Peter Liu - Bald New World

“Why not?”

“You most likely will not be coming back, even with armor on.”

We had to settle for junk food as delivery services ended after five p.m. throughout the city for safety purposes. Chips, cookies, and a soda salad tasted great when you were hungry.

Wudaokou Storage #301 was close to the station and there were Korean restaurants all over as this was Beijing’s Koreatown. I’d have to save my craving for Korean BBQ. The storage warehouse was enormous but the front lobby was tiny, a red brick-affair with a young lady at the front desk playing some game through her goggles. She was flailing her fingers and hands in front of her as she controlled objects only visible to her.

I cleared my throat to get her attention.

“Scan in,” she said.

Above her desk, there was a scanner. I put my palm against it and a retinal check followed. There was a confirming ring tone. To the right of me, a part of the brick wall slid open and an elevator awaited. I looked to the girl, but she was still playing her game. I entered the elevator. The door shut and I felt motion. When it opened back up, I was in a small room filled with weapons. It was dusty and the light had a motion sensor that triggered as I stepped in.

On the shelf, there were light bombs, an electric blade that could cut most metals, a small wooden gun that fired chemically coated paralysis darts, as well as a sleek flesh-toned skintight suit. If I wasn’t mistaken, this was an adaptive armor suit that warded off most bullets and protected against knife thrusts. It was military-grade, something George must have salvaged from the African Wars. Even though it was designed to fit Larry, it was adaptive and shrunk to fit my body. I put it on under my clothes. Though it didn’t provide protection for my head, there was also a black wig shaped like a crew cut that had titanium coating in-between without feeling too heavy on the scalp. I picked up a lens that would go over my eye like a contact lens and acted as a binocular, albeit with streaming data and thermal visuals that could be toggled. All the weapons were nonlethal. There was also a suitcase filled with cash, standard currency.

There wasn’t any message or a note. But George had prepared this, probably at Larry’s behest. What was it all for and why include me on the entry codes? What was George so scared of? I had no answers and contented myself with the equipment. I could barely feel the armor under my clothes. I took a stack of cash just in case.

When I left the warehouse, the girl was still playing her game. She didn’t even notice my departure.

II.

As soon as I stepped outside, a man in a black suit approached me. He was one of those “faceless”’ men I’d heard about but only rarely seen. He’d had plastic surgery/image facilitation to make his face generic, plastic almost to resemble that of a mannequin, skin stretched like Botox gone awry. They were part of a special agency that provided guards that were indistinguishable from one another and could get away with anything since no one could differentiate between the thousands they hired. “My boss would like to see you,” he said.

“Who’s your boss?”

“Miss Rina Zhang-Gibson.”

The Colonel? Chao Toufa’s principal rival and the most dreaded military officer in the African Wars. “What does she want?”

“She wanted to welcome you back to Beijing. You can use the phone in the car.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course.”

He led me to a red limo and I entered the backseat. There was a logo inside that was labeled Zhang Zhang , the brand name for her line of wigs. The projectors created a perfect 3D image of her in front of me. I’d never seen her up close. She didn’t have a wig on, was older (60s maybe?), wrinkles as battle scars under her eyes. There was a tough duress imprinted in her face, a no-nonsense tautness in her lips. Even when she smiled, there was venom in her gaze. She’d seen things I couldn’t begin to fathom. She wore a two-piece purple business suit with a white tie that resembled our old UN uniforms and I could read the tattoo from the insignia of her former African battalion on her scalp; a desert tiger. The King of Hell was there too, and I cringed when I saw the necklace of teeth around her neck.

“What brings you back to Beijing?” she asked.

I could either lie to her, or tell her the truth. Chances were, she was already steps ahead of me. Why did she want to speak to me, a nobody in the chain of things? I had to be careful, ready to jump out of the car and hurtle the light bomb at the guard.

“What do you want?” I asked back, not faltering from her eye line. It wasn’t so hard knowing it was only a hologram.

“I want to know where you stand in all of this.”

“In all of what?”

“This precarious situation we find ourselves in.”

“What’s precarious about it?”

“Larry was your close friend?”

“Still is.”

“Commodities control the world,” she stated. “In the past, the British fought a war for tea. Tulips were the rage for the Dutch. Oil drove most of the internecine Middle-East diplomacy in the early part of the century. Now, hair is the most precious of commodities. I suppose one day, that’ll change. But now, we have to fight over who controls the production of hair. Chao Toufa has some secret recipe that allows them to make the most realistic hair anyone has ever seen.”

“I’m not really involved in the business side of things. I just help Larry shoot his films.”

“I’ve tried everything to find out that formula, but my spies have failed.”

“I’m not trying to put you off, ma’am, but I really don’t know anything about the formula.”

“You know what I’ve found out in this business?” she asked. I shook my head. “Never underestimate the lengths people will go to quench their vanity. At any time, if you find yourself tired of this farce and want to make a deal, let me know. I can help you. We can do it over a phone call, or you can visit me in Bangkok.”

“What kind of deal?”

“I don’t want war with you.”

“War with me?”

“I’ve been informed Chao Toufa is trying to make a move against my factories in Saigon and Detroit,” she stated.

“Not that I know of.”

“There’s no need for a charade of innocence. Let’s talk terms. What do you want?”

That’s what I wanted to know from her .

“Respectfully, nothing,” I informed her. “I don’t have any information about the formula or a fight. I honestly doubt Larry does either, and I don’t think the people who do are gonna tell me.”

The Colonel regarded me coolly, not saying a word. The message ended abruptly. I stepped out. The messenger I’d seen earlier was smoking on the corner. I didn’t care. Everyone was trying to push me around. So she was a psychopath. Could she be any worse than the religious nut I’d endured? I realized, probably. I suppressed a shudder and headed for the Korean restaurant where Shinjee worked.

III.

I couldn’t get the deadly glower of the Colonel out of my head. Was I a target now? Was it her that George was so scared of? What made her think I’d know anything about the formula for the hair? Unfortunately, I’d have to deal with that later. Right now, my focus was Shinjee.

I knew she was trouble from the first moment I saw her. But I never thought Larry’s relationship with her might nearly get me killed. As I went back to the restaurant, I thought about that first date when Larry told me Hyori looked like Linda to get me to go along. Why had he been so pig-headed about his desire for Shinjee? I felt pain in my teeth, smelled blood even though I knew there wasn’t any. The more I thought about Shinjee, the more my gums hurt.