The Artificial Mirage (9 page)

The tunnel system had been completed in record time because of the use of enhanced robotic tunneling equipment that planned and anticipated and completed assignments without stopping to cool off for more than an hour in a twenty-four-hour period. Still, in a country where labor had remained cheap, the price of all that robotic labor required a drastic repayment plan involving hefty tolls. Meandering through slow-moving traffic and smog, he played a game of chess with the driver on the windshield HUD as the car nudged its way forward, maintaining its programmed half-meter distance from the car in front of it. As they approached the smooth new asphalt of the tunnel entrance, the driver switched to manual. He deleted a few Matchbook chat sessions that had popped up before they renewed their chess game as the tunnel’s system took over. After a few minutes, the car slowed to a standstill between the glossy gray walls. An Indonesian remake of an old Lexus model was behind them, and a brand-new white Mercedes was in front.

“It’s unusual—” Keith didn’t get to finish his comment about tunnel traffic. The car started rocking, and the driver looked at Keith and started yelling something indistinguishable. There was a booming sound as the tires were punctured simultaneously. The rocking continued, and Keith lurched over to the other side of the taxi. He brought up his Wasp app and lowered the window. They rose from their resting positions on his arms and darted out. He directed the small swarm with his silver and turquoise stylus ring and saw an embedded video of their line of sight. They were kids—none older than sixteen, but there were ten of them. They hadn’t targeted the Mercedes because of its security features, but Keith wondered why they had avoided the fake Lexus. Then he saw the driver with what looked like a shotgun hanging slightly out of the window. The kids thought they had found an easy target. He split the swarm into three with a cutting gesture of his right hand, which also created two additional video screens in his AR vision, and went after the kids three at a time with a darting formation that would zoom in on each of them. Wasps were designed to distract one or two assailants in the event of a street attack to facilitate escape, but this was something different. The driver pulled out a small dagger, but Keith motioned that he shouldn’t get out of the car. He brought up the Dragonfly app and deployed them. They were larger and not as fast, but the Wasps were providing sufficient distraction. The deployment of the three Dragonflies brought up three more video screens in a concave pattern that didn’t block his line of sight.
He got them aloft at twenty feet in the air to get an aerial perspective of the situation. The Wasps were keeping the youths occupied. He brought a Dragonfly down to six feet and zapped the car with its electroshock feature. He could see from the one that had remained aloft that the kids had all been stunned, and the traffic ahead was easing. He entered the return command for the Wasps and Dragonflies, and they flew back in like a gentle breeze. He slapped the driver on the shoulder and told him to go. There might have been a Wasp or two left outside, but they were cheaper and easier to replace than Dragonflies.

The car’s tires reflated, and they proceeded out of the tunnel to Batavia Bistro without finishing the chess game. He stepped onto the freshly painted white curb, and the Dragonflies and Wasps followed him like an extension of his aura through the black-tinted glass doors past the security guard, who gave a gentle nod. No need to be scanned. A bule in a Givenchy suit with an entourage of Wasps was always passed with a nod.

It was unusual for Keith to eat lunch on Jakarta time, but Batavia Bistro was always open, even during Ramadan. He wandered in, getting appreciative glances from the waitresses. Beneath the trench coat, he was wearing a three-piece tan linen suit, which meant he didn’t need to work hard and symbolized wealth in the harsh tropical heat.

“It’s good to be clean. That’s the new wealth. Clean water. Clean food. No parasites. No infections. Everything’s fine,” Keith heard from a male British voice over the rumble of conversation and swells of raucous laughter, mostly British with pockets of Indonesian and Chinese.

“You got all your vaccinations?” a fat British woman in a blue paisley blouse with pasty white skin blurted out as he approached the bar.

“Fucking tarts,” said a man in a white dress shirt with two buttons undone. He was looking at a local woman in a black silk business dress, who was assiduously applying a toothpick to each tooth and subsequently wiping it on her light-blue cloth napkin.

It was a rhetorical question, but Keith felt like answering. “They’re everywhere. What’s the difference? They’re warm and soft with taut skin. What else do you need?” He slapped the man on the back.

The bar was an ancient marble stage with a mahogany backdrop. He ordered a chilled dry sherry as he waited for a liverwurst with a spiral of Iranian caviar on toasted rye bread. More sherry. Then rum. He took a bite
of the sandwich, but he found the process of chewing to be too tedious to continue. He noticed a Chinese woman with a large black mole on the right side of her face and violet contacts. Her face glowed with sweat, which accentuated the dark rings under her eyes, a stark contrast to her chemically whitened skin and white cotton and linen business suit that extended far above her knees, revealing matching white legs.

“What are you doing?” Keith said as he sat down next to her at the bar and saw her moving her stylus ring around his face.

“Bunny rabbit. Hopping ’round your head.”

“Is it a boy or a girl bunny?”

“Not sure.”

“Great. A hermaphrodite.”

“No, la.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be playing with bunnies?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“That’s a good age.”

“What you do here, la?”

“You’re from Singapore?”

“Of course, laaa.”

“I thought so, but you can never be too sure. A lot of posers out there. Some of the Chinese here in Jakarta like to throw out a ‘la’ here and there to keep you guessing. But you’re the genuine article, eh?”

“I can speak international English, too.”

“Yeah, that’s impressive. So what brings you to Jakarta?”

“Business, la. I work for a construction firm. We are bidding on a contract.”

“Oh, yeah? You’re not the same guys with the robots who did the tunnels, are you?”

“No, la. Different.”

“Yeah, those tunnels are amazing.”

“So what do you do here in Jakarta? Why you not in US?”

“I work in finance. Investments, actually. Lots of people interested in the development of this place. It’s the new Sydney. You got any money?”

“No. Not really. My friend work for bank in Singapore. I have small account there, la.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. You think your company is going to get the contract?”

“Depends, la. It’s big building…owned by Chinese.”

“Well, then I guess you’re set. I mean…you being Chinese and all.”

The woman laughed nervously. “Depend, la.”

“It’s interesting how the Chinese control so much of what goes on here in business. You got a theory on that?”

“They accept everything that happen, la. The Dutch…”

“Yeah, they fought a long war against them.”

“But not for three hundred fifty year, la.”

“Yeah. So you’re saying they’re institutionalized. I guess there might be something to that. You could also say that Singapore is a soulless police state.”

“Everyone the same religion when it come to money, la.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I must go. Sorry. Business in the morning.”

“Need to get your beauty sleep?”

“No, la. Just take shabu-shabu in the morning, and everything OK.”

“What? Crystal meth? That’s some dangerously illegal stuff.”

“Not really. Easy to get here. Impossible to get in Singapore.”

“Yeah, well, have fun. Here, take my card.” He clicked on the icon on the left edge of his peripheral vision and looked into her eyes as he flicked it to her. She grimaced as she looked at the corporate 3-D animation of major currencies twisting in the shape of the infinity symbol with his logo below the words “Infinite Opportunity” glowing momentarily before it all disappeared and established a permanent icon on her upper-right field of vision, next to her inbox icon.

She smiled at the little show. “A bit much, la,” she said as she stepped down from the high bar chair like she was dismounting a pony and walked quickly to the stairs. Then, she turned with her mouth agape like she just had a fabulous idea, and flicked her own card with a voice message he saw her mouthing. “Call me, la. Come to my hotel room.”

He wouldn’t call her. He felt the comfort of being able to discard it. But he didn’t.

Outside, a slow, undulating wave of stir-fried rice and egg and chicken and shrimp being cooked by peddlers on the curb mixed with the palm-oil scooter exhaust. Smeared gray glass buildings stood in permanent dusk underneath the polluted haze that obscured the sun. His body felt light as he thought about the money he needed to raise; it was a permanent returning problem without a solution. Without an infusion of capital, he couldn’t
cover the withdrawals of the past week. He looked around at the people who couldn’t even put together a pictorial concept of what it was like to live beyond the realm of survivalism. There was no way out now. Most of the people on the street didn’t even have AR profiles, and the ones that did were solicitations for legal services or ads for cosmetics, for which they got paid enough to send a few messages. But Keith only saw walking negative bank accounts with nothing to offer.

He crossed with his small swarm of Dragonflies that flapped patiently alongside him and the Wasps that buzzed in orbital arcs around him. While the cost of human bodyguards in Jakarta remained low, their employment was a prerequisite for doing business in Jakarta. Business owners—and especially foreigners—were expected to subsidize the populace by over-hiring. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to have twenty-five personal assistants without even an AR assistant liaison. Keith had brought over Lauren out of sympathy; the sex was good too. But when the JAX did its reversal, he couldn’t afford her or the other three assistants or his five bodyguards and two office security guards. Now, it was just the Dragonflies and Wasps that followed him everywhere, recharging themselves with sunlight and demanding nothing of him. He was too far away from Batavia Bistro and its immaculate black-and-white tile restroom with its attendant always ready with a pressed white cotton hand towel, so he checked the local map and found a public restroom at the next block. A standard black sphere the size of a basketball floated in front of him and directed him to the place, which lacked its own AR identification. An old woman sitting at the entrance demanded the entrance fee. He handed her the smallest bill he could find and went in without waiting to get change. He entered a vacant stall, and there was the traditional water tank with a bucket with a handle for flushing. In the tank were two large goldfish as big as his Louis Vuitton shoes. The dull whitewashed walls looked to be covered in a thin layer of slime. His body was drenched in sweat and ambient moisture from the lack of air-conditioning. He tried not to touch anything and ignored the woman at the entrance, who called out to him with a mouth full of purple betel nut juice as he left.

12

C
harlie was the first one on the ferry to Vung Tau. Keith’s contact information was expired, but he was able to locate him at the company site. The ferry ride was bumpy. He strapped himself into his chair at the end of an empty row and went into occluded mode. He played hide-and-seek with Lauren in a maze garden of pine bushes. He was able to see right over if he toggled up, but he prevented her from doing the same thing. It was fun watching her get lost. It was the sort of fun and spontaneous romantic thing that he and Lauren had never done together. Things seemed to be moving toward a culmination of events, and he was beginning to feel more and more comfortable with not thinking about the future.

Everyone on the ferry seemed to instantly adjust to the slower pace of things; they didn’t rush to get off. His AR glasses told him to go straight with a generic yellow arrow. Ambling along the unique juxtaposition of Mediterranean architecture in alternating white stucco and tan with red tile roofs, he paused before a Russian Orthodox Church that seemed to be still operating as a church. Behind it was a similarly styled townhouse with only a small brass sign on the lime green fence that declared it to be Vung Tau Trust. The very subdued and low-key nature of the place was complimented by Sarah, the assistant who opened the door with one of those genuine smiles that only those handling large sums had the time or the residual strength to pull off.

“You must be Charlie,” she began gleefully.

“Yes, I am.”

“Great. Keith’s upstairs with a client.”

“I don’t like waiting. But I’ll wait.”

Sarah peered around the corner of the door and asked, “Would you like an espresso or a glass of water?”

“No, thanks,” Charlie said without turning to look at her. “Is Keith here in Vung Tau?”

“He’s been working outside of Vietnam. I’m not sure of his schedule. You can discuss it with him.” She gave a quick business smile, which ended abruptly as she continued down the hallway.

An hour passed. A young Vietnamese woman with polished skin and mirrored glasses came down the stairs and passed through the front door without a word or even a look.

“You can go up now,” Sarah said. “Keith will appear when we establish contact.”

“Oh. He’s not here.” He walked upstairs into an empty conference room with a projection of the same conference room covering the whole wall in front of him. Freshly cut flowers lined a shelf.

Keith had been walking so long he had lost track of time. One of the Dragonflies indicated with a musical chime that he had an international phone call. It was an odd time for any of his clients to be calling. One of the Bats shone an audio beam on his head, and he maxed out the volume with his stylus. In the sooty mirrored glass of the office building across the street, the setting sun glowed. As he crossed the street, Charlie’s video image flickered on the street and then on the broken sidewalk between cracks that led straight down to Jakarta’s drainage system. Amid the rush-hour shuffling of the crowd, a man with a Muslim skull cap and a long gray goatee squatted on a railing like a bird on an electrical cable. His AR glasses were blacked out in occluded mode, and his mouth was in a tranquil, permanent grin. The other Bat surveyed Keith’s body for the holographic display in Vung Tau.