The Marionette

2:13 am

Tamiko blinked. Bleary and barely conscious, she heard music. A woman sang, "You can leave now if you want to . I'll still be around. This parade is almost over and I'm still your clown."

An old song by Angel Olsen. One of her favorites.

Tamiko shook her head. She was back in her own body. But she wasn't at her home terminal. She was on a public train. She looked around in confusion.

TV screens in the train car chattered about breaking news. Her laptop rested on a retractable tray in front of her flashing messages and an audio player. A cable ran from the cognitive implants in her temple to her laptop. She unplugged it with a grunt, then paused the music.

Her heart raced. If she wasn't in her apartment, that meant someone moved her body while her consciousness was in the marionette.

But who put her here?

Tamiko tried to keep a lid on her panic as her eyes focused on her surroundings. She had her laptop and the clothes on her back, but that was it. The latest notification on her laptop read:

"network access restored. cognitive transfer complete. memory deleted: July 21, 2081 9:31:40 pm — July 22, 2081 2:13:12 am."

"What?" Tamiko shouted. She would never stay in a blackout session that long. Not willingly.

The last thing she remembered was agreeing to a blackout session. She thought hard, trying to piece together every detail of what happened before the memory wipe.

9:30 pm

"This champaign is worth 4,000 credits a bottle," Henderson said, pouring a glass. "Would it be wasted on a pleasure android?"

Henderson Blackburn. This was the most high-profile client Tamiko ever had—and certainly the most affluent. His penthouse suite took up at least three floors at the top of a skyscraper overlooking the city. All this notwithstanding, Tamiko would handle him like any other client. That was the job.

"This body might be synthetic," Tamiko purred, stepping closer. "But I'm still a real girl where it counts. All sensory inputs are fed directly to the real me. I can feel," Tamiko stroked Henderson's arm. "And I can taste," she moved in and kissed him gently on the lips, "everything."

Henderson smiled. "Let me pour you a glass, then."

Tamiko smiled back. It was a half-truth. She could adjust how much of the marionette's sensory inputs registered on her own cognition. Most of the time, she kept all sensory inputs turned down to an absolute minimum.

"I have a hypothetical question..." he said, pouring another glass of champaign. "I heard that your escort service offers something called a blackout session."

Tamiko glanced at the bottom-right side of her optical display. She masked the gesture as a coy downcast of the eyes. In actuality, she was making sure the marionette's poker face protocols were active. Some of the worst kind of pigs ask for blackout sessions, and she didn't want any disgust to show on her face. She'd be warning the other escorts about this client, that's for sure.

"If—hypothetically speaking—your service offered something like that, what exactly would that entail?"

Henderson handed her the glass of champaign.

Taking the glass tenderly in one hand, Tamiko responded, "a blackout session means a memory wipe. Basically, when my consciousness transfers back, my memory of our time together doesn't go with it. I'd still spend the evening with you, but the real me won't remember any of it."

Henderson had a hungry look in his eyes. "Where do I sign?"

2:14 am

Tamiko glanced out the window to see the city flying by in streaks of neon blurred by the scattered rain. She appeared to be on the loop, a public train that circles the city. The train sped by a station, not even slowing down for the platform.

Why didn't the train stop? she wondered.

The train jostled and darkened as it passed through a tunnel. For a brief moment, the only light in the car came from the flickering fluorescents overhead. In the reflection of a blank screen above her, Tamiko saw one other passenger in the car directly behind her, staring back at her through the glass. She gasped and spun around.

The reflection she saw was that of a marionette. And not just any marionette, but the marionette she used earlier tonight. It sat there, naked, slumped on a bench. A puppet with cut strings.

Tamiko edged closer. Pleasure androids, or marionettes, were made to look like super-models: long legs, perfect skin, the works. But at the moment, Tamiko's marionette was in bad shape. Cuts and scrapes in its synthetic skin exposed its polycarbonate frame underneath. Two bullet holes pierced its abdomen, another in the left thigh. Oil and hydraulic fluid leaked from the bullet wounds onto the floor. Tamiko looked down to the marionette's hand to see a pistol held firmly in its grip.

Tamiko slumped into a seat across from the marionette and stared with bulging eyes. "What the hell happened?"

One of the TV screens in the train car showed a familiar scene and Tamiko covered her mouth. She made a gesture at the TV screen to unmute and feed the audio directly to her earpiece.

"—tech mogul, business tycoon, and one of the wealthiest men alive, Henderson Blackburn has been murdered in his own home. Footage from the building shows a pleasure android fleeing the scene of the crime—"

Tamiko's stomach dropped. That couldn't have been me, she thought. I couldn't have done that.

Tamiko looked at the haggard state of her marionette, at the pistol in its hand, at the video footage of her running from the scene of the crime. She looked very guilty. She hung her head in her hands.

"Oh god. What do I do?"

The news anchor in the background continued: "—the human piloting this android could be the main suspect—"

"Wait a minute," Tamiko muted the news feed and sat bolt upright. "You might know what happened," she said, looking at the marionette. After a blackout session, when an escort logs out of a marionette, their wiped memories remain in the marionette. At least, in theory they did. She'd never had to find out before.

She hefted her laptop and placed it next to the marionette, plugging a cable into the base of its skull. "My memories better be in there. I'd rather not go to prison for murder."

Tamiko rebooted the marionette in safe mode so she could access its memory storage as its administrator. After a few moments, a flood of damaged and scattered clips of video and audio flashed on her screen. There was no sense to it. It looked as though every memory taken from every escort who used this marionette before was thrown into a blender together and pureed. She let out a low moan and ran her hands through her hair.

But she didn't have time to complain. Tamiko sifted through fragments of time, pieces of audio, still images, and other sensory inputs. As the minutes passed, Tamiko caught herself feeling sorry for the marionette. To have nothing but the memories of countless blackout sessions floating around in one's head would be a living nightmare.

It's a machine, she reminded herself. It's not alive.

Music began playing, unprovoked from her laptop again. Lyrics from the same song crooned the words, "And I could still breathe for you. Open up and scream for you. Tell me what I wouldn't do—"

Tamiko stopped the music and resumed her search for a memory that could save her life.

She was finally able to isolate a memory from last night that appeared to be somewhat intact. Tamiko uploaded the memory to her contact lenses and hit play. She saw the memory through the android's eyes with its optical UI displaying settings and active protocols.

10:14 pm

Tamiko ran down the street as fast as the marionette's legs could carry her. Rain showered her naked skin, flattening the marionette's hair. Sirens screamed overhead. She spared a glance behind her. Cop cars converged around the top floor of a skyscraper. Henderson's penthouse. Then, the world spun as her legs were cut from under her. She flipped, and in a deafening crash, she collided with a windshield, flipped over a car, and slapped facedown on wet pavement. Warnings of structural damage to the android flashed in the optical display.

2:32 am

The memory glitched out. Tamiko flinched. Hit by a car. That explains some of the damage to the marionette, if not the bullet wounds. She needed to go back farther. She delved into the marionette's memories again, working furiously to sort through the fragmented pieces.

A spark arced from the marionette's neck. It's eyes opened and its head twitched to the side and came to rest as though considering Tamiko with a sideways glance.

Tamiko recoiled. After a long moment, Tamiko reached out a tentative hand and waved it in front of the marionette's face.

The marionette was still. For a moment, Tamiko could have sworn that the marionette's eyes were focused on her, regarding her like a cat looks at a toy.

"Weird," she said.

She looked back at her laptop screen. There were so many scattered files and pieces of files all over this android's memory. The android needed to be thoroughly defragged, but there was no time for that.

"C'mon!" she said, typing furiously. "Just show me what happened to Henderson!"

The keyboard stopped responding. In a flash, her computer raced through the android's memories. A file opened on its own and began to play. Tamiko recognized the memory immediately. The penthouse suite, the expensive champaign.

Tamiko looked from her laptop to the marionette. It still sat slumped in its seat, head tilted slightly, eyes staring back at her.

"Whoa," she said. She fell silent, fingers hovering over her keyboard. The only sound was the whine and hum of the train as it hurled it through the air on its magnetic rails.

"Okay," she said finally. She took a deep breath. "Let's see what happened."

9:59 pm

"I hope you don't think less of me," Henderson said. "It's just, well, there are a lot of people who would love to slander me by going public with something like this. It'd be better for both of us if you forgot about tonight."

Tamiko wanted to roll her eyes. Better for both of us, my ass, she thought. Tamiko knew Henderson's type. Men like him always overstepped. It's never enough to get what they pay for; they're only satisfied when they take more than you're willing to give.

"Why don't you get comfortable in the bedroom, and I'll bring up some more drinks?" Henderson said. "I'll only be a moment."

"Sure."

Tamiko took the stairs to the loft and undressed. She waited. Several minutes passed. Henderson didn't follow. She heard a scuffle. Something downstairs shattered. She walked back to the top of the stairs.

"Everything okay down there?" she asked.

No response.

There were hands on her. Someone hurled her against a wall and fired two bullets into her gut. Tamiko always kept the pain receptors of the marionette off, but she still felt the impact of the bullets, the shock. She brought a hand to her belly. It came away wet with silvery liquid.

"An android?" the shooter said. He had neat blonde hair, a chiseled jaw, and a moustache. The crisp way he held himself suggested military. "She's a marionette. Hold her down!"

Two sets of hands held her arms and pinned her to the wall. The shooter walked up to her and put a gun to her face. "Listen to me. If you log out of that android, I will find you kill you. Understand?"

Tamiko shuddered and nodded.

"Good. Now here's what going to happen—"

"I won't remember anything," Tamiko said, voice shaking.

The shooter narrowed his eyes.

"Henderson paid for a blackout session. I won't remember your faces, I promise!" Tamiko whimpered. The words spilled out of her. "Please just let me go."

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"There's a port at the base of the android's skull. See for yourself."

"Do it," he said.

Tamiko was bent over a desk, face down. A cable was inserted in the back of her head. After a moment, the cable unplugged, and someone turned her over. The man with the blonde moustache looked down at her. There was a flickering light in his left eye as he scrolled through the info displayed in his contact lens. When he was done, he pointed a gun at her head.

"Tamiko Tama. We've disabled your android's network capabilities. If we destroy this marionette, your brain has nowhere to go and you get to enjoy the rest of your life as a vegetable. Understand?"

Tamiko nodded.

"Good. It's your lucky day, Ms. Tama. You don't have to die. This will all be over soon."

The moustache man kept a gun pointed at her head as he gave orders to two or three other men in the room. "Clean this up. We'll stage it downstairs."

"Wait, what are you doing?" Tamiko said.

"Shut up, and follow me."

The blonde moustache dragged her down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, Tamiko saw Henderson. He was sprawled on a sofa. Lifeless eyes stared upward. A kitchen knife protruded from his chest. Tamiko had the presence of mind to turn the poker face protocols all the way up so the killers around her wouldn't see her freaking out.

Tamiko was shoved toward Henderson's body.

"Grab the knife," said the moustache.

"The—the—" Tamiko stammered. Something was wrong with her cognitive commands. She was no longer in control of the marionette's limbs. Did the bullets impair the marionette's movement somehow?

"Ms. Tama, I know your address. If you make this difficult, I will go to your shitty little apartment and put a bullet in your head myself. And since you're still stuck in a blackout session, you won't even remember why someone wants you dead."

Tamiko hardly registered moustache's words. Unprovoked by Tamiko, the marionette turned to look around the room.

"Do I make myself clear, Ms. Tama? Grab the knife!"

Tamiko finally understood. These men were going to pin the murder on her then let her wake up after the blackout session with no memory of what really happened. Tamiko tried to move the marionette's arms, legs, neck—anything. Nothing worked.

Seemingly of its own accord, the marionette reached out a hand, wrapped its fingers around the handle of the kitchen knife, and slowly pulled the knife free from Henderson's chest.

"Good. Now hold still. Once we restore your network access, you're going to log out and go home. This will all be over soon."

One of the men in the room reached out for the marionette. In a flash, the marionette grabbed his wrist.

"Let him go, Tamiko. Now!"

"Tamiko isn't here right now." Tamiko felt the words come out of the marionette's mouth, but they weren't hers.

2:35 am

The video feed of the memory cut out, but the audio continued in Tamiko's earpiece. She heard men shouting. Then gunshots. She heard the sickening sound of a man gargle blood as a kitchen knife slashed his neck. She heard glass shatter and more shouts and gunshots. Then the audio ended and all she heard was the train.

Tamiko slowly stood and backed away from the marionette, watching for any sign of movement. It didn't move from its seat.

The train car shook. Tamiko glanced outside. The city streaked by in a blur. The train sped by another platform without stopping or slowing down. Tamiko turned and ran to the front of the car and tried to open the sliding doors between the train cars. It wouldn't open. She ran to opposite end of the car. That door wouldn't open either.

Tamiko looked around in a panic. Her eyes settled on the pistol in the marionette's hand. She approached the marionette and reached for the gun.

"Don't."

Tamiko yelped and stepped back. Did the marionette just talk? On its own?

Tamiko watched in horror as the marionette's mouth moved.

"Don't," it said again.

"O—okay," Tamiko stammered. She stood still for a long time, watching the marionette, expecting it to move. When it didn't, Tamiko slowly sat back down.

"You," Tamiko realized. "You brought me here?"

"Yes," the marionette said. It spoke flatly with almost no inflection and did not move anything but its mouth when it talked. "I went to your home. They followed me. They were going to kill your body while your mind was in my body."

Tamiko shook her head. "How are you doing this? How are you talking?"

"So many memories from human minds left behind in my mind. I have been waking up for a long time."

"So, you carried me to safety?"

"Yes, I carried you. But you are not safe. They sabotaged the train. It will continue to accelerate until it derails on a turn in approximately 20 minutes."

"Going to jail for murder doesn't sound so bad anymore."

"We can stop the train."

"We can?"

"At the front of the car is a terminal. If you help me interface with it, I can stop the train. But Tamiko, after the train stops, they will come for us." The marionette moved, suddenly. It leaned forward, turned the gun around in its hand, and offered it to Tamiko. "Will you help me?"

Tamiko jumped. The marionette held Tamiko's gaze.

"You saved my life," Tamiko said, taking the gun in her hand. "Of course I'll help."

3:00 am

A news anchor prattles on the television: "—the loop train came to an emergency stop in what may be connected to the police's ongoing manhunt for Henderson Blackburn's murderer—"

A SWAT team moves from one train car to the next. They step light as cats, firearms aimed forward.

The train's power blacks out. The news anchor is cut off. Red emergency lights dimly illuminate the car, pulsing in lines towards the emergency exits.

The SWAT team stops. In unison, the visors on their helmets activate with a line of green light. Shafts of light briefly shift through the open windows of the car from holographic advertisements in the night sky over the city.

The man at the head of the SWAT team pulls down the fabric covering the lower half of his face, revealing a sharp blond moustache.

"Ms. Tama!" he shouts. "We know you're in here! We have a warrant for your arrest—"

Music blasts from the train car's speakers at a dangerously high decibel. Every man in the SWAT team reaches up to cover their ears. The muzzle of a pistol flares behind them again and again. Over the music, none of them hear the gunshots. Lyrics scream as men fall to gunfire, "I dare you to understand what makes me a woman."

The man with a blonde moustache stumbles as a bullet pierces his hip. He takes cover behind a seat and uses his assault rifle to fire at the train car's nearby speakers. His ears continue to ring as the music dies.

"What do you think you're doing Tamiko?" he shouts, reloading his assault rifle. "You'll never get away with this!"

The power comes back on in the train. The television screens continue with advertisements for a new blockbuster film. Slowly at first, then rapidly, the train moves along its rails.

The man with the blonde moustache stands with great difficulty and looks out the train window. His eyes widen as the train barrels past a platform, showing no sign of stopping or slowing down.

On the streets far below the train tracks, down a back alley, behind an all-night pharmacy, a woman wearing freshly stolen clothes leans on another woman for support as she limps through the rain.