Shudder (2 page)

The Senate of the European Union had returned to Parliament the bill that would terminate the quota of sponsored chest x-rays, dentist visits, and heart medication for smokers.

A speaker of the Senate said that although the desire to not spend public money on people who purposefully do not take care of their health was understandable, there nevertheless must be due respect for the spirit of democracy.

The senators apparently wanted the law to include provisions that annual chest x-rays must remain accessible, as their results might prove to be an incentive to a less selfish lifestyle, and that positive reviews from attending nicotine addiction groups must be taken into account when evaluating whether the smoker in question should have access to certain procedures.

Representatives of Spain and Slovakia had lodged formal protest against the law in general, but observers expected it to pass within two months.

A brown Mitsubishi from another lane tried to edge into Dave's lane in front of him but he sabotaged all efforts of the other driver with minute maneuvers.
Another minor victory against queue-jumpers
.

The quick piles surgery advertisement was over, and the news resumed.

Mister Kulachenko, the chairman of the Sovereign Nation Union, while speaking in Saint Petersburg, had denied that the higher prices of gas and oil were in any way a punishment directed at the EU for its support of Canadian arctic claims.

Prices grow all over the world, he said, and the hints and allusions of detractors, that the decisions of SNU gas corporations are influenced by politics and not solely by the healthy desire for profit, were ludicrous.

The popular singer Sharkana admitted that she had embryo treatment in Shanghai. Her agent issued a statement on her behalf that she was not ashamed of trying to give her unborn child the best chances in life that modern science can offer, and that modern science was also created by God.

Creationist groups slammed the singer for producing hits like
More Moses
and
Snake Away
, but allowing doctors to meddle with the genes of her unborn.

A senator from South Carolina refused to return calls concerning the controversy of his alleged use of a cybernetic sex toy of the ‘little boy' line.

Dave suddenly remembered that he had new music in his car player and switched the radio off. He had downloaded from ‘Be-bai' a Beatles remix album by a sophisticated modern artist called
Light-Eye Dove
.

He was listening to an elegantly nostalgic drum'n'bass version of
A Day In The Life,
when he reached his office parking space.

Dave's secretary, Maldiva, was a fashionable woman of fifty who looked forty. A true professional with almost thirty years of experience, she was the perfect office manager and kept track of the bills, the clients—of which there had never been an abundance—and subtly influenced the office atmosphere by maintaining a vase of flowers in every room.

The rooms were two.

The office was modest, capable of boasting, apart from the two rooms, only a bathroom and a smallish kitchen.

The bathroom was a disagreeable place with a hardened mop in a faded plastic bucket always lurking near the sink, and ancient documentation-filled dusty black nylon bags huddling in the corner of the unused shower stall.

The compact kitchen was adjacent to a small peeling terrace looking into the back street, but the glass terrace door was half-buried by more nylon bags, punctured in many parts by their cargo of timeworn magazines. The key to this door had lain unsought for well over a year.

The office was in an apartment building in the center and was hence a former apartment itself. Most of the neighbors were also small firms of various sorts, including even the local branch of a Belarusian tractor exporter. The people working there were mainly plump men with police mustaches and tracksuits. Dave exchanged nods with them during their fairly frequent corridor encounters.

The linoleum below his shoes was an icky green, slightly curled up at the corners of the rooms, and the two rustic landscape paintings on the walls of Maldiva's room were only marginally better than the products of Hitler's early artistic period.

“Hello, Mister Cohran.” The secretary smiled. She had a very wide mouth, her lips in the fashionable brown hue. The golden thin sticks hanging from her earlobes swayed and glittered as her head gently trembled in a habitual spasm of politeness.

Dave returned the nod with a smile, skillfully suppressing a shudder, which only made it to his left arm, and only for a second.

Just yesterday night he was reviewing the ‘MILF Sluts Galore' portal, trying to find any hidden links to illegal vids, after being forwarded a report that unearthed a correlation between lust for older women and lust for little boys.

Maldiva's far too successful attempts of keeping pace with contemporary, erotically tinged fashion, produced automatic recollections of other middle-aged mouths, smiling and gaping and sucking...

Dave briskly strode over the linoleum and into his room. He switched on his PC, and then returned to the secretary's room, to the black plastic coffee table near her desk, to make himself a cup while the computer warmed up.

Lighthearted female voices sang melodically from the office radio. He listened for a few seconds, hearing the following:

“Face me, face me,

Ay-ay-ace me,

Darling, face,

I want you to face me,

Ace me, ace me,

Face me now.”

He glanced sideways at Maldiva, who caught his glance, and professionally smiled back at him with a half-mocking flutter of green eyelashes.

Malidva was sometimes coquettish in a girlish manner, but with a dash of irony added, as a sign of keeping up with the times.

After this short burst of amiable nonverbal communication, her gaze returned to the screen in front of her.

Dave thought about the song and about his secretary. Did she know the modern meaning of ‘face me'? Of someone ‘facing' someone? If so, did she find it exciting, or repulsive, or just another handy piece of the puzzle of how to be in step with today's world?

Come to think of that, did she fully realize the veiled meaning behind the brown lipstick, at least before it hit the mass-market fashion?

This was as big a mystery as her dominatrix boots and her huge and shapeless sagging leather handbag with the shiny decorative chains hanging from it.

Was she consciously attempting to recreate personae from the deepest desires of the twisted urban male or was this just fashion? Perhaps he, himself, was just getting worn down by the porn and seeing more than there really was to things?

The detective realized that the sound heralding his computer's readiness for someone to unlock it had probably already been given, but masked by the pop music.

He walked into his room, shut the door, switched off the air conditioning, opened the window slightly, and sat down at his desk. The swivel chair accepted him with an accommodating creak and a soft hydraulic hiss.

Dave saw that his official inbox had three new letters. Two were tagged as reports.

The first report was of a woman found dead in her apartment. Her daughter had returned from school, only to find her mother naked, lying on her back on the bed, with her arms and legs tied to the bed posts. Apparent cause of death–feces in her mouth and nose.

Death by shit
, Dave thought. He screwed up his mouth and forehead as the reaction hit him, and then looked at the additional info.

The victim was thirty-three years old, divorced, no known boyfriend or girlfriend. Apparently a case of a fetish game gone wrong. Unfortunately, she appeared to have been fed her own feces, with no non-family DNA found so far, and the speedy discovery of the unknown culprit seemed highly improbable.

Dave dwelled for a few more seconds on the information. This had obviously been a ‘swallow wallow,' as the practice was called by aficionados, a consensual game gone terribly wrong. The passive player in the game, the ‘bottom pig'—the ‘swallow-wallower' —would usually enter something like a trance, and begin gulping down the partner's feces without chewing, in one continuous motion.

He had seen only two such episodes in amateur v-clips, for apparently the trance was difficult to achieve in front of a camera, and there was something fascinating in the glazed eyes of the ‘bottom' fecalists. In this state, they could ingest more feces than they would normally be able to ingest ordinary food. So the blogosphere claimed anyway.

What a way to go.

What a bastard, or bitch, the partner had been
, Dave thought as another wave of nauseous indignation hit him,
first to not notice the woman's death, and then the whole fleeing of the scene of accident thing, leaving the corpse for the daughter to find.

Dave closed the file, this was just general information to keep him updated, his services were obviously not required here.

He looked at the second report. This one was about a man of sixty-two, found in his hotel room, hanged in the closet, dressed in a Batman costume.

‘Coat hangers' they'd been dubbed, these unfortunates who misjudged the ramifications of their happy hour. Moderately successful mature men and women most of them.

Talk about skeletons in the closet.

This one was a clear-cut case of accidental suicide through autoerotic asphyxiation. Nevertheless, since the deceased was a minor celebrity–the analyst of an online news show—the hotel staff was briefly questioned, to determine whether the man had any assistance in his self-directed games.

Unsurprisingly, everyone denied involvement.

Now was the time to look at the third letter. Upon clicking it open, Dave forgot about coat hangers and wallowers at once. It was a new assignment.

He read the letter, frowned, and read it again.

In the last one month, three people had reported break-ins, with some valuables missing from their homes, and their sex dolls destroyed. In all three cases, the cybernetic sex toys were smashed or dismembered.

Dave was given the case, since a consulting psychologist speculated there was a real chance that sooner or later the criminal could graduate from ‘murdering' synthetic love slaves to the real murder of real people.

A possible latent serial killer.

Quite probably a stalker. Otherwise, how would he have known into which houses to break in?

Maybe a hacker
, Dave mused,
maybe he used digital stalking to find out where to break in.
Dave always jumped to the conclusion that a perpetrator was a man and in nine out of ten cases, he was right.

Dave cranked his head left and right with some audible cracks and stretched his arms. He stood up and opened the window wider.

Outside, he saw people walking, cars moving, a stray dog darting furtively from car to trash bin, from cover to cover. He breathed in deeply and then closed the window and went out of his room.

“Maldiva,” he said as he put on his jacket. “I'm going to the precinct to talk to Mister Fortham. If anyone calls, I'll be back in about two hours.”

“All right, Mister Cohran.” The brown lips stretched in a wide oily smile. The skin on her neck quivered slightly as she whirled back to her PC monitor with a show of youthful dynamism.

Pelicanic images popped unbidden into Dave's mind again and he lunged for the door, stopped with a start, and returned to his room, to lock his computer. Then he really went out.

Written reports were all well and good, but it was always better to hear it personally from the person who forwarded the information. Besides, he liked to maintain personal contacts the old-fashioned way from time to time.

If you only communicate with someone electronically, sooner or later a certain disbelief sets in that you actually exist. Once that happens, people tend to forget to send you your wages, or your bonuses, or important updates—or cases.

Dave climbed into his car and switched on the player. An ambient version of
Fool on the Hill
, with plenty of synthesizers piled on top was the next song of the album.

A number of additional ‘ethnic' instruments did not quite ruin it, but certainly did not improve on the melody.

Natalie stood in the darkened room together with her colleague Bob and took meticulous notes of the behavior of the focus group.

The darkened room was small, six by ten feet, with a compact glass top table with a carton of orange juice, a bottle of Coke, and one open n-pad on it, and two folded plastic chairs propped up on its edge.

Neither of the two professionals was sitting. Bob was placidly observing the images that were being recorded on the TV screen, while Natalie was gazing directly through the one-way glass, which took up most of the wall that separated them from the participants.

The client paying for the focus group, the Paxton Media Group, planned to introduce a new tabloid on the market.

Initial research had shown that currently there was in the air a certain nostalgia for the daily paper-based newssheet, and now twelve ordinary people were sitting in small blue chairs on the other side of the glass wall, frantically twisting the knobs on the ‘stop-boxes' in their hands.

In front of them, on a huge monitor, ran a presentation of various versions of the first and last page of the future newspaper.

A black and white first page.
Click-clack
, the people reacted scientifically, ranking what they saw from one to ten.

A two color page.
Click-clack.

A full color page.
Click-clack.

Fat round letters on top.
Click-clack.

Gothic letters on top.
Click-clack.

Click-clack.
Click-clack.

Attached to their arms and chests were electrodes, which relayed information concerning their heart rates and blood pressure fluctuations. People did not mind this, as long as you kept a straight face when you told them to do it, the payment for participation was slightly higher than usual, and they didn't even have to undress completely.

After the session was over, Natalie and Bob would superimpose this biological data over the ratings given by each person, and concentrate on the low and high marks that were accompanied by the more dramatic changes in the bio data.

The statistical quirks of decisions taken on a superficial level would be thus weeded out and the deepest reactions to the shown stimuli would be highlighted.

This technology was an innovation introduced by Natalie herself a year ago. It was the devil's job to convince the head of the agency, Mister Blonski, that the idea was not ludicrous and that it would pay for itself in the long run.

Neither austere slide shows with statistics nor snappy power point presentations helped. Finally, after spending a weekend at his villa with his family, playing with his dog, and gossiping with his wife, she had succeeded in getting him to give it a try.

“Look,” Bob whispered, without taking his eyes off the monitor, “the fat guy with the bucket hat is having a surge again, and he just gave a one for the reds.”

Natalie walked over to the n-pad and peered at the screen. It faced away from the one-way glass, so that its glow would not remind the participants that the moderators were monitoring them. Indeed, on one of the twelve sections on the screen, the fat guy's feed was showing serious changes in blood pressure and heartbeat rates.

Either he really hated what he saw with his whole brain, soul, and body, or he really needed to cut down on the junk food. Perhaps both.

“Yes, and he's not alone, looks like they'll have to be black after all,” Natalie whispered back.

As she stood there, notebook in hand, pencil tapping lightly her lower lip, she was concentrating mainly on the reactions of the participants and was already trying to summarize the data, but at the back of her mind, there was a subtle parallel process. She was also meditating on the need of the next step in technology.

But. But, but, but.
She was only twenty-six, and although already respected within the firm, there was a limit to the credibility of her proposals. Her ‘mad scientist' credit was still low.

For two months now, she bugged old Blonski about the need for brain wave data from the focus groups. He was still in the stage of laughing the idea off.

Some day...some day...perhaps after another weekend at the villa...

Natalie looked at Bob, who was standing slightly hunched, hands in pockets, darting alternating glances at the TV screen and at the glass wall.

Bob was of the old breed. Already forty-something, he completely accepted the need for guesswork and intuition to augment the imperfect data collected by traditional sociological means like questionnaires, polls, and focus groups. He'd given up on the idea that data can actually be iron cast, objective, totally empirical.

Being of a fairly easygoing disposition, he admitted this, unlike most other sociologists and various social scientists, who were locked in madcap denial of the overwhelmingly subjective nature of the interpretations on which their conclusions were based.

Yes, at least Bob didn't seem to feel threatened when confronted with the facts. Away from the ears of clients and bosses, he would be the first to admit that a large percent of what they did was no more objective than fortune telling by use of bird entrails.

Still, it was obvious he had no burning desire to contribute to the further development of the science itself.

Natalie had that desire.

She felt acutely that this science,
her
science, lagged far behind times and felt that she would ultimately remedy this state of affairs.

Enter the brain scanners. Why guess and fantasize, and pray that a sufficiently small percent of the population lies, when you can go straight to the core, straight to the brain and the body?

The voice may lie, the eyes may deceive, the face may mask, but the brain cannot lie. The body cannot deceive.

Already they were light-years ahead of their competition in terms of accuracy of data, just because of the heart and blood reading. In another two years, they would be on par with the established mega-agencies.

If their methodology didn't leak that is, which was doubtful.

If they
could
actually observe the areas of pleasure, or anxiety, or daydreaming; at exactly which instances the relevant parts of the brain started working more intensely…then advertisement and PR could finally really count on precise data from their partner: sociology.

Natalie daydreamed of the possibilities for so long and they seemed so seductive that her throat would begin contracting when she dwelled on it too thoroughly.

For instance, with a little basic photo doctoring one could determine scientifically which combination of haircut, suit, and smile, would win a politician the best brain wave reaction from the voters.

That would certainly get rid of the fashion quacks.

Even something simple, like the shape and colors of a soft drink bottle, or a chocolate bar, could be based, not on the guesswork of some pretentious marketing nitwit, but on solid scientific data, based on the brain and body reactions of a group of kids sitting in those chairs and being projected the various possible looks of the new product.

* * * *

The last version of the future newspaper appeared on the screen, the participants made the last twists on the ‘stop boxes', and it was time for Natalie to wrap it up. She went out of the observation room and heard Bob lock the door behind her.

This was standard practice. You wouldn't want some of the participants to look for the toilet and wander into the room on the other side of the one-way glass.

Although this was all perfectly acceptable sociological methodology for at least the last sixty years, still everyone knew that it was better if the participants were not unduly reminded of how things stood. No specific acts of deception occurred, that would be unethical, but a certain amount of subtle precautions was usually more than enough.

Natalie entered the focus group room.

Inside sat seven women and five men, more or less evenly representing the three age groups and the two levels of income. Racially, they were unrepresentative, too many whites and only one East Asian, but one had to make do with the available material.

As Natalie opened the door, all eyes turned to her. She was pretty, black, five feet four, very thin, and dressed in a tight gray dress, with a thin plastic pink belt loosely hugging her hips, and dark flowery stockings covering her spindly legs.

Her hair was in an authoritative bun, with half a dozen thin wavy strands hanging suggestively here and there, and her dark brown face was almost entirely free of makeup.

“Well, everybody,” she said, clasping her hands in a finalizing manner, “thank you very much for participating in this research, and we hope you weren't too bored.”

As people popped the electrodes off themselves and began putting on their jackets. They made polite noises concerning how interesting the whole thing had been, and how curious they all were to check out the newspaper once it sees the light of day.

Natalie nodded with a professional smile and reminded everyone that their cash awaited on the second floor of the building.

Half an hour later, as she went into the office of Mister Blonksi. He met her with a jovial roar, “Ah, the young genius, Natalie. No brain scans available soon, I'm sorry to say, hur hur.”

He chuckled good-naturedly, his plump, large-pored face flushing with the emotion, and although Natalie knew that he was not really making fun of her, she couldn't help feeling attacked by the mention of the brain scans.

She gave him a thin and cold polite smile. “I brought the preliminary notes that Bob and I took at the focus group, and the report will be ready by tomorrow morning.”

Her boss looked gaily at her. “Hang the report. Tell me what your first-hand impression is.”

His whole demeanor was of someone who would not let any trifle ruin his mood. After all, he was almost seventy, had two heart attacks, and was now more or less succeeding at taking it easy, in spite of running a formerly minor, now an up and rising, market data agency.

He rummaged in his desk drawer and took out a small, black wooden ashtray. “You can smoke here if you want to,” he said and after a jolly wink, his face smoothed out into his general amiable countenance.

Natalie cursed him silently. In the last two weeks, she had managed, after reading
Also Sprach Zarathustra
, to cut down from two packs to seven or eight cigarettes a day, and here was Blonski, tempting her to up her daily dose.

She shook her head vigorously and opened her notebook. “It looks like they most liked the black Gothic logo, and hated most the red and round logo.”

“Hm, hm.” Blonski nodded. “What about the colors themselves, do they want a black and white newspaper?”

“Either a black and white newspaper, or full color. They hated the two colored version.”

Blonski looked at Natalie in mock surprise. “Why, in my day we were happy when there were two colors in a newspaper.”

“Well, now we are all spoiled by glossy magazines and colorful websites, sir,” Natalie answered. “It's either black and white, or full color.”

Too late. Her boss fixed his stare on something beyond the room's walls, and began telling a long and complicated story of what newspapers were like forty years ago, what someone had once said to him concerning a certain article, and what he had answered.

Natalie resigned herself and delicately drew flowers and eyes in her notebook as her boss rumbled on and on.

* * * *

When she returned to her home in the evening, she was wrung out as usual, and her vision was a little blurry from all the work behind a computer monitor. Although it was supposed to be radiation free and magnetically contained and whatnot, it still strained the eyes.

She put on her home gown, switched on the TV, and poured herself a glass of red wine from a half-full bottle—followed, very soon, by another glass.

Forty minutes later, she was quite relaxed, or at least as relaxed as she could reasonably expect to get, for she could never completely unwind after work, nor did she try to achieve total unwinding.

To the contrary, on some unconscious level she enjoyed being highly strung, for it gave her a feeling of focus, of strength and of purpose.

She
did
need to let off steam from time to time, and as she gently touched her thighs, she suddenly remembered the touches of the two gigolos, Archie and Rafael, who had done such a perfect job half a year ago. She had solemnly promised herself to never stoop to using their services again.

That was then and this was now.

She had deleted the number of their firm from her phone, but had neglected to throw away their business card.

It was a matter of minutes before she found the card in a drawer with other odds and ends and soon she was talking to the operator of the ‘Salt and Leather Lonely Hearts Club.'

Rafael was still working for them, but Archie had left. They did, however, have a wonderful new guy named Shane, who would come with Rafael. They would be over in an hour, and the whole thing would cost only a third of her monthly wage. Natalie wished the operator a good evening, hung up, and lay back on her sofa with a dreamy expression.