Bald New World Page 5

  Rebecca stared at Dr. Asahi with a glower of protest, but the doctor ignored her.

  “Tell Larry to call me as soon as he gets this and if you have any questions about anything, feel free to contact Rebecca.” She left without a farewell greeting.

  Rebecca handed me her card; Rebecca Lian, it read, Project Manager at AIOH. Her phone number was a series of sevens and twos that were comically easy to memorize. I wouldn’t have bothered to scan it in even if it had been hard and we both knew it was an empty gesture. I placed the card in my pocket and said, “Good luck. Maybe I’ll see you in Shanghai sometime.”

  “Has anyone told you that you have a very strange-looking scalp?”

  “Not in those words,” I replied.

  Outside, it was raining again. At least I didn’t have to take a shuttle flight back where I’d be packed in with thousands of others, standing on the plane like we were in a train, hoping to grab a seat, holding onto the rail if there wasn’t one available. Rainy days were the worst as everyone’s clothes and shoes were wet. Traffic had become a quagmire and we were at a standstill on the freeway. The clouds vanished and the sun came up. Climatologists speculated the capricious weather swings in L.A. were just part of the mood swings the earth underwent after both poles melted. I knew the East Coast got it worse, though they adapted. New York was a sea city with underwater tours of the old ruins. Greenland was now a tropical resort.

  I saw a naked man running by on the freeway. Followed by hundreds of others. The nude herd of men and women rushed through the freeway like a stampede of deer, pounding people’s stationary cars, hammering them with their hands. It was a stark contrast, these armored cars with armored drivers to the fully bare men and women running without any worries. I asked the driver, “What’s going on?”

  “They call it the Free Run.”

  “What are they running for?”

  “I think freedom. But I’ve never been sure. Nice view though.”

  The shriveled penises and the perky nipples hinted at how cold it still was outside. Perhaps they were tired of living in paranoid vigilance every day. Eventually, the mass moved on and the roads cleared up.

  As we arrived at the airport, I knew the real reason I always came back was Linda Yu. She still lived in the city, and even if she hadn’t, the memory of her lingered here. She’d moved on, ironically, by staying put. I lived halfway across the world but was still stuck here. I examined Dr. Asahi’s capsule. It was tiny. Probably a data chip with some information related to sexual performance. I appreciated Larry’s attempt to arrange a date, but I much preferred to experience life through a camera lens, up on the screen, long after everything had played out, rewinding to watch over and over.

  3. Acid Reflux

  I.

  I’d been dreaming about thirst almost every night. I’d get really thirsty, feel how dry my throat was, grab a cup and fill it with water. No matter how much I drank, the thirst was never quenched and I couldn’t swallow without feeling a desiccated lump. That lump was me trying to wet my throat in real life. Fantasy could not overcome the physical necessities of thirst which would make me in turn realize I was in a dream.

  Gastroesophageal reflux had been the cause. I kept on coughing in the middle of the night, my throat feeling irritated. The doctor told me I shouldn’t eat before I slept and needed at least three hours between drinking water and sleeping. I was waking up in the middle of the night with a dry throat or, as in this case, a drive to the Beijing factory of Chao Toufa which was located on the outskirts of the capital city. I felt like I needed a whole day of sleep to recuperate.

  Larry greeted me and burst out laughing as soon as he saw me. “Way to make an impression,” he said. I was about to hand him the package but he said, “Hold it for now.”

  The factory was huge, taking up over thirty buildings. The campus had a lake, verdant knolls, and two big amphitheaters where various concerts took place. Larry’s father was an admirer of the philosophy of treating his employees well (“Heaven’s Mandate,” he called it) and had established a company culture that espoused, “Work Hard, Play Hard.” The buildings were divided by categories. One of the buildings only did eyelashes. Another, brows. Hair types were divvied; Chinese style, Brazilian, European, and custom hair. Machines did much of the hair preparation, sorting them to maintain direction and avoid tangling. The ventilating needles knotted the hair into the foundation material and also carried out the stylization. The machines still needed human supervision as we walked through and saw several huge mechanical arms with miniscule needle points at the end creating the wigs. Larry’s favorite area was the pubic hairs, especially as most of them had to be customized to individual orders with personalized scans. Larry liked to muse, “What I wouldn’t give to see a woman with natural—”

  “Have you met Russ Lambert?” he asked in the present.

  Russ was the rotund Manager of Operations who kept things running in Larry’s absence. He had the tattoos of Mandarin characters on his head and had shifty blue eyes that averted direct contact. He always seemed to be looking down at my belly.

  “We’ve met. How are you doing, Nick?” he asked with a squeaky voice, sharpened by the rolls of fat under his chin. He had on a pastel-blue suit with a kilt underneath, long blooming jacket covering his back.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “You just got back from Los Angeles?” Russ asked.

  “Yeah. Visiting family.”

  “I spent two years there,” he replied. “Got shot twice. Fortunately, the armor held.”

  I told them about the naked runners and Larry was fascinated by the idea, asking all the details, focusing, of course, on the lurid aspects of which I knew nothing.

  I was introduced to forty other people who were managers of various departments. They were polite as I was the owner’s friend, though their cordiality didn’t go beyond that. I wondered where we were going and why we were checking in on all the buildings. We walked for almost two hours and I knew beyond the factories, there was a huge span of farmland devoted to animals who could graze freely; horses, goats, peacocks, and others that required an army of caretakers just to keep everything spick and span.

  “George said hello,” Larry suddenly said. “Why don’t you stop by and see the old man? I have a meeting I gotta run to, but we’ll do brunch after that.”

  George served in the African Wars with us, though as a mechanic. He was part of the UN Peacekeepers and we went to him whenever our computers had problems. He was a master with hardware, though his specialty was cybernetic parts and tank assemblies. I still remembered the first time we met in Africa—he was working on a drone engine. I noticed his overwhelming beer belly, abetted by his passion for Russian beers. He wore an afro for his wig, though he switched that up with a handkerchief as hat. The top two buttons on his uniform were unbuttoned and his hands were greasy. I’d brought a computer that a foreign virus had destroyed. It was an older machine and I wondered whether it was time to retire it.

  He put the part for the drone down, whistled, then said with a thick Russian accent, “I have not seen 300XVA since I graduate from university. They used these babies for robotics.”

  “Robotics?”

  “The military vanted to build huge robot to fight in Africa. Top secret project. Ve had military officer overseeing everything. Idiot supervisor, vanted all the credit. Ignored all mechanical problems. Too heavy to valk. Engine burned out. The fourth year I vorking on it, ve had goal to make it take a step. Fell apart before first step. They vere huge, taller than skyscraper. Ugly and boxy looking. Ve built them in big factories and whole place smelled like burnt oil. I hated smell but vas stuck. I built small gauge to measure heat levels. Funny thing. Modern cars veeth’ computers are more advanced than our million-dollar robot. Hard to keep up veeth’ the computers they put in cars these days. Military shut us down. Twenty years later, here I am,” George said. “Fixing drone bots to kill our enemies.”

  “How’s that make you fe
el?”

  He grinned, his two gold teeth gleaming. “Too bad var can’t last forever.”

  After the war ended, Larry hired George to modernize many of their factories and he’d done an amazing job. He also provided us with gadgets like the light bomb I’d used earlier. He was currently working on a pet project that Larry financed, a construction robot designed to expedite the building of structures. It was an ugly robot that looked like the ED-209 from the old Robocop films we loved, though with a sleeker design and no artillery. I marveled at the sight of the machine now as I stood waiting for him to finish up what he was working on. He struggled, cursed, and beat one of the bigger parts until he spotted me. Laughing, he came over with a yellow afro on. “Larry tell me you no like girl he introduce to you.”

  “He already told you?”

  “Both us vorry ’bout you.”

  “I’m just not ready for a relationship.”

  “You a young man. It’s no good to be alone. Need sweetheart, cuddle and hold at night. I have Mrs. George, I’m an old man. But you. Young-blooded, need voman to love.” He gave me a jocular punch to the shoulder that actually hurt. “The internet stuff,” he said, making a hand jerking-off motion. “Not healthy for brain or heart. He have too much love. You have too little.” His knowing grin made it clear Larry had informed him of my state of abstinence. Thank you, Larry.

  “It might be a good thing,” I offered, knowing how weak it sounded. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to save him from trouble. If it wasn’t for your light bombs, I don’t know where we’d be.”

  “Vhat kind of ladies you meet, you need all these gadgets for? Every time Larry talks about Rome, I nearly get a heart attack.”

  The memory of the trouble that rained down during our Italian trip when Larry tried to steal away two actresses from their politician husbands brought shudders. “We wouldn’t have testicles if it weren’t for the light bombs.”

  George laughed and put his arm around my shoulder. “Machiavelli said a prince should not touch another man’s land or vomen.”

  “That was before the prince changed his name and became an artist.”

  We spent the next hour swapping stories before Larry arrived. “Brunch? I’m starving. Might be a little business though.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. We both looked to George.

  “Mrs. George cooked my lunch. Have fun and try not to vaste light bomb.”

  II.

  Russ, Larry, five other executives I didn’t know, and myself ate in a room in the west dining hall. There was a circular table with a Lazy Susan. Larry was at the head as host, Russ across from him as secondary host. I was to Larry’s left, a Chinese executive I didn’t know to his right (he might have been a government officer?). We were served fried duck with dasheen, braised turtle in brown sauce, fish roe with scallop dumpling, wutong tea-smoked chicken, toasted rabbit legs with cumin, jellyfish head with mixed vegetables, radish cake with assorted preserved meat, sliced ox-tripe, and duck blood with chili sauce.

  Russ asked after each of the families of those present. One of the executives cut in: “The Colonel is giving us a beating. We got to do something before she destroys our Chongqing factory. She already tried poisoning our horses three times.”

  The discussion became heated and I realized this was a full-fledged business meeting under the pretence of a meal. Most of the frustration came from the figure called the Colonel who was a rival trying to establish her own wig company. This Colonel was ruthless in her pursuit to achieve her objectives, resorting to military tactics which had to be protested with the government. All heads turned towards the man next to Larry who hadn’t spoken the whole time. He was an elderly man with a wart on his right cheek. He had calm and soothing eyes which didn’t waver as he ate the duck meat on his plate.

  He spoke back in Mandarin, saying the government was well aware of the tactics of the Colonel and that there was a line she could not cross. There were complications because she was stationed in Thailand, though those could be circumvented if needed. Zou hou men was the Chinese saying—through the back-gate dealings.

  “It’s a good thing your father never had to deal with a woman like her,” Russ said. “She fights business like war.”

  “She served in Africa. You heard of her,” Larry said to me. “Bloody Rina.”

  Bloody Rina—the officer who took Harare, capital city of Zimbabwe, by sending every troop she had, resulting in a disastrous number of deaths. She was heavily reprimanded and discharged, although she expressed no shame, publicly stating, “Even if it meant a million deaths, I would still have sent them for victory.” She was now apparently rival to Larry’s company.

  Larry was jotting down notes in his holopad and seemed intensely absorbed. I wondered what was going through his head as the discussion moved onto the actions a number of smaller rivals were making, the huge volume of petty lawsuits being brought against the company, as well as negotiations that had to take place to secure various organic materials. At one point, he tilted the holopad and I could see what was on it. He’d just been scribbling, drawing random patterns, squiggly circles and squares overlapping each other in a haphazard diagram. He wasn’t even paying attention. I chucked inwardly and zoned out as well, especially when everyone started speaking in Mandarin which was hard enough to follow without all the business jargon.

  “What do you think, Larry?” Russ asked at one point which snapped me out of a reverie I couldn’t remember even though it was a second ago.

  Larry put down his chopsticks. “I think my dad hired you fine folks to make the business decisions and didn’t want me to interfere. We had a good year. I’m not worried.”

  “We had an excellent year,” Russ said. “But that’ll evaporate if we don’t take a stand.”

  “So make the stand,” Larry said and got up. “You gentlemen continue. I have some business to attend to.”

  “Larry.”

  “Russ. You get paid the big bucks for a reason.”

  We bid farewell to those at the table and stepped outside as the meeting continued without us.

  “If I have to go to another meeting, I’m going to shoot myself,” Larry stated. “I’m done for the day. Do you mind going shopping with me?”

  “It seemed like a serious meeting,” I said.

  “It’s always a serious meeting with these guys. Everything is the end of the world. The world is big enough for rival wig companies.”

  We got into his car and he input directions for a shopping center.

  “What are we buying?” I asked.

  “A gift for some of my ladies. Also, you need to send Rebecca an apology gift.”

  “Huh?”

  The automated taxi took us to a shopping complex about an hour away. Larry was engrossed in a long phone call about various business updates which consisted mostly of him saying, “Uh huh, uh huh,” while making lewd gestures with his fingers as he pretended to take the conversation seriously with the camera flipped off.

  “This Colonel doesn’t got you worried?” I asked after he hung up.

  Larry grinned. “She’s a scary hag. You know she had all her teeth blown out during a bombing? She picked up her teeth and made a collar of them and they say she wears it to sleep. She has that tattoo of the King of Hell on her scalp too which doesn’t help. Anytime I see her, I just want to hand her the keys to the company and tell her, don’t kill me please.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I told you. I don’t have the power to give it up,” he answered. “It’s up to the master computer, the Zhuge Liang. All selling power is controlled by the AI. I just reap the benefits. My dad could be an asshole, but he could read people. He knew I wasn’t a businessman and knew he couldn’t leave control of the company in my hands. I’m glad, because if he had, I’d be broke and I’d probably have signed my company away to some hottie who batted her eyes at me and said, ‘Oh, Larry, can you give me shares in your company?’ It’s something way bigger tha
t’s got me concerned.”

  “What’s bigger than that?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Did you notice anything strange during the lunch?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything unusual?”

  I thought about it. “No. Should I have?”

  “I was hoping you would. That’s why I invited you. Sorry if it was boring. I have to do about twenty of those a week.”

  “It’s all right. Kind of interesting actually.” I thought back on the conversation and while the topics were foreign to me, I didn’t know if there was something specific Larry was referring to. “Was it when we were talking about the Colonel?”

  Larry shook his head.

  “About the lawsuits?” I asked.

  He shook his head again. “It’s actually related to that chip from Dr. Asahi.”

  I got ready to take it out when he stopped me.

  “I’ve been avoiding it all day. I’m hoping I’m wrong.”

  “About what?”

  He placed his thumbnail in his mouth and chewed it nervously. “About a whole lot of things.”

  The first shopping center we arrived at was packed and there were cameras everywhere along with a stream of fashionably dressed patrons. Turned out they were filming a show called Fashion Addicts where the eponymous contestants had to go through shopping malls for a year without buying anything in order to try and cure their disease. Larry decided we should go to a different shopping center that was fifteen miles further. It was practically empty despite being five floors tall and taking up a massive space. There were all sorts of stores on the first floor selling clothing, books, shoes, herbs, sunglasses, and kitchen appliances. The second floor was full of odd products that had never caught on; talking mannequins, robotic pets, books that yelled their contents, pens that wrote themselves, clothes that changed color depending on the emotion of the wearer, and clocks that counted fiscal irresponsibility. I didn’t know if it was the location or if it was because the place was so old that it didn’t have dazzling lights and advertisements, but there were no patrons. There were some stragglers here and there, but not enough to be able to finance such a big area. As a result, the store owners had a desperate gleam to them, watching us expectantly, hoping we would stop in to make a purchase. I couldn’t imagine spending my whole life waiting in one of these stuffed stores, trying to make enough of a living to survive. They existed customer to customer, haggling over pennies that made no difference to those arguing but meant rent to those fighting to maintain that slight margin of profit.