The behemoth did not notice his weight. He brushed a few scraps of paper from the featureless black glass between the handlebars; his touch caused the control elements to light up. A thumbprint brought it online and the entire machine vibrated as the hydraulics kicked in. With a grunt, he heaved the bike off its kickstand and got it rolling. Electric motors in both wheel cores pulled solid strips of rubber around, propelling the machine forward.
Driving with one hand, he fished out his NetMini. The iridescent blue holographic panel faltered and dipped in the passing air as bits of debris and ash flew through it. The number on his cred statement brought a smile―5003.
To the average citizen, it was a decent bit of cash―most of one month’s rent. It would not take Joey out of the slum, but it would put something hot in his gut. Dodging dead car hulks, fallen lampposts, trash, and the occasional sleeping junkie―he crawled his way forward until the moldering ruin of the grey zone gave way to an ocean of glowing advertising bots, bright street lamps and other people.
A lean on the accelerator brought the machine up to around eighty miles per hour, though the speed was a guess. The speedometer had quit months ago and he hadn’t bothered to replace it. Dodging several cars moving slower than he wanted to go, he made his way two miles into civilization to his favorite restaurant, the Fu Sheng House.
he tiny parking lot had six perpetually occupied spaces, even when the place was empty. The aftereffect of hours-old rain glistened on decaying grey bricks in the feeble vibrating glow of his headlamp. He parked the bike in a narrow gap between the trash compactor and the wall. Even the putrescent odor leaking from the dumpster could not tarnish his appetite. His boots splashed through puddles, shattering the reflections of a dozen glowing signs from the street.
Upon the front of the building, a seven-foot tall hologram of Chinese characters greeted him at the door. Bright enough to sear their image into any retina that looked directly at them, they threw off so much light it was impossible to tell if the two nearest streetlamps even worked.
He ducked through double doors covered in cracking bright red paint with gold inlay, into the wonderful fragrance of his dreams. The dark interior wrapped guests with a private coziness. A long gold dragon hung at the back of a room lined with red and gold wallpaper. The intensity of the sign out front permeated through heavy red curtains, bathing everything in burgundy and orange and the sense of an autumnal dream.
A woman behind a tiny counter covered in mints, lotto machines, and an army of tiny ceramic cats greeted him with a smile and said something in Chinese. Joey tipped his hat at her, offered a mute nod, and continued into the dining hall without waiting. She followed, still talking, as he ducked the arm of a huge painted-gold Buddha perched atop a wall of false stone. Once it had been a mechanical waterfall, broken long before he set foot here. As he seated himself, she waved her arms, muttered, and returned to the counter.
Joey removed his hat and set it on the table before leaning back and spreading his arms over the bench seat. The maroon cushions bore the well-worn ass marks of many a patron, threadbare to pale grey fabric in several spots.
Old man Lao appeared like a phantom and placed an electric kettle on the table next to a small porcelain cup. His cologne soon overpowered the fragrance of the tea. Frail, Lao was bald save for a wispy white moustache that hung down to his chest. His neat white shirt hid beneath a black vest, itself covered by an apron. A white towel dangled from the pocket of his charcoal hued trousers, stained with a kaleidoscope of sauces. Joey had grown used to his strong accent, respecting him for learning the language rather than just using a chip.
“Good evening, Mistah Dillon. You must have found work if you here. I hope everything well for you.” With a smile, Lao’s eyes collapsed into thin lines, swallowed by the wrinkles on his face.
Pouring some of the tea, Joey grinned. “Could be worse, could be better.”
“Good to hear, good to hear…” Lao gave an emphatic nod before his eyes widened with anticipation. “What you having tonight?”
“The usual, and please tell the cook I don’t want it gaijin style.”
“Gaijin Japanese, we are Chinese.” Lao held up a finger to make his point, leaning in as he raised his voice in mock offense. “General’s chicken. You want kill white man hot?” Thin lips curled and uncurled around yellow teeth as if he could not decide if he wanted to smile or laugh aloud.
Joey contemplated taking a chance, but decided to play it safe. “I’ll settle for wounded, not killed.”
Lao gave a quick nod and flew off towards the kitchen, hurling Mandarin at a closed door. A voice from behind answered―their back and forth went for a few lines before Lao took up his typical position behind the restaurant’s bar.
Joey had been coming to this little restaurant built into the bottom corner of a residential building for months. The apartments here, tiny and jammed together, offered housing to the lowest end of middle class. He briefly considered getting one, but his current squat was about triple the size. In addition, if anything from cyberspace came back to haunt him in reality, he did not want the Fu Sheng House to get caught up in the shitstorm.
A gold snake on the wall brought his mind back to Cleopatra.
Her pestering pranks had become so incessant that for the past two weeks, he expected to start seeing little cartoon snakes come out of nowhere in the real world. Not since his sister had gone all sanctimonious on him had Joey had such an urge to inflict pain on a woman. He wanted to do something that would make her never want to log into the GlobeNet again, but had yet to even figure out her identity.
Everywhere he went, his eyes darted around, searching for a strange woman following him. Maybe she worked for some company that he had hacked? No, that made little sense. What she did was more irritating and annoying than dangerous; the pranks had a strange sense of humor that defied his attempts to ascribe motive. It could be his friend Kenny’s ex-wife, a bit of a psycho, especially since the divorce. Naah, she has issues speaking and walking at the same time now. Hitting the GlobeNet is right out. Joey shook his head as he thought about that whole mess. He found some humor in the irony of Kenny’s wife having the same name as his sister―they had the common bond of a Kathy as a pain in the ass.
Lao returned and placed four steaming dumplings in front of him. These were the primary reason that Joey came here. In all of West City, perhaps six or seven places still hand made their food and the Fu Sheng House was one of them. The burst of flavor filled his senses and wiped away all thoughts of Cleopatra, Alex, or even his immediate surroundings. Despite his best effort to savor them, the fourth one vanished before Lao made it back to his post at the bar.
The General Tso’s would be a few minutes; Joey figured he might as well see what Alex wanted and called him. The direct manner with which he mentioned a new job was rather unlike him, and piqued Joey’s interest. Alex’s sophisticated smirk hovered in its six-inch holographic glory, changed somewhat purple by the peach-hued glow that permeated the room.
“Did you have a change of heart?” Alex looked about ready for his usual games.
“Since when does “I need to think” translate to “no”? Must be some of that French bullshit you keep telling me about.”
Alex frowned. “Your attempt at humor falls woefully short of the mark.”
“Kind of like your attempt at passing as straight?” The corner of Joey’s mouth curled into a wry grin.
“Why…” Alex turned red. “Do you insist on associating the affect of someone of superior lineage with homosexuality?”
“Because I find it amusing to watch your face change color.” Joey slathered duck sauce on a strip of fried wonton, speaking through crunches. “And you do seem a little fancy.”
Alex’s eyes flared.
“As much as I love tormenting you, my food is about to come out and when it does, I am going to hang up. So what’s this job?”
Alex failed to hide simmering rage. “You have the fortunate lu
ck of being in the right place at the right time. Your unique combination of desperation and skill is something that I need. A client is offering fifty thousand credits for a piece of data hidden in the secure information vault at the Imperial Hotel.”
He chewed in Alex’s ear. “Combination of what?”
“Among the electronic infiltrators at my disposal of a given degree of competency, you are willing to… desperate to… accept this level of payment for a job like this.”
Joey was an adrenaline junkie; that was no secret. Even with such a low payoff, he would be loath to pass up a dodgy run like this. Most capable of pulling off an intrusion on the Imperial Hotel’s network would ask for double that amount just to be told the job existed. Joey’s financial situation did not hurt either.
“I’m listening.” Joey’s tone lost its playfulness.
“My client has his heart set on a particular file that is being stored at the hotel. I do not know what guest owns the data, or what’s in it, nor do I really care. We do know that it will only exist for two to three days at most; you will need to move with haste. I would prefer tomorrow if you can find time in your busy schedule of sitting around in your underwear flicking roaches from your scavenged food.”
Joey filed that one away for later. There would be retribution for that comment soon enough, but now he drifted in the anticipatory elation of fifty thousand credits. “Send the data tag so I know what I’m looking for. I’ll take it.”
Alex’s terminal chirped. “There. The particulars are on their way to you now. Call me when you have the file.”
The holographic head shimmered as the food arrived. Joey grimaced at the sight of Alex’s head attached to Lao’s body and killed the connection.
“Here we are Mistah Dillon, General Chicken, extra spicy.” He bowed with a polite nod as he slid the plate onto the table.
Strips of white meat with a light breading spread with artistic flair, fanned out amidst an arrangement of vegetables and hot peppers, all of it basted in a glistening dark orange sauce. They used vat-grown chicken, not reconstructed OmniSoy. The spicy steam watered his eyes in seconds; the cook had hit the perfect spice point.
By the time he finished, sweat and a euphoric smile were spread over his face. Eating such a large meal after a week of almost starving hurt, but it was worth it.
“Anything else today?” asked Lao, having sidled up to the table unnoticed.
In most cases that would have made Joey jump, but he was too full for sudden motion. Instead, he turned with an idiotic grin of total sublime contentment at the elderly proprietor.
“That was… awesome. I’m done.”
With a nod, Lao cleared the dishes and left a small electronic device behind that displayed a receipt for the meal upon its touchscreen surface. Joey pulled out his NetMini and waved it past the device to pay the tab, 57 credits well spent.
He walked out into the night, not that he noticed. Between the oppressive radiance of the Fu Sheng sign and the ant army of advert bots overhead, the city never got dark; it just cycled through various degrees of dim.
Much to Joey’s surprise, the bike turned on without protest. He did his best not to look like he struggled with a weight beyond his strength as he eased it out of the tiny space in which he had left it. Enjoying the obstruction-free roads, he cruised at a pedestrian-blurring pace until he found himself jamming on the brakes as a traffic signal switched without warning.
He glared at the traffic panel―the damn things acted as if they sensed the approach of a vehicle and went red to spite them, even when nothing came on the other side. His paranoid side told him that the government programmed them to be a pain in the ass. Somewhere, a bored cop made it turn red just to see if he’d run it. He let his head roll around on his neck to stretch, but froze at the sight to his left.
A shop on the corner had an arrangement of holo-bars in the window. Metal strips, oval in cross section and about as big around as a woman’s arm. They created holographic panels that ranged in size from as small as 24 inches to over 150 if your living space allowed for it. Even with the store closed, a number of them remained on, tuned to the NewsNet. The middle-aged blonde-haired woman on the screen, droning on about the tragic disappearance of an up and coming new reporter, did not catch his eye. The nondescript older man walking past her in the background did. He gazed around as if a tourist here for the first time, overwhelmed by the sights. Struggling, he fought his way upstream through the onrush of city dwellers like an overly polite country soul out of his element.
Dad? What the fuck?
Joey’s fingers grew cold as his brain soaked up the surreal vision. His father died a little more than a year ago on Mars, not Earth. Now he was in the background of a live, street level news feed broadcast from about forty miles north of where Joey sat stopped at an impertinent traffic light. As far as he knew, the old man had never been on Earth at all. Supernatural eeriness faded at the realization Cleopatra was likely hacking the video stream and dicking with him. He fumed, gripping the handlebars of his bike and swearing an oath to inflict some kind of lingering pain, mental or physical, on her. Dredging up the image of his father went below the belt, and surpassed a simple prank.
Joey’s weight pressed into the seat as he accelerated hard, ignoring traffic laws for the twenty minutes it took him to get back home. An unusual number of gangers loitered across the street from his apartment, their numbers causing him to turn toward them. He stopped in front of an emaciated man lost in a blue coat two sizes too large. His knee-length fuchsia hair danced in the wind of Joey’s arrival.
“Hey Pinky… What’s up with the convention?” Joey sat back on the bike.
Eyes, dilated and bloodshot, snapped toward him. The pungent aroma of Flowerbasket permeated everything about Pinky. “Duuuuuuuuude.”
Joey waited. Someone on that chem moved at about a quarter of the mental speed of a sober individual.
His hand lifted and pointed. “There’s a giant squid down in Sector 12… eatin’ the buildings.” Pinky fidgeted. “‘cep the wood ones. It don’t eat wood.”
Joey couldn’t help but laugh. “Wood buildings?”
“No… Wait.” Pinky rubbed his head. “Stupid… It was a squid… It ate too much CyberBurger and now it’s a fuckin’ vampire werewolf with laser eyes.” He showed off a broken piece of wood he had stashed in his belt. “Got this… just in case.”
“A vampire werewolf?” Joey sighed at the clouds. “There’s no C-Burgers in Sector 12, and shouldn’t you use a silver stake for a vampiric werewolf?”
“Oh shit.” Pinky gaped in horror at the scrap wood in his hand. “Whoa, I woulda died. Thanks, man.”
A mass of blue spiked hair inserted himself into the conversation. His shiny lime colored coat failed to hide the pair of submachine guns hung on his belt. A strip of blue with metallic flecks crossed his face over both eyes, though Joey could not tell if it was paint or a subderm job.
“Yo Dillon.” The guy raised a hand. “Something’s out there. Bunch of SRaz got themselves dead. One got ripped in half.” The guy shifted and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Somethin’ done fucked them dudes up bad.”
“Sasquatch!” Pinky blurted out in a triumphant tone as if he had just unlocked the deepest mystery of the universe. “Vampiric sasquatch maybe…” He hid the stake behind his back. “That would kill Steel Razors.”
“Right…” Joey shook his head. “I still got a shitload of tequila if you guys feel like helping me get rid of it.”
“Pff.” Pinky made a dismissive wave about three feet to the left of Joey. “I don’t drink, man, it rots your brains.” He wobbled in an apparent attempt to avoid some hallucinatory object.
“Nice.” The blue hair nodded to Joey, swaying like an anemone. “I’ll check that out.”
Joey turned the bike and crossed the street, guiding it down the ramp into its usual resting place. He thumbed through his contacts, tagging Masaru and Katya, and opened a call.
Masaru’s face appeared first, a Japanese man in his early twenties. His stark white hair was down to his collar and had a green highlight over his right temple. A friend he made quite by accident a few months ago, his dark brown eyes radiated a “this better be worth it” glance. Masaru Kurotai was the heir to the Kurotai Empire, arguably a contender for the most prominent electronics company in the world.
Katya, on the other hand, was an enigma. Of Russian descent and indeterminate age, she had the body of a fashion model wrapped around a wicked temper. Her hologram appeared; a smear of jet-black hair framed a porcelain face and ruby red lips. Ever since she paid him to sneak a false identity into the UCF census files, he battled the itch to dig into a past she refused to discuss. Something about her reminded him of the e-thrashing he’d received on Mars. The specter of government intrigue had thus far stalled his curiosity. That, and the expectation any thrashing from Katya would be of a far more physical nature.
With them both online, Joey smiled.
“Just got off the vid with Alex. You two feel like getting shot at with me?”
risp air traced across her naked body from the vent above. A lily-white outline of humanity, stark against the black satin bedclothes, stretched into her field of view. A year ago, the thought of going out in public in a skimpy bathing suit would have crippled Nina with embarrassment. Now, she sprawled on the bed without regard to what a passing hovercar may see. This was something altogether different from what her mother had brought into the world.
Detecting the orientation of her head pointing at it, the small chrome bar on the nightstand bathed the room in lime holographic radiance. The numbers announced the time as 4:40 AM. With a sigh, she rolled onto her back, eyes tracking panels of light in their silent ballet across the ceiling. Her mind conjured up images of a herd of square zebra at a run, superimposing them over the soundless rectangles that slid over each other through the dark.
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