Ghost in the Machine (Steam and Cyber Series Book 1)

by SJ Davis

  The tall man smiled broadly and lowered his sunglasses to stare back. “We came for cigarettes,” he said, using the code word for pharms.

  “Not tonight,” said Charley, his wire still orbiting the side of his head. “Like I said, come back tomorrow afternoon.”

  A woman in a white leather jacked with leg warmers walked in front of the other man. “We have some papers to trade. Urgently.”

  “Papers?” Charley laughed. “I don’t deal in papers. Good luck.”

  Another man, the third in the party, shoved his small frame forward. His face gleamed with grease and sweat. He was only five feet tall and his portly frame popped out from the between the buttons of his shirt. “I’m Buddha.”

  MadCityJess giggled. “Nice to meet you, Buddha.” Her laughter became louder and quicker. “I’m Cleopatra.” The rest of the room remained quiet.

  Buddha’s white bleached hands held out a small 9x11 box of old papers and notebooks. He tossed the box across the half door. Then Charley’s phone rang. Next Yeshua’s phone rang. Then Minnow’s phone rang. Each phone rang only once. They looked back and forth at one other. “I will leave these with you,” said Buddha. “Don’t make it so easy next time.” The suggestion of Buddha’s brutality, with his low hanging brow and his thin wet red lips, offset the quickness of his wide-toothed smile.

  Minnow rocked back and forth on her heels and licked a strand of her hair that was stuck upon her lip. Yeshua’s held his temples and rubbed them and then he reached for a glass of water. He walked over and looked into the box.

  “The blueprints,” said Yeshua. “Where did you get these?”

  “I locked them in my apartment,” said Minnow, “after we left the café.”

  “Surprised?” asked the Chinese woman, her voice a robotic monotone with a synthesized resonance. Her pale blue eyes fixed on his as she extended her claw like hand. Her fingernails were painted black with golden crescent moons, and her fingers were oddly bent at the knuckles, as if they had all been broken and reset. “You should not be, Charles.” She looked at Charley, her nasal voice echoed. “We brought you here in the first place. We just want to make sure your plan succeeds. Think of us as anonymous back-up.”

  “Charles?” MadCityJess stifled a quick laugh, saying his name in an affected British accent.

  The Asian woman walked to MadCityJess and circled here. Her knuckles were white from clenching her fists. She locked her hand around Jess’s wrist like a bracelet of flesh and bone, as she licked her bright red lips. “Yes. I said Charles, didn’t I, Charles?” She held her hand to her lips and blew him a kiss. She closed her eyes for a moment exposing thick black liquid lines that rimmed her lids. “The missing Charles Watson. You’ve been missed.” She held her quilted vintage Chanel bag to her chest and turned back to leave.

  The room stood in shocked silence. “How did they find the papers that Rolls gave to us,” whispered Minnow.

  “Rolls? Frederick Rolls? You know my father?” Josephine turned white and collapsed to the floor. A loud clap smashed the air around them.

  Omni

  January 30th 2135

  The light in Charley’s shop changed from a blurry yellowy brown to a softly muted blue glow. Josephine sank, her eyes widening, as she reached for Yeshua. The east and west wall edged towards them, quickly pushing against Josephine’s back. Yeshua put his arm around her and drew her head into his chest. Popping noises flew through the air and electric charges ran under the carpets and up their legs.

  “We must be rolling into the time change,” said Minnow as she grimaced. “Stay calm.”

  Nico ran to Minnow and grabbed her by the collar of her shirt. “I need to get out of here. Where’s Caroline? She has to come back with me.”

  In a blink, the walls of Charley’s shop converted into a crisp beige with white trim around the floors and windows. Clean white curtains billowed in place of the old cracked blinds. Eight beds lined the wall and an amber glow leaked through the new lace curtains.

  Caroline opened the front door but she was on her knees. “Josephine!” She yelled into the tunnel of wind around here. “We must leave now!” Her hair spun around her head like cotton candy as he held onto the doorframe for balance in the fierce outside wind.

  “When did you get here? How did you get here?” Josephine asked. She tried to run to Caroline but her legs were rooted in place, like blocks of ice.

  “I came with Charley, to help expedite the change. We even brought Anson, but he’s dead now.” Caroline yelled into the whistling hiss of the wind. “We have to hurry up. Minnow! We need your help to get out of here!” Her voice sounded like she was screaming through a pillow. Her eyes closed to keep the dust out.

  Minnow arched her back and moaned to reach behind her against all the forces holding her in place. She grabbed her stylus and pad from her back pocket and searched for a geo-positional code on the chrono-positional spreadsheet. She wrote the code on Caroline’s wrist. “Go to Omni’s global satellite HQ. Go into the black shed in the rear by the power lines and enter this code. I don’t think you are going to make it.”

  Nico yelled over the sound of waves rushing, the air compressed around them, contorting their faces. Strange noises and screams came in from the streets. “I’m going with you, Caroline. I can’t stay here.”

  Caroline ran towards Josephine, grabbing her elbow. She tried to pull her from her frozen position. “Come on, Josephine!” She yelled over the din of time, wind, and transition. “Yeshua! Let go of her! We have to go back where we belong.” The sound of rushing wind filled their ears, Caroline and Josephine’s hair swirled around their heads like Medusa’s serpents, a sweet warm smell shot through the room. Minnow’s chopped locks stood on end from the electric force that locked them in place.

  “No, I’m staying,” answered Josephine. “I can’t move. I can’t move at all.”

  “It seems that only people not on the grid are mobile. Everyone else is frozen, sort of in limbo, waiting for events to flip,” said Nico. “We can move because we are free.”

  Yeshua smiled but his eyes looked concerned. “We don’t know what will happen after this.” He eyes watered in the wind as he looked at Josephine. “We could be strangers.”

  “I know.” she yelled back to him. “I know that we will be, or I will be a stranger to you. But you will never be a stranger to me.” Her voice resonated like an echo in a long tunnel. “I need to be here to be the one who remembers. What happened here needs a voice, a warning siren of what has been before and what could be again.”

  The video monitors above their heads exploded. Wires hissed as they recoiled and shrunk into oblivion.

  Yeshua and Minnow froze in place and their eyes shut as they slumped to the floor. The scars on Minnow’s arms brightened into deep crimson tributaries along the inside of her wrists up to her biceps. She coughed as the room filled with the stench of burning foliage and hot iron. Her scars crawled along her arm, disappearing into her shirt as she lay on the floor, her face stuck in a look of surprise. As the last scar disappeared under her shirt, smoke seeped in under the door. The pale unblemished perfection of her arms surprised Josephine as she crumpled to the ground next to her, her eyes remaining open and blinking while the rest of her remained paralyzed. The three of them looked frozen in time and space like victims of Pompeii.

  Nico, Charley, and Caroline stood against the north wall, by the windows next to the door. The lock melted, the burnished brass dripped down the inside of the door and slithered under the crack. Small shards of reflective glass sparkled in its place, gradually growing like crystal and forming a replacement doorknob.

  “We don’t have much time! We have to try and make it out of here now.” A sucking sound smacked against Caroline and Nico as he pulled her out the door.

  “I can’t leave Josephine here!” yelled Caroline.

  “You can’t force her to leave, just like they can’t make me stay. We have free will to choose,” said Nico.

  T
he streets slid and moved as if made of hot plastic, undulating in slow waves. Nico grabbed a motorbike; its driver was immobile and non-protesting on the roadside as the pavement cracked underneath him. Craters soon began as small holes, and grew across the diameter of the road. Parts of the sidewalk rolled backwards, like a rug being pulled away for replacement.

  “We’ll never make it,” said Caroline. Nico held her hand and pulled her straight into his chest.

  “We will make it. Have faith.”

  Nico and Caroline switch backed up the streets of old Omni, the closest thing to back roads in the area. Nico jacked the bike upwards to jump the cracks and craters as they multiplied. Caroline looked behind her as some of the side roads disappeared into the ether, leaving green grass and walking paths behind.

  They saw smokestacks in the distance, alongside short brick buildings and water towers. But the water towers were unfamiliar. Black letters, with names of unfamiliar towns and cities, formed across the wide body of the towers. Woodbridge, Howell, Chalfont, Yardley. All new, satiny-black scripted letters emerged as the old Omni lettering faded into disappearance.

  New billboards popped up as the old ones crumpled into accordion folds and fell to the ground. In a quick crash sound, any trace of the old advertising was obliterated. The dust, as it settled, quickly gathered into a whirling and shrinking funnel, quickly diminishing into nothing. Computer, luxury goods, and college recruitment signs appeared with no Omni script in the corner. All were brightly illuminated as the sky, aside from the smokestack plumes, were cloudless and blue. The air no longer smelled of petro carbon gas.

  The city seemed smaller than it used to be. The Stalin-era styled government buildings converted to a Federalist style, with classical columns and red brick, as if an artist repainted a canvas. The statues in the parks morphed into different poses and faces. Caroline thought it was as if an old overlay, a hideous costume, had finally been peeled back.

  “Hold on!” Nico yelled. One last concrete side rail had popped into the road. Nico popped up the front wheel, ramping over the rail and winding through the open crevices. The brightness of the new day’s sun burned through their clothes. Nico swerved to avoid a large town center clock that had sprouted from the road, the crumbling black road peeled back to unearth a wildflower tapestry along new stone sidewalks.

  “I feel like God,” said Caroline. “We are watching a new world being born.”

  “I’m glad it’s changing. But I know too much to trust it. I’ve seen too much.” Nico bent lower into the windscreen. Lampposts shed the monitors along the roadside. The tiny glass lenses cracked and the cameras vacuumed into themselves with a sucking pop.

  The large screen monitor above Omni’s financial district changed from black and white into full-color. The new screen illuminated the new city. No longer displaying the arranged news of Omni’s feed, now traffic patterns and weather conditions updated the pixilation.

  The frozen people along the road remained while some stragglers from the deregulation zones began to wander out. Eyes huge, some crying, they stepped over the immobile ones and looked at the changing scenery. Large overhanging oaks shot from the ground, growing at lightning speed from sapling to full growth in seconds. Benches replaced the concrete walls like a game of strange dominoes as they sped by.

  One of the stragglers from the deregulated zone waved with hesitation. The portly man pulled a pocket watch from his right pants pocket and smiled.

  “It’s Frederick Rolls! Josephine’s father! He died centuries ago! How is he here?” said Caroline. “Stop for a moment.”

  “Looks like he’s alive to me. We can’t stop, there’s no time.”

  Caroline reached around to steer. “Knock it off!” yelled Nico. “You’ll crash us! I’ll pull over for a second.”

  “Mr. Rolls!” Caroline yelled, ignoring Nico’s request for speed. “We can get you home. Follow us!”

  “No. I am dead there. I will muddle about without a place. A man out of time.”

  “Find Josephine,” said Caroline. “I don’t know how to tell you to find her. But I am sure you will. She will be here.”

  Rolls’s face brightened. “She’s still here? Why hasn’t she returned?” His face showed a mixture of expectation and concern. “Perhaps she will let me be a father to her, once again.”

  “She’s never forgotten you,” said Caroline. She yelled over Nico’s revving of the engine. “Best to you, Mr. Rolls. Godspeed.”

  Nico sped off in a whirling snarl of sound. A band of iron, cunningly fashioned, bent into the irregularities of the road as the bike sped forward.

  “It’s over there,” said Nico. Caroline dusted off her goggles with one hand and used the other to balance her parasol on her lap. “Can you run in those?” He looked down briefly at her bronze lace up boots.

  “Certainly. If the occasion presents itself, I am quite speedy if need be,” she answered.

  “Run!”

  Nico grabbed Caroline. Her speed and agility surprised him. She leapt over a gaping pothole and stumbles as she misjudged a curb. “I’m fine,” she insisted before he could ask. “Keep going.”

  Caroline looked behind her. Throngs of people from the deregulated zone entered the area formerly controlled by Omni. Hundreds crowded in an orderly fashion through the fence as it evaporated. Most of the rejects looked normal, many laughed and danced, not knowing what pulled them out of hiding. As the people on the ground began to gain their strength the sucking wind sound stopped. Caroline and Nico ran in slow motion, their motion caught somewhere between the then and the now. The citizens of Omni slowly rose from the ground, each cell of their being buzzed with the harmonic dance of transformation.

  A brighter, whiter sort of light shook the earth. A comforting aura surrounded them as children on bicycles appeared, laughing and jumping, the first citizens to be freed from the past.

  “It’s too late for us,” cried Caroline. “It’s almost over.”

  “No,” said Nico. “It can’t”

  He ran into the black metal shed of the geo-chronological positioning unit shoulder first, the door flew open. Two security guards were behind the bushes; each had one foot on either side of the time change. The first man began to rise as if gravity was nonexistent. He floated as his countenance relaxed, his badge dropped and sunk into the ground, his gun melted into a black mercurial ooze and slipped into a crack in the ground.

  Nico grabbed Caroline’s hand and twisted it to read the code. “Is that a 7 or a 1?” he asked.

  “I think it’s a 7,” Caroline answered. “I’ll read the numbers to you.”

  Nico typed Yeshua’s password into the mainframe. It wouldn’t boot up. The back up drives, locked in the cabinets behind them disappeared one by one.

  “Dammit.”

  “Keep trying. Hurry up,” said Caroline. Her chest tightened and her words squeaked out.

  “Done. It’s up. Get over here and read the numbers.”

  Caroline stood next to Nico. In a quivering tone, she muttered, “Three. Five. Alpha. Charley. Seven. Two. Zebra. That’s it. Does Minnow know what she’s doing?”

  “She fought through the change to give us this code. Yes. She does.”

  They held onto a small hand held unit, a silver backed touch screen, which mapped all the satellites, used for geo-positional information.

  “Here we go,” said Nico. “You okay?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. Are you sure you want to do this. We won’t be able to change,” said Caroline.

  “I am sure. But I also believe change is the only thing we are able to do.” The sound deadened in the room as if they were in an acoustically neutral room. With one hand on the satellite device, they held hands with the other. Nico looked down and smiled. “I’m happy to be returning with you.”

  Caroline smiled as they both disengaged from time. “Me too.”

  YESHUA AND MINNOW walked past The Tea Bag. Black Pekoe and Japanese Cherry tea scents wafted out the door. Yeshua stoo
d in the sidewalk, acutely aware of pinheads of sweat forming on his palms. The hair on his arm rose and tingled.

  “You okay, Yeshua?” asked Minnow.

  “Yes,” he said. He swerved to avoid a line of speeding kids on long boards.

  “You can ticket them as soon as you pass your test at the academy,” Minnow joked.

  “Good fun, Minnow.” Yeshua flexed his arms. “Check out these biceps. I’m bursting from all the workouts.”

  “Ha! Look at mine!” Minnow raised a pale and unscarred arm. Nothing but delicate skin over tiny bones. “Nobody bothers me.”

  Yeshua opened the door to the teashop, a sea of people sat playing board games or reading. A young woman with chestnut hair stood behind the tea bar smiled at Yeshua while Minnow grabbed a table. For a moment, Yeshua stood unable to speak. His heart raced and he balanced himself on the counter. The girl smiled and gestured to a small card holding the types of tea to order. He couldn’t stop looking at her. Her strange composure and familiarity confused him. She wore black Capri pants with a light pink cardigan overtop a white tank top. She moved with a foreign grace and wore no perceptible makeup. Unusual he thought.

  “Would you like me to suggest a tea?” she asked, the silence broke between them.

  “I’m sorry. You seem familiar, but I can tell by your British accent it’s impossible.”

  “Never doubt the possibilities. One never knows what could change around the corner.”

  “Over here, Yeshua,” Minnow called out, waving that she had found a table. He nodded back to her. He cocked his head and furrowed his brow. His hair swung back and he studied the girl again.

  “Hi Yeshua. My name is Josephine.”