Redshift Part 48

The second half of the process took a little longer. There were eight digital camcorders in the apartment, over ten thousand dollars' worth of high-spec j.a.panese ingenuity. Two in the living room; four in the bedroom; two in the bathroom. He initially only put new tapes in six, almost electing not to bother with the ones in the bathroom. Never in the seven times he'd had s.e.x with Anne had the action careered into that room. With some women it did, with others it didn't. With Anne it didn't. But sometimes it was worth watching for the expression on the women's faces as they had a pee afterwards, thinking they were in a backstage area and safe from view. Shame, smug glee, guilty and compromised tears: they all informed what had gone before. He put one tape in that room after all, in the camera which directly faced onto the lavatory. He could live without a two shot in here: her face was what really counted.

Each of the cameras was carefully hidden: in curtains, on bookshelves, in tidy piles of clothes. He'd experimented with pinhole cameras in the past, tiny devices not much bigger than the chip required to drive them and the miniature lens on top, but the quality just wasn't good enough, and they required stringing up to a recorder of some kind, which would be kind of a pain.

When he'd finished he went back into the living room. Ten minutes to go. He put a little music on, running it off a pre-chosen play list on the computer. He listened to all music this way now. Soon as he bought a CD, he used ripping software to store it on the hard disk as MP3files. Each file was a mere couple of megabytes in size, and with the array of 100-gig racks he had built into the desk, there was room for thousands of tracks at resolutions none of his guests were likely to be able to tell from the real thing. Truth be told, he probably couldn't these days either. It had been a while since he'd even bought a CD. Couldn't remember the last time, in fact. Now he just culled the MP3 files direct from the Web. Some were legit, some rip-offs. It didn't matter. That was the great thing about the Web-the distance it put between you and the scene of the crime. No one was going to come and find him. Not down those countless little wires. They were too thin for culpability to seep through. You could spend your entire life on the Web without exposing yourself to anything more dangerous than spam or mail-bombing, both of which he was more than capable of dealing with.

The only people he had direct contact with, the only ones who ever learned his physical address and entered his corporeal world, were the women he met in the Web's virtual chat rooms. He'd cultivate them carefully, coming on like some newbie lurker: matching their own shy advances and only very gently nudging the conversation into the slow spiral that would end in them taking the exchange out of a public arena and into private e-mail. He only ever fished on boards that were loosely tied to his own geographical location. There was no point spending all that time and effort only to find that she lived on the other side of the world.

Because eventually he would have convinced the woman-or, in her mind, they would have convinced each other-that it was time to take the relationship a little further. To take it backwards, out of these futuristic and nebulous lines of communication and back to the basic human levels that had worked since the dawn of time. It was never organized by phone. He had not once given his number out. Instead it would be a series of e-mails, a courtship of text: a careful progression for her, sentences fretted over, rewritten, revised or sometimes sent with a spastic click of a b.u.t.ton before she had time to change her mind-but often the same old same old for him, as he'd found that he could cut and paste chunks out of previous campaigns and use them time and again.

And eventually the first visit would happen. A woman, slightly overdressed, eyes round with courage, would turn up at his door. The obvious would happen, and he was good. So it would happen again, and again. At intervals: when the woman could s.n.a.t.c.h the time; when the ennui she felt in her real life was so acute that it could only be a.s.suaged by an action whose dishonesty jerked her out of her rut. Not all the women had been married, in fact probably not even the majority: but for the ones who weren't the very fact that they were prepared to enter into so one-track a relationship showed that none of them were worth taking seriously. It would carry on until something happened-a crisis of confidence, a tearful revelation to a husband, a prying boyfriend discovering an e-mail trail, which by now would be a lewd series of a.s.signation-making-and it was over. He was never the one to make the move. He let them do it, because that way he knew they wouldn't be coming back and bugging him. They'd just be gone. To be immediately replaced by another one, whom he would have been cultivating in the meantime, keeping out there in the ether until the time was right.

The doorbell rang. He walked across the room toward the door, checking his hair in the mirror as he pa.s.sed.

She was standing outside. Rather casually dressed, which annoyed him. He liked to see a bit of effort, not least because it proved that the affair was still at the hotter-than-hot stage. Thoughshe did at least look a little flushed.

"Hi, David," she said, and he was pleased to notice a slight catch in her voice. "You're looking good."

Yes, he thought, I am. And later he found that what she was wearing underneath the blouse and pants wasn't casual at all.

Two and a half hours later he heard the door close behind her as she left the apartment. He'd been lying on the bed, faux dozing: he was prepared to do a lot of things to keep women convinced they were having one of the world's greatest affairs, but listening to them prattle after the event wasn't one of them. As soon as he was sure she'd gone, he was up and in the shower.

A good one, he thought, as he sluiced himself clean. And maybe the best-directed yet. He showered slowly, prolonging the moment.

When he was done, and comfortable in a fluffy white dressing gown that he liked because it never seemed to get dirty, he went through into the kitchen, fired up his other computer, and put a big pot of coffee on. He dropped the two winegla.s.ses-hers empty, his still half-full-in the trash. He had plenty more. Then he went back through the apartment and collected up the tapes.

One from each of the living room cameras, which were triggered as soon as the door was opened and the woman came in. The four from the bedroom: two of these he had switched on as soon as they'd entered this room, via an extra spur off the bedside lamp; the others were on a trip delay to start recording fifty minutes later, to cover for the fact that one hour was the maximum tape length for the format he used. You could get longer, on different machines, but the quality was nowhere near as good.

Then the final one, from the bathroom-which he triggered by another switch once the s.e.x was finished. It was this tape that he ripped to disk first, sitting at the desk with a steaming mug of very good coffee and a cigarette. It only took ten minutes to save it to an MPEG file, and then he set the others to rip in sequence in the background, porting the digital footage onto the array of hard disks, ready for a first quick edit. After a slow first viewing.

This is what he did it for now. This was the moment he enjoyed. Not at first: three years ago, after his last genuine relationship had broken up, he'd just been looking for fun and companionship like everyone else. Maybe even someone to fall in love with. This hadn't happened with the first one, or the one after that. A pattern emerged. He didn't mind. Before, when he'd been taken, he'd envied his friends still out there in the market, the ones with the slew of drunken collisions in clubs and bars, with the long list of accidental one-night conquests. New b.r.e.a.s.t.s hefted, new b.u.t.tocks splayed. David believed that men were collectors, taxono-mists, seekers after and catalogers of variety-and he wanted some of it.

After a while the variety began to pall, however, and he felt less and less a part of what was going on. The women who turned up at his door started to seem too similar to each other. They might have different color hair, contrasting figures, and taste individual where it counted, but in the wriggles and grapples across couches and down corridors and round and round the bed they all ended up blending into one-not least because they shared a fundamental similarity.

They weren't The One. He came to realize that it wasn't them who made him feel alive. What kept him going was himself, his own part in the proceedings. That, and the record.It started more or less by accident. As accidentally, that is, as one can leave a camcorder running in a room where one is likely to be nicking a woman in the very near future. He'd bought the camera for the h.e.l.l of it, mainly because a new computer had come with nonlinear video-editing software preinstalled. He ordered the camera over the Web, and it turned up at his door. Pretty soon he realized that he didn't have anything in his immediate environment worth recording, and no desire to be going out and shooting some shoddy masterpiece for Web distribution to net-heads with cable access and too much time on their hands. But then an idea struck him, one afternoon when a woman was coming round. Feeling suddenly excited, on the verge of something new, he found a place to wedge the camera in the bookcase, where it would capture whatever happened on the couch. What the h.e.l.l, he thought: might be kind of interesting. When the doorbell rang he turned the camera on, carefully positioning books and a small ornamental box (a present from a past f.u.c.k) to hide the red light that indicated it was recording. The s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g moved into the bedroom after forty minutes, but when he watched the tape later that night it was still enough to make him lob his c.o.c.k right out and achieve his third o.r.g.a.s.m of the day: hunched over the desk, eyes wide and glued to the startling images on the screen. Afterwards, spent though he was, he watched the tape again and again, wiping it back and forward, reviewing the captured moments-acknowledging, as if for the first time, that the event really had happened. He really had screwed that woman: she had done this to him; he had done that to her. There it was. It was all recorded. He could see it. He could see it twice.

He could see it whenever he wanted.

And she'd never know. It had pa.s.sed out of the domain of her life, and into his alone. All she would have was vague memories, different occasions blending into one: he could have every event pinned to a board like a b.u.t.terfly.

After that, he recorded the first hour as a matter of course, fixing a piece of tape over the red light to give more flexibility. It wasn't long before he wanted more. At first it was just a camera in both rooms. Then one in the bathroom, because a woman called Monica had got some obscure thrill from doing it in there. Then the extra one in the bedroom, and the second in the living room, because by that time he'd realized how much better it would be if he could get the raw material from two angles: partly just because you couldn't always position the woman to best effect without danger of it being obvious; mainly because it just seemed more real. The two-shot setup made all the difference. The cuts from angle to angle, from view to different view, showed just how true it was, filled it out into three dimensions. It was like a real movie.

It was realer than real life.

Finally the extra pair in the bedroom, to make sure not a moment was lost.

He loved doing his films. He f.u.c.king loved it. It was partly to punish them for boring him. It was mainly because the films showed how much stronger his reality was than theirs, because whatever thoughts were fizzing around their desperate heads during the time they spent in his home, they had no idea what was really going on. That he was recording them, and later could edit the different shots together into any shape he liked. Picking the shots to show himself in control, to show them naked and exposed, leaving the soundtrack real to capture their gasps and squelches, their moans and pathetic avowals of love, of desire, of whatever it was they felt they had to say to make this seem okay to do. He had tapes of every session with every girl, all tidily filed in nested folders on his hard drives. He had "greatest hits" edits, too, each woman'sbest or most revealing moments. He had compilations, quick cuts of the same type of activity performed with a score of different women. He watched the digital films whenever he wanted, his breathing shallow but measured, face bathed in the monitor light, staring at himself, at his power. While the women were with him they had a kind of fake reality, shoved at him through their physical presence. When they were gone their true nature was revealed: as extras in his life, as vague presences at the end of an e-mail. He spent whole evenings reediting for the fun of it, and after a while his vision became more detailed, more refined. He culled through the bathroom tapes, catching the private moments and interspersing them with the other material: Marie looking smug afterwards, thinking she'd shown him the time of his life-when the next cut was that of David exaggeratedly yawning to camera while she enthusiastically sucked him half an hour before; Janine breathlessly declaring their s.e.x as some kind of spiritual triumph, c.r.a.pping on about how much she loved him-then later, sitting slumped on the can, sobbing in silent, racking waves and softly sc.r.a.ping the nails of both hands down her tear-tracked face.

Each time he made a tape he felt more himself, more vital. Sometimes he would start a film running on the computer and then switch the monitor off just before the current woman arrived.

Though it could be neither seen nor heard, it was still playing, still being conjured up out of ones and zeros into image: footage of him plowing one woman while in real and current time he squeezed the t.i.t of another; or of the same woman as she would be in the bathroom afterwards, the event contextu-alized before it had even finished.

The tapes had nearly done being digitized. It was time for another pot of coffee. David leaned against the counter as the water boiled, listening to the chirrup of the hard drive as the files of the raw material were written. He was noticing that he felt tired. Vestiges of the hangover, presumably, and Anne was a workout by anybody's standards. She'd seemed even more frenetic than usual that afternoon, as if testing him, or herself. Or maybe it was just too much coffee on an empty stomach, making him feel a little dizzy. Didn't matter. He was having more Java anyway. It was traditional.

He took the new pot and a jug of cream over to the desk, so he wouldn't have to get up for a while. Then when the machine pinged to signify all the hard work was done, he reached out and clicked the first file. He always waited until they were all done. He liked it that way. Once he'd started watching, he needed to know he could jump to any part he wanted, immediately. It was part of the fun.

The bathroom tape started with ten minutes of nothing-Anne had lain beside him on the bed for a while after they'd finished. David sat and admired the fact that he'd remembered to refold the towels, to make them look just so. The women got good value out of him: the films were just a payment they didn't know they were making. Then there was the sound of the door being opened, and Anne's back swished into view with the sound of the door closing again. She stood in front of the mirror and ran the cold tap, nothing readable in the expression reflected back over her shoulder. She splashed some water over her face, and then sat down on the john. It was then, with her face much more directly visible by the camera, that David realized her facial expression wasn't actually unreadable after all. He watched for the few minutes she sat there, before flushing and leaving the room. Then he clicked back to an earlier frame in the MPEG. And watched it again.

It wasn't his imagination. He was sure of it. He'd seen "unreadable" before. Some womenwere like that. When not on stage, and making an effort to perform, the most vivacious of them could turn remarkably waxlike, as if they were nothing without an audience. This wasn't like that. There was something in her face. It was just something he'd ever seen before.

It was . . . what? Quietness? No. Dissatisfaction? Still no, but. . .

David frowned suddenly and put his cup down on the desk. He clicked the tape back again.

His face felt a little hot.

She actually just looked a little bored.

He irritably lit a cigarette. That couldn't be right. Not after what they'd done. Not after the free-wheeling exhibition of technique he'd put on from the couch all the way through to their mutual and grunting climaxes. Perhaps she'd just had something else on her mind. Presumably things went on in her life. He never asked, but usually they'd say, filling him in regardless-wrongly a.s.suming he'd care. Whatever. She hadn't been bored. It wasn't possible.

David shut the window on that tape and set another loading, wiping the back of one hand across his forehead as he waited. He still felt kind of hot. Embarra.s.sment, maybe. At his initial thought that she might have regarded their coupling as less than earth-moving. Indignation was more appropriate. If she was frigid enough not to be jolted out of whatever little psychodrama from her outside life had been swirling around her head, then she was f.u.c.king on borrowed time. With him, anyway. Doubtless hubby would still limply put out, still engage her in the mildewy fumblings she'd come to David to escape. a.s.suming Anne had a husband. Right now he was so irritated he couldn't even remember.

The tape from the living room was better. A lot better. The fifteen minutes of chitchat and sipping, a spiral like the closing stages of the e-mail courtship-but one with a known destination. Then a frank movement from him: reaching out to stroke a breast through her blouse, then slipping his hand right up her skirt out of nowhere. He loved doing that. Making moves that a.s.sumed. Being in a position to demonstrate that this wasn't any coy long shot, but a f.u.c.king cert. It looked great on the video, too. Made the woman look just like what she was: a three-dimensional version of the pictures you could pick up on a zillion sites all over the Web.

Just something within his field of vision. Something for him to play with. And they loved it.

They really did. Loved being treated that way.

Soon they were both half-dressed. He turned her immaculately, cupping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s from behind, nuzzling her neck as she arched her head back, eyes closed-while he stared straight into the camera. There was a brief glitch in the digitizing and his hands frizzed for a moment, but otherwise it was a cla.s.sic scene-with some superb cutaways possible to the other camera's point of view. Cla.s.sic for the soft-core portion, anyhow: there would be meaner, better stuff later.

Then more of that, more of the usual. Building up. A b.u.t.ton here, a strap there. Then a zipper. David could now judge how much time he had in the living room, how to steer things toward the corridor before there was any danger of the tapes running out. With three minutes to go, both still standing but with pants around their ankles, he touched her in a way that had her backing giggling out of the room, pulling him by something a man is bound to follow.

Just as they pa.s.sed out of sight of the cameras, David noticed another little visual weirdness. He stopped the film, clicked back. Right at the end there was a two-second patch where there was a little streaming around the image of his head, tiny pixelated blocks of color.He flicked up the other camera's view of the same moment, and was relieved to see it looked fine. He'd just have to cut at that point. Something wrong with the tape, probably.

Condensation. Or the recording head needed cleaning. He sorted through the cameras, found the offending tape, and put it to one side to check out later.

Then he kicked up the first of the bedroom films. He'd missed a little bit of action in the meantime, he knew. In the corridor Anne had bent to take him in her mouth for a couple of minutes. Not for the first time he mused it would be good to have a camera in there, too.

Problem was, how to conceal it. Maybe he'd have to compromise, get a pinhole and hide it in a picture. Might even look good: a kind of voyeur, security camera-style section. Hmm. Think about that later: the bedroom tape showed events liquidly transforming into full flow.

He'd known at the time it was good. Not the s.e.x, so much, as the way he'd controlled its movements, its ebb and flow. Her head there, in direct shot. His hand here, just where it could be seen. Seemingly spontaneous little rolls, taking the action from one view to another. Her moans and sighs, his encouraging grunts. Thrusts, acceptances, retractions and changes of position, all maximized for his eyes. Prime stuff, packaged and presented. A cla.s.sic.

Except-s.h.i.t.

He clicked back thirty seconds, not really knowing what he'd spotted. Watched the section again.

Straightforward shot, with them sideways across the bed, taken by the camera hidden up on the curtain rail. Him on top of her in missionary position, holding her shoulders down and grinding away. Her hands on his a.s.s, pulling him in and out. Her hair spread over the sheets like a mermaid's floating in shallow water. Her legs raised up after a moment, clasping behind his. So much for the "boredom," he thought, with joyful spite-she was loving it. She moved her hands up along his back, nails out for a little playful scratching, and then slipped them both up and round to cup his face. Her eyes opened for a moment, looking up into his, searching for something. Maybe she found it. Maybe not.

Freeze. Click back two seconds. There. Her hands cupping his face.

He could see them.

The camera was high up and behind his back. He should be able to see the top and side of her face, and her hair. The tips of her fingers either side of his head. But for a couple of frames there, he could see her hands, too. Underneath his head. That shouldn't be possible.

He flipped back and forth a few times, bordering on very irritated. It was probable that the effect, a weird kind of transparency, had been caused by the filter set he automatically applied to the tape as it was being digitized. Preset algorithms adjusted contrast and light levels to maximum effect, seeking a medium range which made the edited result more consistent. The filters played with the image on the basis of numbers and theory, rather than reality. He was a lot more tan than Anne was, he realized: it hadn't been a problem before, but she hadn't been on vacation since he'd been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her. Perhaps the tones of his head had fallen foul of a glitch, blue-screening them into momentary translu-cence. It had f.u.c.king better be that. If not, then it was a tape problem again, and the Web merchant from whom he'd bought this batch would be hearing from the sharp side of his e-mail.

He clicked on and got back to watching the rest of the tape. It was fine. It was cla.s.sic. But the f.u.c.king glitch kept coming up again. Never for very long. A second or two, here and there.It had to be the skin-tone thing. She was pale, he was golden. The filter range he'd set was too narrow to cope. And it kept getting worse. By the time he'd moved on to the second pair of tapes, the ones capturing the second hour in the bedroom-and the second, languid, f.u.c.k-the image was stuttering all over the place.

David grabbed the mouse and viciously stabbed the b.u.t.ton, stopping the film. It didn't matter in the long run. He could rerip the tape without the filters, put up with the differences in lighting-or even manually tweak them himself. But the former would be disappointing, a drop in quality he didn't want, the latter several hours of hard slog. He didn't deserve this kind of ha.s.sle. He'd done a good job. Why the f.u.c.k couldn't it just work out the first time? Why didn't the silly b.i.t.c.h go to a tanning booth? He'd have to talk to her about it. He'd got her trained otherwise. This was good stuff. He wasn't losing it just because she was too f.u.c.king lazy to look after her appearance.

He slugged back another mouthful of coffee and stood up, feeling momentarily dizzy again.

He wasn't going to be s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with manual filtering tonight, that was for sure. His eyes ached as it was. The mood lighting that remained from the setup for Anne was too dim for anything else, making the corners of the room hard to see.

He sorted through the cameras once more and found one of the second ones from the bedroom-just to confirm it wasn't the tape itself. He hesitated for a moment before plugging it in to the monitor. He was in a bad enough mood already. If he found it was a tape problem, then there was nothing he could do to save the film. Did he want news like that now, feeling as s.h.i.t as he did?

f.u.c.k it. He was going to find out sooner or later. He plugged in, waited while it rewound, pressed play.

The tape started just as they were building up to the second f.u.c.k. Anne lying on her back, groaning quietly as he sucked her nipples and coaxed between her legs. Then he gently pulled one of her hands across and placed it down there, while he straddled her chest, tugging at his c.o.c.k, getting it to the point where he could commend it to her mouth for further encouragement.

A section of this and then he withdrew, climbed off and turned her over, ready for-But it was wrong. It was all very wrong.

He wasn't there on the tape.

Anne did all the things he remembered. She moved in all the right ways. Her body showed the impressions of his hands. Her mouth opened, and her hands lifted up, as if controlling his thrusts. Then it shut, she looked up at nothing and turned over, the imprint of his fingers on her b.u.t.tock. But she almost looked as if she were the only person on the bed.

David swore, yanked the tape out of the camera and threw it across the room. He grabbed another camera, plugged it in. Tape from the living room. He knew that worked. He'd already watched the MPEG. He rewound, watched it again.

Anne drank alone.

Anne's b.u.t.tons undid themselves. Her zipper undid itself, and her pants dropped to the floor.

Anne backed out of the room, giggling, her hand held out as if pulling an invisible rope.

It was f.u.c.king horrible. The tape was so screwed up it made it look like he hadn't even been there. Of course he had been, there was no question of that: the evidence was actually still there in front of him. She hadn't undone her own b.u.t.tons: her hands were nowhere near them atthe time. He'd been there; he'd done that. But if he couldn't see it-how the f.u.c.k was it supposed to count?

He furiously lit another cigarette. Went and retrieved the thrown tape. He could hardly send it back as evidence of how faulty their merchandise was, but he could note the serial number.

He'd need to quote it. Obviously a whole batch was screwed up. They'd probably already had complaints. They were sure as f.u.c.k going to get one more.

He sat down again. His heart was beating hard and ragged. His head felt terrible. The dislocation he'd felt before Anne arrived was back in force. For just a moment he wavered, doubted the point of his life, realizing that everything else he did had become superfluous, that the films were all he cared about, the only things that spoke directly to the man he knew himself to be. It only lasted a second, and then he was back again. Back, and angry. He needed grounding, that was all.

Hands moving like independent robots, one took the mouse and flash-navigated through the file structure on his computer, heading for one of the Greatest Hits compilations. The other tugging at the knot in the cord of his dressing gown, pulling it aside and finding what was inside. He double-clicked the file, already kneading in his lap. Okay, so one had got away.

Technology had conspired against him. But there was so much already stored to enjoy.

The film, "Dogs I Have Known," flipped up onto the screen. He was proud of the t.i.tle. A score of women in the doggie position, intercut with the little ladies gnawing on his bone. It was his finest hour, his finest hours, in fact: stripped of dead wood and cutting straight to chase after chase.

But he wasn't on it. Not in a single scene.

Feeling sick with confusion he raced back and forth through the tape, checking sections more than once. Monica, Claire, Janine. The women moved under his direction, but he wasn't there. Anne, Marie, Helen, Liz. Parts of their bodies opened to accommodate him, but there was no him to be seen. Sue, Teresa, Rachel, Nikki, Maggie, Beth. And him f.u.c.king nowhere.

Closed out, checked another film. The same.

And another. And another. He staggered to his feet. He felt very strange now. Almost as if he were floating.

There was something wrong with his head.

Maybe it hadn't been alcohol that had done for him. Perhaps he'd been slipped a drug the night before, a delayed psychedelic, by some f.u.c.ker at the club where he'd been. Wherever it was-he still couldn't properly remember. It couldn't all be gone. Not the things they'd done for him. The things he'd made them do.

No, it was a drug, because things off the screen were looking strange now, too. The table looked insubstantial. The little lamps, carefully placed around the room, these, too, seemed odd: as if flicking from one state to another outside his control. He pushed himself away from the desk, staggered back into the room. He felt sick, hollow, as if his grip on reality was fading.

Maybe not a drug, he thought suddenly. Not exactly. Not something slipped into a drink.

Maybe one of the women had come back, or her man. Some kind of revenge: because now he thought about it, some of them did come back, for "just one more time" visits every now and then. Maybe one had left something in the room. Something that slowly leaked out, a gas,permeating the room and gradually f.u.c.king him up. Building up over days, weeks. His only respite the time he spent out of the apartment. Like when he ...

He couldn't remember when he'd last left the apartment. He couldn't remember the night before. He couldn't remember where he'd been. Maybe he hadn't been anywhere, and it was only the gas that was making him think he had. Filling in the gaps, trying to explain the way he felt. He reeled across the room, heading for the corridor. Fresh air. He needed fresh air. He needed to get out and then find out which b.i.t.c.h had done this to him. And then he thought maybe he'd break his (virtual contact only) rule. Maybe he'd just find her and f.u.c.k her up bad.

As he careered across the room he seemed to move in a series of jump-cuts. When he pa.s.sed the mirror he didn't even notice that he was not reflected in it.

He barreled into the corridor, doing his best to run but losing all speed to his thrashing. The drug was building up in his head. Maybe Anne had triggered it. He'd felt odd before she came, but nothing like this. She could have pushed him over the edge. As he hauled himself along the corridor, face pressed against the cool wall, he tried to imagine what he'd do to her next time she came. She didn't like rough stuff, he knew. He'd tried it, carefully ch.o.r.eographed for the cameras. Well, next time she was going to take it anyway.

He didn't feel sick anymore, just so light-headed he could barely think. Everything seemed too white. He couldn't even feel the wall now, but he could see the door. He reached for the handle, turned it, and yanked it open.

Outside there was nothing but a black void.

He turned, but his corridor wasn't there either now. It was just black all around, the last of the light fading out. His last thought was this: This isn't right. Don't you understand? This is me.

Anne checked her e-mail before she went to bed. The usual stuff: a few things from work, a couple of articles she'd sent her agent after, a newsy letter from her sister in New South Wales.

And one from private encounters.com. She opened it.

Dear Anne: Grovel, grovel: what can I say! You were right-it wasn't your sensor pads at all. The site engineers have just found a deep code fault with the charactergen, and it looks like it's been acc.u.mulating for some time. As a result, the David Mate has been permanently withdrawn from service. Unfortunately this means that he will also have disappeared from the transcripts of previous SavedEncounters you have archived on our secure server-but rest a.s.sured he will be replaced within twenty-four hours, for your revisiting pleasure.

I do apologize for the inconvenience, and hope that a $30 rebate (against further purchase) and the promise of Generation IV En-counterMates just around the corner will encourage you to log in again very soon!

Yours sincerely, Julie North, Customer ServiceAnne nodded to herself, pleased to have been proved right. It just hadn't felt the same. And the prospect of revisiting old times, but with a different Mate, sounded really rather interesting.

She grinned greedily to herself as she shut down the computer. Whatever. She'd had enough.

For tonight, anyway.

Joe Lansdale, Hisownself here. Writing about Al Sarrantonio again. This is my second time to write a brief introduction to one of Al's stories. I also wrote an introduction to his wonderful short story collection, Toybox.

He could have written his own introduction, but modesty, d.a.m.n near shyness, kept him from it, so he asked me.

I'm honored.

This short tale, "Billy The Fetus," is undoubtedly one of the strangest, and in some ways bravest, stories he's written. It may seem like nothing more than a clever little tale at first, a cousin to one of Bradbury's more famous tales, "The Small a.s.sa.s.sin," but this one is harder and truer and stranger and even more original than that of the master.