by Ted Weber
Her twitching eyes started to sting. Tear gas. She forced them shut. The cacophony of shouts and buzzing tore at her brain.
Finally the noise inside her head faded away, leaving only external groans. She blinked and forced herself to look up.
None of the protestors were still standing. Vomit spattered the street and steamed in the sun. White plumes of tear gas wafted down from the broken windows overhead.
A school-aged girl lay nearby on her stomach, arms and legs jerking up and down. An older woman crawled over and cradled the shaking girl’s face, which streamed blood from a mashed nose.
With a chorus of shouts, the dark-armored stormtroopers charged from both ends of the street. They hit the disoriented building defenders like a tsunami, slapping instant-lock cable ties around wrists and ankles, and swinging batons at anyone who resisted.
Dingo rose with clenched fists. One of the cops raised a shotgun and blasted a wooden dowel at him. It glanced off his forehead, leaving a bright red gash. Dingo howled and cupped a hand against streaming blood.
Still on her knees, Waylee slipped her data glasses back on. No more striping, and the camera was still recording. Comnet signal still blocked, but no matter—she’d upload the video as soon as she got back to the newsroom.
A bulky cop rushed toward her, shield up, baton raised. Pale blue eyes gleamed behind a pig-snout gas mask. “Hey, you!” The voice from his helmet speaker sounded tinny, more machine than man.
She held up her hands. “I’m press.” She tried to remember where she’d put her badge.
Her attacker thrust out a black glove and snatched the data glasses off her face.
“Fuck you!” Waylee forced herself up, then grabbed the edge of the cop’s shield. She shoved it aside and reached for her glasses, hoping to pry them out of his fingers.
Behind his mask windows, the cop’s eyes widened. His baton swung down.
Her temple exploded in pain, and the world went dark.
* * *
“That bald patch looks awful.” Waylee’s teenaged half-sister, Kiyoko, averted her almond eyes and twiddled one of the silk bows in her long rainbow-hued hair.
Waylee’s boyfriend, Pelopidas, patted her hand. “You’re still the hottest scenester in Baltimore.”
“Whatever.” She felt a little relief, though. He must not have found someone else yet.
Kiyoko reached into her big Sailor Moon carry bag and pulled out a shoulder-length wig with black bangs and metallic blue dreads.
Waylee didn’t bother rising from her bed to reach for it. “I hate blue.” The walls of her hospital room, shared with a dwarfish woman who spoke neither English nor Spanish, were pale blue. Her detergent-reeking bed sheets were also blue. Even her flimsy gown, which offered no protection against the freezing air conditioning, was blue.
Kiyoko spread the wig apart in her pink-nailed hands. Its dreads drooped like jellyfish stingers. “It’s cybergoth. It’ll look awesome on stage.”
“I hate goth too. And anything cyber related stinks of MediaCorp.”
“I’m just trying to help, Waylee. This cost me fifty bucks.”
Pel, who had transformed himself for the band with a buzzcut, long sideburns, and braided Jack Sparrow beard, snatched the wig from Kiyoko’s hand. “Just wear it for now. Or don’t. It’s the least of our problems.”
Waylee wanted to rail against the police department, about how she’d sue them for cracking her skull, but tears poured down her cheeks and she couldn’t talk.
Pel grimaced. “We’re here to pick you up. Threw that PowerPack in the RV today, maybe we can make some money street racing it.” He smirked, but didn’t barrage her with details the way he normally did.
We’re both unemployed now. What the fuck are we going to do? Unemployment benefits were one of the first casualties of the laissez-faire Congress. “The enemy won,” she managed.
Pel raised a pierced eyebrow. “The enemy?”
“MediaCorp, who do you think? Their enforcers put me here. Their hatchet men fired me.” She was first on their list, and they didn’t even give fair notice, just an email to come pick up her shit. No one at the paper defended her.
Her young doctor waddled through the open doorway, data pad in left hand, abdomen bulging with late pregnancy. “Good morning, Ms. Freid.” She spoke with a precisely enunciated Nigerian accent.
Waylee sat up and wiped her eyes and nose on a sleeve of her gown. “Hospital coin counters evicted me this morning.” Even a shared room was way too expensive without insurance. “Are you sure I’m good to go?”
The doctor stared at her data pad and swiped her fingers along its screen. “Your skull will take three to six months to heal, but it can do so at your home.” She didn’t look up while speaking. “In the meantime, do you play sports, anything like that?”
“No.”
“It is important that you protect your cranium while it heals.”
Avoid bullies with badges. Got it.
Kiyoko plopped down in the visitor chair and fished her pink-framed virtual reality headset out of her carry bag.
The doctor glared at Kiyoko and Pel. “Would you mind waiting outside while we consult?”
“They can stay,” Waylee said. “They’re family.”
She shrugged.
“Now, any changes since yesterday? Headaches, ringing in the ears, memory troubles, mood changes?”
Waylee hesitated, then answered, “No.”
The doctor swiped the data pad again. “I am sending your post-operative instructions to your Comnet account. I encourage you to visit our hospital site and you can confer with our virtual doctor with any questions you might have.”
“I prefer real people.”
The doctor looked up. “I assure you that the virtual doctor can access every unclassified medical database on Earth and is therefore much more knowledgeable than anyone on staff. We would, however, like you to come in for a follow-up examination. Say, in three weeks?”
“I lost my insurance.”
“You can buy medical insurance on the exchange. I encourage you to do so as soon as possible.”
“With what money?”
The doctor fiddled with her data pad, ignoring the question. “Now, your MRI scan showed no brain damage, that’s the good news. However, the functional analysis indicated some anomalies that we’d like to examine further.”
Pel frowned and rubbed a thumb against two of the beads securing his chin braids. Kiyoko wasn’t even listening, her smooth Asian features half engulfed by the VR headset.
Waylee’s throat snapped shut and tears blurred her vision. Some strong female I am, crying like a baby whenever something goes wrong. She turned away, toward the heavy curtain separating her from the other patient. I wish that pig had killed me. She still had life insurance then, enough to send her sister to art school.
“What sort of anomalies?” Pel asked.
Waylee swung her head back toward the doctor. “I have a pre-existing condition. Check my records from College Park.”
Cyclothymia, the doctors called it. Milder than bipolar disorder, but still a hard beast to ride. They diagnosed it when she was in journalism school and having trouble focusing. But probably her brain turned against her long before, somewhere in the darkness of Philadelphia.
Pel inched forward. “Are they related, or is this something new?”
The doctor wagged a brown finger at him. “Please sit. I will consult her records.”
Pel looked around. Still oblivious in her headset, Kiyoko occupied the only chair.
The doctor tapped a cadence on her pad and stared at it. “I see. This information is quite old, but it might be congruent with the functional data.”
“Doctor visits were a waste of time,” Waylee said.
The doctor slid fingers along the screen. “It says here that concussions could make your condition worse; amplify the depressive phase. There’s a forty percent probability, and it doesn’t always manifest right away. I wi
ll refer you to a psychiatrist on staff, and our virtual doctor has psychiatric options.”
“Is the app free?”
“It is very affordable. As for in-person visits, the hospital has a number of payment plans. If you sign up for a credit card, you get ten percent off your first visit.”
Why bother? Cyclothymia had no cure, and medicine didn’t help, not that she could afford it anyway.
The doctor left, and a smiling nurse pushed a black wheelchair into the room. Pel shook Kiyoko out of her virtual world and helped Waylee out of the bed.
The wheelchair embarrassed her. There was nothing wrong with her legs.
The nurse guided her into the chair and patted her shoulder. “Hospital rules. It’s just to get you to your car.”
“My stepfather bullied me,” Waylee said as Pel and Kiyoko packed her things into the Sailor Moon bag.
Pel turned and nodded. His eyes searched for context.
“Knocked me down day after day, year after year. And he paid the price.”
Kiyoko stared and bit her lip.
* * *
June
(9 months later)
Gunshots woke Waylee from a haze of choking tentacles.
Pop! Pop pop! Pop! Pop!
Printed pistol by the timbre, professional disagreement by the tempo. Distant—other side of U.S. 1.
Waylee glanced at the grimy window of the crowded, musty bedroom she shared with Pel. It wasn’t even night yet.
Survival of the fiercest in West Baltimore. Their geriatric two-story house was in a patrolled DMZ, but she and her roomies still had to be careful. Not everyone respected the zone system, and she’d get no favors from the police after her failed lawsuit.
Two more gunshots, then silence. Mission accomplished or weapon malfunction. 3-D printed pistols weren’t terribly accurate or reliable, but they were the latest weapon of choice. Cheap, no serial numbers, and acetone soluble.
She threw aside the sweat-drenched sheets and half-rolled out of bed, her trim body clad in zebra-print panties and one of her dozens of unsold band T-shirts. Dwarf Eats Hippo—we were high as clouds when we came up with that. She edged past piles of used books by Goldman, Foucault, and a hundred other social theorists, and snatched up a pair of tattered jeans from the floor.
Her comlink sat in the charging station on a shelf by the door, along with Pel’s chrome-framed data glasses. She could do just about anything with her comlink once hooked to the Net, and the screen could stretch to six times its current size. At the moment, though, this fancy piece of technology served as a clock, with faux-analog hour and minute hands.
5:30. She’d slept twelve hours. I can’t believe Pel didn’t wake me.
Waylee trudged into the hallway, gritty floorboards creaking beneath her bare feet. Guitars rang in her head and the day’s first lyrics spilled forth.
Aching meat bleeding for meaning,
Tattered banners ’neath a dark moon…
Behind Kiyoko’s door, marked with a rainbow and unicorns, a piccolo voice spoke, “I will never abandon my realm to the likes of Vostok.”
Immersed in BetterWorld again. Even her own sister was ensnared by MediaCorp’s virtual world, their number one manufactured distraction. Waylee lost the thread of her song.
Further down, explosions and screeching tires leaked past the reinforced door of the game room. Pel and Dingo, their latest housemate, practically lived in there. She knocked, but no one answered, no doubt dreaming like her sister in cyber cocoons.
All alone. Shakti, her most reliable friend, was out tonight, off at a People’s Party meeting.
Waylee’s chest tightened. She should be out there organizing, not sleeping life away. Gravity pulled her down the stairs to the living room.
The metal-plated door of the storage closet was unlocked. She grabbed the lap-sized Genki-san Comnet interface and nested in the living room recliner, cat-lacerated sofa and chairs flanking her on either side. Her stomach grumbled, but could hold out until dinner.
She pressed a small button on the Genki-san, transforming its glassy surface into a touchscreen and virtual keyboard, then activated the huge display skin fastened to the opposite wall. She logged onto the Comnet, using her real account, planning to check the responses to her latest freelance proposal.
Working in blinding spurts, Waylee had spent the past nine months researching MediaCorp’s relentless march to monopolize information, their suppression of critical analyses, and their empowerment of an international plutocracy. Her latest story, about how they warped news coverage to elect their political supporters, was nearly done. She just needed funding for undercover work, to access hidden documents, interview people, and get some choice quotes. A little money and recognition would boost her morale, too.
She’d pitched her story to every independent outlet in the U.S. and Canada that paid their contributors. There weren’t many, and the number dropped each month.
Still no responses. Not one.
Waylee didn’t know whether to scream or cry. Not one paying gig all year. Well, there was the band, but that barely covered equipment costs. She wouldn’t even have a blog, with its handful of subscribers, if Pel hadn’t arranged free space on the Collective’s shadownet. She was twenty-eight years old with nothing to show for it.
The why homunculus stirred inside her head and activated her fingers. Why hadn’t anyone written back? Waylee pulled up the list of outlets.
The first, Platform, was her favorite, at least after the demise of Democracy Now and the Independent News Center. They published ‘edgy’ news and analyses, but had high standards and a sizable budget.
Someone had redesigned Platform’s Comnet site since her last visit. It had a slicker look, and the articles were all about “viral innovations” and “trend reports.” The lead article heralded, “BetterWorld Passes One Billion Subscribers,” followed by fawning praise of “the Comnet’s crown jewel.”
Waylee almost dry heaved, then tapped the search icon. “Platform acquisition,” she told the Genki-san’s hidden microphone.
The most relevant response on the screen read, “Media Corporation Buys Platform and Subsidiaries.”
Waylee sat motionless for a while, too exhausted to feel sad or angry. Then she continued down her list. Stirrings and The Daily Read didn’t exist at all anymore.
The rest… maybe no one but her cared that a handful of sociopaths controlled the world and used MediaCorp to tighten their grip every day. Or maybe no one would fund her research because she lacked the creds and followers. I’m nobody, why should anyone take a chance?
To the right of the wall screen, Pel clomped down the stairs, clad in grease-stained jeans and a Pirates 4 People T-shirt. “I presume by the volume you were the knocker?”
“You could have answered. Or would something awful have happened, like having to pause your game?”
“You can’t just pause online combat; you’ll get fragged. Whatever. I’m gonna work on some tracks.” Instead of asking what she wanted, Pel took the lower stairs to the basement.
The loneliness stopped circling and settled on her like a bloated carrion bird. Waylee decided to check the news before going back to sleep. Even though it barraged her with propaganda, she always kept a national news portal open in the lower right corner. ‘Know thy enemy,’ Sun Tzu advised across three millennia of dog-eat-dog history.
The talking heads were spewing their usual pablum, this time about curtailing the power of local governments to restrict development. “They are just infringing on our rights,” a man in a suit said, “the fundamental right to do with our property as we please.”
Sometimes she argued with the anchors and commentators, as if they could hear her point of view. Today, the notion seemed absurd.
“And now,” a female anchor said, “we turn to President Rand on the campaign trail.”
The whitebread jock-handsome president strolled through a crowd of homogenous Anglo-Saxon supporters, smiling and shaking hands.
“With polls showing overwhelming support,” the anchor narrated, “it looks like his re-election’s in the bag.”
They cut to his speech du jour. “America has never been more prosperous than today,” the president proclaimed from a podium. “People around the world see us as the land of opportunity.”
Too bad none of that trickles down.
Waylee’s lyrics homunculus dipped into her deep well of anger.
Bend over, chattel;
Pretend you like my ride.
Kneel when I say so,
And swallow my pride.
Something caught her eye, something out of place. Fingers flying across the touchpad, she expanded the news portal to fill the wall screen.
After the lottery numbers, the moving ticker on the bottom read: LEVEL 3 ZOMBIE OUTBREAK DOWNTOWN WASHINGTON D.C. AVOID CORDONED AREA. RESIDENTS IN AFFECTED AREA URGED TO STAY INDOORS.
Lights exploded in her head. She laughed so hard, the Genki-san slid off her lap and thudded onto the dusty rug.
Her nemesis, which Pel considered impregnable to hackers, had chinks in its armor.
She didn’t need journals or publishers. She could reach a bigger audience without them, maybe millions of people, and tell them whatever she wanted. Why play a fixed game when she could kick the table over?
On the wall screen, President Rand had disappeared, replaced by green reboot messages as the Genki-san recovered from its fall.
Nerves humming with electric fire, Waylee pumped a fist and shouted. “Get ready, you bastards! I am gonna stick the biggest firecracker on Earth up your ass and light it with a flamethrower!”
1
December
Waylee
“Superheroes don’t get stoned before they go into battle,” Pel insisted from the parked van’s passenger seat. He whipped out a latex-gloved hand and tried to snatch the fattie out of her fingers before she could light it.
Waylee was too fast for him, though, and jerked her prize just beyond his reach. “You’re a mere mortal, my dear Pel, and can’t possibly defeat the likes of Storm.”