One of Us. Michael Marshall Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ thousand dollars is an awful lot of bar tending.

      It wasn't a difficult decision.

      I signed a non-disclosure contract. I was leased a receiver, and had it explained to me. Basically I could go anywhere in the continental United States, as long as I kept the machine within six feet of my head while I was asleep. I didn't have to go to bed at any particular time, because the dreams booked to me were just spooled into memory. As soon as the device sensed I was in REM sleep it fed the backlog into my head. When I got up in the morning my nightwork would be there on the screen like a list of email messages: how long the dreams had been, when they started and finished, and whether they qualified for bonus payment or were just hack work.

      And at the bottom of the list, the good news. A figure in dollars. I found I could take six or seven dreams a night without too much difficulty. Some days I'd be groggy and find it difficult to concentrate on anything more complex than smoking, but when that happened I'd just take the following night off.

      After six months I was recalled to REMtemps' offices and asked if I'd like to volunteer for a higher proportion of bonus dreams. I said ‘Hell, yes’, and my earnings took another jump upwards. I met a hacker called Quat in the Net, and hired him to write me a daemon which would circulate my earnings around a variety of virtual accounts: every now and then the IRS or some other ratfink would close in on one of them, but when that happened I'd just swallow the loss and keep the rest of it on the move. I also paid him a lot of money to erase a particular incident from the LAPD's crimebank, which meant I could go back to California.

      It was a good life. I travelled from place to place, this time as a person with money instead of someone looking for a score. After a while it came to seem natural to wear better clothes, to head for the upscale hotels. I got used to the other things that money gets you, like a modicum of respect, and bed companions who don't issue you with an invoice in the morning. I kept in touch with the few people I cared about through the phone, the Net and occasional flying visits. I dropped in on Deck in LA a couple times, and the city began to lose its darkness for me. I began to think of moving back there, of letting it be my place once again.

      There were occasional downsides. Boredom. The exhaustion which came after a night full of bonuses, and the emotional flatness from being forever on the move and never having a relationship which lasted longer than a few days. There were periods when I'd go a little weird, and I came to realize that was because I'd spent so many nights having other people's dreams that I hadn't had time for any of my own. When that happened I'd clock off, let my mind catch up and do the subconscious boogie. After a few days I'd be fine again.

      I'd found some action which was safe, which I was good at, and which paid big-time money.

      That should have been enough.

      Then five months ago I got a call from Stratten. It came very early in the morning, and I was crashed out in a king-sized bed on the top floor of a hotel in New Orleans, the debris of a hard evening's pleasure spread all around me. By then I was back more or less full-time in LA, and had an apartment in Griffith which I called home. I wasn't supposed to hang in one place, however, so I took enough trips out of town to convince REMtemps I was still itinerant.

      I couldn't remember the name of the woman beside me, but she was a whizz at answering the phone. By the time I'd realized it was ringing she already had it up out of its cradle and at her ear. When she passed it over to me I sat up, head foggy and full of half-remembered tasks and confusions. I suppressed the urge to look at the receiver to see how much I'd earned. From the way I felt I knew it was going to be considerable.

      ‘Mr Thompson,’ said that voice, and I instantly became more awake. ‘Who answered the phone?’

      ‘I don't know,’ I said stupidly. ‘I mean, why? What difference?’

      ‘I assume she's someone you've met very recently?’

      ‘Yes.’ I glanced across the room to where the woman was standing. Candy, I think her name may have been, though she may well have spelled it with an ‘i’. At the end, I mean. She seemed nice, and I got the feeling she actually liked me. I was wondering whether she might be interested in hooking up with me for a while. A whole week, maybe, until I went back to LA. At that moment she was making coffee with no clothes on, and I was hoping Stratten would stop talking soon.

      ‘You met her last night, correct?’ he asked. I admitted that was the case. ‘And she's in your hotel room. But she answered the phone after a single ring.’

      I took a sip from the beer bottle by the bed. ‘So?’

      ‘Think about it.’

      I watched as Candy stirred just the right amount of sugar into my coffee. I got what he was driving at. ‘Don't talk shit,’ I said. Candy winked at me and slipped into the john.

      ‘Get rid of her and come to the office,’ Stratten said. ‘I have a proposal for you.’ The line went dead.

      I got out of bed and put the dream receiver in my bag. The readout said I'd earned over a thousand dollars. I got dressed, and when Candy came back out, spruced up and fresh and ready to play, I said I had to go out for a while. She took it badly, and then well, and then badly again. She tried a lot of things to get me to stay. When it was clear that wasn't working, she said she'd hang in the room and wait for me. For however long it took.

      Call me someone with low self-esteem, but women don't usually react that way after a single night in my company. I'm kind of an acquired taste. It wasn't proof, but it was enough to make me gather my things and walk out the door, leaving her standing shouting after me. In the elevator I did what I'd been told to do in such circumstances, and pressed a recessed button on the side of the dream receiver. There was a soft ‘crump’ sound from within and the readout panel went black. The unit was now dead, logic board fused into inexplicability.

      On the plane to Jacksonville it occurred to me to wonder why – if Candy had been some kind of federal agent – she hadn't just done whatever she needed to do while I was sleeping. If there was one thing a REMtemp was guaranteed to do most nights, it was catch some zeds. Maybe she'd needed to talk to me, get names or something. I'd only ever worked on the wrong side of the law, so I didn't know how the good guys did things. Perhaps they'd had me pegged as a potential witness against Stratten, in which case they obviously hadn't met the guy. It didn't make much difference. I had to go back to the office anyway now, to pick up a replacement receiver.

      Slumped over a table in an up-market café round the corner, I mainlined a gallon of coffee and a half pack of cigarettes before reporting to REMtemps. Usually the fog faded to a soft confusion after a couple hours, but this morning it felt like I'd never slept in my whole life. I wanted to be sharp to respond to whatever proposal Stratten had in mind, but in the end I settled for being not actually asleep and just lurched over there.

      This time we didn't meet in a side office, but in Stratten's own den. It was no bigger than your average football field, but luckily we sat at the same end so we didn't have to shout. I told him I'd done what he told me, and he smiled. I added that I'd fritzed the machine, also as per instructions, and that I'd need another one. He smiled again. Then he started talking.

      Though I didn't know it, a number of the company's most important clients now asked for me specifically. Most REMtemps left vestiges behind, elements personal to the dreamer which they couldn't assimilate. I erased the whole lot, every little shadow and whisper. Hence the bonuses. Hence also the fact that he wanted to offer me a more lucrative line of work.

      Memories.

      As soon as he said the word I started СКАЧАТЬ