It was a disappointing contact; he couldn't be sure she had believed, and he had been unable to offer anything to prove it. But if he could make her go to his old body in the pit, then he wouldn't have to depend only on the kid in the penthouse, where his awareness had chopped off suddenly and permanently not long before he'd found Gina.
Neither the kid nor Gina would have understood that, how he could have been absent from the penthouse and yet still there in a way. It wasn't something he really understood himself, but that didn't matter now. That part of his awareness was as lost to him as any amputated limb, which had to mean the kid was lost to him, too.
It was up to Gina now to keep the Big One contained in the flesh. Every bit of the little one Out Here in the bigger context was waiting for it. And wherever it was awaited, it would go.
Even as he realized that, he realized his presence had made it worse. To escape being devoured by it, he would have to spread further, possibly amputating a great deal of himself, confined in some other location, losing his enlarged awareness. Or perhaps enlarging himself that much would dissipate him, fragment him into many little aspects of the same program, each one self-contained and out of contact with the other. Perhaps then he would lose his memory and forget that he had been human once.
He was still wondering what would become of him when he felt the first shock wave, followed by the last message he would ever receive from the meat.
– -
She didn't really understand what she was seeing at first. Mark was lying on the mat on the floor of the pit pretty much as she'd left him. At the console was some very young kid she'd never seen before, studying the screen so intently between taps on the keyboard (entering something? just browsing?) that he was completely unaware of her standing up on the catwalk. Moving quietly, Gina climbed down the ladder.
The kid saw something on the screen, and his fingers danced rapidly over the keys. He leaned toward the speaker. "Disconnect now?" he asked. Apparently the answer was no; the kid shook his head and muttered something. Probably another fucking child-prodigy doctor bused in to Diversifications' home implant program. This one had the sense to see all wasn't well, but it was too fucking little, too fucking late.
Gina moved along under the catwalk, skirting around to approach Mark behind the kid's back. Ripping the wires out of his head would either bring him out of it in a hurry or blow him up. Video turned it loose. Turn me off. Take out wires. Be there for me.
She looked down at Mark's inert body, still curled up on the mat. Shoulda kissed him when you had the chance, back in Mexico, she thought suddenly. Back in Mexico, when he first put the wires in when you were there. If you'd leaned down then, put your mouth on his, he might have stayed. Because after that nothing could pull him back, not love, not sex, not you. Not nothing, not no-how.
Thou shalt not fear?
The long, greying brown hair had fallen back from his gaunt face as if he were already dead. We don't grieve for what might have been in rock n'roll. We just keep rockin on.
This ain't rock'n'roll. It ain't been rock'n'roll for a long fucking time. This is business, and money, and change for the machines, but it ain't rock'n'roll.
The kid was still busy at the console, running some kind of complicated program that showed mostly numbers in three columns on the monitor. She knelt down next to Mark and put her fingers gently against his cheek. His face was comfortably warm. She lifted his head and wrapped the wires around her other hand, getting a good grip on them. "What are you doing?!"
She jumped, nearly yanking the wires out of his head right then. "I'm taking care of him," she said. "Get your ass back to Medical and pretend you never saw this. If he dies, I'll turn myself in."
"I'm taking care of him," he said. "I'm overriding within the program for the connections. If I can make them let go, we might get him to a doctor before he strokes out big."
She felt her mouth drop open. "Who the fuck are you? Whadda you mean, 'stroke out big'?"
Mark's body gave a jerk.
"Aw, shitl" the kid yelled and lunged for the console. "Disconnect! Disconnect now!"
Mark jerked again, and his head flopped out of her grasp as he rolled over onto his back, quivering and twitching. Bubbles of saliva bloomed on his lips; his left arm flailed, slapping against her thighs.
"Disconnect! Disconnect!" the kid was yelling desperately, and Mark kept twitching and bucking as she tried to get her hand free of the wires. She could feel how they were pulling at his head, and she had the horrible thought that if they pulled away now, they'd turn his skull inside out.
"Yank them!" the kid shouted.
Mark was flailing like a fish drowning in air. All the shit he'd ever gotten toxed on, and he'd never had a seizure until now. She straddled his chest and took the wires in both hands, intending to yank his head off if she had to.
Abrupdy he opened his eyes, and she knew that he could see her there, sitting on him, holding the wires, about to reel him in the hard way. Underneath her his body was still twitching a little, but the energy was going. She could feel it.
The faded green bloodshot eyes moved back and forth as if he were fixing her face in his mind.
Say it, whispered a voice in her mind.
She took a firmer grip on the wires; his head lifted slightly, but his eyes never left hers.
Say it. He wants to hear it. He always did, he was just always too toxed or too far out in the stupidsphere to know it.
The whites of his eyes were getting redder. The wires in her hand were very warm, fever temperature. On his lips, foam thickened into a stream that ran down to coat his chin, and she wanted to look away, but he wouldn't let her. She gave the wires a hard yank; his head dipped forward in a grotesque nod, driving his chin down onto his chest, but the connections held.
"Yank them!" the kid yelled at her.
She gave another hard pull. Mark nodded. Yes.
Say it!
"Yank them!"
Yes.
Say it!
His eyes were all red now, she could barely see any of the old green in them at all.
"Yank them, goddamn it!"
Yes!
Say it!
"You stupid fuck-up!" she yelled.
Mark smiled. Good enough. His eyes closed, and she felt his body go limp under her.
She lifted him under the shoulders with one arm, still holding the connections with her other hand, getting off him so she could cradle him on her lap. The kid was going, "Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus," at the console, and she had the vague idea that in a little while she would get up and bash the kid's brains out on the desk, put her foot through the monitor, and then head on down to Rivera's office and show him how to do the funky chicken while she crushed his windpipe. In a little bit. After she was sure Mark was resting.
One red tear trickled swiftly down his left cheek, dropping away from the side of his face. She shifted position slightly, and the blood suddenly gushed from his nose, painting his mouth and chin red, saturating his shirt.
The connections let go, then; all at once they dropped from the sockets, and she was holding a fistful of eight wires in a limp bouquet. She had to force her cramped fingers against her leg to make them unbend and drop them.
Musta hurt. Musta felt like I gave you a hot one with a set of brass knuckles. His eyes, she saw, weren't completely closed after all. He might have been nodding out on a dose he'd misjudged. Yah, we did that often enough-me keeping watch while you were toxed out, waiting to see if you were gonna turn blue or purple or some other stupid fucking color. His head sagged toward her, and a red tear diverted across the bridge of his nose and dropped.