The Escher Man E-Book

T. R. Napper

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 468

Beschreibung

One man peels back the layers of implanted memories to save his family in this gritty, action-packed cyberpunk novel. Perfect for fans of William Gibson's The Peripheral, Richard Morgan, and Temi Oh's More Perfect. Endel 'Endgame' Ebbinghaus is a violent man, a street-level enforcer for a drug cartel. Or is he? In The Escher Man, nothing is as it seems. Friends, enemies, the past and the present, all become blurred in a world where memory manipulation has become the weapon of choice for powerful corporations. From the gaudy, glittering demimonde of Macau, to the war-torn, steaming streets of northern Vietnam, Endel must fight to save his family, his life, and the fading memory of the man he once was

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

A Note on Foreign Language Usage

Part One The Memory Hole

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2

3

4

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Part Two Memory Town

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Part Three The Escher Man

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Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise for T. R. Napper and The Escher Man

“An incisive and self-assured voice in near-future fiction. One of those writers with an effortless grasp of the highs and lows of human nature. Always a joy to read.”

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke and Hugo Award-winning author of Children of Time

“A couple of years ago, I said I couldn’t wait to see where T. R. Napper’s science fiction would take me next. Turns out, it was worth the wait.”

Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon

“Brace yourself, this is the future, but not as you remember it… it’s more badass.”

Pat Cadigan, Arthur C. Clarke and Hugo Award-winning author of Synners and Fools

“T. R. Napper shows true genius in his storytelling, with a compelling plotline, noirish setting, and characters of true depth.”

Kaaron Warren, author of The Underhistory

“This is one hell of a read. T. R. Napper is back on his quest to be the reigning successor to Burning Chrome, Altered Carbon, Synners and Ghost in the Shell. And it’s definitely working. The Escher Man gripped me from the very first scene and never let go. This is the new face of cyberpunk.”

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, author of The Salvage Crew

Also by T. R. Napperand available from Titan Books

36 StreetsGhost of the Neon God

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The Escher Man

Print edition ISBN: 9781803368153

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803368160

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: September 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© T. R. Napper 2024.

T. R. Napper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To Kazuo Ishiguro, a realist of a larger reality.

And to my son, Robert. This is the third book I’ve dedicated to you, but I love you and I’m not going to stop. Even when you become a teenager, and find the whole thing embarrassing. Especially then.

A Note on ForeignLanguage Usage

By English-language convention, character names do not use diacritics or tone markings, nor do country names. However, all other foreign words use diacritics or tone markings where appropriate, except where a non-native speaker is using them (because the speaker is not using tones). This may sound a little complicated, but I swear you won’t even notice.

PART ONE

The Memory Hole

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

– Chinese Proverb

1

People would try to do one of three things when I was about to kill them: bribe me, beg me, or pretend they didn’t know me. A bribe could be any number of things, but it was usually money. The rational proposal that their counteroffer was of greater value than what I’d been paid for the hit. Begging was usually an emotional reference to family – I’ve got three kids to feed, I love my wife – that sort of inconsequential bullshit. Chances were, if it got to the point where I was paying them a visit, they hadn’t made family the most important thing in their life. The last was ignorance, feigned: I don’t know you, I’ve never seen you before – like it’s all a simple case of mistaken identity.

I never understood that one. Bribe me, beg me, but don’t bullshit me.

The guy looking up at me was trying to do just that. Fred ‘the Rake’ Bartlett: westerner, Former United States, business suit, crumpled now with blood on the dark grey lapel. He had a full head of brown hair that probably wasn’t natural and he was smaller than you’d think, given his occupation. The product in his hair held it neatly in place, even after the beating I’d given him.

His apartment was far more tasteful than anticipated. I was expecting oversized gold throw cushions, monogrammed bathrobes, maybe a large painting of a tiger eating its prey. The usual gangster bullshit. But his place was surprisingly understated. Minimalist white-and-red furnishings, brass fittings in the kitchen, nondescript art on the walls. Down one corridor I’d glimpsed a door with the letter S on it, sparkling with glitter.

The floor-to-ceiling windows provided a generous view of the city: the mammoth, bulging structures of the casinos draped in their eternal neon. The hard perpetual rain that drew a thin veil over it all. Macau – that steaming, throbbing gambling mecca; the dark underbelly of the Chinese Dream; the gaudy, glittering, and unapologetic face of its power.

Bartlett was seated with his back to the windows, dripping blood onto his white lounge. He was a nobody, really – a middle manager in an ice-nine drug cartel who had been fool enough to try cutting in on Mister Long’s territory. The memory of dinner, two nights ago, was burned deep:

Alone, eating chilli clams sautéed in beer, fresh-baked bread on the side and a large glass of whisky, straight up. The clams were real, so the dinner was expensive, but someone in my line of work ain’t saving for retirement, as a rule. The two small rooms of A Lorcha were cosy, friendly, and filled with the tantalising smells of baked seafood and crisp soy chicken. Conversations in Cantonese and Mandarin and Portuguese washed around me while I dipped the fresh bread in the clam sauce and savoured the reason this was my favourite spot in town.

The front door opened and a short guy (who I later learned was Fred Bartlett) sauntered over, cigarette dangling from his lips, a goon on either side of him. He had a gun in his belt that only I could see from this angle, sitting at a small table in the back corner of the second room. The guys with him were big shouldered: one Filipino, one white. The white guy had a shaved head and teeth that glinted metallic blue – a nano-alloy affectation wannabe gangsters hadtaken to implanting lately. The Filipino wore a white fedora and the calm, coiled stance of a professional fighter.

Bartlett had this grin on his face that made me want to break a chair across it. He said: “Endgame Ebbinghaus, in the flesh.” He made a show of looking me over. “I guess I thought you’d be more intimidating. Solid titanium limbs, tattooed skull, a dick that shoots flames – that sort of thing.”

I slugged half my whisky and said: “I have no idea who you are. And the woman who takes the reservations here is more intimidating than you.”

The grin stayed on his face, though it strained a little. He took a drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out through his nose. “I have a feeling you’ll remember me after this,” he said, and pulled the pistol from his belt.

I’d looked down the barrel of enough guns not to get too flustered by this one, but it’s never a pleasant experience. Quiet rippled through the restaurant as heads turned to watch. A table of three got up slowly to leave; one of the goons pointed at them and made them sit back down. Everyone else sat stock-still.

So, yeah – I’ve looked down enough barrels to know there’s one thing you never do: hesitate.

I threw the table up with both hands, the edge slammed into Bartlett’s wrist, making him fire a shot into the ceiling. I followed in one smooth motion with a straight right to the man with glittering teeth, using the full force of the augmented joints in my shoulder and knees as I rose with the punch. His head snapped back and he crashed into the table behind as he fell.

The Filipino was already moving, kicking low. I checked it. He flowed smoothly into a high kick. I stepped back; the blow didn’t come close.

I smiled at him. He didn’t like it.

He came at me hard, as expected, I moved inside to meet hischarge, ducking and ramming my elbow into his face. The Filipino staggered, I grabbed him by the collar before he could fall and hefted him above my head, easily. The titanium sockets in my arms clicked and whirred softly.

I paused to savour the moment while Bartlett scrambled for his gun and patrons gasped or screamed or quietly cried. I laughed, though I’m not sure why, and then hurled the Filipino, knocking Bartlett backwards and over a chair. But the blow didn’t hit square, and the runt had sufficient adrenaline and panic coursing through him to pick himself up and fly out the front door.

I didn’t bother following him. Men that careless were easy enough to track down, and my main concern at that moment was finding a new spot for dinner.

I surveyed the mess. The Filipino groaned, but stayed down. The white guy was out cold, marinating in the beer and garlic prawns from the table he’d taken with him on the way down. I walked over to where the manager, a short Portuguese woman, was standing behind the bar. Her usual expression was harried and stern, with a touch of you-must-be-fucking-kidding-me when confronted by an atypically stupid customer. But now her mouth was parted in shock, and she had this look on her face like she was seeing me for the first time. I got that a lot.

I was mildly disgusted at myself for the scene I’d made, but outwardly I kept my face hard as carved wood as I threw a bundle of currency onto the counter.

I said: “I seem to have spilt my dinner. This is for the mess, and the meals of the patrons here whose evening I interrupted.”

She took the fat roll of yuan and weighed it in her hand, then eyed me. In Portuguese, she said: “[We don’t have any associations here.]”

“This isn’t the start of one,” I replied.

“[We can handle security just fine.]”

“Lady, I’m just here for the clams.”

She thought it over, lips pressed together, then closed her hand around the money. When I lingered, her familiar temperament returned: “[Well don’t just stand there, clogging up my bar with all that shoulder and chin.]” She nodded at the door. “[Get out of here.]”

“I’ll see you next week.”

She eyed the two thugs groaning on the ground, the splatters of red wine and broth on tablecloth and wall, and the shocked customers whispering emergency calls into their cochlear implants. “[Better make it two.]”

Hard to credit the tough-guy grin and trigger-happy disposition with the beaten-down, pleading little creature here in front of me now. But that is always the test of the mettle of a gangster: how they face death. Most failed in my experience – they begged or wept or wet their pants, and I went ahead and killed them all the same.

Bartlett wiped away the blood from his mouth, his hand shaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice higher than I remembered. “I’m not a drug dealer. I’m a nanotech designer at Baosteel Technology.”

“You’re saying you don’t remember me?”

“I’ve never seen you in my life.”

I seated myself opposite on the tasteful white-and-red faux-leather lounge. I nodded at him, impressed. “Comfortable.”

He kept giving me the scared shitless look.

I said: “You should have left town while you could.”

“Huh?” His pretence of confusion was very convincing. Imminent death has inspired some of the great acting performances, and Fred was angling for Best New Talent at the Shanghai Film Festival.

“It’s always the most logical response. You mess with the wrong people here, you’re dead. Macau is the most unforgiving town on Earth. Indifferent, too – just swallows you up into its black bottomless maw, and not a shred remains. Not even a memory. Everybody knows this, yet everyone believes this somehow doesn’t apply to them. So here you are, sitting in your nice apartment, trying to disbelieve the bullet that’s about to enter your brainpan.”

His eyes were wide open. When he spoke he made sure to verbalise each word, slowly. “Mister. I’ve never seen you before in my life. I swear.”

I placed the pistol on the armrest, pulled a packet of Double Happiness cigarettes from my pocket, and tapped one out. I lit it, snapping the heavy lighter shut, and drew the biting nicotine hit into my lungs. I sighed through my nose, blowing out the smoke. “Cigarette?”

“No I…” He took a deep breath. “Are you really going to kill me?”

“You’ve been in this business as long as me, Bartlett. I’m going to paint that nice view behind you with your brains.”

His lip quavered, tears welled. I shifted in my seat. I’m not sure why, but seeing a grown man cry made me more uncomfortable than beating one to death. When the first tear rolled down his cheek I stood up, stepped over, and slapped him.

He looked up at me, eyes glistening, hand at the spot where I hit him.

I held out the pack. “You need a cigarette.”

Bartlett cleared his throat, then took one, hand shaking. I lit it for him. He inhaled deep, sucking on that stick like he was giving head to the last moment of his life. Then he started coughing, hard, as though it was the first time he’d smoked. At first I thought he was faking it, that maybe he was looking for a chance to grab at my pistol. But his face went bright red, so I sat back down and let him cough it out. He did so, colour in his face abating with the shaking in his hands. He took another drag, coughed a little, but not too much this time.

“Have mercy. I have a family – a daughter,” he croaked.

“Shouldn’t have brought them into this.”

“Please.”

“I am a man of violence, Bartlett. I don’t care about your children. I don’t care about your woman. I don’t care about that irrelevant sideshow you call a life. I’m not even going to remember you tomorrow, and the way this world is, nobody is going to remember you long after that. Violence is the language of these streets, and I am merely the calligrapher’s pen. There’s no mercy here Bartlett, no negotiation, no compromise, no way out. There’s just this.” I showed him the gun, side on. “Now, I have rules when I do this. The first is to tell you why you’re going to die. The second is to give you a minute for a drink or a cigarette, while you make your peace with the world. Enjoy it.”

He started to argue again.

Irritated, I shot him in the forehead. The windows behind were painted with blood and brain matter, as promised. I sat there and finished my cigarette, the air thick with smoke and gunpowder. I felt flat as I looked at the body. Mild disgust, at the man’s weakness I guess, and nothing more. Nothing more.

2

I sat on the glimmer bike at dusk under the deep shadow of the cemetery wall. The air was hot, fecund, so rich in this town it could be mistaken for something rotten. Rain was coming. When it wasn’t here already, it was always on its way. I kept the mirrored visor of my helmet down as I watched the little girls cross the crossing: white dresses, big red kerchiefs around their necks, hair in pigtails. A level of cuteness so absurd and un-self-aware it made even me smile a hidden smile.

Jian waited at the other side of the crossing, watching the children approach. My heart tightened in my chest – even after everything – as it did every damn day. Her bare arms were like pale jade in the low light, the smile on her face warm and easy as she bent down, and two of the girls in the parade of tiny children ran to her. Kylie, my angelic child, her face alight and more beautiful even than her mother, laughing as Jian picked her up. Seeing her, the tightness in my chest twisted until it hurt, as it did every day, as well. The other girl was younger than Kylie – Jian’s new child with her new husband. I didn’t know the little girl’s name. But I didn’t feel angry or bitter, like I was supposed to. All I had was this deep dull pain, this old familiar ache of wanting that girl to be my girl, too.

I gripped the handles of the bike hard, the leather of my gloves creaking. Not mine and they never will be, because I am a violent man.

I gunned the glimmer bike, shooting out between slow-moving automated cars, the solar particles coating the bike scintillating, even under the roiling grey-clouded sky. I swerved, barely missing a Chinalco delivery truck, the big C-little c insignia looming large as I flashed by.

Further and further from the school and those beautiful children, my pain anonymous behind the reflective visor. Over the roar of the bike no-one could hear me scream.

3

“Endgame. Come in, mate.” Wangaratta Nguyen slapped me on the back and led me into one of the hotel rooms at the Grand Lisboa. Porkpie hat, always smiling, hands big and strong enough to crush a man’s throat easy as blinking. He was the only other Australian I knew in Macau. Often we’d drink whisky down on the foreshore, eat fresh-grown mussels with garlic and butter, and talk about the white sand beach at Bondi, how it felt under your toes. That big sky country, blue and limitless, where the Macau skyline was cramped and grey. Manufactured, where Australia was raw and fierce. They had their architectural triumphs here, sure, but sometimes you’d wonder if these were what you consoled yourself with once the wilderness had been consumed.

We talked and tried to remember, and remind each other, how it was back home. And once the reminiscing was done, we’d go find a dingy pool hall and pick a fight with local gang members. Always a good night, with Wangaratta.

We entered a three-room suite with canary yellow walls stencilled, for no apparent reason, with black elephants. Mister Long sat at a mahogany table, eyes closed, no doubt watching his c-feed. He wore a tight, white, stiff-collared silk shirt that accentuated his slender, too-perfect body. His face was smooth, buffed clean of lines and wear and emotion. His lips were painted red, his heart another colour entirely. Some people would look at Mister Long and think he was twenty-five years old; I knew he was closer to fifty.

On a lounge nearby sat Chrome Linh Phu. Purple eye shadow and matching lipstick, short dark hair, she was wearing a black singlet and her default anger. Tattoos twisted up each arm, depicting the serpent designs of her first gang in Shanghai. The slender tails started on each wrist, twining around as they disappeared under her top, before reappearing on the other side, the heads ending on the top of each hand. The design could be mistaken for a snake, if not for the thin beard of spikes that lined the long, slender jaws of each creature. Holotype ink had been used to edge the scales deep blue, creating a shimmering effect when she moved her arms, as though the serpents lived. The eyes atop each hand burned a fierce blue.

There weren’t many people in Macau I’d hesitate raising my fists against, but Chrome Linh Phu was one of them. She moved so fast when she fought, her opponents didn’t even know when or where they’d been cut. She’d just walk away and three minutes later they’d find themselves dead, bled out on the steaming polycrete of some anonymous back alley.

Wangaratta announced to the room: “Endgame here to see you, Mister Long.” He turned, winking at me as he did so, and left.

I stood, feet shoulder-width apart on the thick cream carpet, while the two ignored me completely. Chrome cleaned the action on her sleek needle pistol while Mister Long mumbled under his breath, talking with whomever it was he could see in three technicoloured dimensions on the back of his eyelids. The only word I heard him murmur was the incongruous happy.

I pulled the pack of Double Happiness from my pocket and tapped one out, grabbing the cigarette with my lips.

“No smoking,” hissed Chrome, her eyes flashing. “How many times I got to say?” Linh’s English was excellent, though whether from learning it in Vietnam, or being raised in an English-speaking country, no-one knew. I thought I heard a touch of Australian in it, but she’d told me I was an idiot when I’d once asked.

I snapped shut my lighter, put the unlit cigarette behind my ear and said: “I don’t remember you ever saying it.”

Her mouth twisted into a whisper of a sneer before she returned to working on her gun. It was a look she often gave me: somewhere between disappointment and contempt. The latter I got. The former was harder to figure.

For a few more minutes I stood there, waiting while Mister Long mumbled, Chrome cleaned her gun, and I thought about the cigarette sitting behind my ear. Finally, Mister Long opened his eyes and gave me the look he always gave when we talked – like he saw right through me, knew everything turning over inside my head. It was a feeling I just couldn’t shake. “[Mister Ebbinghaus.]”

“Mister Long.”

He held out his slender hand, palm open. “[Your memory pin, please.]”

Mister Long was a mainlander and, as such, spoke only Mandarin. I couldn’t sing, play an instrument, or learn another language. Just wasn’t in my skill set. So I relied on the translation from my cochlear implant. It ran a couple of seconds behind the pace of conversation, making any non-English speaker seem badly live-dubbed to my eye, their lips not matching the words pumped into my ears. My lack of aptitude at Chinese never worried me that much, what with the implant and all, but it seemed to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Once I was running security at one of Mister Long’s cocktail functions when a white guy wearing a silver-grey Xiong original suit and matching fedora, thinking I was one of the guests, acted appalled when he realised I couldn’t speak Mandarin. He proceeded to lecture me about the crudities of cochlear translation and the nuances of cultural resonance – whatever the fuck that was – I was missing by not knowing the language. I leaned in close and asked him how hard it would be for him to resonate the different tones with all his front teeth missing. He smiled, then un-smiled when he saw the look on my face, then stuttered and walked away.

Wangaratta had me remove my memory pin before entering the suite. I handed it over to Mister Long. He unfurled a flexiscreen flat on the table and whispered into it. The surface came to life with scrolling, soft glowing green icons. He placed the pin in the centre of the screen, the icons begun swirling around it, the pin the eye of a digital storm.

“[Your new memories will take two minutes to upload.]”

I nodded.

He placed a green glass vial on the table across from him. “[Miz Phu will fix you a drink while you wait.]”

Chrome Linh allowed irritation to cloud her features for half a second, then rose and walked over to the bar at the side of the room.

“Single malt, straight up,” I said.

Mister Long and I looked at each other while she made the drink.

The red on his lips glistened. “[Effective as always, Mister Ebbinghaus.]”

I shrugged.

“[Take a seat.]”

I sat opposite as Chrome Linh placed a tumbler in front of me, filled with vodka. I eyed the drink and then the enforcer. She looked back, her mouth a thin line of disdain, and returned to the lounge and her pistol.

Mister Long indicated the glass with his eyes. “[Drink up.]”

I picked up the glass vial, unscrewed it, and used the eye dropper inside to put three drops into the vodka. The drops glistened golden yellow as they fell. I knocked back the booze in one hit. It was just after breakfast, so only my third drink of the day. My head spun, but not too much, and left a metallic aftertaste in my mouth, but that subsided quick.

I pulled the cigarette from behind my ear, tapped it on the table. “Anything else?”

He blinked at me. “[No. Your pin will load the new memory while you sleep. A day or two and it will encode. I’ll have something new for you in a week.]”

I waited.

He blinked at me again, then directed his voice at Linh: “[Miz Phu.]”

Chrome rose slowly and walked over, reaching into the back pocket of her black, faux-leather pants. I tensed, but all she pulled out was a brown envelope. She threw it onto the table in front of me. I picked it up – the weight felt about right – and put it inside my leather jacket.

I got up from my seat and walked to the bar. I looked over my shoulder at Mister Long and said: “You want anything?”

Mister Long stared back, looking at me with the disinterested contempt I usually reserved for barflies begging for change. He said: “[Sobriety. At breakfast time.]”

“Come now,” I said, grabbing a bottle of expensive single malt and pouring myself a triple. “A pusher shouldn’t be so squeamish around drugs as mild as this.”

“[I’m not some common corner drug dealer, Mister Ebbinghaus.]”

“That’s true,” I said over my shoulder as I poured. “You’re a superb drug dealer. The best.”

The backing for the bar was mirrored and I glanced up as I said it, hoping to see Mister Long show a flicker of annoyance at the jibe, and expecting Chrome Linh to rise from her seat and threaten me. But she just smiled, which seemed strange. Mister Long gave nothing away, as usual.

I looked away from them and back at the mirror, drink in hand, and found myself fixed on the guy staring back at me. He didn’t seem so familiar these days. Big shouldered and big jawed, sure, that hadn’t changed. But there were lines of purple under each eye, courtesy of the booze and the memory drugs and the sleepless nights. The once-magnificent dark hair now receding and a long scar that ran straight down near my right eye that, right then, I couldn’t recall receiving. But the eyes, most of all, were unrecognisable. Flat, distant, without spark; blue eyes that once attracted attention for their rarity, now washed out. The eyes of a stranger. They were like the waters of Macau’s outer bay: nothing lived there anymore.

I downed the drink, still looking back at myself, and poured myself another.

I turned to Mister Long and leaned back against the bar, holding up the glass in one hand. “I’m not complaining, not at all. I’m just a junkie looking for a fix. Glad, that I’ve come to the right place.”

He watched me, in silence, red lips shining in the dim morning light. Mister Long’s skin was young and perfect, but his eyes were old, so old, filled with the ancient cruelty of this city. Even I couldn’t hold those eyes long.

“[You’re right,]” he said, finally. He plucked my pin up from the now-quiet flexiscreen, holding it in his palm. “[So drink, Ebbinghaus. The most powerful drug of all: the dreams I dream for you.]”

4

I took the elevator down, the floor of it a gleaming gold mosaic. I slotted my memory pin into the cochlear implant behind my left ear, leaving my finger on the small cold steel circle long enough for it to record my print, accept the pin, and secure it in place. Three ascending tones sounded inside my head as the implant acknowledged successful receipt.

I walked from the elevator out into a long, wide, red-carpeted corridor that ran past the high-roller rooms. Between frosted glass screens I glimpsed glittering chandeliers as big as small cars, and red-faced men with loosened collars and fat cigars. On the other side of the corridor loomed fine paintings on the wood-panelled wall; someone told me once, breathlessly, that two of them were Renoirs. I didn’t care much either way, but I suppose there was an appeal to having something of true beauty to counter the empty gaudiness of this place. A member of staff recognised me, nodding as I walked by. He wore a trim blue and black uniform, which seemed at once somehow futuristic and authoritarian.

The end of the corridor opened out into an expansive poker room, the air thick with cigarette smoke and exhortations in Cantonese and Mandarin as players willed this card or that to fall. The hotel refused to make it a non-smoking room, thus ensuring it remained the most popular in town. As I made my way through the tables someone whispered gweilo to the person next to them. My neural implant translated it as ‘foreigner’, but it was a term that really depended on who was saying it, and how. It meant ‘ghost man’, or sometimes ‘devil man’, in Cantonese. At best they were calling me an outsider. At worst, a white devil.

I sat down with half a million yuan in chips. The regulars round the table nodded at me from behind the screen of smoke, and gave me the smiles they put on for the mark at the table. Half wore face masks, but still I could see the shine in their eyes as I was seated. I didn’t go there to win, so the condescending camaraderie never bothered me. I sat down to feel the rush of the big bluff, the burn on my lungs as I worked though pack after pack of Double Happiness, and the heat in my chest as I downed thousand-yuan glasses of single malt whisky. That’s the service I paid for, and that’s the one that was provided.

The night went the way I wanted.

At some point I opened my brown envelope from Mister Long and started playing through that, too. A young guy sat down late into the night, Macau local, big ears. He was talented, but too arrogant to appreciate the most basic premise of cash game poker: keep your customers happy. He insulted me in Cantonese for a bad bluff I made and I responded by breaking his nose with the back of my hand. He lay on the stained red and gold carpet, struggling to breathe though a mouth full of blood, while the regulars at the table patiently explained to the floorman how it was the young man’s fault. Soon the boy was dragged away between two heavy-set security guards and I was free to lose the rest of my money to good-humoured, respectful, and convivial company.

When I staggered outside a new dawn was staining the thin edge of the horizon purple. The wet heat of the early morning hit me as I stood swaying on the curb. The doormen knew me, knew I needed help into a cab, even knew my home address, I guess. That’s where I ended up anyway, sprawled on the couch, Blundstones still on my feet.

I dreamed:

I dipped the fresh-baked bread into the beer and chilli sauce of the clams. I bit into it and closed my eyes, savouring the taste: delicious. Delivered straight from A Lorcha, the food was expensive, but someone in my line of work ain’t saving for retirement, as a rule. I sat in my apartment at the Venetian, looking out at the view across the outer harbour, through the light rain, at the mammoth, bulging casinos draped in neon. Bulging as though they were fit to burst, having gorged themselves on the dreams of their inhabitants. A bottle of twenty-one-year-old Glenfiddich stood open next to me, the tai screen on the far wall showed the cage fight, live, from the City of Dreams. The announcers exclaimed in the background as the white fighter kicked the brown-skinned fighter in the head and I worked on my buzz.

My on-retina display read:

21:43

22°C inside / 42°C outside

Venetian Hotel, Cotai Strip

The meal was soon finished and I sat back, satisfied. I tapped out a cigarette from the pack and searched my pockets for the lighter.

“Yes, I fucked him – so?”

I started and turned, cigarette unlit, and there she was, Jian, standing near the kitchenette I hadn’t cooked in since moving into the hotel. Her arms crossed, hair pulled back, no trace of her ready smile.

I stood, cigarette dangling from my lips and asked, quietly: “You what?”

Her face remained impassive. “It was the office party and I’d had too much to drink. He was insistent and I hadn’t seen you in two weeks and it happened.”

I took a step forwards and found myself in the little place we used to live in on the Rua da Gamboa. The gloomy but cosy apartment with its dark wood floors, and weird wallpaper of faded red with black silhouettes of belly dancers. The sight of the room brought back memories long forgotten, filling my nostrils with the scent of the incense that Jian used to burn of an evening.

I said, louder: “You fucking what?”

“Don’t try your tough guy routine on me,” she said, uncrossing her arms.

I screamed: “YOU FUCKING WHAT?”

She took a step back. The flat indifference on her face was gone, replaced instead with fear, sparking behind her eyes. “Don’t touch me, Endel.”

I advanced on her, fists clenched.

5

I awoke with a start to an ache in my chest and the cloying taste of incense in my mouth. Ragged daylight pierced my hangover. I remembered my name and, after a pause, where I was.

I fumbled a finger against my cochlear implant. “Make it dark.”

A voice, flat and uninflected, responded from inside my head: Did you want the kitchen to prepare dark coffee, Mister Ebbinghaus?

“I said make the room fucking dark.”

A pause. Right away, sir.

The implant turned the windows down to the deepest gloom, but it didn’t help. I’d never been good at sleep and I’m terrible at it when I’m pissed off. So I tossed and turned on the couch to no avail for another hour, throat dry and neck sore from sleeping at an unhealthy angle. Eventually I swore, loudly, into the empty apartment and stumbled over to the kitchenette on unsteady feet, and ordered a coffee from the machine, black. I put a slug of whisky in it and stood over at the windows, increasing the opacity enough so I could look out over the wet Macau morning. The distant, muted sounds of traffic, and wind, and rain seeped faintly into the room. Beyond the levees, a storm-tossed, darkling sea.

A lone white gull hovered above the distant waters, and a flash of memory came to me, of Australia: waking to birdsong. Though less a song, and more a cacophony of demented avian fauna. The screech of the cockatoo, the warble-gobble of the magpie, the rhythmic raucous laugh of the kookaburra. Here you’d be hard-pressed to see even one. Bird flu wiped out most of them in Macau twenty-five years back, plus three per cent of the human population. They reckoned the new breed of genetically modified birds were immune and safe, but many saw them as a bad omen. And bad omens did not sit well with a city of superstitious gamblers, not one bit.

I burned through a half-dozen cigarettes and two more coffee-and-Scotches like that, at the windows. Then down to the gym, where I punished myself with an hour on the treadmill and thirty minutes on the heavy bag. Then a long hot shower, head bent under the powerful spray, trying to wash away the stink of sweat and incense.

The rest of the day was spent lying on the couch, watching kickboxing on the big screen, taking it easy with a few quiet beers. Late that afternoon a chime sounded in my ear, waking me from a doze. A reminder appeared, on-retina: School. I got up, washed my face in the sink, and headed down to the garage.

*   *   *

I waited on the glimmer bike under the cemetery wall. Class seemed to be running late, twenty minutes past seven and still no sign. As time dragged on I began to crave a cigarette. When it dragged on some more I started to feel claustrophobic in the helmet. Sitting there as sweat trickled down my brow, waiting for the rain to come, hands shaking from the heat or exhaustion or alcohol withdrawal, finding it harder and harder to breathe. I tried taking deep breaths, but every time I sucked in the closed air of the helmet it tasted like I was inhaling more of my own sweat and fear. Another few minutes and I couldn’t stand it anymore, getting off the bike, unsteady. I yanked the helmet up, gasping, and leaned forwards with hands on knees, chest heaving. I let the helmet fall to the sidewalk.

The beating in my chest slowed. I wiped the sweat from my face and glanced over at the school. Still no kids. I slipped on a pair of mirrored sunglasses and eased out a pack of smokes from inside my leather jacket.

I had the lighter’s flame an inch from the end when a voice, close and soft, said: “Endel?”

I started and turned. Jian stood there, not two metres away, uncertain smile on her face. Jian, wearing faded jeans and a simple green blouse and her effortless grace. As beautiful as ever, no make-up, that single small mole below her left eye on otherwise flawless skin.

“Oh,” I mumbled through my cigarette. “Hi.”

She tilted her head to one side, eyebrow raised. “Laconic as ever, Endel. What you doing here?”

“Um…” I took off my sunglasses, wincing at the light. I felt my face going red. “Just having a smoke.”

“You look terrible.”

“Cheers.”

She let a smile touch her eyes. “And you smell worse: like gym socks soaked in bourbon.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that.

She looked at my glimmer bike, then over at the school, where straggling gangs of red-and-white uniformed kids were now emerging from the front doors. “I’ve seen that bike sitting over here in the shadows before.”

I said nothing, just returned the lighter to my pocket, the cigarette back to the pack.

She looked me in the eye. “Has it been you all this time, Endel? I thought it was some freak stalking the kids.”

I cleared my throat, but still, my voice came out thick. “I—I just wanted to see Kylie.”

She nodded slowly and something in her stance changed. Her eyes gleamed. “You know you can just call me. You can see them anytime.”

“Jian,” I said, the word coming out like surrender. “I’m a violent man. You know this.”

Her eyebrows drew together for a moment. “Kylie misses you, Weici misses you.” She took a deep breath. “I miss you.”

When she said Weici something plucked at my mind. “Weici? Is that your new girl?”

She tilted her head slightly. “What do you mean?”

I stared at her. I was missing something. A phantom memory, passing, just beyond the edge of my waking mind. Like I’d walked into a room for a specific purpose and now I stood in the middle of it, not knowing what the hell I was doing there. I said back: “What do you mean?”

She looked me up and down again, and the expression on her face was the one I always dreamed in my dreams: disgusted and shocked and sad all at once. “What have you done to yourself, Endel?”

The sense of my missing something expanded and I shook my head, like I was trying to jar the elusive thought loose. I took a step backwards, knocking the helmet with my foot. It skittered on the polycrete, spinning in a slow circle while Jian and I stared at each other.

She blinked, real long, leaving her eyelids closed for two eternal seconds, and when she opened them again her face had softened. She reached out. “Endel, she’s…”

But static filled my ears, white noise eating into the edge of my senses. All I could think of was Jian, lying on the brown wood floor of our apartment, her brow split and bleeding, and I grabbed the helmet from the ground and jammed it on my head while I said sorry over and again.

I jumped on the bike and gunned it. Jian grabbed the elbow of my jacket and was yelling something, screaming it, but I think the wind caught it.

I spun the wheels.

6

I drove straight to the Scarlet Street bar down on the waterfront. I told the barman – who went by the name of Paddy the Mex – to leave the bottle; he did without a word and returned to cleaning highball glasses with a white cloth. Paddy was a skinny Cantonese speaker from Hong Kong. No-one had a clue how he got his nickname.

I watched the fight on the screen over the bar and worked my way through the bottle slow. My drunk wanted to come on in a rush, but I didn’t want that, not yet. I wanted to remember Jian, standing there as dusk approached, smiling as though the betrayal and brutality of four years ago had never happened. I had my memory pin play back the time sequence at the school. I closed my eyes and watched my point-of-view of an hour before, a perfect three-dimensional recording made by the nanos attached to my optic nerves and encoded onto my memory pin. I scrolled through the school at dusk, through pulling the helmet from my head, through the conversation with Jian until the moment she smiled that small smile at me. I told my implant to freeze the image.

I eased myself back in the bar stool, eyes closed, and stared. She was exactly how I remembered her. The slightest hint of new lines under her eyes as she smiled that smile, but that was it – like the movement of time had left her behind. I sighed. Jian: the free-spirited, down-to-earth merchant’s daughter from Shanghai. I still remembered – without any artificial assistance – how she looked when we first met in the bar at the City of Dreams. She stood next to me in her faded jeans and calf-high boots and ordered a lager. I asked her if she was here for the fight. She told me she was here to dance, and with a twinkle in her eye as she looked me up and down, asked me if I was going to join her. I transferred my ticket to the nearest barfly and gave her my arm.

So beautiful and smart and so damn good, and as I looked at her I just couldn’t understand why this woman, with the world at her feet, would have anything to do with an immigrant street thug. But it happened. She called me her Australian cowboy and I called her my Chinese princess and we didn’t care what anyone thought about us.

That I remembered. I couldn’t remember if we were happy or not, but somewhere deep down I felt that we were. I couldn’t remember how long that happiness lasted, and when I tried to bring up our history on-retina, all I found was yelling and angry silences. The former from her, the latter from me. Just the same fights over and over, variations on the theme of my lifestyle or her career.

When I opened my eyes the picture of Jian remained, hovering about three feet away, visible to my eyes and my eyes only. I left it on-retina. In the end I’d probably forget everything else, but this one brief memory of her, this I wanted to keep.

I burned through a pack of Double Happiness, made small talk with Paddy the Mex, and used the grog to bring back some life to the deadness inside my chest.

At one point my on-retina display flashed with a news alert that my implant had decided I’d be interested in. I closed my eyes and watched a story about what looked like a gangland killing. The victim seemed familiar: a small guy with a full head of brown hair that probably wasn’t real. The wilfully stupid ticker tape at the bottom of my vision read: Found Dead with Bullet Hole in Forehead, Forced Entry into Apartment, Police Suspect Foul Play, glowing in red holotype. I felt this gnawing sense of déjà vu as I looked at the picture of the man – a nanotech designer at Baosteel, said the report.

I shook my head. I got these bouts of déjà vu all the time. I’d meet someone whose face was strikingly familiar, but when I’d nod and say hi they’d introduce themselves with some name I’d never heard before. Some days I’d get this feeling that I was the butt of some joke that the rest of the world was in on. Other times – usually when I was drinking – I’d get all metaphysical and wonder whether part of the human mind could know the future, that we’d glimpsed it in our dreams. That maybe we’d lived it all before, the eternal return, like that guy said. Then I’d blearily fear, for a few seconds anyway, that I had some sort of precognitive talent, like in those science-fiction books Jian used to read.

In the end, though, I’d just smile at myself. The most likely explanation was that I’d seen something similar before, and my booze-marinated mind simply found it hard to tell the difference anymore.

This was the series of thoughts I went through while I watched the report about the dead white guy. I shook my head, switched off the feed and smiled at myself while I poured another whisky.

I drank until the edges faded and the evening blurred into the Great Drinking Session, until it became the dream-state of drunk, where sitting on the chair at that bar at that time could have been any joint in this town, at any time. Where so many years and so many days could simply be interchanged with one another, where the drunk was the same and bled into all the others. My life was divided into three states: the sleep-state, the sober-state, and drunk, and drunk had been the dominant one for so long I wondered if that was my reality, and the dreams and the daylight were the illusion.

After, well, I’m not sure how long, I turned off the on-retina of Jian. The static image stayed warm and kind, but as the night wore on it made me feel sick. I didn’t want her to watch me anymore with those too-forgiving eyes. Look into eyes like that long enough and I might just forget the truth of my nature.

It was time, then, to do what I was good at.

The place was hopping. Loud music, shouted conversation, the air a cloud of body heat. Life swirling around me as I drank, a dark island in a sea of human connection.

Someone bumped my back.

I took a slug of my drink.

They knocked me again, harder this time.

I turned. Tall Chinese guy, big white teeth, shiny silk paisley shirt. Woman with him, teeth just as white. “You right mate?” I asked.

He looked down at me. “[Are you talking to me, foreigner?]”

“Seems that way.”

“[We got a problem?]”

“Boy, I hope so.”

The woman narrowed her eyes and looked up at the man. His smile faded for a moment and then came back strong and mirthless. He opened his mouth, looking for another line, but nothing came out. Guys not used to fighting were like that: unable to multitask, once the adrenaline hit.

I looked him over, and then the woman. To her I said: “How much is he?”

“[What?]” she asked.

I jerked a thumb at the guy. “How much?”

“[For what?]”

“He’s a male hooker, right?”

She looked confused.

I indicated his shirt.

“[Watch your mouth,]” said the man, puffing out his chest.

“Bold fashion choice,” I said. “Just woke up in this and thought: gigolo. That’s the look I want.”

“[Shut up, you drunken slob,]” he hissed. “[You can barely sit straight on that stool.]”

“True. Not to worry though, mate – I throw up on that and no-one will notice.”

The woman smiled, briefly, then tried to press her mouth into a straight line.

The man reddened and balled his fists. I waited. The music blared. Customers shouted orders at the bartender. And the paisley shirt guy – well, he lashed out. My head jolted to one side, pain flashed, then ebbed just as quick. I turned back to face him, and then it happened, the creeping realisation clear on his face. He said: “Oh.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I grabbed his arm, twisted it, and chopped down with my other hand. His elbow snapped, he screamed. The woman screamed. I breathed that great sigh of exultation, felt the fire in my eyes and in my teeth and in my chest.

I let the man drop to the stained floor, writhing, while around me the crowd parted. They moved away and in that space an image came, unbidden. Jian, arm outstretched as I turned and hopped on the glimmer bike. Yelling something, desperation in her voice—

I clenched my teeth and whirled, leaping over the bar and snatching a bottle from the hand of Paddy. His eyes wide as I opened my mouth and poured it in, didn’t care what it was, the fire burning in my chest and I had to smother it all, kill it all.

People were yelling. Someone was grabbing me.

And, well, it all went downhill after that.

Paddy the Mex and two of the bouncers tried to restrain me, but I’d gone blood simple, splitting open faces and breaking the ribcages of anyone within arm’s length. I got hit across the back with a pool cue and when I turned to face the man who did it, he just threw the broken stick away and ran. I was roaring, wanting more. But no-one would give it to me. No-one would let me bridge the lack. The club cleared and I was alone, save the noise. The noise, falling on my mind like a summer storm, would not quit, just wouldn’t.

Wangaratta Nguyen arrived about the same time as the cops. I was sitting at one of the unbroken tables by that point, trying and failing to pull a cigarette from the pack with bloodied fingers. Everything after that was a blur.

I could have played back the evening from my memory pin, see what I did. But it had been a long time since I’d looked back on a drunk. The self-loathing of the alcoholic is sufficient without constant fucking replay.

So I guess – but don’t know for sure – that Wangaratta paid off Paddy the Mex and the cops, same as always. I do remember one final thing, though – Wangaratta dumping me face down into the back seat of his car and saying: “This can’t go on, Endgame. Even you have limits.”

“I know,” I said, “I know. I can’t stop.” But he didn’t hear me. He was in the front driving me home by then and my face was pressed into the leather seat, muffling my words.

I dreamed:

“Yes, we slept together – so what?”

I started and turned and there she was, Jian, standing with arms crossed, hair pulled back, no trace of her ready smile.

I stood, cigarette dangling from my lips and replied, quietly: “You what?”

Her face remained impassive. “It was the office party and I’d hadtoo much to drink. He was insistent and I hadn’t seen you in two weeks and it happened. It was just, it was just…” She hesitated, putting a hand against her forehead.

We were in our little place on the Rua da Gamboa. The apartment was gloomy, but cosy, with its dark wood floors, and weird wallpaper of faded red with gold silhouettes of belly dancers. My nostrils filled with the scent of the sandalwood incense Jian used to burn.

The scent faded and I said, louder: “You fucking what?”

“Don’t give me your tough guy routine.”

I stepped forwards and shouted: “What did you fucking do, Jian!?”

She took a step back. Fear sparked behind her eyes. “Don’t threaten me, Endel.”

I advanced on her, fists clenched.

7

A few days later – or maybe it was a month, it’s hard to be sure – I was sitting with Wangaratta and his woman, Fourhands Ha, at my local, MacSweeny’s, the Irish pub at the Venetian. A faux Irish pub in a hotel built on land reclaimed from the sea, a hotel modelled on a long-demolished casino in Vegas, which in turn was inspired by a city in Europe now underwater. An illusion built upon a dream built upon faded memory. Maybe that’s why I came back here, time after time.

Normally I could forget everything. The drink and the drugs from Mister Long and the epidemic of memory loss that the world is now heir to meant I was usually living on the thin edge of the present. But the last few days, I’d kept going back to Jian’s face, to how she looked while she was talking to me. I re-watched it more than once, to be sure, to remind myself. She wasn’t angry, wasn’t scared, not at first anyway. And when she was yelling as I rode away on the glimmer bike – the audio was muffled – she said… something. Something that hovered always on the edge of my consciousness, deep behind my forehead, refusing to reveal its secret.