Ghost in the Machine (Steam and Cyber Series Book 1) Read online

“I don’t know what I’ll do.” Caroline looked at Bodhi. “What about my father? What will I say to him? If I’m not safe here is my father in danger also?” Caroline began pacing the room. “Bodhi, I can’t simply disappear, Father’s been keeping a very keen eye on me of late. I’ve worried him enough.”

  “Calm down. Your father will be in Scotland for several weeks,” countered Bodhi. “Tell the servants you are going on a short trip to Brussels to see some old school friends. We’ll see what happens in the meantime. Pack a few things and you shall go to Francesca’s in the morning.”

  “What about the sphere? Can’t I stay there?” asked Caroline. “No one even knows about it.”

  “No. It wouldn’t be appropriate for you to stay there alone with me, without any accompaniment.”

  “And Francesca’s home is deemed more appropriate due to her supervision?”

  “Did you come in a carriage, Francesca?” asked Bodhi, ignoring Caroline as he looked towards the door, giving a gentle sign their meeting should come to a close.

  “An omnibus,” she said, reaching for her gloves. “But I disembarked several stops before your father’s house,” she quickly added, looking directly at Caroline. “I didn’t want to draw any attention to your personal residence.”

  “Surely you won’t walk home unattended? The Omnibuses don’t run very often at this hour,” observed a dismayed Caroline. “The streets are so dangerous, especially the closer you get…”

  “Yes, I know, the closer you get to my home,” Francesca finished sharply. “I am not afraid, Lady Caroline. People know I am not one to be trifled with.”

  “I will escort you home, Madame Francesca,” said Bodhi. “I cannot in any good conscience let you leave to walk about at night, unescorted. “Caroline, may we use your father’s airship to avoid the evening streets?”

  “What if the zeppelin is recognized, Bodhi?”

  “It’s too dark, Caroline. And it’s a quiet night. Please accommodate this request, as a favor to me.”

  Caroline sighed deeply, nodded, and waved in acquiescence.

  Bodhi and Francesca proceeded to the ship. The ship’s exterior was primarily a matte navy blue in color with silver trim, adding to its opulence. An enormous propeller powered by a steam engine hung near the front with two smaller propellers located in the rear. Two side propellers steered the ship once it was airborne.

  “After you,” gestured Bodhi as they neared the ramp. Francesca barely concealed her amazement at the interior, made with the finest adornments from around the world. A chess set made from ivory sat on a swiveling cherry wood side table with hand carved lion’s claws stretching forward for legs. The window ledges were inlaid gold and polished to a blinding sheen.

  Bodhi appeared from the closet to stand on the bow. He wore a long scarf and his goggles perched upon his forehead. Around the rim of each lens, levers attached two additional circular discs. One lens magnified, the other performed a telescopic function.

  Within moments, they were in flight. A grinding jolt frightened Francesca and she tightened her grip on the handrails.

  “Don’t be alarmed!” Bodhi yelled over the din of the steam engine. “The turbulence is perfectly normal. So are all of the hissing and booming noises. Try to relax! Look down and enjoy the views!” Two large metal wheels turned at the front control area, one rotated perfectly with the other. Steam escaped and wafted up the cogs as a whirring sound filled the airship.

  “The airship seems quite sturdy,” shouted Francesca to Bodhi, who manned the helm.

  “This is a Zeppelin NM, which stands for Nouveau Mechanics. The rigid frame is covered in a multi-layer laminate and can withstand even a lightning strike. And if any one or all of the ship’s three propeller-driven engines should fail, the airship will still float, instead of crash, until we find a suitable landing spot.”

  “How fast are we going?

  “We have a top speed of 75 mph with an ability to travel about 500 miles without refueling for more coal.”

  Madame Francesca stared out the picture windows, enjoying the panoramic view of the earth below. “The Steam Age has been the beginning of a new era for man, for better or worse,” she said softly to herself.

  “You can open the windows and peer outside as the air flows by, Francesca. It gets quite breezy and brisk but there is nothing like it! Please, make yourself comfortable.”

  “Francesca, I appreciate you not telling Caroline and Josephine, about our earlier association.”

  Francesca smiled. “Bodhi, I would never reveal something that would harm you, or cause you discomfort and embarrassment.”

  “And I, you, Francesca. No one would have looked after me, had you not taken me in. I owe you my life for that.”

  “You were a good boy, Bodhi. And a fine man now.”

  Bodhi remained silent, manning the controls, as Francesca enjoyed the outside view. The hum of the engine quieted his mind. He remembered a brief time in his childhood, eleven years earlier, looking down a long foyer and hallway. A serving girl pulled the weighty scarlet curtains on the long windows, diminishing the outside light as it fell on a series of magnificent brass clocks, some hanging from the wall as others stood freely on the floor. He wandered to the wall, hypnotized by the gears and levers as well as the bright sheen of the metals.

  A portly confident man walked into the foyer and grabbed his top hat. He crumpled the Times and tossed it on side vanity table, upending an ashtray and sending a plume of gray dust into the air. “Thank you, Francesca. Are we all clear?”

  “As clear as one can hope, Professor.”

  He glanced out onto the walk from the side windows; gaslights glowed like fuzzy halos in the darkness. Police dirigibles drifted overhead, their searchlights illuminated long columns of white into the streets.

  Bodhi stepped out from behind one of the clocks, peering at the stalwart man in the doorway. “A new serving boy, Francesca?”

  “He is none of your concern.”

  “An orphan? Or a reckless spawn of your girls?”

  “Though it is none of your business, if you must know, I found him along the River Thames. Fending for himself. A stowaway from India. Leave him alone, though. He doesn’t speak.”

  He felt under the brim of his top hat. “Here, boy,” shouted Anson, “look at this.” Bodhi walked cautiously over as Anson pulled a set of goggles from his pocket and placed them over Bodhi’s eyes. For Bodhi, everything suddenly took on a greenish hue. The professor turned the lenses slowly towards his ears and Bodhi saw targets floating and following his exact line of vision. “Now, look outside,” Anson instructed. He cranked the lenses again; tiny cogs and levers were set in motion and his view magnified exponentially. Bodhi could see at least three blocks away, through the fog, in unimaginable clarity. “These are the eyes of the future, my boy. Can you imagine if the British military possessed such goggles? Imagine the advantage of mechanized and magnified sight with perfect and accurate precision?”

  “Run along, Bodhi,” instructed Francesca. “You may play with the clocks upstairs.”

  “You have a soft spot for rejects,” said Anson. “Perhaps that is why you are so successful.”

  “I can see the underneath their damage, that is all.”

  The Pawn Shop

  December 2134

  Josephine’s borrowed black jeans barely stretched over her bandaged leg. The frayed edge at the bottom dangled around her boots, dusting the floor while the stiffness of the unforgiving fabric felt like hardened plaster, encasing her from the waist down. Sitting only added to her discomfort so she stood at the window. Her eyes fixed through the lace curtains on the alley leading to the garage. She took a long swallow of water as she smiled down at Charley as he ducked past and waved. Her expression changed abruptly as he floored the car, reversing from the driveway. She checked her Bodhi’s pocket watch. Half past five.

  “Would you like some coffee?” asked Minnow.

  “Do you have any tea?”


  “I’ll look and see what Charley keeps in the back. If I don’t come back in five minutes, come and look for me,” she joked.

  Josephine walked over to a white china cabinet filled with pharmaceutically folded bubble packs of individualized pills. Black pills, red and yellow pills, and white powdered capsules, all of differing sizes. A key hung in the cabinet’s lock, an enormous Victorian key wedged in plated brass.

  “Couldn’t find any.” Josephine startled at the tension in Minnow’s voice. “Hopefully Charley will be back soon.”

  “I’ll have coffee then,” said Josephine. “Thanks for checking.”

  “Narcotics,” Minnow stated flatly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What you’re looking at. You know, street drugs. Some tranquilizers. Some hallucinogens.”

  “Oh, well I imagine pharmaceuticals can be a lucrative venture.”

  “Everything here is lucrative for Charley. Or he wouldn’t do it.”

  “Have you tried them?” asked Josephine, trying to sound nonjudgmental.

  Minnow shrugged. “At one point or another in my life,” she answered vaguely. “For a quick trip. But we have a straight edge rule.”

  “Makes sense,” said Josephine. “Addiction can be an unpredictable burden.”

  “More than that. You run the risk of forgetting. These pills can change your mind.”

  “Change your mind about what?”

  “No,” Minnow said as she opened the cupboards. “Literally change your mind.” One side of the cupboard slammed shut. “Some of these pills can be used to download memories, thoughts, dreams.” Minnow turned opened the fridge for milk. “All of this can be bought, traded, and downloaded. The rush of the transfer is addictive.”

  “You do this with pills? How do you know what or whose experiences you’ll receive?”

  “You can choose a profile, but you don’t know what experience you might transfer. Could be the best moment of someone’s life or their most tragic. And your reaction could be different from someone else’s.” Minnow threw her satellite phone onto the coffee table.

  “That sounds like insanity. Or brilliance.”

  “People crave stimulation outside their own existence. But there is a risk that you take on the donor’s gestures or habits, or that you integrate too deeply.”

  “You mean, become more like the other person, the person whose memory you acquired?”

  “Yes, people have been known to go through drastic changes after a transfer.”

  “Hard to believe it’s possible, really.” Josephine ran her hand across the beveled glass of the cabinet, her palm down, and her fingers pale.

  “I know, right? It began as part of Omni’s special operations. Omni would download suitably ‘appropriate’ memories into the minds of freethinkers and rebels. Then they stole ideas and memories from the academics and intellectuals.”

  “Mind boggling.”

  “Your new memory is like a dream, only better. You can smell and feel everything. And when you wake up, your experience feels genuine. People pay a lot of money for this kind of trip.” Minnow stepped closer to Josephine, passing her a watery coffee. “It’s a high. Some even pay for the memories of a drug addict. They get a rush without a crash. Somewhere in all this, are a few of my own nightmares.”

  “I can hardly imagine it! Charley administers these drugs? Like a chemist? People trust him with their minds and mental state? What if something goes wrong, if a memory is intensely unpleasant? Are there side effects?” Josephine took an involuntary step backwards, towards the window. From behind the office door, the phone buzzed several times.

  “Usually it will integrate into your memory over time, like any other bad experience. But people take this chance. They want to live again. The human mind and the feed have fused to the point where reality is incidental, almost non-existent. People want more.” Minnow sat on a filthy futon; its foam prickling out from the separated side seams. For the first time, Josephine noticed an automatic pistol at Minnow’s side, sliding down the crack of the futon cushions.

  “How is acquiring someone else’s memory any different that reading about the experience, or hearing it in a story?”

  “It’s like the difference between the fragrance of an orange and the actual orange. Much more acutely tactile, the recipient feels totally immersed.”

  “So by stopping Omni, will this drug industry end?”

  “The drug industry will never end. I don’t know that I’d want it to.” Minnow stopped, she opened her palms, splaying them against a cabinet filled with pills. “But we hope to avoid the worst of Omni. Most technology will still be available, I assume, but without Omni as an entity of control, it might be driven by free choices.”

  “Minnow, we have the Tabulator, and we have the hard drive. But nothing’s different here yet.”

  “Maybe we have to wait for the alternate history to catch up with us. Maybe something suddenly folds. I don’t know.”

  “How do you manage to avoid the feed? Can you only do it in two hours increments?”

  “Yeshua and Nico are Native Americans and can speak Algonquin, a language unrecorded by Omni. They think and speak in this language as a cover when they aren’t in the deregulated zones. To Omni, it gets picked up as static and garbled nonsense. It’s written off.”

  “Really? I have such of love of languages.” Josephine shifted her weight as one of her legs felt numb under the tightness of her jeans. “And you? How do you stay off?”

  “I have high perceptive ability, almost empathic. Omni grades me as a ‘high communicant.’ Any subversive conversations or thoughts I have don’t raise any flags. They categorize any insurgent communication from my feed as noise that I absorb from others.”

  “Why would they not suspect you? Why would they not believe that these thoughts are your own? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I have been tested and interrogated several times. But I have been able to derail the detectors.” Minnow looked tiny but had a quirky defiance. “Also, my great-great-great-grandfather is Professor Anson, so I have a level of assumed credibility.” Minnow’s knuckles were dry and cracked, tiny red lines of blood peeked through. “No one wants Anson’s descendent under heat.”

  “Oh my God!” Josephine recoiled at the thought of Anson. “I’m sorry, I’m just shocked. He does not even like people. Only his machines and automatons.”

  “You’re right. But he had one illegitimate daughter.”

  “I had no idea!”

  “Yep. By little old Madame Francesca.”

  Josephine looked up to the brilliant slash of sunlight as it ripped through the window. Bright orange and pink hues lined the horizon, the sky looked bright blue but fragile. She shrugged the tension from her shoulders and inhaled deeply, stretching and widening her body for more air. She watched Minnow’s fingers wrap around her coffee cup like a band of tiny bones.

  “Does this information upset you?” she asked Josephine.

  “No, of course not,” Josephine answered in Victorian politeness. “Yes, a bit,” she then added. “It’s just odd. Unexpected.”

  “Was it weird to meet her? In person?”

  “No. Yes. I felt angry. But I always feel angry.” Minnow smiled and shrugged. “It’s not her fault, anyway.” On the archway to the back room, four red battery-powered candles flickered on the wall. The entire building smelled like faintly burnt rubber. Minnow rummaged through the contents of her bag, dumped across the table, looking for a headband.

  “Are you afraid here? Do you see why we want change?” Minnow asked.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore. Anson told me on his zeppelin that nothing is what it seems.”

  “There is truth to that,” remarked Minnow.

  Josephine stood under an oversized candelabrum whose lowest crystal almost touched her head. She nibbled on her lower lip and heard a click at the door. The door half opened and from the hall came a loud voice, slurring unintelligible syllables. It
was Charley. His eyes were bloodshot, his forehead bruised and gleaming with sweat. One foot was bare and the knees of his jeans were ripped and bloodied.

  “What the hell!” yelled Minnow as she ran to pull Charley into the front office. “Close the door and pull the blinds,” she barked to Josephine. Minnow placed Charley’s arm around her shoulders.

  “Charley, can you hear me?” she asked him. “Lean on me.” Minnow guided him into his back office. She reached into his front pockets with both of her hands, and then patted the back ones.

  “Hey!” Charley yelled as he slumped onto the desk and lay down. Small manila envelopes peeked out from his jacket pocket. As Minnow slid them out as ground white powder dusted her hands and the front of Charley’s shirt. The powder scattered into the air as the ceiling fan blew overhead. She dug in his pockets further, pulling out a five-inch long narrow syringe, a lighter, folded aluminum foil, and a steel spoon.

  “Jesus Christ, he’s overdosing!” Minnow yelled. Josephine stared at them both, completely paralyzed. Charley pitched over sideways and fell to the floor. Bubbled froths of spittle blew from the sides of his mouth. Minnow threw off her jacket and kneeled over him. In the middle of her shoulder blades, tattooed words were inked: “There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

  “Go to the back room.” Minnow directed Josephine, still staring at the words on Minnow’s back. As she ran back, Minnow shouted after her, “In the black file cabinet behind the desk, second drawer from the top, you’ll see boxes of hypodermic needles. Bring me the Narcan. Bring at least three syringes of it.”

  Charley lay on the floor. His extremities were turning blue. “I don’t get it!” Josephine heard Minnow yelling from the office into her satellite phone. “Charley isn’t a user.” She kicked her phone away.

  “Maybe all this easy access wasn’t good for him,” mumbled Josephine.

  “No, you don’t get it. He supplied other people but he stayed clean. He always said you don’t shit where you eat.”

  “Lovely sentiment,” said Josephine.

  “Shut up and find the Narcan!”