Bangkok Noir

Seven leaned down and rummaged inside her handbag until her hand emerged gripping a .38 Smith and Wesson. She rested it on her lap, looking straight ahead. As she began to rise from her seat, two men from the row of seats behind her grabbed her arms. The gun dropped on the floor. The sonar whelp of the dolphins murdered on screen masked the sound of the gun hitting the floor.

4.2

Where are you?

Below deck, Dolphin Shepherd

As far as Seven could see, she was surrounded by mountains of shaved ice. From the port side, she wiped icy fog from the window pane and looked out at the calm blue sea. A ridge of white foam passed beside the ship. She shivered, moving from side to side, but nothing seemed to bring warmth. The ice had gone straight into her blood, lungs and brain. She sat in a corner, arms folded around her chest. She’d never seen so much ice in a room.

The bulkhead door opened and Shockley stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He wore a hat, mufflers and a heavy coat. Unwrapping the scarf from around his neck took several minutes. When he finished, he handed it to Seven, who looked up with a smile.

“Using an old cheat code to game the system,” he said, slowly shaking head.

Seven took the scarf and cocooned herself like a larva. “How long do I have to stay here?” she said, sighing.

“Until you earn their trust,” said Shockley. “And that won’t be easy, given your last jump. But they have all the time in the world.”

“Chinapat?” she whimpered.

“He’s harvesting pure water from our iceberg factory. The dolphins trust your friend,” said Shockley.

“Can’t you release me to Chinapat?”

Shockley smiled. “No one is stopping him from coming for you.”

Seven blinked, only her wet eyes visible through a slit in the scarf. Hot tears froze halfway down her cheek as she wondered if Chinapat had left her behind, jumping to the next router. She hung her head. On all sides heaps of pure ice thousands of years old seemed to grow, crowding her into a small corner. Her arms wrapped around her raised knees, she rocked back and forth. “When will he come?”

4.3

Where are you?

The Cove, Taiji, Japan

Chinapat sat alone on the long sandy beach, facing the sea and the Dolphin Shepherd, anchored in the harbor. Small skiffs ferried ice from the ship to the shore. The cranes on the ship loaded ice onto skiffs. The clear sea surrounding the ship boiled with dolphins, jumping and diving, swimming alongside the skiffs and guiding them to docks that dotted the shore.

Seven started to run as she saw him in the distance. His large head and broad shoulders were unmistakable against an almond sky. She sprinted the last thirty meters, feeling the warm sand between her toes. Shockley’s scarf trailed behind her until at last it fell from her, leaving a long silk wound in the sand. Reaching Chinapat, she fell on her knees next to him.

He took her hand, not taking his eyes off the Dolphin Shepherd

and the skiffs.

“I told you it was a trap,” he said.

“The Sim felt so real,” she said. “The ice, the cold. Shockley. The scarf.”

He turned his head, looking at her eyes for a moment and then behind her. “But it was real.” The scarf had turned into a scarlet red river in the sand, gurgling as it flowed toward the sea. Baby dolphins dropped one by one, as if from an assembly line, into the sea. They both watched as the cove teamed with dolphins.

“The scarf was from you,” she said. “You trusted me.”

He shrugged. Chinapat had never thought of giving another person a cheat code for release from virtual prison reality. He had only one. Once it had been used, that was the end of it. There was no second code. If things went wrong now, he’d remain in a limbo with no hope of escape. It wasn’t necessary to tell Seven the obvious consequences of his decision to help her.

“We are going back home?” she asked. Chinapat smiled, knowing that her idea of home was far away from the dolphin world.

He nodded his head. “We’re not finished. Tonight we sail for Bangkok on the Dolphin Shepherd. This time we can’t make any stupid mistakes. We play by the rules.”

“But I played by the noir subset of rules,” she said, a tone of anger creeping into her voice. “It is permissible.”