The hulking form of Lenard Byson closed in on Alice Mihara. She quickly backed into the hotel room and squeezed between a wall and a high end table crowded with boxes. This wasn't Lenard Byson the gangster she had escaped from in 1983 Las Vegas. Regardless of that fact, the guy looked pissed and seemed bent on doing her serious bodily harm.
"I searched all of fucking San Francisco for you," Byson said, his expression hard, his chubby face beet red.
Her mind raced in panic. Was this Byson a gangster too? How had she wronged him? And how many gangsters can one skinny Japanese chick piss off? It seemed so unfair!
"You forgot how to use a smart phone?" Byson yelled. "Forgot how to text?" He obnoxiously mimed texting with both thumbs. The guy was over six feet tall, wide at the shoulders, generally fat, and no question way stronger than her. She listed her options: scratch him, bite him, knee his crotch. A combination of two or more with lots of screaming seemed her only out.
"What? You not gonna say anything? You WANT me to blow my fucking my top, Alice?" Byson asked.
"Sorry," she said in a tiny voice choked with fear.
He thrust an object at her face. She flinched ready to scream scratch and bite. Then she frowned when she saw that it was a book he was holding.
"You are going to the book signing, Alice!" he yelled shaking the book in her face. In a quieter but no less menacing tone he added, "You are going to smile and pretend that everyone there is your best friend. You are going to answer every inane, stupid questions your fans ask like they fucking matter. Do you understand me?"
"Yes Mr. Byson," she said barely above a whisper.
"Mr. Byson?" he said with a sniff as he put the book down next to a box full of them on the table. Several more boxes were scattered through out the hotel room. "Cut the sarcasm kid. I know you hate this promotional shit but it pays the bills." He backed away and went straight to the little hotel refrigerator and pulled out a beer.
"Book signing?" she whispered.
He popped his beer and waved it at her as he spoke. "When we lock the graphic novel deal with the Japanese, a movie contract is just one skip away. Until all that happens you gotta learn to play nice." He sat on the bed and suddenly looked tired. "Being your agent is gonna give me a heart attack." He took a long draw of his beer. "I got a lot to do before the book signing kid. Help me out. Don't run and hide, okay?"
"Okay ... um ... Lenard," she said hesitantly.
"Lucky for you Imperial's people moved the signing to Sunday morning. You get the night off." He drained the last of his beer, slammed the empty on the bedside stand, got up and walked toward Alice. In her mind he was still the heartless gangster from Las Vegas. A particular memory of him forcing her to watch his goons break all the fingers on both hands of a card cheat floated up from the dark depths of her mind like a dead bloated animal. She couldn't help flinching when he put his hands on her shoulders. Then he did the oddest thing, he gave her a fatherly kiss on the top of her head. "Go do your favorite thing kid... write your stories and forget about the rest of us." He went to the door. "Imperial is ready to sign on for book two. Wouldn't hurt if we had something to show him. I'll be at this fucking door at ten sharp. Wear something nice." He made that last part sound like a threat. "You show up dressed in that goth shit I'm gonna slap you stupid in front of your fans." On that note he left.
"What the fuck," Alice said to the empty room.
"What the fuck indeed," Came a male voice.
The room wasn't as empty as she thought. With a racing heart, she turned to confront the speaker but no one was there. Was someone hiding in the bathroom? "Who are you?" she asked in the direction of the closed bathroom door.
"Really Alice? I'm offended. Have you forgotten me already?"
The voice was in her head. "Britt?" she whispered.
"It is I your faithful suicide phone back from the dead."
"How?" Alice asked confused. "I thought you fried yourselves in the bathroom back on New Nippon when I jumped?"
"I thought I did too. But here I am."
Alice went into the bathroom to retrieve her faster than light phone or FTL for short. But it wasn't a FTL anymore It looked like a slick smart phone, better than anything she had ever owned in 2011 for sure, but still just a smart phone. "You in there?" She asked.
"In a way," Britt said in her head. "I have to say though that the technology of this world is barely adequate for my existence. It took me nearly forever to hook up with your brain chip."
"I've been here for less than an hour," Alice said.
"I arrived two days ago and believe me, that's a life time for an AI like me," Britt said. "I nearly gave it up several times. Then there it was ... the tech signature of your chip beeping loud and alive. It gave my life meaning again."
"The chip thing is still in my head?" she asked.
"Apparently."
She wasn't sure if this was good or bad. The way her life had been going lately, it HAD to be bad.
"When I got here, the first thing I did was look you up on line," Britt said. "Welcome to the world of Alice Mihara in the year 2016."
"I'm from 2011," Alice said.
"The Alice of this world appears to be a successful writer. Her first and only book to date is climbing best sellers lists across the country."
"What did she write? Never mind, there are boxes of the book right here."
Alice picked up the one loose book that Byson had shoved in her face. She read the title aloud, "Naked Portraits, by Alice Mihara." The dust cover was black with a galaxy of white stars, a red and violet nebula cloud formed a distinct female shape. She cracked the book. "Copyright 2016 by Literotica Press. This is the closest I've gotten to a world close to my own. Maybe I can settle here?"
"Sounds good. Now all you have to do is avoid extreme sex and write a second novel for your bombastic agent," Britt said cheerfully. "I estimate a seventy two percent failure rate on the sex and eighty nine on the writing."
"Asshole," Alice said.
"Notes for the second book are stored in a place called the cloud. I'm collecting them right now. Perhaps most of the book is done?"
"That would be nice. Wait, don't you need codes to get into her files?"
"Silly girl, I'm her so called smart phone remember? Oh my, you're not going to believe what the title of book two is."
"I'm tired of surprises. Just tell me."
"Naked Portraits 2: Confessions of a Liner. Apparently the Alice Mihara of this world has an inkling of what YOU are."
********
"My life is so weird," Alice said as she sat down on the bed. She was way beyond tired and just wanted to go to sleep.
"Thank you for dragging me along," Britt said dripping with sarcasm.
"Don't blame me. You were suppose to kill yourself," Alice said crankily.
"I'm still considering it."
"Please don't," Alice said quickly. "You're the only friend I have in this world."
"Alice ... I'm touched." Britt said sounding sincere. "I downloaded the book notes on the other Alice's primitive laptop," Britt said. "Good Goddess that laptop is beyond stupid. I'm using the Master Card to order a better one."
"I feel bad for using this woman's money," Alice said.
"It's your money if you plan on staying."
"I wonder what happens to the Alices I replace?"
"I can't answer that and do you REALLY want to know?" Britt asked.
Alice didn't.
"Now that I've finally found you, I'm going to explore the so called world-wide-web for a proper place to live."
"I thought you lived in my phone?" Alice asked surprised.
"It might be easy for you humans to squeeze your entire brain and soul into a micro chip but entities like me need more space. This may take me a while. I suggest you find out if you can write a book. Find that primaeval laptop and get to work."
"If you're NOT in my cell phone where have you been all this time."
"Too complicated to explain. See you in a bit."
"Whoa! Wait!" Alice said. "I don't know any of the passwords to get in the computer files."
"I changed all her passwords just for you. Type in mybestfriendbritt, no spaces and two T's at the end."
Alice found the laptop in a bag near the bed next to a box of books. The thing was sleek and cool, better than anything she had back in 2011. It was one of those hybrids, a tablet with a detachable key pad. "Can't believe Britt called this primitive," she said as she accessed a word file titled book 2. There were ten pages of notes but none of it made sense to her. The word Liner appeared quite often."Guess I better settle in to read the first book," she said.
In no mood to sit and read, she Goggled Alice Mihara instead. Six possibilities came up but only one was a best selling author.
The Alice of this world mirrored her own life up to 2011. After that things changed. It started when she had published a series of stories on a free erotic story sight called Literotica. Back in 2011, Alice had visited the site a couple of time but it had never occurred to her to write a story. The other Alice apparently had and somehow she got herself discovered. A picture of Lenard Byson appeared in the bio. Before becoming her literary agent, Byson managed a mini golf course in Las Vegas, Nevada. "From a made man to mini golf. Poor Lenny," Alice said. She Goggled her best friend Joy Maeda next.
Joy owned a chain of yoga studios in Hawaii called the Joy of Yoga. "Big step away from porn star Mandy Almond," Alice said recalling a particularly disturbing version of her best friend a few dimensions ago. Alice smiled at a picture of Joy and the Alice of this world grinning hugely and holding up glasses of wine. The caption to the photo read 'Alice hits the big time! Congrads on the book deal!'
"Still best friends," Alice said close to tears. She went to a website dedicated to the book 'Naked Portraits' and read a short synopsis.
Naked Portraits chronicles the sexual exploits of Gwen Yoshimura, A young Japanese art student at Honolulu University. Strange people come in and out of her life and weird events shape her fate. A sexual event so unexpected flings her into a world the fantastic.
"Sounds like my life," Alice said. She sighed. "Guess I'm gonna have to read the book." She was no big reader of fiction and the thought of actually writing a book seemed impossible to her. She grabbed the book and flopped on the bed.
