Walter Mosley - Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World

“Who hired you?” Neil asked Torres from the backseat of the luxurious, German-made Century Bug. The green chromium car sped down the small lanes of the perfect little Hindu city that was the tourist hub of Maya.

“The travel bureau of the island called me and told me that you were my only responsibility for the next few days,” the big man said. His mouth, Neil thought, seemed always on the verge of laughter. “And that I was not to accept any gratuity from you whatsoever.”

“Who paid them?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I know who sent me here but I thought I’d like to find out what department did the work, so I could thank them — everything has worked out so well.”

The hotel lobby was the size of Grand Central Station and every bit as busy. Carrying Neil’s two suitcases, Oscar weaved through the crowd of noisy tourists, bellboys, taxidrivers, and undercover security agents. Finally they came to a small window that had no one waiting on line.

“First class only, M,” said the small woman who sat inside the window.

“That’s my boss. First class all the way.”

The woman, who had India Indian deep brown skin and shimmering blond hair, leaned forward to get a glimpse of Neil, who was wearing a worse-for-wear coal gray andro-suit.

“Name?” she asked suspiciously.

“Neil Hawthorne virtual mid — um, Neil Hawthorne.”

The woman pressed two buttons and then her dour expression changed. “Welcome, M Hawthorne,” she said brightly. “We’ve been waiting for you. You have been given the Neptune Suite above the upper level of the reef. Are these all your bags?”

“Yes.”

Four melodious chimes issued from somewhere behind her desk. A moment later a tall man appeared, wearing a uniform that was the same color red as the island, the outer walls of the chalet, the ceilings, floors, inner walls, and almost everything else that Neil had so far seen.

“The Neptune Suite,” the woman said.

The big man took the bag from Oscar and said, “Follow me, sir.”

“Here’s my number, M Hawthorne,” Oscar said, pressing a scrap of paper into Neil’s sweating palm.

The cavernous suite was the pale blue of a pastel artist’s rendition of the sea. An incredibly large, green-tinted window led out onto a deck easily five times the size of Neil’s apartment. From there he could see most of the southern part of Maya. There were tens of thousands of tourists and workers down in the town and spread out across the orange sands of the beach. But even with all that traffic only the sound of the ocean reached Neil’s spectacular perch.

“M Hawthorne?” a girl’s voice asked timidly.

She was little more than a child, Neil thought. She stood in the doorway naked and barefoot. Her pale white skin seemed to belong to the night and its lunar light. She had no hair, anywhere. No brows or pubes or even an eyelash. And she was beautiful.

“Who are you?”

“Your house servant — Charity.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m here for your needs. I can cook and clean, run errands and sleep in your bed. I am here for you.”

“You work for the hotel?”

She nodded and looked down.

Many years later Neil realized, as he scanned this memory, that it was at this moment that he no longer considered Pulse as an alternative to problems he faced in life.

“Where are you from?”

“Scandia.”

“How’d you get here?”

“My parents send me for their retirement.”

“I can send down for a vig-toner drink,” Charity offered.

They were lying in Neil’s bed. He had been trying for hours to make love to his house servant. The windows of his bedroom were open to the sound of the ocean. The impossibly bright three-quarter moon was their only light.

“No thanks,” he said. “All I’d do is think about Nina.”

Charity lifted his limp penis with the fingertips of both hands. She gave it a light kiss.

“I like how the skin of your penis is so dark compared to the rest of your body. It’s so much better than pink or red.”

“That tickles,” Neil said.

“Is Nina your wife?”

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Sometimes.”

“What does that mean?”

“She’s, she’s a free spirit, a wild thing is what she calls it. I see her a lot but sometimes she goes away for a night or two... to get wild sex with strange men or women.”

“Is she very beautiful?” Charity asked wistfully.

“No. Actually she’s kind of ugly.”

“No!” Charity blurted. She laughed and punched Neil playfully on the arm.

“Yeah, she is. I mean she’s real sexy and there’s something about her...”

Charity seemed to be paying very close attention to him. She pushed Neil’s chest with both her hands hard enough to knock him over on the bed.

“You lie,” she said. “A rich man like you would not have an ugly girl.”

“Yeah,” Neil said, putting his hand against his chest.

“Sit up,” she said.

Neil did. He was enjoying their banter.

Suddenly she slapped him very hard across the face.

“Ow! Why’d you do that?”

“Look,” she replied, pointing at his groin.

He looked down to see that he’d begun to have an erection. When he looked back up at Charity, she slapped him even harder and pushed him down on his back.

The days passed on Maya. Neil wandered the crowded streets looking into shops where items were actually for sale rather than lease. When he was tired of the multitudes he would have Oscar drive him to the private access suite beach. There he could wander alone for hours only rarely coming across some billionaire and his house servant.

Whenever he was alone he’d remember the last communication he had with Un Fitt. He decided that the rogue controller was a megalomaniac, some demented genius who trapped unsuspecting prods in his illegal designs.

For the first time in his life Neil read the electric news. The INA, the Western Wynde , even the Daily Dump were available on a flat screen that popped up on his breakfast table every morning. The first few days he just scanned the headlines, looking for the escapades of sports heroes and vid stars. He was also drawn to spectacular murders and great disasters. It was only by chance that he saw the name Arnold Roth reported as one of the victims of a Common Ground riot in the Bronx.

There had been a three-day food shortage, something about a delivery schedule foul-up and the subsequent lock-down of CG-109, the largest Common Ground facility in the twelve fiefs. Roth had stayed in his sleep slip to avoid trouble, the INA reported, but out-of-control rioters had thrown a Molotov cocktail and the smoke suffocated the innocent cycler.

The Daily Dump had a completely different scenario for the death of Arnold Roth, Neil’s only friend before he came to work for GEE-PRO-9. M Roth, the Dump reported, was demanding food or freedom with thirty thousand other displaced unemployed persons when they were dispersed by sonic cannons, a standard antiriot tool of the NYSP. To prove this claim the Dump supplied a vid clip that showed Arnold yelling and brandishing his fists along with many others. Later, the Dump asserted, Roth was forced into a tunnel where rioters were to be quelled with disorientation gas. Arnold was one of the unlucky few who got pressed into a lower slip. There he suffocated.

The end of the article was punctuated by a low-res electronic photo of a jumble of corpses jammed into a sleep tube. Arnold Roth’s pudgy face lolled over another dead M’s rump.

The news of his friend’s death greatly disturbed Neil, though he didn’t feel sadness or loss. Neil liked Arnold, but he’d always known that his friend was destined to become a Backgrounder. Roth could never stay on a job cycle for more than a few months. In the last year Neil hadn’t responded to Arnold’s calls. He was afraid that he might let some secret slip about GP-9. He never trusted Arnold, he hadn’t missed his company in the past year, but still he identified with the dead prod. Neil saw himself in the brown pajama uniform of Common Ground, shaking his fists in the face of the Social Police. He saw himself pressed into a hole and suffocated.