The Future, Imperfect: Short Stories Read online

  Or perhaps in the corporations would be the more appropriate term.

  Mercedes's dream of the power of illusion and the life of a sim star had required corporate support. Yes, she had paid off the expense of her implant, had become an independent, but she was complicit anyway.

  Complicit in Amy's disappearance — her way of life subsidized by the system. If only it were possible to contact the girl's parents. But what would she tell them? I did my best to persuade your daughter to jump out of a window but she wouldn't.

  Mercedes tried to push that thought away, but she knew it would never leave her. It was part of her days and her nightmares.

  Her flat in Vancouver was a tiny thing with little more than a bed and a convenience kitchen, but Mercedes felt lucky to have it. She commanded the entertainment system on and listened to the babbling voices with a fraction of her attention as she took off her jacket, put it in the hall closet, and got herself chips from the cupboard and beer and cheese from the fridge. She settled down on the couch with the newspaper Bonnie had given her under her arm and the evening goodies in her hands. Just out of curiosity, she switched to the news. There still wasn't any mention of the missing girl in Seattle; come to think of it, there was no mention of anything particularly negative.

  Where had she gotten the idea that news was all bad?

  Mercedes frowned and opened the newspaper. Turning the pages, she noticed that here most of the news was bad: murders, riots, trade disagreements between U.S. corporations and the Canadian government, water shortages growing worse in North Africa, more incidents in the ongoing non-war in the Middle East.

  Between the individual stories were short quotes from books and famous historical figures that didn't have anything to do with the news items, at least not as far as Mercedes could tell.

  Below the article on Amy was a quote about the importance of what books can tell us from one of the novels Bonnie had recommended to her today, Fahrenheit 451. Mercedes glanced at the top of the page. There, a quote from the other book Bonnie had left for her on the counter, The Scarlet Pimpernel: "Bah! It was ridiculous! she was dreaming! her nerves were overwrought, and she saw signs and mysteries in the most trivial coincidences."

  Mercedes looked up, allowing the newspaper to sink to her lap. Taken together, it looked absurdly like a message.

  She'd heard about people who saw secret messages addressed to them on the television and elsewhere — they were commonly referred to as schizophrenic. Was she going crazy? But her personality wasn't changing, or at least she didn't think so. She wasn't sleeping and she was tired all the time, but that was easy enough to explain. She'd fled for her life, leaving a small girl to her fate. Plenty of stress and guilt there to justify a little sleeplessness.

  Perhaps the quotations were no more than "trivial coincidences," just like the quote from The Scarlet Pimpernel.

  Coincidences or not, it wouldn't hurt to take a look at those books at the bookstore tomorrow.

  As Mercedes was drifting off to sleep, trying to fight the usual memories and nightmares, a voice seemed to speak directly into her brain. It's time to end this.

  She shot up in the bed and checked the mental blocks she had set. All in place, as far as she could tell. Another nightmare? But it had been like a real voice, speaking to her. Her reaction at least was real — she was drenched in sweat.

  Then came more reality, or more nightmare, or both. Waking lurched into dream, and Mercedes shook her head, fighting it, losing.

  Rasmussen stands over her bed, ghostly white. Mercedes has the impression of further looming threats somewhere outside of the range of her vision, but she cannot bring them into focus. "Why are you resisting us, Mercedes?" the corporation man says. "We won't harm you."

  "Won't harm me? Where is the little girl? What did you do to me before I fled?"

  Rasmussen smiles, heavy to one side of his nanotech sculpted features. "Are you sure you want to know?"

  Her stomach recoils at something almost unremembered. "No."

  "You do have a strong sense of self-preservation, don't you? While I admire that, I fear it's what got us into this very unfortunate situation."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We don't want to hurt you, you know. We just need to mess with your mind a little."

  "You're messing with my mind now."

  "No, I'm afraid that's you. We're only trying to pull you out."

  "Pull me out of what?"

  "The illusion you're hiding in. The place you've gone in your mind. It is time to end this."

  "No!"

  Nightmare and waking shifted again, and Mercedes jumped out of bed, dizzy and disoriented, slamming her knee against the night stand.

  She fell down on the edge of the bed, clutching her bruised leg. "Shit!"

  Rocking herself back to calm, she waited until the room around her had taken shape in the dark. Once she got her bearings again, she switched on the bedside lamp and went to get a glass of water.

  What the hell did the damn dream mean? Could Rasmussen be accessing her unit after all? The red hand indicated her block was still active, but what if the company that developed the tech had ways around that? Someone had infiltrated her mind in Seattle.

  There was another distinct possibility — the dreams were a result of guilty conscience.

  She downed the ice water and slipped back under the covers, reconciling herself to yet another sleepless night.

  * * * *

  When Mercedes entered the bookstore the next morning, half-awake at best, the books Bonnie had recommended were still on the counter.

  At the tinkle of the bell, Bonnie came out from behind the nearest stack. "Good morning, Mary. God, you look like hell."

  Mercedes slipped out of her jacket. "Thanks. That about describes the way I feel."

  "Do you want the morning off?"

  Mercedes shook her head. "Can't afford it, I'm afraid — I need the money."

  "Well, there's a fresh pot of coffee in the back."

  "Thanks. You're a lifesaver."

  She got herself a cup of coffee — black — and leafed through Bradbury and Baroness Orczy while she tried to wake up.

  Books saving the world, and a secret society saving the world. And everything a mystery to the protagonists. Everything was certainly a mystery to Mercedes. But Bonnie had given her the books, and Bonnie had given her the newspaper with the quotes — if anyone was sending her secret messages, it was her boss.

  Once she was sufficiently caffeinated and their regular morning customers had come and gone, she took the two old paperbacks in the crook of her arm and went in search of Bonnie. Her boss was kneeling on the floor, shelving used hardbacks and trade paperbacks on the bottom row of the psychology section, but she looked up with a smile when she saw Mercedes.

  Mercedes knelt next to her and placed Fahrenheit 451 and The Scarlet Pimpernel on the stack between them. "So, what's with the quotes?" she said, tapping the cover of the Bradbury.

  Bonnie shook her head. "What do you mean?"

  For a moment, Mercedes felt like the character in The Scarlet Pimpernel, construing "signs and mysteries in the most trivial coincidences." But no, taken together it was too much.

  She looked at her boss, trying to see behind the surface, see why this woman had given her these books. This woman who laughed at everything and had lost a lover to death. This woman who thought her life too full to keep her from dwelling on that tragedy. "The Scarlet Pimpernel and Fahrenheit 451 were quoted in the paper the other day. The two books you suggested I read."

  "Lots of books are quoted in the paper." Bonnie shrugged. "That's something the publishers do as a sort of tribute to the dying print media."

  "But the day before, there was an article..." Mercedes's voice trailed off. She didn't even know Bonnie that well, after all. But she was sure the other woman knew something.

  Bonnie was silent for a moment, but when Mercedes didn't continue, she did. "An article that meant something to you?"<
br />
  "Yes." Mercedes sat down on the floor and crossed her legs. "What do you know?"

  Bonnie put out a hand before she spoke, as if to ward off whatever reaction Mercedes might have. "Not much. Only that someone thinks you're significant."

  "Significant."

  "You were placed with me by one of our people in the refugee organization. He thought you might be one of the ones the corporations were looking for. There are several articles in that newspaper relating to crimes we think the corporations committed. Which one...?"

  "Amy."

  "Ah, the little girl."

  The little girl.

  Mercedes leaned her head back against the shelves of books behind her; they gave way just enough to allow her to stare at the ceiling of the dingy bookstore. Someone knew who she was, or at least enough to connect her with the corporations.

  "We're on your side, Mary," Bonnie was saying now. "But we need your help."

  "We?"

  "We."

  Apparently, this mild-mannered, harmless-looking woman was a member of some kind of underground organization. As unlikely as the Scarlet Pimpernel. And secret messages in newspapers. "Who is 'we'?"

  "Sometimes we work with the Canadian government on projects that can't be part of official policy. But we're not a front; we're independent."

  Mercedes grimaced. "Why all the secrecy and funny notes in the newspaper?"

  Bonnie laid a friendly hand on her forearm. "You're not the only person we're looking for. Besides, most of the time we don't even know who we're looking for, only the crimes that are associated with excessive activity on the part of the corporations. The ones who got away."

  Mercedes closed her eyes, memories coming back too strongly now. The little girl. "Does your organization have any information on Amy?"

  Bonnie squeezed her arm. "I'm afraid not."

  And then she felt hot tears streaming down her face and pain closing her throat. She tried to change it, tried to make the pain into something else — she was a sim star, after all, an expert at manipulating her own emotions to make them into something her audience would enjoy. Even if her neurobroadcaster was disabled, she should still have the ability to transform her inner reality into what she wanted it to be.

  Why oh why couldn't she do that anymore?

  She had no control, it was over, Hypersystems would find her and come to get her.

  She heard her sobs grow louder, and she was finding it hard to breath. Then she was no longer just crying, she was hyperventilating, gasping for breath with each sob. Her face grew hot, and she thought she might be sick. Her head was getting fuzzy, the shelves of old books fading before her eyes.

  Maybe she was going crazy.

  She barely noticed as Bonnie pulled her up from the floor and laid an arm behind her back, pulling and persuading her to the front of the store while she made a call on her cell phone.

  And then the world around her went black.

  * * * *

  "Mercedes! This has gone on too long. It is time to end it."

  Rasmussen towers over her. Impatience distorts his perfect features.

  She won't give in. "The little girl, Amy. Where is she?"

  "The girl has nothing to do with you."

  "I want to see her."

  Rasmussen turns away from her for a moment, gesturing to someone in the background.

  "Fetch the child."

  A small figure, bound, gagged and whimpering, emerges from the darkness at the edge of her vision.

  "Untie her!" Mercedes demands.

  A short hand movement from Rasmussen and her will is done.

  As soon the girl's hands are free and the blindfold is removed from her eyes, she throws herself on Mercedes, sobbing desperately.

  * * * *

  Mercedes woke up in an unremittingly sterile hospital room with two beds, one of them empty. It took her a while to remember what had led up to her being here. Had she had a nervous breakdown, or whatever they called it these days? She'd had a hysterical crying fit and passed out, that was for sure.

  Maybe it was just the effect of two weeks of next to no sleep.

  The table beside her bed contained an old-fashioned newspaper, folded in quarters. Mercedes lifted it, almost dreading what she might find.

  There, in the middle, another quotation from The Scarlet Pimpernel: "The invigorating scent of the sea was nectar to her wearied body, the immensity of the lonely cliffs was silent and dreamlike. Her brain only remained conscious of its ceaselessness, its intolerable torture of uncertainty."

  Mercedes laid the newspaper back on the bedside table. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Perhaps merely that she really was a basket case. Or that not all the quotes were messages to her. Bonnie had said as much.

  Three white suits filed into her room, and she turned her attention to the medical experts.

  Who weren't.

  Mercedes nearly went back to whatever place she had been in the last days or hours, the safe place in her mind far away from everything that had been tormenting her since the Hypersytems gala.

  She knew these men. But she only knew one of their names — Keith Rasmussen of Hypersystems.

  Mercedes pushed herself up on her elbows and looked from one to the other, fighting back the panic and replacing it with a slow smile. "Wow. High-level visit."

  Rasmussen crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Next-gen sim deserves nothing less, don't you think?"

  Next-gen sim? What was he talking about? Mercedes had gotten a corporation loan for her neurobroadcaster, it was true, but no one had said anything about new tech.

  "How did you find me? Because I gave in to my addiction for simulated lives and tried out for the flat? Because I faked a feed?"

  The bully-slash-bodyguard who had been leading Amy into the room the last time she saw him spoke. "We didn't have to find you."

  "Right. You just let me run for over two weeks before you decided to rein me in." She noticed with a great degree of satisfaction that the skin around his eyes was discolored — as if he were still recovering from a concussion. That at least said something for the strength of her right arm. She glanced around the hospital room, but she didn't immediately see anything she could use as a weapon to brain the thug a second time.

  Rasmussen chuckled, a particularly unpleasant sound. "A weapon won't do you much good, whether you find one or not. You think you got away? Just because you remember hacking off your hair and running for the border?"

  Mercedes blinked. What was he implying? "Seems logical enough to me."

  He approached her bed, arms still folded in front of his chest. She resisted the urge to jerk away. "Logic isn't always correct. You probably also still remember being called back to the hotel by your implant."

  "Yes."

  "Well, that's what you did — you returned to the hotel."

  For a moment, Mercedes couldn't answer. She had returned to the hotel?

  She drew a deep breath. It was all too possible.

  What if Hypersystems had taken over her mind when she had unjammed the feed, had covered her real actions with the scenario she had planned in her head?

  No, she could not allow that train of thought.

  "What proof do you have?" Underneath the white cotton sheets, she felt for the button on the side of the bed to call the nurse.

  Rasmussen unfolded his arms and sat down on the edge of her bed. This time, Mercedes couldn't help wincing.

  "You cited logic," he said smoothly, ignoring her body language. "But your behavior in the reality you inhabit here in your fictional Vancouver is far from rational. Why haven't you gone to a specialist to have your neurobroadcaster removed?"

  "How do you know I haven't?"

  "Because we've been monitoring your dreams and your illusions. We own your brain, after all."

  "I blocked the feed!"

  Rasmussen gave that easy chuckle again. "Do you really think we would allow it to be that easy when we invested so much?"


  "I paid off my debt."

  He shook his head. "You never pay off your debt."

  They were messing with her head — either way, she realized with an increasing sense of hopelessness.

  Mercedes groped around in her mind for an argument that could defeat them. The best defense was a good offense.

  She leaned forward, hoping the nurse would finally show up. "There is still nothing you've said to make me believe that all this is actually taking place in my imagination. We are in a hospital in Vancouver."

  Rasmussen laughed out loud. "Come now. What about your schizophrenic incidents? You're fighting us harder than we expected, but it's taking its toll on your mind, breaking it."

  "It was the stress of my flight and my guilt that put me in the hospital. A panic attack is not the same as schizophrenia."

  He smiled indulgently. "So now you are a psychologist? Then consider this: why haven't we killed you yet? That would be the easiest solution for us if we were physically in Vancouver, and not just participating in the illusion in your mind."

  She shook her head, feeling for a moment like she were getting part of herself back again. "That one's easy. You told me yourself — Hypersystems doesn't want to destroy its investment."

  Then it occurred to her: that might be the reason she had survived all along.

  "Come, Mercedes," Rasmussen said. "You must have noticed before how little sense this makes. Can you think of any reason why we would have let you run in the first place?"

  Mercedes chuckled, doing her best to act braver than she felt. "You have me there — that's the most illogical part of the whole thing. Incompetence, maybe?" She glanced over at the man with the black eye. "Because I brained your thug?"

  It's time to end this.

  Behind her smile, she gritted her teeth, fighting the voice in her head. She wouldn't let them win.

  "Then think about this, Mercedes — what does your fictional Vancouver look like? Isn't it more like a postcard than a real place?"

  He had a point. She gazed at the discolored skin around the eyes of the one guard, a true detail. Would she have thought to include it if she were making this up?