5
Ric hadn’t bothered to show up on his first day as an assistant data evaluator. Instead he’d spent the day in Marlene’s condeco, asking her home comp to search library files and print out everything relating to what the scansheets in their willful ignorance called “Juvecrime.” Before Marlene came home Ric called the most expensive restaurant he could find and told them to deliver a five-course meal to the apartment.
The remains of the meal were stacked in the kitchen. Ric paced back and forth across the small space, his mind humming with the information he’d absorbed. Marlene sat on an adobe-colored couch and watched, a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, silhouetted by the glass self-polarizing wall that showed the bright aluminum-alloy expressway cutting south across melting piles of snow. Plans were vibrating in Ric’s mind, nothing firm yet, just neurons stirring on the edge of his awareness, forming fast-mutating combinations. He could feel the tingle, the high, the half-formed ideas as they flickered across neural circuits.
Marlene reached into a dispenser and took out a red pill and a green capsule with orange stripes. Ric looked at her. “How much of that stuff do you take, anyway? Is it medication, or what?”
“I’ve got anxieties.” She put the pills into her mouth, and with a shake of her head dry-swallowed them.
“How big a dose?”
“It’s not the dose that matters. It’s the proper combination of doses. Get it right and the world feels like a lovely warm swimming pool. It’s like floating underwater and still being able to breathe. It’s wonderful.”
“If you say so.” He resumed his pacing. Fabric scratched his bare feet. His mind hummed, a blur of ideas that hadn’t yet taken shape, flickering, assembling, dissolving without his conscious thought.
“You didn’t show up for work,” Marlene said. “They gave me a call about that.”
“Sorry.”
“How are you gonna afford this taste you have for expensive food?” Marlene asked. “Without working, I mean.”
“Do something illegal,” Ric said. “Most likely.”
“That’s what I thought.” She looked up at him, sideways. “You gonna let me play?”
“If you want.”
Marlene swallowed half her wine, looked at the littered apartment, shrugged.
“Only if you really want,” Ric said. “It has to be a thing you decide.”
“What else is there for me to do?” she said.
“I’m going to have to do some research, first,” he said. “Spend a few days accessing the library.”
Marlene was looking at him again. “Boredom,” she said. “In your experience, is that why most people turn to crime?”
“In my experience,” he said, “most people turn to crime because of stupidity.”
She grinned. “That’s cool,” she said. “That’s sort of what I figured.” She lit a cigarette. “You have a plan?”
“Something I can only do once. Then every freak in Western America is going to be looking for me with a machine gun.”
Marlene grinned. “Sounds exciting.”
He looked at her. “Remember what I said about stupidity.”
She laughed. “I’ve been smart all my life. What’s it ever got me?”
Ric, looking down at her, felt a warning resonate through him, like an unmistakable taste drawn across his tongue. “You’ve got a lot to lose, Marlene,” he said. “A lot more than I do.”
“Shit. Motherfucker.” The cigarette had burned her fingers. She squashed it in the ashtray, too fast, spilling ashes on the couch. Ric watched her for a moment, then went back to his thinking.
People were dying all over California in a war over the neurohormone Genesios Three. There had to be a way to take advantage of it.