The Fickle Finger of Fate: Chapter III

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Dawn comes late in the middle of the city at this time of year, but I've never been able to snooze too well with a dumpster for a pillow, a pool of industrial waste for a mattress, and two thousand watts of mercury discharge for a night light. And I've tried to sleep that way far too many times. I don't know what time it was, maybe six or so, when I struggled to my feet and stumbled out of the alley. I wasn't sure just where I was; downtown Tokyo somewhere, obviously, but they'd dumped me in a neighbourhood I wasn't familiar with. The buildings were tall and new, with unfamiliar names on the signs: "Jatexu," "Ng-Sys," "Hadaplect," and so on. I guessed they were second-generation biotech, which didn't make me feel any happier about the fluid soaked into my pants.

I stumbled along the sidewalk, aimlessly, wondering how I would get home. They'd left me my wallet, amazingly enough, but I couldn't seem to find a subway station. The few passersby studiously avoided my eyes. I saw a taxi parked in front of an ornate building that looked like a conference hotel, and decided that was my best bet.

The driver was a bearded Sikh who flinched as he saw me approach, but I got my face in the open window of the cab, read his name ("Dharampal S. Sandhu") off his hack license, and was addressing him politely in Punjabi before he had a chance to claim that he was off-duty or whatever. I hadn't spoken more than a word or two in that language since, well, a couple years ago, and I was never exactly fluent; but it worked for impressing the taxi driver and convincing him I was legit, anyway. As I crawled into the back of the taxi, he quizzed me as to how I'd learned to talk that way, and said some other things I didn't understand. I had to switch back to English. I said, "I learned some Punjabi from my wife, who is now dead. It's a painful memory," and most of that was even true.

The cabbie was suitably horrified when I explained that I had been set upon by ruffians and beaten in an alley, and I could tell he didn't quite believe my story of being simply an innocent passer-by. He wanted to drive me to a police station so I could file a report on my attackers; it took some doing to convince him that I really needed to just go home. He drove a complicated zig-zag route, out of the new neighbourhood and through a maze of older buildings, first-gen biotech and software businesses with familiar names. He made a couple attempts at light conversation, but I didn't pick them up. I was just too tired to talk or think.

When the taxi pulled up in front of my apartment building, I dug around in my pocket and came up with a few bills to pay the fare. I tipped Mr. Sandhu a little extra, and he seemed surprised I could pay at all. I guess he'd taken me for a charity case. He frowned and looked me up and down again as if seeing me for the first time. I guess he thought I was a gangster, and I guess he wasn't that far off. He rolled his window up firmly and shot off down the street without saying another word.

As I dragged myself up the stairs I encountered my elderly neighbour on his way down, with his little dog in tow, evidently taking it for a walk. "Ah, Ploughman-san!" he cackled, "You'll catch your death like that! Hee, hee!" Yeah, I love you too, Miyazawa, I muttered as I pushed past him. He turned and called after me, "You had best mend your evil ways!" I ignored that.

Inside, I stripped off my clothes, dumped them on the floor, took a fast, hot bath, and dragged my aching body into bed to recuperate for a while. My bruised head hurt a lot when I tried to lie on my back, and my backside itched from whatever it was I'd sat in in the alley. I guessed I'd have a rash there in a few hours. The light from outside filtered through my cheap blinds and got in my eyes. But I managed to find a position that didn't hurt too much, and I pulled the blanket up over my face and dropped into a light sleep.

I woke at about one in the afternoon, to the ringing of my phone. I poked around in the pile of clothing, looking for it, and the pocket of my pants ripped and the phone fell out. Looking more closely at the pants, I could see that the material had been weakened, eaten away in places. It looked like it had gone through several years' wear in one night. There was an acrid, burnt smell, and I remembered the waste puddle. Acid, maybe, or some kind of bio stuff. So much for this set of clothing. I briefly wished that I had been on duty last night - then I'd be able to charge the cost of a new suit to my client as "expenses". Maybe I'd be able to find the goons who'd dumped me in the alley and send them a bill, but it would be inconvenient to collect.

The phone was still ringing, but I took the soggy clothing tatters over to the disposal, and gave the phone a shot under the washroom tap, before answering it. Might as well limit the damage if the stuff was still active. As I passed by the mirror I noticed that the skin on my behind and the backs of my legs was all red with some kind of rash. It didn't hurt, though, so I hoped it'd clear up without getting worse. I dumped the remains of my suit into the disposal and picked up the phone. It was Jonathon H. Yetterby, Esq., from the insurance office next door to my agency's.

"I say, Flank, are you all right out there?" "I've had better days, Jon." "Oh. Well, were you planning to come in to work today? Because you've had a caller and she was rather disappointed not to find you in. Quite disappointed indeed. Showed up in my office and acted as though it was my fault you were away without, sort of thing." "Purple-haired dame? Seru, pushy?" "Indeed! Quite a looker, too, if I may say. But I daresay you -" "Yeah, exactly. So, did you sell her any insurance?"

I actually wanted to know. Yetterby's a slick operator, and it would serve my would-be client right if he had signed her up for a couple hundred million in earthquake damage or whatever. Not so many people walk out of his office without a policy. But he chuckled over the phone. "Not at all, dear boy. On the contrary, when she simply would not dry up, I had to give her the old one-two!" Whatever the Hell that means. How deliciously precious. He sets my teeth on edge when he talks that way, and I think he knows it.

I hung up on Yetterby, or "rang off" as I guess he would call it, and looked in my dresser for something to wear. I ended up with a stained grey jogging suit. I wondered what to do for the rest of the day. Maybe I'd go buy some new clothes. I couldn't really afford it, but I wasn't quite broke yet, and I wouldn't impress many new clients in my grubby sweats. I walked out of my apartment into the punishing sunlight and caught a train to the shopping district.

The train skirted the edge of the Quarter, the part that's all prettied up for outsiders. The movie industry makes its money from selling dreams, and dreams are damn flimsy, when you stop and look. They have to be propped up all the time, especially from the inside - and that's difficult, because where's a firm place to plant your guy wire, inside a dream? Already I was forgetting the torn shreds of memory from my dream in bed that morning - all I could remember now was a vague scent of patchouli and a dark drumming noise, but that might be only the sound of the train as it slid along the tracks anyway.

Dreams are slippery things that slide away when you try to touch them, like sheets of acetate, just like sheets of acetate in fact. The dreams of the Quarter are two-dimensional and lifeless even when they take physical form in seru. You don't pay attention to your dreams if you want to get somewhere in a human world, and you don't love seru. I learned that in 2041 if I hadn't learned anything else that year. I thought about all that as I stared out the window at the pretty face of the Quarter.

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