William Gibson: All Tomorrow's Parties

'Yes.

'And you are obsessed with her?

Laney stares at him, eyes lit by a backwash of data. 'No. Not with her. Guy named Harwood. Cody Harwood. They're coming together, though. In San Francisco. And someone else. Leaves a sort of negative trace; you have to infer everything from the way he's not there.

'Why did you ask me here, Laney? This is a terrible place. Do you wish me to help you to escape? Yamazaki is thinking of the blades of the Swiss Army knife in his pocket. One of them is serrated; he could easily cut his way out through the wall. Yet the psychological space is powerful, very powerful, and overwhelms him. He feels very far from Shinjuku, from Tokyo, from anything. He smells Laney's sweat. 'You are not well.

'Rydell, Laney says, replacing the eyephones. 'That rent-a-cop from the Chateau. The one you knew. The one who told me about you, back in LA.

'Yes?

'I need a man on the ground, in San Francisco. I've managed to move some money. I don't think they can trace it. I decked with DatAmerica's banking sector. Find Rydell and tell him he can have it as a retainer.

'To do what?

Laney shakes his head. The cables on the eyephones move in the dark like snakes. 'He has to be there, is all. Something's coming down. Everything's changing.

'Laney, you are sick, Let me take you-

'Back to the island? There's nothing there. Never will be, now she's gone.

And Yamazaki knows this is true.

'Where's Rez? Laney asks.

'He mounted a tour of the Kombinat states, when he decided she was gone.

Laney nods thoughtfully, the eyephones bobbing mantis-like in the dark. 'Get Rydell, Yamazaki. I'll tell you how he can get the money.

'But why?

'Because he's part of it. Part of the node.

LATER Yamazaki stands, staring up at the towers of Shinjuku, the walls of animated light, sign and signifier twisting toward the sky in the unending ritual of commerce, of desire. Vast faces fill the screens, icons of a beauty at once terrible and banal.

Somewhere below his feet, Laney huddles and coughs in his cardboard shelter, all of DatAmerica pressing steadily into his eyes. Laney is his friend, and his friend is unwell. The American's peculiar talents with data are the result of experimental trials, in a federal orphanage in Florida, of a substance known as 5-SB. Yamazaki has seen what Laney can do with data, and what data can do to Laney.

He has no wish to see it again.

As he lowers his eyes from the walls of light, the mediated faces, he feels his contacts move, changing as they monitor his depth of focus. This still unnerves him.

Not far from the station, down a side street bright as day, he finds the sort of kiosk that sells anonymous debit cards. He purchases one. At another kiosk, he uses it to buy a disposable phone good for a total of thirty minutes, Tokyo-LA.

He asks his notebook for Rydell's number.

'HEROIN. declared Durius Walker, Rydell's colleague in security at the Lucky Dragon on Sunset. 'It's the opiate of the masses.

Durius had finished sweeping up. He held the big industrial dustpan carefully, headed for the inbuilt hospital-style sharps container, the one with the barbed biohazard symbol. That was where they put the needles, when they found them.

They averaged five or six a week. Rydell had never actually caught anyone shooting anything up, in the store, although he wouldn't have put it past them. It just seemed like people dropped used needles on the floor, usually back by the cat food. You could find other things, sweeping up in the Lucky Dragon: pills, foreign coins, hospital identification bracelets, crumpled paper money from countries that still used it. Not that you wanted to go poking around in that dustpan. When Rydell swept up, he wore the same Kevlar gloves that Durius was wearing now, and latex underneath that.

He supposed Durius was right though, and it made you wonder: all the new substances around to abuse, but people didn't forget the ones that had been around forever. Make cigarettes illegal, say, and people found a way to keep smoking. The Lucky Dragon wasn't allowed to sell rolling papers, but they did a brisk trade in Mexican hair-curler papers that worked just as well. The most popular brand was called Biggerhair, and Rydell wondered if anyone had ever actually used any to curl their hair. And how did you curl your hair with little rectangles of tissue paper anyway?

'Ten minutes to, Durius said over his shoulder. 'You wanna do the curb check?

At four o'clock, one of them got to take a ten-minute break, out back. If Rydell did the curb check, it meant he got to take his break first, then let Durius take one. The curb check was something that Lucky Dragon's parent corporation, back in Singapore, had instituted on the advice of an in-house team of American cultural anthropologists. Mr. Park, the night manager, had explained this to Rydell, ticking off points on his notebook. He'd tapped each paragraph on the screen for emphasis, sounding thoroughly bored with the whole thing, but Rydell had supposed it was part of the job, and Mr. Park was a definite stickler. 'In order to demonstrate Lucky Dragon's concern with neighborhood safety, security personnel will patrol curb in front of location on a nightly basis. Rydell had nodded. 'You not out of store too long, Mr. Park added, by way of clarification. 'Five minute. Just before you take break. Pause. Tap. 'Lucky Dragon security presence will be high-profile, friendly, sensitive to local culture.

'What's that mean?

'Anybody sleeping, you make them move. Friendly way. Hooker working there, you say hello, tell joke, make her move.

'I'm scared of those old girls, Rydell said, deadpan. 'Christmastime, they dress up like Santa's elves.

'No hooker in front of Lucky Dragon.

''Sensitive to local culture'?

'Tell joke. Hooker like joke.

'Maybe in Singapore, Durius had said, when Rydell had recounted Park's instructions.

'He's not from Singapore, Rydell had said. 'He's from Korea.

'So basically they want us to show ourselves, clear the sidewalk back a few yards, be friendly and sensitive?

'And tell joke.

Durius squinted. 'You know what kinda people hang in front of a convenience store on Sunset, four in the morning? Kids on dancer, tweaked off their dimes, hallucinating monster movies. Guess who gets to be the monster? Plus there's your more mature sociopaths: older, more complicated, polypharmic.

'Say what?

'Mix their shit, Durius said. 'Get lateral.

'Gotta be done. Man says.

Durius looked at Rydell. 'You first. He was from Compton, and the only person Rydell knew who had actually been born in Los Angeles.

'You're bigger.

'Size ain't everything.

'Sure, Rydell had said.

ALL that summer Rydell and Durius had been night security at the Lucky Dragon, a purpose-built module that had been coptered into this former car-rental lot on the Strip. Before that, Rydell had been night security at the Chateau, just up the Street, and before that he'd driven a wagon for IntenSecure. Still farther back, briefly and he tried not to think about it too often, he'd been a police officer in Knoxville, Tennessee. Somewhere in there, twice, he'd almost made the cut for Cons in Trouble, a show he'd grown up on but now managed never to watch.

Working nights at the Lucky Dragon was more interesting than Rydell would have imagined. Durius said that was because it was the only place around, for a mile or so, that sold anything that anyone actually needed, on a regular basis or otherwise. Microwave noodles, diagnostic kits for most STDs, toothpaste, disposable anything, Net access, gum, bottled water… There were Lucky Dragons all over America, all over the world for that matter, and to prove it you had your trademark Lucky Dragon Global Interactive Video Column outside. You had to pass it entering and leaving the store, so you'd see whichever dozen Lucky Dragons the Sunset franchise happened to be linked with at that particular moment: Paris or Houston or Brazzaville, wherever. These were shuffled, every three minutes, for the practical reason that it had been determined that if the maximum viewing time was any more, kids in the world's duller suburbs would try to win bets by having sex on camera. As it was, you got a certain amount of mooning and flashing. Or, still more common, like this shit-faced guy in downtown Prague, as Rydell made his exit to do the curb check, displaying the universal finger.