Charlie Huston - Sleepless

Park and Beenie followed, stepping into the hidden round chamber that had once been the pleasure dome for Cager’s most exclusive clientele. Now, instead of coke-addled starlets and inbred eurotrash demiroyals, the room was populated by a hushed collection of aesthetes and aficionados, a highly select inner circle.

Almost exclusively male, perhaps one as old as forty, most of the others topping out at thirty, status, such as it was, outwardly displayed in the obscurity of the movies, bands, literary quotes, or bits of machine language code displayed on their T-shirts. Eyeglasses, of which there were many pairs, tending toward either retro-huge plastics or slight and unframed geometrics. Hair at similar extremes of long and unkempt or military-grade buzz. Jeans only, black preferred, khakis allowed if obviously ironic. Chuck Taylors, black, red, or white, high or low, the footwear of choice. None managing the austerity of Cager’s geek perfection. Their tablets, smart phones, net books, cloud links, heavily modded and customized. Hardware signaling not only to one another directly and over the club’s ubiquitous WiFi but also beaming otherwise unspoken detailed information about their owner’s beliefs and loyalties within this particular conclave.

As in the tournament room they had just left, attention was focused on a series of screens. Mounted on the wall and running 180 degrees of the room’s circumference, they were set at intervals that minimized light spill or peripheral distraction from screen to screen. Blow-up photographs of processor chips and detailed screen shots of 1980s golden era 8-bit video games hung from the ceiling and covered bare sections of wall, hiding the speakers while simultaneously baffling and focusing the surround sound on the middle of the room.

At that center were a cluster of five black and red Erro Aarnio Ball Chairs. Occupants engulfed by the globes, only their legs dangling or jutting free from the openings directed at the screens.

The screens themselves flashed and swooped, perspectives zooming and receding, plucking particulars from a series of popping and dropping menus, settling on a map, pulling close until it unfolded into a richly detailed scene of a central square in a city made entirely of iron. Forge, the City of Smiths. One of the entry points for Chasm Tide. A destination for parties looking either to arm themselves heavily or to have fabricated tools of special trade.

The five central screens showed varied characters’ points of view. Just off the shoulder, from behind the character’s eyes, well overhead, depending on player preference. The remaining screens displayed a collection of wider master shots of the action. The five avatars themselves: dark, light, human, non, scaled, armored, burly, lithe, bristling with blades, carrying only a staff, hooded and cloaked, fur-bikinied. The archetypes of the fantasy role-playing tradition. They materialized with a whoosh and a hum, resolving from an artful blurring of space, and stood there, inert amid the fuming wonders of Forge.

The audience, seated at cabaret tables or on a banquette that arced along the curve of wall opposing the screens, shifted, some making entries on their devices, one or two whispering into headsets.

Park heard an acne-scarred boy in an Atari-logo T-shirt speaking softly into a digital voice recorder.

“They’re going classic. Knight, mage, thief, barbarian, elf. Can’t tell if it’s meant as camp or homage.”

Cager’s entrance caused a slight stir, attention shifting from the screens. Nods were tossed his way, returned in the form of a general wave of the comb before he turned his back to the audience and inspected the screens himself.

He scratched the side of his neck with the tines of the comb.

“They know their crowd.”

He looked at Park, nodded him aside to a small bar.

Helmed by a very young girl in Harajuku anime-schoolgirl geisha chic, the service area was sunk several feet below the floor, putting the glossy surface of the bar, collaged with pornographic Disney-inspired animation cels, knee level to approaching customers. Cager knelt and nodded at the bartender. She dipped her head and began filling a small green bamboo pitcher with cold sake. Park squatted on his haunches, waiting as she placed the pitcher and two small, tightly tongue-and-grooved cypress masu boxes before them.

Cager poured both boxes full, picked one up, handed it to Park, took the other for himself, and lifted it.

“Kanpai!”

Park lifted his own.

“Kanpai.”

They drank.

Cager drained and refilled his box.

“I went to Japan for the first time when I was nine. For a year with my dad. Business. I found it alienating until I discovered the otaku. In terms of geek immersion, they were years ahead of me in every way. Of course, they had a natural advantage. All the most interesting technology was being developed for their market. My edge was that, compared to them, I was socially advanced. They trusted me very quickly and gave me access to their kung fu. Not pure code, which I’ve never had a gift for, but they helped me unlock game levels I didn’t know existed. Secret moves. When I came back here, I’d had six months on PlayStation and it hadn’t even been released in the States. It became a pilgrimage for me. Culturally I never penetrated deep. Too opaque. I’m low-affect myself. Not many outbursts like that one you saw with the phone. And I generally have a hard time reading other people’s moods. The Japanese in Japan are very hard for me. With otaku it doesn’t matter. No one cares what you’re feeling. My dad never grasped the fascination. He’s smart enough, but too old. He was over fifty when he had me. A gap like that, we can scream at each other and still not be heard.”

He combed his hair.

“That’s where I tried Shabu. To stay up. Keep playing.”

He put his box down and waited.

Park put his own nearly full box aside and opened the flap on his engineer’s bag. From a cylindrical pouch he tugged a cardboard toilet paper tube capped at either end with rubber-banded squares of cellophane. He undid one of the ends and drew from the tube a small package of crisply folded beige tissue. Untucking one corner of the paper, he peeled it aside, opening the package like a blossom, revealing the milky white coiled dragon nestled inside.

Cager nodded.

“Yes. That’s it.”

He reached for the dragon, Park pulled on the piece of paper it rested on, sliding it away.

Cager looked at him.

“Yes?”

Park placed the tip of his index finger on the barbed tail of the dragon.

“Twenty-five-gram dragon. Pure and real Shabu. Cash only. Up front.”

“‘Cash only.’ That seems a little shortsighted.”

Park shrugged.

“I’m a dealer. It’s a cash business. No one has come up with a barter model that makes sense.”

“They will.”

“Until then, the dragon is fifteen thousand U.S.”

Cager nodded and placed a fingertip on the corner of the paper opposite Park’s.

“Cash, then.”

He started to draw the dragon toward himself.

Park considered the moment.

When Bartolome had offered him undercover and he had accepted the assignment, he’d done as much research as he could on the topic without actually resorting to talking with other cops. No one was supposed to know about the investigation into Dreamer. So Park could ask no one what risks his new job might carry beyond the obvious. Not that he would have asked, anyway. Even his most serviceable relationships within the department were strained. His well-known inflexibility marked him for little more than scoffing dismissal from any undercovers he might cross paths with.

Flexibility was one of their primary job requirements. Average undercovers, most of them working cases that touched at the very least tangentially on the drug trade, had forgotten how to see the world in any colors but muddy gray. The briefest spell spent dealing with the economies of narcotics quickly erased all traditional valuations of right and wrong, good and evil, or, in the end, legal and illegal. The few undercovers Park had dealt with personally had distilled police work to an essence of us and them. Making busts wasn’t a matter of doing the right thing, of enforcing the law or doing your job, it was more akin to sticking it to the other side before they could stick it to yours.