Bangkok Noir

As the Dolphin Shepherd sailed from Bangkok Port, Chinapat caught a glimpse of the two rows of Japanese men with long swords and megaphones shouting slogans as they ran along the docks, waving and shouting, and Jaul waddled behind, trying to keep up. He looked like an old walrus, shaking his ham-sized flipper and barking. Bringing up the rear were hundreds of Nana Plaza bar girls. As they set sail, Chinapat grasped the railing with both hands. Seven stood beside him. They watched as the women gutted and slaughtered the black-suited men, turning the Chao Phraya River red. The swords dissolved in the hands of the Japanese. The megaphones fell silent. By the time they reached the sea, the water was again clean and pure.

Bangkok Port soon was a tiny rim on the horizon. Shockley produced a device the size of a cell phone, running his fingers across a small screen until it lit up. He offered the device to Seven. “It’s the owners. They want to communicate directly.”

She held the device close to her ear and smiled. Then she handed it to Chinapat, who pressed it against his ear, a big smile crossing his face. It was somewhere between the rush of the sound from a large seashell, running water and music coming from a thousand crystal glasses, each filled with different levels of water. The background songs registered from deep inside the electromagnetic spectrum.

4.0

Where are you?

Chinapat: Still at Dolphin Shepherd, Simulation 28478, GENESIS 32 Vector

Where are you?

Seven: Meet you at Login node loading hydrogen atoms to emit microwaves at the frequency “21-centimetre line” sequencing EXODUS 4:24-26 router

4.1

Where are you?

Queen Sirikit Center, Bangkok, Thailand

Inside one of the smaller conference rooms, the air-conditioning blasting multiple streams over the audience. In the back sat a youngish Asian woman—still in her teens, her hair long and dyed red in streaks. The young woman was dressed in the white pressed cotton blouse and black short skirt of a university student. The too tight skirt just fit inside the outer perimeters for a certified conservative sexual university outfit found in Bangkok. The Gucci handbag also fit. The .38 Smith and Wesson inside the handbag was non-standard university issue. Seven had the confident and alert look of a woman-girl whose attention floated across the room, perching, sensing, flying off to another perch, constantly on the move.

Seven could never sit in quiet serenity like Chinapat. That was his problem. All that meditating had over-focused his attention on one thing. For example, she thought he’d complain of the tropical heat inside the room. The temperature was like a sauna. Many in the audience had wilted like unwatered flowers.

Inside the hotbed was the object of Seven’s first professional job.

A middle-aged Japanese woman in dark glasses, old enough to be her mother, had sat with her in the back of a BMW. Looking her over the way a mother looks over a daughter before a first date—part pride, part doubt and disapproval, as if her expectations had been exceeded and dashed at the same time—the Japanese woman had showed her a photograph of a woman named Tanaka. She was an activist filmmaker, and she had drawn an audience of activists, artists, journalists and NGOs to hear her speak about her dolphin film documentary, showing a terrible, cruel slaughter.

In the parking lot a couple of dozen Japanese men in dark suits used threats to stop people from going inside. Only a few people were intimidated enough to leave. The others filed past the Japanese men with tattooed necks and missing small fingers.

“Eliminate Tanaka,” the Japanese woman in the car had said.

Even though Seven hadn’t asked why the activist was scheduled for removal, the middle-aged Japanese woman felt obligated to give a reason. “She’s a troublemaker.”

Chinapat slipped into the seat next to Seven and whispered, “It’s a trap.”

Seven smiled, glancing over at him, squeezing his knee. “I have the cheat code.”

He frowned, pretending to be above easy shortcuts. Chinapat had a cheat code to get out of virtual prison, but only if nothing else in his source code kit worked. Cheaters ran up the white flag of surrender before experiencing any real degree of panic or desperation or being black-boxed and cut into pixels. He never thought of Seven as a cheater. Before he could object, the large screen behind Tanaka filled with a video of dolphins churning in blood red waters. The volume of their high-pitched squeals rolled through the room, echoing off the walls, ceiling and floor.