by Gary Ballard
Having found the number, he felt trapped, closed into a slowly shrinking box that was their apartment. The air was stuffy and smelled of rotten food. He needed to get out, needed space and air. He couldn’t take it anymore. He would head down to the club and call Cramer. He would set the whole thing up and be done with these bastards.
“That’s it, I’m done. Fuck you, Bridge. If you do this, I’m done.” Her words echoed through the hallway as he shuffled quickly towards the door.
“Then I guess you’re fucking done,” he said as the slammed the door.
*****
“And you’re sure this guy is solid?” Archer whined. His rat-faced grin, so smug and self-assured gave Bridge the urge to plant a quick jab right on the guy’s pointy nose, an urge he fought down with some difficulty.
“Doc Cramer is a hundred percenter,” Bridge replied with no hint of malice in his voice. “Whatever he sells you will be the mad notes.”
“It better be,” Pearson threatened, “or we will bury you.”
“You know, I got plenty of business from people who don’t threaten me. Maybe I should go take care of some of it.” Bridge was genuinely ready to walk away, if for no other reason than to see how far they’d go to get him back. If he pushed it, if they really tried to play the hardass, he might even be able to get a few extra points out of the deal. Bridge started to stand, and Archer almost knocked the table over to keep him from leaving. Aristotle had tired of the game and leaned over the back of their booth, exposing his tree-trunk thick biceps to full view. Archer thought better of actually touching Bridge once he saw the dark form of the bodyguard hovering over the transaction.
“Sal, shut the fuck up, dude. I got this. It’s cool, man. It’s all good. We’re all friends here.” Archer couldn’t take his eyes off the bodyguard’s arms.
Bridge sat back down, his smile oozing smug triumph. “If the dick-measuring contest is quite through with, let’s get down to business.” He pulled a bizchip from his pocket and laid it in the exact center of the table. “Payment received, so we’re all set on my end. You put your thumb on this chip and Cramer will contact you shortly to set up fulfillment. I never see the stuff, and I never met you. You can back out now, and I’ll refund half the fee and we never met.” Bridge had to give them the out, give them the opportunity to tamp down their worst desires. He was always surprised when someone took that opportunity, mostly because it was such a rare occurrence. Despite the profit, he was always a little disappointed when a deal went through. But the more jobs he did, the more he saw that the people who sought him couldn’t help themselves, no matter how self-destructive their requests were, no matter how far down the path to self-immolation they already were. His clients either couldn’t help themselves or didn’t want to.
Archer giggled with depraved glee and jammed his thumb down onto the card. It flashed twice. Bridge picked it up and tossed it into the sparkling clean ashtray where it smoked and shriveled before catching fire and dissolving into a fine pile of ash. “Enjoy your party, boys,” Bridge said and waved them off. They left with hardy back slaps and effervescent excitement.
Despite the fee, Bridge was going to make nothing on this job. He had traded his entire fee to Cramer for a special request of his own. Bridge knew that his reputation required that he get his fratboys exactly what they wanted no matter how sleazy it made him feel. But their attitude towards him demanded attention. There was no reason to be so dickish in business. He could have gotten them anything they wanted and looked the other way without blinking, but they had to play the alpha male. Spoiled rich kids with nothing to lose because their daddy’s money would always backstop any bad behavior really pissed him off. So he asked Cramer to work a little extra magic on his client’s order of Sluv.
The drugs would work, of course. They could dissolve it in a chick’s drink, or place the paper-thin tabs on the girl’s skin. Within minutes, the victim would be completely suggestible, a fully conscious robot awaiting whatever depraved instructions the boys could dream up. The men would touch the tabs since Sluv were normally designed to only work on female body chemistry. Unfortunately for Archer and his would-be rapists, Bridge had asked Cramer to spike the dose.
The rapists would get their victims, but they’d be completely impotent for the entire duration. Whether the male touched the tab to administer the drug, or touched the victim’s skin after it took effect, there was a second nano component that turned a male’s equipment into a flaccid noodle.
Bridge was taking a chance, of course. The disappointed customers might try to blame Bridge, but to do that, they’d have to admit they couldn’t close the deal. Bridge was betting on the fragile ego of the alpha male. If there was one thing Bridge figured he could count on, it was his client’s inability to admit they couldn’t lay pipe at a moment’s notice. They would lie to each other, maybe even lie to themselves, but the odds they would put two and two together to equal Bridge were astronomical. It may have cost Bridge his entire fee, but it was worth it.
Bridge thought about Angela with a scowl darkening his face. Angela had made her arrangements moments after he slammed the door. His shit would be gone by the time he returned. He thought briefly about calling her, about trying to explain what he’d done, but dismissed it. He could explain all he wanted, but the distance between them had grown too wide, had grown with every job he’d done, with every minute he’d spent doing this thing he had to do.
*****
BOOK 1: UNDER THE AMORAL BRIDGE, A CYBERPUNK NOVEL
*****
Chapter 1
August 28, 2028
11:42 p.m.
“I know a guy,” were the only important words Artemis Bridge uttered these days. All of his conversations with those words were a carefully choreographed dance routine, each step planned out in advance with only rare deviations from his expectations. Before those words came the usual bullshit, the greetings, the give and get probing Bridge used to determine if the prospective client was a cop trying to entrap him or a legitimate person with an illegitimate need. After those words, the dance was all details, the who-is and the where-wills and all the rest of the important minutiae that would get the job done. But “I know a guy,” those were the focal point of Bridge’s life. Those words were the music that drove the dance.
Bridge didn’t yet know the well-dressed man coming across the Glitter bar towards him, but he could read the guy like a web site from the moment the sharp-dresser had entered the club. Bridge thought, ‘Here’s a guy that gets a little action on the side, a little weird action his girlfriend or wife won’t give him. He’s some well-heeled corporate douchebag looking for someone to help him exploit something.’ The man’s bearing was all faux confidence. His suit was Armani, his job was corporate, but his bravado was a subtly tarnished facade. Bridge pegged the client at around 32, desperately hoping he was still as cool as he was in high school, but deep down all too aware that the young things gyrating wildly in the club around him had moved on to more interesting predators. He was not cool, he was not crunk, he wasn’t even hip and he sure wasn’t cyber. He ogled the pretty girls as he straightened his silk tie uncomfortably, his eyes shifting nervously from one younger alpha male to the next as he gestured for the bartender’ip s attention. The man’s eyes never held anything for long, except for constant predatory stares at any young female that happened by. He seemed especially interested in the girls with the cybernetic replacement limbs. ‘Must have a metal fetish,’ thought Bridge. The bartender directed the client over towards Bridge’s table with an indifferent shrug, signaling at Bridge as the client turned his back. Costello the bartender was a stand-up guy who vetted prospective clients. All he ever asked for was a bit of hard-to-get ‘70’s porn. Bridge knew a guy.
Sharp-Dressed stuck out a hand to Bridge as he approached the table, offering a handshake of dubious merit. Bridge waved off the proffered hand. “Sorry, I don’t do physical contact,” Bridge apologized. “There’s too many crazy things can be
transferred by touch in this business.” Sharp-Dressed sat down quickly with a slightly offended expression, his eyes darting nervously as he straightened his jacket.
Bridge’s paranoia excuse was a valid one. The people he dealt with were often lying shitheels of the worst kind. There were nanotech listening devices that could be planted through skin-to-skin contact, contact poisons and diseases of varying lethality, and portable weapons bladed and concussive that would make perfect tools of revenge. Bridge always tried to be fair in his dealings, but that never stopped unsatisfied customers from seeking recompense of a physical nature. But those weren’t the reason he avoided physical contact. No, the real reason was that he just hated people on an almost universal basis. He hated the cloying press of humanity, the parade of simpering mongoloids that walked the face of the earth as if they owned it. He hated them for their greed, he hated them for their vices, and he hated their sweating, stinky desperation which fell off of them in waves no matter the circumstance. He hated Mr. Sharp-Dressed man here, for whatever connection this well-heeled faker wanted from Bridge.
Bridge wondered how Sharp-Dressed managed to not sweat his balls off in the intense Los Angeles heat outside, but the man showed only a thin line of perspiration on his brow. “You got a business card?” was the first question Bridge asked him. In any other environment, Bridge reckoned the man would have whipped out the bizchip before their handshake was even cold, but the potential illegality of the situation had obviously put the guy off personal revelations.
“Of course,” Sharp-Dressed answered, whipping out a small card wallet from his breast pocket. He hesitated as the chip left his pocket, wondering if he really should be handing over his particulars to someone who could link him to a crime. “Isn’t this business usually anonymous? No names and all that business?”
“Do you do business with a motherfucker won’t tell you his name?”
Sharp-Dressed had a good think about that, finally handing over the card with only a slight reluctance tugging at the corners of his smile. The paper-thin silicon wafer glowed with exposure to the pulsating light show of the club, an animated presentation complete with video of the card’s owner flashing boldly from the card’s electronic paper surface. The man oozed oily confidence even from the bizchip.
“Your business with me is as secret as your confession,” Bridge continued as he eyed the card. “You already kpleou alrenow my name. We’re just evening up the deal.” Of course, Bridge was lying. Anonymity was a buzzword of his, but it wasn’t religion in his line of work. Bridge’s first priority was protecting his own ass, and if that meant he had to “know a guy” he worked for when someone else asked, like a frisky cop or a mean big bastard with a big bastard gun, he’d sing like a canary. Knowing guys meant knowing their dirty little secrets, and he could trade secrets as well as connections when the need arose. “Good to meet you, Brandon Thames, Film Distribution Assistant,” Bridge read from the card. “Are you a cop?”
Thames appeared taken aback, his affected calm showing signs of wear. “Boy, you don’t waste any time. I like that, I dig that. No, I am not a cop. I’m not wearing any kind of wire or listening device.” He manufactured a smile for Bridge, a smile filled with the ivory produce of a very expensive dentist and the cloying charm of a social predator. He opened his coat to display a crisply-laundered white shirt, as if that would allay all Bridge’s fears.
“Wasting time is a sin in this business, and spending time in jail for what I do is a serious waste of time,” Bridge replied.
“And what do you do, exactly?”
“I am my name. Artemis Bridge, pleasure to meet you. I’m a bridge, THE bridge, the path to whatever it is you want, so long as what you want is something hard to find that someone else has. It may be rare, it may even be illegal, but if you need it, I am the guy that knows the guy that’s got it or does it. I’m the main circuit in the relationship network, I’m the go-between and the get-to-know. You stand here on one side of the bridge with a need, and somewhere on the other side of the bridge is the guy who can fulfill that need. For a nominal fee, I connect you with him. I do not touch the goods. I do not care what the goods are, whether it’s information or mineral, virtual or physical. What you trade with the people I set you up with is your business so long as my fee is paid.” The well-rehearsed speech flowed from Bridge’s lips like electricity through a wire.
“And you don’t care what it is?”
“Not one iota. Couldn’t give a rat’s ass.”
“Which is why they call you the Amoral Bridge.”
“I’m surprised ‘they’ even know the meaning of the word amoral,” Bridge quipped with a sarcastic smile. “It’s an amoral shitstorm out there, Mr. Thames, and I’m just trying to keep dry.”
“Can you guarantee confidentiality?”
“I’m still alive, aren’t I? My clients are ghosts, Mr. Thames. The only people who will know you’ve done business with me are you and the person I introduce to you.” Bridge lied, of course, neglecting to mention Aristotle, the six-foot-three lie watching from ten feet behind Bridge’s left shoulder.
Aristotle was Bridge’s bodyguard, a fantastically gigantic black man with biceps as thick as tree limbs and a stare that filled most with the ff ct with ear of a black planet. Bridge had nicknamed him Aristotle during their interview last year, when the bodyguard had explained the philosophy of existentialism and how it related to the twenty-first century life under a corportocracy. Bridge hadn’t understood a goddamn word of it, but it had sounded right. Bridge had decided at that point that Aristotle was a damn sight smarter than Bridge was, hiring him on the spot. Unfortunately, Bridge couldn’t afford to pay him enough to actually engage in dangerous activities like fistfights. Bridge mainly kept him around for show, a bluff for the easily dissuaded, a bluff that succeeded more than it failed. The last ass beating Bridge was forced to take was eight months ago, and even Bridge would admit he had deserved it. Bridge glanced over Brandon’s shoulder at the reflection of Aristotle in the mirrored walls, buttressing his confidence with the bodyguard’s presence.
“So what is it you need? Women? Guns? Information?”
Thames voice fell into a hoarse whisper. “I need a leaker.”
Bridge laughed a little on the inside. Every movie studio in the States had been conducting legal and not-so-legal wars against what they called intellectual piracy for decades. It had started with lawsuits in the late ‘90’s, suing whatever poor soul they could drum up who had downloaded a copy of a movie or a song before its release date. As the corporations had gotten more legal power in the 2k’s, their rhetoric about the effects of piracy on their business had gotten more zealous, and the legal wiggle room to protect their copyrights had expanded with the propaganda. By the early 2020’s, many hackers spoke of hit teams who scoured the GlobalNet in search of anyone leaking books, games, movies, songs, software and TV shows. Net battles were fought, with rumors of the odd fatality here and there. And no matter how harsh the reaction, the hackers just kept leaking pirated goods and thumbing their noses at their corporate opposition.
But what few of the normal people not associated with either side knew was that the corporations hired people under the table to leak the releases. They had long ago discovered that pre-release buzz from legitimate reviewers and paid shills only generated so much interest in a media-saturated world. Unfiltered positive buzz from the hardcore underground, the pirates and the punks, was worth its weight in gold. As a result, the media corporations did what they did best. They made a deal. The corporate liaisons, like Brandon Thames here, would carelessly let the leaker know where and when to steal a copy of the media from the GlobalNet database, like something ‘falling off the truck’ because the driver left the back door open. The hacker would still have to do the work, of course, breaking through security and reaching the prized goods. Like a virus, the stolen media would spread through the GlobalNet, building hopefully positive buzz that translated into bigger releases. The corpo
rations got a boogieman to keep the average meathead from downloading leaked media, and the hackers got a little spending money and the infamy of making a big score. The system worked great, unless the product was a stinker, or the leaker got himself dead.
Bridge asked, “Have you ever worked with a leaker before?”
“All the time. My last guy got himself killed in some goddamn arena battle. That’s the third one this year. I keep getting them from the temp pool of the collections dep"Tilectionartment. Those credcrasher assholes are barely sober most of the time, and they all seem to have a death wish. I figured I’d see if you had a different talent pool to choose from.”
Bridge put his chin in his palm for a moment, a practiced pantomime of thoughtful consideration. He couldn’t think of anyone specific right off the top of his head, but Angela would. His brow furrowed, and he gave a desultory “Tsk!” before snapping his fingers. “I know a guy,” he concluded.
“Great! When can I meet him?” Thames’s face bled relief.
Bridge spread his hands in front of him. “Whoa, patience. I’ll need to contact him and these guys don’t exactly work a 9 to 5.” He tapped Thames’s business card to his forehead. “I’ll give him your credentials and see if he’s interested. If he is, I’ll call you back and set up a meet. Be prepared, he’s probably going to do a quick background search on you, make sure you’re on the up and up, not a cop or anything.”