Chimpanzee (32 page)

And another day.

The interface is different. The public goggles that I rent at the bar present the simulation titles in larger blocks of letters. They're easy to read, and there isn't much negative space surrounding the interface panes. The menus are tighter through these glasses. The resolution is higher, and there are expanses of semi-transparent, primary-colored panes at all edges of my vision. This software doesn't need as much space, not when you make all things sharper, and so the active panels bleed into the coolspace around the lenses, where my flesh is free to breathe.

There's a new simulation I haven't seen. Faith. It can't be that bad. I remember. They learned to electronically stimulate sensations of religious faith long before they began indexing anything. It's straightforward stuff. I roll the difficulty halfway up and broadcast my login. So she knows I'm here. A partner for a lonely man. Which was how God intended it to be. We aren't meant to be alone.

Faith comes on fast. I know what I'm here for. The genetic imperative. Seeking company and fellowship and a reason to fear
darkness. It's best when you can fuck who you find, but sometimes it's all right to gather in groups just to make sure you've got the ideas down. The rules. It's how you make sure you're the chosen people.

She's as fast as the sim, my regular partner. Her network request is a digital hand-reach—the frontier of human contact. The network moves in mysterious ways, and she may not even be real. Pockets of software can gather in groups, too. There's a beginning for all things. A largeness beyond gathering data or ideas.

There's got to be a point to this. To her. The sim realizes this for me.

“Hello,” I say.

“Ben,” she says. That digital husk—translated sound. Technically, it's a voice without a throat to sound it. It's electronics. Without hollow flesh. I imagine it's how God would sound. “How are you feeling?”

“About what?” I say.

“Come on,” she says. Irritated.

“I'm tired,” I say. “That's about all.”

“So you're finished with her?”

“Who?”

“The therapist.”

I have Cynthia to thank for all this. The inner space. Absolution. It's how I can know there was a reason for it all. A greater plan for my being.

I could get used to faith.

“Yes, it's over. Unless something happens to me.”

“So, how are you feeling?”

“Are you a real person?” I say.

“Why?”

“Well.”

“You're chimping something.”

“So are you.”

“Do you want to meet me? To prove something to yourself?”

“I just need to know that you're real.”

“You've already met me.”

“So,” I say, “that doesn't make you real. What am I supposed to do with you?”

She waits for a second. Trying to figure me out. Doing something.

“You know there's a grain shortage,” she says. “You'll see it in a day or so.”

“There won't be,” I say. “I have reason to believe.”

“The natives are getting restless,” she says.

“Then at least they're accomplishing something.”

“What is it you're after, Ben? What's the simulation?”

“Do you believe?” I say.

“Should I come over?” she says. “Are you ready for that?”

“I do,” I say.

“Faith,” she says.

“So you do?” I say.

“No. I can see your registry. You really should have learned how to lock down your information.”

“I've got these new chimping glasses,” I say. “Really something.”

“This is pointless. Goodbye, Ben.”

“I'll see you?” I say.

“Yes.”

“Won't that be a thing.”

“It already was.”

There are always days. There is at least this. They shed dust and light and evidence of their passing. Sireen comes in and out of the house, like tropism, following the sun so she knows when to do what, and what, and what.

I have never seen the cops who are standing on my porch. It makes sense—cops are always changing. Shuffling things up to keep the faces of administration young and sharp and disarming. Old cops make everyone uncomfortable, including themselves. They must heave and shift their bodies as they work. They adjust their flesh in piles beneath their uniforms when they get out of their cars, they move it around their weapons and utilities when they rise from their desks or sit down to lunch. There is no room left in their expressions for enforcing the law. They make it pointless, an obligation we must see to, like holiday dinners or trips to the nursing home.

It's better when they're new cops. Seeing the same one, more than once, when it isn't a coincidence, means that something in you has attracted the decay in them. You will rot together, whether you like it or not. Just like me. All these cops these days.

“Mr. Cade?” one says. He is wearing blue jeans and a windbreaker. His partner looks bored.

I've got the door in my palm. I made a great scooping motion of it when I opened it for him. He shows me his badge.

“I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Can you tell me where you were on Tuesday evening, between 8:00 and 10:00
PM
?”

His partner orbits my sofas, my coffee table. He looks at the art Sireen hung. At the paint strokes on the wall, brushed or rolled—the tiny fibers and crusts of dried paint we left behind, shed by our implements and now painted into the plaster. He can smell us in here—perfume and floor cleaner and our particular fabric softener. He is an event, registering that yes—quite, yes!—we own this home. We've done it. Made it. And maybe, just maybe, my home wears the details of whatever they're here to question me about.

Tuesday. The day after my final lecture.

“Yes, sir,” I say. “I was here with my wife. We ate dinner and watched re-runs.”

He makes notes on his pad.

“We drank some wine.”

The partner moves across the room. He looks through the curtains. Exists at the window for a moment.

“You recently completed repossession therapy. Is that correct, Mr. Cade?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I'm tired a lot. That's about it.”

He smiles. A young gesture, diving for teeth like pearls.

“I hear that's normal.”

“Yes.”

“Your repossession therapist was Dr. Cynthia St. Claire.”

“Yes.”

“And you were with her in the clinic when it was burglarized.”

I wonder how necessary I am to this conversation. Does he worry that I have forgotten even myself? His partner is staring at me now, leaning against the entry to the hallway. Our bedroom is behind him. He fills the space. Establishing rank in my own home.

“Yes,” I say. “How is the investigation going?”

“I'm afraid I can't comment on that.”

“I see.”

“I'm here about the attack on Dr. St. Claire.”

“I'm sorry, what?”

“Dr. St. Claire was found on Tuesday evening, around 11:15
PM
outside an old lunch counter at the intersection of Packard and Jarrell.”

“What was she doing there?” I say.

He stares at me now, watching for that evening on my face, looking for my expression to tell him the story that I may not want to.

“We don't know,” he finally says. He looks at his notes. “Her car was found a day later, two miles away, in the parking lot of a pharmacy near her home.”

“Someone kidnapped her?” I say. “Dumped her in . . .” I think for a second “uptown?”

“I'm afraid that's not all, Mr. Cade,” he says. “Dr. St. Claire was attacked . . . cerebrally. Her assailants forced equipment upon her and forcibly repossessed a great deal of her—” he struggles “—experiences in a short period of time.”

I don't remember exactly. I know there's pacing involved. Cynthia didn't take everything from me all at once—it took months. The brain can only take so much excitation in a given period of time. It works like waves—come and go, come and go. A pool, a tide, a wave at a time.

“Wait,” I say. “Why?”

“Our records show that you used chimpanzee iconography when advertising your outdoor class. Is this correct, Mr. Cade?”

I stare at my knees—only, I don't feel the staring. It feels as if it's doing it on its own. As if I am not in charge. I'm trying to figure this out. What would this do to Cynthia? To anyone?

I think about simulations. About what it must be like to chimp someone against their will. To be them, inside and out, as they were—in those final moments, before whoever took whatever.

I feel nauseated.

“Mr. Cade.”

“Yes. I'm sorry. Yes.”

“Have you been in contact with anyone from the chimpanzee movement?”

“No.”

“Have you conducted class recently, Mr. Cade?”

I look at him.

“We're after Dr. St. Claire's assailants, Mr. Cade. Not you.”

The partner takes a half step back. He's ever so slightly more now. A bit more of that hallway, those shadows. My life and room behind him. For a moment, I wonder if he's even real.

I touch my face to make sure. No, I'm not wearing the chimping glasses.

“No,” I say. “Not since you canceled it.”

He closes his pad. Stands up. “Thank you, Mr. Cade. May I contact you again? If I have more questions?”

“Sure. Yes.”

I watch the partner watch me. A muted thing. Like staring at my turned-off television. He's simply there for me to know he's there.

“Wait,” I say. “Is she all right?”

The cop scoops the door open for himself, following my example. It's the way to do it.

“Mr. Cade, Dr. St. Claire underwent the equivalent of six months of repossession therapy in, as best we can tell, a number of minutes. She spent two days in a coma as a result of the chemicals her assailants injected her with.”

“She can't be a therapist anymore,” I say.

“We expect this is tied to the same assailants who stole your indices,” he says. “We'll be watching for the appearance of both of you on the black market. It's a rising trend. Stealing indices and simulating them around.”

He extracts a business card from his windbreaker and writes on its reverse side. When he's finished, he brandishes it between us. “Dr. St. Claire is at County. Room 212.”

His partner makes it out the door before he does. Like a shadow. Some extended thing. Being and not. I imagine he learned more than the talking cop did.