Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (30 page)

“There was no other way to stop them from carrying out their orders. They weren’t simulations under control of a program, they were people I hired.”

“If they weren’t under your direct control, how did you 
deanimate
 them?”

“The Dogs.”

Jesus wept.

“How many?”

“Twenty-five.”

“You said there were nineteen dead.”

“I said nineteen staff.”

TJ had been close, but he’d miscounted by a few.

“You won’t need a squadron of cops Dave. Your sorry ass should be enough, not counting the paperwork. Everything’s done here now. When you get here I can fill you in. There are a few more stiffs though.”

“How many more?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Oh man, I can’t wait to get the skinny on this one.”

He actually sounds happy. To Felon this will just be one more juicy story.

“See you soon Dave.”

“Sooner than you think, Gat. I’m about three minutes from you now.”

“I’ll make sure the gate’s open.”

The ambulances and coroner’s vans arrive in force, cleaning up the mess that the shells and the Dogs have left behind. That Alan left behind, really. Felon stands in the middle of it all, out on the lawn, and marvels.

“Man, I wish I’d been here. I haven’t seen action like this since the Forces.”

I explain the basics of the story to him, leaving out my contact with the spider and the 
Suerte
. They just aren’t things he needs to know.

“Why did this Porsche chick let her slasher into the apartment, you think?”

My honest opinion is that it had everything to do with luck, but I’m not about to say that.

“She had a lot of lovers, Dave. Maybe somebody finally got possessive. She knew him, thought she could handle him, let him in.”

“You figure it’s connected?”

“Nah, probably just a coincidence. What would Alan have against Porsche?”

“Okay, back to the attack on Max, what about the magic bullet? The one that disappeared?”

“Alan collected it and disposed of it to prevent any ballistics trace,” I say. “That’s how come you guys never found it.”

He shakes his head in wonder.

“
Max Prince and Rogue AI in Love-Murder Plot as Beautiful Grand-Daughter Butchered
” he recites, anticipating the next day’s headlines. “The sims are gonna cream all over this one. Can I ask you one more question?”

I want him to go, but I don’t want to offend him.

“Sure, man. What is it?”

“How the fuck did you figure out it was Alan?”

I can’t tell him the truth, obviously, but I get as close as I can.

“Too many things didn’t add up. Whoever was doing this had all this firepower, all this know-how, all this money, but somehow no one ever got killed. I mean civilians, yeah, but not Max and not me, the supposed targets. Eventually it hit me that we weren’t 
supposed
 to get killed. Once I figured that out the rest just fell into place.”

“You should consider working for the P.D., man. I’d recommend you.”

I stifle my gag reflex. He may be a psycho but in this instance he means well.

“Thanks anyway Dave. I’m better being my own boss, you know?”

“Whatever amigo. Offer’s open if you change your mind.”

Cleaning up the bodies takes hours, but in the end the last coronor’s van leaves. The CSIs are still here, but at the moment they’re all inside. Felon graces me with a blast from his horn as he heads down the long driveway and Max and I are left standing on the lawn in the late afternoon sun.

“Max, Porsche’s dead,” I finally say when everything else is out of the way.

“I heard you before,” he says. He shows no more reaction than he did the first time, and I’m left to wonder what, if anything, she ever meant to him. Nothing, I suspect, except a potential heir, blood of his blood. Her shortcomings, even her evil, become more understandable looking at his untroubled face.

“What about the 
Suerte
?” he finally asks. “Was that real?”

“You know it was. Alan would never have believed me otherwise.”

“Can you really call them off?”

I look out over the grounds for a moment, taking in the wealth, the status, the power he wields—this weird, stunted, bloated, human.

“Yes, with a single call.”

“Can I assume you’ll make that call?”

“No.”

“
What
?”

“I said no, you can’t assume it. It can happen, but you can’t fucking assume it. Is that clear enough for you?”

“But you promised Alan,” he says, suddenly acting indignant on behalf of the broken-hearted AI he just abused.

“Alan will be decommissioned. He’ll never know the difference.”

Max looks furious and frantic at the same time.

“What do you want? A bonus? How about five-hundred-thousand? That should cover anything, don’t you think?”

I 
am
 thinking, but not about his five-hundred-thousand dollars landing in my bank account. I’m thinking about the dreams I had in Mexico City, about all the dreams I’ve had since I got back from Tijuana. I’m thinking about Damita and all the other Damitas, half a million in Mexico City alone according to Ramon’s estimate.

“I don’t want your money Max. Just my fee will do.”

He glares at me, looking like a child ready to throw a tantrum. He hasn’t had any alcohol or drugs in hours now and it’s made his a worse person, not a better one.

“Well what the fuck 
do
 you want?”

“We’re talking about your life Max.”

“I 
know
 that,” he says, forcing his voice into a low growl.

“It’s in my hands. I can make a call and get the 
Suerte
 off your back.” I turn to him and look him in the eye to make sure he understands the next part. “And at any time in the future I can make a call and put them 
right back on
 your fat ass.”

“What do you 
want
?” he whispers, grinding his teeth.

“In exchange for your life? I want you to take a fifth of your estate, whatever that is, millions anyway.”

“You fucking bet it’s millions.”

“And I want you to set up a charity, to be run by an arm’s-length board that you can’t control or influence, on behalf of the street kids of Mexico City.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“And Tijuana,” I add impulsively.

“You’re serious.”

I spin quickly and punch him once in his huge paunch, just because it feels so good to finally do it. He crumples to his knees clutching his belly.

“Yes, I’m serious. Do it or the 
Suerte
 will be putting 
your
 handprint on a wall.”

“Fine,” he gasps, trying to catch his breath back. “Fine, whatever, just get the fuck out of here and make sure they don’t come near me.”

For the first time in a long time I smile.

“Suits me.”

I start toward Jenna’s van where Prender’s been waiting behind the wheel, then stop and turn back.

“Oh Max, I’ll send you a list of names, the people who’ll be on the board, you understand?”

He’s on his feet now, but still bent over, hands on his knees like a tired long-distance runner. He glares at me, but he nods.

“And I’ll send the name of an accountant. You’ll give him access to all your books so we can figure out just exactly how much a fifth of your estate is. You’re gonna make sure he gets access to 
everything
, right?”

“Fine. Get the fuck out,” he croaks.

“Don’t make me doubt you, Max. Don’t 
ever
 make me doubt you.”

I get into the van.

“Drive.”

But Prender can’t wait to ask. He puts the van in gear but keeps his foot on the brake.

“Gat, how the fuck did you get Alan to believe that the 
Suerte
 were after Max?”

“They were, now drive.”

He releases the brake and we roll down the driveway.

“You told me yourself that they weren’t.”

“They weren’t—until I called Suarez and asked him to put Max on his list, subject to me being able to take him off the list again.”

“And Suarez went along with it?”

We finally leave the estate and I look out at the road ahead.

“I’ll pay for it someday, I’m sure.”

I leave all the beauty and ugliness of Cloud City behind me, feeling cleaner with every kilometer I put between me and Max’s poisoned palace.

I shouldn’t feel good, I suppose. As Suarez says, Max is busy hurling himself off the edge of the world. Poor Alan will be decommissioned over the edge, Porsche has been shoved over it, James Jerome pulled over it by the Dogs.

Nonetheless, maybe I’ll succeed in pulling a few people back from the brink. I think of Damita and it occurs to me that tonight, for once, I might sleep in something like peace. I have no idea how Vicente Suarez will levy the debt I owe him but for the moment, with the prospect of a dreamless night ahead, I don’t really care.

If you're like me and you enjoy getting a look behind the scenes of movies and books, this section is for you.

Luck and Death at the Edge of the World
is a work of fiction, but many of the details in the story come from the real world. In this section I'll talk about a few of those details and provide links to more information for anyone who's interested.

You can find additional materials and updates to this section at
www.LuckAndDeath.com
, which will continue to evolve.

Notes Regarding Links:

• All of the links are functional as of the date of publication and I've tried to link to the most stable pages I could find on any given topic so that the linked material won't disappear. If you find a link that needs updating or replacing, by all means drop me an email at [email protected] .
  
• Using stable links often means using Wikipedia and other sources that, while not perfect from the standpoint of scholarly erudition, can be counted on to be around into the foreseeable future. Where possible I've included other links as well for those who might want to go a little deeper.
  
• Where a link connects to something other than a web page, like a PDF file, I've labelled it. All unlabelled links go to web pages.
  

In
Luck and Death
, Max's home is
Cloud City
, a dream-like estate that's been turned into something of a nightmare by its owner's madness.

When I created
Cloud City
, I had a number of real world precedents in mind. Here are three of the main ones, starting with the most recent and working back to the oldest and most important of all.

Neverland Ranch

The most recent of the estates I looked at when I conceived of
Cloud City
was Michael Jackson's
Neverland Ranch
. Even more than Max's home, Jackson's ranch was explicitly designed to insulate everyone inside it from the outside world...

The full text of this section appears in the commercial edition of this book. It includes a detailed discussion, illustrations, and links to relevant web pages, documents, and videos.  The commercial edition is 
available on 
Amazon.com
 (and all other Amazon sites) and 
Kobo.com
.

One of the mysteries about the attempt on Max Prince’s life is how the would-be assassin got past the Dogware.

Like many things in science fiction, Dogware is an extrapolation of current technologies. It incorporates several real threads into one fictional system:

• nanorobotics,
  
• robot swarms, and
  
• military robotics.
  

Nanorobotics

Nanorobotics is a branch of
nanotechnology
, which deals with creating materials and devices on molecular scales. Manipulating matter at the level of the molecule allows you to create materials with specific properties and to build microscopic devices that can be deployed for very fine work, sometimes inside our bodies...

The full text of this section appears in the commercial edition of this book. It includes a detailed discussion, illustrations, and links to relevant web pages, documents, and videos.  The commercial edition is 
available on 
Amazon.com
 (and all other Amazon sites) and 
Kobo.com
.

One of the things that’s changed about the world since Gat went into stasis is the prevalence of new infectious diseases.

Like the Dogware, though, this is really just an extrapolation of current trends – I’ve taken existing problems with regard to infectious diseases and the insects that can transmit them and intensified them by adding the problems that come with the Fall.

Putting aside the Fall, though, both of the basic ingredients that Gat describes actually exist already: we have overused (and misused) antibiotics in treating ourselves and our livestock in such a way as to create
antibiotic-resistant infections
and we have overused pesticides with the result that we have created
pesticide-resistant insects
that can infect us with those diseases...

The full text of this section appears in the commercial edition of this book. It includes a detailed discussion, illustrations, and links to relevant web pages, documents, and videos.  The commercial edition is 
available on 
Amazon.com
 (and all other Amazon sites) and 
Kobo.com
.

In
Luck and Death
, a "shell" is an artificially produced human body into which a person’s consciousness can be decanted.