So Yesterday (14 page)

My own brain began to twist under the assault,
gradually losing the marbles it had regathered in the darkness downstairs. I
forged ahead, jostling my way through swarming penguins and penguinettes. There
seemed to be no security, no one who had realized how badly things were falling
apart. Maybe the Poo-Sham effect had dazzled everyone in charge as well.

I made it to the main lobby, where the dinosaur
skeletons still posed in their death struggle, unimpressed by the chaos around
them. They'd seen worse. At the entrance stood a tall woman who smilied and
opened the door for me. In her early thirties, elegant and striking in formal
black, she was the perfect image of a hostess proud of the way her party has
turned out.

"Good night," she said. "And thanks so
much for coming."

"I—I had a tate grime," I stammered, and
stepped out into a light rain.

Cool drops of water cleared my head, and halfway down
the marble steps my addled brain managed to inform me that she'd been wearing
sunglasses. She was protected from the flashes. She was with the anti-client.

I turned back and saw the woman staring after me. Then
she glided closer, and I realized that she wasn't as tall as I'd thought—she
was wearing roller skates. She rolled to the edge of the steps and looked down,
j
pulling off the glasses.

She was awesome. It was
nighttime and raining, and everything was wet and slick and beautiful,
highlights from passing traffic gleaming onskates, supremely confident on
wheels, gliding to a graceful halt.

"Hunter?" she called
softly, still unsure.

" 'Don't Walk,'" I
murmured, realizing who she was.

With her liquid motion, her
physical glamour, the woman came straight from the fantasy world of athletic
gear and energy drinks. She was confidence and cool, power and grace.

She was the missing black
woman from the client's ad.

"Hunter!'
'Jen cried from the street
behind me.

A smile spread across the
woman's face, and she spread her thumb and smallest finger, put the hand to her
head, and mouthed the words,
Call
me.

I turned and ran.

Chapter 19

"ARE
YOU OKAY?"

"Did you see her?"

"See who?"

I fell into the cab's seat, still stunned from
everything, unsure of what I had known positively only a few seconds before.

"Her," was all I could manage, and a look
back up at the woman atop the museum steps. Then I noticed the cab wasn't
moving, the meter ticking along in hold mode. "Why aren't we—?"

I looked at Jen and found
myself silenced by her transformation.

She smiled. "Like the
dress?"

I know now that it was ankle length and scarlet, lacy
and billowing, old-fashioned and extraordinary. But at that moment I hadn't
noticed it yet.

"Your hair.

She scratched her head. "Yeah, I've been meaning
to do this. Summer, you know."

Her hair was almost gone, cut
down to a half inch.

"Makes me look different,
doesn't it?"

I managed to nod.

"Jeez, Hunter." She scratched again.
"Haven't you ever seen a buzz cut before?"

"Uh, sure." I smiled, shaking my head. 'You
don't mess around on the disguise front, do you?"

She laughed. "I walked up to our bald friend and
asked him where the bathroom was. He didn't bat an eye."

Remembering him and realizing the cab still hadn't
moved, I looked back up at the museum entrance. The woman was still up there,
gliding across the stairs, effortlessly switching from forward to backward on
the slick wet stone.

"Did you see her?" I said. "With the
sunglasses
..."

"Yeah. I took a picture. Of all four of
them."

"Oh." That brilliant idea hadn't crossed my
mind, although I had accidentally gotten a close-up of Future Woman.
"Shouldn't we be leaving now?"

"There's something I wanted you to see before we
get out of range." She pulled out one of the Poo-Sham cameras.

"Ah!" I said, squinting. "I know all
about those."

"You think you do. But watch this." She
covered the flash" with one hand and took a picture. The red glimmer
through her fingers reinforced my headache.

Then Jen held up one hand in front of my face. Her
Wi-Fi bracelet was flickering wildly. The little diodes sputtered insanely for
a few seconds, then calmed down to a normal level.

"I don't get it," I said.

"The cameras are
networked. They're wireless."

"What?"

"We can go now," Jen called to the driver,
then settled back as the cab pulled away. I stared through the back window for
a moment, but the woman on the marble steps had disappeared. A few smokers
huddled out of the rain.

"These cameras have Wi-Fi cards in them,"
Jen said. "When you take a picture, they transmit it to a hub somewhere
near here. Whoever was in control of that party was collecting every picture
taken."

I rubbed my temples. "As far as I could tell, no
one was in control. It was chaos."

"Very carefully organized chaos. The free rum,
the camera flashes."

"The Poo-Sham ad."

"What?"

I told her about the advertisement running in the
planetarium, the weird pseudo-feel of it, the flashing screen at the end.

"Interesting," she said, still studying the
camera. "We need to do some research on how this thing works. Maybe a
Google search on 'mind control with party favors'?"

"That would be a start. Or maybe 'visually
induced . . . uh, some-thing-phasia.'" I rubbed my temples. For some
reason, I couldn't remember the word for not being able to remember words.
"My head hurts."

"Yeah, mine too." She ran her hands across
the planes of her shorn head again, and I couldn't resist reaching across to
touch her. The newly buzzed hair was soft beneath my fingers.

"That feels nice," she said, her eyes
closed. "I'm beat. One more flashing light and I'm going into a
coma."

I remembered the urban legend.

"Jen, have you ever heard that old story about a
TV show that caused seizures? It was a Japanese cartoon or something."

"You're kidding. Sounds like that stupid movie,
where the videotape kills you?"

"Yeah, but it was based on an urban legend. And
like most legends, that was based on something real."

She shrugged. "We can Google it."

"Actually, I've got a friend who knows more than
Google, at least when it comes to Japanese pop culture." I pulled out my
phone, checking the time. "If she's awake."

I started to dial, but Jen pulled at my wrist, eyes
still closed. "Just chill out until we get back downtown, okay?" She
pulled herself closer, the dress rustling as her legs curled up under its yards
of scarlet. Passing neon and streetlights swept across her as the cab descended
Broadway. With her long hair Jen had been pretty, cute, attractive.

Buzzed, she was beautiful.

"No problem," I said, my heart fluttering
pleasantly.

She held my hand. "We did good tonight. I feel
like we actually learned something about the anti-client."

"Too bad none of it makes any sense."

"It will." Her eyes opened, her face close
enough that I smelled Noble Savage on her breath. "I have to ask two very
important questions, Hunter."

I swallowed. "Sure."

"One: Why are your hands purple?"

"Oh, that." I looked at them. "In
addition to not being shampoo, Poo-Sham happens to be a very persistent skin
dye."

"Ah. That's nasty of them." Her fingertips
trailed across my open palm, sending a shudder through me.

"What was the other question?" I said
softly.

"Well, uh." She bit her lip, and I found my
gaze stuck on her mouth. "Did you know
...
?"

"Know what?"

"Did you know you ripped your jacket?"

I was paralyzed for a second, then followed Jen's gaze
to my shoulder, where the sleeve had become disconnected in a long, uneven
tear. I remembered Future Woman grabbing my arm on the stairs as I pulled
violently away. My stomach sank.

"Oh, shit."

"Well"—she sat up and checked me over carefully—"at
least everything else looks okay."

"This jacket was a thousand bucks!"

"Yeah, ouch. Still
...
your bow tie looks really sharp. Did you tie it
yourself?"

Chapter 20

TINA
CATALINA MET US AT THE DOOR WEARING SWEATPANTS
and a pajama top covered with
Japanese kids' characters—frowning penguins, happy octopuses, and a certain
kitty whose first name is a common salutation.

"New hair, Hunter?"

"Well spotted. You
remember Jen, right?"

She blinked sleepily.
"Oh, yeah, from the focus group yesterday. I liked what you said, Jen.
Very cool."

"Thanks."

Tina squinted. "But
didn't you have
...
like
...
more hair?"

Jen's fingers skimmed her
scalp, and she grinned. "I got bored."

"So you buzzed it." Tina stepped back,
taking in my black-tie getup and Jen's gigantic dress. "And then went to
the prom? Do they still have those?"

"A launch party, actually." I fingered my
torn thousand-dollar sleeve. "It's been a long day."

"Looks like it. Are the
purple hands a retro-punk thing?"

"Yes, they're a
retro-punk thing."

"Cute, I guess."

Tina led us into her kitchen, which had pink walls and
brutally bright lighting. Character-themed cooking gadgets and porcelain
good-luck cats filled the counter space, and the small kitchen table was heart
shaped.

Tina yawned and flicked on a coffeemaker in the form
of a smiling frog.

"Did we get you out of
bed?" Jen asked.

"No, I was up. Just about
to eat breakfast."

"You mean dinner?"

"No, breakfast. I'm in
jet-lag mode."

"Tina's an air-mile addict," I explained.
"She lives on Tokyo time."

Tina nodded in sleepy agreement, pulling eggs out of
the refrigerator. Her job took her to Japan every few weeks, and she was
constantly juggling night and day, shifting into or out of Japanese time
zones. She structured her life around jet lag. The light that bathed the
kitchen came from special full-spectrum bulbs, which fooled her brain into
thinking that the sun was shining. A big chart on the wall tracked the
convoluted maneuvers of her sleep cycle.

It was a taxing schedule, but cool hunting in Japan
could pay off handsomely. Tina was famous for having been the first to spot a
new species of cell phone, one that was just beginning to catch on here in
America. Part phone and part electronic pet, the device required that you feed
it (by dialing a special number), socialize it (by frequently calling other
pet-phone owners), and play thumb-candy games to keep it happy. In return, your
phone would occasionally ring and deliver messages of love in a sort of meowing
language. Even more addictively, all registered owners were ranked in a nonstop
global competition, updated by the minute, the highest achievers receiving free
minutes with which to supplement their obsession. The whole system had been
hacked together by users in Japan, but here in the States the big corporations
were taking over, and Tina was getting a percentage.

Besides the professional payoffs, Tina loved all
things cute and big-eyed, which the Japanese have a mortal lock on.

Her rice cooker, which was pink and in the shape of a
rabbit, said something in a high-pitched voice. Probably that the rice was
done.

"Hungry?" she asked.

"I ate at the party," Jen said.

"Actually, I"—Tina's
idea of food was freeze-dried snow peas and heavily salted seaweed cakes, but I
was close to fainting—"am starving."

She doled out rice into two
bowls.

"So what's up,
Hunter-san? Spotted any pet phones at school?"

"Uh, it's summer. We
don't go to school in summer here in America."

"Oh, yeah."

"You haven't heard from Mandy, have you?"

"Since the meeting yesterday?" Tina
shrugged. "No. Why?"

"She's missing."

Tina thunked a bowl in front of me and sat down. I
looked down to see a raw egg staring up at me from the bed of rice.

"Missing?" Tina poured soy sauce on her own
raw egg and began to stir the whole thing into brown mush, adding red-pepper
flakes. My stomach growled, indifferent to how the rest of me was reacting to
the sight.

"We were supposed to meet her downtown," Jen
said. "All we found was her phone."

"Oh, the poor thing," Tina said, meaning the
phone. She looked like she'd seen an abandoned puppy on the roadside.

"We haven't been able to
find her, but a lot of strange things have happened in the meantime," I
said. "There's one you could help us with. At this party tonight there was
this weird ad that gave us headaches."

"Pardon me?"

"Well, they were flogging this shampoo .
..
which was really purple dye." I
waved a retro-punk hand. "I mean—"

"What he means is
this,
" Jen said, pointing her
Poo-Sham camera at Tina. I barely had time to shut my eyes. The familiar
flicker penetrated my eyelids like a drill.

When I opened them, Tina wore the Poo-Sham-dazzled
expression.

"Whoa. That was weird."

"Yeah, everyone at the party thought so
too," I said. "And I remembered some urban legend about a Japanese
kids' show. It gave people seizures or something?"

"That's no legend," Tina said softly, still
dazed from the flash. "That's episode 38."

************************************

"You asked to see
this," Tina said. "So don't blame me if you die."

Jen and I glanced at each other. We had relocated to
Tina's living room, where there was a VCR and where I was discovering that
rice, raw egg, and soy sauce all stirred up actually tastes good. It does if
you're starving, anyway. According to Tina, it was what Japanese kids ate for
breakfast, which was roughly what time it was in Tokyo right then. Maybe I was
having some sort of trans-Pacific psychic moment.

"If we die?" Jen asked.

"Not that anyone really died, of course. But six
hundred or so kids went to the hospital."

"From watching TV?" Jen asked for the tenth
time. "And this actually happened?"

"Yeah. December
16,1997,
a date that will live in infamy. You should have seen
all the Japanimation-bashing that went on."

"And you've actually
watched it yourself?" I asked. "Willingly?"

"Sure. I had to see it,
you know? Besides, we should be safe. Only one in twenty viewers actually had a
bad reaction. And it was mostly kids who were affected. I mean, younger than
you guys. I think the average age was about ten."

That made me feel somewhat better.

"But it was a kids' show," Jen said.
"Maybe it affects everyone, but not that many adults were watching."

That made me feel less better. I wanted my protective
bangs back.

"The scientists who've studied it don't think
so," Tina said. "After the first bunch of kids went to the hospital
in the afternoon, the killer segment got shown on the national news that
night."

"They showed it
twice?”
Jen said.

"Anything for ratings. So anyway, people watching
the news are all ages, but again it was kids who went to the hospital. Mostly
kids, anyway. They think it's because their brains and nervous systems are
still developing."

"But there weren't any children at the
Hoi
Aristoi
party," Jen said. "And nobody had a total
seizure. They just talked funny and then started acting crazy."

"Huh," Tina said. "Sounds like what
you've got there is a totally new thing: an engineered paka-paka
sequence."

"A what?"

"Japanese animators use flashing colors a
lot," Tina said. "They've even got a word for it:
paka-paka.
What happened with episode 38
was an accident: they stumbled on exactly the right flash rate to put kids in
the hospital. They weren't
trying
to, though."

Jen nodded. "But if someone at the party was
using paka-paka intentionally, maybe they've been testing it. And learned how
to make it work on older people."

"And get everybody, instead of just one person in
twenty?" Tina looked dubious.

"That's a lovely
thought," I said.

"So what does all this
have to do with Mandy, anyway?" Tina asked. Jen and I looked at each
other.

"We don't know," I
said.

"The people who
do
know invited us to this
party," Jen said, "But we have no idea what they're up to, besides
messing with people's heads."

Tina held up the remote. "Well, episode 38 falls
into that category. You want to see it or not?"

Jen nodded. "I'm dying
to."

"Nice choice of
words," I muttered.

Tina turned on the TV. "Just don't sit too close.
Supposedly it's worse the closer you are."

I took my rice goo and scooted back to the couch. Jen
stayed where she was, ready to ride the wave. Like I said: Innovators often
lack the risk-assessment gene.

On the other hand, maybe it was simple disbelief. It
was hard to comprehend that TV could hurt you—it was like finding out your old
babysitter was a serial killer.

"So," said Tina, "this is episode 38,
also known as 'Computer Warrior Polygon.'"

The screen jittered to life, with the fuzzy quality of
a copy of a copy of a bootleg. I hoped the low resolution would give us an
added layer of protection.

An English title appeared:

Warning:
NOT
for
Viewing
by
Children.

May
Cause
Seizures.

I moved back as far as I
could.

The cartoon started, typical anime: a bunch of
shrill-voiced characters screaming in Japanese, a certain well-known brand of
evolving
monsters familiar from toys and trading cards, no
image lasting more than a half second.

"I'm having a seizure already," I said over
the noise.

Tina fast-forwarded ahead, which didn't help.

After a couple of minutes in hyperdrive, she brought
the chaos back to normal speed. "Okay, our story so far: Pikachu, Ash,
and Misty are inside a computer. An antivirus program is about to try to
delete them by firing missiles."

"Do antivirus programs frequently use
missiles?" Jen asked.

"It's metaphorical."

"All," Jen said. "Like
Tron,
but on too many
Frappuccinos." (It was a good line. I'll allow the product placement.)

Among the careening images I spotted missiles being
launched. Then Pikachu, the yellow, ratlike protagonist of the franchise, burst
forward to unleash a piercing battle cry and a bolt of lightning.

"Here we go," Tina said.

I squinted and hoped Jen was likewise chickening out.
As Pikachu's electric bolt struck the missiles, the screen began to flash red
and blue, flickering off the apartment's white walls inescapably for six long seconds.
Then it was over.

A slight headache, nothing more. I breathed a sigh of
relief.

"Those were the same colors as the Poo-Sham
ad," I noted.

Tina nodded. "Red causes the strongest
reaction."

"But it wasn't nearly as intense as at the party.
Did it feel the same to you, Jen?"