The Artificial Mirage Read Free

believe that he had no knowledge of the operating capital that was actually present. It wasn’t until he was removed from the hospital and moved to a prison cell that he became convinced they weren’t joking.
    The guards were all white women in black uniforms who spoke Vietnamese among themselves. He guessed they were a subcontracted company, but they ignored him when he asked them anything nonessential. They began an incessant daily routine of hosing him down with a fire hose for hours and keeping him awake with strobe lights and Vietnamese pop music. After a few days, he gave up caring who they were.
    The irony that poverty was the end result of his life spent in the pursuit of money never left his mind. Nothing could be more embarrassing. The trade had been perfect, and his timing impeccable. But Chi had beenplaying with a shadow account. Why had he traded his own account at Chi and not a large brokerage back in the United States? His anger was tinged by the knowledge that he had been a part of Chi. He thought about every transaction and sale he had made with Chi and his own confident laughter, which he could still hear.
    The oldest of the guards towered at least a foot above him. Her pasty white head was draped in a mop of silken strands of gray and blonde hair that ended abruptly at her neck. A pink AR monocle was fitted into her left eye. She was the one responsible for moving him to a cell with bars and blasting him with cold, pressurized water while the AC was on its highest setting. There was never any malice in her face or demeanor; she could just as easily have been watering plants. This latest session felt like the third time in less than twelve hours. He was becoming feverish, and the cold water dissipated his self-inquiry temporarily, but his regrets and self-disgust came back within a few minutes of returning to the tropical warmth of his cell.
    Money had no purpose without Lauren. But with money forgiveness and forgetfulness could be had. Laws could be made up along the way with money. But not now. Now he was a victim decrying his circumstances, the embodiment of everything he hated. He wanted to return to his old self, but it was like watching someone else’s life. He was stuck in a pattern of thinking he felt helpless to interrupt.
    The blonde left him in the dark. He was shivering in a ball on the wet concrete floor when the dim yellow lights brightened. A different guard with dark red hair and brown freckles squatted in front of him between the bars of the cell.
    “You know what, Charlie?” She spoke in clear American English, but it was clear she wasn’t American. She smiled at him like she was telling him the punch line to a joke he would never get.
    “What?” Charlie held himself in the fetal position on the floor and looked up at her polished black shoes and dry uniform.
    “I believe you. I believe you were a useful idiot.”
    And that was the end of his conversations with them. The blonde came in with a towel and returned him to his cell. After that, the guards seemed to regard him with sympathy as they passed his cell. Occasionally, they even inquired about his thoughts on his food, which was always lukewarm rice and some cabbage-flavored nutritional paste squirted on one side like toothpaste.
    Since his incarceration, he had been completely cut off from the outside world. His custom AR glasses had been seized, and he had not been permitted to use any other communication devices. He wondered what day it was as he stared at the line where the wall met the floor. Lauren, the police had informed him in an unusual departure from their policy of keeping him in the dark about everything, had been released after only a few days of interrogation because she was only an assistant. Days passed, but it might have been weeks. He wasn’t going to bother wondering what was going on with Lauren or what was going to happen to him. He was going to breathe. Now. And everything around him would fade. He