Chapter 3: Dangerous Assignment.
Ankara had to list Baptiste as a D-RAA. She didn't want to—it'd lower his credit score even further—but he had made the mistake of promising money if he received an extension. That was automatically considered a form of arguing. Anything that wasn't handing over money or going limp was considered arguing.
He seems like a good enough man, though, Ankara thought. He didn't sell his land. His family will probably be fine.
Ankara's wristspace told her to return to HQ for her new assignment. She sighed.
That will take all night. Why can't they just tell me who the next target is?
Before mounting her bike, she took a look back at the ranch. The two beauties were still bathing nude by the window. Baptiste jumped in, but he was careful not to get his shoulders wet.
Then they'd all see the blood.
He picked up some flowers, put them in his hair, and looked back at the other men for verification.
He's acting ridiculous on purpose. Overcompensating.
Baptiste's wife entered and started waving her arms.
Ankara climbed onto her bike, turned her lights on, and hoped the night wouldn't reject her. She saw the night as a separate monster, a liquid tar that could eat her and spit out her bones.
HQ was an old office building, a squat thing that had once been windowless and filled with metal cubicles. The interior had been gutted, the ceilings raised, and the facade replaced with bay windows. The intervention didn't really work. Ankara still felt the sadness of everyone who had spent their youth working there.
Ankara parked in the lot that was wider than the building itself. Her bike was the only thing in the lot except for a lawn mower that obviously hadn't been used: the grass around the lot grew six, seven inches high. Flowers too heavy for their stems sagged and frowned. The heat melted even the attempts at tree-planting.
None of the trees they planted are growing.
Ankara saw her boss EA (short for Elianantonio, a name he hated) standing outside the building. He was huffing on an e-cigarette. Mother of milk was his favorite flavor.
Ankara caught her reflection in the glass of the building as she walked. Her skin was dusty, her black hair thick from not being washed. Her clothes looked relatively clean. She had lost weight since the last time she'd been here.
She tried to keep her eyes forward. EA liked to mock women's vanity.
"We need to talk about your next assignment."
He's worried. He's not interested in his usual sexist banter. What is wrong with my next assignment?
"Why? What's different about this one?"
"I'll tell you in a bit. First, there's a group of hopefuls I want you to speak to."
"Dana is out, and I'm terrible with customers."
That's a lie. He just wants me to do it because I'm a woman.
An overwhelming majority of Vida Siempre customers were men, and studies showed that they responded best to a young, attractive woman.
"Let's get you cleaned up. They're waiting."
Too bad I can't use being tired as an excuse. It's kind of bullshit when you're immortal.
Ankara recited her explanation to the group. Fifteen men, three women.
She had washed and braided her hair, and lathered butter on her body, and tried to brush her eyebrows.
Too bad there's no fix for adding honesty to your eyes.
Now she stood tall in front of the hopefuls. They had all passed the initial tests: physical, psychological, financial. Now they just had to make the moral choice. She could tell about ten of the men already had their minds made up.
"We're happy to share the latest technological revolution: Freedom from aging. What we offer is freedom from the pains of aging, of deterioration. How do we do this? Through digitization.
"Before digital copies of movies or music, we used analog copies. What happens when you copy a tape? The copy is not as good as the original. A copy of that copy is even lower in quality. The digital revolution allowed us to make truly perfect and identical copies of absolutely anything we wanted . . . and the copies do not wear out. They are identical to the original, and they aren't ruined if you listen to them too much, or slow them down, or speed them up.
"Your body is constantly replicating its own cells. About every seven years, all of your cells are completely replaced, making you, in effect, an entirely different person. Your body copies itself. Since your body is analog, not digital, these copies aren't perfect. The copies become lower and lower in quality, thus causing you to age.
"Digitizing your cells means that your body will make perfect copies of itself every time. Your body will not age past the point it has already reached. If you digitize your cells at twenty-five, you'll be twenty-five indefinitely. If you take care of yourself, these means you have the potential to live forever."
They were already drooling, except a few cloudy faces. The women. Three of the men. Ankara opened the floor to questions. A short man with glasses and a strong chin asked the first question.
"What about diseases of the mind, like dementia or Alzheimer's? Are we safe from those?"
"The mind ages differently from the body, so studies of that nature are inconclusive. However, our oldest customers are already reaching their seventies and eighties, and there have been no confirmed cases of those diseases as of yet. I have more information for you, if you'd like me to send it to you."
He just nodded. It was always good to nip those in the bud and follow up with a personal message. Talking about something like that in front of a group would cause everyone else worry.
"You did good out there, kiddo." Ankara hated when EA called her that.
"So, what about this case? Why did I have to come all the way back here?"
"It's your new case. Sami Valo. You're going to need these whenever you see him."
EA handed her a bottle of unlabeled pills.
"It looks strange, na hay keyson. But I can't disclose what is in there or why. Just try to get him to take a couple when you see him."
"You have to tell me something, EA."
"All right. Sami came to us when he was nineteen, which is pretty young to be digitized. But everything checked out. Financially, physically . . . psychologically. He was high-risk, but we gave it to him."
"There are some mental problems that crop up when people are around that age. That's pretty much all I can tell you. He was probably in the early stages of it when we digitized him."
This is a very high-risk assignment and they're not giving me much to go on. They won't even tell me about his condition. How am I supposed to do this?
"So you want me to track down a mentally unstable man, force him to take this medicine, and then make him analog?"
"Sort of. It's kind of worse than that."
"We received a tip on his location. Actually, we received it when you were talking to the group.
"Sami Valo isn't in the civilized world. He's in Cloud CIty."
