Altered States: A Cyberpunk Sci-Fi Anthology

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Altered States: A Cyberpunk Sci-Fi Anthology Page 20

by Roy C. Booth


  Soon they were part of the crowd milling through the shops and buying stuff compulsively. As they walked past a holographic vista of an exotic sun-splashed place, peopled with smiling men and women, and a voice said, “Happiness and unspoiled nature are awaiting you at our many destinations. Why don’t you book your Time Warner Airlines flight now?”, the woman turned around and asked:

  “Why aren’t you buying anything? Pills, emoboosters, all the other stuff you were buying all the time? Like everyone else here? Well?”

  “I just don’t seem to feel the need to buy that stuff now,” he answered.

  “And you know why? Perhaps because you’ve taken those antidotes?”

  “All right. Tell me the complete story.”

  “Well, why not, as you’re with us now, whether you want it or not. I’m sure you know most of what we eat and drink and the tons of pills we swallow so happily have stuff in it rendering it addictive and increasing our receptivity to advertising? You know most of the food and drinks these days are “sponsored” by big corporations that are controlling the market and intent on keeping consumers in an economic stranglehold?”

  “Yes, but there’s nothing illegal about that. They add the elements to our food and drinks that keep us going, that keep the economy and the world as we know it going. That’s the way things evolved. We get quality stuff, and there’s plenty of it, so why would we bother about those conspiracy theories?”

  “It’s not illegal because these big corporations are the ones wielding power. They’re controlling the authorities as well. As a matter of fact, they’re controlling everything, and they’re still out to extend their control. We’re fighting a holy war against this mad consumerism smothering our freedom.”

  “Oh, please, don’t give me that kind of revolutionary crap. So you’re fighting the establishment. And your so-called antidotes are illegal?”

  “Of course they are. They’re evil stuff cooked up by some rebel movement out to destabilize society and shake its consumerist foundations, according to the official view. And they’re hot on or heels, both the authorities and the corporations’ lobbyists, in a no-holds-barred kind of way. Especially because they’re moving into the next big phase. They don’t want us spoiling the fun.”

  “What’s the next big phase?”

  “Big religious organizations have understood the benefits of food and drink sponsorship, decided to buy their way into the system and added stuff that increases receptivity for religious messages too. They’re definitely winning. We’re clutching at straws, we may be fighting the last battle in a war we’ll lose. Have you seen any empty churches recently? Mark my words, consumers are growing more devout with every mouthful of junk or swig of liquid shit.”

  “I think I’m getting the picture. Let me guess. You were at the Lunch Mob to meet someone who would hand you some of these antidotes, but your opponents got the air of the deal and intervened. Your contact only saw one option, slid the goodies into the pocket of an innocent bystander, hoping to retrieve them soon, and all the parties left empty-handed, wondering where the goodies were.”

  “Fair. And the goodies are now inside you, making you a formidable ally for Unholy Grail, and a hot target for the other side, as soon as they find out what’s cooking in your bloodstream.”

  “Unholy Grail. The name has a nice ring to it.”

  “Never mention the name to anyone. The wrong ears might be listening.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I’ll have to talk about that with my friends. I’ll get back in touch with you. In the meantime, don’t give yourself away. Act naturally, buy some stuff even if you don’t feel the need, tell your boss you’re taking emoboosters even if you don’t want to ever touch that stuff again. Make sure no one finds out about your altered condition. And enjoy it to the fullest.”

  “What exactly is this stuff doing inside me?”

  “The antidotes are countering all effects caused by any active elements that enter your system and their programming identifies as intruders. No more impulsive buying. No frantic energy, artificial smiles and unnatural moods. No urgent need to go to church. You’ll feel liberated. As everyone should be entitled to feel. The antidotes are nano-agents, self-repairing and reproducing in your bloodstream. You can’t remove them, and they have no known side effects. You’ll be fine, as long as you manage to stay alive. That’s all you need to know.”

  “One more question,” he said as they walked by a holo commercial of Nokia’s new cell phone virus scanner. He looked all around him, but the woman was gone. She had disappeared into the throng of shoppers filling the place. He was alone. Well, not quite. He had joined Unholy Grail and had gained a number of merciless enemies out to get his blood. Quite literally.

  “Don’t let them get you,” the holo ad’s voice system said, accompanying a gigantic cell phone that was attacked by a monstrous creature, opening its mouth and sinking its teeth into the phone. “Protect your right to call and be called, get Gobble-X as quick as you can.” While the voice spoke, the creature started gobbling up the phone, but at one point the holo image stopped, shimmered and flickered until it winked out. Was this holo ad malfunctioning? Had it been hacked, damaged by a virus? Now that would be a strange coincidence. Unless this was an intentional effect, a joke of the advertiser. But did it matter? Didn’t he have more important problems on his mind than silly commercials? To hell with the damned nuisance!

  Strange, he thought, that I’m starting to experience the countless commercials popping up around me as bothersome and irritating. The woman had been right. The antidotes in his blood were doing a fine job. But still he wondered what would happen now. How would he fit into Unholy Grail’s plans? How would this Holy War end? And would he have any say in that?

  He shook his head, turned around, walked straight through the Gobble-X ad that popped up again, and headed for the exit. For now, he would go home. And all he could do was wait until that gorgeous woman got back in touch with him. If only he wouldn’t have to wait too long. And if only he would be able to realize his own private ambition with her. The Holy War wasn’t all that high on his list.

  There was one effect the antidotes failed to cancel, as he discovered the next few days. He kept seeing that girl’s pretty face before his mind’s eye, any moment of the day, wherever he was. She haunted him, made him long to be reunited with her, made him daydream about the ambition he hoped to realize one day with her–basically positive, stimulating feelings he did not exactly regret.

  What he did regret was that she failed to get in touch with him. The first day, he just thought she was discussing the problem with her revolutionary friends, but the days went by and there was no call from her, nor any other sign. Each time his cell phone rang he thought it was her; each time he was disappointed to discover it was another commercial for religious services or for nano-art body ornaments.

  He kept a low profile, as she had suggested, acted as he always had, bought stuff he didn’t really need so no one would harbor any suspicions about his unnatural thrift. The third day after their meeting, he could take it no more and decided to do some research. After his shift at the Lunch Mob, he went to an Internet café (preferring not to use his own computer, which might be monitored), and tried to find any information about rebel movements or underground resistance fighters. He even entered the word “Grail” into the search engine, but all he got was sites referring to history and movies. Hadn’t the woman (would he ever find out her name?) said they were on the losing side? Maybe by now Unholy Grail was very much history indeed! Maybe the incident at the Lunch Mob, that had turned him into a player in the field, had been the final skirmish of the war.

  The next day he dropped by at the Pizza Palazzo, and asked Luigi a few questions, carefully phrased so he wouldn’t give away too much. All he learned was that a shady organization specializing in payment fraud using cloned retinas had been dismantled. Could there be a link with Unholy Grail? Or were the Grail activists
merely using those cloned retinas so they couldn’t be traced by their payment patterns? Maybe there was no direct connection between the two groups.

  He hung around news booths as much as he could, hoping to pick up some news items that might offer clues, but there was nothing at all. The fact that the tidbits of information were embedded in thick layers of commercials was perhaps an indication that Unholy Grail had met with abject failure. And the fact that the commercials irritated him beyond reason reminded him that the antidotes were still inside his blood, and that Unholy Grail was still active, even if it might now be limited to a one man’s army. For by now he felt privileged to be with them—he had grown to experience the antidotes as a cleaning, he felt liberated and relieved, as if a smothering embrace had been broken. But maybe the liberation had come too late.

  As the days went by, he grew convinced he would never hear from the woman again, or from any other Unholy Grail representative for that matter. The guys from the “other side” hadn’t tried to get in touch with him either, the ones who had broken into his apartment, had interfered with the woman’s actions, had paid his boss a visit when he wasn’t there. Perhaps they thought the enemy had been defeated, and were not aware of the full nature of his involvement. Did this mean he could consider his situation safe? He hadn’t heard from the cops either. Was this another good sign? He decided it was, until proof to the contrary.

  He didn’t know whether the antidotes were a blessing or a curse—would he have to hide his “immunity” for the special substances in his food and drinks for the rest of his life? Would he have to be wary of the authorities for the rest of his days, would he be arrested and brought to trial if they discovered his secret one day? Would he end up a social outcast, a raving psychotic, a mental wreck?

  On the sixth day, his weekly day off, several things happened that made it a special day in the full sense of the word. As he hung around news booths, he repeatedly caught images of a wrecked train, with a voice talking about this being the biggest catastrophe to hit the CityNaut network in many years, with a lot of victims and seriously injured people, huge material damage and an interruption of the regular CityNaut services in that area for at least a few days. Most people didn’t seem impressed much. They probably thought this was another commercial on heavy rotation, but after a while it dawned on them this was a news item and a terrible accident had indeed happened.

  Roy had been quicker to grasp the gravity of the situation, as he had been following newscasts with more interest than most people, and with a mind freed of the influence of uppers, emotional stimulants or other such products used to generate a revved-up, smile-driven mental stance. Lucidity, however, was not necessarily a typical effect of these products.

  Later that day, as he was watching another holo newscast in a mall close to his apartment, his heart missed a few beats as he saw the woman that had been on his mind for days now. Was she looking for him? Had she been unable to get in touch with him by phone and was she on her way to visit him? He immediately went after her, and noticed a few things that didn’t seem right.

  She was different. For instance, she had a normal hairdo, one that wasn’t in constant evolution. And she wore a cheap recyc T-shirt, sporting a garish Microsoft Moviedrome ad, a far cry from the fancy dress she had worn on previous occasions. Sadly, this cheap stuff covered the nipple ornaments, supposing those were still present at all.

  He tried to call her name, and discovered how extremely frustrating it was that he still hadn’t found out what her name was. So all he could do was run after her and try to catch her attention. When he was finally close to her, he grabbed her arm, forced her to stop and look at him, and said, “Hi, do you remember me?”

  “Hi,” she said. “Do I know you? Sorry, pal, but I’m in a hurry.” She shot him a smile, the kind of empty smile only emoboosters could produce, and turned around, ready to continue on her way.

  “Wait,” he said, “please wait. We need to talk.”

  She shot him a blank stare, although the smile didn’t disappear. “I don’t think I know you. Maybe you mistake me for another person. But never mind all that, why don’t you come along?”

  “Where are you going to?”

  “To church. Follow me.”

  That’s it, he thought. She doesn’t remember me, she no longer sports all her fancy stuff and she’s going to church. Either she’s desperately hiding the fact that she’s an Unholy Grail activist, or the authorities saw through her disguise, caught her and “cured” her of all undesirable traits, setting her free again afterward in a world she was perfectly adapted to. But if her current appearance and attitude were only a cunning strategy to mislead the enemy, why did she pretend not to know him anymore? Was she implying it was too dangerous to re-establish contact? Had the war they fought against the consumerist utopia reached a decisive phase? And why was she going to church, when it was her goal to undermine the church’s grand ambitions? Maybe she was simply luring him along, maybe all would become clear if he followed her and didn’t ask any questions?

  He decided to follow her, and no further word was exchanged as they wound their way to the church near the city’s main CityNaut terminal. A service was apparently already underway, and the woman quietly took one of the few remaining empty seats. Roy followed her example after a moment’s hesitation, choosing a seat from where he could observe the woman.

  He had no idea religious services drew crowds this big. Was this due to the effect the woman had described to him, or were there other factors involved in this evolution? Frankly, he had never given the matter much thought, but the fact that this very same woman was sitting there, a few rows in front of him, seemed to indicate the true nature of things.

  He barely paid attention to the ceremony that was presented to the crowd, although the tastefully choreographed holographic projections highlighting the sermon were very well done indeed. His thoughts kept going back to the woman, the role she was playing and the role he was supposed to play in the future. Would he ever find out, or was he on his own now? Had she invited him to follow her to church for no other reason than that was the normal thing to do, or was there a hidden agenda somewhere?

  At one point the woman turned her head, vaguely looked in his direction, then shifted her attention back to the sermon. Was this a signal? Was this her way to tell him this was a crucial moment, was he supposed to catch a clue now? He looked around him, listened to what was being said: a plea for empathy, for compassion with those who were in need, for solidarity and sacrifice in favor of those stricken by fate. A reference was made to the CityNaut tragedy that had happened, a call was made to donate money for the victims, to give blood and convince others to go to blood drives. The sermon changed topics, and Roy got lost in his thoughts.

  The CityNaut accident, money for charities, blood drives. Was there a clue here? Or had she simply looked around for no special reason? Maybe he was reading too much into all this, maybe she didn’t even know where he had taken a seat, as he had entered the church after her, maybe he was looking for signals and clues where none were intended.

  Wait a minute. Blood drives? Of course, big supplies of blood were required to help the huge number of victims. Let’s just suppose, Roy thought, that this woman was indeed “cured” of her revolutionary ideas and the whole Unholy Grail movement had been wiped out, but that there was still a final vestige of those ideas smoldering within her mind, just enough to drag him along to a place where his attention would be drawn to the benefits of blood drives.

  Especially if this was about his blood, possibly the only place left where some undetected antidotes were still alive and kicking. And by giving blood, these antidotes would be transferred to other people, maybe a fair number of people, who would become new supporters, even if unwittingly, of Unholy Grail’s fight. If he went to enough blood drives, and the new recruits did likewise, his efforts might make a difference. The woman had told him these nano-agents were self-regulating and self-replicating. They wo
uld do their job, in body after body that he “contaminated”. Would the blood that was collected be checked? Probably it would be checked for the usual risks, but maybe not for the nano-agents that were maybe already considered history anyway. It was a chance he would have to take.

  As he left the church after the service was over, he tried to find the woman, but she was nowhere to be seen. Had she wandered off, not even knowing he had been there, totally unaware of his presence or its meaning for Unholy Grail, or had she consciously severed the link he represented with what remained of Unholy Grail, if there were any members left at all, in an effort to increase the chances of his action plan?

  Had this entire episode, from the incident in the Lunch Mob to the present moment, perhaps been a carefully planned set-up, too vast for him to grasp? Was he perhaps but a cog in a gigantic machine, a tiny pawn unable to fathom his place and role on the chessboard?

  In any case, he understood the battlefield had now been reduced to his bloodstream, and he would act with that idea in mind. So he would give blood, whether this was the woman’s intention or not, because that was the only option open to him now. I may be the only activist of Unholy Grail left, he thought, but I’ll inject new blood into the movement, to use an extremely appropriate phrase. I’ll give as much blood as I can the following days.

  Unholy Grail isn’t dead. As a matter of fact, it’s about to be revived. And as this second attack comes from an unexpected front, a source mistakenly believed to be dried up already, it might well take the enemy by surprise.

  Unholy Grail was back. After all, it was in his blood.

  END

 

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