Living in Syn
(Pantomime City)
By Bobby Draughon
Text copyright © 2012 Robert S Draughon
All Rights Reserved
Cover Art by
Stephanie Anderson of
Neon Armour
To Robert and Theresa, who enjoyed these stories as teens, and then, as adults, encouraged me to share them.
Table of Contents
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1
Mission imagined himself as part of an abstract painting. The shapes and structures bore some elemental resemblance to office buildings, shops, and apartments. The vines and vegetation running rampant imposed an overwhelmingly green color scheme, to be interrupted on occasion by graffiti or handmade signs. Genuine Spring Water. Paulson Territory. LP Gas. Leshondra sux …well, there are some things that will never change. And the people. Caricatures. Bent and broken. Angular and grim. Faces doggedly staring at the ground, avoiding eye contact at any cost. The automobiles dotted the landscape like statuary satire. Designed to be transportation, they were now stationary, hollowed memories as immutable and anonymous as those that used them, as market stalls to sell their wares, as shelter from the elements, as security outposts for whatever gang controlled the block that week.
And amid this monument to detritus, on far stage right, Mission reclined on what had once been concrete stairs. By and large, he was unseen, which was his intention. Anyone surveying the street would move their eyes over him without stopping. He ebbed and flowed between consciousness and some inebriated vision of voluntary surrender. Nothing of value there. Not the clothes, not the shoes, not the person. But neither was he aged nor infirmed, not an easy target. The only risk he took was his smoking and he had taken care to bend and dampen the few cigarettes in the pack, as new smokes were worth taking, forcibly. He drew the smoke in deeply, and as he exhaled, he wondered what was more important, the tangible physical little rush with each drag, the self-destructive drama in play with the ritual, or the fact that cigarettes had long since been declared illegal. He permitted a small, inward smile as he flicked the butt away. Philosophical musings such as those were strictly to pass the time, nothing more.
In terms of a vantage point, he had chosen well. Fire gutted the building behind him two nights ago, and this was too soon, even for the most enterprising, to establish business operations. Too much lingering smoke. Too many hot spots inside with still burning embers. In one or two more days, a few of the winos and/or addicts would take up residence, only to be summarily evicted once the gangs saw that the building was theirs for the taking.
A group of Hare Krishnas passed, chanting and singing, collecting and proselytizing. The shaved heads and the robes were the same. The Bhagavad-gītā handouts from copies of copies of copies. The weather was a fine, fine mist and the ink ran, turning the propaganda into full page storm clouds. Or Rorschach tests. Or unreadable shit.
It was getting close to 6:00 in the evening and that is when the streets came alive. The hookers started selling aggressively. The junkies were coming down from their afternoon highs, and now they wondered where their next fix would come from. The gangs started to appear, posturing for the benefit of their rivals. A sot teetered precariously and he, as drunks will do, considered with great deliberation, the pros and cons of approaching Mission. The smell of urine on the drunk's clothes even overpowered his Mad Dog breath. At the last second, some preservation instinct told the old man no. As he turned away from Mission, the drunk tripped over one of the pieces of concrete and fell backwards onto his head. He exhausted all his mental and physical resources trying to stand, and he finally staggered off toward another potential contributor. Mission thought, "Two months max.”
He had to stay alert now. The streets were full and he would only get one chance to pick up his mark. A man and a woman, both armed with pistols, parked a pushcart less than 50 feet down the street and started selling shots, tequila, salt, and lime wedges. A small crowd gathered and someone cranked music up to the pain threshold. More people gravitated toward the music. Two wagons, from separate directions, sensed this was the place to be, and set up outdoor kitchens with open fires. It smelled incredible, the meat roasting on skewers with peppers and onions. Mission remembered that he hadn’t eaten in more than 24 hours.
Every nerve in Mission's body jangled. His mark came into view. He was six feet tall and 180 pounds, with perfect dark hair. His clothes granted him a sort of anonymity, it was the getup worn by thousands here in the Free Zone, the construction worker uniform. He wore khaki chinos, work boots, and a white T-shirt. He carried a small thermos, and a similarly sized LP gas bottle. Once his mark passed, Mission stood up, yawned and stretched luxuriously, and finally shuffled into the street.
Mission blended expertly into the masses, nodding at the vendors, his head bobbing to the music, just another guy in the crowd. He reviewed what he knew about this syn, over and over. Model DM764. Factory name Tom Brown. The nomenclature was simple enough. The D stood for domestic skills such as cooking, cleaning, and baby-sitting. The M indicated male. The numbers were 0 - 9 ratings. The first digit rated intelligence, the second physical agility, and the third detailed any special skills. Of course upgrades were available, but his owners hadn't installed any.
At his one year diagnostics, Brown’s statistics showed that he watched children an average of an hour and a half a day. He cooked an average of two meals a day, did laundry three times a week, and painted the home once. Oh, and he made love to the mother of the household over 500 times. That's right, 500 times. Paradox Synthetics Inc. had discovered that if you made sexual programming optional, no one bought it, and sales were lukewarm. And even when it was standard, buyers made it clear they weren't interested. Then when the synthetic came in for the one year checkup, you found out that the owners were trying to wear it out. But…nothing unusual in the diagnostics. This was a profile typical of millions of syns across the world.
So, two months ago, Tom disappears. The family reports it, they get a new syn, and Mission, among thousands of others, gets a news bullet from Paradox with a bio and a bounty offer of $40,000. Mission views the perimeters of the Free Zone as a game trail. For the most part, a renegade synthetic has to live in a FZ. Any place else wants driver's licenses, credit references, and ID numbers not available to a syn. But the lifestyle in the Zone is not one that the syn can adapt to in terms of earning a living. It
requires those intangible skills, the street smarts to make deals, to negotiate, to know when to walk away, and when to just hang on through the day.
So most syns live in the Zones, but work outside it in skilled labor positions. Mission would memorize the pictures, and then hang out, and watch for people crossing the borders, especially at changing times for work shifts. That's how he uncovered Tom Brown a week ago. He watched him go to his room, an efficiency in a dilapidated eight story building that was protected by the Johnsons. He had done his homework and now he looked for an opportunity to drop him.
Mission had tracked renegade syns for the last fourteen years and it showed in his work routines, his clothes and equipment…. and in his body scars. He wore a cheap, torn trench coat. He paid a seamstress to distress the coat and his sweatshirts so that they would tear away under pressure. Once a syn grabs your clothes, he doesn’t let go. Mission's carried an ingenious rig under the coat, a compact, high burst battery pack with the lead wire sewed into the coat all the way down the left arm and into his palm when he wanted it. He always hoped he could use the battery pack. His left hand squarely on any part of the syn, firmly enough to trip the switch, instantly fried the nervous systems and brain paths.
Mission wore no belt, watch, necklaces, bracelets, or the like. They were just handles for a syn to grab onto. His Glock Ion, the finest small arms weapon available, rested in the holster clipped to the inside of his jeans' waistband. He didn't understand the technology. It still shot "bullets", but that was the least of it. The metal existed only to hold a huge ionized charge that wreaked havoc on all it touched. Mission stowed extra clips in four different locations.
He moved closer to Brown and when he stopped to talk to a group of women, Mission had to walk on past, which would work out well. He stepped neatly into the next alley, blending into the shadows, and waited. He knew that his right foot was near something, probably a sleeping wino. Mission thought, “Just don't move, just let me stay here.” He thought about risking a look, but he couldn't interrupt his concentration. Just when he felt he couldn't stand motionless any longer, Brown walked into view.
Mission made certain that Brown was completely past and wouldn't see him move out through his peripheral vision. He closed the distance between them, eyes focused on an imaginary destination well down the street. Timing is everything. Mission fell into a rhythm with his mark. After a few steps, Brown's right hand was at the back of its swing and Mission's left hand was at the front. That brought their hands less than 12 inches apart and Mission struck. Time always slowed down for him in these situations, and he saw his hand move closer, his fingertips at Brown's arm, now his fingers ready to encircle the wrist and...
Wham! Mission felt his face and then the rest of his body slam to the sidewalk. He didn't know what happened, but instinct took over. He had to get moving. He would roll three or four steps and then try to get up. But when he pulled his right shoulder to roll, a searing pain ran from his trapezius all the way down to the middle of his back. As he rolled away, he noticed blood on the sidewalk. His blood. He hit a concrete barrier and came to rest on his back, looking over his head toward Brown's previous position. He saw, upside down, a woman helping the syn. She pushed him on down the street and Mission saw her index finger was covered in blood.
She was a syn! She had made Mission, followed him, and tried to kill him when he made his move. Mission's sudden movement to grab Brown's wrist had pulled him just out of reach, and her blow, intended to break his neck and tear his shoulder off, caught him with the tip of her finger, digging a long furrow in his back and throwing him to the ground.
Convinced that the pair would not look back, Mission wobbled up onto his feet and ran through the alley, stepping on junkies, running through a makeshift home of wet cardboard, and finally landing right in the middle of some Chinese gambling circle. He emerged and took a right, flying down the street. He had to time this perfectly. What in the hell was going on here? Syns never worked together. Never! It attracted attention. He had a sudden thought that he filed away for later.
Hookers and street musicians dominated this block, making running next to impossible. He jumped away from a woman trying to give him a squeeze and fell off the curb onto a drum set. The pain crawled up his back wearing hobnailed boots and recommended that Mission not stand back up. But then he saw the drummer, all six foot seven inches and 300 pounds of him, and he bounced back to his feet and waded through the crowd. He weaved as fast as he could and then suddenly stopped.
He gasped for breath and whispered, "There it is."
Brown was staying there, the building with the weather-blistered sign that said Chase Condominiums. The back of the building was covered with windows leading to fire escapes, with metal dumpsters and assorted debris along the bottom of the wall. Mission had to time this perfectly. He knew which fire escape and which room would lead him to Brown. If he went up too early, they would see him up on the ironwork. If he waited too long, they would hear him coming up. He had to be moving up the fire escape as they went up the stairs inside. Mission crept as far up in the shadows as he dared. Again he waited, just waited. But this time, he felt his blood dripping onto his jeans. He looked down and saw that his blood reached his tennis shoes. The feeling gradually returned to his face and he realized something was on it. He brushed his cheek and fire shot through his head. He lost a lot of skin when he hit the pavement. What he felt were pieces of gravel and glass sticking to the bloody patches.
After a seeming eternity, they strolled past at a leisurely pace. Mission took care to commit every detail of the female syn to memory. He moved out slowly and forged a curving path toward the fire escape. He moved quickly up to the fourth floor and pulled out his Glock. The window was open and he extended the gun on into the room and pointed it at the door. Mission thought, "Miller would blow hell out of the door as soon as the door knob turned and let Recovery sort it all out."
Mission squatted on the fire escape and saw the knob turn slightly. Thoughts shot though his brain, "That took longer than I expected. The female had a bag, do they have weapons? Why would they take chances? They just survived a recovery, so they will be very careful. What would I do? Get on either side of the door and kick it open. Then one leans in and fires with the next one a second later." A tremendous Whump! echoed simultaneously with the door blowing off the hinges. It headed straight for Mission and he instinctively backed up against the fire escape railing. The door fell just short of Mission at the window and he realized the female syn was behind it. She had taken a running start in the hall and exploded through the doorway, using it as a shield. Three feet from the window, Mission saw a shot plow across the side of her head at the temple level. He realized that he had fired as she crashed through the window. A piece of the window frame slapped him hard in the face and he felt his cheek give. The syn's hand struck him in the chest and she pushed as far as she could. She was on her knees, and the window started at about her armpit level. She tried to get a purchase with her feet, to raise up just a few inches so she could push him through the railing of the fire escape, or push her hand through his chest.
Mission was pinned against the railing, and he felt his breath squeezed out, felt the pressure on his sternum, felt his whole rib cage trying to bend. He squirmed furiously, trying anything to wriggle free. He dimly perceived his shots peppering her upper body, exploding on impact into tiny flares that burned right through the alloy chassis. Her eyes lost their intensity and she stopped moving. Mission used his Glock to smack her arm at the inside of the elbow joint. The syn was now brain dead, the joint folded neatly and he gulped for air.
Suddenly he remembered where he was and he jumped up to grab the bottoms of the next flight of the fire escape stairs. As he grabbed hold and pulled his legs up, Brown charged through the remains of the window. Perhaps he hoped to ram Mission off the fire escape, perhaps he didn't care if they both went over. He rushed through the empty space where Mission had been and crashed through t
he railing, grabbing on to a still connected section as he started to fall. Mission looked down to see Brown clinging precariously to the railing. At the same time he noticed his Glock on the fire escape floor, dropped when he grabbed hold of the steps.
Mission was in real trouble here. He didn't want to go back down on the floor. His first law of survival said to stay out of arm's reach of an angry syn. On the other hand, Brown would pull himself back up onto the fire escape in no more than two seconds. Mission swung back toward the building to gain momentum and when he swung out towards the fire escape, he let go. He fully extended his left leg and made sure it pushed Brown's right arm away. Then and only then did his right foot catch him at the junction of the neck and the shoulder, throwing him off the staircase.
Mission landed awkwardly, as all his concentration was focused on placing his feet properly on the syn. His feet hit at an angle and skidded off the floor. He grabbed frantically at the railing, and it came off in his hand. In one last act of desperation, he swung the other hand around and latched onto the railing remnant, just as the full weight of his body pulled him down. Groaning at the sheer effort, he pulled himself up to the point where he could swing a leg up onto the floor. Then the other leg, and he collapsed in a heap at the floor's edge, gasping for air and clinging tightly to the railing. Mission noticed that his vision blurred. It might be a while before he could stand up.
"Bastard!", screamed Brown. "You killed her!"
He startled Mission so much that he almost fell off the landing. He got as high up on his knees as he could and sneaked a peak down below. Brown was climbing up the dangling railing. That didn't make sense. He was coming after him when he could drop to the ground and certain freedom. Brown locked eyes with him, and tears streamed down his face. Genuine emotional pain controlled his expression and he choked out, "I loved her."
The words stunned Mission. Then he realized the next hand up would grab the floor. He looked for the Glock. No time! Brown's hand touched the landing and Mission slapped it, palm down. The switch tripped and 20,000 volts pulsed through the syn. The hate in the teary eyes, the clenched teeth, everything went blank and his whole body went limp. Except for the hand that took the charge. It was locked in place and would stay that way.
Living in Syn Page 1