Black Marble (Darkside Dreams - Series 1 Book 3) Read online

  As soon as I step inside the place, goosebumps break out on the back of my neck. I shiver from the cold. It blasts down in palpable waves from silvery overhead grilles, forcing me to pull the hood of my black trench coat over my head as I continue forward. The man standing ten feet away, behind a low counter, is dressed lightly and doesn't seem bothered by the low temperature. That pegs him for a synth straight away. Actually, it's the same guy who originally called me.

  “Mr. Ibarra!” he says without missing a beat. “I imagine you're here to claim the persona of Adriana Graves.”

  I nod. “Place looks good. Must have been updated since I was last here.”

  The synth smiles. “That would have been eight years ago, Mr. Ibarra. We have certainly done some renovating since then. The facility has been upgraded in every way. Rest assured, your stored personas are exactly where you left them. Shall we?”

  He steps out from behind his desk. Another synth appears from the side and takes his spot. Then the two of us go strolling off down a long, wide hallway. Feels like we were about to walk forever, and I can’t even see an end to the damned thing.

  “Big place,” I observe. My instinct is to always be talking. You learn to keep the conversation flowing, as a private detective, because you never know when someone will slip up and let something loose. Not that I thought my synthetic friend here had any secrets I wanted to know, but you know what they say about old habits.

  “It's the same size it's always been,” he says. “We have enough space to store a hundred and thirty thousand personas. Enough for the next three hundred years, at least.”

  “It'll take that long to fill it up?”

  He gives me a funny look. “Longer, perhaps. Persona storage services are being eclipsed by persona transfers. More and more organics are waking up to reality, Mr. Ibarra. They realize that death is optional.”

  “Yeah, if you're rich,” I say. Just can't help myself.

  “There are affordable ways, Mr. Ibarra. Some people take many years to enact a transfer. They do it in installments. Nowadays, we synths care for things other than money. There's no incentive in overcharging for our services.”

  Yes. I had seen those people who did it in installments. They're all over the place. A guy with one cyber leg. A woman with two cyber arms. They do one body part at a time, their fear of death and age dwindling with each upgrade. But the head is always the last thing they do. The brain. Persona transfer is a flawless procedure, if you get it done in a proper clinic. No one dies. No one even loses memories anymore. But the thought of it still freaks people out. Freaks me out, almost as much as dying does. But, if you have the stones and the funds, it’s a surefire way to make yourself live forever.

  “Are we almost there?” I ask, suddenly anxious to get out of here.

  “Almost,” the synth replies.

  We walk another few minutes, go down an elevator, and emerge into a dark subterranean chamber. The air is stale down here. Stale and just about motionless. It isn't hot, per se, because the persona crypts don't generate a whole lot of heat. But there's definitely a sense that this is the discount area. The bargain basement, quite literally.

  The synth leads the way as we stroll through the stacks. The persona crypts are tiny, like little safety deposit boxes. Drawers upon drawers lining every wall. Thousands of them from what I can see… maybe more. Luckily, it doesn't take us long to reach our destination.

  There we are, I think as I push down a wave of anxiety and stare at our digital tombs. Two drawers right next to one another, marked with random letters and numbers.

  The synth uses his omni to look up Adriana's file. Then he shows we a copy of the will she left, for legal purposes, and we confirm that she wanted to transfer ownership of her persona to me after her death. To Roman Ibarra.

  “She wanted her persona to be removed from here and transferred to your care,” the synth explains. “Based on the same, we cannot hold her persona here any longer. It must either go to you, or to the default party.”

  “The Horizon Group,” I say.

  “Correct.”

  “Tucker Berg ain't getting his mitts on my Ana,” I grumble. “Let me have her.”

  The synth pulls out the drawer. I see Ana. She doesn't look like much anymore. Just a weird black marble suspended in the middle of a glass tube filled with filaments so fine you almost can't see them. From some angles, they really are invisible.

  “That's her,” I say. “Is that really her?”

  “Yes, Mr. Ibarra. This is everything. Her mind, her personality, her memories, just as they were on the day eight years ago when you arrived here with her. Do you need a moment?”

  “No, but thanks anyway,” I reply. “I want to get out of here as fast as possible. If you don't mind.”

  “I don't mind at all. There are two ways to do this, Mr. Ibarra. You can take the storage tube as is. Or we can do a secondary transfer to your omni.”

  “Secondary transfer?”

  “The persona stored in the tube will remain intact. It will simply be re-copied into your omni.”

  “Will the copy be... I dunno, distorted?”

  The synth shakes his head. “No, it won't be. Eight years have passed, Mr. Ibarra, and your omni is many quantum leaps beyond this tube as far as its storage capacity and fidelity. It will take the persona without issue.”

  “Okay. I get to keep the tube too, right?”

  The synth nods.

  “Then let's do it.”

  It turns out to be just as simple and easy as he made it sound. The synth pulls a couple fine wire leads out from the bottom of the storage drawer. At their ends, they have tiny metallic dishes. Like microscopic magnets. He fixes the leads to two black pinpoints on the upper edge of my omni. He presses a button, waits five seconds, then pulls the leads away.

  “All set,” he says. “Would you like to test it?”

  “Not here. How long will she last? In my omni?”

  “As long as the omni itself lasts, which of course, could be several decades. But I recommend making more copies within a few months. For redundancy.”

  “Fat chance. I’m still making monthly payments on my own copy,” I grumble.

  “I see. Well if you change your mind you know where to find us. As for the tube itself, it will remain viable for around half a year after being removed from its drawer.”

  He takes the tube out, resting it in a velvet cushion, and then puts it inside a bag for me.

  “I hope this gives you the closure you're looking for,” he continues, and I don't know if I've ever heard a synth who sounded more sincere.

  CHAPTER 4

  ◆◆◆

  All the way back home, through every checkpoint and over every bump in the road, I keep glancing at the bag that holds Ana's persona tube. I know she's also in my omni now, which is safe in my pocket. But I can't help but worry. She's so fragile. Her beauty so fleeting. Already gone, really. I try not to think about it, but that's like trying not to think about your thirst when someone's sucking down a cold beer in front of your face.

  By the time I reach my apartment, I feel hopeless and lost in despair. The boulder on my chest returns as Ana's death haunts my every waking thought... She's really dead. No way of getting around that fact, anymore. And even as the hope stirs up inside me, that I'll see her again, it immediately withers and dies. Because it will only ever be a copy. Ana might have gone for a transfer one day, or maybe not. The point is, someone decided to rob her of that possibility. And every other possibility. Including the one where we might have gotten back together.

  I collapse my bike then tuck it away in my apartment closet, and then stash the bag with her tube in a safe spot. I go to look out through the peephole, to make sure no one followed me for some reason. Then I lock the door, pace back and forth in the tiny room for about twenty minutes, then gulp down a glass of liquor.

  Finally, I have nothing else to do but the thing I've been dreading.

  The copy of Ana's
consciousness is easy to find on my omni. There's a shortcut for it. It even asks me what I want—full, partial or scaled-down projection. I pick full. And then the hologram comes into life. Suddenly, a raven-haired goddess of a woman is standing there in front of me, dressed just as she was on that day. Forevermore.

  “Rome?” she says, looking around. “Did I fall asleep? How did we get back here?”

  My heart breaks. I knew it would. I start to cry. And that makes Ana realize what's going on.

  “It happened, didn't it?” she says matter-of-factly.

  I nod.

  “Who did it?” she asks.

  “I don't know, Ana. They're saying you did it to yourself.”

  “Who's saying that?”

  “The synth cops in charge of your case.”

  She shakes her holographic head. In the dark of the room, the re-creation is perfect. The only sign that she isn't real is that she seems to be exuding her own light, creating a small bubble of it around her.

  “What do you think about that?” I ask, trying to force my brain into detective mode. “Suicide?”

  “I highly doubt it,” she says, just as I knew she would.

  “Can you rule it out?”

  “That depends, Rome. How long has it been?”

  “Eight years.”

  The number hits her hard, but not as hard as it hits me.

  “I can't see any set of circumstances that would make me end my own life,” Ana admits. “But I guess you never know. A lot can happen in eight years. How have I been?”

  I shrug. “Fine. We've... Well, never mind. As far as I know, you're... you were... the same old Ana.”

  “What have I been up to?” she asks next.

  I'm ready for that question. In the time between when I got the call from the synth and now, I've been quite busy. Thinking away.

  “You were working this missing person's case,” I tell her. “You mentioned it in passing. That was a few weeks ago. You didn't get into details.”

  “Okay,” she says. “What have you been doing?”

  “I went to your place. The synths took pity and let me in on the case a bit. Your body was found at your apartment. Poisoned via Inhydrin Ipitate. Said they found the place wiped clean. Nothing left at all. Nothing about what you were working on, no evidence to suggest that anyone besides you had ever been in there either. I don't think you would have removed all the evidence yourself, so whoever did you in must have cleaned it up. Must have been a synth.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asks.

  “Never seen a crime scene so clean,” I reply. “Absolutely perfect. Not even a goddamn hair or partial print anywhere.”

  Ana bites her holographic bottom lip, a favorite tic of hers when she feels doubt or stress. “So, there's no evidence at all?”

  “Nothing yet. Any ideas?”

  She stands there thinking for a bit, hands on her hips. “I don't know. You were always the clever one, Roman.”

  “No way. You're a lot smarter than I am.”

  “I didn't say smart. I said clever. Don't deny it. You've always been the superior detective. So, you tell me: what should we do next?”

  I smile, taking the compliment in stride as I consider our next move. I'm just about to respond with a suggestion when Ana gets an idea.

  “Email!” she suddenly says, snapping her fingers. Somehow, the finger snap actually makes a sound. I guess that would be my omni, doing its best to make the hologram realistic.

  “I'll be right back,” Ana says. The hologram disappears.

  It's a full three minutes before she returns, and she doesn't look happy.

  “I tried to get in,” she says. “But I guess I changed the password. In eight years, I'm sure I changed it more than once… I can probably hack it but I'll essentially be butting heads with myself in that regard so it may take some time.”

  “What should we do in the meantime?” I ask.

  A naughty smile spreads across Ana's diamond shaped face and she looks at me in a certain way. A way that I had almost forgotten about. A beautiful woman, staring at the object of her love. Feeling flirty and a little bold.

  It feels good to have her looking at me this way again. For the first time in a while, I feel that fluttery feeling in my chest as well as a few other places, but I do my best to push it all back down, figuratively speaking. It isn't real. And to be honest being physically attracted to Ana's hologram felt a bit weird the more I think about it.

  Earlier that morning, I was looking at her poisoned body, lying on a metal table in front of me, completely devoid of life. That was the real her. At least that's what my brain keeps telling me. But my heart is singing a far different tune. As far as my heart was concerned, the enchanting holographic woman who now stands before me is the one I knew for all those years. Not the pale corpse that I had said my goodbyes to earlier today.

  It’s not fair. It's not fair to Ana. To be so easily dismissed just because a perfect digital replica is now a mere omni projection away.

  “Is everything okay, Rome?” she asks, obviously sensing my inner turmoil.

  “Yeah, yeah, I'm fine,” I lie, yanking my attention away from the maddening thoughts that still cloud my mind.

  “I'm a bit confused, though,” Ana confesses.

  “I'm not surprised. It's been eight years.”

  “But I never hide things from you, Rome. From everyone else, sure... but not from you. You should know more about what I was doing. You should already have a lead by now.”

  What do I say to that? Do I confess, tell her that we broke it off years ago? Do I tell her that we gave in to cowardice? We saw the potential for great pain and suffering in the future, so we threw in the towel.

  Do I? Well... no, I don't. At least not for the moment. If you think about it, what purpose would it serve? It would just waste time. Her world has already been rocked thoroughly enough simply by waking up eight years in the future. No reason to confuse her anymore.

  “You just never told me,” I say, and the tender, fearful way she looks at me makes my broken heart swell. “But we'll figure this out, Ana.”

  She stares at me for a moment, and I can see the full spectrum of emotions that are running through her mind. Fear. Confusion. Sadness. She reaches up, as though to touch me, and then realizes once again what she is. Just a projection. Eventually her disappointment in the phantom-like qualities of her holographic body fade and her luminous eyes ignite with excitement as she recalls an important bit of information.

  “I have a stash,” she tells me. “A place where I hide things. No one else knows where it is. Not even you. It's something I'm certain never would have changed, no matter what's happened these past eight years.” She looks around, frowning. “If you're still stuck in this utter dump, Rome, I'm sure my stash is just where I last saw it. And I'm sure I've been keeping it updated.”

  I nod. “Okay, that's a start. Where can I find the stash?”

  “We,” she corrects me. “You're going to take me with you. And don't give me any crap. I'm already dead. What's the worst that could happen?”

  “I could join you,” I say, forcing a crooked smile.

  She gives me a dry chuckle.

  I see no logical reason why I shouldn't take her along. She can sit right there in my omni, hidden away. But, even so, I feel strange about it.

  You would too, I think, if you were suddenly talking to an old lover after seeing their cold corpse on a table earlier that same day.

  CHAPTER 5

  ◆◆◆

  Eight years ago, we made our pact. There were various caveats to it. For one, neither of us wanted to be brought back to life. Some organics, including the two of us, see mortality as our one remaining natural right.

  Death is what sets us apart from the synths. In a weird way, it makes us nobler than them. It isn't much to cling onto. But try telling that to a drowning man who sees a short length of lumber bobbing along in the water ahead of him. You'd better believe he's
going to wrap himself around that sucker and never let go. And once he finally reaches land, he'll likely appreciate his life a hell of a lot more than someone who's never had a near death experience… or someone who isn't susceptible to death to begin with.

  In her will, Ana laid out the things I already knew. It was not her wish to be resurrected. It was one of her greatest fears, that her stored persona would be transferred into a cyber body and that there would be some false copy of her strutting around. So, I made a promise not to let that happen. And she promised the same thing to me. After I die, I want to be gone... Things aren't meant to last forever.

  But with that said, her persona copy is content to ride around in my omni, in my pocket, occasionally telling me things through the earpiece I'm now wearing.

  She's guided me all the way out here, to the dismal tenement block where she lived. Where her body had been found.

  I crane my neck, looking up along the huge apartment building. It towers to the clouds, featureless but for the thousands of vent grilles that belch an occasional puff of steam.

  I'm glad her persona can't read my thoughts. Because I'm thinking about how much I would have loved to rescue her from this place. Take her out of this wretched city and go... somewhere else. Somewhere beyond. I don't know if there's anywhere left that would be safe. The Second War saw to that. But, even if we died out there, at least we would have died free.

  Instead, she met her end with poison in her mouth and her face flat against the same cold floor.

  “Not here,” she says into my ear now. “Turn left, down the sidewalk. Keep going. It could get dangerous. Do you have your piece on you?”

  “Always,” I mutter. But, just to be safe, I feel along my left hip. Searching for the hard jut of a handle, the reassuring curve of a trigger.