Vita Aeterna

by Jay Allan Storey

  I took a chance and stepped inside. The interior was dark, but there was enough light to make out where I was going. A hallway with doors off either side ran ahead of me for about fifty meters. I was about to start down it when a voice behind me said:

  “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

  I froze, and turned to locate the source. Half in the shadows of a graffiti-plastered pillar on my left stood a guy in his early twenties (I think — let’s face it, it’s hard to know). He towered over me — at least six feet tall. He had a few days’ stubble on his face, and he looked like he hadn’t washed in at least that long. His brown hair stuck out wildly from his head. There was an ugly scar ten centimeters long beside his right temple, and his right eye seemed to wander.

  He was wearing what I guess was once a business suit, like what the big-wigs in the Corps like to wear, but it was torn, tattered and filthy. The top buttons of his shirt were gone; he’d fastened the collar together with a safety pin. What was left of a necktie was wrapped around the collar. It looked like he’d tried to tie it properly, like the big-wigs, but he must not have known how, ‘cause it was tied with a regular square knot. The tie was all torn and filthy too, and the bottom part was missing, like it had been ripped off by a wild animal.

  He was trying to act tough, but when I looked closer I could see he was shaking.

  “Can’t you read?” he said. He nodded at a torn piece of cardboard tacked to the wall where I’d come in. “Rent — $2.00” was scrawled on it in a shaky hand.

  “Rent?” I said. His eyes were wild and distant. He didn’t look dangerous, but I was ready to run.

  He gestured around at the junk, dust, broken furniture, and collapsing walls. “To use the offices.”

  I started to laugh, but stifled it when I looked at his face. He was dead serious. Instead I said, “So — what — you own this place?”

  He straightened up and puffed out his chest. “I own all these places — the whole block. I’m a entrepreneur.”

  “Well, I haven’t got two dollars,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell him about the money in my shoe.

  He scowled and took a step toward me. “Then you’re in big trouble.”

  “Look,” I said, stepping away, “I didn’t know this was your place. Maybe I should just take off.”

  I started to turn back toward the door. He moved closer. I spun around and put up my fists in case he came at me. He jumped back, startled.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I said. I put a hand on the door jamb and lifted one of my feet to step out.

  “Wait,” he called. I stopped and turned back.

  His expression softened. “I’m havin’ a special right now — first week for free.”

  He stepped away and gestured for me to come in. I was pretty desperate. I was hungry and exhausted, and I needed a place to hide. I introduced myself.

  “I’m Benny,” he said, shaking my hand.

  Benny led me to his ‘office’, a filthy, debris-strewn room with the remains of a desk in one corner. What must once have been a computer sat on the desk, surrounded by rotting stacks of used paper. Several other pieces of junked equipment were scattered around. I couldn’t make out what any of them were.

  “This is my command center,” Benny said. “This is where it all happens.”

  “What all happens?”

  He shot me a look of annoyance. “My corporate empire,” he gestured around him.

  A government poster tacked to the back wall was all but blotted out with graffiti written with a black marker. The words ‘Fuck You’ were scrawled over a photo of the president, and comments like ‘bastards’ and ‘go to Hell’ surrounded it.

  Benny noticed me looking at it. “You’re not with them, are you?” He staggered back in fear and disgust.

  I laughed. “Do I look like I’m with the government?”

  He relaxed a little. He leaned forward and whispered. “They’ve got spies everywhere.”

  On another wall was a picture of Charles Wickham. The head of the CCE stood confidently in front of some fancy building, with his arms folded across his chest, the light from above reflecting from his silver buzz-cut, a confident sneer on his craggy face. That poster was untouched by graffiti and, unlike most of the room, looked like it was cleaned regularly. Benny was obviously a lot more positive about him.

  “Someday, we’re gonna kick some government ass,” he said, nodding at the CCE poster as if Wickham and him were buds. “Someday soon.”

  The walls of the room were plastered with pages ripped out of magazines. I glanced at a few — all were either anti-government or pro-CCE.

  For the first time I noticed that there was no HUD controller on his wrist. I studied the scar on his head and froze. The silver HUD access connector on his right temple was missing. He was the first person over five years old I’d ever seen that didn’t have a HUD.

  “What happened?” I asked, pointing at his scar.

  “Those government bastards tried to brainwash me with their evil bullshit,” he rubbed the scar like he was remembering something painful.

  “But it’s hooked into your optic nerve,” I said. “How’d you get it out?”

  “It’s like a poisonous plant,” his hand shook as he rubbed the scar again and screwed up his eyes. “You just dig in and pull it out by the roots.”

  I cringed. “That must have hurt.”

  “Made me blind in one eye,” he said, “but it was worth it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “What do think I’m doin’ here, anyway?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m underground, stupid,” he sneered. “I’m gathering intelligence. I’m like a… ‘field operative’.”

  In one corner was a huge stack of old food packets. He noticed me eyeing them and handed one to me.

  “I’ll put this on your tab,” he said.

  I checked the expiry date. It had expired a month ago. The packets were vacuum-sealed, and technically didn’t have to be refrigerated, but that was getting pretty old. Anyway, it’s not like I had much choice. I ripped it open and scooped out the brown mash with my fingers. I might not starve now, but I might die of food poisoning. He threw in some stale crackers, which tasted like cardboard. We left the office and he showed me the remains of an old kitchen where there was a supply of water.

  “I’m glad I ran into you,” I said, feeling better, but wondering what would happen when the rotten food hit my system.

  Benny was out there. It was a long-shot, but I figured I might as well see what he knew. “I’m looking for information on some people. An org—”

  “Don’t say any more,” he whispered, putting a hand on my shoulder. “They might by listening.”

  “So, you know who I’m talking about?” I asked.

  He narrowed his eyes and nodded. He drew me closer.

  “What do you want to know about them?”

  “Who they are,” I said. “What they’re after.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “What they’re after — yeah — what they’re after. That’s a good one.”

  He turned and stared at the wall for a long time and didn’t say a word.

  Finally, he turned back and put his lips next to my ear.

  “You’re CCE, aren’t you,” he said. “This is a test — I know. You want to see how much I found out.”

  I played along. “I can’t fool you. So how much did you find out?”

  “I can do better than tell you about them,” he whispered. “I can take you.”

  What the hell? I thought. I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with this guy. Maybe I better give up and get out of here before he loses it completely.

  Too late. He grabbed my arm and started dragging me out of the room.

  “Hey, forget about it,” I said, trying to pull free. He seemed to have flipped into some kind of hypnotic state. “Hey, asshole!” I yelled. “Let me go! I changed my mind. I don’t give a shit who they are.”

  He wasn’t listening. He
dragged me across the entire building and through a hole blasted in the wall at the opposite end. We headed down a filthy alley. He wasn’t even trying to avoid the cameras. I looked around and realized that this deep in the Dregs there were almost none anyway, and the few I saw looked broken. I checked my HUD and it wasn’t registering anything.

  “There’s no cameras?” I said.

  He finally spoke. “Smashed ‘em all. Nobody came back to fix ‘em. Nobody ever comes around here.”

  I finally gave up and went along. We traveled a few blocks, then entered another abandoned building. We climbed a half-demolished set of stairs for three floors, headed down a hall littered with garbage, and turned right into what had once been an office. A gigantic hole had been smashed out of the inside wall. The center of the building was open, and you could look through the hole right down to the bottom floor. There had once been an atrium with a garden. Most of the plants had died. Some of the hardier vines had spread around to cover the walls.

  Benny sat down near the hole and closed his eyes.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We wait,” he answered.

  I thought about trying to get out of there. The guy was obviously unstable, but so far he’d been harmless. There was a chance that he might actually know something, or at least might lead me to somebody that did.

  He sat there like some kind of Buddha statue. He wasn’t going to say anything else. I figured I might as well wait. I thought of filling the time checking the crypted phone, but wasn’t sure what he’d do if he knew I had it. I cleared some of the debris from a section of the floor, laid my pack down for a pillow, stretched out, and went to sleep.

  I woke up. Somebody had a hand over my mouth and was shaking me. I opened my eyes and looked up. It was Benny. He put a finger to his lips. I nodded and he removed his hand. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. There were voices in the space down below. Benny leaned in close to my ear.

  “They’re here,” he whispered. He pointed down toward the voices.

  I moved closer to the hole in the wall to look down.

  “Careful,” he whispered. “Don’t let them see you.”

  I leaned out just enough to see a small group in the atrium area, sitting in a circle, talking. It was pretty dark, and they were about fifty meters away, but I could see them well enough to tell they were homeless and dressed in rags, like Benny. I didn’t know much about Vita Aeterna, but I figured it was pretty unlikely these guys were them.

  Unlike Benny, they all had HUD controllers on their wrists. They were passing a bottle around, talking and laughing.

  “This is them?” I whispered to Benny. “They look like a bunch of drunks on a bender.”

  Benny scowled at me, annoyed. “That’s their cover. Don’t you know anything?”

  “So what are they doing here?”

  “Lookin’ for me,” Benny sat up straight and smiled. “But they’ll never find me.”

  I heard a noise toward the door behind us. A voice said, “I thought we told you not to come back here.”

  We turned to look. A guy was standing in the doorway with a gun in his hand. He was young, tall and thin, with a scruffy dark beard.

  “It’s my building,” Benny said. “I can…”

  “Cut the bullshit,” the guy said. “We don’t want to hear about it.” He nodded at me. “Who’s your little friend?”

  I got to my feet. “I can speak for myself.” I probably should have been more careful. He had the gun, but his attitude pissed me off.

  He raised the gun and pointed it at me. “Well I can blow your head off if I feel like it, and nobody — including this bozo —” he nodded at Benny, “will give a shit.” He cocked the firing mechanism. “Now, what are you doing here?”

  I stepped back. “Name’s Alex,” I said, losing the attitude. “I’ve been living on the street.” There was no way I was gonna tell him the truth.

  “For how long?”

  I winged it. “A few months.”

  He scanned me up and down. I realized that my clothes, which weren’t anything special, weren’t rags either.

  “How come we’ve never seen you before?” he said.

  “What?” I said. “I gotta come and announce myself to you guys whenever I’m around?”

  He stepped forward and pressed his gun barrel against my forehead. “This is our turf, and yeah, you better come and ask permission to be in it.” He sneered. “If you were living on the street you’d know that.” He waved the gun toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  “No!” Benny yelled.

  “I wasn’t inviting you,” the guy sneered at him. “You can get lost.”

  “If I come down, he comes with me,” I said.

  “You’re not in a position to bargain,” the guy with the gun said. “Anyway, you should pick a better class to be loyal to.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The Gang

  We left Benny and navigated down the garbage-littered stairs to the bottom. The group didn’t look any better close up. There were four guys, including my captor, who introduced himself as ‘Tory’, and three women. I guess it was party time. They were passing a bottle of something around, laughing and shouting. They were all dressed in rags, and they all had this gaunt look like the life had been sucked out of them.

  They took my pack and the board strapped to my back. Tory held a gun on me while one of the others frisked me. The guy was so pissed he didn’t notice the cards, which I’d moved to an inner pocket of my pants, and didn’t find the money in my shoe. One of them pulled the crypted phone out of my pack and held it up, smiling. I moved to grab it, but Tory cocked the gun and pressed it against my head. I stepped back.

  “Take care of it,” Tory said to the guy.

  I watched as he stumbled off, hoping to see where he put it, but he went around a corner and I lost sight of him. Tory shoved me forward and told me to sit down with the others. After the big deal he’d made about taking me down there, nobody really seemed to care whether I was there or not, but they still wouldn’t let me leave.

  At first they didn’t want to share their booze (which was okay with me), but as they got more hammered, they changed their minds. I wanted to keep my head straight and maybe make a run for it once the rest of them passed out or something, but they got suspicious when I kept turning down drinks, so I gave up and joined them.

  I told them about my Cam-surfing, and there was talk of me joining — like that was some kind of honour. Anyway, they said the head-man, Cash — the guy who’d end up making that decision, was off negotiating with the leader of another group.

  I asked Tory about their gang.

  “We help each other stay alive,” he explained as they passed the bottle around. “We sneak into the Quarters, even the Corp Ring sometimes, and steal enough to survive, like the thousands of others out here. We stay together for protection. If SecureCorp catches any of us we’re dead.”

  “Thousands?” I said. “Bullshit — the Dregs are practically empty.”

  Tory laughed. “Empty? Who’ve you been listening to?” he nodded at the HUD controller on my wrist. “That?”

  The others joined in laughing. I felt my face turning red. “Well, how else are you supposed to know what’s going on?”

  They all laughed again.

  I explained how Benny and I had met. I didn’t mention anything about looking for Vita Aeterna or Uncle Zack, or what happened to me. They seemed to buy that I was just a regular street kid.

  “Where’d you get the money for a crypted phone?” Tory sneered.

  I looked at the floor. “I didn’t. I stole it.”

  I looked up. They were all staring at me.

  My eyes locked with Tory’s for a few seconds. Finally he shrugged. “Anyway, who gives a shit. Cash’ll find out what’s up with you when he gets back. Have another drink.”

  ☼

  About an hour later the leader, Cash, finally showed up. He looked pretty much like the rest, in his twenties (I guess), r
agged and unwashed, but with a little more intelligent glint in his eye. As soon as the others saw him they quieted down. The bottle was almost empty anyway, but they shoved it under a jacket — like he wouldn’t notice.

  Cash took Tory, who I guess was sort of his right-hand man, aside and talked to him away from the others. Tory pointed at me a couple of times. Cash looked over at me and smiled. It gave me the creeps.

  Finally, Cash and Tory both came over. I stood to face them.

  Cash stuck his face in mine. “Who the fuck are you?”

  I felt my body shaking but I didn’t move. “What’s it to you? I was just minding my own business. It was you guys—”

  “You’re in our territory — your business is our business,” he said. He shoved me back on my heels. “Tory says you’re supposed to have been livin’ on the street for a few months.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So?”

  He sneered. “You haven’t been out here for more than a few days.” He stared at my clothes. “What the hell are you up to?” He smiled again. “You told Tory your name was Alex.”

  I cringed. Why the hell did I tell them my real name? I thought. He’s heard about me.

  Cash nodded at Tory, who left and returned with a couple of the other guys that were sitting around.

  “I gotta take off for a while,” Cash said. “I got some people to talk to — figure out what to do with you.”

  The others rushed forward and grabbed me. I tried to break free but they had me pinned.

  Cash turned and walked away. They dragged me to a small room nearby, threw me inside, and locked the door. I pounded on it for a while and screamed, but they all ignored me. I could see a shadow moving occasionally through the crack under the door — they’d left a guard outside.

  I sat down on the bare concrete floor with my head in my hands. After all that had happened — and Walter and my father giving their lives for me to get free…

  I scanned around the room, hunting for a way out. There was nothing. Even if I could break through the wall somehow the guard would hear and I’d be put somewhere else. The room was around the corner from where the main group were sitting, but I could still hear the noise from the drinking party getting louder. They must have gotten another bottle from someplace.