Join (3 page)

“That's the luckiest part,” says Apple Two, the bartender.

Which is true. If the cancer had struck earlier, Chance Five wouldn't have joined and might have really been killed by it. Dead dead. Then again, this particular cancer is more common and more dangerous among joins. Maybe, if he hadn't become Chance Five, Javier would have remained healthy.

Chance Three says, “I know,” but says it grimly. It's hard to be self-pitying when people consider you privileged.

“You'd be about two-thirds of the way to a complete join, wouldn't you, if the drive were to die in six more months?” asks the bartender, Apple Two. He's referring to common wisdom that says psyches integrate quickly, but drives take about eighteen months.

Chance Three is feeling buzzed and is exhausted from his shift, but Chance's mind is mostly clear. “Up until last year,” Chance says, “for part of me, that drive was everything, literally. For the rest of me, well, I'm a five. I'm going to be a four again.”

“How long were you a four, before this join?” asks the waitress.

“Fifteen years.”

“Well, that is sad,” she says.

A very long time ago, joins decided that when they had a choice, sympathy from the opposite gender was more emphatic. Now, it's almost etiquette. With the right intonation that choice can also carry a distinct kind of irony. Though it's sometimes hard to detect, Chance thinks he may have just heard it. Chance isn't sure whether Apple believes what she said, doesn't believe it, or both.

“There's not full physical integration yet.” Chance is annoyed by Apple's callousness. “Okay, right now this is me, but I—the man who was my Five—am still afraid of dying.”

The waitress sighs. This time her empathy does seem real. “You kind of won't,” she offers.

“Another whiskey! Something cheap!” the other customer calls with gusto from several tables away.

“So that guy's fucking awesome,” Apple Two says under his breath as Apple One gets up, grabs a bottle, and walks toward the guy.

The bartender gives the other customer a quick wave and a nod. Then he explains to Chance, “He's a nine. Was a ten.”

Chance feels a small charge of interest—this is someone who's recently lost a drive?

The bartender waits a moment, watching the waitress and customer, then continues, “He says he wants to run down to a two or three. Then he'll build it back up. He likes to kill them slowly, with alcohol poisoning.”

“What?” Chance says. “That's horrible!”

Apple raises a finger to his lips—Chance's reaction was too loud. Chance borrows a few more cycles from his sleeping drives, becoming more present with Chance Three, less drunk.

“And if he even got to two or three,” Chance says, trying to hold down his volume, “and then he added, how could he be sure he'd still want to do it, to go down again?”

Apple leans his palms against the bar. He doesn't respond but instead watches Chance, challenging him to come up with the answer.

“He's not joining kids?” Chance asks with a touch of disgust.

The bartender's eyes close briefly, and he shakes his head ever so slightly.

“He's using a fixative?” Chance's voice rises a little in disbelief.

“He's hitting on me right now,” says bartender Apple, and nods toward the guy. Chance turns around. Apple, the waitress, is leaning against the table and laughing with the guy. She's good looking—curvy, with brown hair; although her short costumey skirt and matching black-and-yellow-striped blouse look a bit silly. But the customer is even better looking—six-foot-four-ish, broad shouldered, chiseled jaw, blond close-cropped hair, narrow, smiling eyes. His face is flush with drink.

Then Apple Two says in a hushed voice, “I don't really know, but that's what I think, a fixative.”

“Really?” is all Chance can say.

“That guy's two of the original thousand,” Apple Two continues, keeping his voice low. “A married couple. Says he was close friends with Music, but, you know . . .” Apple folds his arms again and leans back against the shelf.

Apple Two is short and slightly heavyset, with dark sideburns shaved into a circle on each cheek. The left half of his head is shaved bald. The hair on the right half is about an inch long. He looks more like a solo from some sort of resistance cell than a bartender working near the core of a spire community. He speaks slowly. Despite the sarcasm, he seems like he might not have a sense of humor.

“The two of them were both pretty well off before joining,” Apple continues, his voice measured, to carry to Chance but not far beyond. “They put everything into Vitalcorp, in the early days. And won the lottery of five hundred to boot. Sold the last of their stock—most of it—a few years ago. That guy's very rich.”

Chance does a quick estimate. Everyone knows the approximate number. After Vitalcorp finished the trial of one thousand and released Join to the general public, its stock rose so fast it threatened to break the market. Vitalcorp was a capital hurricane, sucking in investment dollars like a megastorm sucks in small towns.

And Join actually did break the government. Things like Social Security numbers and biometric security all assumed a person had only one body. Lots of programs got snarled up—should all of a join's drives get benefits or only one? It was clear that regulators had let Join come to market too early, but the genie was out of the bottle. The government needed the money Vitalcorp was making in order to address the issues Join caused.

In the end, the government froze the stock and seized the company. The joke was they merged. To avoid the catastrophe of a complete divestiture, shares continued to pay a sizable dividend until about ten years ago, when plans were announced to retire Vitalcorp equity, and the dividend started a phased decline. The bottom line was that each dollar invested before the trial of one thousand realized a very, very large return.

Chance's drink is empty. He pushes it forward. Apple is watching Apple One and the other patron closely. He steps up, finds the bottle, and refills Chance's tequila without really taking his eyes off them.

“What, ah, you said he was a nine?” Chance is confused briefly as a drunk spike inhibits the join. He has an attack of nausea and headache, and then he's okay again.

“Yeah. Soon to be an eight,” says Apple, distracted by watching them. “Says he was a fifteen once. Now he's going back down. Wants to make it to two.”

“What's his name? Would I recognize it?”

“No, I don't think so. Says he's one of the ones that didn't look for press. Says a lot didn't. Says the ones that didn't were safer, during that first round of backlash.”

“Do you believe him?” Chance sips his refilled drink.

Apple finally looks at Chance. “Yeah, I do,” he says.

“Fixative,” says Chance, speculatively.

“You're a join doctor?” Apple asks.

Chance Three raises his glass in acknowledgment and takes another sip.

“How would you get to someone like that, to test them?” asks Apple.

“Well, you'd have to do it when he came in for something else. He probably has his own doctors, though. And, yeah, fixative does work. One prejoin personality gets a distinct advantage, but it's not like the pulp vids and Civ News, and it doesn't have a clear physical signature like, say, a meme virus. Fixative is more . . . flexible. He'd have good lawyers too, so you couldn't prove it in court. But it's
very
dangerous,” Chance says. “Why do you believe him?”

Apple's gaze is steady and unblinking. “That guy is an asshole,” he says. “A real asshole. Right now, he's telling me how he'd like to kill me. Both of me. He's telling me
how
.”

Chance looks over his shoulder, and the guy glances up at them. The guy catches Chance's eye and smiles, then refocuses his attention on the waitress, Apple One. The guy is starting to look pretty sloppy.

Apple Two says, “A while ago, I saw him drink a drive to death. Over a couple of months. At first I didn't know what he was doing. He flirted a little. He's a big tipper. Anyway, it gets pretty clear pretty fast that he's going to drink hard when he comes in. I felt like shit some nights, serving him. One night, he says, ‘Hey, don't feel bad. This is what I do.' ‘What?' I ask. He says, ‘I kill drives.' He says, ‘I do it in different ways. I'm drinking this one to death because it can be slow.' He says, ‘I want to feel it.'”

Apple shakes his head. “I should have cut him off.”

Apple has a glass of water under the bar. He takes a drink. Chance can hear waitress Apple and the customer laughing.

“I've seen solos try to drink themselves to death,” Apple Two continues. “And the thing is, it's hard for them. They lose their nerve. That guy just drank right through, like it was a show. He passes out. I'm calling the ER. So I cut him off. Maybe a week later, he comes in with a different drive. Healthy, happy. Shows me a Civ News story. His other drive's dead of alcohol poisoning. Says he owes me. Says he appreciates it must have been hard for me. That was years ago. Then maybe a week ago, that drive comes in.”

“But he sounds unstable. Killing drives . . . Why hasn't the Directorate picked him up?”

“Exactly,” says Apple. He turns his back on Chance, lifts his bar rag, and drops it on a shelf. He says, “He hasn't been picked up. That's why I believe him.”

Chance Three's heart starts beating fast. Sweat starts on his upper lip. He wipes it away with the back of his hand and tries to calm his breathing. Chance's mind is mostly clear, but the drive has been touched by panic. The alcohol doesn't help.

His drink is empty. He should get up and go home.

Chance Three motions to Apple to refill his glass. He throws back his newly poured shot. A moment later, the bartender has gone somewhere. Chance stands, wobbling a bit.

He walks to the other guy's table. Bumps into a chair, overcompensates, and stumbles. Steadies himself. He sticks out his hand. “Chance,” he says.

The guy doesn't move. “Rope,” he says.

Rope watches him for a moment, then asks, “You wan' a last drink?”

“Last drink?” Chance asks quickly.

Rope gives him an odd look. Explains, “They're gonna close.”

“Oh! No, no, I've really had plenty.” Chance feels stupid standing. He pulls out the chair opposite Rope and sits down.

“I'ma haf one more.” Rope lifts a hand to signal Apple One.

She walks over with a bottle and refills his shot glass. “Last call,” she says. Rope makes an effort to waggle his index finger at her.

Rope is slumped in his chair. His arms are dead weights, one resting on the table, one limp at his side. His mouth is hanging open slightly. His eyes—though deeply bloodshot—look clear. The drive is nearly unconscious, but the person within it is alert.

“Can hol' ma liquor,” Rope says. The mouth on the handsome drive smiles. “Sorry, I'll do betta wif my speech.” Rope is putting more effort into working the drunken drive.

“I don't mind,” Chance says.

“No.” Rope laughs, speaking slowly, enunciating. “Don' imagine you do. Apple jus' told you more than she should haf about me, din't she?”

Chance Three nods.

“Don't worry about it,” Rope says, with increasing clarity, his body still slumped and unmoving. “Really.”

Chance says, “Apple said you were two of the original one thousand.” Rope's eyes move slowly in agreement. Chance continues, “It sounds as though you . . . have a lot of experience with . . .” Chance can't finish the sentence.

“With what?” Rope asks. In join lore there's a phenomenon commonly referred to as “possession.” It's meant to describe exactly this. Rope is alert, energized, unfazed by the alcohol, but the drive is a mess.

“What do I haf experience with?” Rope asks again, slowly, and Chance hears keen interest in the voice.

Chance leans forward. “One of my drives has cancer, end stage,” he says. “I think the prognosis is maybe three or four months.”

Rope says nothing. Chance watches him. Rope's eyes close. Eventually, Chance sighs and begins to get up.

“Ahm sorry. This drive's cooked. Meet me here, tomorra, nine
a.m.
,” Rope says. He tips forward and then falls onto the table. He knocks his empty shot glass over, and it spins off the side of the table, raps on the wood floor, and rolls. A trickle of blood spills from Rope's mouth.

Both the Apples arrive at Chance's left. “Leave him,” says bartender Apple. “I'll clean him up in a few minutes.” Waitress Apple raises her eyebrows expectantly, as if saying, Now would be a good time to leave.

The day after Chance Five
turned six years old, he was part of a crowd of children pouring down narrow steps and into the wide world outside their green school bus. In Chance's memory, the children fan out into a crisp, bright morning. The shadows of Chance's playmates are stark black silhouettes stenciled onto the white plain of Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat. The plain stretches without variation from a southern scoop-mining operation toward the hazy northern outlines of low and distant peaks.