Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set)

by Harmon Cooper

  The aeros sped off towards the representative housing, leaving the two sprawled out the parking lot. They lay like this for a good five minutes, waiting for the other one to make the first move to resume their little tiff. Keva was still trying to catch her breath and Rinchi had jammed her other ankle .

  It was Keva who spoke first. “Are you okay?” She coughed, splattering blood onto the asphalt.

  “I’m at 15% power, my leg needs replacing, my other ankle is broken, my ocular feed is semi-fried, and some of the flesh cables on my neck are making my left arm malfunction. A day’s worth of repairs, maybe two. You?”

  Keva grimaced. “You’ve dislocated something in my shoulder. There’s something wrong with my ocular feed as well. The flesh cables in my hip are jumbled or something … they’re making my entire leg numb. I can’t move the fingers on my right hand. About a day of repairs for me as well.”

  “Well, it looks like we are more or less even. What do we do now?” Rinchi tried to push herself up. “Shall we finish this?”

  “Let’s … ” Keva wiped blood from her mouth onto her tiny black dress, the shoulder strap of which now hung from her shoulder, revealing a portion of her breast. “Let’s just lay here until they find us. It won’t be long now.”

  “If you try anything, I’ll activate my Tesla Discharge…”

  Keva ignored the threat. “You know, I like you, Rinchi, I really do.”

  Rinchi was silent for a good minute. Through her blurred ocular feed, she could see the stars above, twinkling as a group of dark clouds moseyed their way over from the Pacific. A soft breeze rustled passed her, cooling her e-skin.

  “What about me?” Keva groaned, turning to her side. “Do you like me?”

  “Do you like me? Are we in grade school now?”

  Keva bristled, tried to turn away.

  Rinchi put her hand out to stop her. “When you’re not trying to kill me, I like you a lot. But – do me a solid and make up your fucking mind and stick with it; this ‘love me, hate me’ bullshit is killing me. So we good now?”

  “For now.” MercSecure’s top rep grinned, her gums red and bloody. With what strength she had left, Rinchi crawled over to Keva and rested her head on the woman’s chest.

  “For now,” Rinchi said. “For now.”

  The End.

  Life is a Beautiful Thing

  ((BOOK FOUR))

  Harmon Cooper

  Edited by George C. Hopkins

  ONE∞

  “I wanted to wait until you were off Truth XO to kill you.”

  Nelly jammed the end of her EM railgun into her ex-husba nd’s mouth. Tears streamed down Antimeria’s face as he realized, without a shadow of a doubt, that these were the last moments of his life. There was no flash associated with this realization; only an intense remorse for not winning, for not getting the best of those who sought to get the best of him. He’d lost the game.

  “Please!” he said, his voice muffled by the barrel of the gun. “Please … ”

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t,” Nelly hissed, “one reason.”

  “I know things!”

  Antimeria was crucified against the wall on the third floor of the El Pito Grande Hotel y Casino in a room that had clearly been designed for torture. The cuffs on his wrists were attached to two adjustable metal clasps behind him. A scrambler was attached to the cuffs, making it impossible for him to access the iNet. In front of him was his ex-wife, a woman with a clear motive for killing him. Behind her was Noah, the Humandroid butler who had kidnapped him from his home.

  “Oh, I don’t know Nelly,” Noah said. The e-skin on his arms was still torn, revealing the extent of his PHASR arm enhancements. The enhancements were silver, as all things android should be.

  Nelly removed the weapon from her ex-husband’s mouth, wiping the saliva on the front of his shirt. She wore a pair of jeggings, a shirt that said Killer-made and a pair of combat boots flown in that morning by an EBAYmazon drone. Fashion before terrorism, always.

  After putting Rebel to sleep the previous night, Noah and Nelly had spent about three hours on iNet digitally trying on clothing. Nelly’s shirt, handmade by a team of genetically ensmartened orangutans exclusively for Marc Jacobs, was unique in the fact that it was missing one sleeve, while the other sleeve formed a small shoulder pad. A fashion blog had recommended wrapping her forearms in tape to resemble a Reaper – an avatar used by a cyber-terrorist organization in the 2050s and 60s.

  Noah had kept things simple. He was in a dapper blue suit with the sleeves removed due to his PHASR enhancements. Once the skin on his arms was repaired, he planned to reattach the sleeves himself, as being in a sleeveless suit was considered trashy in some circles (although, as Nelly pointed out, the style was all the rage in parts of Ecuador). A Hermés cravat puffed out from below his neck, completing his neo-dapper look.

  It was the second time Nelly had been down to the torture room that day. She didn’t want to interrogate Antimeria while he was hopped up on Truth XO, the serum that had made him malleable enough to get Noah, Nelly and baby Rebel across the Mexico-United States border. Information was crucial, especially when waging war against the Federal Corporate Government of America. She wanted the information she extracted about the FCG to be sound. She still planned to kill the swine, but not before the pig squealed.

  “You did this to me!” Nelly pointed at the bruise around her eye. Without hesitation, she brought her fist back and sunk a good solid punch into her ex-husband’s gut. She was still weak from her stint in prison, but anger is a powerful force and it more than compensated for her lack of strength.

  Antimeria whoofed and moaned as the punch connected.

  The clasps holding his cuffs to the wall kept him from completely doubling over. His shirt, which had been ripped open, revealed the extent of his over consumption.

  “What do you want?” he asked as a wet spot formed at the front of his pants. “Anything! Please, I’ll do anything!”

  “Oh, I hate seeing people piss themselves!” Noah gave Antimeria a pained expression as he adjusted his green cravat. He quickly sent Nelly a message over iNet.

  Noah: Careful!

  Nelly: Relax, I’m not going to kill him yet. Your cravat looks great, BTW.

  Noah: You had me convinced! You really think so? I keep feeling like I should tie it again. Cravats have to be perfect; otherwise the effect isn’t the same. No one wants to look homeless.

  Nelly: It looks perfect. Your eyeliner looks great too.

  Noah: You are too sweet.

  Nelly punched her ex-husband in the stomach again. He coughed, his mouth foaming with spittle.

  “Please, Nelly,” he screamed hoarsely. “Torture … torture is beneath you! You’re better than that! Than this!”

  Nelly clenched her fist and curled her lips into a little snarl. A one-two combination and he had the start of a shiner to match hers, and a nicely split lip to go with it. “That was for having me imprisoned you miserable sack of shit.”

  Noah: Oh dear!

  Nelly: Relax. Manuel said I couldn’t kill him until I get some info that will help us crack MercSecure and ExEx. Antimeria has always been weak. It shouldn’t take much more to get some info out of him. Activate your ocular feed as soon as he starts confessing. Make sure you note any changes in body temperature.

  Nelly raised her weapon again. “There is nothing you can do for me.”

  Antimeria sobbed. “There is! I promise there is! Please don’t kill me, please! There always is something! I can tell you everything I know about Sauria! Everything.”

  Nelly lowered her weapon. “Noah, get me a chair.”

  TWO∞

  A holoscreen on the wall displayed Sauria’s vitals, which had improved significantly over the last day. Above his hospital bed was an ArachnaMed SpiderDoc, its surgical instruments tucked safely away inside its metal belly. Next to him, Heidi, his personal Humandroid assistant, was determinedly knitting a scarf.

  “
Heidi … ” he said through parched lips.

  The scarf fell to the floor as she came to the bedside of her owner. “You’re awake!” she said, with a smile that appeared genuine.

  “My iNet access has been disabled,” he said, blinking rapidly. “And I’m thirsty”

  “Yes, the doctor wanted to give you adequate time to recover. I’ll get you some water.”

  He touched the new scar on his chest, directly next to the scar from his last heart surgery. “I need to speak to Lorem.”

  “He’s in the waiting room now. Shall I get him?”

  “Why didn’t the doctors let him in the room?”

  “They thought it would be best if you didn’t focus on work for a day.”

  Sauria growled. “Bastards.”

  “I’ll get Lorem and some water.”

  “Make sure the water is ionized. The last glass they gave me wasn’t ionized, and it left a funny taste in my mouth.”

  She returned a few minutes later with an unshaven Lorem Ipsum behind her. His dark eyes jumped from Sauria to his vitals read-out on the holoscreen, cautiously darting back and forth as to ascertain the condition of his superior.

  “You’re doing better,” he finally said. “Sorry I’m late. I had to meet with the Saudi royals and smooth things over. It’s a process … ”

  Sauria downed the glass of water and set the plastic cup on the side of his bed. “Update me, not on the royals though – fuck them. Everything else.”

  “I’ve been waiting to speak to you personally,” Lorem said. “There have been some… developments.” He glanced over his shoulder at Heidi, who had returned to knitting her scarf.

  “She can stay. She did more to protect me than anyone else.”

  If Heidi heard this statement, she didn’t acknowledge it. Her hands worked quickly, knitting the scarf that she’d been working on since yesterday evening.

  “We’ll start with Antimeria…”

  “What’s happened to him?” Sauria asked, gritting his teeth.

  “He’s been kidnapped by his Humandroid assistant, Noah. Noah also killed the three MercSecure security staff assigned to Antimeria.”

  “Noah did what!? Christ!” His heart monitor shrieked.

  “Relax, dear,” Heidi said without looking up.

  “Where did he take him?”

  Lorem cleared his throat. “It gets a little more complicated than that. Using data-switch technology, a prison guard named Gloria Pilar switched with Nelly. We found her in Nelly’s cell with Nelly’s data, but not in Nelly’s body. Apparently, Nelly left the prison in her own body, but with Gloria’s data, which is why she wasn’t stopped at the check point.”

  “Surely they had this Gloria woman’s picture!” Sauria coughed. “How is this even possible? ADX hasn’t had an escape in … in … ”

  “Twenty years, seven months and eleven days,” Heidi said without looking up from her scarf.

  “The prison guard’s photo had been swapped out for Nelly’s. This was a well-planned and professionally executed operation.”

  Sauria crushed the plastic cup in his hand. “By who? How is this possible?”

  Lorem flattened the front of his suit. “We used a provision of the Patriot Act known as the pre-terrorism protocols to interview Gloria Pilar without the presence of a lawyer. We used as many … persuasive measures as were necessary to get the information out of her, including neuron-boarding. It’s safe to say she is now in an irreversible and persistent vegetative state.”

  Sauria nodded. Neuron-boarding slowly short-circuited a person’s brain, creating violent hallucinations. It certainly met the definition of torture as defined by the United Nations Convention against Torture, but the FCG hadn’t followed the international agreement since the 2050s. “What did this Gloria woman say?”

  “She was sent by Manuel’s organization. Nelly, Noah, Rebel and Antimeria are at the drug cartel’s hotel as we speak. This was confirmed by an EBAYmazon drone, which delivered Nelly clothing last night.” Lorem turned to Heidi. “Transfer the video I’m sending you to the holoscreen.”

  The screen lit up with video taken from the drone. It was clearly Nelly in the video. For some bizarre reason, she hadn’t enabled an app like BlurYou, which would have pixilated her image.

  “What a stupid bitch.” Sauria said. “She didn’t … she didn’t blur her image!”

  “Maybe she isn’t so stupid after all.” Lorem suggested. “I think it may be a message to us, a come and get me if you dare type of thing.”

  “Where’s Keva?”

  “She is on her way to retrieve the contents of a transport vessel hijacked by Somali pirates. Walliburton stuff.”

  Sauria licked his fat fish lips. “Get her on this as soon as possible. Also, get the other top reps, Murika, Walt, two others. Four should do it.”

  “Rinchi?” Lorem asked.

  “She’s far from the top ten, but she already knows the layout of the hotel.” He thought for a moment. “Yes, her too. I think we’ll be able to get to the bottom of the Anonymous One and Two attack by assaulting the hotel and tossing its data systems. After all, it was Nelly’s information they stole from Shinagawa. They may have sold or distributed it to Carloza, I mean Manuel’s, organization.”

  “And what about Manuel?”

  “Trigger the DL agent in his spine. I want that guy dead in the next thirty minutes.” Sauria smiled grimly. “It looks like the war we’ve been preparing for has finally come.”

  THREE∞

  Yeshi is looking hella-fine as always, sitting next to me in a white outfit reminiscent of the get-up she wore back in LA, when she met me in the hotel room with her body done up in black light responsive paint. The good ol’ days when I was still a therapist, when Tyro was alive and I wasn’t technically dead nor was I trying to wage war against the FCG. A simpler time for a simpler Meme.

  I suppose life is a beautiful thing no matter how ugly it becomes.

  We aren’t in Cuba yet with Richard Hewman, the famous and supposedly dead creator of the Humandroid, but I do have a Cuban cigar in my mouth ready to celebrate because why the hell not? Besides, the cigar makes me look like a badass, and with the company I keep these days, I gots to look hard. I just gots to. After all, we’re in the big leagues now, rolling with drug kingpins and terrorists. I am the Big Lebowski sans John Goodman. I don’t go looking for shit; shit comes looking for me.

  Enough reflecting.

  Slice the hands of the refrigerator raiders and interrogate the puzzled Australopithecus! No sense in evolving when evolution has surpassed us. No questions asked and no answers questioned. Meme dying, Yeshi living and Manuel a corpse in the hallway outside his office, killed by a DL agent. ¡Aye caramba! ¡Pinchi puta madre!

  I repeat: Manuel is dead; his splattered remains are being scraped off the floor by hotel staff as we speak. Because of this, I toast Latin Supe, the vato thug who transported Yeshi and me from Japan to Mexico not long ago.

  “Congrats on your death,” I tell him as I throw back a shot of Tequila.

  “We all must die someday,” Latin Supe says, wincing as the Tequila sears his throat. Real talk. “I should have switched a few days back, but just look at that body – I spent a lot of time in that shell.”

  “I know the feeling,” I say, suddenly missing my black body. There’s been a decrease in penis size since switching to my current Japanese body, but it isn’t as exaggerated as one may think. My new amigo is bigger than Carloza’s, who had what would scientifically be classified as a choad (don’t tell this to anyone in his former organization – they still worship el jefe), but is at least an inch and a half shorter than the trouser python I was born with. C’est la vie I suppose.

  “That’s some powerful chit,” I say, feeling the heartburn coming on.

  Latin Supe nods. “Sí, it is some powerful chit. That Tequila comes from a rare variety of blue agave only found in a very, very limited area.”

  In case you haven’t caught on, Manuel da
ta-switched with Latin Supe earlier in the day, before the DL agent in his spine was triggered by those nipple-teethed dullards at ExEx, or MercSecure, or the FCG – who can tell the difference between asshats these days? The feckless fucks. Now, Manuel is in Latin Supe’s body, which I’d say is an improvement because Latin Supe is young, buff and handsome. Manuel thinks otherwise.

  “I’m going to shave my head later today,” he informs Yeshi and me.

  “Why?” I ask. “That slicked back Clark Kent look suits you. Besides, 2084 is almost here. The Grease remake staring a digital John Travolta will be released next year; your style will be all the rage by then. Trust me.”

  “I doubt it.” Manuel’s stern demeanor has already infected Latin Supe’s face. Gone is the man’s blinged-out grin, replaced by a serious drug lord visage.

  “Let’s check in on Nelly,” he says. “Close blinds. Holoscreen. Banquet Hall backroom.”

  “It responds to English?” I ask as the blinds twist shut, eradicating the spicy Mexican sun that makes me wish I had bought a sombrero before coming here.

  “It does.”

  I secretly want to champion the fact that I’m fluent in the global language – sorry Mandarin Chinese, nobody wants to go around sounding like a pelican with lung cancer deep-throating the Eiffel Tower after an acid rain.

  The video feed appears on the holoscreen.

  “That’s my girl,” I say as Nelly slugs Antimeria in the face.

  A quick glance at Yeshi tells me she isn’t the least bit jealous by this statement. Thanks again, machine-learning. (I’m telling you, Reader, you have to date a Humandroid when the time comes. Nearer to the Gods no mortal may be. Mark my words.)

  “Noah, get me a chair,” Nelly says in the live feed.

  Foppish Noah struts over to the opposite side of the room, adjusts his cravat, returns with a chair.