Claire Deluna sat on a squeaky barstool at The Downbeat and fiddled with the straw in her vodka cran. An acoustic blues band played a slow, dreamy number in the background. Jasper eyed her. “You ready for another one of those, sweet cakes?”
Claire giggled. She couldn’t help herself. She always giggled like a girl whenever the make-believe bartender asked if she wanted a make-believe drink.
“What’s so funny, Ms. Deluna?” he asked. He always asked it in exactly the same way.
“All of it, Jasper. The whole damned ridiculous idea of it. You know what I mean? Grown-up people playing dolls for a living. Jesus Christ, it’s funny.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty funny all right.” Jasper gave a brief reserved laugh as he turned to serve a customer at the far end of the bar. All perfect, all so disney, she thought.
Claire glanced at the clock behind the bar. Ten past seven. Why the hell wasn’t Bigshot here yet? These corporate types, always so keen on punctuality. Oh wait. That’s when they’re expecting you. Gotta keep perspective on the pecking order, here, sweetie. One of her weaknesses, the whole perspective thing.
She admired the neat rows of vintage liquor bottles artfully lined up on the shelf as she watched Jasper go through his routines, dutifully wiping down the counter with a bar rag and chatting with the customers. At quarter past, she stood to leave.
That was when her eye caught the avatar in the doorway. He was dumb-ass ridiculous. His shoulders and biceps were exaggerated beyond belief, and there was a massive bulge in his pants. A little dick in real life, or some other kind of bullshit. You might think it was satire, except these guys had no clue about satire. Claire had an urge to laugh out loud, but you don’t laugh at a prospective client. Besides, she was pretty much a cliché herself, wasn’t she?
He strutted up to her with macho confidence.
“You must be Jeremiah Bigshot,” she ventured.
“Yes.” His voice was deep and confident. “And you are Claire Deluna. May I call you Claire?”
“No. Ms. Deluna will be fine.”
“All business.” He sounded disappointed. “Okay, Ms. Deluna, I can go with that. You’ll allow me to buy you a drink?”
“Sure.” If Mr. Bigshot wanted to support the 3D artist who created her favorite hangout in New Life, who was she to deny him the pleasure. Besides, it was the expected thing to do. Part of the protocol.
Bigshot paid for the drinks at the bar and chose a privacy booth near the back of the room. Claire set her encryption. She trusted The Downbeat’s data shields for personal conversations, but an added layer of protection never hurt when it came to protecting her clients. Or potential clients.
“So, Mr. Bigshot, what can I do for you?”
“You certainly don’t waste any time, Ms. Deluna,” said Bigshot. Claire resisted saying something really hackneyed about time and money.
“We deal with sensitive data, Ms. Deluna. I’m afraid files are going missing, and hackers are playing with our data. To complicate things, we recently purchased a company, and it’s beginning to look like a possible source of the mischief. I need someone I can trust to get to the bottom of all this.”
“And the real life company you represent is…” Claire prompted.
“Futures, LLC. We’re—”
“Hold on,” interrupted Claire, “I know who you are. You’re that new tech company that’s been in the news lately. Developing ‘the next generation of sim technology’ or whatever.”
“That’s us.”
Claire hesitated. “Hmm. I don’t know…”
She had to think about this one. It might be hazardous. Over the past few years the criminal gangs, which had long promoted gambling and prostitution on the sims, had begun to entrench themselves in the corporate structures. Hacker wars had taken out one of New Life’s major competitors, and a bomb last summer decimated New Life headquarters in Denver, killing a CFO and several staffers. But, they had money to throw around. Lots of it.
“I’ll make it worth your time,” said Bigshot, as though reading her mind. “They told me you’re the best. I want the best, and I’m willing to pay for it.”
“Okay.” Claire succumbed to the flattery in a heartbeat. “Fifty k up front and I get full access to all the information I need. That’s all and any info I tell you I need, when I need it.”
“That’s fine,” said Mr. B. “Fifty thousand NewDineros it is.”
Claire cleared her throat. “That’s real life dollars, Mr. Bigshot. I hope you don’t think I was born yesterday.” Jesus, she thought, what is it about this job that makes you want to talk in cliches?
“Certainly not, Ms. Deluna. I just wanted to be sure.”
When the transfer of the retainer registered, Claire thanked him and promised to make contact first thing in the morning. Then, she promptly teleported to her office. Claire loved her office. She had spent hours getting the details just right, the stains, the paper-strewn desk, the ashtray, and half-empty whiskey bottle; even down to the old, battered fifties couch, complete with stuffing coming out the tear in the cushion.
“Maxi.” She beckoned and a beautiful, middle-aged brunette with a no-nonsense demeanor, a bit butch, emerged from the door behind Claire’s desk. Claire’s assistant, Maxine Magnolia, had been programmed by K.T. Willow, one of the best hackers on the planet. She was more sophisticated and trustworthy than your typical out-of-the-box concierge. And she had access to a number of corporate, law enforcement, and DHS databases.
“What can I do for you, hon?” asked Maxi, in her syrupy Appalachian accent.
“Could you find out everything you can about Futures, LLC, and its subsidiaries, Max? I’ll be checking out until morning.”
“I’ll get right on it, darlin’. You know Maxi never sleeps.” Maxi winked and disappeared through her door.
Claire shed her trench coat and reclined on the couch. Fifty thou wasn’t bad. It would pay for a few months rent, both here on New Life, and for her little studio apartment in Seattle.
* * *
Bridge Whitedeer transluced her ocs and sighed. It had been a good day. It was time to put Claire Deluna to bed, although she regretted it just a little.
She gazed out her window over the darkening waters of what had once been the south edge of downtown Seattle. Most of the buildings south of Pioneer Square still stood, rising like drowned ghosts from the sea. A few people still lived inside these doomed towers. At high tide, they exited through windows just above the waterline and rode one of the taxi dinghies or homemade rafts created from plastic bottles and other floating garbage. When the tide dropped low, the inhabitants put on waders and slogged their way to higher ground. At night, you could see their dim lights flickering in the windows.
Other buildings leaned and twisted, undermined by the rising water, which had flooded the Seattle underground and eroded their footing. Many older brick structures were clearly crumbling. Even the city engineers said that Smith Tower would likely go within the next few years. The skyscrapers further north stood, as yet untouched, on an advancing shoreline. Seattle, protected by the Sound and the Olympic peninsula from the worst effects of the rising ocean, fared much better than other cities, such as San Francisco, where the strong tides pushed constantly at the western hillsides, pulling the old structures, and the hills themselves, into the sea.
Bridge was born about the time the scientists began to grow seriously alarmed about the melting ice. It will take centuries, they said, for the sea to rise enough to engulf our cities. Their models were based on incomplete knowledge, denial, and political cowardice. When the Greenland Ice Shelf began to collapse in earnest, only a few cities had adequately prepared. By then, the country was in perpetual war and deep depression brought on by the oil crash. The sea rose three meters between the time Bridge began high school and the time she would have graduated in ’21. Since then, it had raised another twelve meters, fed by the total disintegration of Antarctica’s ice shelves.
Bridge hunched her thin shoulders and pushed her short, black hair back from her eyes with scrawny fingers. She considered her reflection in the window. Absent-mindedly she teased the mods which were installed, like tiny embedded jewels, behind her right ear. She looked nothing like her alter ego, Claire Deluna. Claire was someone Bridge imagined was more attractive, with her cute red hair, and breasts you could actually see. A girl with more moxie and flair than her real life puppet master. More suitable as a private eye. Bridge could never be an investigator in real life. Who would possibly take her seriously? And yet, Claire was the best. Mr. Bigshot, himself, had told her so.
She continued to look out the window for a time, watching the lights and listening. The drumming had begun, its tribal rhythm calling out from the homeless enclaves, and the drowned buildings, as it had every night since the beginning of summer. It seemed more insistent now as the weather grew wet and inhospitable. There was something indescribably comforting in it.
Finally, Bridge crossed the floor to her tiny refrigerator, grabbed a half-eaten sandwich. She sat at her little kitchen table and took a bite. Then she put her head down on the table and fell asleep.
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