“What do the numbers following your names mean?” I blurted out, trying to cut through the drudgery.
Ezra looked up at me, clearly startled.
“Well, they’re a manufacturing indicator,” Ezra replied, lowering his voice, and fidgeting nervously. “There are different kinds of Drones, and Metasapients, each designed for a different purpose. We were given a number depending on that purpose.”
“What does Annabelle’s designation of ‘Five’ represent?”
“Um, pleasure model.”
I probably shouldn’t have laughed, and seeing Ezra get incredibly embarrassed didn’t help.
“That explains a lot actually. She’s beautiful,” Silverstein remarked.
“What about your designation, Ezra?” I blurted out and I tried to gloss over what Silverstein had said.
“All the first generation Drones and Metasapients were designed for combat. We’re killers,” Ezra remarked with some trepidation.
The remainder of the trip was somewhat uneventful, if not awkward after Ezra went quiet. Never thought of myself as a conversation killer, but I definitely touched a nerve with Ezra. He was mopey and downcast right up until we got underneath my building.
I sent Russ a text once we got to the hatch, and I thought for a moment maybe I wasn’t getting reception when it took him so long. It was a good thing nothing was chasing us. He unlocked the hatch and climbed down with us, his face fearful and smudgy. I let him catch his breath before pummeling him with questions.
“Why can’t we go up top, Russ?”
Russ looked at me, his eyes went all grandfatherly and concerned.
“There were collectors here looking for you,” Russ whispered while looking up above.
“What? What did they want?”
I was scared.
“They were looking for you. Didn’t know your full name, but they did know exactly which apartment was yours,” Russ whispered, shaking his head.
I looked over at Silverstein and Ezra who, being them, couldn’t understand why I was scared out of my mind. The collectors didn’t just bilk hapless merchants out of cash at the downtown markets, they made people disappear too.
“How could they know who I am? What am I going to do Russ?”
“I told them you moved out, and that your apartment was empty. I hid your stuff,” Russ winced.
“You touched my stuff?! Hey, you can’t rent my place out just because the collectors are hassling me!”
“I won’t! I won’t, but you guys can’t go up there, they might be watching,” Russ grumbled, rubbing his temples.
Russ handed us each a sandwich and then lingered by the ladder going up, making sure no one was standing up top. Silverstein looked thoughtful while Ezra picked through my bag for colored scraps. Then, Russ gave us the not-so-reassuring nod and headed back up, giving us a key to the hatch so we could come and go.
“I’m the bug,” Silverstein whispered.
“Um, what?”
“If the Mystic is on the up and up, one of my clones is, or was, a psychic. Probably means he can tap into what I’m doing, knows where I’m going, who I’m hanging out with... I don’t know,” Silverstein said in his slow thinking voice.
“The old man? Or, maybe someone who directed him?” I asked.
“Could have been,” Silverstein nodded. “He did look like me, and found me when no one else who knows my pre-amnesiac self could.”
Ezra looked up, a purple scrap of cloth draped over one of his long feral-looking ears. I laughed, at what was probably an inappropriate moment, trying to break up the mood a little. Ezra just gazed at me baffled, while Silverstein seemed lost in his thoughts.
“They’re trying to get to me, which means that they think I’m still a threat to them somehow. That means I might have a chance to stop whatever it is I set into motion,” Silverstein said as he shed the coveralls and hard hat.
“So they know who we are, but we don’t know who they are,” Ezra hissed. “How can we even the playing field here?”
“By finding out who I am.”
“How are we going to do that?” I asked, already sensing what Silverstein intended to do.
“I’m going to find Officer Collins and have him try to register me as a transient. He implied that the Central AI will do a search of my finger prints to find out who I am, even if I have no criminal record. Probably a safeguard in the event the elderly, mentally handicapped, and such wander off and get lost.”
“You definitely qualify as mentally handicapped,” I said giving Silverstein a soft jab to the gut.
“Definitely, especially with this plan. If my clones are hacked in somewhere, they’ll instantly know where I am, even without a psychic. I can’t think of another way that isn’t hacking into the Central Global Government’s computer systems,” Silverstein replied, grabbing my wrists so I couldn’t slug him anymore.
“Sounds like suicide,” Ezra replied.
I didn’t want to do it that way, and couldn’t fathom Silverstein wanting to trust the Police in this town. Why he thought this Officer Collins would be any different, I had no clue. I suppose it didn’t matter, because none of us had the contacts or the money to pay for a proper CGG hack.
It was probably stupid, but we waited until it was dark and crept up through the apartment building to the street. I hated leaving my stuff behind, but Silverstein said it would only slow us down. Ezra kept mostly to the shadows, creeping along behind or above us.
I couldn’t help but feel anxious. All the familiar downtown streets, my old haunts and hangouts, even the trash which always lay strewn around everywhere seemed different. Like whatever it was Silverstein started had corrupted the whole world and I was just beginning to see it.
More than anything, I wanted everything to be okay, and for things to be like they were a few short days ago. Silverstein and I, hanging out, shopping, wandering the Downtown. Now he’d lost his agedness, been unveiled as possibly responsible for ending the world, and was killjoy-serious all the time. Not how I wanted to spend the weekend.
It was cool to have Ezra along. Yeah, he was creepy in that underground mutant sort of way, but kind of sweet and shy. Patient, too. No matter how many times I stole his googles or snapped the back of his little rubber suit, he always seemed on an even keel.
We were all worried what would happen when we talked to Officer Collins, but none of us could have known just how bad it would be. Hindsight truly is twenty-twenty.
Chapter 7
Downtown Port Montaigne, Tourist Route
2:01 AM, December 22nd, 2199
Taylor’s Diary, Part 2
Silverstein, Ezra, and I wandered the downtown Port Montaigne streets for several hours hoping for a chance encounter with Officer Collins. Generally, when I didn’t want the police around, there they were. Now that I actually wanted to see a cop, one was nowhere to be found. Totally cliché, but this is the way human perspective works I guess.
The thunderstorm was making the downtown area darker than usual, so we cut over near the strip near where I first met Silverstein. I took in the sights of the place. Triple X parlors, pawn shops, theaters harboring various attractions, and the small hubs of commerce in between each brightly lit building. Home.
Ezra did little to obscure his presence, and most people did just as little to notice anyway. When he put his head down and his hands in his pockets he looked like a gloomy teenager as opposed to a biologically engineered weapon. Including Silverstein, he was probably the second tourist to wander the area in a very long time.
The place was in full swing with people selling what the people were buying. I’d smelled the smells and seen the sights here many times, passing through to work in the colorless kitchen where I did dishes. I tried not to let the thought of it all coming to
screeching halt enter my mind, but it was too late.
Silverstein looked about for something that would bring the few Port Montaigne police officers brave enough to respond to calls downtown. Ezra was doing his best to keep his head down and smiling weakly whenever I met his gaze to gauge how he was doing. From what little I knew of Drones, they did not like being above ground, near bright surroundings, or in the midst of a crowd. Ezra was getting a plentiful helping of all three.
He seemed to be doing pretty well, all things considered. He was very different in both temperament and looks from the other Drones. They all seemed like sleepy mole-people while Ezra was more like a shark, always moving, watchful, and eerily fearless.
He’d been through things, too. I could tell. He shared the same distant look that some of the ex-soldiers who served on Mars had. Whenever they came into the club and I was clearing their plates, it was like they were somewhere else most of the time. Ezra wasn’t sad or broken, though. It was as though his experiences periodically informed and bolstered him instead.
Outside one of the seedier casinos, a place known for bookies and slavers, we saw the familiar red and blue lights. As we got closer, it was clear that someone lay dead amidst the trash that lay clogging up the gutters out front. A police officer was clearing the crowd as the meat wagon slowly descended, emitting a dull warning alarm.
Whoever it was, they were mostly nude, and laid open like the shop keeper Silverstein said he saw a couple days back. It was hard to see much else through the rain soaked tarp that had been spread over the top. I recognized Officer Collins as we approached, waving his flashlight back and forth.
“Everyone, move back!” he bellowed at the onlookers. “Let the wagon land!”
“Officer Collins, a moment of your time!” Silverstein yelled as he stepped across the police line.
Officer Collins turned and opened his mouth to say something, but his words were blotted out by gunfire. The crowd surged toward me like a tidal wave, and I thought for sure I was going to be trampled. Ezra grabbed me and quickly scaled a lamp pole, clinging to it almost half way up. From that vantage point I could see Silverstein drop to one knee and pull out his own gun.
Officer Collins opened fire, aiming for the front doors of the casino. Ezra grabbed me around the waist and leapt over the crowd to the roof of one of the theaters. I couldn’t believe how far he was able to jump, particularly with me in tow.
“Stay here,” Ezra said. He quickly disappeared back down over the edge.
I watched him weave through the crowd, like a tiny piranha just below the surface of water. As quickly as it began, the shooting was over. I peered back down into the street trying to find Silverstein, but it was hopeless.
Officer Collins managed to make it back to his car. He leaned inside and allowed his fingers to flit across one of the monitors glowing faintly inside. The meat wagon was holding a safe position over the scene, creating quite a racket in the process. I could barely hear, but I could see red and blue flashing lights descending from uptown above, and heading our way.
Ezra suddenly emerged from the lip of the building, his face hollow with horror. I shook my head wordlessly as he got close enough to scream over the engines of the various vehicles descending around us.
“They killed Silverstein,” Ezra cried out.
“What? No!” I cried grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Not our Silverstein, a different one,” he yelled over the racket trying to calm me down.
When we got back down to the ground, it was like Ezra said. There was Silverstein, standing over... Silverstein. Same face, same body, even the same cute freckles on his forearms. The dead one had a long knife in one hand and had taken several bullets to the chest. He had a crazed look on his face, his teeth gritted tightly together in a grotesque smile.
“You want to explain this to me?” Officer Collins growled, pointing to the more familiar of the two corpses laying in the street now.
“Is this the guy that’s been going around attacking people randomly? From that shop earlier?” Silverstein rasped, flicking me a concerned look.
“You heard about that, too? It does seem like the same perpetrator,” Officer Collins replied eyeing Silverstein in that way cops do.
Ezra walked over to me pulling his goggles up on top of the skullcap I gave him. He looked back over his shoulder and then drew close enough to whisper in my ear. Ezra had apparently sniffed over and around the body.
“That’s not Silverstein laying there. Smell’s all wrong,” Ezra whispered, followed by a quick glance back at our own distraught Silverstein.
Finally, the crowd cleared enough to allow the meat wagon to land amidst the swarm of radio cars that had responded to the shooting. Silverstein kneeled down next to the gross parody of himself, the sound of the casino ahead, and the chatter of radio car transports and cops behind. It was an odd sight, and I could see Silverstein was taking it pretty hard, blaming himself.
“I need to find out who I am, Officer Collins. I want you to file me as a transient and run my records,” Silverstein whispered as he, Ezra, and I stepped in closer.
“You sure you want to do that?” Officer Collins asked as he pulled out his data slate.
“Takes three years or proof of residency to drop off your record.”
“I think I probably should,” Silverstein said looking sadly back at the carnage around him.
“Right,” Officer Collins replied, taking Silverstein’s thumb print with his data slate registering him as a transient. It took a few moments for the confirmation to come back. Officer Collins blinked almost audibly at the data slate before turning back to us with a slight smile.
“Pretty ominous name you’ve got,” Officer Collins said. “Says here you’re a Mister Vance Uroboros with an address in uptown, specifically in the Silver Estates.” He turned his data slate around to show us.
Silverstein looked at the limited information the public record contained then seemed lost in thought for a moment, closing his eyes as if he needed to blot out everything for a moment. He did that every time he was doing some sort of math.
“Can I get a ride home?”
“Protect and Serve, that’s what we do. Don’t leave town, though. The detectives might have questions about these killings if the victims have families,” Office Collins said hitting a button on his belt that opened the prisoner compartment of his transport.
I thought riding in a police car without wearing handcuffs would be something of a novelty for me, but my experience was nothing compared to Ezra’s. He just stared out the narrow window, his black Drone-eyes filled with wonder. I don’t think he’d ever seen stars or the city from this vantage point. I envied him every time he had one of his “magical moments”.
We passed through the bowels of downtown into the shining precipice of the uptown streets, monorails and shining pillars of glass where uptowners worked and played. The shining edifice did its best to cover the underbelly of Port Montaigne, appearing as though it were casting an ugly shadow. I could see the ocean spread out to the horizon beneath a bright sun diminished only by the thick wire mesh in the transport’s windows.
“Why did Officer Collins make that comment about Silverstein’s real name?” I muttered, thinking half out loud.
“Uroboros?” Ezra whispered turning toward me.
“Yeah,” I replied watching Officer Collins and Silverstein chat in the front seating area.
“His name is sort of like a word used to describe a snake coiling around in a ring for the purpose of devouring itself, starting at the tail,” Ezra said squinting at me.
“Yeah?”
“Yep.”
“Yuck.”
Leave it to Ezra to make something that just sounded weird into something creepy as well. I couldn’t help but like the little guy, though,
him saving my bacon all the time and such. I wondered what it would be like to have his strength, able to leap crazy crowds in a single bound. I knew he’d be helpful to Silverstein in all of this. I just hoped I would be, too.
The radio car transport slowed as it came to a trembling hover above a conspicuously clean street. Looking down I could see a high gate surrounding a community of homes that probably cost a billion each. They were huge, had pools, solar panels, and the latest in security systems.
We stepped out onto the smooth, well-maintained pavement. I’d never smelled air so clean, or been in such a quiet or safe feeling neighborhood. Totally creeped me out, even without Ezra’s helpful insights.
“Why can’t Officer Collins drop us off at your house?” I said giving the cop a wink.
“He’s not allowed to fly over. The folks who live here will call the mayor and complain,” Silverstein said, half-joking.
“He isn’t wrong. This is one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Port Montaigne. You have to have the code and the right biometric signature to get in the gate and everything. Think you guys will be okay from here on out?” Officer Collins asked, one eyebrow raised in my direction.
“Totally. Thanks for the help, Officer,” Silverstein said.
“What do you want done with your twin brother we found down there?”
“Burn him,” Silverstein replied without affect, then turned and walked up to the gate.
I watched Officer Collins climb back into his radio car. It slowly ascended into the sky, the dull thrum of anti-gravity engines fading quickly into the night. I was nervous. It was silly, but I hoped none of the residents would notice I was poor. It was the middle of the night of thankfully, with no “decent” folk wandering about.
I’m not sure why I was suddenly so self-conscious.
Uroboros Saga Book 1 Page 10