AS HOTELS GO, the one I’ve been deposited at by a dull US Gabor corp liaison isn’t too bad. As with all things American, it’s on a bigger scale than anything in Norope and has an affiliation to a particular church stated proudly on a stone plaque next to the entrance. When Tia handles the handshake with the hotel node and the check-in, it informs me that my behavior at the hotel mustn’t contravene any of the guidelines provided (via a link I don’t select) for the comfort and religious freedom of all guests. What it neglects to mention is that they mean the particular brand of religious freedom that they approve of.
I checked in eight hours, forty-seven minutes and twenty seconds ago, according to the stopwatch counter that appeared without my permission on the left-hand side of my vision as soon as I stepped onto US soil. Below that counter is a second one informing me of how many hours, minutes and seconds remain before the toad’s forty-eight-hour deadline expires and each additional hour will mean a year added to my contract.
Collindale sent a message mere moments after I checked in, saying he’ll escort me to the Circle but not detailing exactly when. Even though I know I can’t expect to be taken there much before the funeral, the wait and uncertainty are agonizing. I’ve memorized the pictures and bios of those Circle members as best I can, and now I’m too tired to work yet too restless to relax. It’s two o’clock local time, but my body thinks I should be going to bed. My stomach rumbles, but I can’t bring myself to eat anything produced by the printer in my room.
Gabor obviously thinks I’ll be able to use the information on those people as leverage, should it be necessary to find an ally at the Circle to get Travis out. Even though I don’t have much faith Gabor will keep me alive once his husband is delivered back to him, I still can’t take the risk of ignoring his order. At some point after the funeral the Circle will boot me back out again, and if I don’t have Travis with me, Gabor could have me killed then and there if he wishes. I don’t want to be a kidnapper, but if a choice has to be made, I doubt I will put Travis’s marital happiness above my own life. He made his choice years ago. I’ve never had the pleasure of knowing what that’s like.
I’m pacing again, even though my legs are aching and my head feels stuffed with cotton wool. I think about the bios Gabor sent me, the patents, the way Collindale and the US gov-corp got so twitchy about anyone knowing about the suicide. What Alejandro founded as an oasis of simple godliness in the Texas wilderness has mutated into some sort of elite research facility raking in a huge amount of money from the products of its scientific endeavors. I try to fit that idea of it into my memories of the aging hippies with tanned beer guts and sagging breasts, either sitting around praying and talking about how God worked through Alejandro to save them from the evils of the modern world or working the fields to grow real food for everyone there. I don’t remember anyone other than my dad having a background in science, and he couldn’t even wash and dress himself without being reminded to, let alone carry out research. I try to persuade Tia to do a search on his name and any of the Circle’s patents, but it won’t comply. I can’t decide if Gabor has restricted my access out of spite or fear that I’ll get a message for help out there somehow. Probably both.
I try to imagine what it will be like to see my father again. Will he be pleased to see me? We parted on such bad terms. Has that festered inside him as it has in me, mutating into an emotional cancer that fucked up his life as much as mine? Or will he throw his arms wide and behave like nothing happened? I don’t know which of those possibilities I dread the most.
Eventually I can’t pace anymore and flop onto the bed, thinking I’ll just rest my eyes for a few minutes. I wake some hours later. The light from the window is the dull bronze of a Texas sunset and does nothing to help my disorientation. Tia informs me that no contact has been made from the Circle or US gov-corp. I’ve been in the States for more than twelve hours now and have nothing to show for it except jet lag and a headache the size of the Atlantic. MyPhys recommends I drink water and eat.
The water is easy enough. The chemical aftertaste is unpleasant but better than being ill. Evidently the hotel’s water supply is pumped in from one of the older reclamation plants. I try not to think about it too much.
The food issue is harder. I sit on the edge of the bed, my stomach long past the stage of rumbling, staring at the printer fitted into the wall. It’s a typical generic model and only a couple of years old by the look of it. “Any cuisine, anytime!” boasts the tagline beneath the company logo. I think of the meat and vegetables rotting in my apartment, the look on Gabor’s face when he made it clear I’d never eat real food again, the consequences of not using the printer. If I don’t eat and fall ill or cease to function properly as a result, MyPhys will no doubt escalate this. For those in better circumstances than I, it would simply be a notification sent to a health-care provider. In the MoJ, I would have been sent to my psych supervisor and no doubt given a recalibration session. But now? Now I wouldn’t be surprised if MyPhys reporting into Gabor’s APA would result in some of his goons coming in here and force-feeding me. He must have people nearby, waiting for me to emerge with Travis.
I instruct Tia to open the menu for me. As expected, there are thousands of meals available. All are described in ludicrously poetic language and a picture of the dish presented restaurant style, with equally fake steam and the kind of metal cutlery you never get printed with one of these hotel models.
It doesn’t fool me. I know that those dishes are all just different combinations of protein, oil and powdered chemicals injected in the appropriate ratios and then built layer by layer into the correct shape and texture by the nozzles. Behind that shiny black plasglass are the same sorts of tubes that would have been in that machine in my childhood home, packaged so that you never see how horribly artificial and inedible the contents really look.
Surely it’s different now. More advanced than back then. No. The formula may be more advanced, the chemicals better at fooling the palate and the manufacturers making more sophisticated combinations, but it’s still not real food.
I need to eat though. I select a lasagna and pace the room as it prints behind the opaque plasglass screen. A soft musical tone tells me it’s ready and the screen slides open as I approach. I pull out the tray, nothing more than shiny cardboard, and peer at the newly printed “lasagna” resting on a plastic plate with a horribly kitschy flower pattern running round the edge and a logo for the affiliated church. I pull a plastic fork from the slot at the side of the printer and push the “food” around with it, unable to bring myself to put any of it in my mouth. It smells good. It’s hot. It looks like a fake lasagna; not nearly as good as the picture but better than I expected. I carve off a corner and hold it on the fork, my traitorous stomach rumbling loudly. Finally, I close my eyes and shove it in my mouth.
Each forkful brings a memory of the house in Spain. Crying in front of the printer when it wouldn’t make chorizo anymore, the timid tapping on my father’s bedroom door that evolved into banging thumps when the printer just fired out spurts of lumpy goop into the tray.
Bear hearing me crying and trying to solve the problem, and waiting for the social team to come and take me away as the sound of police sirens and the smell of smoke filled the house. The riots stopped three streets away, I learned many years later, and Bear’s report to the social team was lost in the tumultuous collapse of democratic government.
I don’t notice the tears on my cheeks until the plastic plate is empty. Beneath the “sauce” smears a new logo has been revealed, one for the printer company, with a cartoon animal holding a sign saying “God loves you!” next to it.
I dump the tray in the recycling bin and then fall into another restless sleep. Several times I wake from dreams of boats and chains, filled with the sense I’m going to die that grows, unchallenged, in the darkness.
—
I wake before dawn with no sense of the actual time nor what my body thinks it should be. The counter is approaching twenty-four hours and still no contact from the US gov-corp. Collindale said he would collect me when it was time to go, and that would be determined by the funeral arrangements at the Circle. I guess they don’t want me hanging around for hours, being curious and poking my investigator’s nose where they don’t want it. I’d be the same.
A shower helps, even though it’s not the lengthy indulgence that it was at the Moor Hotel. By the time I’m dressed and caffeinated there’s a faint pink glow brushing the bottom of the clouds on the horizon. The headache has eased but the hunger is building again. I just need to wait a little longer; then I can eat something real at the wake. Fuck, am I really looking forward to a wake now? I need to get out of this hotel room and feel the wind on my face.
There are apples for sale in the lobby café for twenty dollars each, grown at a local orchard, if the sales display is to be believed. I walk past them, the question of whether to incur more debt to buy one having been made irrelevant by my new contract, and head toward a courtyard-garden sign posted from all the elevators on the ground floor. Tinny Muzak plays as I walk, trying to shrug off the sense of shaky disembodiment caused by the jet lag and hunger, and I notice a woman watching me as I go past. My first thought is that she’s from the US gov-corp, assigned to make sure I don’t leave the hotel without an escort. My second is that she’s actually a Gabor employee with the same brief. My third is that I’m evidently paranoid. JeeMuh, what I wouldn’t do to have that Moor Hotel breakfast again. Was that only yesterday? Or the day before? I’d even welcome small talk with Alex the SOCO. Hell, even a grilling from Milsom would be good right now, if it meant I was back in the MoJ for real.
The courtyard garden is the most inappropriately named outdoor space I’ve even been in. There are a few planters with brittle-looking cacti and some artificial ferns that have seen better days. At least there is a crisp chill in the air to refresh me. It will have to do.
I sit there, thoughts of Dee and Mars floating through my mind like the clouds passing over my head, until I start to feel too cold. I shuffle back into the hotel, hands in my pockets, hating this limbo. I stop next to the lobby café, staring at the apples, until a ping comes from Collindale telling me that he’ll be at the hotel in five minutes and I need to be ready to leave.
The adrenaline kicks back in as I walk briskly to the elevator and then down the seemingly endless corridor to my room. Without knowing how long it will take to find Travis, it’s useless trying to plan my approach. There are fewer than twenty-four hours left and about four of those will be eaten up by travel into the heart of the Circle and back out again—assuming I can get a car to bring him back out to the rendezvous. It’s going to be tight.
I don’t notice the package on my bed until I’ve shut the door behind me and gotten halfway to the en-suite. I stop and stare at it, half expecting it to blow up. It’s only three centimeters or so thick, about thirty centimeters by twenty, wrapped in thick brown paper covered with a protective bio-film wrapper. I pick it up, turn it over to see that there’s nothing written on the outside anywhere, and then get a ping from Collindale telling me he’s in a car outside.
Hoping it’s from Delaney, I stuff it into my case underneath everything else and suppress the worry that they will search my bag again. I hurry down to the lobby as Tia checks me out of the hotel. Collindale is parked to the left of the main entrance and is leaning against a predictably large car. I return his wave.
Collindale looks exactly as he did in Devon and gives me the same smile and sense of being short as he shakes my hand. “Good flight over?”
“Not bad. I could do without the jet lag though.”
“You wait till you fly back,” he says, opening the boot.
I put my case in and watch as he waves a customs wand over it, checking for any electronics. I hold my breath, fearful that the package actually contains an old tablet, but he seems satisfied and switches the wand off after waving it over my body. “I know you’re not dumb enough to try to sneak some personal tech into the Circle,” he says. “Just gotta make sure I can tell my boss I followed procedure. You know how it is.”
“Yup,” I say as casually as I can, wishing that Milsom were still my boss.
He opens the passenger’s door for me and I climb in and buckle up as he walks round to the driver’s side. Being on the other side of the car adds to the background noise of disorientation.
“So, I guess they must have told you that the Circle has strict guidelines about who can go into their”—he struggles to find the least loaded word—“territory.”
I nod. “The last time I was there I wasn’t chipped. I understand there’s some sort of thing I have to wear?”
He reaches into the backseat and retrieves a very small plastic case. Inside is a plain solid-metal bracelet. “This,” he says, pulling it out and chucking the empty box back onto the backseat. “It locks on and you won’t be able to take it off until you leave the territory. I have the key, but any US gov-corp employee of my pay grade and above can unlock it for you. No one at the Circle can, I should add. Obviously.”
“Does it cut off my connection to the cloud?”
“No, it shuts your APA down altogether and stops you from reactivating it. I know it seems kinda full-on, but the Circle insists on it. They said you’d understand.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
“Ankle or wrist?”
I shudder and remind myself there is no boat, no chain, no leering pervert here. “Wrist is fine.”
“It emits an alarm of one hundred and twenty decibels if you or anyone else there tries to deactivate it or tries to physically cut it off you. It’s made of a high-tensile alloy that can’t be cut with conventional tools.” He makes a small gesture, as if selecting something from his own APA’s menu, and it clicks open. “You sure you wanna go to this funeral?”
“Yes,” I say, after making a note of the time and the amount I have left until the deadline, and he puts it on my wrist. The spinning Gabor logo disappears and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Were you expecting it to hurt?” he asks.
I shake my head, reveling in a visual field free of the marking of slavery. “I thought it would be more uncomfortable.”
“It’s about an hour to the border. I can play some music, seeing as your APA is down,” he offers, and I beam at him.
“That would be great,” I say, hoping that a plan involving this bracelet and my permanent freedom will form soon. Gabor has no way to track me now and Tia can’t police me either. I have to make the most of it.