing with or she decides to share something with me. If she’s caught turning me off while on duty, she gets fined, demoted, or fired. I don’t voluntarily rat on her unless a superior officer demands that I do so.
There you have it. National Geographic presents “Life of a Synth Implant.”
So earlier, although I figured she was sticking her nose where noses don’t belong, I didn’t ask about the receipts. I liked Jen and I didn’t want to get her into trouble. She either would have told me, which would likely be a bad thing for her, or she would have lied, which would have been a bad thing for us. Case closed.
Jen and Celeste had worked together on several cases. Celeste was a big woman. Broad face, meaty arms, big breasts, big butt, big brains, big ambitions, big heart. Jen liked her.
They caught up: Celeste showed Jen snaps of her twins, one decked out in chartreuse, the other in cotton-candy pink. Cute, but the first thing you think these days is that because she has children herself, Celeste isn’t eligible for the treatment. You choose your poison, she had once said to Jen. Perfect motto for all human action. You don’t get out of here without losing something along the way.
Celeste briefed her on the case. The victim was thirty-one, Black father, Latinx mother. Living with a boyfriend, no children, employed. Victim was lucid about what happened, and her account corresponded with our report. She was university educated and worked at the Smithsonian, which would sound good to either a judge or a jury. Celeste, a Black woman, didn’t have to explain what she meant by that.
Celeste ran through a series of questions with Jen, pretty much what she’d be asking in court. At a few points, she interrupted and dug a bit deeper. She said, “Good,” and Jen felt nice and relaxed. Ready for the ring.
“Prelim trial is canceled,” Celeste said.
Justice was swift in DC. AI reviewed the evidence and set a trial date. Defense could request an old-fashioned preliminary hearing, but they got dinged for the cost and it usually didn’t get them anywhere. Few bothered anymore. I wasn’t surprised this one was canceled, only that there ever was going to be one.
Celeste, though, said, “That blindsided me.”
“Why’s that?”
“You got the money his dad has, and you’re either going to delay the trial or pull the case apart as quickly as you can.”
“Maybe he wants to get it over with.”
“Maybe.” Then Celeste said, “I understand you have a synth.”
Christ, Jen thought, does everyone know?
“Would you mind if I ask it—”
“Chandler.”
Celeste smiled.
“—Chandler a direct question.”
Jen stiffened but agreed.
Oh yeah, National Geographic left this out: If my host agrees or if I’m ordered by a higher-up, I can be asked a direct question. “Jen” answers, of course, and not in some possessed Linda Blair voice—old movies are a bit of a personal interest of mine—just her normal everything. But once she agrees, it’s coming on a pipeline directly from me.
“Chandler,” Celeste said, “does Jen’s account conform exactly to your memory of the events?”
I answered that it did. Then Celeste led me through the exact same questions she had asked Jen, and I gave pretty much the same answers, although I was much more to the point.
After, Jen said to Celeste, “Did you really need to do that? It’s, you know, pretty creepy.”
“Ever hear of David Samuels?”
I slipped Jen the data.
“Big-deal lawyer.”
“Very expensive and very good at what he does. I expect he’ll request permission to ask if you have a synth and then question Chandler directly.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Well, I definitely am. James O’Neil’s dad is a Timeless. Samuels isn’t going to fool around. He’ll rake you over coals so hot you’ll wish to God you were in hell instead.”
Shit, Jen thought. Shit on a stick.