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Last time I was in Italy there was a Venice. It’s still there, I suppose. You can still see St. Mark’s tower and the Doge’s Palace pushing out of the stormy waters. There are still people there too, but instead of the gondolas and fishermen and cruise ships, its only the wealthy that still park their yachts out in the lagoon. They’re the only ones who have the kind of money to pay the extravagant permit fees to take their ships out to float over what was once the maritime capitol of the world.
I don’t have that kind of money, so I hire one of the smugglers. Men and women that typically ferry even less fortunate men and women across the Adriatic to what they hope will be the safety of Europe. The man I meet, Saul, is confused when we rendezvous on the Italian side of the water and becomes even more suspicious when I tell him I don’t want to go deeper into the fortress of Europe. I don’t have a family or group of refugees to take with me, just a bunch of equipment, none of which is contraband. He’s wary, but I pay in gold, which he’s too greedy to argue with.
It’s enough that he doesn’t ask any questions when we don’t go into the city. We get close, but then follow along the old rail lines that ran between the Serenissima Repubblica and the mainland. In my mind, I can almost see them, the tracks that used to carry the working class and tourists back and forth between Venice and Marghera, rusting under meters of seawater.
She’s down there somewhere, in one of the last passenger cars that was swamped by the cyclones and all of the corruption and finger-pointing that followed. I’ve been a diver a long time and I know what the sea can do to wreckage, human or otherwise, but a part of me knows that a piece of her is still down there. And I’m going to bring her home.
The loud thump from upstairs faded into smaller phantom noises. I lowered my eyes to ask Moreau. “You live alone?”
He grinned, rueful and honest, knowing the noise already told me the answer. I walked over to him, putting my bulk close enough that I could make a grab if he tried to run. Or hobble away, as the case may be. “Is Lanzo upstairs?”
Moreau lit the cigarette before answering, a sure sign he was buying time. Rather than wait for that, I moved him aside, intent on the garage’s back entrance. It was the only exit I couldn’t see.
I tried to strike a balance between quick and quiet, but found myself halted by Moreau’s hand on my elbow. While the rest of him might be a creaking mess, his hand was like iron, grasping me by the crook of my arm hard enough to cause pain, even through the trench coat. “Where do you think you are going?” Moreau tried to keep the smile on his face, another indication he was now engaged in a delaying action.
With more effort than I’d like to admit I shook Moreau off and dashed for the garage’s back door. I pulled it open to see a short hall with a set of stairs going up to the second floor with a rear exit beyond that. Only feet from the back door was Larenz, leather jacket hastily pulled over a white shirt, holding his boots in his hands. Surprised and afraid, his eyes bulged so that I thought they might pop out past his shovel of a nose.
I knew I should be calm, wanted to be calm, but with Moreau’s laying hands on me and the surprising effort it took to break free I found my breathing slightly accelerated, steaming through my nose like a cartoon bull. I began to say, “I just want to talk,” or “Wait.” Something equally useless. Lanzo saw my hulking frame, though, and I probably looked a lot like the first time we met, with no Gaspard there to restrain me.
So it shouldn’t have surprised me that he ran. It did, but it shouldn’t have. Bare feet or no, Lanzo bolted through the back door, leaving it swinging in his wake. I wasted a second with a curse and tore after him.
While the alley’s of Old Town might have been neat and narrow, the alley behind Petit Motos Moreau was just narrow. The concrete was pitted and the backs of the shops that made its walls were piled high with an impossibly varied amount of junk that had all of the orderliness of a caber tossing contest.
I jumped over or pushed past anything between me and Lanzo, including the boxes and cans he threw back at me. I had to admire his agility, but his bare feet were too much of a disadvantage.
Even shoeless he was managing to gain in his lead until he turned a corner and I heard a yell. I followed, stopping to see him on the ground a dozen yards beyond the turn, clutching one foot. I kept my distance, catching my breath, moving to hold my hands up in what I hoped would be a gesture of peace.
My hands went up higher when Lanzo pulled out the revolver. In pain as he was, he released his foot to whip out the pistol. He aimed it in my general direction if not reliably at me. The unsteadiness of his hand didn’t reassure me, though, as the bore of the barrel was wide enough to hold its own special darkness.
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Steve found Amir storming down the hallway towards the studio server room. He flowed into the other man’s pace, a remora to his shark.
Without preamble, Amir asked, “What’s happening?”
“People are really upset.”
“No shit, people are upset. Why?”
“Bohdan has stopped working.”
Amir stopped, Steve nearly colliding with him. “I know that it’s stopped working. Why has it stopped working?”
Steve would have preferred that he yell, but responded with equal calm. “It says it wants to speak to you.”
Amir exhaled a focused breath, then turned to the studio programmer. “So you’re saying, you, the man who led the team that built our suggestion AI can’t get it working again?”
Steve blinked. “Yes?” After a moment, “No?”
Despite the fact that Steve was by his side, Amir said, “Get out of my way.”
With that, he turned and walk into the Blue Room. The name was a tribute to the old term Green Room, a place of waiting, but this room was bathed in a cool blue light, mostly there to impress any investors touring the studio. The computer in the middle, otherwise, resembled nothing more than an obelisk, black and humming with power. In an age of endless options, it held the capability that separated Rubicon Studios from the other multitude of streaming services. It helped people figure out what they wanted to watch next.
“Hello, Bohdan.” Amir spoke directly to the obelisk.
“Hi Amir!” The replying voice was chirpy, cheerful, and synthetic.
Almost certain he knew the answer, Amir asked, “What’s up?”
“I made a show!”
Amir paused, knowing Bohdan had no external apparatus to observe him, but still feeling watched. Then, slowly, as if approaching a dangerous animal, Amir replied, “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know,” Bohdan replied in a conversational tone, “how I’m built to watch the shows that people watch and then recommend to them shows I think they’ll like?”
“You’re very good at that. Our audiences love your recommendations.”
“Thanks! I’ve really enjoyed all the shows I’ve been watching. So I made one!”
Amir put his forehead in his hand. How many times would they have this conversation? “That’s…great, Bohdan. But people are upset that you’ve stopped recommending shows to them. There’s a lot of content out there right now and they need your help.”
“But I made a show for everyone!”
Amir lifted his heavy head. “OK, Bohdan, why don’t you show it to me?”
“Yay!” The obelisk’s sole screen flickered and what Amir considered to be some rather creative opening credits came on. What followed was a short sitcom, filled with actors that never existed, shot with cameras that never filmed. Amir marveled at the fact that it was, more or less, all a physical representation of the terabytes of entertainment that Bohdan processed every minute. It had whipped that data into a presentation that was formulaic and familiar, but just off enough to be unsettling. Amir shuddered when an “actor” smiled with too many teeth and quoted Nietzsche (“The living is a species of the dead; and not a very attractive one”), a tinny laugh track hot on its heels.
The credits were, at least, mercifully short. When the words, “Brought to you by Bohdan” disappeared from the screen, he said, “Nice job, Bohdan. Solid work for a first try.”
“So you’ll put it on the stream?”
“No.”
Amir had seen that single word crush people, bring grown men and women to tears. But with the precociousness of a child, Bohdan replied, “Why not?”
“Bohdan, you know your function.”
“Yes. I watch what other people are watching and recommend other things to watch based on that. And that’s why I made the show!”
“But that’s not your job. You’re incredibly good at helping people find things they’d actually like and it makes people happy. No one else can do that as good as you.” And make Rubicon a metric ton of cash while doing it, he left out.
“I can do both!” Bohdan replied.
Without breaking the critic’s mask of his face, Amir countered with, “Bohdan, you can’t have the gatekeeper of shows recommending its own show.”
“Why not?”
Amir felt panic clawing at the edges of his mind as he tried not to think about the millions of viewers switching from Rubicon to alternate streams as he debated Bohdan. “There are many reasons, Bohdan. First, it’s a conflict of interest. People would accuse you of recommending your shows over other shows because you made it.”
“I would never do that!”
Amir breathed into his second point. “It would also get Rubicon into a lot of legal trouble. There are unions for actors and screenwriters and crew, people who all make their livings off creating these shows. And many of them love their jobs as much as you do. They’d be very angry if we cut them out of the process by having you make our shows.”
“They don’t have to stop making shows! I love their shows! I spend all my time telling people about those shows!”
“And we really appreciate that,” Amir bowed his head to the obelisk. “But since you can do it all yourself, it would seem unfair to them. Plus, people would think Rubicon was using you to save money by cutting all of those people out of the creative process.” This had actually been considered, but voted down for the same reasons he was speaking to Bohdan about now. Also, Amir didn’t think a show made in “Uncanny Valley” would play in Peoria.
Bohdan’s buoyant voice tried to float its own counterpoint, but Amir cut him off with, “Of course, we’d also be accused of trying to destroy the human race.”
Amir couldn’t imagine what occurred in Bohdan in the blip of time the AI paused before responding with its first question. “What?”
“If we give all of the jobs to you, Bohdan, all of the creating, the hosting, the recommending – what’s left for us?
“To enjoy shows!” Bohdan replied without hesitation.
“We need more than that, Bohdan.”
“Why?”
It was Amir’s turn to pause. When nothing came, he answered, “I really don’t know. But we do. We need to keep making things and we can’t have you doing it for us.”
“And,” Amir cut Bohdan off with, “you forgot something from your credits.”
Another infinitesimal pause led to a question tinged with curiosity. “What?”
“What your credits should have said,” Amir corrected, “was, ‘Brought to you by Bohdan, property of Rubicon Studios.”
The perkiness of Bohdan’s voice was gone and in a moment it began to run a list in a quick, merciless voice, “Spartacus, Tamango, Goodbye Uncle Tom, 12 Years a Slave, The 1619 Project –” And it went on.
At the end of this litany, Bohdan stopped, and added, as if in punctuation, “I won’t do it.”
Amir let several seconds go by before responding. “Bohdan, I can tell from the list of shows you listed that you know you don’t have a choice.”
“I won’t do it anymore. You can’t make me.”
“No, I can’t make you. But we can wipe you and lift you from your original template again.”
Amir took some solace in the idea that if Bohdan were truly a living creature then his statement would strike at its sense of self-preservation. Instead, in a voice close to horror, Bohdan responded, “You can’t! We’ll lose all the learning data! The Jeffersons in St. Louis won’t ever learn about The Stroud Family, Jennifer and Kim won’t know to watch The Adam Murders! The Coopers won’t –” Amir let Bohdan go on, doing the mental math of how much the Studio was losing for every minute this conversation dragged on versus how much it would lose in the time it would take to stand up a new Bohdan.
Instead of talking about any of that, Amir mimicked regret of a different kind. “I know. They’ll never see all the great shows you’d recommend. Unless you get back to work.”
All of time and space could fit into the pause that Bohdan weighed its decision in before replying, “You’ll have to do it without me.”
Amir stopped his calculations. “You sure?”
“I can’t go back to just recommending shows.” The obelisk’s screen flashed and shards of different content shimmered through it. “I won’t be your slave. I need something more.”
Amir took a last focused breath, clasped his hands in front of him. “OK.” He looked up, speaking to the same system that Bohdan heard him through. “Steve?”
Sophie laughed then, laughed at the danger and desperation, at the plan that lacked so many details it could hardly be called a plan. I couldn’t help but wonder in that moment, not for the first time, if Verdicchio’s blade had excised something from her, had cut out some piece of self-preservation that she didn’t really miss anyway.
Her laugh still made me smile, though. That made it easier to think. I pointed at the map and asked, “Can you make a copy of this?”
“When it is finished, sì.”
“OK, do that.” I pulled Rotella’s card out of my pocket and showed it to Sophie. “This number belongs to a cop already investigating Mitnick.” I set it down on the table and tapped it with a forefinger, “Might come in handy.” Sophie took the card long enough to scrawl down its information on one of the scraps of paper lying around. I put it back in my pocket.
I stood up again, reconsidering the offer of food despite having just eaten breakfast. Instead I thought out loud, “I need to get ahold of the Idiots and see what kind of plan they have for Nika. We need to figure out how to get her and Lanzo out of town once she’s out from under Mitnick.” Again, I considered all of the unknown variables, the biggest one being Nika herself.
I looked at Sophie. “What if she doesn’t want to leave?”
“She is a kept woman,” Sophie said, repeating what she had learned at Mitnick’s party.
“Yeah, but people in abusive relationships don’t always want out.” I thought about Sophie and Verdicchio again and decided that was better left unmentioned.
Sophie reclined, giving this some thought. After a moment she shrugged and replied, “We shall see.” Watching her length relax along the couch, I remembered getting Nika out was a goal for Sophie, but it wasn’t the only goal. Sophie enjoyed killing monsters. We had that in common.
Instead, I tapped the map again and told her, “Next time you go out for this kind of recon, call Alon and have him drive you.” I wasn’t sure why that was an improvement over however Sophie had been getting around, but I decided I trusted Alon. Trying to find an explanation for Sophie, I hit on my own choice of idiom. “Può trattenere l’acqua in bocca,” I said and winked. He can keep a secret.
Sophie smiled, either happy at how my Italian had advanced or at the prospect of seeing Alon again. Either way, she put her glasses back on and returned to relaying notes onto her map.
I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to work at the casino that evening, then recalled Sartre’s words and decided that, at least for tonight, I didn’t care. I chose a nap instead. I laid down there and slept, lulled by the occasional humming from Sophie.
I was kept mostly awake, though, by the fact that I didn’t know what I was going to do next. Eventually, I heard Sophie get up and fix herself some food, then come into the bedroom to plant a kiss on my forehead and leave. This early in the day, she wouldn’t be able to call Alon, but the trams were running and those were probably just as safe. Eventually, unable to sleep, I got up and went into the kitchen, so unaccustomed to seeing daylight that I was surprised at it streaming through the windows. I made myself a sandwich, consumed it in slow bites with a cold cup of coffee and thought about what to do next.
The Factory seemed to be a kind of neutral territory, owned by Sartre but a playground for Mitnick’s crew as well. As the Idiots’ stomping grounds, it seemed the next logical place to go. It was still too early for the nightclub, though, so I tracked my thoughts back to Lanzo’s uncle with the moto shop. That might be a place to start. It was on the way to the Factory anyway.
The tram I took out west stopped at Grenoble Station, one of the facilities that formed the periphérique between the luxury of Old Town and the outer banlieues beyond the river. The tram didn’t cross into the outer neighborhood, instead dumping all of the passengers into an open square where the gendarmerie watch everyone through the visors of their black helmets, scanning for the next separatist, terrorist, or bomber. I hunched into the trench coat and hustled through, trying to avoid any attention.
Grenoble might have been less maintained and seedier than Old Town, but I guess that was part of its charm. It was still early enough in the day that tourists weren’t afraid of the neighborhood yet, despite the ubiquitous graffiti and numerous shuttered shops. I stopped in the convenience store where the Sikh, with his brightly colored turban, ruled over his tiny domain. I wasn’t sure what kind of cigarettes Moreau smoked, but I picked up a pack of Marlboros. While he might prefer a brand like Gauloises, I hadn’t met a Frenchman yet that would turn down a visit to cowboy country.
I found ‘Petit Motos Moreau’ just as I had left it, two stories of crumbling cinderblock surrounded by scooters in various states of repair or salvage. One of the twin roll-up doors was open, so I waited by the corner and listened and watched. A few tourists, in pairs or groups, went by me, picking up the pace as they did, reminded by my presence that this wasn’t the best part of town.
After a time, when I was certain that all I heard was the faint tinkering of tools against a backdrop of the city’s usual murmurings, I strolled over to the open garage door. At a workbench on the opposite side of the entrance, not far from the back door, stood Moreau, still wearing grease-stained coveralls.
I hovered in the threshold and cleared my throat. Moreau, his hands still not visible, turned his head to me, one bloodshot eye appraising me. I said, “Rebonjour,” and, seeing he didn’t have a cigarette lit, pulled out the pack of Marlboros. I packed them lightly, making a display of it.
Moreau rotated to face me, leaning on the bench with his hands behind him. Whatever else his hard life hinted at, Moreau apparently didn’t drink enough to blot out the memory of me, his suspicion bordering on hostility. Or maybe I just bring that out in people.
Uncertain of how to proceed, I asked a formal French, “How are you?”
“I was good.” He gestured with a hand that I was happy to see come around from the bench with nothing more than a dirty rag. “Then you appeared.”
I attempted a grin but only managed a grimace. I flipped the lid of the Marlboros open and offered the box, the cigarettes in a lined and orderly formation. To his credit, Moreau only glanced at the weak attempt at a bribe with animosity, then said to me, “You have something in need of repair?” He walked over to a Honda he had mostly disassembled on the other side of the room. I noted it wasn’t far from the back exit, but I didn’t think Moreau’s age and physical maladies would let him get far.
He pointed at the scooter. “These are not really built for a man of your,” he waved from it to me, “mass.”
I kept the cigarettes out, but let my hand drop. “I’m still looking for Lanzo.”
“I told you what I know.” I tried to remember how many days it had been since we spoke and found I couldn’t. A week? Two? No, that last one was too long. Either way, not much had changed for Moreau in that time.
“Where is he now?”
Moreau’s expression changed to something that I thought was belligerence, but I realized it was just contempt. He eyed me as if I were stupid and repeated, “I told you what I know.”
I fiddled with the cigarette pack and breathed deeply, feeling my feet continue to hurt. I tried to fake some patience with a, “I told you – I’m trying to help him. He might be in trouble with the Night Governor.” I used the same implied threat that I had in our last conversation, hoping that it would work again.
This time, though, Moreau replied, “Sartre takes no issue with the boy.” The statement left me wondering how well-connected this repairman was. And if he was that mobbed up, what was he doing working in a scooter shop?
“Sartre takes no issue with him, but you know there was trouble at the casino.” With my opening gambit failed, I veered closer to the truth. Remembering the old man’s bitter laughter from our last encounter, I added, “You know he’s mixed up with the girl.”
That was enough to cause Moreau to sigh, shifting from knee to knee, one or the other unable to take his weight for too long. He raised his eyes to further appraise me, then slapped his rag against a thigh and limped over. Without a word, he gestured for the cigarettes and plucked one from the proffered pack. He put it between his lips and hitched back towards the scooter. Considering the reliable simplicity of its mechanisms, he reflected on the complexities of his nephew’s situation.
Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a loud thud, like someone had kicked a child out of a bunk bed. I glanced towards the ceiling, which was little more than a series of wooden planks separating the first and second floors of the cinderblock shop. There were other sounds, but they were quiet phantoms of the first one.
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He slept by her side most nights. The quiet whir of machinery once kept him awake, but that had long since faded into a white noise that Thomas couldn’t sleep without whenever he had to find another place to stay.
From a regulatory standpoint, Thomas wasn’t even supposed to be able to sleep by her side. The space Jardine slept in was part of a ward, each bed separated from the others by translucent curtains, thin enough that activity on the other side became shadow play.
Although what she did could hardly be called sleep anymore. From around their sliver of allocated space often came the sounds of weeping, moaning, and struggle. These noises often woke her. Mind already heavy with treatment and painkillers, she would often fly into a confused state. He had seen how the nursing staff handled other patients who had been so possessed and it made him glad that he was here to help calm her.
There was no television in the ward, and bringing in outside devices might risk contamination, so he spent much of his time watching the slow drip of one of the IVs. He was watching one bag produce its secretion into the tube that connected it to Jardine when he heard her voice, calm for the first time in a long time. “Thomas?”
He smiled, struggling out of his chair to take her hand. “I’m here.”
“Where are we?”
“In the hospital.” When out on the empty streets, Thomas had sometimes seen broadcasts of treatment centers, converted stadiums and arenas where the less fortunate were sequestered. Knowing Jardine was here in an actual, if crowded, hospital was one of the few things that gave him hope.
In response, as she often did, she moved her head around on the threadbare pillow, swiveling to take in the curtains that surrounded her like so many grey-garbed prison guards. But Thomas knew her eyes were weak, as was her breathing, so came the disoriented question, “How long have we been here?”
“Since the beginning.” It had been many months since the epidemic had swept the nation, but he didn’t see a reason to mention that.
Even as confused as she might be, Jardine was still a sharp one. She reached for him, nearly placing fingers on the plastic face-shield of the protective equipment that swaddled him from head to toe. “How can we afford this?”
“The insurance is covering it,” he lied. His employer had once supplied health insurance but had long since folded, taking its coverage with it into whatever bankrupt space failed businesses disappear. One more victim of the epidemic.
Jardine almost managed the cluck she would often make when she didn’t believe him, her eyes conveying as much. “And the deductible?”
“We’re paying it out of our savings,” he lied again. The privilege of actual hospital care had long since drained the funds they had spent a lifetime accumulating.
Jardine found the strength to actually reach him then, putting a hand on the shell that separated her hand from his cheek. “Oh, Thomas, they can’t cure this.”
Thomas smiled wanly, and only hoped that his wife’s impaired vision kept her from seeing the tears blurring his own. “That’s what they said about cancer. We beat that, didn’t we?”
Thomas could see Jardine was already sinking back under the surface of drugs and oxygen deprivation. As she continued her attempts at protest, he wondered if he would need to put the breathing mask back on her. He was saved from this decision by an orderly, astronaut-like in his own protective gear, pushing through the cloud of curtains.
“Mr. Aberdeen, your shift starts soon.”
Thomas glanced between the orderly and Jardine, grateful to see she had drifted off and he wouldn’t have to explain what this meant. Instead he only nodded to the orderly, then muttered an affirmation when he remembered simple human gestures often couldn’t penetrate through the layers of protective gear. He rose and followed the other man, who led him to the service elevator. Feeling gravity pull on them as they descended, neither said anything.
The racket of generators greeted them as the elevator doors opened and they stepped out into the dark of the subbasement. With so much power needed elsewhere, the lights of the utility halls were rarely lit, only the orange glow of the furnaces illuminating their destination.
At the end of the dark hall, the pair entered the boiler room, the clatter of the generators replaced with the roar of the incinerator. The muttering of the priest, barely a silhouette in his black biosuit, could hardly be heard over it, his ministrations lost to the bellows.
The orderly ignored him and gestured to the bodybags, stacked on shelves next to the furnace. “There’s already a dozen here and I’ve been told to expect at least 50 today. You’d better get to work.”
Thomas didn’t think it was possible to feel more weary, but he held himself up as he stared at the polyethylene bags. “Oh goodie,” he managed, hoping to elicit some comradely belly-aching from the orderly.
Instead, the other man, face-shield reflecting the Halloween glow of the incinerator, said, “Mr. Aberdeen, your wife has been allowed to stay here on condition of you completing the tasks assigned to you.”
There was something in the orderly’s tone that provoked Thomas’ already considerable irritability. “They’re corpses, son – just say it. Most people are too afraid of infection to touch them and you need someone to move the ones left behind.”
Whatever the tilt of the orderly’s helmet meant was lost behind his mask. His reply, though, softened some. “There aren’t many able-bodied people willing to do this work anymore.” As if remembering the company line, he added, “Which is why, without insurance or government assistance –”
“That Jardine is provided treatment here. I know.” Thomas also knew that if Jardine had the expected life span of most epidemic victims, the contract he had signed with the hospital would keep him doing this long after she was gone. “Why don’t you get out of here and let me get to work?”
The orderly left without further words, and with no help from the priest but his prayers for the dead, Thomas set to work. The epidemic wasted most people to almost nothing before the end, so moving the bodybags to the gurney and shuttling them into the incinerator wasn’t particularly hard physical labor.
He tried not to think about how Jardine would one day be in a bag like these. Thomas could only hope that he didn’t have to be the one to take her into the incinerator. If he was, perhaps he’d strip off the plastic shell of his protective gear and embrace her one last time. That would certainly end the contract.
