Cyberpunk Trashcan
Copyright © 2016 by Randall P. Fitzgerald.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information contact;
www.randallfitzgerald.net
Cover design by Randall P. Fitzgerald
Cover art by Josan Gonzalez
ISBN: 153686336X
ASIN:
First Edition: August 2016
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To everyone who’s ever done the electric slide.
Chapter
ONE
So it was Thursday and as much as I fucking hate it, I was out in the world. Is there anything more bullshit than Thursday? Like, as a day, I mean. Wednesday gets a lot of shade, but being the middle of the week is something at least. I mean it should be something anyway. Whatever, it was Thursday and I was at this pizza place. I didn’t want to be, I just am. VR gear was busted, hoverbus— they actually call it the fucking hoverbus— smelled like piss and now I was at some place where the waiter smiles too much. I thought about saying something about it, but where do you start with that? People are supposed to like smiling but it’s just off-putting in a situation where all I wanted was a slice of pizza while I waited for the shop to open.
The girl who ran the place I was going was nice enough. Real, smart as hell... well, book smart. Tech smart. She’d probably get murdered if she ended up anywhere without plugs or wireless. She wouldn’t smile at me. Or maybe she would. But at least she fucking knows me. Not like this pizza asshole. Who’s it even for? The smiling. Stupid people? Is it supposed to make him less threatening? More inviting? It’s maybe one of the most basic transactions of a given day for any human being and now I’ve got to act like I care. They tried to replace the whole thing with robots, but then the robots smiled weird or something so I guess parents complained. A few places still used robots. The new kind that smile right. Expensive, though. Not this place. That’s a genuine “happy to be here” sort of retail worker. That’s creepier than the robots.
The slice came. I stared at it more than I should have, hoping the waiter’d go away. The guy smiled at me— I could feel it burning the side of my face like a hot lamp— and asked if I needed anything. Or probably he did. I heard that end-of-the-sentence tone raise. I really, really wanted to say no without looking at him but I did it anyway. Some sick reflex left over from before I turned into a real pile of shit. I raised my eyebrows and winced.
“Nah, man… that’s… I’m good.”
He said that was great. Well, he said “great.” But it’s not. He knows it’s not. We’re just lying to each other. I don’t know why. Said to let him know if I need anything. One of those things that really could have gone unsaid. I ignored it. I felt like I could get away with that one. He can’t make me say okay and if I ignore the line and stare at the pizza slice he’ll have no follow up. It’d take one real autistic weirdo to force me to confirm that I’ve heard him offer to do his job. Or a sadist, maybe.
I wanted to just eat the slice real casual. Take my time, sort of dab at it with some napkins. I like grease as much as the next guy but there’s a limit. Plus, then I can feel like I’m not exactly a disgusting grease-drinking slobfuck. It’s the little stuff, right? The little victories. Well, that plan was out. He kept looking over. The place wasn’t that full so fair enough, but what did he expect to happen? Like I might get four bites in, realize I am in desperate need of companionship and beckon him over? Maybe he was disgusted I didn’t dab the grease. Well, I was going to dab the grease you son of a bitch! I was going to do like four napkins worth of dabs but you kept just… GAH!
So I ate the slice faster than I wanted, only drank half my drink, and I left. It’s a hard argument to make that the sidewalk is better than a pizza hole for people who don’t want to talk to anyone, but I made due. Large headphones are a good trick. And being unkempt helps. I’m pretty sure the shirt I was wearing was a few weeks past needing a wash as well.
The walk to Marine’s shop was pretty short. I’d probably have to stand out front for a bit because of pizza boy but the weather wasn’t too cold yet. Streets were crowded for a couple of blocks, but it fell off on the backstreet where the shop was. Almost an alleyway, really. The sort of place you’d go to get mugged or knock on an unassuming back door to get let into some kind of sex club or crime thing. I guess that wasn’t entirely far off of what I was doing.
So anyway, I knocked. Of course, she wasn’t down yet. Marine worked nights. No posted hours. Nothing before 1pm, she told me. I liked to aim for three just to be on the safe side. It was barely two now, so there was a real chance I was going to be standing in an alley for an hour. I’d text her, but that wasn’t a thing she did. Or maybe she did, but not with me. She lived above the shop, but there were no windows to throw tiny rocks at. There were also no tiny rocks, but there was probably a fish store… is that what you call it? Fish… fish store? Aquatic pet retailer? I don’t know. There was probably a fish store somewhere nearby and I could buy a bag of those little rocks for fish and huck some of those up. You know, if there was a window.
A couple of delivery robots rolled by. Trashcans on wheels, covered with screens. One of them tried playing an ad at me, but they never slow down unless something’s blocking them so I didn’t hear much of it. That’s the nice thing and the problem all at once. The robots tend to just fuck off, they’ve got deadlines. But they don’t respond to awkward silence as predictably if you happen to end up awkwardly stuck around one. That said, I heard that if you nudge it with your foot— which may have been code for kick it— that it’d shut up. Honestly, I’m too much of a pussy to try. Thing’d take like twenty pictures of me and I’d owe somebody a bunch of money for molesting robots or something. Not really worth testing shits you read online.
I heard crap getting moved around in the shop so I knocked again. She seriously not going to open the door?
“Hey, Marine. Stop being a slut and open the door.”
Nothing. Slut usually got her motivated to come complain. Maybe she was in a bad mood. Whatever, I had nothing better to do so I went back to waiting. The rustling stopped after a few minutes so it was back to leaning pointlessly against the wall. Probably… twenty minutes later or so, I heard the locks running down on the other side of the door so I turned around to wait for the door to open up.
The top half of the door cracked open.
“You finally remember I knocked?”
“Huh?” She sounded groggy. “The fuck is you talking about? I saw you on the cameras.”
She leaned over and looked down the alleyway in both directions. It was a pretty half-hearted check. She was in a loose shirt that’d had the neck cut off it. Now, and I can’t stress this enough, I tried to look at her nipples. I didn’t see them, but I tried. Too hard. She saw me, and scoffed. The top of the split door shut and then the whole thing opened.
“I’m never going to fuck you.”
She was wearing brown… I don’t know… yoga pants? But they weren’t the tight kind. Upscale sweat pants without elastic on the ankles? I don’t fucking know what girls call pants. Just pants, maybe. She turned and headed in so I followed her.
“Yeah, I wasn’t really worried about it.”
“Bullshit. You want this whole deal. Pervert.”
I didn’t say anything. Felt like I could have carried on with the banter but the options laid out didn’t really leave me in a good position conversationally speaking.
Sure, I’d love to lay a jizz in just about anything willing but sex just seemed like so much effort lately. It’s not like in porn. If you don’t want to be called an asshole, you either have to get the girl off or date a chick who had a bad series of high school boyfriends and doesn’t understand what orgasms are. Really, I just wanted to see her nipples. She was some kind of half Asian, I think, and I wanted to know if they were brown or not. This shirt seemed like my best bet on getting a look. She was pretty short. Still, it wasn’t a thin shirt so I couldn’t rule out brown just based on the light getting through.
She moved behind her little counter and sat down. The shop was the same mess it always was. Parts, half-finished projects on work tables, the skeletons of robots of two dozen different makes and models.
“So what were you doing in here before you finally decided to open up?”
“What are you talking about? I opened the door as soon as I got down.”
“Guess it was thieves then.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but Marine went pale. Paler, I guess. She stood up and looked around the shop.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Are you fucking sure, I said?!”
She didn’t wait for an answer out of me, it was straight to the racks behind the counter, sliding things over. She got more frantic as she poured over the contents of each shelf in turn.
“Oh no, no… come on.”
She was tearing things off shelves now. Nothing that hit the floor seemed to give her any satisfaction. She grabbed her head, groaning. Marine turned and walked to me. She grabbed my bag and unzipped it.
“What did you hear?”
“Nothing in there but my busted VR rig.”
She threw my bag on the ground. Really wanted to say something about it, but she seemed pretty upset and when she calmed down she’d probably feel bad anyway.
“What. Did. You. Hear?” It wasn’t quite screaming, but it was certainly louder than I’d have preferred to be spoken to.
The pizza guy never treated me like this. Maybe I’d misjudged him.
“Nothing specific. Just rustling. Blame your giant door. Hard to eavesdrop through that thing.”
Her shoulders dropped and she looked around the shop. There was an expression slowly working its way on to her face, like a kid realizing they can’t fix that vase before mom gets home. She sort of dragged her feet back over to the chair behind the counter and sat down.
“So, this is bad?”
She did not look at me in a kind way after asking.
“Don’t you have cameras in this place?”
I’d forgive her for forgetting. She was probably still pretty tired. She thought a minute after I said it then stood up.
“Come on.”
She went up the stairs behind the counter. My hands felt greasy. I should have dabbed the pizza. I take it back. Fuck the pizza guy.
Chapter
TWO
I did a sort of twee little jog to catch up before Marine got too far up the stairs. I felt that little sense of weird pride when I dropped my bag behind the counter. There’s a sort of singular joy in getting to go into staff only places when you’re not staff. Sort of like being the President’s kid or something. That unearned status that immediately proves we’re all insensitive pricks and casual tyrants just like every Saudi oil prince, we just lack the means to justify the attitude.
It was maybe when I hit the first stair that I realized I’d never been up into her apartment before. I’d been in the workshop in the back a few times, but that was about it. That led me to a thought. Well, a different thought than whether her place was going to be covered with cutesy girl shit. I don’t know if I could respect her if it was. Or maybe I’d respect her more. These are complex emotions we’re dealing with. Maybe she was secretly a metal head. There was also the very real possibility that there was a shrine to me inside, completely with pictures on every flat surface. My smiling face, unaware I was being photographed as I went about my day.
I said it out loud. “We’re climbing stairs but you didn’t look in the workshop.”
She paused on the stairs. Then she sighed. Pretty sure she said a swear word. Marine turned and stared at me for maybe three seconds before throwing her hands up.
“Well? Turn around.”
I’m not sure if I actually gave a longing look to the door behind her, but I feel like I did. Maybe I did. Anyway, I didn’t want her to actually get to the part where she called me stupid since I was still hoping to get her to fix my shit so I turned and headed down.
I waited at the bottom, figuring going into the workshop first wasn’t going to help much. Plus there’s that weird not-my-house feeling about the whole thing. Where you’re not even sure peeing is cool without asking. Not the first time anyway.
Marine got down and pushed through the full-length split curtain that acted as a door. I followed her through. To put it plainly the place was trashed. Marine was by no measure a neat person, but this was above and beyond. The weird part is, nothing was broken or busted. Just… moved and opened. Every drawer was opened and left that way. There were a few shelves full of equipment that had been slid out of place, or at least the fading on the paint seemed to make it look like they were.
“No.”
She ran over to a pair of workbenches along the far wall. Each had a pair of robotic helper hands attached that had been pushed up and away. It was weirdly neat. Maybe systematic was the right word.
“Somebody move those shelves?”
Marine looked away from the desk when I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, somebody moved them.”
Somebody wasn’t really seeming like the right word there. I guess I’m to blame for saying it first. The shelves were covered in parts. Heavy parts. Big, fuck off metal chunks of… robot… stuff. I helped her load up an industrial work torso one time. Onto a bottom shelf. Took us three hours and I sweated a lot and looked entirely uncool but I helped her so she better not have made any sort of mental judgments about any of the sounds I made, I’m serious. There’s war time decorum to be considered in a situation like that. Or… I don’t know. Some strained metaphor. Biting the hand that feeds, maybe? That seems overreaching. Don’t know why, but right at that moment I wondered what slapping a baby feels like. They don’t have bones right? Well, they have soft bones. But it’s got to feel weird. It’s one of those things that not many people can possibly know. Who’d even get away with it? Doctors, maybe. But that’s medical procedure ass slapping. There’s no real leverage going on there. No passion.
I was trying to work out if the weight of a baby’s head being slapped would snap its neck or not when Marine walked by me. She was going fast and I figured maybe I should turn around and follow her.
“Not there?”
She didn’t say anything but I feel like she chuffed like bulls do when they’re about to charge something. I took it as a no.
“Right, so cameras upstairs then?”
Well, certainly the silence couldn’t get any more awkward. Maybe now was a good time to ask about her nipples. That’s a joke. Don’t worry. That was just for you guys. I’m not going to ask her about those. Seeing is believing, right? And I need to believe.
So we got to the door upstairs and she opened it and went in. When she didn’t slam it behind her, I assumed it was as good an invitation as I was going to get. The apartment turned out to be more like a square with a bathroom in the corner. There was a proper room, not just a toilet in the corner. But that was it. Kitchen was against the far wall, such as it was.
Marine was at her computer as I started taking in the scenery. Dirty clothes pile. Mattress straight on the floor. There was a fitted sheet on it though, so points for that. No dishes in the sink, though. That felt like a small betrayal. Who was she trying to impress with her fitted sheets and her clean
dishes? No posters either. Except on the wall beside her computer. And even those weren’t posters. It was hard to tell at a distance, looked like mazes or maybe the world’s least exciting museum exhibit ad, but they were electrical diagrams.
“No stuffed animals?”
“Eat shit.”
Fair enough. Not like I can judge. Only stuff I had on my walls was to keep people from realizing how I lived. Well, to keep delivery guys from realizing how I lived. I doubt it worked but the facade provided a crucial psychological shell that allowed me to continue my unconvincing masquerade as a functioning adult.
Marine was clicking around in footage of the four cameras watching the workshop. I didn’t really have anywhere to look so I figured the best thing to do would be to kind of stare at her. Seemed good enough. I was sort of hoping it would annoy her and she’d tell me to stop but she was too focused on the footage.
She leaned in toward the screen and I noticed that she was rolling back and forth across maybe two seconds of video.
“Is… I don’t see anything?”
It was a question. Shut up.
“I don’t either.”
“Marine you’re sort of prompting me to start asking what might appear to be silly questions. Okay?”
“Something moves. But there’s nothing in the image.”
“Don’t cameras usually have those, uhh… infrared?”
She leaned back in her chair. “They do. Mine do, I mean. They’re automatic, though. Only on when it’s dark.”
“So, what do we do? Cops?”
Now, I’m a patient guy, I like to think. One time I waited for twenty minutes to have my order taken at an empty Thai place. Seriously. Nobody in the restaurant the whole time. Chick never came out of the back. This is the robot thing again. Robots would come out of the back, I bet. She didn’t. Nobody came in. No phone calls. But you hit that point where it’s like, okay, I’m basically just here out of spite now. And by the time she came out, of course I’d literally run every possible way the order could go. Somehow, some-stupid-fucking-how, you always just assume that they’re a human, they’ll apologize, right? Even the fake one. Even the cursory “Hey! Sorry for the wait! I’m not going to explain why I was in the back for twenty minutes. Maybe there’s semen in my underwear, WHO KNOWS?! But I’d love to take your order.” You never get that. It’s like they farted while you leaned over pulling something out of your jacket and the fart was right on the side of your head but you just sit up real fast and don’t laugh or even address it. You get that. The “nothing is weird about this” thing. Still, in a case like this, I want to feel like I’m part of the conversation so I asked again.
Cyberpunk Trashcan Page 1