Veneer (55 page)

“I did win. You cheated.”

“No. I just had the better backup plan.”

“I guess Jalay should have planned better too.”

He sniffled and tried to rub his nose. “You heard that, huh? I can’t believe all this time I’ve wanted to end you and I never realized how easy it would be. All I have to do is reach out and put my hand on your throat. Then I get to watch you die. Very slowly. And if it’s anything like throwing that fat fucker off a building, then I’m really going to enjoy it.”

Deron felt pressure on his neck as Russo’s fingers dug into place. At first, he thought he could still breathe, but as the residual oxygen ran out, his lungs panicked. He felt the contractions in this throat, but Russo’s grip was too tight. The gray ceiling faded down even further.

“I would hate to suffocate to death,” said Russo. “It’s even worse than drowning. All I have to do is let go and you’d be saved.”

The pressure relented and Deron gulped down air.

A gunshot echoed outside, closer than the others.

“Sounds bad out there. The pigs have their hands full. No one to save little Deron Bishop.”

“Fuck you, Russo. You getting sent to Glenmore was the best thing that ever happened.”

Russo grabbed his neck again. “Not for me! The kids they send there...”

His voice trailed off in time to the dimming of the world. Deron prayed it would keep going so the true black could take over, but it didn’t.

“Poor... little... Russo,” sputtered Deron.

“Yeah, poor little me.” Russo let go and straightened up. His black eyes surveyed the room, coming to rest on the IV bag hanging on a metal stand. “I saw this in a movie once. You pull this line here and drain the fluid.”

Deron couldn’t see if he was actually doing it, but the dripping on the floor backed up his narration.

“Then you plug it back in and squeeze.” He came back into view. “Once the air hits your heart, you die instantly.”

“Bullshit.”

“We’ll see. For now...” Russo didn’t finish his sentence, though maybe his hand returning to Deron’s neck was intended as punctuation. “We’re going deep on this one. Your lungs will be so deprived that they’ll start working against you. And when you wake up, it’ll be in the worst pain of your pathetic life.”

Darkness rose like the surf in Rosalia’s dream. Each wave brought a measure of release. Deron felt himself sinking beneath them, felt the world retreating.

A scream rang out in the hallway, followed by deep voices shouting. Somebody came into the room and tackled Russo, ripping his hand away from Deron’s neck. It was the man from before, Detective Pierce.

“Hold him!”

“I’m trying!” The other voice sounded younger. He grunted as he wrestled with Russo.

A woman’s voice shouted, “You can’t go in there!”

“Keep her back,” said Pierce.

There was so much activity that Deron didn’t notice the darkness persisting. He felt his eyes blink, but the voices never grew bodies.

“Cuffs are on.”

“You can’t do that,” said the woman, possibly a nurse. “This boy is a patient!”

“Fuck that,” said Pierce. “He’s a murderer and a danger to society. I’m taking him back to HQ. Help me get him downstairs, Aguilar.”

“Dr. Blake won’t allow that.”

“Dr. Blake isn’t the law around here.”

“Now just relax,” said Aguilar. “Nurse, can you check him?”

“I have to tell Dr. Blake...”

“I can’t see!” Deron tried to bring his hands to his face, but he was tucked in tight.

“Stand that piece of shit up. We’re outta here.”

“You can’t take him out
there
,” said the nurse. Her voice shifted as she came closer and soon Deron felt her thin fingers on his face. Seeing the tears in his eyes must have made her abandon her argument. “Don’t worry, I’m here. Now, I want you to follow my finger.”

“What finger?”

He had been wrong. He thought it couldn’t get any worse. Being blind to the veneer was one thing, but going all the way down to nothing...

“Deron?”

That voice.

Even in the darkness, he could see her. Deron imagined her standing just outside the room, half-hidden by the doorjamb, concern on her face. The last time, they wouldn’t let her come into the room because they weren’t married or related. If only she had come a few minutes earlier, he could have glimpsed her face before the world shut off for good.

“Rosie?”

It was enough of an invitation; footsteps hurried across the room.

Something dug at the blanket around his arm and then Rosalia was holding his hand. “I’m here,” she said.

Deron turned his head to the sound of her voice. “I can’t see you.”

“It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

“I need to find Dr. Blake. You’ll stay with him?”

“I will.” She squeezed his hand. “I’ll stay.”

Deron felt his lips reposition into a smile. Somewhere in the unending gloom, he imagined Rosalia smiling back at him.

71 - Sebo

Parker Avenue was shut down, but that didn’t stop people from milling around in front of the shuttered businesses, using their outdoor seating as a place to congregate and discuss the latest happenings. Stories from downtown were trickling out with each public servant that managed to escape the chaos. They told of riots and unrest, of cops shooting people dead just for getting too close. For those that lived in the neighborhoods surrounding Parker, such talk of violence was enticing and they drank it down like a strawberry-banana smoothie.

Sebo glanced at the front windows of Perrault’s and wondered how long the pristine plate glass would last before someone put a chair through it. He listened to the rumors too, but where a commoner would abhor the tragedy, Sebo could only focus on the hysteria, the driving force that would ultimately cause the most damage. A few decorations had come off, yet people were behaving as if the heavens were crashing to the ground. Even the other men and women sitting at the tables around him looked agitated, as if at any moment they might stand up and start murdering each other.

“I hear busses are lined up at South Gate to take people to Paramel. North Gate too.”

It was a common rumor that people were not just leaving Easton, but fleeing in droves, intent on waiting out the crisis in a city that still had television and computers. A few days in Paramel didn’t sound so bad, but the people waiting at North Gate would be heading to Sonora. Sebo couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go there.

“The hotels are gonna double their rates, you watch.”

Yeah, thought Sebo. Someone was always waiting to profit from a disaster, severe or not. If anything, the lack of veneer was only a minor inconvenience. There were still basic services: food, water, and electricity. The worst thing that had happened so far was that everyone got a day off from school. He smirked and wondered what the hell was wrong with people.

“They make you sign a contract. On paper.”

“Who does?”

“The bus people. You have to sign an I.O.U. saying you’ll pay them back when the veneer is back up. Don’t know how much they’re charging though.”

“Shit... I’d expect that from Paramel types, but it doesn’t seem right to do that to your own people.

The man sighed. “Those people aren’t from here. Those busses are with a Sonora company. You ever notice those agency mini-tanks following you on the way to Paramel?”

“I just thought agents were nosy.”

“They’re psychotic assholes,” said Sebo, under his breath. They were cheats and rogues, but they didn’t take an interest in anything without reason. Whoever ran the busses controlled the flow of people from one city to the next. Sebo had heard stories of ambushes in the outland, so hiring muscle that could travel freely between cities made sense.

“You know it’s not just the veneer thing,” said one of the men. “If those riots spread out here, I’m taking Rebecca and the kids and getting out of here.”

Sebo nodded his head thoughtfully. What did it take for neighbors who had lived together in peace for years to suddenly look upon each other with distrust?

“What gets me is the lack of a plan. Did no one ever think this might happen?”

“They had a plan,” said Sebo, turning in his chair. “Cut and run.”

The men looked at him with curiosity.

“The veneer is too big to fail.” He conjured up the appropriate maxims. “We put all of our eggs in one basket. And then the basket disappeared right out from under us and all the eggs fell on the floor.” He pointed to the ground and the men followed his gaze. “They’re all broken now, see? Social services, communications, the fucking network; all gone.”

“I don’t see anything,” said one of the men.

“They’re not real,” said the other. “He’s just saying.”

“Oh.”

“But that doesn’t mean we have to freak out,” Sebo continued. “I don’t think the agents abandoned Easton because of a little thing like the veneer. And I don’t think they’re going to let it stay down permanently.”

A couple at a nearby table looked at Sebo, as did a few other interested people. He smiled at the attention.

“If anything, they left because of that.” He gestured to downtown and was surprised to see half a dozen heads turn at his instruction. “They knew some of us wouldn’t be able to handle even twelve hours without TV or e-mail. But they’ll be back. You can’t keep agents out of Easton forever. Once the veneer is back up, they’ll come riding into town like fucking heroes. And we’ll love them for it.”

That got a few nods.

“We should be fortifying the walls,” he concluded. When one of the men scoffed, Sebo went after him. “Would you rather see the city burn? You really want your family to get caught up in
that
?” He pointed to downtown again, only this time, he didn’t see the smoke. What it was, he couldn’t put his finger on. It reminded him of a shadow cast by a high cloud moving quickly overhead. It flowed out from downtown and passed over in a flash. No one else seemed to notice it.

Could it have been a veneer?

Sebo put his hand down on the table; it shimmered at his touch. Multiple theories came hurtling out of the darkness. He had just seen an artifact of reconciliation, which meant...

“You alright?” someone asked. They were all looking at Sebo.

“Did you guys see that?” He looked to the couple, as they were closest to his table.

“See what?”

“I thought the table changed.”

“Oh, I’ve been seeing that all morning. I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me.”

A hand came in from Sebo’s left; it was a younger boy, maybe a few grades down the totem pole. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“The veneer is down,” said Sebo, repeating Mr. Greene’s words from earlier. “We’ve lost our uplink to VNet.”

“Why would we need an uplink?” asked the boy.

Sebo’s head shook minutely, stuck in a nervous tick. “It’s too big to fail. And too big to fit in one person’s head. You have to trade information. You reconcile a portal, but it’s only real to you. It has to get to me somehow. We’re all part of a network of reconcilers, but if we disagree—”

“Someone has to be the authority.”

“Yes!” He pointed to the man in recognition. “A master control that reconciles reconciliations. You make something blue, but I make it red. Who is right?”

“But...”

“Exactly!” Sebo could no longer bear the shaking of his leg. He stood and looked over his congregation. “There’s too much data to be processed remotely. They have to have a local server, something keeping the city’s veneer consistent. Maybe the uplink is there to spy on us.” He cocked his head. Something was shouting at him from the back of his brain, but the words were unintelligible.

“I thought the things we reconciled were private.”

Sebo looked at the couple; they were nodding in unison.

“Some of the things we’ve sent each other,” continued the girl, “well, you know.”

Sebo imagined their late night chat sessions and the racy messages Jordan had sent him before it all went to hell. That was reconciliation into a portal, into software. How did it get from Jordan’s program in his wall to his palette during lunch? There was more software at work than he realized and all of it was built around one purpose: reconciling conflict.

He pushed his chair away and beckoned to the people around him. “Everyone stand up,” he said. “Get around the table.”

The older men hesitated, but soon Sebo had seven people surrounding the small, plastic table.

“Put your hand on it.” He pointed to each person in turn. “You’re blue, red, orange, green, purple, and... yellow. Now, reconcile the table.”

Nothing happened.

“Harder,” he commanded. “Try harder.”

It took a few minutes, but eventually someone gasped and the voices around them became excited. The table was still gray, but its surface was shimmering as if it wanted to be anything but the lifeless color.

The younger boy’s face was scrunched in concentration. His fingers were splayed on the table and under them, trickles of blue were blinking on and off.

All around the table, false starts erupted from the seven hands. The colors faded quickly once they appeared, but some lasted longer, swirling with the hues around it. They were flashes of a world that everyone desperately wanted to go back to, but it always ended the same way, with a gray film overtaking everything.

“Okay,” said Sebo. “That’s enough.” The murmurs in the crowd made it hard to think.

“What does that mean?” asked one of the men.

Sebo found they were all looking at him again.

“Conflict,” he replied. “Everyone wants to see a different color. Something in the way the veneer works says there can be only one version. Whoever wanted it more should have won out.”

“Nobody won,” said the boy. “It’s still gray.”

Tooth. Gap. Sebo’s eyes went wide.

“Come on,” he yelled. “We need to try it on a bigger scale.”

He led them to the street and used the newcomers to form a large oval. There were thirty or more people, all of them feeding off of his excitement. Some were already kneeling and placing their hands on the ground. Sebo followed their lead.