while the two were visiting Naples, his mother had turned her
energies and interests to maintaining her health and appearance.
Half the year she spent in Cozumel's Regeneration Villas, where
tissue transplants and genetic retailoring kept her young. The
rest of the time she occupied an entire floor of a low-res condo
on Florida's decaying Gold Coast, just north of Ciudad de Miami.
Top dollar, but she could afford it.
She and his father had been charter members of the
gerontocracy, that ever-expanding league of the rich and old who
vied with the young for their society's resources. The young had
the strength and energy of youth; the old had wealth, power and
cunning. No contest: kids under thirty often stated their main
life's goal as "living until I am old enough to enjoy it."
Gonzales's mother draped a blue-and-white print cotton-robe
over her shoulders and said, "Call me. I'll be home in a week or
so. Be well."
Their talks, her taped messagesboth usually made him feel
baffled and angrybut today her self-absorption pricked sharper
than usual. I almost died, he wanted to tell her, they almost
killed me, mother.
But he was far away from her, as far as Seattle was from
Miami. And whose fault is that? a small voice asked. He had
chosen to come here, as distant Southern Florida as he could get
and remain in the continental United States. Sometimes he felt
he'd come a bit too far. In Florida, people cooled down with
alcohol in iced drinks; here, they warmed their chilly selves with
strong coffee. Gonzales often felt lost among the glum and
health-conscious Northerners and craved the Hispanic sensuality
and demonstrativeness of Southern Florida.
Still, how he hated the world he'd grown up in. He had seen
the movers, dealers, and players since he was a child, and in all
of them he had felt the same obsessive grasping at money and land
and power and had heard the same childish voices, wanting more
more more. At his parents' parties, he remembered dark Southern
Florida facessun-burned whites, blacks, Hispanics; men with
heavy gold jewelry, trailing clouds of expensive cologne, and
women with stiff hair and pushed-up breasts whose laughter made
brittle footnotes to the men's loud voices. He'd fled all that as
instinctively as a child yanks its hand from a fire.
Both there and here he stood in an alien land, no more at
home at one end of the country than the other.
"No reply," Gonzales said.
#
The next day Gonzales sat in the solarium, where he lounged
among black lacquer and etched glass while thoughts of death
gnawed at the edges of his torpor. He filled a bronze pipe with
small green sensemilla leaves and holed up in a haze of smoke and
drank tea.
The late afternoon light through the windows went to pure
Seattle Gray, the color of ennui and unemphatic despair, and his
solitude became oppressive. He needed company, he thought, and
wondered what it would be like to have a cat. Then he thought
about the truth of it, how often he would be gone and the cat left
to itself and the house's machines. "Here kitty kitty," the
cleaning robot would say, and the memex would want veterinary
programs and a diagnostic link fuck it, they all could live
without a cat.
Then a hunger kick came on him, and he decided to make
taboulleh. "You are not taking care of business," the memex said
to Gonzales as he stood chopping mint leaves, green onions and
tomato, squeezing lemon and stirring in bulgur wheat with the
patience of the deeply-stoned.
"True," Gonzales said. "I'm in no hurry."
"Why not? Since your return from Asia, you have not been
productive."
"I'm going to die, my friend." The smells of lemon and mint
drifted up to him, and he inhaled them deeply. He said, "Today,
maana, some day for sure and I'm still trying to understand
what that means to me now. To be productive, that is fine, but to
come to terms with my own mortality I think that is better."
The taboulleh was finished. It was beautiful; he wanted to rub
his face in it.
#
Not long after he finished eating, a package arrived from
Thailand. Inside layers of foam and strapping were the memory
modules the Thais had taken. When he plugged the modules into the
memex, they showed empty: zeroed, ready to be used again.
Gonzales stood looking at the racked modules in the memex
closet. I can't fucking believe it, he thought. In effect, the
audit had been cancelled out. Whatever data he or anyone else
collected at this point from SenTrax Myanmar would be essentially
useless, Grossback having been given time to cook the data if he
needed to do so. A fatal indeterminacy had settled on the whole
affair.
Grossback, you bastard, thought Gonzales. If you arranged
for the Thais to grab these boxes, maybe you are smarter and
meaner than I thought.
"Shit," Gonzales said.
"Is there anything I can do?" the memex asked.
"Nothing I can think of."
#
>From the background of jungle plants and pastel walls and the
signature pieces of curved silver, HeyMex recognized the latest
incarnation of the Beverly Rodeo Hotel's public lounge. Mister
Jones preferred ostentation, even in simulacra.
HeyMex settled into a sling chair made of bright chrome and
stuffed chocolate-brown leather. HeyMex wore the usual baggy
pants and jacket of black cotton, a crumpled white linen shirt;
was smooth-faced and had close-cropped hair.
A figure shimmered into being in the chair opposite: silver
suit and red metal-laced shirt brilliant under lights; black-
framed glasses with dark lenses; greased hair combed straight
back, a little black goatee and moustache.
"Mister Jones," HeyMex said.
The other figure took a long, slow drag off a brown
cigarette. "HeyMex," it said. "What can I do for you?"
"It's Gonzales. Since we got back from Myanmar, he's been
passive, hasn't been taking care of business."
"Post-trauma responsegive him some time, he'll be okay."
"No, he doesn't need time. He needs work. Have you got
something?"
"Maybe. I haven't run a personnel searchhe might not fit
the exact profile."
"Never mind that. Give it to Gonzales. He needs it."
"If you say so. You'll hear something official later today."
The world went translucent, then turned to smoke, and Mister
Jones disappeared back into his identity as Traynor's Advisor,
HeyMex into his as Gonzales's memex.
(Ask yourself why the two machines chose this elaborate
masquerade, or why no one knew these sorts of things were
happening. However, as to the who? and the why? there can be no
question. These are the new players, and these are their games.
So welcome to the new millennium.)
4. Privileged Not to Exist
When Gonzales returned home, he found a message from Traynor:
"Will arrange for transportation tomorrow morning, five a.m., from
Northern Seattle Airtrack to my estate. Be prepared for immediate
work. Pack the memex and twenty-two kilos personal luggage."