John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

Too late I become aware of a force even greater than the Asset’s. Bride is also staring at me. As I succumb I am aware of what you might call the backdrop against which all this is playing out. I remember the words of the late Lord Sakagorn on the subject of Angkor: That huge dark rotting Wat the size of a city block, those hideous stone pyramids like Aztec architecture, that sinister little shrine right in the middle, the whole atmosphere of the thing.

I see that sinister shrine at the top of the steep stairs, and there, filling the corbeled vault-how shall I put it? The Beast himself, there is no other word for it.

“You want me to be…Who? Saint Paul? John the Baptist?”

I stare at the Asset, who smiles. “Anyone you like. The electrical circuits in the left and right lobes are tiny, you can hardly see them, they’re about the size of a fingernail. Admit it, dear one, you do want to be enhanced, don’t you?”

–

Now, between you and me, R, he has a point. I’m wondering what I’m going to do with the rest of my life without Chanya, and I have to confess I wouldn’t mind some of those Apps. Would you? To stroll around confident that you could beat the hell out of any ten thugs who crossed your path: that would be basic and I wouldn’t say no, but it’s the others that are so intriguing. Suppose you could understand all the calculations that prove e = mc 2 in five minutes just by following the logic? Suppose you could learn an Asian language to fluency level in a month? Then there’s the enhanced sex App: create eager sex slaves with every erection, that would be worth the inserts, don’t you think? And there’s the total makeover of the personality: from timid urban paranoid to strutting world conqueror in no time at all. I bet there’s a synaesthetic App, too, that would let you experience music in terms of color and even as direct sensual experience. (Would it be fun to automatically ejaculate at the end of Beethoven’s Ninth? I’m not sure but I’m willing to give it a try.)

“Sure,” I say. “But I don’t want to be a sociopath.”

The word takes them by surprise.

“I’m afraid you don’t really have a choice, my friend,” Bride says. “Not because we will coerce you-frankly, that is not possible, only a willing recruit could succeed in the program. But because you alone are qualified to save the world. Or, at least, that part of it that remains when the dust has settled on the catastrophes to come.”

My jaw drops. Silence. They wait, confident of my final capitulation.

I wish I could claim credit for some brilliant scam by which I escaped their psychic bullying, but as you know, R, I’m always honest with you, and I hope you’re not too disappointed when I confess I invoked an imperative no culture can afford to ignore.

“Excuse me, I have to use the bathroom,” I say, and slip out the back way that Krom showed me when Sakagorn was still in the bath.

–

Now, R, I cannot claim that I am unaffected by the extreme bullying to which I have been subjected. I am, frankly, terrified that I will succumb in due course, as Chanya has. Their argument is backed up by the evidence, that is the problem. The Asset really does exist, such beings really will be all too common in the future, the ordinary man and woman can look forward to a life of politically correct slavery, a feudalism as rigid as the Hindu caste system, while the THs lord it over us like barons on horseback from the Dark Ages. And I really could be one of them. Come to think of it, I do believe I’d be pretty good. I mean, I’d try to be fair, humane, make sure nobody whips the slaves too hard (under my stewardship everyone would have a roof over their heads, hot and cold running water, plenty of food and fuel to keep warm, TV so long as they’re obedient and work work work)…I would only have to sacrifice my humanity at a time when no one values it anyway. Somewhere, however, there is a deeper truth, I know there is, I simply don’t seem able to reach it right now.

–

However, by some quirk of dharma I have the medicine to hand-and the cure. I’m racing to the hovel on the back of a motorbike. I promised the jockey triple the usual fare if he can beat the traffic. As a result we spend a lot of the ride on the sidewalk, trying not to knock over pedestrians. When we arrive I tell him to wait while I dash inside to pick up a packet of Marlboro Lights and the rest of that oil Krom gave me. Once back on the bike I tell the jockey to take me to the police station. The plan is to find me a nice subterranean cell where no malevolent vibes can reach me. There I shall avail myself of the power of Buddhist meditation boosted by cannabis. It won’t take more than a couple of joints and some intense breathing exercises. It happened once before on the Green Sash case where we found the head but never located the torso: I totally freaked out, but with the healing herb and the wisdom of the Buddha and the seclusion of the cell I was able to reach the underlying reality of Universal Mind. As for Chanya, don’t worry, she’ll be fine once I’ve got some herb into her; we must not judge her too harshly: empty days weaken all of us, and she does have an adventurous streak.

Now, I don’t want to lead you astray, R, and probably such radical therapy is not for you, but as I explained once before in an evangelical moment, compassion is the cosmological constant of the psyche, just like the speed of light in physics: at the end of the day everything is measured against it. So that’s where I’m headed right now. I’m not being sentimental or religious, it’s simply the only enhancement worth having. There is the slight problem of desolation, though. It’s where the treasure’s buried, and you do have to cross that desert, as the holy man said. Did you ever reach this moment yourself, R, where you take a deep breath and gulp before you bite the last bullet?

–

I am yours in dharma, Sonchai Jitpleecheep.