Hunting a Tigress Pt. 01

The Old City of Cairo is an immaculate matted world stitched with strings of dark sin. Karnell can see the sinners cloud, brown hazy, above the city as the drone copter-craft shuttles him and his work partners toward the ports rising out of the dust. The setting sun reveals the colorful neon blinking like varicose veins pumping through the city.

It beats just like Karnells broken heart.

"I hope we can get out of this god forsaken city early," says Gensen, his conservative architect partner.

Karnell moves his gaze from the bubble windows over to Gensen sitting at the white seats, waving his skinny hands through the air, clearly working on their presentation. Karnell switches his retinal hud over to see the overlay of the man's work. Their proposal for a new apartment complex, fit with new age advertising screens, is filled with too much artificial color for Karnell. He switches his filter over to his jungle one. It fills their stark white passenger cabin with rendered plants, vines, and trees. He relaxes into his seat trying to listen to the sound of birds over the drone engines.

"Chances are we're going to be here a while. You know how Egyptians can be. A mouse and cookies and that kind of thing," says Karnell.

"Either that or we'll be waiting around for a decision forever. Priscilla doesn't like that I'd be here idling around. She reads *The Daily Telegraph* way too much. But I guess from our office briefing before we came here, that piece of crap tabloid isn't too far off," says Gensen.

The corporate real estate investors at the London office were very clear in their warnings over the pristine conference table that morning: Stay in the hotel. If you leave, the city might take you and you might never be seen again.

Karnell chuckles to himself. They probably used *The Daily Telegraph* as their primary source of research. From what Karnell has learned, the city is rough...

But there are diamonds everywhere.

The copter-craft gives a gentle notification to both of them to buckle up as they start their descent. Soon, they're engulfed in brown smog so thick Karnell can't tell they're moving. But he looks down into the city to see the sinful neon.

In ways he wishes that he still had Ashley pawning after him like Priscilla; calling and checking on him almost at every moment. He can still hear the worry of her voice and her accusations of him wanting others.

But he hears them no more.

---

## Karnell Dresses for The Presentation

And for the outside. As a man with a fair complexion, he wears a long black woolen sports coat to hide as much of himself as possible. The turtle neck might be a little too much, but without any of his implants or additional neon inlays, he looks rather 21st century. His idea is to hide his brown hair and angular face in the mask and not be noticeable.

The last thing he wants is to bring attention to himself, especially in a place like this.

It's a habit he wishes to break. But from Ashley constant nagging over him and his wants, he still feels beaten into a muted version of himself that he can't seem to raise the brightness of. Karnell puts his implant neon lights back on and sees them glowing yellow, orange, and steel white along his neck and under his jaw. It's been a while since he's seen himself this way. But all they remind him of are the fantasies that Ashley forced him to suppress. The air of her suspicion dances in the aura of his implants. The light powers down and he feels muted once more.

Again, it's a bad habit.

He leaves his serenity style room that feels like the inside of a pyramid tomb and makes his way to the conference rooms in the high rise above.

---

## Gensen Is Right

The Egyptian men with The Consolidated Contractors Company are pot bellies in over-priced suits. They're sitting at the other end of the conference table and speak Arabic as they debate and argue. Karnell and Gensen wait patiently as they let the translation fill their rental huds with the conversation.

*This is going to take more than a week*, thinks Karnell. All it took was a few slides into the presentation and already two of the larger Egyptian investors at the end of the table are concerned about the size of the advertising screens on the outside of the building's north end. They talk over each other and the conversation draws on with a thickening tenseness that resembles the ash outside of the windows.

A text comes in from Gensen sitting to his left. The yellow letters of his work partner go underneath the blue of the Arabic translations.

"I've notified the London office that we're already off our timeline. They underestimated how much time we're going to be here," he texts.

"I'll contact the hotel now and extend our stay," Karnell texts back. He keys over to the hotel concierge and updates their stay.

"I'm going to fly out Priscilla in a few days. She'll want to be here to 'keep me safe', or more to keep an eye on me. She won't bother me as much if she's here. Did you want to bring Ashley out?" he texts.

Karnell takes a moment before he texts, feeling the pain and imagery of Ashley surge up into him as he sends his message.

"No. We're not together anymore," he texts. Seeing it in words makes the sadness grip his chest and tear at his heart already in pieces.

He can see Gensen's facial expressions change slightly in his peripheral view of the rising argument in front of him. Gensen reaches a hand over and puts it on Karnells forearm. He turns and they meet eyes.

"I'm so sorry. When did that happen?" Gensen whispers.

"A few weeks ago. She had another man," Karnell says.

Gensen's face twists into sadness and shock as he turns back to the warring Arabic businessmen.

"God, that's fucked up," Gensen texts. "I'm so sorry."

Karnell pushes back tears that well up in his eyes and he tries to focus on the conversation. Hands and insults are flying among the half a dozen men speaking.

But one of the business men isn't arguing. He's still and connects eyes with Karnell.

*He must have heard us,* Karnell thinks.

Karnell nods to the well dressed man. His name is Tartib and he's one of the investors of other architects. Karnell recognizes the studious contractor from some of their augmented virtual meetings.

Tartib gives him a sympathetic look and a nod, then returns to listening to the argument.

The nod makes some of the emotional pain swirling in Karnells mind slow. It's a sense of comfort he hasn't felt much in the last few weeks after finding another man's jeans in his dresser drawer. The breakup has been long and nasty, and getting out of the country has helped to distract him, even for the short time he's been here.

He wants to be distracted more. So he finds solace in his fantasies brought on by boredom. He wants to bring his jungle overlay up and play his secret fantasy, but he doesn't.

Instead, he settles for the pain to keep him awake as the hours go on.

---

## The Meeting Ends After Seven Hours

Karnell comes back into his hotel room and lays his long body out on the white sheets, letting his back decompress and his mind temporarily unwind. The silence in his room is joined by the hum of the city outside of his room forty floors below.

The darkness of the city accompanies his own dark thoughts. He misses Ashley. Pain from ripping the mental scab during the meeting only festered the longer they sat. The motivation he had to go out into the city and explore is now gone. He just lays in his darkness, letting the air of Cairo fill his lungs.

His ears beep a soft alert for a text message.

He opens his eyes to see a message from Tartib at the meeting.

"Want a drink? Bar upstairs in fifteen?" he asks.

"But I thought you're not supposed to drink?" texts Karnell. Settling aside religious norms long past, corporations like the Consolidated Contractors Company sometimes institute no drinking policies, along with a various other amount of restrictions, to prevent them from ending up on some social media feed and tarnishing the company's image.

"I'm not supposed to do a lot of things, but you'll find that very few rules in this country are enforced anymore. Martinis?" texts Tartib.

Karnell gives him a thumbs up and then sits on the bed. He reaches over slowly and flicks a light on. As his eyes adjust, so does his mentality about his breakup. For the next ten minutes, he switches his eye filter over to the jungle and looks about the room. He hears the jungle over the horns honking. Flowers and green vines cover the bureau and TV on the wall.

But for the first time, he hears the growl of a tiger.

Looking to his right, he sees it passing by in the bushes.

A real one. Not the generated fantasy one he has logged in his implants.

Karnell remembers that seeing animals in these overlays might happen, but it's rare.

It makes the fantasies of his mind, the ones he revealed to Ashley a year ago, come to the forefront of his mind. But it comes with the pain of why he lost her.

He rises and takes the filter off and heads to the bar above thinking of a woman in tiger print body paint.

---

## "I'm So Sorry My Friend"

Says Tartib.

The robotic bartender with silver arms sets two ginger mint juleps on the tan marble bar in front of them. Karnell takes a sip before responding and lets the peppery burn of the drink coat his throat.

"Thanks Tartib. I appreciate the drink," says Karnell.

"Was she in love with the other man? Or in love with both of you?" he asks.

Karnell knows that Egyptians can be highly personal very quickly sometimes, and other times they play politics and games. But with matters of the heart, they get right to it. And this question hits Karnell right in the broken parts of his feelings. He takes another long sip and looks into the sunny haze of Old Cairo City out the large windows of the high ceiling bar.

"Just him. She said she stopped loving me a year ago," Karnell manages to say.

"Why did she not tell you?" Tartib says incredulously.

Karnell can only shrug as the images and actions of Ashley flash through his mind. He spent more money on her for trips, clothes, pampering, dinner dates, and anything that she wanted to buy. He thought she wanted him more, but it was the opposite. She was filling a hole in her heart with his cash, the only reason she stayed. Karnell feels his shoulders slump and he leans his elbows on the bar.

"She was enjoying the 'perks' of my labor," Karnell says.

"Ah, yes. Digging for gold to fill the empty heart. I'm so sorry, my friend," Tartib says, placing a hand on Karnell's back. He hits the button on the LED menu in the marble for shots, and the robotic bartender whirls back up and pours vodka into crystal glasses.

"How have you been coping?" Tartib asks.

Karnell thinks about the excessive exercise he's done over the past few weeks to get the stress out. His tired body is sore, but now recovered after the last few days of traveling. But it's barely enough.

"Not the best. Been trying to focus on this deal to take my mind off it."

"Ah, well your mind will be wandering quite a bit over the next two weeks. The bosses will do that arguing for many days until the last. I'm afraid you will be quite idle."

Karnell twirls the shot glass on the bar and smells the fumes of the drink. For a moment the tiger comes into his mind and excites the dreams and fantasies that he hides. It makes his heart heavy knowing that those very thoughts are why the weight is there. An additional week of being tortured by his fantasies and his heartbreak make the sadness well up in the torn folds of his loss. Karnel takes the shot glass and clinks it to Tartib before they drink it.

"What caused the hole in her heart that she had to fill?" he asks.

Karnel shakes his head slightly and exhales slowly. Karnell lets the liquid courage speak for him.

"I told her something a year ago that must have ripped a hole too wide to heal."

"What was that?"

"I had fantasies that were... Beyond anything she was even willing to hear, much more activities that she was willing to entertain. As a result, her view of me changed and it all went downhill from there."

Tartib looks up at the holo-program showing advertisements, clearly thinking for a moment. Then he looks to the left and right of him at the empty bar around us. He leans forward to me and keeps his voice at a whisper as he speaks.

"Are your fantasies that dark?" he asks.

"No. Just kind of... Unique. Not something many people are willing to do," says Karnell.

"Well, you are a free man now, yes? Maybe you can do it now," he suggests, slapping me lightly on the back as he orders another round.

"It's not exactly something easy to find or coordinate. I just don't have the time or energy to go after it," says Karnell.

"What if I told you that you could?" says Tartib.

"Could what?" says Karnell, turning to Tartib. The astute Egyptian man pulls two beers away from the robotic bartender as the taps in its arms close.

"Could find it and have it coordinated for you," he says.

As he slides over the beer on the coaster, Tartib slips a card under it.

All that's on it is a QR code that he can partially see.

His retinal hud tries to read it and struggles.

"I appreciate the gesture, but this isn't the kind of fantasy that can come true with an escort in a hotel room," says Karnell. Although, he wishes that it could. He brings the drink to his lips just as Tartib finishes his sip.

"That isn't for an escort service," he says.

"What's it for then?"

Karnell detects a bit of a smile from Tartib as he looks into his beer.

"A dealer in *"unique"* entertainment," he says.

Karnell moves the coaster away from the QR code and lets his hud read it.

The message is encrypted.

And as he reads the orange letters in his hud, hearing the American accent voice in his ears reading the message out, the pain of seeing the other mens jeans in his drawer fades. As the message moves on and he listens, so does the pain of leaving Ashley.

When the message is complete, all that remains is the image of the tiger.

Or, more accurately, a tigress.

---

## Karnell Has Never Heard of This

He searches the old internet and the current neural nets, both in this country and in New Britain. But he finds nothing similar or related to the message from the QR code. The only reason he doesn't think it's a scam is because it came from Tartib, who's not the kind of man to burn a bridge or offer something sinister. He wants to ignore it, but his curiosity gets the better of him the longer he sits in the hotel room. The darkness of Cairo and his fantasy pump through the veins in his mind, pulsing like the neon outside. He reads the message again and the orange of the letters start to flash as stripes like a tiger.

The safety briefing about the surface streets of Cairo from Corporate echoes in his mind. Karnell switches over his filter again to make the room a jungle. Sounds of animals, of rain, overtake the moment. He breathes in, trying to let the fantasy pass. He closes his eyes to feel the sadness of his loneliness.

There's a chuffing sound of a tiger.

Then a guttural growl.

When he opens his eyes, the overlay program shows the grainy image of a tiger walking in the distance.

It looks at him.

It stirs the fantasy that caused the split in Ashley's heart.

And his own.

The tiger backs away into the brush of the jungle and disappears.

Karnell rises to his feet and walks toward the tiger.

The jungle overlay goes away.

He grabs his coat and walks out through the door to the elevator, and presses the button for the lobby.

He reads the direction to find this dealer in unique entertainment.

A man calling himself "The Mediator".

---

## He Coughs Through The Mask

The hotel rentals have bad filters and the air tastes like petrol and mothballs. But Karnell walks through the dust cloud of the city streets after taking a cab to Zamalek. The former row of old expatriate housing is now a slum, filled with the kind of sinful shops that the tabloids talk about, all ablaze in bright neon arabic.

Ahmed's less-than-lethal weapon pawn shop with tasers in the blue neon windows.

Digital GirlFriend Express, a programmer's shop to sell x-rated holograms for the retinal hud, many of them dancing against the glass of the shop, beckoning you to come in.

Zahir's Brokers for overseas husbands to get out of the country.

And every type of lingerie and sex toy store you can think of, all displaying cheap holographic ads that litter the side walks just as much as the dust.

Karnell walks in and out of the sidewalk and street, weaving through peddlers and implant gangs as he looks at street signs. No one seems to notice him in his all black clothing. But as he walks and looks around, he seems to be the only person not brandishing his neon inlays to his skin or any of his implants.

As he notices this, he finds the corner leading down a dark alleyway that only has pink neon lights. It's a dark path with not many people.

He brings up his panel in his retinal hud and allows the neon implants in the side of his head shine their colors of yellow, orange, and iron white.

His eyes glow as he turns into the dark alley like the instructions say.

Set between a broken shop with windows cracked and dusted from a break-in ages ago and a tacky jewelry store with gems and necklaces well out of fashion is an old door with an upgraded keypad. He punches in the code and has to lean into the door to push it open.

He closes it behind him and lets the darkness of the white and black tiled lobby engulf him. The faint glow of his implants are the only light that shows the smooth and worn surfaces of the old lobby and the twisting staircase up to the top.

As he looks, he sees only one yellow light coming from one open office upstairs.

He climbs the smooth starway that creaks as he walks up.

---

### The Glass Door Says "Computer Repair"

And Karnell pushes the door open to see a skinny Arab man in his mid-twenties sitting behind an old desk. Around him are broken flat screens, keyboards, and wires with old non-quantum computer terminals piles to the ceiling. He looks up from a paper book and looks at Karnell.

"Welcome. American Statesman?" asks the young man.

"No. New British. I'm... Here to see someone," Karnell says, stepping into the office.

"You have an appointment?" asks the young Egyptian man.

"Not exactly," says Karnell. He holds up the card with the QR code on it.

The young man just points to the door to his right and continues to read his book.

Karnell looks to his right to see another crowded office. The sweet smell of smoke and sour apple fill his senses as he opens the door. There's a man sipping a small crystal glass with a sprig of mint sticking out of it. They meet eyes, and Karnell holds the car up. The older man waves him into the office.

"Would you like shisha?" The old man with the white hair offers him a pipe from the glass and electric bottle on his desk.

"Please," Karnell says, closing the door and taking a seat across from him in front of the big wooden desk. He sucks in some of the smoke as the old man puts a few pads of old paper aside. The old man put his hand out for the card and Karnell hands it over.

"Ah, very good," says the old man. He puts the card aside. "I am Omar. I'm the mediator. You read the message?"

*"'An expert on special sensual affairs,'"* Karnell repeats. "Not something I've ever heard of before. That's rare in an information age like today."

"We pride ourselves on anonymity," says Omar, taking the pipe to get his own drag of smoke. "It is why we stay in business and out of the way of the authorities, of course. I plan to keep it that way. What brings you in to see me, my friend?"