by Carl Neville
Either way, time to hit the canteens. He’s horny, no denying that. Time to get laid.
There’s a pretty, stacked blonde with surprisingly good dental work and an incomprehensible accent at the beer taps. Decides to try out a line that worked before the one time he got laid in the PRB about three years ago.
Hey, he says, my name’s Joe, you must be PRB 36-24-36.
As far as you’re concerned, pet, she says tapping her Affective Monitor, I’m zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.
Pet? What the fucking? Pet! What do you mean pet? What’s that, anti-Americanism?
No pet, she says, check the slang and idioms section in your guidebook; term of affection commonly used in the North East.
Anti a certain type of American, sure. Maybe they could smell his patriotism, they sure don’t seem to have any problem with the student radicals and Unionists who come over on exchange visits and sit around with their stupid little caps on and talk down the spirit of free enterprise. Maybe he doesn’t have enough treachery running through his veins to get their dumb little plastic hearts pumping. There is a floor on the Affective Monitor settings so that no matter how repulsed you are the readout can’t drop below a certain neutral level, everyone an expert in discreetly observing the numbers. They have some variation now that you wear in your palm that vibrates with varying degrees of intensity when you meet. Phoney, Commie bullshit, he’s suddenly angry.
Next time he gets out there, out of this fucking hemisphere, he’s going to kick back on a floating sun lounger in that big infinity pool on top of the Punto Rico in Los Elijidos, order himself a Wet Nurse; whisky and breast milk. Looking at the cocktail menu last time he was there he was like, twenty-five-year-aged single malt, eighteen-year-old milk and curious, what does that mean, only to be told it was the age of the girl that supplied it. Reverse pricing system, the younger the milk the more expensive, all the way down to sixteen-year-old, even get a picture of the girl it came from up on the tablet, some of them real beauties. Sixteen, shit that is his daughter’s age. Wrong as hell, but, you know. Too much Dev, he’s trying hard not to be assailed by sexual thoughts: the floating milk farms off the Venezuelan coast, some of these rich guys now, those 0.1 percenters looking at living forever, already run stud farms for mistresses for themselves, the promise of a lifetime’s food and shelter in exchange for breeding whores and servants at the maximum level of physical beauty. He needs to target these guys for some kind of security work around exactly this issue. Concubines. Once he gets out of here, he’ll think about all that.
Raises his beer to his lips, ROD beeps. Checks it.
They have bypassed the lock somehow and the gun has gone live.
Motherfuck!
So what’s the conclusion? Somewhere along the line he’s been played.
Next move? Call in the authorities, send in an anonymous warning? Could do. Gun’s gone live, that’s bad, still, look on the bright side, at least it means he can trace them, unless they figure out how to disable that. High-grade military hardware should be unhackable. Fortunately, even back home they understand, weapon like this needs a tracking device and they don’t seem to have been able to switch it off, at least not yet.
Well, not too fast, maybe somehow he can still pull this around. Still resolve the situation under his own steam. Needs a hacker, needs to ask around in some of the big social centres down by the river. Try some farmers out in zone three where it starts getting really overrun, rifles for urban foxes and rabbits maybe. If not, what option does that leave him?
Explosives are easy. Bombs are good. He has the files for all that sitting on a cat-site if he can just download it, get it printed up. That will probably mean going back into the An-Ams’ territory, patching into one of the servers up on the roof of that building that they have been using to get across the Partition. Should be do-able. Then he just has to get it printed up. Print up a little UAV, get it attached to them through visual check, track them through that too in case they disable the gun. Still has some latitude on this. Can still pull this around. Pops a Dev as the complementary health plet on the ROD measuring the chemical composition of his sweat beeps at him that he has exceeded the recommended dose by 3000%.
Standing on the roof he waves his ROD around, fishing for the data packet that should be revolving round one of the hacked masts. It flashes up on the screen, downloads for a second then seeps through the net.
Circles, comes into range, gets snagged, downloads, starts to decrypt. He squats. Better stay close to the hardware in case it times out, try and catch a mirror package.
ESTIMATED DECRYPTION TIME: 30 MINUTES
Fucking country.
Plugs in a portable solar charger. What if he can’t download it? Needs a gun. Won’t be easy in the PRB, not with his limited contacts. What if he needs to get up close and do some hand-to-hand? Learned how to take out an opponent with a single one-inch-punch to the sternum on one of his Bleekhour modules. His precision door kick was pretty effective so maybe…
Wonders just how trained-up these guys might really be. They both look pretty fit. Could have been doing the whole bozo thing to throw him off and be well-honed highly trained killing machines underneath.
Small-time hustler way out of your depth.
He looks around the rooftop. Is someone beaming these thoughts at him? Some counter-intelligence mechanism got his wavelength, shooting these thoughts in, undermining him? Has he been hacked?
Sounded like his dad’s voice. The father, first of all the hackers! The primal hack!
Fuck you, Dad. He slumps back against the low wall. Pops another Dev.
That’s been, he checks, must be almost there by now and he can get off this roof where he is feeling increasingly exposed.
ESTIMATED DECRYPTION TIME: 47 MINUTES
Panicking suddenly. What he needs is a Mantis. Shit, you can’t live this Psy-kaledics without a little help and that is some next-level icy shit, a neurosheath and endoskeleton. He doesn’t understand exactly how that works but he gets the principle, it creates a film between you and your activity, dissociates, in a good way, holds all the chaos off to one side and lets you function, the hurricane’s eye.
Each man his own hurricane!
Whose voice was that? He looks around, roof still empty. Takes a deep breath.
IN.
Can he get one in across the Partition anyway? That is some army-reserved stuff deigned to deal with ultra-complexity. And he’s heard, well… what hasn’t he heard? That it can only be passed on host-to-host, through a blood transfusion or sharing a cup of saliva maybe, sure, and that a lot of the infamous tek-sex-magik parties out in Connaught’s dome are designed to pass that Mantis around. All kinds of crazy ritual shit where they infect and re-infect each other, breeding and incubating these viruses in each other that can invade and mutate the networks they are all plugged into.
Shit he’s heard sometimes if you look close on videos you can see these green spikes coming up out of the top of Altborg’s head like horns. Fuck, even better, he’s heard Connaught has gone fully immortal, that his disappearance from the public eye has nothing to do with some higher-level strategy but that he has splintered open somehow in the process. Can’t be looked upon, just a fractured mass of pitch-black shards that are both simultaneously jutting out of and collapsing back into some other post-mortal, pre-primordial realm.
The living rupture!
OUT.
And focus on the job in hand. All this is too much to process, too many levels of stuff he doesn’t get. Break it down into manageable chunks. What’s the next step?
Find someone who will get him access to a printer.
He can taste that the bar is pumping something out as he enters, notorious hangout for PRB denizens who have determinedly slipped through the very fine mesh of the PRB’s work and subsistence system. Checks the poster up on the wall informing him of and thereby assuming his consent to the PMDMA atomiser in the centre of the room. Sure, why not. People spre
ad out on dilapidated looking sofas and armchairs, some kind of repetitive piano music playing at a discreet volume mingling with the hushed chat. He has to take a DB swab to check he’s not overdosing on anything, pretends to wipe it around his gums, hands it to the guy lounging in the doorway reading who glances at it then puts it in the bin with a nod. The bar looks like soft drinks only until he spots a vodka bottle and a couple bottles of scotch up on a shelf behind the bar. Should he drink?
Why the fuck not?
Give me a shot of that one, he says to the whatever-it-is behind the bar. The person, if even that word can capture just where they are located not only on a continuum between male and female but somewhere on a series of intersecting continuums between fucking animal, mineral and vegetable, looks like a fucking rubbish-strewn hedge with a face. Maybe he is tripping out, brain getting scrunched up. The PMDMA is not a hallucinogen though, is it?
Lagavulin? the hedge says. Is that even English?
I don’t speak tree, he says, just give me a shot of that. Double. No ice. Fucking…
There’s a kid next to him at the bar, identifiably a male human. Lagavulin is the name of that whisky, he explains. American? he asks
You got that.
Here for the Games? It’s so nice that the Games have brought all these different nationalities together here in the PRB, he says.
The kid grins, lip furls backward suddenly, a piano dropped forty floors, the lid flipping up with the impact and the keys jolting, Franklin almost hears the dissonant clang and clatter of the kid’s teeth. Gristly synaesthesia.
We can see how we are all the same, all different.
Sure, Franklin says, takes slug of the scotch, can just about taste it through the accumulated half-fevered thickening of sleep deprivation and chemical concussion.
Where can I find a hacker?
Where? They are everywhere.
Are you one?
Oh yes, the kid says.
Got access to a printer, no questions asked?
Oh yes, yes. The kid hands him his card like he’s some big corporate executive. Name, location of his workpod. Handy.
Can you get me a gun?
What do you mean a gun?
I mean a gun. Shoots things called bullets at people called targets.
The kid looks nonplussed. Overstepped the mark. Rein it in.
Nah I am just fucking with you, he says. The kid, horrible as he is, is also sweet looking, in a way. Just a kid, right? You know, he says. I have got a daughter about your age.
You must love her, the boy says.
Shit, Franklin takes a mouthful of flogavulccan or whatever the fuck it’s called, what is it called? And tries to tough it out but something’s getting to him.
Love her? Well shit she’s my kid, you know. She makes me angry, sure; he says. Pisses me off you Brits say, right? But. When she was born, I said, the kid is smiling at him, so much wisdom, so much understanding and generosity in one so young. I swore I would sort my shit out. Y’know, I know it’s corny, you think you’ll get a shot at redemption.
The kid is still smiling.
But I don’t know if did.
There’s always time. It’s never too late to express your love, the kid says.
Shit, Franklin says and stands up, the kid stands with him and he puts his arm around his shoulders, guides him over to a sofa. You seem like a good kid you know, you have a good relationship with your mom and dad?
Well, yes. I didn’t see a lot of them, but they are fine people, committed workers and citizens. Of course, we are raised communally so, we don’t have some of the conflicts that you might have in Nuclear America.
You know I just feel so, shit, he needs to get out of here, the kid has reached into his pocket and appears to be putting some leaves into a vaporizer and leaving it burning in the centre of the table. Franklin laughs. What’s that?
Chemically enhanced cannabinoid. It is designed to synthesise nicely with the PMDMA, he says. Keep telling me about your daughter and how much you love her, it really lifts my heart to hear that, he says.
Sure, wow I guess I never talk about it, y’know, the sofa is extremely comfortable, he stretches out his legs.
This, a cloud of vapour is rising up from the burner and diffusing into their faces, what is this? Drug-wise?
It’s a Neo-noo.
What? Franklin says.
Nee-o-noo-o, kid keeps talking. It’s short for Neo-nootropic, one of those rec pharms that…
The two syllables stay rotating back and forth behind Franklin’s eyes. Like an alarm going off, like a siren and he forgets what the sound is and panics, is that…
Neo-noo-o
… coming from outside him? Is that the cops, coming to raid the joint, coming to bust him?
No, they don’t have cops here but still…
Neo-noo-o!
… I gotta get out of here. Fuck, he gets up out of his seat, then sits back down again, so cosy, so snug and the vapour and the beaming kid and…
Neo-noo-o!
… gets up again. I gotta thanks but I gotta…
Gets out onto the street, heart pounding, and it suddenly starts to rain, a light breeze and a half-warm April shower hitting him and making him shiver. He takes a deep breath and starts to go along the riverbank. The crowd is huge, tourists over for the Games and for a while he is picked up and carried along in the surge, a thousand faces all passing him by. He goes and stands by the river saturated outside and in, pressed against the metal guardrail feels his crotch stirring into life again. Fuck. For a while there everything softened out nicely. He is half tempted to go back into the bar, sit there in a cocoon of platonic bliss while all hell breaks loose, why the hell not? Go and get laid one last time if he can.
No, that’s right, he’s going to get this sorted out, bring his kid over, let her see the place. Be a man! Accept your parental role, try not to be a skirt-chasing asshole, a… poonhound, then he starts laughing, poonhound, where did that come from? All your life. A passer-by looks at him, sweating American laughing at nothing in the middle of the thoroughfare, and he glares back, suddenly angry again. Fucking country. Maybe he should just let this little shit nugget floating in its puddle of fucking grey toilet water get nuked.
When he has calmed down enough he tries to orient himself. OK, head for the workshop. Neat little trick, the card has somehow got an arrow and a set of instructions flashing up on the front. TURN LEFT. Flips it about, feels like plain cardboard, can’t figure out how that’s being done. Maybe he’s imagining it? Maybe there’s nothing there and he’s been hacked and it’s all happening in his head? Remote piloting: some guy in a cubicle somewhere toggling a joystick around and blasting thoughts at him. Still, here it is. More kids with terrible teeth and wattle-and-daub hair faux-reluctantly taking his c-credits. He prints up the bomb parts and assembles a little UAV that he syncs to the Tomahawk’s tracking device, releases it up into the PRB’s unregulated airspace, hopes one of the birds he sees constantly swooping about over all the parks and patches of untended greenery doesn’t attack it. Fly my pretty one, fly!
Goes back toward the hotel, dodges the PMDMA bar and any others with atomizers, and instead goes up to his room and thinks about calling his own kid. It’s 7:30am stateside and he can get her in the window between finishing off her Powerflakes and heading out to school, has to request a patch through from central Comms dept, sits staring at the ROD screen counting down the minutes, hears the landline ringing across on the other side. Pick up, pick up, feels his impatience rising, waits till he can’t stand the ringtone anymore, hangs up, goes through the pharmacopeia in the mini pill bar next to his bed, finds a sedative, knocks himself out deep and fast.
Franklin 12/04/2018
Time is it? How long has he slept? Sits bolt upright, heart hammering. Shit, that’s right, today is opening day of the Ceremony at the Games. The day he has to go and kill some people. He checks the half-assed tracking plet on the ROD, suddenly panicked that he ha
s overslept, and they have already committed some anti-American carnage that he hasn’t anticipated, but the plet still shows them sitting around in the deep southeast somewhere. Looks at a log of their movements, seems they are still using the flat they first met up in as a base. Logical place to put the bomb.
Shower, a Dev and two sachets of Special T poured directly into his mouth and swilled down with lukewarm tap water, goes down and gets a couple of knives from the communal kitchen on the first floor just in case.
Time to get on public fucking transport.
Jammed, slower than usual with all the Games-goers being ferried about, the bus snarls up against a knot of people doing seemingly nothing in the middle of the road. The Enthusiasm, a woman next to him says with an indulgent smile. Might be best to get off here and walk.
Get off and fucking walk? He hunkers down in his seat, backpack clasped tight to his chest, balls pulsing with the stalled throb of the engine coming up through the wheel arch. Bad place to sit.
He looks out of the window as the bus realigns and eases round a group of twenty or so half-naked PR-Beings painted any number of colours and looking like they are about to publicly start fucking. Maybe he should get off, go and join them, and, cameras, lights, American accents drifting through the window, lo and behold there’s the crew he’s come in with making their public service film on the whole sorry shitshow. Lowers his head and slides down in his seat on the off-chance they clock him through the window
Finally gets there and he knows that they are still out of the flat. Door unlocked of course and yet the guns they were claiming they could get access to if you can even call them that are there against the wall behind the table. He picks up the one that looks least toy-like, rusty half-plastic BB gun of the kind his old man got him as a kid.
Fucking idiots leaving these lying about for him to snaffle. He puts it into his backpack, more or less, handle sticking up out the top, but no one is paying attention anyway here in the peace-loving PRB. Still, the all-in-one printable bomb solution is the best option. He has an instruction manual, better focus on that, doesn’t want to blow himself up.