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  “Heavy hitter is new, Pascal,” I say, moving further into the workshop with the doctor just a few steps ahead of me.

  “You haven’t heard what happened to Allen?” Pascal asks. It sets his jowls wobbling. Pascal has a fat face that has always seemed wrong on his rakish body. I’ve never been able to understand how a man can be so thin, but look like he should be so fat.

  I don’t bother replying. Pascal likes to talk. He’s always done enough talking for the both of us. He’ll tell me what happened to Allen even if I did already know.

  “He’s dead.” Pascal stops and turns to me. His eyes dart all over my face, looking for a reaction. He should know better. “Torn up by bullets, him and all his security.”

  I nod. “He worked out of Mextown. Was bound to happen sooner or later.” Gangland territory is one step above a war-zone. The only reason the officials don’t do anything about it is that it’s safer to have all the gangs in one place. Keeps the rest of the city relatively crime free. They’ve engineered it that way. “It’s why I only deal with you, Pascal.”

  “Not the only reason you only deal with me,” Pascal says. He stares at me for a moment longer, then turns and walks over to one of his machines.

  “No,” I agree. I join Pascal at the machine and sit down in the chair, waiting for him to prepare his tools and instruments and drugs. He’s giving me harvester number six. I like number six. It always has the smoothest retrieval. Leaves me feeling less raw than some of the others.

  “Well anyway. Allen has operated in Mextown for four years. He pays… paid protection to the gangs. It makes no sense one of them would remove him. There’s something else going on, Garrick. Something bigger.”

  Again Pascal looks at me, searching. Again I stare back blankly. He really should know better. Every week Pascal has a new theory. Last week it was the colonies on the Moon were trying to start a revolt, despite already being independent. A month ago he declared the government was hiding aliens from the public. Crashed ships and plasmorphic creatures with murderous intent. He never seems to realise how absurd he sounds. After a while, Pascal turns back to his tools.

  I glance over towards Kendall. She’s not watching, too busy staring at her PD. It’s possible she has it hooked up to the building’s security feeds. It’s possible she’s watching for threats even now. I’ve seen her file, she’s a true professional. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was always on the job. Also wouldn’t surprise me if she was scanning Me.com to see her latest friend updates. Even cold-blooded assassins have personal lives. Everyone does. Everyone except us Drones.

  She’s pretty, in a savage predator kind of way. Dark skin, tight and smooth. Darker hair, braided and pulled back. Her tight shirt does nothing to hide the fact that she’s well muscled underneath. Nor does it hide the pistol, a Berreta with a custom grip, hanging under her right shoulder.

  “What am I taking today?” Pascal asks as he comes at me with a needle. He inserts it into my right arm and hooks it up to an IV. Neurosepatine Ex, a drug to help the process. Makes it smoother and faster, less painful for the Drone. Some people say the drug makes everything feel a bit fuzzier, makes it harder to feel anything. Not me. I struggle to feel anything at the best of times. It’s why I go to extremes.

  “Pride,” I say.

  “Well, yes,” Pascal says with a sigh. “It’s rare you don’t start with that. I’m amazed you feel anything from the gym anymore, Garrick.”

  “Fear,” I think back to the dive off the KuroWayne building. I can still feel the fear of falling through the air, the ground rushing up to meet me. My heartbeat speeds just remembering it. I don’t like it. I want it gone.

  “I saw a bit on the local news. Somebody captured a video of a skydiver in the middle of the city.” Pascal shoots me a cocked eyebrow. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  I nod.

  Pascal barks out a laugh. Kendall looks up, but quickly goes back to staring at her PD, occasionally tapping at the screen.

  “There wasn’t even a request for it,” Pascal continues. “This is why you’re my best, Garrick. None of my other Drones show even half your initiative. And none are so willing to risk their lives.”

  “Anger,” I say. I got into a fight last night. Wasn’t really a fight, just a beating I dolled out. I saw a man hit his dog, a little bulldog, I’m not even sure why. I showed him how the dog felt, used the anger to break the man’s nose. Strange thing was, his dog started to bark at me, bared its teeth. Loyalty built not from love, but from need. Misplaced affection.

  Pascal is watching me again, an odd look on his face. He knows me, knows me better than anyone else alive. He’s sees what I see, knows what I feel. Takes it all away.

  “I don’t usually get anger from you, Garrick,” Pascal says slowly. “It doesn’t sell. You’re better than that.”

  I shrug. Sometimes things happen, they can’t be helped. Besides, Anger sells, just not well and often to the types of people Pascal doesn’t like to sell to. Shady sorts. The type of people who don’t buy for themselves, but to inflict upon others. I don’t like anger, it makes me too hot, overrides rational thought. Anger needs to go too.

  “I got a call from Summer,” I say.

  Pascal glances towards Kendall, but the assassin appears to be paying very little attention to either of us. “Did you answer it?”

  I shake my head. “I listened to the voice mail.”

  Pascal nods slowly. “I’ll deal with it.”

  This is why I come to Pascal over any of the other harvesters in the city. He knows me. He helps me. We have a symbiotic relationship. I provide him with emotions that none of his other Drones can, or at least none of his other Drones are willing to. In return, he takes away anything I feel about Summer or Susan or Mars. We don’t talk about it. He just does it.

  Pascal checks the IV and then picks up a little torch from his pocket. He shines it into my eyes and stares. He has deep brown eyes, so dark they’re almost black. They suit his thick eyebrows, somehow making him seem kind and gentle. He wouldn’t need so much security if he was truly either of those things. He nods, more to himself than to me.

  “I suppose I might be out of a business soon,” Pascal says. He’s always been one for small talk during harvesting. I’ve never been one for small talk, not since I started life as a Drone. “If the new laws are passed, that is.”

  “What laws?” Sometimes my curiosity still gets the better of me. More than sometimes.

  “You haven’t seen?” Pascal asks. He picks up a remote from a nearby table and points it towards a monitor hanging from the ceiling. With a single button press the monitor flicks from security feed of the building, to an old cartoon about a duck in space. The duck is being chased by an alien and they fire laser pistols at each other. The past got a lot about the future wrong. We’re probably still getting it wrong. “Ooops. Wrong channel.”

  Pascal presses three more buttons on the remote and the monitor flicks over to a twenty-four-hour news channel. He increases the volume and waits. “It will roll around soon,” Pascal assures me. “They just repeat the day’s news on this channel. You really don’t pay any attention to it, do you?”

  I shake my head. “The news is usually depressing. Despair, sadness, worry. They don’t sell.” I think I might have liked to watch the cartoon. Judging by the way Kendall looked up at it, I think she might have felt the same.

  Pascal lets out a bitter laugh. “No. They really don’t.”

  The lady presenting the news could have been a Drone herself. Her face shows not a trace of emotion as she reads out line after line of the day’s most prominent articles. First she talks about the release of Epicurus and how Me.com is leading the way, both in PD technology and in enabling social interaction of all people everywhere. It’s a fluff piece and an obvious one. Me.com is one of the largest corporations on Earth and pays media outlets all over the world to only present it in a favourable light.

  The second article of news is about a slew of di
sappearances on Mars. Sixty workers have gone missing so far and not a trace of one of them has been found. The Mars colonisation project is still in its infancy and missing people could threaten to derail it before it truly starts.

  “Aliens,” Pascal assures me. “The government and media is covering it up, but they’re there. Have been for years. Watching us from inside the planet.”

  I think it’s more likely to be dissidents. Mars has been volatile from the get go. I remember fire fights, friends gut shot and bleeding out into the hellish atmo. I don’t feel anything though. Gave those feelings away long ago.

  “This is the one now.” Pascal turns the volume up again.

  The next news article is about congress and the upcoming vote on laws sanctioning the harvesting of emotions. For now, the process is still strictly illegal.

  It’s why Pascal operates the way he does. He’d been a prominent doctor up on the Moon colonies until he’d murdered a man. That was what the authorities called it, anyway. In truth, the man had wanted to die. He had terminal Absorption, to do with cosmic radiation or some such. He was dying, and in a lot of pain. Pascal eased his suffering. Assisted suicide. Euthanasia. The Moon colonies declared it murder and Pascal fled to earth. There’s no extradition laws for Earth to the Moon colonies. So as long as Pascal stays here on Earth, he’s safe. Still had his medical license stripped though. Forced him to pick up a new career.

  Emotion harvesting is also illegal, for now at least. Much like memory blocking. The mind is considered to be the last true personal space. Any violation of it, including willing, is considered against the law. The woman presenting the news goes on to explain that some are arguing that a person’s emotions are always affected by everything and everyone around them all the time, so harvesting is no more illegal than being loved or hated by a person. She does not present a counter argument.

  The delegates of the UEA congress are meeting to vote on the subject in three days time.

  “You see,” Pascal says after the woman has finished her report. He presses a button and the monitor flicks back to security feed. “If harvesting is made legal, there’ll be no more need for me. All this will be legal, sanctioned and operated by licensed doctors.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Taxes. It’s the same reason heroine, cocaine, jazz, and the all the others were eventually made legal,” Pascal explains. “Government and corporation crooks taking money out of the hands of us decent criminals. Prices for the product will drop, taxes on it will appear and rise. People like me will go out of business. You’ll be fine, though you’ll get far fewer creds than I give you for everything. Might be you’ll have to cut back on the lavish lifestyle, hmm? Right. Into the machine.”

  I stand and my legs give a slight wobble. Neurosepatine Ex also acts as a muscle relaxant. I climb into the reclining chair and lay back. Pascal takes my right hand and places it onto the bio-gel pad. It’s warm and sticky, coating my hand and sending little tingles through each of my fingers. I relax into the chair and Pascal lowers the memory scanner around my head.

  “There will be a time when none of this is needed,” Pascal says as he connects the electrode to the base of my neck. “The harvesting implant screwed into your skull, the bio-gel. The whole machine.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Technology advances.” Pascal turns on the machine and a soft hum vibrates throughout my entire body. “Me.com have already said an upcoming update to Epicurus will be able to read a person’s emotions with a touch. All those status updates where people tell their friends they’re feeling happy or sad or loved. Soon their PDs will just read their emotions and tell the world automatically.”

  I close my eyes as the machine recalls my memories. It would be a shame if the harvesters were no longer needed. I like them. The feeling of my memories being drained of their associated emotions. The numb sensation after they’re gone.

  Chapter 4

  Companionship: Close. Comforting. Hungry. Companionship is easy to come by, even for Drones like me. It’s a big seller. Everyone wants to feel it. Humans desire it, need it. I provide it, just not in the conventional way.

  Sam is another Drone. I don’t know why she chose the life, I’ve never asked. I never will. We all have our reasons. Some people love to feel, need to feel. They tend to be our best customers. Some of us don’t want to feel anything. Maybe life just got a bit too hard for her one day and she decided she couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe tragedy struck and she realised it was easier to simply not deal with it. We all have our reasons and Sam’s are her own.

  I stare at her. Breathing in her scent, feeling the warmth of her body. Sam is young, beautiful; that combination of curves, perfect skin, and fine, symmetrical features. What we have is another example of a symbiotic relationship. We provide each other with companionship, pleasure, comfort. Then we sell those emotions to our harvesters who sell them on to clients. We don’t meet up every night, but when we do, we make a fair few creds and we enjoy it.

  In a way it’s almost like pornography, only more intense, more personal. People pay to feel how we feel when we screw. People pay to feel how we feel as we lie next to each other. The closeness of another human’s tender touch.

  Maybe it’s more like prostitution.

  I shake my head, trying to clear it of my foolish thoughts. Sam gives a soft murmur and rolls over, face down in the silk sheets. I watch her for a moment longer, watch the way her breath pushes and pulls at the strands of blonde hair that have fallen in front of her face. Contentment. Happiness. I don’t deserve to feel those things, best I give them away as soon as possible.

  I ease myself out of the bed, stand and stretch. I make certain to be quiet, make certain not to wake the slumbering woman. It’s not for any tender reason, I don’t care about letting her sleep. I just don’t want the interaction right now. I have other things to do.

  I slip from the bedroom and close the door behind me, flip the button on my Blenco coffee machine and wait while it whirs to life, grinding beans and heating water. I take the moment to stare out over the city below my apartment.

  New York at night is a beautiful thing to behold. Lights and billboards paint the cityscape in rainbow neon hues. The city never sleeps, not truly. I imagine the people far below, those who call the night time their home rather than the day. I wonder what sort of things those people are doing with their night.

  Close to the window, I stare down to the street below. I can see flashing blue lights a few streets away, only slightly obscured by the high-rises that block some of my penthouse view. What could have gotten the police in such a flurry out here? I can’t even remember the last time I heard a report of even a petty crime in this area of the city.

  Curiosity isn’t an emotion. There’s no way to give it away, no matter how I might wish to. Mine tugs at me over everything. It’s all a puzzle to be solved, a question to be answered. And there’s always new questions. New curiosities.

  The coffee machine beeps and I return to it, picking up a cup and giving it a deep sniff. Delight. Smells are connected to memories and memories are connected to emotions. Even so, my memories have all been stripped of their emotions, the smell of coffee shouldn’t evoke delight so much as the taste should. I feel a frown and purposefully relax my face, forgetting the confusion and annoyance.

  I decide to tell Pascal to perform a deep harvest tomorrow. Rid me of any residual emotions hanging around my long term memories. It’s a long process, one he won’t want to do. But I need it.

  I take one more look out of my window, towards the city in darkness. Such a beautiful view. Such an expensive view.

  Sitting down at my dining table, I open up my computer and unlock it by pressing my palm to its screen. PDs are useful, being connected to the internet and the world all the time from every location is probably the most significant invention of the last ten generations, but sometimes it’s still easier to use a computer. Larger screens, easier navigation.

  I star
t a search for nearby locations that might be able to provide me with a truly dangerous experience.

  Pascal gave me a special request before I left his workshop. Terror.

  Terror is one of the hardest emotions to replicate, so very few Drones even try. It runs deeper than fear, it’s more primal. Fear makes you hot, terror makes you cold.

  I can jump off a building, knowing it will scare me, knowing I will feel fear. But I also know I have an escape. I know at any time I can pull on the cord and float the rest of the way down. Terror comes from a more helpless place. We only experience real terror when we believe we’re going to die. This is a request that is going to take some planning.

  I could have turned the request down. I could have claimed it was too difficult, too dangerous. We Drones may not like to feel, but that doesn’t mean we want to die. I still want to live.

  At least I think I do. The shame and guilt hasn’t driven me that far.

  I could have turned it down. But there’s a reason I’m the best paid Drone in the city. There’s a reason I can afford one of the most expensive penthouses the high-rises have to offer. There’s a reason I get to look down on the city with my amazing view. I take the requests no one else does, no one else can.

  Pride. Pride in my job? The pride that comes from being the best? This one snuck up on me. I didn’t expect it. Don’t want it. Pride fades fast. Far too fast to get it to Pascal. Far too fast to sell it this time. Sometimes, even I have to accept that I still feel. I just hope it fades before anyone else realises.

  Chapter 5