Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE - WEATHER FM
RADIO-ALARM-CLOCK: TIME TO GET UP, DETECTIVE. TIME TO START ANOTHER DAY. TIME MARCHES EVER FORWARD, AND IT’S YOUR TIME NOW, HARRY DU BOIS. Olduvai, thirty-five degrees centigrade, wet….
You rub your hand over your face. Your head pounds, a heavy weight behind your eye cavities, your cheeks. Light streams into your apartment, thin and pale from the window, set high over your bed. Your mouth tastes of old wine and death. You wake these mornings to unfamiliar places: La Parbat, Deora, Vredefort. It’s not like it was in Martinaise, when you’d come into the world knowing nothing and no one. This time, the places are on your radio-alarm-clock, calling you back into the world.
RADIO-ALARM-CLOCK: Kim had gotten it for you a few months ago. You had been late to work one morning. You had overslept. When you’d moved back in, you’d found your old alarm clock crushed on the bathroom floor like a square plastic bug.
EMPATHY: Poor thing.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You get the sense that you had mostly been on time before by never leaving work.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: These days, either your prostate or your pounding heart or the street vendor selling worn wire flowers outside wake you up most mornings.
INLAND EMPIRE: Until that morning.
You had been nothing, you had been less than nothing, you had been a squashed plastic bug stuck to the dark floor, and then suddenly you were being shaken. Someone was saying your name, saying, “Harrier! Harrier!”
SOMEONE: The someone slapped you in the face. Not lightly, either.
PERCEPTION: Cool leather, smell of engine grease.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You sputtered awake, swinging at your assailant, who neatly pinned you down by both arms. You fought to get your eyes open.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim swam into view, your bedroom as brightly lit as it ever gets.
VISUAL CALCULUS: It was mid-morning, judging by the way the light spilled across the pile of clothes at the foot of your bed. You’d say nearly eleven.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim let go of one of your arms to grab your chin in his hand. He turned your face from side to side, looking into your eyes.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Not in a sexy way.
DRAMA: No, sire. He thought you were high.
YOU: You batted him off. “I’m sober!”
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim glanced at the still half-full glass on your nightstand. Then he took his hands off you, and stood up. You felt strangely light without his weight to ground you. He put his hands behind his back.
EMPATHY: As if to avoid further temptation.
YOU: “Fuck,” you said. Your heart was pounding at your rude awakening, and you put a hand to your bare chest. “Goddamnit, Kim!”
KIM KITSURAGI: “I had thought you were - incapacitated.” He looked away, at the window over your head.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He felt he had overreacted. He was embarrassed. He had spent more than two hours waiting for you in the station, watching the light move across your empty desk.
(JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Welcome to the club, Kitsuragi."
Judit had made a sympathetic face and then looked away. McLaine and Torson had started taking bets on which gutter you would turn up in this time.)
YOU: “Haven’t you ever slept in by accident?”
KIM KITSURAGI: His face was as impassive as a carven statue. No, that face said. I haven’t. Because I have an alarm clock.
YOU: You hunched over, groaning. You gathered the sheets and wiped your face in them.
SAVOIR FAIRE: You weren’t wearing a shirt. Embarrassing!
ENDURANCE: Your face stung a little from the slap.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You were a little hard from the slap. You made sure to bunch the blanket over your lap.
YOU: “I’m sorry, Kim,” you mumbled. “I’ll get an alarm clock. Did I miss anything?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He sighed, pinching his nose. Then he said, “Not really. But it’s about time for lunch.” Then he turned and left the room. By the time you dressed and came out, he was waiting for you in the living room. He gave off the air of definitely-not-having snooped through your things while you were changing.
RADIO-ALARM-CLOCK: The next morning, there was a radio alarm clock on your desk.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: The lieutenant had thought about putting a bow on it, but that seemed a step too far.
YOU: “Thank you.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “The best thank you is a partner that’s present," he said sharply.
YOU: You were left holding the clock to your chest like some sort of absurd bouquet.
RADIO-ALARM-CLOCK: So now you use the radio-alarm-clock each morning. You set the wakeup station to WEATHER FM. Something about it reminds you of the Whirling-in-Rags, of your first swim into consciousness. You wake slowly, swimming in a sea of strange places. Places that mean nothing to you. You begin to learn them by their weather patterns: Bashir, thirty-three degrees centigrade, arid. Mirova, twenty-eight degrees centigrade, gray. Thylakos-by-Pisantic is temperate, Virmandeux is dull. You pepper Kim with questions about these places, and, when you get the chance, every suspect and witness you meet.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Thylakos-by-Pisantic is on the edge of the Pisantic sea. Pillars of marble, a sea-breeze cutting through the bright day. Smell of oranges. Mirova is cold and gray with brief brilliant moments of sunshine. The kind that can highlight blonde hair with gold, can shine through a woman’s skirt and outline her legs with light.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Seol is a vast muggy land of jungles, thick with dark murky pools and near-black undergrowth. The remains of a vast stone city, enormous statues teetering on columns. Half-animal, half-man, all stone, looking down.
RHETORIC: That’s kind of racist, isn’t it? You don’t know anything about Seol. What are you going to do next, start carrying around racist mugs?
YOU: Since you’re up, you stop by the Jamrock Library before work. You give them a fake name, because the last time you had tried to go in, the librarian had yelled at you. You’re not allowed in here, get out, get out! This time, her sour face and tight bun is absent.
SHIVERS: She’s not working today. She has to take her ailing mother to the doctor. She will be there for five hours waiting to be seen.
YOU: You tell the nice young man who is present instead that your name is Reg Revachol.
NICE YOUNG MAN: “Unusual name,” he says, as you fill out the tiny library card in your shambling handwriting.
YOU: “Yeah. My mother had a sense of humor.” You don’t know if she did. You don’t remember anything about her.
NICE YOUNG MAN: He hands you your library card, smiling at you. Your hands brush.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: He’s kind of cute, isn’t he?
YOU: He is. But he’s not for you. You ask him the way to the atlases, and then he takes you back in the stacks, dark and quiet. “Here they are,” he says, and gives you a long, lingering look as he leaves. You find what you are looking for easily enough: a large, oversized world atlas. The publication date shows it is ten years outdated. You hope not much has changed in the last ten years.
SHIVERS: In the last ten years, countless people have been born and countless people have died. Wild Pines has made and lost and remade over a hundred billion dollars. The Moralintern has tightened its grasp on Insulinde. And in a precinct in Jamrock, in the captain’s office, something has started to tick….
INLAND EMPIRE: You had an almost-wife ten years ago. You were a different thing, then. Still closer to a man than an animal.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: You remember none of this.
You walk the rest of the way to work, atlas under your arm. You run up the steps, burst into the C-wing, only eight minutes late. You grin at Kim, drop the atlas on your desk, go to get coffee. When you come back to your desk, the finest of the 41st precinct are gathered around your desk, looking at the atlas.
CHESTER MCLAINE: “Shit, Captain Sober can read?”
1. “Of course I can read, dipshit! Look at all my case reports!”
2. “Your mom can’t read!”
3. Put your head down and get to work.
AUTHORITY: Don’t say this. Your late and/or missing case reports are a sore subject with Jean.
1. “Of course I can read, dipshit! Look at all my case reports!”
2. “Your mom can’t read!”
3. Put your head down and get to work.
EMPATHY: Don’t say this. She can’t.
1. “Of course I can read, dipshit! Look at all my case reports!”
2. “Your mom can’t read!”
3. Put your head down and get to work.
You put down your head and get to work.
AUTHORITY: Atta boy.
KIM KITSURAGI: “What’s that you’ve got there?”
OVERSIZED ATLAS: You gesture at it. It’s an oversized atlas, thin, with a red cover. The pages are crisp. It doesn’t get checked out often.
OVERSIZED ATLAS: You are the very first person to check me out, my good traveling man!
DRAMA: Think about it: You could become a traveling man. It wouldn’t matter what kind of trouble you got in. You would leave it behind you, a string of decayed cities rippling out in your wake. Like radioactive waste. Eventually, you could make your way to Mirova.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Going somewhere?” There is a little lilt of humor in his tone.
AUTHORITY: Are you just going to let him make fun of you?
HALF LIGHT: Flip your desk. Flip his too.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s teasing you. Very lightly. He’s honestly surprised you had known where the library was, let alone what a library was.
YOU: “I walk past the library each day, Kim. I know what a library is.” Old-Harry had known, too. You had found piles of old Jamrock Library books in your apartment. Propping up the kitchen table. Water-logged Hjemdall paperbacks in the bathroom. One in the toilet tank. A mass of books on entroponetics, most of the pages torn out raggedly, as if an animal had been at them.
LOGIC: That’s probably why you are not allowed in the Jamrock Public Library.
KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant blinks, the action magnified behind his glasses.
MACK TORSON: “Hey, Mullen’s trying to find a place he didn’t fuck up!”
JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Try l'isola d’atlantide.” His voice is short.
YOU: L'isola d’atlantide. You like the sound of that.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: A whole new land. You could reinvent yourself. Become a new man. A happy man. A man worthy of being loved.
VOLITION: You have already done this. Remember Martinaise?
DRAMA: No. It has to be l'isola d’atlantide.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: You imagine it. An isola rising out of the pale, a shimmering disco-haven, every building mirrored, every street grooving.
SHIVERS: No. There is a deep blue lagoon, the color of bar-glass. There is a rainstorm every day but it passes quickly, leaving the land fertile and warm.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: You can crawl into an alley and drink yourself into oblivion. You will never let anyone down again.
KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant makes a small noise, as if he would like to say something, but feels it’s not his place. He looks over at Jean, who meets his eye, and then looks away.
DRAMA: Perhaps that was a bit of sarcasm, my liege?
RHETORIC: Certainly not.
AUTHORITY: It’s not. Jean Vicquemare knows you! Even if you don’t know him, this man knows every single place you’ve fucked up.
INLAND EMPIRE: Every piece of bedrock in this city has been built on your fuckups, Harry. You’re practically the backbone of the city.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: The decayed, seized-up, decrepit backbone of the city, pockmarked by bombs and riddled with alcoholism.
PAIN THRESHOLD: Have you checked your magnesium levels lately, Harry-boy?
YOU: What the fuck is magnesium?
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Magnesium is a shiny gray metal, which burns with a white-hot light. It is the eleventh-most prevalent element in the body. It is also extracted through the kidneys via an interaction with ethanol, and its deficiency is, therefore, a common problem with late-stage alcoholics. Which you are.
HALF LIGHT: Light yourself on fire. Burn with a brilliant white light.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY. Hey, we haven’t had a - well, we haven’t gone on a bender since Martinaise!
DRAMA: Ehhhh….
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Ehhhh….
ENDURANCE: Ehhhh….
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Fine. There had been the time you had gotten back from Martinaise. After Gottlieb had checked Kim’s handiwork and disinfected you some more and stitched you up some more some more, and sent you home. Alone. Back to your infested hole.
YOU: You and Kim had stood at the door of your apartment. You had gotten the address from Jean. Standing there, you had known you shouldn’t invite him in.
APARTMENT: You could feel something lurking behind the apartment door. You stood there awkwardly, both of you staring at it.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Isn’t he going to invite me in? Kim had thought.
INLAND EMPIRE: DO NOT. DO NOT LET KIM SEE INSIDE THERE.
YOU: “Alright, well….bye!”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Right.”
DRAMA: If you let him go, you will never see him again! Drop to your knees and beg, sire!
HALF LIGHT: Invite him in, and then keep him there. Forever.
SAVOIR FAIRE: What, keep him captive in your apartment? Is that the only move you’ve got?
HALF LIGHT: Yes.
PAIN THRESHOLD: Yes.
VOLITION: Damnit, yes.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Don’t do that. The lieutenant will just wait until you’re asleep and then sneak out.
HALF LIGHT: If he doesn’t kick the living shit out of you first.
YOU: So you had let him go. And then, because you hadn’t been able to help it, you had gone into your infested hole and had dug through the apartment looking for clues as to who you had used to be. You had found them alright. You had found a few bottles of vodka, too, which were soon emptied.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: That was hardly a bender.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Detective,” he says. You look up. “Perhaps you can find the address of our next witness in your atlas?” He’s watching you, eyebrow raised.
YOU: You can take a hint. You put the atlas under your case files, and get to work.
≠≠
YOU: That night you walk home with the oversized atlas under your arm. It’s late, a little after 20:00, and the night is black and cold and clear. It’s spring. Spring is always hard for Revachol. The gang violence has gotten worse in the last few weeks. You and Kim have been running around Jamrock, finding dead bodies and attempting to enact justice for them. It’s exhausting.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Someone has to do it.
YOU: Tonight, you and Kim had lingered on the roof as you smoked a cigarette. His eyes had darted towards your hand as you’d raised the cigarette to your mouth, but he hadn’t lit one.
EMPATHY: He can wait. He’s had a long day. He wants to smoke a cigarette, alone, in his apartment. The silent, empty kitchen. The room feeling large around him in its emptiness.
YOU: When you get back to your apartment, you spread the oversized atlas on your coffee table and hunch over it. There is one bulb in the lamp in the corner and it throws a patchy yellow glow on everything. The couch creaks under you as you lean forward. The worst of the couch has been covered by an old sheet you had dug out from underneath the bed. The worst of the sheet is currently covered by your ass. You flip the atlas open halfway through and press the stiff pages down flat with your hand.
OVERSIZED ATLAS: Hello, fellow traveller!! Where would you like to go today?
[Read atlas? Will take + 1 hours.]
YOU: You look at the table of contents. The atlas boasts coverage of the entire world, with a distinct focus on Insulinde. The isolas swim on the page in a sea of pale, which is represented by the blank whiteness of the page surrounding the isola. Something about it makes your chest tight.
1. IILMARA
2. MUNDI
3. SEOL
4. KATLA
5. GRAAD
6. SAMARA
7. INSULINDE
You don’t see Atlantide anywhere.
LOGIC: Perhaps it’s a smaller island off the coast of another isola?
INTERFACING: You begin to read.
1. IILMARA: Iilmara is a vast desert, small dots of cities and colonies scattered sparsely across the brown page. They cluster around the great river deltaed up through it like a jagged tear in skin. Further colonies stipple the west coast. They look like mining cities. There are trade routes running through the desert, all leading to the shore closest to -
2. MUNDI: The Occident. The atlas is a tangled snarl of trade routes, supplying all of the world’s riches. Everything that makes life worth living: spices and silks and rich deep wines. You spot Oranje, with its tulip fields. You wonder where Klassje is now. The Pisantic sea nearly splits the isola in two. You study the tidy narrow streets making up Thylakos-by-Pisantic, all leading up to or down from old ruins.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: They are not as poor in other parts of the world as you are in Revachol.
AUTHORITY: That is your punishment for rebellion. Elsewhere, people are happy.
INLAND EMPIRE: True love is only possible in the next world, for other people.
3. SEOL: Seol is a vague sketch. It spans three pages: two of them are an outline of the isola and its surrounding ocean; the third is a rough map of Seol Cite, based entirely on outdated maps and smuggled reports.
YOU: What are you like?
SEOL: Seol says nothing, an impenetrable fortress.
4. KATLA: Katla is ice and tundra, small dots of villages here and there. Most of the routes are centered in Vaasa City.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: You wonder what the aurora borealis is like. You imagine it is beautiful, the spreading drunken color behind your eyelids as the world spins around you.
5. GRAAD:
VOLITION: Are you sure you want to look at this one, brother?
YOU: I feel like Atlantide is there. I feel like I’m meant to be there.
SHIVERS: There is nothing for you there, Harry.
6. SAMARA: You trace the roads which trickle out from the edges of the archipelago. They all come to an end in the jungle.
VISUAL CALCULUS: There is a great map-colored pit in the Koko Nur desert where gravity just stops working.
LOGIC: Fails.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Maybe if you go there you’ll stop getting dragged down into the gutter.
SHIVERS: No. That is the kind of animal you are. You are a Revacholian Gutter-Rat, the sort of being that lives on piss and stale alcohol and whatever scraps are left behind.
INLAND EMPIRE: You like it like that, Harry. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself in Koko Nur. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself anywhere else. You don’t belong anywhere else, not Atlantide, not Graad, not Samara.
HALF LIGHT: Except maybe six feet under.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Revachol mostly burns its bodies. They have run out of room for more.
HALF LIGHT: What about the bottom of the sea?
VOLITION: You already tried that. It didn’t work.
7. INSULINDE: You flip through the Semenine Islands, the spattered archipelagos of life, of civilization. Insulinde, you note, has more ocean than the other isolas. A greater protection against the pale.
VISUAL CALCULUS: Except, of course, Revachol, which is where you are, Harry!
SHIVERS: This is better. This is where you belong.
OVERSIZED-ATLAS: The atlas seems focused, heavily, on Caillou.
LOGIC: Different editions are sold on different isolas.
OVERSIZED-ATLAS: There are several very detailed pages of the streets of Revachol, which you trace with your fingers until you find your apartment, and then the precinct, and then, of course, Kim’s apartment.
INLAND EMPIRE: This will come in handy.
YOU: It could. But where is Atlantide? “Come on,” you say to the atlas. “Where are you?”
OVERSIZED ATLAS: I’m right here, traveller! And so are you! We are here, together! Isn’t this grand?
YOU: “Okay, but where’s L'isola d’atlantide?”
OVERSIZED ATLAS: The atlas thinks. It says, “I do not know of such a place, mon ami.” It sounds pensive and sad, as if it has failed you. Please, it thinks, do not take me back to the library.
YOU: You sit back on the couch and rub your eyes. You’ve got a lamp on and the light is yellow, spilling across the couch into blackness. Outside, the flicker of the sodium lights, human voices as they pass by, a bit of laughter. The sudden urge comes over you to go out to a nearby bar. Any bar will do. You need to sit amongst people. To listen to them. To talk to them. You are so far away from them. You might as well be in Atlantide.
You lean forward suddenly, flipping through the pages of the atlas quickly. You come back to -
5. GRAAD: The bird’s-eye view shows the isola surrounded by pale. She had travelled through the pale to leave.
HALF LIGHT: Had risked total destruction just to get away from you.
The cities stand out on the map like architectural features. You flip to the map of Mirova.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Mirova is a large city, arranged in a ring around the city center. Churches and government buildings and hotels and shopping centers stand out. Vodka distilleries and factories. From there ripple out apartment buildings and then multi-family houses and then single-family houses and then estates. Where is she? Where does she live?
VISUAL CALCULUS: You close your eyes and summon the smell of apricots. You put your big sausage-finger to the page.
You open your eyes. There. She’s in the neighborhood of Yaro-Graad, on Karzai Ulitsa.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: [godly: success] You close your eyes, your eyelids trembling as you squeeze them tightly shut, letting in little peeps of light as you tremble. You try to picture her house. Where she lives now. Is it large and open and airy, just like she always wanted? Is it painted yellow, like you had painted the little house on Perdition over and over again, the paint peeling from your sloppy paint job and the exhaust from the motorway?
You can see nothing.
OVERSIZED ATLAS: Yaro-Graad is a university town, also known for its beet production and its bicycle factory. The atlas pauses, then says, as if it doesn’t want to report it - as if it doesn’t want to hurt you - although the summers are cool, with beautiful clear days, they have bad winters. Cold, long, snowy. She probably spends them inside, laughing with her lover as she gets out of the cold, amazed at how cold it is.
HALF LIGHT: And she would still rather be there than here with you.
OVERSIZED ATLAS: It is sorry to say this, but it is an atlas. It has to report the truth.
PERCEPTION: There’s a terrible animal noise coming from somewhere in the room. You pick the atlas up between your two hands as if ready to tear it in half. It quivers, slightly, but says nothing.
HALF LIGHT: It knows what it did.
LOGIC: It’s just a book. What did you expect?
RHETORIC: Go on. Tear up one of the few books from the Jamrock Library. Help reduce reading literacy further for the citizens of Jamrock. It doesn’t help them anyway.
EMPATHY: The book doesn’t deserve this.
YOU: Shaking, breathing hard, you lower the atlas slowly to the table, still intact. You put your hands over your face. If the atlas says anything to you, you don’t hear it over the sounds you’re making.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You know what would make you feel better? Some genuine Graadian vodka. The kind they make in Yaro-Graad. The kind they sell at the Frittte five blocks away.
GRAADIAN VODKA: You go get the vodka. You swear the vodka tastes like apricots. It chases you all the way down into blackness.
≠≠
RADIO-ALARM-CLOCK: You wake up: Betancour, twenty-four degrees centigrade, clear.
YOU: You don’t know where the noise is coming from, at first. An aerostatic, maybe, high above you. What is Betancour? What does it have to do with you?
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: And why is your head pounding? And why does your mouth taste like stale apricots and isopropyl alcohol?
VOLITION: You got drunk. Again.
VISUAL CALCULUS: Your radio-alarm-clock has gone off again. The reason it sounds so strange is that you’re in the living room, face down on the couch. The bottle of Graadian vodka was knocked over sometime in the night and now it is empty and your carpet is stiff with spilled booze.
LOGIC: Er. Stiff-er.
YOU: You should get up and turn off the radio. You should stick your head under the faucet. You should go out and get the greasiest kebab you can to try and soak some of this alcohol up.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Your stomach feels sour and swollen. Your eyes feel hot and dry.
PAIN THRESHOLD: You feel like shit all around, Harry-boy. Was it worth it?
YOU: You don’t remember. You lay on the couch, curling onto your side and propping your aching head on your arm. You listen to the radio as it crackles its way through its reports, finally cycling to Revachol. Jamrock, seven degrees centigrade, wet. You can just see one of the windows from your position on the couch. It’s dark gray outside, nearly night. The sky bears down on you.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It’s the kind of sky that needs a little nip of whiskey to burn down your throat and into your stomach. That’s the only thing that’ll cheer you up right now. You know how this works, kiddo. This is not your first time around this carousel.
VOLITION: You shouldn’t. Kim will be so disappointed. What you should do is put a raincoat on over your disco-ass blazer and slog your way into work.
YOU: This is what you do. You keep your head down against the rain. Water drips cold and wet on the back of your neck, dampening down your hair. When you climb the steps to C-wing, you notice the bottoms of your pants are wet. You go in, grunting to Kim, who has just gotten in himself. He is cleaning his glasses off with a handkerchief. He looks up as you go past.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You are a green-and-orange-and-raincloud blur, stinking of vodka and sweat. You lean against the radiator and let yourself steam off. You shake the water out of your hair as Jean passes, accidentally spattering him.
JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Goddamnit, shitkid! You’re like a fucking dog.”
YOU: You mumble an apology, but he pushes past you roughly to get to the canteen.
YOU: Later that day, you and Kim make the plunge to the Kineema. You’re following a lead on a reputed La Puta Madre safe house which is perched on one of the many shambling narrow roads of Jamrock like a rotting tooth. You mark the potential safe house off in your atlas with a pencil.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim gives you a sideways look, but says nothing.
EMPATHY: Really, defacing library property? That’s where he draws the line?
SHIVERS: The safe house is empty right now. It will be empty for several more days. You are wasting your time here, detectives. Outside the Kineema, it is cold and gray, a hard steady drum on the windscreen.
YOU: You worry for the buds on the trees. They tremble in the wind.
ENDURANCE: Not unlike your hands, which you have shoved between your thighs to hold them steady.
EMPATHY: You worry the buds aren’t going to make it.
KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant gives you another look, and then, reaching forward, clicks the heat up. He sits back in a rustle of nylon.
YOU: You roll your head back on the headrest and look out the window. You are parked several blocks away from the safe house. There are few people out in this weather. Someone slumps huddled in a nearby bus stop, which is missing half its roof.
YOU: “Hey, Kim, why can’t I find anything on Atlantide in my atlas?”
AUTHORITY: Your atlas? Surely it is Jamrock’s atlas.
LOGIC: No one has ever checked it out. You were the first.
OVERSIZED ATLAS: The atlas trembles where it lays against your ankle in the footwell of the Kineema. Yes! Take me out! Keep me!! Please!! Let me see the light, let me breathe!!!!
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim makes a noise beside you. You turn to look at him. His eyes trace your face slowly, as if determining if you are serious.
VISUAL CALCULUS: What’s that look on his face?
EMPATHY: Pity.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Detective, Atlantide does not actually exist. It is a make-believe place. A fantasy for children.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: And delusional adults, he does not add.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Martin Polon set off into the pale seventy years ago, vowing to find the famed isola. He never returned.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Oh. Then Jean….
KIM KITSURAGI: “Satellite-Officer Vicquemare was making a sarcastic remark at your expense.”
INLAND EMPIRE: So there really isn’t a place in this world you haven’t fucked up?
[Damaged morale - 1]
CONCEPTUALIZATION: The bottom of the ocean, maybe. You haven’t fucked up down there, yet.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: In Martinaise, under the steady drum of rain, the ice melts a little more. A Coupris 40 - which had stood with you through more than a dozen struck buildings and cars, three dead dogs, and three dozen bouts of vomiting, sinks further and further down into the salt water.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim frowns, lifting his head. He’s not sure why, but someone, somewhere, is mistreating a motor carriage.
SHIVERS: Down. Down. Far below the 40 and kilometers out, down at the bottom of the sea, where everything is silent and dark and cold, sits a mass of land. A former island. The remains of walls, of buildings, have been crumbling in the current for hundreds of years, and will continue to crumble for hundreds more.
YOU: “So Atlantide doesn’t exist?”
RHETORIC: Hang on. They said the Insulindian Phasmid didn’t exist either, and you’ve got photographic evidence. Jean hadn’t believed you until Kim had shown him the picture. “Holy fucking shit,” he’d said with a note of soft wonder that made your chest hurt to hear it.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I’m afraid not.”
SAVOIR FAIRE: Careful, bratan. You are showing your whole heart on your face right now.
KIM KITSURAGI: “You know, when I was a child, I used to pretend I was flying an aerostatic through the pale and had discovered Atlantide. Mostly when I was trying to fall asleep.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He still does. Nights he really can’t sleep, he soars low, skimming the city: its tall clear buildings sparkling in the sun, the river snaking through the plain. Far below, a man looks up at him, shading his eyes. A child waves at him. A dog chases his shadow, snapping at it, never catching it.
He had flown it a few nights in the Whirling-in-Rags, the nights you had laid there injured and moaning and rotting, before you’d woken up. Once, he had seen your aerostatic go down in front of him. He had tried to get to you, fighting the air current, which had kept buffeting him up. The island, he realized with horror, was sinking, and you were drowning…
He had woken up then to you thrashing and moaning, and had reached out, grasped your hand tightly, arm to arm, gripping it until you had settled down.
YOU: “You still do.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He blinks. He looks embarrassed.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: You have an image then of the two of you on a remote island. Just the two of you. The bomb will not come for you there. There will be no smell of apricots, no death, no alcohol.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: No alcohol?
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim has a far-away look on his face, a softness around his mouth. His fingers twitch slightly, as if he is flying an aerostatic even now.
NEW THOUGHT PROJECT: THE LOST ISLAND: ACCEPT?
[YES]
YOU: You lean your head on the headrest and look at him. “I bet I could find it, Kim.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He sighs, shortly, through his nose. He leans forward in his seat, peering out the windscreen. He squints past the water beaded on it, hovers his hands over the heating vents. He says, “Believe me. If you found Atlantide, I would be extremely interested. But you won’t, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a fable. A tale for children.”
INLAND EMPIRE: Like being happy.
RHETORIC: Further proof that happiness is only achievable at the bottom of the ocean.
HALF LIGHT: Yes. Throw yourself in.
SHIVERS: Sink down, down, down. Until your lungs burn and your eyes go blind and your feet scrape the bottom. You will fall forever before you hit Atlantide.
HALF LIGHT: You have been falling since the day you were born, brother.
YOU: "Like being happy?”
KIM KITSURAGI: Something passes over his face. “You don’t think happiness is possible in Jamrock?”
YOU: You lean forward. You can see a patch of stubble he has missed underneath his jaw, the indent of his glasses on his nose. His eyes, dark and magnified behind his lenses. The way his upper lip twitches when he takes a breath and says, “Detective-”
SHIVERS: SAFE HOUSE. NOW.
YOU: You wheel away, looking out the windscreen, then lunge for the Kineema door, opening your jacket to get at your weapon. Kim curses, then comes out after you.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You chase the young man down and, kneeling on him in a wet alley, get some valuable information out of him. And if the feeling of success thrumming alongside your throbbing heart and skinned knees isn’t happiness, you don’t know how you’ll know what is.
≠≠
You go back to the Jamrock Library to find out more about Atlantide. The NICE YOUNG MAN from before helps you with the card catalogue and with taking you to the right section of shelving. He asks you about your interest in the isola when he is checking you out.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh, he is definitely checking you out.
YOU: You tell him you’re thinking of taking a trip. He laughs like you’ve made a joke. As you’re leaving the library, you hear the dreaded voice of the MEAN LIBRARIAN behind you. “Wait - who is that? Is that that damned drunken cop-”
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You high-tail it out of there, jumping over three steps on your way down.
DRAMA: You can never go back there again. Looks like those books are yours now, fair and square.
EMPATHY: You hope the NICE YOUNG MAN doesn’t get in trouble.
YOU: You take your ill-begotten gains to a nearby cafe, which is famous for its lack of alcohol, and less famous for its fairly decent falafel. You scarf down your food, holding open the book with one hand as you eat. You drip creamy white sauce onto the pages as you slobber.
LOGIC: This book definitely isn’t going back to the library.
INLAND EMPIRE: The arcane mysteries open themselves to you.
ARCANE MYSTERIES: Atlantide is said to be a long-lost ancient isola somewhere in Insulinde. The ancient cultures of Ubi Sunt had stories of an isola that had been favored by the gods. A real utopia of light and knowledge and love. Centuries ago. They had angered the gods somehow. Stories vary based on which culture you are speaking to: some blame it on vanity, or debauchery, or the worship of a new god. The more practical blame it on rising sea levels, a hole opening in the pale. Regardless, the isola was destroyed for its faults.
EMPATHY: All those people.
LOGIC: Dead.
ARCANE MYSTERIES: Some say the pale crept in and ate it away, disseminated it into the nearby Insulindian islands. Some say it is still out there in the pale; others say it has sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Three hundred years ago, messages were received from the navigators sent out by Irene La Navigateur claiming to have discovered a whole new isola, one of crumbled ruins and soft spongy green grass and small waving willowy trees. This is commonly assumed to be a mass delusion suffered by the crew before they turned on each other. Of course, none returned.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Mass delusions are common in the pale. Most common is the sight of a vast white bird soaring through the pale.
INLAND EMPIRE: Some say it is made of the pale itself.
VOLITION: It is very, very bad luck to kill this bird.
INLAND EMPIRE: You get the sense that you have killed this bird, in another lifetime.
YOU: You wipe your hands on your trousers, and lean over the book again. You are sitting with one hand shoving your hair back, leaning on your elbow over the book. The other hand splays over the book, holding it open.
ARCANE MYSTERIES: The culture from Atlantide had brought the world complicated maths and little olives stuffed with cheese and drizzled with honey. They had written the first Volta. They had no fewer than three dozen types of birds.
LOGIC: What happened to the birds when the island went under the sea? Surely they could’ve flown away?
SHIVERS: They did. And they flew to what would centuries later become Ubi Sunt and Villiers and Bashir and Laurentide. And they started again.
EMPATHY: Poor birds.
RHETORIC: Maybe they didn’t like it on Atlantide. Maybe the whole island stank like dates and they couldn’t turn a corner without running into something they’d fucked up. Maybe they were happy to get free, to start over.
LOGIC: They flew through the pale?
ENCYCLOPEDIA: The pale was less bad back then. Even now you get the sense of the world winding down, hemmed in between two closing walls.
DRAMA: It’s not fair. Just when I’ve gotten my shit together!
VOLITION: Is your shit together, detective? Is it really?
DRAMA: You feel sometimes as if you are walking a tight rope in a circus with a pit of lions under you. In this feeling, you’re drunk, which means you’re steady, but the drunk is fading, which means you are wobbling.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You’re not drunk! I’d be the first to know!
DRAMA: It’s a metaphor, jackass. What I mean is you are barely holding on. You are mostly doing it so Kim doesn’t leave you.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Kim will never leave you. A good engineer goes down with his aerostatic.
YOU: Does that make me the pilot?
INLAND EMPIRE: No. That makes you the aerostatic.
YOU: Does this mean Kim wants to wrench on me?
CONCEPTUALIZATION: What does that even mean?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You know what it means. And yes, yes he does. Come on. Haven’t you seen him looking at you in the Kineema, his eyes running over you? He wants to have fuck, baby.
YOU: Kim is far too much of a professional to do that.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Is he, though? Kim’s a speedfreak.
PERCEPTION: A loud scraping noise nearby startles you. You look up, letting the book fall shut. The waitress, who looks old and tired and very annoyed, is putting chairs up, very pointedly, on tables. You get up, apologizing, and leave.
SHIVERS: It’s late. It’s dark out. The recent rain has left the pavements cool and damp. The smell of rain still lingers on top of the other city smells: urine and trash and cooking food. You step out, tucking the book into your jacket pocket.
YOU: When you get home, you go straight to bed. You crack the windows open and lay on your bed, hands behind your head, staring at the fall of light across your floor. You turn your RADIO-ALARM-CLOCK on to the one-hour timer. Sometimes, if you’re sober, you have to reset it, and again, before you can fall asleep. You let the weather play, low and soothing, telling you to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, the weather is still talking to you, like it has never stopped.
The radio helps. It makes you feel less alone.
(Sometimes it backfires on you, picking up in a blare, broadcasting an incoming storm. When that happens, its harsh buzzing alarm makes you fall out of bed, grabbing for your gun, this is the End Times, it makes you run to the door, to go - and then a flash of light that has you down on your knees.
A rumble of aerostatics moving in?
No. Just rain.
SHIVERS: Somewhere across the city a man has woken up, too, out of a fitful sleep. He also has the weather radio on, but low. He’s not listening to it. Not really. He’s sitting in his deep windowsill, forehead leaned against the screen. The spray of rain mists in on his face, on his bare arms and legs.)
RADIO-ALARM-CLOCK: Sometimes there’s a pale-storm and the resultant surge knocks out the radio waves. The soft empty crackle makes you feel lonely. People say they’ve been happening more lately. You say nothing. After all, for you, there’s no lately. There’s only always.
Tonight, as you fall asleep, as you are nearly asleep, as you feel the blackness clawing at you, tearing your thoughts to shreds, half-images and thoughts, you hear the RADIO-ALARM-CLOCK giving its smooth endless round of weather. Zsiemsk, five degrees centigrade, clear. Seol-Cite not available. L’isola d’atlantide, eleven degrees centigrade, wet.
INLAND EMPIRE: Wait, what? What was that?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Too late, Harry-boy…
≠≠
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You really think you can outrun yourself by sinking to the bottom of the ocean?
LIMBIC SYSTEM: You can….you can drive into the ocean, Harry. You’ve tried it before. It didn’t work. Why didn’t it work?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You got scared.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: The cold shock of water waking you up…looking over at the passenger seat and realizing you were alone, that the soft mocking sound of her laughter was only the rolling clink of empty bottles…the desperate struggle to get your door open, the cold water pouring in, soaking your clothes, making it hard to move…
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: For all your puerile moaning and sobbing about how you want to die, you don’t, do you? You’re afraid.
1. No, I really do want to die. I mean it.
2. Of course I’m afraid.
3. I’m not going to drown in a meter of water. That’s stupid. And embarrassing.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: You can drown in a few centimeters of water, child. You almost did, once. Don’t you remember?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Your partner remembers. Your old partner. Jean. You had both been high and drunk and you had fallen asleep in your apartment and he had woken up to find you face-down in the bathtub. Drowning. His heart had hammered with speed and fear and desperation and he had pulled you out dripping and cold and mostly naked and thrown you down on the floor and pushed on your wet hairy chest until you vomited and began to breathe again.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: He had cracked your head off the tub as he had gotten you out.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: He had been crying when you had regained consciousness. You had put your cold dead head on his face, his neck, his shoulder, and said, What happened, Jean, what did I do now?
LIMBIC SYSTEM: This is something of a pattern with you…
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You ruin people. You make them watch you destroy yourself. You’re a real sadist, you know that? Do you like watching the people you love hurt? Do you like knowing it’s your fault? You must do, or you wouldn’t keep doing it.
1. They don’t have to watch. They can just leave…
2. Yes. I like ruining people. I want them to hurt just as much as I do. If I can’t get better, I don’t want them to be happy, either.
3. I don’t have room to care about anybody else.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: No they can’t. Do you know why? Because they love you.
1. But she left…
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Then she didn’t really love you.
1. Nobody loves me…
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You only wish that were true.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: The way Kim’s hand lingers on your shoulder when he touches you. All the ways he touches you when he doesn’t need to. It makes your heart race and pound. It makes your fingers tremble.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: And what about Jean? He remembers loving you. He still does. How many times does he watch you across the room? He goes home at night and worries about you, when he’s not busy obliterating his sense of self.
1. I don’t want anyone to love me.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: We’ve heard this one before. You don’t want to get better. You want to get worse.
1. Yes…
2. No, wait…
3. I don’t know what I want.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Listen. You want to run away. You think you won’t have these dreams on that little lost island of yours? You’ll still be trapped behind these eyes every night when you go to bed, Harry. That’s the great tragedy of your life. You can never get away from yourself.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: He’s slipping….
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Right. Dream-time. Have fun figuring this one out, Harry….
≠≠
You stand on an island under the clear sun. The sun is warm on the top of your head, on your cheeks, your hands, your neck. You’re standing on the beach, waves crashing in to fall gently at your feet. Your feet and ankles are drying, as if you’ve been recently soaked. You turn to look behind you. A short sandy beach climbs up to grass and continues to meadow. Far off, the glint of sun on buildings. The city is that way. You will go there, but not yet.
You are at peace. You are happy. Someone is waiting for you, back in the city.
Suddenly you hear a rumbling noise, something shaking the ground beneath you. The sky above you tears, a screeching noise rising through the air and filling your ears your skull your lungs.
Something is wrong.
You look up. An aerostatic, orange and sleek and well-maintained, is tumbling out of control over the ocean, barreling towards you. Smoke is pouring out of it. It is on fire, it is going to hit the island, and someone you love is inside it. It streaks over you, spitting debris and ash down on you, and you run after it, screaming something, but you struggle against the sand, you run and run and you cover no distance; in front of you you see it spinning down, down down -
≠≠
PHONE: The phone rings shrilly, waking you up. It’s still dark as you fumble for the phone, put it to your ear. You grunt. Your heart is pounding in your chest. You’re sweating. You’ve had a bad dream. Even now glimpses come to you and are lost, spinning off into the pale, to be returned to you years from now.
JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Sober up, shitkid. Your partner needs you.”
INLAND EMPIRE: This sounds familiar. It rings a bell in you. You’ve heard this before.
SUGGESTION: But not in this tone.
INLAND EMPIRE: Oh shit. It’s Kim.
YOU: “Kim?” you say, your heart pounding so loud you almost miss what Jean says next.
JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Good job. Glad you remember some things, at least.”
EMPATHY: Something’s wrong. He sounds upset.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s upset about a lot of things. Losing his partner to a haze of drugs and alcohol and self-destruction, THEN losing his partner to amnesia, THEN losing his old partner’s new partner to this 57th precinct bullshit.
YOU: You’re already falling out of bed, pulling on the closest clothes you can find and running for the door. “What is it? Where is he?”
JEAN VICQUEMARE: “We don’t know,” he says as you clothesline yourself with the phone cord around the corner. You step back towards the bedroom, press the phone to your ear, hard. “The 57th precinct called us. He was finishing up a case for them. Something to do with fighting-cock smuggling.”
VOLITION: Don’t laugh. This isn’t funny.
JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Yeah, I know. But apparently Kim went to investigate a lead at the old FALN warehouse in the GRIH and his precinct hasn’t heard from him in hours. Missed his checkin.”
AUTHORITY: It wasn’t his responsibility anymore. He shouldn’t have been there.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: “We all work in the same city,” Kim Kitsuragi thinks. He is a good lieutenant.
YOU: You drop the phone behind you as you go to the living room, hear it hit the floor. You can hear Jean counting to squawk at you, but it’s meaningless as you run through the living room. You grab the OVERSIZED ATLAS off the coffee table, flipping through the close-up maps of Revachol until you get to the GRIH.
YOU: “Sorry,” you say to the OVERSIZED ATLAS. You tear the page out, crumpling in your sweating hand.
OVERSIZED ATLAS PAGE: Yes!!! I breathe free! Let me see the streets I speak of!!!
YOU: You leave the phone on the floor, Jean’s voice like background radio waves, like a weather station in another city, and you go. You race through the streets, letting your legs take the lead, hair and jacket flying out behind you as you run, your throat dry and burning, gasping for air, as -
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Kim Kitsuragi parks the Kineema some distance away from a vast warehouse and walks the street towards it, his boot heels marking out the beat of your heart, his swift light direct way of walking. Even as you run down the Rue de Suresnes, cut the corner short to the Rue de Jardin, jumping an overturned trash can, you can see the street signs as Kim walks past them, HARBOR A, HARBOR B, HARBOR C, street names utterly devoid of imagination, of charm. He walks them, hand on his holster. He won’t take his gun out, not yet.
HALF LIGHT: Foolish. He should.
YOU: You try to read the map as you run, looking for HARBOR A at the same time as you attempt to leap over the corpse of a dead dog that has been steadily increasing in size for the past week. You and Kim have been taking notes on it as you drive past. He thinks it’s in poor taste. You feel sorry for it. But you both do it, you can’t help it. You leap the dog without looking, knowing it’s there, but you trip over the curb, coming down hard on the dirty street, skinning your knees and one palm badly. The map crumples under your hand, staining with blood. You pick yourself up and, cursing, stumbling, run on, bits of gravel falling off the map as you go.
INLAND EMPIRE: Why didn’t he ask for help? You would’ve gone with him.
ENDURANCE: You were a liability. It was a simple case. You would’ve turned it into something more. Discovered a great Moralintern conspiracy, or taught the chickens communism.
YOU: You run, tripping over curbs and uneven sidewalks and people sprawled out sleeping in doorways. “Sorry,” you rasp out to them, the wind tearing your voice away from you as you run and run. You cut across streets, darting in front of busses and motor carriages, the lights barreling down on you. Honks, squeal of tires, shouted insults. You run past a group of kids skulking outside a bar, too young to even be allowed in under the faintest of pretenses. “Run, pig, run!” they cackle. One of them throws something at you. They start to chase you, but you lose them easily. The smell of Jamrock is ceding to the smell of the sea as you get closer and closer to the warehouse district. You haven’t run this far or this hard in a long time. Your body tells you this.
VOLITION: You can’t stop.
ENDURANCE: You won’t stop.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Kim is going into the warehouse, his gun and flashlight before him. He is moving carefully forward, hunched a little to make himself a smaller target.
Not small enough. There is someone behind him there is SOMEONE BEHIND HIM they get the jump on him, grabbing him. They spin and grapple, Kim struggling and dropping the flashlight, and the man hits Kim in the face once, twice. As Kim drops to the ground, tugging the man down with him, the man pulls free and gets the boot in on Kim, once or twice on his ribs and stomach -
YOU: You throw yourself inside a doorway to check the map. There is a mad dog somewhere nearby growling with rage. You can hear it froth at the mouth, can hear the graveling in its throat.
OVERSIZED ATLAS: Have you considered going Main to Industrial Way? It will be a shortcut.
YOU: But there’s a blue splotch, that means water…
OVERSIZED ATLAS: Yes, when I was young, there had been an offshoot of the Esperance. Now it is only a dirty drainage ditch. You may get wet up to your ankles, but I guarantee you can make it, my rambler.
YOU: You do, sloshing through the shortcut, running, map singing in your pocket as you gain the warehouse district. The stink of the sea, always present in the edges of Revachol, begins to overpower you. Your breath is coming so fast and harsh it hurts; you taste copper in the back of your throat, your vision is graying out around the edges. And then -
COUPRIS KINEEMA: The Kineema is parked neatly on a street three blocks away from where the warehouses start. You race over, try the doors. It’s locked.
POCKET. Pssst. Hey. Hey, you there.
YOU: You reach into your pocket - thank someone you keep all your clothes at or on the foot of your bed - and pull out the keys. You have a spare to Kim’s place and a spare for the Kineema. You let yourself into the MC now. It smells like Kim: pine and engine grease. There is no Kim; the car is empty. Bereft.
COUPRIS KINEEMA: You fumble at the radio, call in to the 41st. Jules picks up. You tell him you’ve found the Kineema, where it’s parked. “Kim’s in the FALN warehouse,” you gasp. It’s hard to gain your breath and speak. “He’s down. I’m going in.”
JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Wait for backup, Harry! Do you hear me? Don’t you fucking go in there!”
YOU: “I’m sorry, Jean,” you say, and drop the radio.
JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Goddamnit, Harry!” you hear as you close the door and take the time to lock it - Kim would never forgive you if you did not - and go find Kim.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim is in the third FALN warehouse. The place stinks of chickenshit and musty old warehouse and dock water. You creep along until you find him. Well, you creep along until you find his legs sticking out from behind a pile of crates, where he has been dragged, a clear drag-mark in the chickenshit and dust.
YOU: You scurry over to him, turning off your flashlight, and drop down on your knees beside him.
PAIN THRESHOLD: Your knees sting where you’ve skinned them.
KIM KITSURAGI: You can hear the whistling noise of his breathing. You run your fingers over his face lightly, which is tacky with drying blood. You press your fingers to his throat in the dark. His skin is warm and soft under your fingers. His heart is beating strongly despite his lack of consciousness.
PERCEPTION: The crates towering above Kim stink like gasoline. Hand moving to Kim’s shoulder, you lean around them to see a man nearby with his back to you. He doesn’t see you.
HALF LIGHT: Yet.
PERCEPTION: The animal sounds of hundreds of fighting-cocks block out all sound of your movement. The man is ranting to himself, pouring gasoline on everything. “This’ll show them!” he says.
INLAND EMPIRE: He is counting on Kim’s body to be mistaken as him long enough to make his getaway. He is a desperate man. He will leave here, steal a motor carriage, and run as far as he can.
YOU: You lean down to Kim, far, farther, so the man can’t hear you. One hand flat on the ground to steady yourself, the other on Kim’s neck. You press your mouth to Kim’s ear. “I’ll be back,” you say. Kim doesn’t respond.
HALF LIGHT: You creep up behind the man, who hears something behind him and starts to turn. Your flashlight makes a satisfying sound when it connects with his head. He goes down.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You cuff him and drag him to the side. The air is heavy with the stink of gasoline and chickens.
EMPATHY: All this life almost lost.
HALF LIGHT: You stare down at the man below you and kick him in the ribs, once. He makes a grunting noise, curling up on himself.
YOU: You wrench Kim’s gun away from the man and leave him there. You return to Kim, who is still unconscious. When you play your flashlight over his face, it is bloody and swelling already. You find his glasses nearby and put them in your pocket.
KIM KITSURAGI: You carry Kim out into the moonlight and back to the Kineema, three long blocks with Kim slung over your shoulder. You settle him into the passenger seat and radio to fill the station in. You describe the situation and ask for backup to retrieve the suspect. “And maybe a bio secure unit,” you say, thinking of all those chickens.
JEAN VICQUEMARE: Jean curses you out for a full minute. Then he says, “How is-”
YOU: “He’s okay. I think. Is Gottlieb in?”
GOTTLIEB: “I am always in,” he says.
YOU: You sign off. You turn to Kim and study his swollen face in the street lights coming in through the windscreen of the Kineema. His head lolls back against the headrest. You have never seen him unconscious. You fumble around in your pockets.
INTERFACING: You’ve still got his handkerchief in your jacket pocket. It’s yours now.
YOU: You wet it with a bottle of water out of the footwell. You hold onto Kim’s chin with one hand and lean over into his space. You are cleaning his face, as gently as you can to get the dried blood off, when he wakes up.
PERCEPTION: First he is unconscious and then the slightest swell of his chest, as if he is taking a breath and holding it. His shoulder stiffens and his hand shoots out to grab your wrist in a grip so tight it hurts.
YOU: “Kim!” You are so relieved you’re grinning.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Harry,” he says. It is almost a question. His eyes open. He reaches up to touch you. His gloved hand pats your shoulder, your muttonchops.
REACTION SPEED: You resist the urge to nuzzle into his palm, but barely.
KIM KITSURAGI: He continues to touch, small pats with his fingers, as if he’s afraid to put your eye out. Your cheek, your nose, your forehead.
YOU: You close your eyes to it all and breathe. Then your eyes fly open. “Oh! Hey, here. I have your glasses. Sorry. I didn’t want to put them on. Your nose, you know. It’s a little. Busted.” You pull them out of your pocket and put them in his hand.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Yes. I can feel that.” His voice is thick and nasally. He unfolds his glasses and winces when he settles the nosepiece on the bridge of his nose. He’s still laying back against the seat. His eyes take you in: your wild, sweaty hair, your flushed cheeks, the blood-stained handkerchief crumpled in your hand. “Did you run the whole way here?” he asks.
EMPATHY: He might be thinking about smiling, if his face didn’t hurt so bad.
KIM KITSURAGI: You can see the moment he remembers. “The suspect-” he says, sitting up suddenly.
YOU: “Back there,” you say. You gesture to the warehouse. “All tied up for the 57th precinct. They’re on their way.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He reaches for the door handle, but your hand on his thigh pulls him back. He looks over at you.
YOU: You flush, but keep your hand there, a heavy weight. If he wants to move, he needs to shove it off.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I need to meet them.”
YOU: “You need to go see Gottlieb. Dolores Dei, Kim, what were you thinking?”
KIM KITSURAGI: A noise. He is looking down at your hand on his thigh.
HALF LIGHT: Your grip has tightened with anger. You can see where your fingers dig in.
INTERFACING: Let go. Or at the very least, ease up.
YOU: You ease up.
KIM KITSURAGI: “It was my case to finish.” His eyes are very dark in the dim light, his pupils huge. He swallows as you watch. You swear you can feel his pulse beat in his thigh, or maybe it’s your own.
YOU: You pull your hand away and lean forward again with the handkerchief. He looks down at it with trepidation, then lets you clean him up.
YOU: “Why didn’t you ask for help? Is it-”
1. “Is it because I’m such a fuckup? Is that it?”
2. “Is it because I ruin everything?”
3. “Is it because you thought I’d be drunk?”
INLAND EMPIRE: This isn’t about you. Don’t make it about you.
YOU: You say nothing.
KIM KITSURAGI: His mouth tightens as you clean the dried blood off his upper lip. You try to be gentle, but it has to hurt.
INTERFACING: After the third pass, he pulls the handkerchief from your hand and does it himself.
EMPATHY: Kim doesn’t like asking for help.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: That’s stupid. You’re his partner.
YOU: You realize you’ve said this out loud.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Yes, well,” he says, somewhat stiffly.
DRAMA: Turn the Eyes on him, sire! Surely he will melt in your arms!
YOU: You turn the Eyes on him.
KIM KITSURAGI: He meets them, then looks away. Out the windscreen, at the FALN warehouse off in the distance. “I’m sorry, detective,” he says. “I will - ask for help in the future.” He presses his lips together like he’s tasted something bad.
YOU: “Thanks, Kim.” You look at him. He looks out the windscreen. Then you say, “You missed some right - no, right - no, a little to the left-”
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim sighs, then hands the handkerchief back to you.
INTERFACING: You wipe at his cheek carefully, slowly, watching your hands, which are trembling, very slightly. His skin is warm under your fingers and cool from the water and slightly tacky from blood and all you want to do is pull him over on top of you and pull his head to the crook of your shoulder and neck.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: No, you want to crawl over into his footwell and unbuckle his belt, tugging on his pants -
HALF LIGHT: You want to lick his face, to taste his blood, to see what Kim Kitsuragi tastes like on the inside.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: There are other, better ways to do that, you know.
KIM KITSURAGI: “How did you find me, detective?”
1. “Our souls are tied together. I can feel you wherever you are. When you go into the pale, I will go too.”
2. “You know dowsing rods? Funny thing about my dick-”
3. “I used a map. And, you know.” [Tap head.]
VOLITION: Don’t say this one. It’s too much.
INLAND EMPIRE: But it’s true.
VOLITION. He doesn’t need to hear it right now.
INLAND EMPIRE: He’s not ready yet. Neither are you.
1. “Our souls are tied together. I can feel you wherever you are. When you go into the pale, I will go too.”
2. “You know dowsing rods? Funny thing about my dick-”
3. “I used a map. And, you know.” [Tap head.]
YOU: “I used a map. And, you know.” [Tap head.]
KIM KITSURAGI: “I didn’t know they still made maps.”
OVERSIZED ATLAS, CRUMPLED UP IN THE FOOT WELL : THEY BROKE THE MOLD WHEN THEY MADE ME, BABY!
AUTHORITY: Whatever you do, for the love of god, do not tell Kim you defaced a library book.
YOU: By the time you get back to the precinct, and get Gottlieb to look at Kim’s face, and give him some minor painkillers despite his protests, it’s late.
VISUAL CALCULUS: More accurately, it’s early.
YOU: Dawn is coming over the buildings pale and golden. It’s not worth going home. You could sleep under your desk, but the idea doesn’t sound appealing. Instead, you sit down outside Gottlieb’s office and close your eyes, listening to the city unfold around you. You press a hand to the OVERSIZED ATLAS page now folded up in your pocket.
OVERSIZED ATLAS: You are welcome, friend.
SHIVERS: In Martinaise, a woman is heading out on a fishing boat. The wind blows her hair back cold and loose. It is refreshing on her neck, on her tired eyes. Further inland, a woman shells peas into a basket interminably. A little girl and a stuffed lamb are still asleep….
YOU: Your eyes close…..
YOU: You wake, suddenly, to a hand on your shoulder. Your body wakes up first in the pattern of that hand, which spiders out, fingers reaching into your brain, down into your chest, your lungs.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim is looking down at you, his face bruised and battered behind his glasses. “Come on, detective,” he says. He sounds as tired as you feel.
PERCEPTION: There is something at the corners of his eyes. Something almost like a smile.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: It’s time to go to work again.
≠≠
JEAN VICQUEMARE: Jean forces the two of you to leave early that afternoon. Kim bristles beside you. Although you technically outrank Jean, you have never treated it that way.
AUTHORITY: Not anymore. You had, a few times, in the before times. It’s how you had driven him away in Martinaise.
YOU: You look over at Kim, whose shoulders are drooping imperceptibly. His grip of his left wrist by right hand behind his back is looser than usual.
EMPATHY: He’s tired. His face hurts. He won’t be able to sleep if he goes home. He feels like a failure.
YOU: “Thanks, Jean. We’ll be back tomorrow.”
KIM KITSURAGI: If there’s betrayal in the look he shoots you, it’s hidden behind his swollen nose. You put a hand just behind his lower back, not quite touching him, and use it to usher him out the door.
JAMROCK: You step out into a spring day. The kind that is cold in the mornings when you’re racing through the streets of Jamrock, and in the afternoon is hot in the sun, windows down. You take off your jacket and raise your face to the sun as the two of you walk out of the precinct. Kim doesn’t unzip his jacket.
INLAND EMPIRE: Armor.
YOU: You badger him into getting something to eat. His choice. He picks something sweet and fried from a street vendor. You raise your eyebrows at him as he licks powdered sugar off his lips.
KIM KITSURAGI: “What?”
YOU: Your mouth is dry. “Nothing,” you say. Your own is long gone, devoured in two bites, greasy powdered hands wiped off on your trousers, which are also covered with chickenshit and Kim’s blood. You look a mess. You smell even worse. Passersby give you both a wide berth.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim finishes his lunch and wipes his mouth with a gloved hand. “Now what?”
EMPATHY: He doesn’t want to go home to his cold and empty apartment. He’s been barred from the station for the rest of the day.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Tiki Rikki’s! It’s the perfect time for a drink! The girls are out in their short dresses, it is hot, you can sit at a table and drink drinks with little umbrellas and watch the people go by. Maybe even tangle your legs with Kim’s under the table.
EMPATHY: He’s tired. He would let it happen.
VISUAL CALCULUS: It’s the same little umbrella as of old. They have four of them and reuse them for every guest.
SHIVERS: Most people in Jamrock do not drink drinks with little umbrellas in them, preferring the cheaper options that get them drunk the quickest.
INLAND EMPIRE: They have three little umbrellas now. Someone had stolen one three months ago.
YOU: You feel something sinking in your stomach.
DRAMA: Why? Surely it’s got nothing to do with you.
YOU: “Let’s walk.” He cracks the smallest smile.
PAIN THRESHOLD: His face looks like it hurts. It’s swollen now and when his mouth twitches at you it pulls at the puffy bruise on his cheek.
AUTHORITY: Don’t mention it.
PAIN THRESHOLD: He’s going to sleep well tonight.
ENDURANCE. If he can. His face hurts. A lot. A throbbing headache pulsing from his nose out across his face. The glasses dig in, but he’s blind without them. The sun hurts his eyes.
PERCEPTION: He’s been shading his eyes with one hand since you’d left the station.
NEARBY BIN: There is a nearby bin overflowing with trash bags and detritus. Pssst. Hey. You. C’mere.
YOU: “Hold that thought.” You swear you can hear him groan behind you as you dart over to the bin and Jamrock shuffle a hat out of it. You trot back over and present it to him with a flourish.
DRAMA: Go down on bended knee, my liege!
PAIN THRESHOLD: Don’t do that. Your knees still sting. You should probably clean the scrapes before they get infected.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I am not putting this on," he says, staring at it. He holds it between two fingers. It’s a straw boater that has seen better days, a hole eaten out of the crown, likely by rats, likely because there had been food stained on it. But it has a brim, which will shield his eyes from the sun.
YOU: You give him what can only be known as dog’s-eyes.
KIM KITSURAGI: He sighs, then puts it on.
DRAMA: Oh, dear.
EMPATHY: Whatever you do, do not laugh at him.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: But he looks like -
EMPATHY: If you laugh at him now, you will lose him forever.
SAVOIR FAIRE: [success: moderate.] You do not laugh, instead turning away to stare down the street, biting the inside of your cheek so hard it bleeds. You pull the map out of your pocket and look for a path down to the piers.
YOU: “Come on,” you say.
KIM KITSURAGI: He gives the map a look. Its ragged edges make its provenance clear. He sighs through his nose, then his mouth tightens as if hiding a wince.
YOU: You lead him down to the piers, cutting through neighborhoods that are half-familiar from recent cases. You’re discovering the city together. Kim’s less familiar than you are. Although your feet remember it and some soft rotten part of your brain still retains things, you need to relearn it.
PIERS: The piers are crowded when you get down there. It’s a nice day, after all. Mothers and children and drunks and young couples. Girls in their nice dresses that it’s a little too cold for. Goosebumps on their legs.
KIM KITSURAGI: He glances at the viewfinders which point to Martinaise. It is visible as a hazy gray blot on the landscape.
YOU: You go forward and gallantly put a few reál in. You lean in and look out the viewfinder, letting your eyes adjust. You can see the sun glint off the ocean, can see vast ships moving slowly. A pleasure-boat, moving quickly. “Look. There’s the Whirling-in-Rags.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Mmmm,” he says. You glance over from the viewfinder, your eyes adjusting. He is standing, arms down by his sides. His shoulders are slumped and his eyes are closed.
EMPATHY: Because he thinks you’re not looking.
YOU: You swallow hard.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: It could’ve been bad, if you hadn’t found him. He’s grateful once again for your strange and unsettling knowledge. To get through the tribunal and die on the floor of a warehouse like a dog. It could happen to him at any time. He is fine with it. He is. He wouldn’t be doing this job if he wasn’t. And yet…
KIM KITSURAGI: He starts to open his eyes and turn towards you. You go back to the viewfinder so quickly you smack your face into it.
YOU: “Ow.”
KIM KITSURAGI: A muffled sound like laughter from the lieutenant.
YOU: You spin the viewfinder to the side and look out to sea. You look further, further, further, further. Somewhere out there is the pale. But in between you and the pale….a slightly darker swell on the waters. Somewhere between here and Samara.
YOU: “Look, Kim,” you say, and point. You hope it’s in the right direction. “Look, there’s Atlantide. You can see the land mass from here.”
SHIVERS: Down below the ocean, somewhere ten meters below the surface, in the dark and the cold, a ringed series of the remains of stone walls rise, hemming in nothing but fish and seaweed.
KIM KITSURAGI: He comes forward, clearly humoring you. You step aside, your hand still on the viewfinder as he leans close, his glasses pressed to the binoculars. He nearly knocks his hat off and you hold it in place for him with your free hand. “Yes, I can see the land mass from here. I believe I can see the hill of the main citadel.”
YOU: “Do you see any people?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “No. Perhaps they are all asleep.”
YOU: “Do they take siestas on Atlantide?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “But of course. They work hard, but they take time to relax, too.”
EMPATHY: No one gets punched in the face on Atlantide. There is one detective -
ESPRIT DE CORPS: No. There are two detectives on the island. They solve every crime.
VIEWFINDER: There is a click. Your money has run out. When Kim pulls back, there is a small smile on his face. “Well,” he says. “What now, detective?”
YOU: You’re exhausted from your desperate flight last night. You’re going to go back and sleep so hard you won’t even drink about it. You’ll turn the radio on and set it for another morning. 0530. And then you will go to sleep, lulled by the sound of the weather.
SHIVERS: Somewhere across town, another man will lay in his bed, a bag of ice to his face, head turned to the same radio, listening to the same channel. It’s good to be prepared, he thinks. Vesper, eighteen degrees centigrade, clear. Bashir, thirty degrees centigrade, arid. Seol Cite, data not available.
Jamrock, five degrees centigrade, spring.