Memoria
| Memoria | |
| Alex Bobl | |
| Sky Bridge (2012) | |
| Rating: | **** |
| Tags: | Hardboiled Sci Fi |
They control your memories...
They tell you how to live...
In the bombed-out streets of New York, the corrupt bosses of Memoria
Corporation make billions by erasing people's traumatic memories. But their
bubble bursts when a humble citizen Frank Shelby becomes a murder suspect on the run. Betrayed by his friends and hunted down by mysterious killers, Frank has to penetrate Memoria and find evidence of their real plans before it's too
late for all of us.
Alex Bobl
MEMORIA
A Corporation of Lies
Memoria. A Corporation of Lies
Alex Bobl
Published by
Sky Bridge Publishers
, 2012
Copyright
©
Alex Bobl
2012
Cover Art
©
Vladimir Manyukhin 2012
English translation copyright © Irene
Woodhead 2012
Editor Neil P. Mayhew
All Rights Reserved
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to
Amazon
.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.
Table of Contents:
Chapter One. Who? When? What For?
Chapter Three. The Letter from the Dead
Chapter Seven. It's a Small World
Chapter Eight. The Expert's Lodgings
Chapter Nine. A Pattern Starts to Form
Chapter Ten. The Vaccination Project
Chapter Eleven. Underdogs Bite
Chapter Thirteen. Rappelling into Hell
Chapter Fifteen. Questions Without Answers
Chapter Sixteen. The Migrants' Camp
Chapter Eighteen. The Bent Cop
Chapter Nineteen. Personality Correction
Chapter Twenty. Things Fall into Place
Chapter Twenty-One. Chasing Tails
Chapter Twenty-Two. The Murderous Friend
Chapter Twenty-Three. The Final Combat
Epilogue. The Lull Before the Storm
appreciation to Tais Khulish, Yulian Zagorodny
, Cyd Athens
and Sergei Grushko for their wealth of advice.
Chapter One
.
Who? When? What For?
F
rank didn't like the cab the moment he saw it.
The ancient Ford Victoria had tint
ed windows, a rusty rear fender
and a massive brush guard mounted on the bumper.
The driver pulled out of the cab line that stretched all the way to the airport exi
t, cutting off the car that
already
waited
for Frank. Brakes screeching, it came to a halt by the curb.
Frank had a bad feeling about it.
The car raised questions. First, what cab company would keep this rust bucket in their fleet
thirty years after the
end of the
war
in the city
? Second
ly
, what kind of taxi driver would so brazenly cold-shoulder his fellow cabbies?
The driver rolled down his window and yelled at Frank, his voice drowned out by an airbus landing in La Guardia. The plane's shadow darkened the bombed-out skeletons of buildings along the road. Crossing the faces of people waiting on the sidewalk, the shadow brushed the glass façade of a newly restored building and fleeted away.
"You deaf? It's half
the fare!" Frank heard once the whine of the jet's engine subsided.
He stepped toward the car, opened the door and looked inside. An unpleasant face stared back at him, its cheekbones high and eyes deeply set. Smooth skin was drawn tight over the man's skull, and a thick white scar ran from his right temple to the back of his head. The man's skin, although perfectly natural, looked too smooth to be real. It gave Frank the impression that the bully had slapped on some makeup before pulling in at the terminal exit.
"Get in," the baldhead barked.
Frank had another look at him and stepped back.
"I said, get in,"
the man glanced up impatiently at the road in front of him. A spot of light fell on his face, causing his pupils to con
tract
, and Frank gave up his initial idea of the driver being a spaced-out junkie.
Behind Frank's back, unhappy voices tried to hurry the line along. Another cab pulled up by the sidewalk, causing the whole line of cars that snaked around the terminal's perimeter to edge forward.
"Move it!" the bald-headed driver wheezed through his teeth. He stuck out a sharp chin and shifted in his leather seat.
The cab behind him tooted and pulled too close, locking his bumper. Its front door swung open, letting out an indignant middle-aged heavyweight with a fat mustache.
About to comply, Frank laid
his hand on the door handle when
a
familiar stinging filled the bridge of his nose. His eyes watered.
He glanced
inside
and cringed
at the view of battered leather seats
.
Leather.
He let go of the door and shoved a shaking hand into his coat pocket for a tissue. All gone.
Shit
!
Wretched
allergy, always messing with his life!
He stepped back and forced a smile to the baldheaded driver.
"Sorry
...
I can't go with you
...
It's not your fault, I'm allerg-"
"You piece of
crap
!" the baldhead lunged across the cab and grabbed Frank's hand dragging him inside. Frank pulled his hand free and slammed the door, barely missing the man's fingers.
His heart pumping, he looked around him at the staring people, mumbled something about giving up his turn and stepped
over
to the mustached cabbie's vehicle.
"I'll go with you, if it's okay."
He reached for the door.
"
Hey
you
!
Get lost
!"
the
baldheaded cabman croaked behind his back
.
Frank turned round. The
bully
driver
pushed aside a passenger who was trying to load his suitcase into
the
trunk. He waved to Frank again.
"Come on,
quit stalling
!"
Frank chose to ignore him. The angry passenger picked up his suitcase and mumbled something. The bald driver slammed his fist into the man's shoulder. The crowd
recoiled
.
"I think the guy could use a lesson," the mustached
cabbie
said. "I c
an
teach him one if he insists."
He stepped toward the first
taxi
, but the bully driver
jumped into his cab,
rolled up his window and
took
off
, his
intent
eyes fixed on the road
.
"Don't bother," Frank wiped his stinging eyes and said out loud, for the crowd's sake. "I'm a lawyer. I work for the Government. I'll take care of it."
He made a show of marking down the
departing
Ford's plates
as well as
the com
pany's logo and phone numbers from
the trunk. Then he checked the other cab's fabric upholstery, got in and gave the mustached driver his West Side address.
His heart was still pumping hard. The bald man's bosses got to know about this. His poor conduct shouldn't be tolerated. Nor should Frank himself head for Memoria in order to erase the unpleasant incident from his mind. The bully had to get his comeuppance: be punished, demoted, fired — let him take his pick.
Of course, the man could always go to Memoria himself and erase the memories of his dismissal and the airport incident that had caused it. But it wouldn't help him much: his name would be blacklisted by all cab companies'
databases, or maybe even the New York
police department files. That would be more than enough. The La Guardia
bully
would never be able to appear in public again; he'd lose his driver's license, and no amount of Memoria wipe would help it. He could erase his memories every day if he wanted to, but every time the bald son of a bitch tried to get a job, the incident would come up until the day the sanction was lifted.
Satisfied,
Frank reached for the cell phone in his pocket. After a brief hesitation
—
whom to call first?
—
he dialed his home number. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Kathleen had remembered his arrival and was now waiting for him?
Under the gloomy sky, Queens'
half-restored
ruins
flashed past the cab window. Shame if it was going to rain: he'd been looking forward to a breath of fresh air. Provided Kathleen picked up. Provided nothing had come up to keep him from seeing her.
The phone rang. Frank shifted it to his other hand and leaned back. Theirs was a strange relationship indeed, Kathleen’s and his, nothing normal about it. High time they sat and talked about it. You couldn't expect a successful lawyer like himself, a government advisor, to keep dating someone he'd met six months ago at some Mayoral event without even knowing her full name. Kathleen was an intelligent and educated girl, all designer clothes and sports cars, but she'd never spoken about herself.
He tried to remember when exactly he'd given her the key to his place
...
Was it their second date? Third? Come to think of it, it had been her idea to begin with. Pretty irrelevant, but still, they had to talk it all over. Frank didn't look forward to falling victim to a jealous husband or anything like that. In the light of his position, and especially his potential promotion to a post in EPPD, it wouldn't be a good idea to take his relationships lightly. So he needed to weigh up all the pros and cons and approach their future discussion with some seriousness. He had to practice what he was going to say and how he'd say it — his arguments, his body language
...
Then they'd decide where their relationship could go from there.