Strange Flesh (5 page)

ARGs are new-media hybrids using the whole communications spectrum—phone, email, web, forums, video—to allow a group of players to discover a hidden narrative that plays out over the course of the game. The people who organize them are called the “puppet masters.” So Billy’s screw-and-string tattoo favors the ARG paradigm by making him a giant living marionette. I guess
NeoRazi
could be seen as an early experiment in the genre.

I want to read the article more thoroughly, but I look up at the twins and say, “So . . . ?”

Blythe inclines her head at the magazine. “Two of the people in that picture are now dead. Second from the left, an ambiguous drug overdose a couple months ago. Then the last one, the girl, almost decapitated herself three weeks later. Billy used her as an actress in this repulsive video he made. I’m sure you can find it online somewhere.”

Blake says, “Which leads us to another video . . .”

Blythe steps over to an end table on which stands a ceramic statue holding a long remote as though it’s a scepter. She plucks it from his grasp, and while she thumbs a sequence of buttons, I take a moment to study the thing. It’s an ugly-but-cute blue-scaled creature with spindly appendages, small pointed pig’s ears, and a large head filled almost entirely with a single massive eye. I decide he must be an imp, his peculiar anatomy a mordant representation of IMP’s customers: giant eyeballs dedicated to consuming company product. A private jest.

The lights dim and a white screen descends from the far wall. A projector opposite whirs quietly to life.

Blythe selects a file called Jacking-Out. “This video was sent to Blake from a dummy email account two days ago.”

Darkness. Then a shot displaying a naked man of maybe twenty-seven seated in front of a bank of monitors. He presents a striking contrast to his siblings. His head is covered with a tufted anti-haircut, a few jet-black locks hanging limply over his face. His eyes are so dark that pupil and iris seem to merge into inhuman anime dots. He shares the twins’ pallor, but where on them you’d describe it as luminous, on him the word that leaps to mind is “sickly.” The periodic beeping of a heart monitor on one of the screens behind him enhances that impression.

Billy’s sense of physical malaise is deepened by a painful-looking Prince Albert piercing through his penis. Hung from which he’s got a large golden crocodile pendant that closely replicates the world-famous logo for Lacoste sportswear, the touchstone of preppy culture until Ralph Lauren’s polo ponies nearly trampled it to death in the eighties.

The chair he’s sitting on is made of rough planks. Affixed to its back is a rusty metal band that’s fastened around his forehead. Thick wires descend from the band and attach to a bank of car batteries at his feet. While it’s impossible to follow exactly, a large throw-switch next to his right hand appears to control the circuit.

An improvised electric chair. I tense in anticipation.

Billy declaims in a slow rasp:

As a final farewell, Blake, I thought to indulge your greatest fantasy. I know you’ve often wished that I’d just jack out like she did. But be careful what you wish for. My ghost may come back to haunt you. And lead you down your own path of torment. For I will rain down brimstone and fire upon your festering Sodom. And when you look, lo, the smoke from your life will rise up like the smoke from a furnace.

He then throws the switch, sending his body into violent convulsions. His eyes bulge, and his hands form unnatural claws. Blood trickles down
his chin after he bites his tongue. It goes on for an excruciating ten seconds or so, his skin blackening around the metal head restraint. The heart monitor becomes a frenetic screech of trauma. Then the beeping abruptly stops. At this point, the juice must have cut off, since Billy’s body relaxes. Foamy mucus drips from his nose and mixes with the blood now freely coursing from his mouth.

The camera lingers on his still form and then cuts to black.

Blake brings up the lights, and the three of us sit looking at one another. I’m not altogether sure what I’ve been shown, so I just say, “I’m sorry.”

He sniffs. “Don’t be. It’s a fake. Our brother is extremely disturbed, and—”

“He needs help.” Blythe’s words are soft and almost without affect. I can see Blake framing a sarcastic reply, but some subtle detail of her posture must alert him to the fact that she’s holding back a reservoir of pain. His initially dismissive gesture blends into one of apology. He stares at her expectantly. I’m no longer in the room.

I clear my throat and ask, “Why do you say it’s fake?”

Blake looks away from his sister. He pulls up the video again. “It’s just his typical plug-head drivel.” He stands up and points to one of the monitors behind Billy.

It shows a 3D scene set in the courtyard of a ruined castle.

Blake says, “Watch this space when the heart monitor stops.” He plays the video, and sure enough, as Billy’s body slumps, an avatar modeled to resemble him slowly fades into the game world with a ghostly particle effect.

“He’s not dying. He’s just virtualizing himself. Which, at least for the moment, is science fiction. Ergo, this video is bullshit.”

“It certainly looks convincing.”

“He may have used real electricity. Maybe even harmed himself for the sake of realism. But we don’t believe Billy has the good grace to actually . . . Well, anyway, this is just another stupid shock-art project.” Blake grimaces at the rogue pun. “So to speak.”

“You know it’s more than that, Blake,” says Blythe.

“What do you mean?” I ask her.

“We can’t find him. It’s like he really has dematerialized.”

Blake adds, “His apartment is cleared out. None of his . . . associates have seen him in weeks. He hasn’t been at work. No financial transactions, cell phone calls. Nothing.”

“But you think he’s alive. He’s just”—I’m reaching here—“faked his own death? Why?”

“Why does someone like him do anything? He’s totally bug-fuck. I’m sorry, Blythe, but it’s true.”

“I understand that his work is, ah, on the dark side, but what makes you believe he’s actually crazy?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Blake starts ticking things off his fingers. “In the years since our differences over that first lawsuit, he’s sent me a ream of threatening emails. His work has become even more depraved. Recently he’s taken to getting himself arrested for petty outbursts.”

“But this feels like . . . a more significant departure. Like he’s planning to target Blake in some way,” Blythe continues. “That online world you see Billy enter is the ever-popular NOD. The only clue we have to his whereabouts is this place that doesn’t really exist.”

“I see.”

Blake says, “Ms. Mercer assures us your technical skills are top-notch. She also says you’ve had a number of assignments involving . . . undercover work.”

Blythe says, “We want you to find our brother. Before he really does harm himself. Or someone else.”

S
tanding under the imploring gaze of the woman who, it could be argued, ruined my life, you’d think I might exercise some caution. Obviously this assignment will place me in a mental landscape so perilous that I should refuse it point-blank. All I’d ever wanted was to be there for Blythe when she needed me. In the end, she declined. Back then, I was devastated, and turned my sorrow inward. I told myself that I’d manufactured an epochal love story purely in my imagination. Blythe never made me any promises.

Why then, after all these years, do you feel the need to make promises to her?

The answer of course comes from my abraded wrists and the scabby bruise around my neck. Wherever this work takes me can’t possibly be worse than where I am now.

Those were my thoughts after the meeting. In that moment, though, accepting Blythe’s charge had the feel of a spinal reflex.

“I’ll find your brother,” I said.

Blythe smiled at me, and that was all it took.

Pathetic, sure. But my pride has deserted me these days.

To say that I have a weakness for women is like saying Ernest Hemingway enjoyed the occasional cocktail.

After my mother’s death, my father made the disastrous decision to enroll me at an all-boys former military academy in an effort to curtail some
of the tantrums brought on by her absence. The education, dispensed by a staff of retired air force officers, was exceptional, but by age eight, I was spying on my friends’ mothers. One of them caught me observing her step out of the shower. She was really kind and understanding about it, and even hugged me once she got her clothes on. But I was never invited back.

The advent of my interest in computers can be precisely fixed at the instant a low-res image of a nude Victoria Principal rolled off Rory Cullenden’s dot matrix printer when we were in the fourth grade. My hacking skills went critical after I discovered those underground bulletin boards for swapping naughty files. I spent high school knowing that I’d do the computer science course at Stanford.

So, how did I end up at Harvard? Sonali Mehta. I followed my rival high school’s gorgeous Intel Talent Search winner there. Though she declined all my advances, my grief didn’t last long, since there were any number of distinguished young ladies for me to spend my freshman year mooning over.

Then I met Blythe Randall.

I’ve always known that the idea of perfect, all-consuming love is a myth invented by ancient writers in order to move units. And yet acknowledging that left me without an explanation for the unprecedented feelings she aroused in me. After Coles introduced us at the Pudding one night, I felt like I’d discovered an alien species, awe and fear wrangling for control of my brain.

What was it about her?

Blythe’s beauty was somehow original. She had a refinement of face and figure that you hadn’t seen a million times on magazine covers. And she used that peerless vessel to radiate goodwill. Not a common sort of gushy niceness, nor the protective shell of polite reserve often found in the insanely rich. She seemed to instantly hold the conviction that you were an interesting person, and even if that wasn’t true, she had the confidence and alchemical grace to make you so. In her presence, people, at least those not prone to jealousy, would just beam with pleasure.

A month after that monumental poker game, her relationship with Coles ended in a pyrotechnic argument in front of the Bat. I’d heard that the subject was her brother.

For a dismal couple of weeks I didn’t see her at all. Then one night just after winter break, Rex Ainsley and Raffi Consuelo burst into the card room to demand that at least three of us make ourselves presentable for some ladies coming over from Pine Manor, a local women’s college, for a round of Circle of Death. This was a drinking game expected to segue into strip poker and hopefully some kind of orgy-type activity. We were skeptical since these often-promised orgies never really seemed to materialize.

Ainsley said, “And Coles is coming by for this, so whichever one of you cum dumpsters let in Blythe Randall, you need to get her out of here. Now.”

“She’s here? Where?” asked Tim Fielding, the dealer.

“Upstairs, bombed out of her skull, and looking to make trouble. We are her friends, so clearly we’re not going to deal with her. It has to be one of you lot.”

“You want us to throw her out?” This from a fellow sophomore.

Ainsley snorted. “I’d like to see you try. That woman could crush your testicles with her
mind
. No, one of you must use his feminine wiles to lure her nicely out of here, so she doesn’t suspect that her ex-boyfriend is coming over to molest wet-brained goo poodles before a decent mourning period elapses. We Batsmen are classier than that.”

There were blank looks all around.

“Jesus, what a bunch of worthless—”

I was astonished to hear myself say, “I’ll do it.” I flipped over the pair of queens I was betting, drawing a sigh from the nut flush.

Blythe was sprawled in a wingback chair in the upstairs members-only lounge. Eyes closed, ashing into a full tumbler of scotch. Around her neck hung her trademark pearls, a stunning string that glowed with an extraordinary scarlet luster.