One of Us. Michael Marshall Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ It was the kind of situation that could get you down.

      So I lay on the bed and went to sleep.

      I woke up early the next morning, feeling strange. Spacey. Hollow-stomached, and as if someone had put little scratchy balls of crumpled paper inside my eyes. My watch said it was seven o'clock, which didn't make sense. The only time I see seven a.m. is when I've been awake straight through.

      Then I realized an alarm was going off, and saw that the console in the bedside table was flashing. ‘Message’ it said. I screwed my eyes up tight and looked at it again. It still said I had a message. I hit the receive button. The screen went blank for a moment, and then fed up some text.

      ‘You could have earned $367.77 last night,’ it read. ‘To learn more, come by 135 Highwater today. Quote reference PR/43.’

      Then it spat out a map. I picked it up; squinted at it.

      $367.77 is a lot of nights' bar tending.

      I changed my shirt and left the hotel.

      By the time I reached Highwater I was already losing interest. My head felt fuzzy and dry, as if I'd spent all night doing math in my sleep. A big part of me just wanted to score breakfast somewhere and go sit on a bus, watch the sun haze on window panels until I was somewhere else.

      But I didn't. I have a kind of shambling momentum, once I'm started. I followed the streets on the map, surprised to find myself getting closer to the business district. The kind of people who spam consoles in cheap hotels generally work out of virtual offices, but Highwater was a wide road with a lot of grown-up buildings on either side. 135 itself was a mountain of black plate glass, with a revolving door at the bottom. Unlike many of the other buildings I'd passed, it didn't have exterior videowalls extolling with tiresome thoroughness the virtues and success of the people who toiled within. It just sat there, not giving anything away. I went in, as much as anything just to find some shade.

      The lobby was similarly uncommunicative, and likewise decked out all in black. It was like they'd acquired a job lot of the colour from somewhere and were eager to use it up. I walked across the marble floor to a desk at the far end, my heels tapping in the cool silence. A woman sat there in a pool of yellow light, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.

      ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, her tone making it clear she thought it was unlikely.

      ‘I was told to come here and quote a reference.’

      I speak better than I look. Her face didn't light up or anything, but she tapped a button on her keyboard and turned her eyes to the screen. ‘And that is?’

      I told her, and she scrolled down through some list for a while. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Here's how it is. Two options. The first is I give you $171.39, and you go away with no further obligation. The second is that you take the elevator on the right and go up to the 34th floor, where Mr Stratten will meet with you presently.’

      ‘And you arrive at $171.39 how, exactly?’

      ‘Your potential earnings less a twenty-five-dollar handling fee, divided by two and rounded up to the nearest cent.’

      ‘How come I only get half the money?’

      ‘Because you're not on contract. You go up and meet Mr Stratten, maybe that will change.’

      ‘And in that case I get the full $367?’

      She winked. ‘You're kind of bright, aren't you?’

      The elevator was very pleasant. Tinted mirrors, low lights; quiet, leisurely. It spoke of money, and lots of it. Not much happened during the journey.

      When the doors opened I found myself faced with a corridor. A large chrome sign on the wall said ‘REMtemps’, in a suitably soul-destroying typeface. Underneath it said, ‘Sleep Tight. Sleep Right.’ I walked the way the sign pointed and ended up at another reception desk. The girl had a badge which said she was Sabrina, and her hair was done up in a weirdly complex manner, doubtless the result of several hours of some asswipe stylist's attention.

      I'd thought the girl downstairs was a top-flight patronizer, but compared to Sabrina she was servility itself. Sabrina's manner suggested I was some kind of lower-echelon vermin: lower than a rat, for sure, maybe on a par with a particularly ill-favoured vole, and after thirty seconds with her I felt the bacteria in my stomach start to join in sneering at me. She told me to take a seat, but I didn't. Partly to annoy her, but mainly because I hate sitting in receptions. I read somewhere it puts you in a subordinate position right off the bat. I'm great at the pre-hiring tactics – it's just a shame it goes to pieces afterwards.

      ‘Mr Thompson, good morning. I'm Stratten.’

      I turned to see a man standing behind me, hand held out. He had a strong face, black hair starting to silver on the temples. Like any other tall middle-aged guy in a sober suit, but more polished: as if he was a release-standard human instead of the beta versions you normally see wandering around. His hand was firm and dry, as was his smile.

      I was shown into a small room off the main corridor. Stratten sat behind a desk, and I lounged back in the other available chair.

      ‘So what's the deal?’ I asked, trying to sound relaxed. There was something about the guy opposite which put me on edge. I couldn't place his accent. East Coast somewhere, probably, but flattened, made deliberately average – like an actor covering his past.

      He leaned forward and turned the console on the desk to face me. ‘See if there's anything you recognize,’ he said, and pressed a switch. The console chittered and whirred for a moment, and flashed up ‘PR/43 @ 18/5/2016’.

      The screen bled to black, and then faded up again to show a corridor. The camera – if that's what it was – walked forward along it a little way. Drab green walls trailed off into the distance. On the left-hand side was another corridor. The camera turned – and showed that it was exactly the same. Going a little quicker now, it tramped that way for a while, before making another turn into yet another identical corridor. There didn't seem to be any shortage of corridors, or of new turnings to make. Occasional chips in the paint relieved the monotonous olive of the walls, but other than that it just went on and on and on.

      I looked up after five minutes to see Stratten watching me. I shook my head. Stratten made a note on a piece of paper, and then typed something rapidly on the console's keyboard. ‘Not very distinctive,’ he said. ‘I don't think the donor's very imaginative. And you lose a great deal, just getting the visual. Try this.’

      The picture on the screen changed, and showed a pair of hands holding a piece of water. I know ‘piece of water’ doesn't make much sense, but that's what it looked like. The hands were nervously fondling the liquid, and a quiet male voice was relayed from the console's speaker.

      ‘Oh, I don't know,’ it said, doubtfully. ‘About five? Six and a half, maybe?’

      The hands put the water down on a shelf, and picked up another bit. This water was a little smaller. The voice paused for a moment, then spoke more confidently. ‘Definitely a two. Two and a third at most.’

      The hands placed this second piece down on top of the first. The two bits of water didn't meld, but remained distinct. One hand moved out of sight and there was a different sound then, a soft metallic scraping. That's when I got my first twitch.

      Stratten noticed. ‘Getting СКАЧАТЬ