Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (13 page)

“I’m not a fan of the Forces myself. It was an unpleasant experience.”

He says something under his breath that sounds like 
choe-bee
, drawing the word out, and Father Wen looks away.

“Yes, pissing on the poor can be unpleasant,” he says sarcastically. “Killing them, burning their homes.”

I don’t like the direction this is heading and decide that a little confrontation may be the only way to take control of the situation. I step forward until I’m inches from Chen’s face.

“It’s more than unpleasant. You know it if you were there. I have guilt, I have nightmares, but I can’t undo the past. All I can do is try to do the right thing now. If that doesn’t meet your high standards, fuck you.”

Chen laughs quietly.

“Okay, you have my attention. What do you want?”

“From what I’ve been told you know a lot about what goes on around here.”

He shrugs noncommittally.

“I was attacked in front of my office on Jung Jing Road. Three men posing as homeless. I thought you might know something about them.”

“Sure,” he says affably. He leans against the doorway. “White men, well-fed, obviously not real homeless. They were around for a day or so.”

“Can you tell me anything about them? What they looked like? What they did?”

“All of them were tall, all in perfect health. Good teeth, good posture, no bone degeneration. Good hair, so good diet, vitamins. Other than the fact that they didn’t look homeless there was nothing particularly distinctive about them. One had blond hair, the other two dark. All with short hair. Very muscular and their demeanor was very pushy. They were bullies.”

“How were they bullies?”

“They demanded cigarettes from people. Cigarettes are very valuable for us, like money. If people said no they would laugh and take the cigarettes anyway. They pushed some of the girls around, trying to get sex. They had guns, so no one argued with them.”

“These people were stealing and threatening and no one reported them?”

Chen makes a face and glances at Wen, who looks down, apparently uncomfortable. Chen faces me again.

“Report? Who the hell to? To the police? For them we don’t even exist, except when they think we’ve committed a crime.”

“They don’t respond?”

This time Chen laughs loudly.

“Respond, he says,” directing his comment to Wen. “Respond. They don’t give a fuck, Mr. Burroughs. You know what they call us, right? Krill. Small, abundant, unimportant, and preyed upon by others. They don’t even show up. Theft, murder, rape. . . it doesn’t matter. We have to look out for ourselves. No one else is going to protect us.”

“Okay,” I say, hoping to change tack a little, “so how did you look after yourselves? These guys were bullying you, what did you do?”

“I talked with them.”

“You 
talked
?”

“Yes, I talked. I explained that they were three men. Then I explained that I had at least five-hundred men who would attack them if I gave the order, even if they knew some of them would die. With such numbers, even their guns wouldn’t matter. They stopped.”

“Didn’t you wonder what they were doing here? Why they were pretending to be homeless? Why they were carrying guns?”

“Personally, I didn’t care. Obviously they were after someone who was not one of us. Some 
housed
 person,” he says, pronouncing the word like an obscenity. “That is not my concern.”

“They wanted to 
kill
 someone,” I say, unable to hide my anger at his cavalier manner.

“Yes, you. With no disrespect, so what? You don’t know this city at all, do you? You think it is your world, the housed, the wealthy, the privileged. Do you even see the homeless when you pass them on the street? Do you ever stop to think about their lives, their world? Do you do anything to help them? There is a whole world that is invisible to you and the only reason it’s invisible is that you would rather not see it, it makes you uncomfortable. So why should we care about you?”

I want to respond angrily, but he’s right.

“Okay Chen, I’m guilty, all right? I ignore the homeless. I try to pretend they’re not there. It makes me uncomfortable to see them or to think about them.”

“About 
us
,” he corrects me.

“Fine, about 
you
. But I’m trying to save lives here. We’re all human, even the housed.”

“You are human, obviously. The question is, are we? And if we are not, if we aren’t treated as human beings, why should we give you the courtesy?”

“Okay,” I say, “fine. I won’t argue with you. It’s unfair, it’s even cruel. Still, people have died and more could die yet, even homeless. If you can help me, I might be able to prevent it.” 
 

Chen looks into the middle distance for a moment, as though considering what I’ve said. Then he looks back at me, full eye contact, no flinching. His gaze is very intense.

“The only reason I talk to you is Pastor Hearn. The 
only
 reason. I don’t care if you live or die, but the Pastor 
does
 see us, he 
does
 know our world, and he 
does
 help us. For that reason only I will tell you something that might help you.”

“Thank you,” I say, not knowing what else is appropriate.

“They were vat boys.”

“Shells? How do you know?”

“You’re a shell yourself, Mr. Burroughs, like me. Don’t you usually know one when you see one? Too perfect, too healthy, too at ease, too strong, too confident. They weren’t just healthy, the way housed people are healthy, they were ultra. Definitely shells.”

“Thank you Chen. I appreciate your information.”

“If you really appreciate it, you should make a donation.”

I take out some money from my pocket and start peeling off bills, holding them toward him.

“Not to me,” he says, as though I’m stupid, “to Father Wen, to the mission, to Pastor Hearn. Stop being blind for a moment and see our world. If you do, you might even 
want
 to give something.”

“I will,” I promise.

“Big words. Heard that song before. I know this neighborhood, you know. I know where you live and where you work, and I don’t like being lied to.”

“I can imagine.”

That brings a large grin.

“You haven’t got enough imagination for what I can do,” he says, and turns to leave.

“Chen,” I call out after him.

He stops and turns back to me in the doorway of the office.

“What?” he asks curtly, and I ask him the question that’s been bothering me since I saw his pants.

“You were in the Forces, you could have a pension, education credits, help getting a job. Why are you homeless?”

He advances on me and this time he is the one who presses his face close to mine. His eyes are angry, furious.

“Do you think I want anything the Forces would give me?” he asks, angry. “Do you think I would take one penny from them?”

He calms himself and straightens his jacket.

“For my part, Mr. Burroughs, I like to see the world as it is, including the poor and the homeless. I joined the Forces, like so many others, because I felt I had no choice, no other job, but then I learned what they were about: crushing us. Using the poor and the desperate who can’t find a job to beat the rest of the poor into submission. When I realized what the Forces really were, I went AWOL. Technically, I’m still subject to Court Martial. I wouldn’t take anything the Forces would give me, but they wouldn’t give me anything anyway. I am a criminal, Mr. Burroughs. I prefer it that way.”

And with that, he leaves.

I call Felon as I head back to Cloud City, activating my kaikki by voice command.

“Fellows, L.A.P.D.”

“It's Gat,” I say, forcing myself to sound friendly. I need him, after all. On the other hand, in my heart of hearts, part of me would rather cut my own guts out and try to eat them before I died.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“I’ve got news on our UIF.”

“Been out there playing detective?”

“I 
am
 a detective, got a license and everything.”

“No shit? So what’s the news?”

“We’re looking for shells.”

“How do you figure?”

“Trust me, it’s my life.”

He mulls it over for a moment.

“Well, that’ll cut down the I.D. time. I’ll have the techs compare the DNA scrape to the shells on file. Shouldn’t take long. I’ll call you back.”

By the time I’m winding up the final stretch of road to Cloud City, my kaikki chirps and Dave’s badge number and the L.A.P.D. logo appear in the upper right corner of my visor.

“Gat here Dave. What’s up.”

“The dead UIF is no longer UI.”

“Praise God.”

“And pass the ammunition,” he says, completing the phrase and laughing. It’s making me a little sick, buttering him up with this Forces chatter, but he’s got what I need.

“You want to ride along while I track it down?”

I want nothing less than to spend time with him, but I need information and I don’t want him screwing things up—I want to be there to supervise.

“Sure. You got the vat?”

“Oh yeah, DNA traces back to an outfit called Body Work Inc.”

“Where should I meet you?”

I’m almost at Cloud City now, slowing the bike.

“I gotta do a few things. Whyn’t you meet me there?” He rattles off the address, knowing full well that my Forces training will ensure that I remember it.

“Okay. Is an hour all right?”

“Sure, sure, whatever. They’re not going anywhere.”

“Sooner, Dave,” I say, not meaning it.

“See you in the zone,” he says, hanging up. The drop zone. Still a trooper after all these years.

I don’t even bother entering the grounds of Cloud City, just turn the bike around and head out. The address that Felon’s given me is north of Pacific Palisades, near the waterfront. Vat outfits need a lot of water for their operations and ocean water’s just fine once you desalinate it and filter it about a thousand times.

The building sits, squat and low, spread over acres of rocky land. The driveway approaches from the east side of the building and opens into a small parking lot with about ten cars in it. The plant is huge, but if it’s like most vats it’s largely automated, so there won’t be a large staff. Yellow brick walls stretch north and south in an unbroken line for hundreds of meters. Dead center is a pair of doors and over that is a small sign: Body Work Inc.

No doubt they have a corporate office downtown for the clients—the kind of place that’s redecorated by a different brand name artist every six months just to stay chic—with demonstration tanks, plush carpeting, and a gorgeous receptionist. Out here is the business end; there’s no need to get elaborate.

I sit on my bike and research the company while I wait for Felon to arrive, translucent data streaming down the inside of my visor. Body Work Inc., I discover, has been operational for over twenty-five years. They look very clean. A few minor Code violations have showed up during inspections, but any vat has those, mostly inadvertent. The company’s publicly traded, so it has an obligation to publish its financial reports, making it an unlikely criminal enterprise. It would be very hard to hide any illicit profits.

The president and CEO is Lester DeLong, a biochemist and one of the pioneers of shell technology. He started out at General Genomics, where he worked his way up to VP operations. In his spare time he worked on the notion of shell farming, his hobby. When he’d nailed the details he handled it responsibly, telling the board of directors about his extracurricular work and requesting that he be allowed to start up a branch operation on a test-case basis for a year. If it paid off, he’d run the branch and take a bonus in General Genomics stock that would put him into the richest percentile in Cali. If it went bust, as most predicted it would, he’d return to his old duties, no hard feelings. It was a bit of a gamble for General, but DeLong had the credentials and had worked up an impressive presentation, not just scientific stuff, but a whole business plan. It seems DeLong had an entrepreneurial side, he just hadn’t chosen to show it until then. If worse came to worst, General could always claim the loss on their taxes.

By the time the year was up, though, Body Work Inc. was a cash cow. The scientific work had already been done long before the business started, but DeLong brought in some of the best spin artists around to make sure the public bought into the scheme.

DeLong had also been at work on decanting, the sensitive process of extracting  neural patterns from a human brain—a package of jellied meat soaked in chemicals and animated by electrical impulses—encoding them in a transitional program that ensured redundant backups for safety, and then instantiating them into a fresh brain.

The pioneering work in that area had been done years before by Watts and Sweet at CaliARPI, then revolutionized by Bennett and Hai at T.T. Genomics, but until DeLong got involved it was an artisanal process that depended entirely on a surgeon with a rare and expensive set of skills. DeLong had taken the work of disparate researchers, knit it together into a single procedure, worked out the bugs, and then focused on routinizing—and often automating—the complex details of the decanting process until it was not only cost-effective, but also demonstrably safe.

Next thing you knew rickety old rich folk with saggy jowls and too much money were walking in, looking ready for the undertaker. When they left again they were substantially less rich but they didn’t care because they were young, healthy, and beautiful. No more lung and heart transplants, with all the risks of rejection and infection, not to mention the dangers that come with general anesthesia. Now you just dropped by Body Work and got a whole new shell. Hell, you didn’t even have to go under a general. A local anesthetic for the scalp was enough to let DeLong into your head—the brain can’t sense pain, after all. Bit by bit your memories, sensations, and thoughts were scanned and transferred from your old body to the new shell until 
voilà
, you were ready for another sixty years of life. Not that anyone was likely to wait that long. With enough money you could show up the moment your shell hit the equivalent of fifty, fifty-five, whatever, and just download again into another twenty-year-old shell. As far as anyone knew you could live forever, and that prospect is what’s put Body Works and other places like it into the stratosphere fiscally.