False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(39)
Mirage is one of the worst Zealot lounges, and that’s where we head in the hope of finding Mia.
Mia. I haven’t seen her in a year and a half. She took us in when we left the Hearth. She was like a second mother, or an aunt. We lived with her for years—the only other Hearth apostate, or at least the only one we met. We loved her, and she loved us, but she was always troubled. In and out of the nicer Zealot lounges, but when her Zealscapes became darker, police showed up at our door. She cleaned up her act until she almost seemed like the Mia we knew when we first came to her.
After the last time she relapsed, and disappeared to an off-grid Zealot lounge, both Tila and I washed our hands of her—at least, I thought we both did. It wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t watch her self-destruct. She turned down all my efforts of help, of therapy, of rehab. There was no going back for her. Not this time.
I still felt guilty about that, but I couldn’t help her if she wasn’t willing to help herself.
Nazarin thankfully has the night off with the Ratel, though he’ll be there all day tomorrow. There’s still a chance we could be recognized if the Ratel have visited Mirage before. We’re both wearing masks, like a temporary visit to a flesh parlor. They fit perfectly over our features, light enough not to be noticed but enough to trick the camera drones, and we can peel them off when we wish. There’s a small chance the orderlies might notice, if they look too close, but so many there are overworked and underpaid, I think we’ll be all right. My mask itches.
We take the MUNI down to the Mission district. By the time we arrive, night has fallen. The streets here are full of wavering holographic ads. They assault the senses as we walk down the street: men and women wearing next to nothing, displaying their wares, licking their lips suggestively and calling out to us what they’re offering. Loud, tinny music blares from each of them in a cacophony. If anyone still had epilepsy these days, they’d have to avoid this whole neighborhood. I feel the beginnings of a headache flaring at my temples. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I make my way through the glare, Detective Nazarin at my side.
The ads grow darker, more reds and blacks and deep blues. They flicker, leaving the streets in darkness but for the street lights. There’s no sense of welcome. The people who come here want only the dreams they’re too afraid to dream in a proper Zeal lounge.
Mirage is at the end of the street. An ad of a palm tree in a desert ripples over the front of the building. A stone sphinx wavers in the distance, and as we watch, it opens its mouth and yawns before gazing at us mysteriously. The windows are shuttered. I don’t want to enter.
In that building I know there are dozens of people strapped into Chairs, wires poking from their veins, their eyelids twitching as they live out their dreams.
I wonder what causes some people to favor more violent dreams than others. Some say that people who are predisposed to crime have different brains, like damage to the prefrontal cortex. That means that the two hemispheres of the brain can’t communicate properly, and aggressive impulses are in overdrive. Ticking time bombs.
I never bought that, but it’s the endless question of nature versus nurture. Free will versus predestination.
Sudice developed Zeal at first as a virtual reality game in which to act out fantasies. They discovered the extra benefit by accident, that if people acted out violent urges, when they came out, vicious tendencies were dampened. The neural pathways are reworked, suppressing the amygdala, or the prehistoric “lizard” brain we’ve had since we crawled out of the ocean. It worked on those with so-called violent brains, and those without. Overall, people were calmer, happier. Perfect citizens. Zeal lounges became all the rage.
Sometimes I wondered what Mana-ma would have to say about all that.
The first time doing Zeal is a rite of passage, one my sister and I missed. When we tried it later, it was anticlimactic. All the dreams seemed but pale echoes of what we saw during Meditation back at the Hearth, or when we closed our eyes each night.
“The government and Sudice are both terrified of Verve, aren’t they?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“The same drug, but stronger, more powerful, a better high and people wake up not calmer, but angrier. More prone to lash out. San Francisco has peace now, but how peaceful would it be if people weren’t kept dampened by Zeal?”
I wonder if I’m pushing too far, saying that. It sounds critical of the government, his employers. Nazarin only smiles sadly. “I don’t want to find out, do you?”
I don’t say the other thing I’ve wondered, from all the information I’ve brainloaded: what happens if the government gets hold of Verve? Dangerous as it is, it lets people see into others’ dreams remotely. And what if there’s more it can do?
“How did the Ratel develop Verve?” I ask.
“We think it’s Ensi himself who designed it. The genesis is from Zeal. He took it and twisted it somehow. The man is a genius.”
“And where did he come from?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“How deep do the Ratel run?” I ask out loud, more to myself than to Nazarin, but he answers.
“Deep. They’ve got their little tendrils everywhere. Right now, in a way we’re fighting a losing battle. Getting rid of the Ratel completely will likely never happen. What we have to do is have the upper hand, choke off their stronghold before Verve becomes too widespread.”