Greg Chivers - The Crying Machine

‘Over here.’

A sudden circle of light illuminates a small round table in the corner of the room. Levi hunches over something, just as he did before. That time it was trinkets, now it’s two data slates hard-linked by a physical wire: old-school, but secure. Whatever is in them is supposed to be secret. The yellow glare from the ceiling lamp prevents her seeing what’s on the slates. Levi extinguishes the images with a tap of the finger and looks up as she approaches.

‘So, how are you doing? You like it there, at the Mission?’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Guilt darkens Clementine’s words. Nobody at the Mission made her sign contracts or swear oaths, but this still feels like a betrayal.

‘Yeah, I guess you are.’

‘So are you going to tell me about this job?’

‘In a minute. The thing you need to understand is that once I tell you the details, there’s no backing out.’ He looks over her shoulder to where Yusuf still stands next to the barred door, and then looks to her, waiting.

‘You want me to say “yes” without knowing what I’m agreeing to?’

‘Basically, yeah. Don’t worry, it’s only a little bit illegal.’ Levi chuckles at his own joke, but Clementine turns away, stares at the floor. The attempt at humour throws the reality of her choices into stark relief. It’s this or the mop and the kitchen forever, serving the ghosts as they pass through.

‘Levi, we don’t know each other. We can’t really talk about trust, or agreements, or anything like that. There’s no reason for me to trust you, or vice versa, so let me tell you where I’m at, and then you can decide for yourself how much of a risk it is to tell me about this job. How’s that?’

His mouth narrows into a line and his gaze flicks to Yusuf and then back to her.

‘OK, tell me “where you’re at”.’ His words mimic Clementine’s still shaky Arabic accent.

She forces a smile. ‘I’m broke, I spent last night in a homeless shelter, and the locals seem to regard the only clothes I own as some kind of sexual invitation. I need the money.’ Her smile sags beneath the weight of reality in those words, but she holds it in place and fixes Levi’s gaze, waiting for him to speak.

‘I think we can do business.’ His grin is a salesman’s, closing an easy deal. He taps the corner of one of the screens, and both of them shine into life; then he flips them around to face Clementine. They are photographs of the interior of a building taken from its own security cameras. ‘I need you to get into this building – it’s a museum storage facility – and retrieve an artefact. Think you can do that?’

‘Yes.’

He laughs again. ‘Confident, that’s good.’

Her fingers slide across the table to touch the tablet, but Levi jerks it back, caging it with his own hand just beyond her reach.

‘Keep your hands to yourself. You see what I need you to see, no more.’

‘If you want me to plan a break-in, I need to see everything.’

He shakes his head and smiles, but there is no warmth in his expression. ‘I think you’re labouring under a misunderstanding. I don’t need you to plan anything. I need someone quick and smart to do the legwork, that’s all.’

‘How do we get past the security? There’ll be alarms, cameras …’

‘You won’t need to worry about any of that stuff. It’s taken care of.’

‘I worry if it’s my picture they’re taking.’

Levi’s mouth pinches like he’s tasting something sour; then he shakes his head again. ‘I already told you too much. Get out.’ He spits the last word and leaves a silence, waiting for her to move.

His anger vents in sharp, shallow breaths, a warning hiss, but Clementine doesn’t shift. The thought of tomorrow morning’s cleaning routine echoing infinitely into the future keeps her rooted to her seat.

‘Go on, move! If you breathe a fucking word to anyone, we will find you. Nothing moves in this city Yusuf doesn’t know about it.’

Her head jerks around at the mention of the other man’s name. He’s still standing watchfully by the door, barring her exit, but there is no malice in his pose. The tablet lies tantalizingly out of reach, but she can almost taste the trickle of current flowing through the solid-state circuitry from the tiny block of lithium at its core. Just a little nudge …

Blue light from the tablets suddenly illuminates Levi’s face. He blinks in disbelief. ‘What the fuck did you do?’

‘Like I said, I need see everything.’

Heavy footsteps from behind warn of the big man’s approach, but Levi holds up a hand, and they stop. She feels the looming presence no more than a metre behind her.

‘May I?’ She gestures to the tablets shining through Levi’s caged fingers and he nods cautiously, pulling his hand away.

The moment her index finger brushes the tablet’s casing, data rushes up to greet her, coursing through the fingertip interface into her grey matter, flowing in a stream of firing neurons into the tiny auxiliary processor at the base of her frontal cortex. An itch in her brain is a long dormant sub-routine kicking into life, processing, sorting through thousands of files. The storage is archaic: pointless partitions and fragmentation make it needlessly cumbersome, but a few microseconds suffice to realize it is mostly redundant information. Almost all the files are copies of each other with small, pointless modifications. This data is an illusion, a pantomime of rigour.

‘This isn’t everything.’ Clementine’s voice comes out in a lifeless monotone.

‘What do you mean? I have contacts. This is the skinny.’

‘Look.’

The micro-projector on one of the tablets sparkles into life, and the photographs from its data files flicker into the air above the table on its beam of light. One after the other, they seem to hover, connecting with each other through some algorithmic alchemy to form a glowing three-dimensional wireframe of the target building that rotates slowly between Clementine and Levi.

‘Fuck.’ She turns in her chair at the sound of Yusuf’s voice. The big man is staring at the ghost building she’s conjured, mouth wide open.

‘How? How do you do that?’ Levi’s stare is intense, but his voice betrays a note of excitement.

‘It’s easier than the orange.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘You’re right, it isn’t. Is that going to be a problem?’

A calculating look comes into his eyes, and he shakes his head. ‘What’s going on here?’ He points to one of five blurred areas in the rotating schematic. It stops, and the relevant area enlarges, obeying an unspoken command.

‘This is how I know you’re not being given everything – there’s no source data available for me to process into the larger model. Is there a reason your contact wouldn’t give you the whole picture?’

‘Maybe. Maybe these areas just aren’t important.’ He waves a hand, and the model continues its rotation. ‘This doesn’t change anything.’

‘I think it does. I think my fee is four thousand.’ Clementine pulls her finger away from the tablet and the schematic winks out of existence, casting them both into gloom. Levi emits something like a growl, a sound of reluctance from deep in his throat; then he leans forward, face cracking in a sudden smile.

‘Yeah, yeah, four thousand is cool. You bring a lot to the party. I can respect that. I think we should regard this as the beginning of a business relationship.’

‘No, I do this and then I’m out.’

‘Let’s just see how this goes and then maybe consider it further down the line.’

Clementine breathes deep and shuts her eyes against memories: a year of running now. This is not her first opportunity to make money through crime. There were offers in Marseille as soon as people got a hint of what she was. Now, at the end of the money, choices are fewer. ‘This is not a career opportunity for me.’