Velvet Dogma About 3300 wds (2 page)

"So if I need the money, I can sell my liver?" Rebecca asked.

"You need your liver to survive," Kumi said flatly.

"Oh."

"But you could sell your spleen," she added.

Rebecca shook her head as she imagined selling her spleen for the price of a new car. "What does a spleen go for nowadays?"

"Based on your readings? You could get somewhere around a hundred thousand for it," said Kumi.

"For my spleen? But it doesn't do anything. Who would pay that much for a spleen?" she asked.

Kumi shrugged. "Lots of people. Chinese herbalists pay a high price for healthy human spleen."

Rebecca remembered that Chinese specialists in Eastern medicine used to deal in bear bladders and elk hearts. They'd always been into special body parts. She'd remembered running across an online network back in her information warfare days. When she'd gone to jail, hunting those animals had been illegal; but then so had been the harvesting of human body parts for sale. She supposed the natural evolution was to the human spleen—whatever it did.

"So what you're saying is that I could go into a hospital, have them take out my spleen, then walk out with a bundle of cash?"
 
Rebecca almost laughed. The entire idea was ludicrous. Selling off part of her had never crossed her mind. She reminded herself that the whole idea had made her ill when she'd first heard it, now here she was contemplating the possibilities of a get-rich-quick scheme. How easy it was for crazy things to become normal.

"That's about right. There isn't any
cash
though. Everything is electronic now. Your account would be credited."

"Do I even have an account?" Rebecca asked.

Suddenly Kumi smiled. "Yes, you do. I don't know why I didn't mention it earlier. You have quite a significant amount of money in fact."

"What? Where'd it come from? I didn't have any money when I was arrested."

"Besides the computer equipment that was confiscated at your arrest, you had a home and some furniture. According to the records, no one came to claim your property, so the state sold it at auction. At the time of your incarceration, after paying court costs and fines, your net worth was $23,000."

Rebecca felt a pulse of excitement course through her body. When she'd had money, she'd given it away. She'd never had a need for it. But having money now seemed important. Although she didn't know the cost of a bar of soap, she knew that with money came a certain freedom that she'd need to survive. She held the possibilities at bay as she waited for Kumi's answer.

"And now? How much do I have now?"

"A little over $74,000 Global Dollars," Kumi replied, the sparkle returning to her eyes.

"Oh, my God!"
 
Rebecca stared for a long moment. Suddenly she frowned. "Is that a lot? I mean, I don't know the value of money now. What can I buy with that?"

Kumi shrugged. "About the same thing you could have bought in 1995 Legacy United States Dollars."

"Are you kidding?"

"Nope."

They were interrupted by a knock. Kumi opened the door and spoke with someone in hushed tones.

Rebecca waited, realizing for the first time that she probably did have a future. The money was a nice stake and would be a terrific help getting her back on track. After Kumi's reintroduction, Rebecca could even find a job. There had to be some lo-tech work that suited her.

The room looked like it belonged in a cheap hotel. An orange sofa sat against one wall. A table and two chairs had been arranged by a curtained window. Although thread-bare and gauche, the furnishings were more opulent than anything she'd been allowed to use during her incarceration. Her Spartan cell had been a perfect merging of metal and cinderblock—effective, easy to keep clean, and about as comforting as stone and metal could be.

The
pièce de résistance
of the room was a large velvet painting of dogs sitting around a table playing poker as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. When Kumi had prepared the reintroduction room for her, she'd found a reference to this painting in Rebecca's files and placed it here. The painting had been her brother's, something she'd given him for his birthday. He'd placed it in his den as a reminder for all things wonderful, sometimes gazing at it as he drank scotch long into the night. She'd never really understood the imagery. She'd only known that the painting had made him happy.

Now, looking at the velvet picture of the dogs playing poker gave her strength. She remembered a saying that her brother had been fond of—
If dogs can play poker then I can rule the world
. Of course he never had ruled the world. Before she'd been incarcerated, the best he'd managed to do was sell used computers over the Internet and auction video tapes that he'd found at garage sales, but the sentiment was no less grand.

Rebecca turned as she heard the door close. Kumi walked slowly back to her, her forlorn gaze losing focus midway between them. Where a smile had lit her face just moments before, a frown now darkened her features, bringing with it the harsh edges of dread. Kumi stopped in front of Rebecca. She held her hands out in front of her, empty and clutching. Her eyes tried to find the right place to gaze at Rebecca's face.

"What's wrong, Kumi?" Rebecca asked.

Kumi breathed twice, each exhalation a sigh. "It's your brother," she said at last.

"David? I was hoping you'd tracked him down..."
 
Her voice trailed off as she finally acknowledged the agonized emotions in the young woman's face. Rebecca grabbed Kumi's hands. "What's wrong? What's happened?"

"The medics found him in his flat," she said, her voice low. "They called it a stroke."

"A stroke?"

"His brain filled with blood. There was nothing they could do," Kumi said evenly. "Even the donor squads were too late to save him."

"When did it happen?"
 
A pit yawned open in Rebecca's chest.

"An hour ago."

She felt sick to her stomach. "What caused it?"

"They don't know."

"How could he have a stroke?"
 
Rebecca felt her mind swirling around thoughts of her brother. She remembered when he'd been five, then ten. She remembered him at her trial and the miserable look on his face. She remembered that she hadn't been allowed to speak with him since. "He's only forty. What happened to him, Kumi? Why him? Why
now
?"

"I
want to go."

"What? Where?"

"I want to go to my brother's apartment."

"He's not there. They've taken him away."

"Who took him?"

"He had several organs levied. Donor squads monitoring his status usually arrive within thirty minutes."

"What about the police?" Rebecca asked. "What about an ambulance?"

"They don't handle things like that."

"They don't handle—"
How could they not handle death? Had things changed so much?
"I still want to go. I need to go."

"But that's impossible."

"Why? Why is it impossible? You said I'd been released. Is there any paperwork? Is there something else I need to do? If there is, then let's do it."

"But there are contracts to sign," Kumi said hastily. "I need to explain things to you. Really, you can't just go into the world without knowing something."

A door opened inside Rebecca that had been shut for twenty years. Inside the door was a room filled with all the fury, consternation and disappointment that she'd once aimed at her world. The emotions had been locked away all this time, but no more.

She grabbed Kumi by her wrist and leaned close enough to see the pores on the younger woman's nose. "If I'm as free as you say, then let me go. If there are things that you need to tell me, then do it on the way, because there's one thing that I know and it's that the only way you're going to stop me from getting to my brother's house is if you kill me."

Kumi glared back at Rebecca for a moment, and then jerked her arm free. She backed away and ran a hand through her hair. "Listen, I don't know what to do. This is highly irregular. Let me confer with my supervisor."
 
Before Rebecca could react, Kumi spun and ducked out the door.

Rebecca once again stared at the dog picture as she tried to control her breathing. The image swam in her tears. This was more than coincidence. There was no way that her brother had remained alive only to die on the day she was released. An hour before she was released, she reminded herself. Rebecca refused to believe it. Even so, she could hardly say the word to herself, so she whispered it. "Murdered."
 
There it was. She'd said it. But it still didn't seem real. Had he really been murdered? Things like that only happened on the vids.

Kumi returned to the room, clearly upset.

Rebecca wiped her eyes, turned and placed her hands on her hips. "Well?"

"They said we can go. We still need to finish this, but we can do it later."

"Excellent."
 
Rebecca started for the door.

But Kumi blocked her path. "Listen, we're not far from his place. I designed it that way so that you could go see him when we were done. We thought you deserved to see the face of someone you loved."
 
Kumi let the words die in the air, and then began again. "But you can't go running off out there. Things have changed. This is not the Los Angeles you knew."

"I could always take care of myself."

"That was when you knew what to be scared of. Here you don't. Trust me, Rebecca, there are things out there that will blow your mind."

This did make Rebecca pause. She reminded herself that her brother was already dead. There was nothing she could do. The best she could do was find his killer. But as soon as she thought it, she dismissed it. This wasn't TV. Things just didn't happen like that. She swallowed a sob and nodded. "You're right. I'll follow your lead."

Kumi was visibly relieved. "Good. Then let's go."

They stepped through the door and found themselves in a small space, definitely not the outside. There was a door in front of them and a narrow hallway that bent back in the direction they'd come from. Without hesitation, Kumi opened the door and stepped out onto the street. Rebecca followed and discovered that they'd never been in an apartment or hotel room at all. They'd been inside an immense tractor trailer. And even as she watched, the trailer pulled away, leaving them behind on the streets of Los Angeles.

And what a strange place it was.

The night sky was alive with light and sound. Cars flew above her in ribbons of light, as if the busy 405 and 110 had been moved to the sky. Not a ribbon of light, Rebecca noted after getting a better look, but individual cars moving so fast that the lights merged. A smaller number flew at angles to the traffic. An awful hiss grew louder. Kumi jerked her from the street just in time to let a long, wheelless skateboard skim through where she'd just stood, the contraption apparently levitating. A man wearing red shorts and a yellow muscle shirt turned and gave her the finger. At least some things hadn't changed.

"Those in the sky are bullet cars, that thing that almost hit you is a gravBoard. The former shouldn't ever give you trouble, but the latter will kill you, especially the types of tweakers who ride them."

Rebecca just nodded. She'd ask questions later. If she began asking now, they'd have to stop every five feet.

The sounds were as she remembered. It was the sound of a big city, except a little different. It was too early to put her finger on it. Rebecca noticed the street signs. They'd been moved to knee level, letters floating in mid-air indicating that she and Kumi were at the corner of Olympic and Pico. She'd been by this spot a hundred times, but everything she remembered was gone. There'd been an In and Out Burger on one side of the street, a surf taco stand that made incredible shark tacos on the other...but the world had gone meatless in 2032. Rebecca wondered if that included fish.

They headed down the street at a brisk pace. The construction was clearly new. Three-storied buildings made of concrete, steel and glass were interspersed with Japanese-inspired buildings that appeared to be made of wood and rice paper. But that couldn't be. They'd probably been constructed of some kind of carbon composite. High definition video monitors the size of Buicks hung from every building. Figures and faces and fast cars flashed advertisements from each one. Some signs faced her. The ones that faced away she was able to see through, catching the reverse image in a reduced resolution. Santa Monica had sure changed.

A few low slung, sleek cars moved down the street—but not even a tenth as many as back in her day. Then she remembered the bullet cars. With all the traffic in the sky, things were much less congested on the ground. A serpentine bus rumbled by, four long carriages attached to each other by some sort of cable. This was followed by what had to be a garbage truck, then another gravBoard driven by a boy dressed exactly as the other.

Besides the boy on the board, people filled the sidewalks. Their clothes were an eclectic mix of what passed for modern mixed with retro. She spied a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt worn above pants that seemed to have a video input, every surface showing a band playing music. Hairstyles went towards the punk, with every color of the rainbow. Then Rebecca focused on a few people standing on the sidewalk like listing ships, their faces blank and expressionless, what could only be a POD affixed to one of their eyes.