The Punch Escrow Read online

  THE PUNCH ESCROW

  TAL M. KLEIN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2017 Tal M. Klein

  All rights reserved.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material.

  “Karma Chameleon” as written by George Alan O’Dowd, Jonathan Aubrey Moss, Michael Emile Craig, Roy Ernest Hay, Phil Pickett. Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management US, LLC

  “Bette Davis Eyes” as written by By Donna Weiss, Jackie DeShannon. Copyright © Donna Weiss Music, Inc. and Plain and Simple Music Author Photo © Lai Long

  All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them, or any of their future successors-in-interest in the year 2147.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Inkshares, Inc., San Francisco, California

  www.inkshares.com

  Edited by Matt Harry, Adam Gomolin, and Robert Kroese

  Cover design by M.S. Corley and interior design by Kevin G. Summers

  ISBN: 9781942645580

  e-ISBN: 9781942645597

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940692

  First edition

  Printed in the United States of America

  “I read a lot of books but haven’t enjoyed one as much as The Punch Escrow in a long time. I picked it up for a cross-country flight and didn’t put it down until we landed in New York. Tal Klein creates a plausibly real future that sucks you in. He powers his story with action, twists, and more than a dash of humor. Young actors will be lining up to play the lead character, and any director worth his salt would kill (or at least teleport) for a chance to adapt The Punch Escrow.”

  —Andy Lewis, book editor, The Hollywood Reporter

  “A compelling, approachable human narrative wrapped around a classic hard sci-fi nugget, The Punch Escrow dives into deep philosophical territory—the ethical limits of technology, and what it means to be human. Cinematically paced yet filled with smart asides, Klein pulls off the slick trick of giving readers plenty to think about in a suspenseful, entertaining package.”

  —Sean Gallagher, IT editor and national security editor at Ars Technica

  “An alt-futuristic hard-science thriller with twists and turns you’ll never see coming. I couldn’t put it down.”

  —Felicia Day, author of You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)

  “Klein transports us to a beautifully rendered near-future world. This is refreshingly original and immersive hard sci-fi. You’ll turn the last page and yearn for Joel Byram’s next chapter.”

  —Ben Brock Johnson, host of Codebreaker podcast and Marketplace Tech

  “A headlong ride through a future where ‘huge international corporate conspiracy’ is a box you check on a form and teleportation takes you anywhere—it just blows you to bits first.”

  —Quentin Hardy, head of editorial at Google Cloud and former deputy technology editor at The New York Times

  “If I lived in the world of The Punch Escrow, I’d teleport around the world shoving copies of Tal M. Klein’s thrilling, hilarious, and whip-smart debut into everyone’s hands. Save me the trip—buy this novel now.

  —Duane Swierczynski, author of Revolver and the bestselling Level 26 series

  “A fast-paced near-future sci-fi adventure peppered with exotic technology and cultural references ranging from “Karma Chameleon” to the Ship of Theseus, The Punch Escrow will have you rooting for its plucky, sarcastic hero as he bounces between religious fanatics, secret agents, corporate hacks, and megalomaniacs in a quest to get his life back. If you’ve ever wanted to get Scotty drunk and ask him some tough questions about how those transporters work exactly, The Punch Escrow is the book for you.”

  —Robert Kroese, author of The Big Sheep and its sequel, The Last Iota

  “This book angered me to my core, because it’s based on an idea that should have occurred to me. The fact that Tal executed it so well, and made such a page-turner out of it, just adds insult to injury.”

  —Scott Meyer, author of the Magic 2.0 series

  “Some writers take us to the future so we can question the effects that technology can have on humanity on a global and personal scale, along with the impact upon the social fabric. Others do it to take us on a wild ride made all the more fantastic by pushing the boundaries of what we can expect from the world of tomorrow. Tal M. Klein masterfully balances both and sets it all to the beat of an 80s soundtrack. An excellent piece of contemporary science fiction.”

  —J-F. Dubeau, author of A God in the Shed and The Life Engineered

  McCoy: Where are we going?

  Kirk: Where they went.

  McCoy: What if they went nowhere?

  Kirk: Then this will be your big chance to get away from it all.

  —from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  Actually violets are purple

  Irises too

  CONTENTS

  AB INITIO

  STICK!

  SYMMETRY BREAKING

  NEARLY INFINITE

  SITUATION

  HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN

  BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

  CUT LOOSE LIKE A DEUCE

  SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE

  IT’S MY LIFE

  ANOTHER OTHER

  LOVE PLUS ONE

  THE LAW OF HOLES

  THE BIG MAC OF THESEUS

  TARZAN BOY

  TAINTED LOVE

  TAKE ON ME

  THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH

  DOCTOR! DOCTOR!

  CURST BE HE THAT MOVES MY BONES

  THE CRETAN LABYRINTH

  ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

  WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  THE BUMMOCK

  CHEKHOV’S GUN

  THE ROAD OF TRIALS

  MAGIC MIRROR GATE

  DON’T YOU WANT ME

  A PERFIDIOUS INDULGENCE

  MISE EN ABYME

  IT’S A HELL OF A TOWN

  ONE-HUNDRED STEP SOUL CATCHING

  EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD

  JEOPARDY

  HALCYON

  SUPERCALISOLIPSISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS

  NULL ROUTE

  A BORROWED SWORD

  MAKE WESTING

  THE BATTLE OF CHELSEA PIERS

  OH L’AMOUR

  THE LASKER TRAP

  ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE TO REMIND ME

  AD FINEM

  LA GIOCONDA

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  LIST OF PATRONS

  AB INITIO

  IF YOU’RE READING THIS, then you’re officially in charge of figuring out what to do next. I’m off the hook, probably because I’m dead. Consider the baton passed. Hooray for you.

  The problem for me is trying to figure out how much you know, and more important, how much you need to know—because you’re in the future, and I’m in the past. Maybe it’s a good idea for us to start with the past past, like stuff that happened in my past that is relevant to my present, which is still your past, but now possibly relevant to your present.

  Do they still teach you guys about the da Vinci Exhibition? Maybe that’s a good place to start.

  STICK!

  TELEPORTATION KILLED THE MONA LIS
A.

  More specifically, a solar storm during the teleportation of da Vinci’s masterpiece was to blame. It happened on April 15, 2109. The painting was being teleported from Rome to New York City for an art exhibition when a huge flare erupted from the Sun, sending something called a coronal mass ejection on a collision course for Earth. Think of it like a zit popping on the Sun’s forehead, only the zit was about the size of Venus and the pus inside was an electromagnetic shit storm. Okay, that’s a pretty gross visual, but now it’s in your head and out of mine.

  That solar storm hit Earth with such force, it ionized the sky, creating a vast cloud of hyperactive electrons that bounced around inside the atmosphere above Italy. Anything electronic in Rome got fried. That included thousands of implants, automobiles, drones, city buses, and those cute little Italian scooters zipping through the city. One hundred and thirty-five people died. Hundreds more were injured in collisions and fender benders. But the greatest loss, as perceived by the worldwide community, was the disappearance of a six-hundred-year-old portrait of a woman with a mysterious smile.

  Back then, freight teleportation had been around for about four years. The process worked pretty much like you might have seen in vintage movies—an item was placed into a chamber in one location, scanned, and then instantaneously zapped to a receiving chamber in another location. There had been very few mishaps since the technology went commercial, mainly because the procedure took place in such a short amount of time.

  But during one crucial moment on April 15, 2109, the frayed threads in the process unraveled all at once. There was no fail-safe. No backup. The plasma cloud struck Rome at the exact moment some poor technician started teleporting the Mona Lisa. A globally cherished artifact was scanned, beamed into the ether—and never showed up on the other end. Rows of atoms arranged to create centuries-old master strokes suddenly evanesced into nothing. The painting dissolved into a cloud of worthless gray quantum foam.1

  It wasn’t the technician’s fault. Nor was the teleportation process itself to blame. It just so happened that an incredibly unlikely solar event occurred at the same instant as an exceedingly rare painting was being moved from one place to another. Statistically, it was in the neighborhood of one in 3.57 quintillion. But as the universe continually likes to remind us, black swans don’t play by the rules. And this was one particularly petulant pen.

  Sure, accidents happen all the time. On that unfortunate day, boats sank, drones crashed, trucks collided—all with valuable cargo and precious souls on board. Any vessel in which the Mona Lisa could have otherwise been traveling might have also been downed by the solar flare. But witnessing a one-of-a-kind, globally precious masterpiece fade into nothing—that had a lasting effect on people.

  The da Vinci Exhibition meme, more than anything else, led to the creation of the Punch Escrow. And the Punch Escrow, of course, is what made human teleportation possible. Not only possible, but avowed as the safest form of transportation yet. Beaten into our collective consciousness was the fact that not once since the commercialization of human teleportation in 2126 had any person been maimed, altered, vanished, or otherwise mistreated by teleportation.

  Not until me.

  But we’ll get to that. For now, let us pay our respects to that enigmatic Renaissance lady, La Gioconda—who was visited more than any other painting in the world, whose rapture led to human teleportation becoming the great success it is today.

  Ciao, bella.

  1 Quantum foam (also referred to as space-time foam) is the stuff that makes up the fabric of the universe. It was theorized by John Wheeler in 1955, thought to be officially discredited by Kristina Wheeler (no relation to John) in 2055, and then finally “discovered” by Suzanne Wheeler (no relation to John or Kristina) in 2105 with her invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. Quantum foam is essentially a qualitative description of subatomic space-time turbulence at extremely small distances (on the order of the Planck length). At such small scales of time and space, the Heisenbergs uncertainty principle allows energy to briefly decay into particles and antiparticles and then annihilate without violating physical conservation laws. As the scale of time and space being discussed shrinks, the energy of the virtual particles increases. According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, energy curves space-time. Wheeler (the Suzanne one) conclusively proved that, at the time crystal level, the energy of these teeny tiny fluctuations in space-time are large enough to cause significant departures from the smooth space-time seen at larger scales, giving space-time a “foamy” quality that can be definitely measured and discretely manipulated. In other words, scientists were able to get their hands on God’s Legos and start building whatever they wanted.

  SYMMETRY BREAKING

  COMING TO WAS A BITCH.

  Not sure how many volts I took. Conservatively speaking, enough to power my apartment for an hour or two.

  Mumbles were the first sounds I heard.

  What the hell happened? Did I get struck by lightning or something?

  More mumbles.

  A feminine voice. I’m not sure what it was saying, but yes, it was definitely female.

  My confusion was too debilitating to focus on the words or their owner’s identity beyond that. There was just this awful ringing. And purple.

  In my childhood, when I got angry, I’d clench my eyes shut as hard as I could. Eventually, the pitch black would become dark purple.

  Open your eyes!

  My eyelids weren’t responding. All I saw was purple.

  I remembered reading that a blind person’s brain rewires itself to use the visual cortex, essentially hijacking it to improve the processing of other information such as sound and touch. Because of this, some blind people learn to use echolocation—reflected sound waves—to build a mental picture of their surroundings, like bats or dolphins.

  Abe, one of the guys I worked with, could do this. He was born blind, but his parents were Three Religion Fundamentalists, so they didn’t allow him to get implants as a kid. When he got older, he gave up religion and ran away from home. In his secular twenties, he finally got his comms installed but opted out of ocular implants. Being blind was just a core part of his self-identity. I recalled him claiming to be able to tell an object’s distance, size, texture, and density by clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth about three times per second. I’d seen pictures of him hiking and cycling, so maybe he was right. But he was a smartass like me, so there’s also a good chance he was full of shit.

  Just for kicks, I tried clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

  Click. Click. Click.

  It worked! Not the echolocation thing, but my tongue worked! Progress.

  I tried blinking my eyes open. Too bright!

  The voices were becoming clearer. I could hear mutterings in a Middle Eastern–sounding tongue—one of the Levantine languages, I thought.

  I had no idea where I was, and no idea who the out-of-focus head trying to communicate with me belonged to. Now someone else shined what looked like an interrogation light in my face, blinding me and catalyzing an even more painful headache.

  “Hey! Cut it out.” It appeared my vocal cords worked, too.

  “Ahlan habibi,” the blurry face greeted me. I smelled cardamom and jasmine. “My name is Ifrit. Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay. Could you please stop shining that thing in my eyes?”

  The bright interrogation light blinked off.

  She asked me if I was okay again.

  I rubbed my temples and groaned. “Well, I’m not dead.”

  Ifrit’s blurry face started to come into focus. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, with attractive Middle Eastern features—coffee-colored hair, dark almond-shaped eyes, and olive skin.

  “I’m sorry we had to shock you, but our security system doesn’t like unauthorized visitors.”

  “Well, thanks. I guess.”

  I looked around. Other than the woman tending to me, t
here was nothing remarkable about the room I found myself in. Why did she send me here? It was another conference room, like the one I had just escaped, although the comparatively sparse decor indicated whoever occupied this space had significantly less of an aesthetics budget to work with. For example, the table on which I was lying was made of plastic, not wood, and the chairs were less “comfortably ergonomic” and more “painfully pragmatic.” There was a medium-sized printer by the door, though. A very recent model, taking up most of a desktop, and a rather expensive accessory for such an otherwise scant room.2

  But I had made it. I was alive.

  Do the thing!

  I had rehearsed this moment in my head before my escape.

  “My name is Joel Byram. People are trying to kill me. My comms have been disabled. I need help!”

  “Shhh!” Ifrit chided. “You don’t have to shout. We can hear you.”

  I guess I was yelling. Wait—“we”?

  I painfully lifted my head to try to gather my bearings. Beyond Ifrit, at the head of the table on which I was lying, was a lean, salt-and-pepper-haired, smartly dressed older man. The first thing that came into focus was his forehead. He had more creases on his forehead than I had metaphors to describe them.

  The smoke from his cigarette snaked toward me, framing his face like he was in one of those old-fashioned film noirs from two centuries back.

  “Is he okay?” the man asked her. A low, gravelly voice.

  She nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

  The man jerked his head sideways, and Ifrit, the only person who genuinely seemed to care about my well-being since the attack, left the room.

  As she walked out, I tried once again to access my comms and pinpoint my GDS location to get an idea of where I was. But all I got was the same irritatingly familiar error message:

  UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS. INVALID USER.

  The man silently stared at me. The kind of icy, appraising silence that didn’t encourage small talk. Finally he rose and motioned for me to get up off the table.

  As I got up, my body took the opportunity to remind my brain of its various aches and pains. The worst of it seemed to spread along my right flank. My wrist was also on fire, so much so that I could barely move my hand. My shoulder sent pulsing shots of pain with every movement, and my ass felt like I was sitting on a family of fire ants.