Cyberpunk Trashcan

by Randall P. Fitzgerald

  As I passed a trashcan, Cincy spoke up. “No food in the cars.”

  “Are you fucking around here, I just bought—”

  “No. Food.” She raised her eyebrows very bitchily.

  I looked at Marine. “You know I’m not even getting paid for this.” I threw the pastry in the trash against my wishes and made for the car.

  “You know, you were way cooler when you were naked, Cincy.”

  I got in in a huff and crossed my arms until Marine finished talking to the crazy prostitute executive assistant. She got in the car beside me and I gave a harrumph and looked the other way.

  “I’ll buy you dinner, okay?”

  “Just dinner?”

  “And desert.”

  I nodded and unfolded my arms. “Deal. So where’re we going?”

  “A warehouse.”

  Well, if I had a deathly allergy to specific details, she was definitely looking out for me. I decided it didn’t matter in the end.

  Our trip to the police station was already on the news streams. A dozen local streamers getting picked up by the main feeds, hoping to turn that into private subscriptions. The cameras showed an absolute swarm of people badgering every policeman they could get close to for answers. It was a smooth ride, comfortable but without pastry. Marine had gone quiet and her face was back to that look of concern it shifted to any time her mind had a break.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  She looked over at me, a soft, sad smile on her lips. “Nah. Not yet. Sorry.” She spun her finger around, keeping it where only I could see. “Not for them.”

  It took me a moment to realize those sentences were separated by the motion for a slightly deeper reason. She could have meant she didn’t want the potential people watching to know, but I thought that didn’t quite capture it. Maybe I was reading too deep but she’d acted like I’d never seen her act all day. It was an act that took a lot out of her. As much as she kept herself on their level, she didn’t feel comfortable. Or maybe she did and I was an idiot.

  We pulled up in front of a warehouse just outside the district Marine and I lived in. It was part of an old truck lot that’d never been in a nice enough part of the city to be bought up, so it stayed industrial warehousing. There were maybe twenty buildings spread across the yard, thin metal walls and ranging from the size of airplane hangars to small shops. We’d landed in front of one that was, well, warehouse size. A storage warehouse. The door popped open and we stepped out.

  I very nearly shit myself seeing the guy who was standing there waiting for us. He wore an open cotton button-up shirt and dirty jeans. He was maybe in his mid-forties and covered with tattoos. I mean covered. No hair, no eyebrows, nothing. His arms were both prosthetics, no skin on them and he had a clear flexible polymer window over his sternum. I could see his lungs and heart working beneath it and I felt deeply uncomfortable. He looked at me with untrusting eyes until Marine stepped out of the other side of the car.

  He threw his hands up. “Marine! Salutations!”

  Salutations? Well, okay.

  “Absolutely wonderful to have you come for a visit. It has simply been too long!”

  The way he talked, a working-class sort of accent, sounded just ridiculous coupled with the over-polite speech.

  He pulled her hand up and kissed the back of it when she came around to our side of the car. Then he turned to look at me.

  “I fear I’ve not had the pleasure of acquainting myself with your friend.”

  I offered my hand. “Laze. Delighted.”

  He took my hand firmly, which suddenly reminded me that I would likely be killed if I mocked him in an obvious way.

  “A polite one,” he said, looking at Marine but still gripping my hand. “I like that. Is he taken?”

  Oh no. This… I misread the situation. Not good.

  “Not as such.” Marine was not helping.

  The man looked back at me and smiled coyly. “Well, Laze. I shall be delighted as well. Very. My name is The Earle and the pleasure is all mine. Those who I find agreeable can simply call me Earle.” He pulled my hand up and kissed the back of it. His lips were… oh god… so wet. Just… just so wet. Like he’d brushed them with melted butter or something.

  “We have business, Earle.”

  Marine had saved me. She’d put me in the situation, but she saved me. So I hated her, but I loved her. But still a little bit of hate.

  “Right you are, and business must always come before pleasure.” He let my hand go and motioned us toward the door of the warehouse. “This way, if you please.”

  We followed him in. The warehouse was well-organized, most of the boxes marked inconspicuously with meaningless numbers and letters. Meaningless to me, anyway.

  “Graver was kind enough to contact me ahead of time, informing me what it was you would likely be wanting.”

  “I doubt he could have mistaken my intentions.”

  “My thoughts as well. And so I’ve prepared it for you. Though, for obvious reasons, I will have to ask that you suffer me an inconvenience.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I fear you shall have to inspect it in the dead room. And then it must be sealed in a geolocked hard case.”

  “Understandable.”

  Understandable?! And what was a fucking dead room? We were getting a bomb. No question about it, it had to be a bomb. Nobody talked about not-bombs like this. Or maybe some kind of chemical weapon. I thought she was just bummed out, but nope, she’s off her tits. She’s going to murder a building full of people. I realized I didn’t actually care and that calmed me down a little, but what if it went off accidentally? My human meats weren’t built for that sort of thing. Did she know how people bodies worked?

  We walked through an entryway, the door behind us shutting. Bright UV lights came on and massive turbines pushed wind through the room at high speed. My hair started to hurt about the time it shut off. The far door opened and we stepped inside.

  The room was stark white except for the aluminum table in the middle and a few cabinets and refrigerators along the walls. The table held a small, dark metal box. The lid was off and leaned against the side.

  The Earle arrived at it first, pulling out a small device. A black globe, entirely unassuming looking. It had prongs on the end of a short cord that were shaped like a wall plug.

  “So, was Graver entirely correct in his assumptions?”

  Marine took the device from The Earle and examined it closely. “It looks like he was, but I’ll confirm it so there’s no unfortunate misunderstandings. This is a blotto box?”

  A grin spread over The Earle’s face. His eyes practically sparkled.

  “It very much is. The finest ever made.”

  Blotto boxes were basically a myth. Or were room-sized devices that no one had tried using for years. They were definitely not a baseball with a plug on it. Marine seemed to share my skepticism.

  “You know I’m going at Vircore.”

  “I know. And so I have given you my best piece. It has a thirty-second delay—”

  “What’s the output, Earle?”

  His grin became a toothy smile. Immaculate teeth, really. He really took care of those things.

  “Three hundred megawatts at capacity. And I can make my guarantee to you that it will run for at least the full of a day.” He took a small bow as if expecting applause. “As utility figures for the Vircore skyscraper put them at just over two hundred megawatts of draw a peak, I should expect it meets your requirements.”

  Marine stared at the device in her hand. She was likely coming to the same conclusion I was. There was a fusion generator inside. It was a bomb. A directed one, assuming it fucking worked. Instead of letting its energy go, the box shunted the energy forcibly back into the grid of a building. Normal home wiring would go up like an oil rag.


  I couldn’t let the question slide. “The wall plug’s a joke, right? It’ll burn out the socket.”

  “My pride simply cannot accept such a suggestion. There is a controller inside which subverts any flow controls. So long as there is a valid circuit, it will find a way through. It congests the line and should destroy connected equipment without burning out the line. Should. However…” He took the ball from Marine, pointing to small fins around the ball. “Vents. A necessary compromise, I fear. The waste heat has to go somewhere, and venting proved the only solution at size. I’ve tried to keep it under a half megawatt at the worst. It ought not to take a large room much past a few hundred degrees. Still, I cannot strongly enough recommend plugging the box in outdoors if it is possible.” He put the device into the box and lifted up the lid to put it on. “Is that all within expectation?”

  Marine nodded. “Assuming it doesn’t explode, yes.”

  The Earle put the lid on the box and an actuator inside whirred, sounding metal clicks at each edge of the box. “It will only lock within ten yards of Graver owned properties.” He handed the box to Marine. “I doubt he would ever admit such a thing, but he was quite ecstatic with your choice of target. He says they have taken something from you.”

  Marine was about to say something when my stomach growled. It was a loud one. I’m pretty sure it echoed. I was being stared at again.

  Marine looked back at The Earle, who looked as though he was going to titter gaily and maybe do a wee dance.

  “We should go.” To get food. That’s what she meant. I hoped.

  Chapter

  SIXTEEN

  The Earle had handed me a card with his contact information on it as we were leaving. I took it because I didn’t want him to eat my skin, which was something I was fairly confident he might be into. Marine was laughing in the car when I had gotten into it. She’d spent the bulk of the rest of the trip examining the blotto box. I helped as best I could, but it was nearly impossible to see anything inside the vents. There was a fairly complex series of channels leading to the nuclear core to direct the force of the radiant energy, or that was what we decided by poking at the thing. Closer inspection also showed the wall plug to be modified. It would lock itself into the wall, keeping it from being pulled out without considerable effort.

  She’d put it back into the box and closed it up when the car had come to a stop. It let us out in our neighborhood, not far from Marine’s shop. When the car was well out of range, I turned to Marine.

  “So what do you think that thing’s worth?”

  She wiggled the box around, considering it. “Few hundred thousand, maybe. At least.”

  “Yeesh. So maybe we just sell it and get ourselves a little house in the woods and get married.”

  “Part of that sounds pretty good.”

  “I know which part.”

  She started walking, though not toward her shop.

  “Where you going?”

  “You’re hungry, right? Might as well have a nice last meal before Earle’s little ball kills us both.”

  “Seems reasonable.”

  Marine had tried to be chipper but as we got to walking, she focused more and more on the box. I let her sulk for a block and a half before the sounds of the city around us got boring.

  “You want to talk about it now?”

  “I… I mean, I guess I should.”

  “Well, I gave up my hand for you, so yeah. Even a hint would be fun for me. I can guess whatever this is runs pretty deep if you’re going to maybe blow up a building for it.”

  “It’s… my dad.”

  “So they stole a vacuum cleaner.”

  She hit me instantly but laughed after she had. “No, it’s not a fucking vacuum cleaner.” She shook her head and forced herself to cheer up a bit. “My dad. He built me. It was after his wife died. He always called her my mom, but that never really felt right.”

  There were maybe three people capable of doing that work on their own in the history of robots and AI. One of them was a Japanese scientist, notoriously obsessed with old robot cartoons, Tommy Hakua. The half-Asian thing seemed to narrow it down but I decided to let her say it, not wanting to be a smarmy, trivia spouting ass. Or to be wrong.

  “Hakua Tsutomu. I read a lot about him after he died. He’d asked me not to while he was alive. He said he didn’t want his child to think of him that way.”

  “So, he died, but… they took him? Marine, you didn’t keep his brain in a jar or some shit, right? Please tell me we’re not recovering pickled brain. Pickled brains are decidedly not AI.”

  “No shit.” She shoved me, probably for ruining the somber mood. I couldn’t help myself. It was either that or let the missing hand and the rest of the past day and a half get into my head. “He scanned his brain at some point before he built me. Really old tech. I found it a few years ago behind a shelf and I’ve been working on reverse engineering it. So…” She took a deep breath. “Okay, it’s going to sound stupid. But so I can talk to him again.”

  “I don’t really think the premise is stupid. Maybe it’s a little… I don’t know. I mean, you’ve got questions right?”

  She looked at the box in her hands. “I do. Too many, really. But I know it’s him before he built me. I’ve got file dates and it’s stored on old NAND and I know I won’t necessarily hear whatever it is I want to hear…”

  “Eh, even then, I get it. I mean, Vircore basically robbed a grave to dig the brain out of a genius. Even if he wasn’t your dad, I’d be all for burning the place down just to fuck them over for it. I mean, can you imagine how much they’re gonna want my brain? There’ll probably be a bidding war. But I’m leaving my brain bits to you, Marine. I know you won’t let them go cheap and that’s the important thing.”

  She chuckled. “I’ll plant bidders in the audience. Fraud all the way to the end.”

  “That’s basically my motto.”

  We arrived in front of the pizza shop. The pizza shop.

  “Pizza?” She turned with a little hop that was incredibly cute so I got confused.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Shit, no. Not yeah, sure. Definitely not. She’d already gone in and I had already followed her, meaning to complain. At least, maybe the guy—

  “Hey, bud! Back for more, eh? Two days in a row. Must be doing something right. Ha ha.”

  That space is intentional. He didn’t laugh. He said ha twice. Like a fucking creep. Like a fucking grease terrorist creep. Now was my chance.

  “Haha, yeah. Yeah I guess. It’s… you guys make a good slice. Heh.”

  I was already thinking about the various lengths of extension cord I had back at the apartment. I wasn’t sure there was a door knob strong enough, that was the real hang-up. Maybe I could get the finger laser to work.

  I was so distracted that we’d sat down and the guy was on us, asking for an order without me having thought about it.

  “So, what can I get for the cute couple?”

  Fuck you, fuck you, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “What do you want on this thing, Laze?”

  “Huh?” I looked up from the table at Marine, who was staring across at the menu on the wall above the counter. The waiter, though… he was staring straight at me. “I don’t know. Whatever you want is fine.”

  Marine turned to face me. “Bullshit. Nobody wants what other people want on a pizza.”

  “A few minutes then? I’ll grab some waters.” He clapped his hands together before he turned. Who even…

  “So what do you want on the pizza?” She leaned in and whispered the rest. “That guy’s fucking weird and I don’t want to have to deal with him any more than we have to.”

  “I don’t know. We’ve only got like… thirty seconds, maybe? What do you want?”

  “I dunno. Some kind of meat, I guess. Meatball?”

 
“That can go real wrong.”

  “Whatever, he’s fucking coming. Meatball?”

  “Fine, fine.”

  He was upon us, sitting water down like he wasn’t a lizard person. “So, you two decide?”

  “Yeah, half cheese, half meatball.”

  “That sounds great. Might have to do that myself sometime.” He turned and left.

  What the fuck did that even mean? Try it himself? A pizza with half one topping? What the fuck was he talking about? He works at a goddamn pizza place.

  I leaned in to Marine. “What the fuck was that?”

  She whispered back, frantic. “I know. Try that sometime? What the hell is he going to try?”

  He was coming again. Oh god. Luckily, he stopped when my eyes met his.

  “Sorry, did either of you want drinks besides water?”

  “No, I don’t think…” I looked at Marine, she shook her head. “Nah, water.” Is fine, say is fine. “You know, it’s…” It’s what? “…the…” The? That’s not right. Where is my sentence even going to go from here?! “…best.”

  Maybe I could just huck myself off the roof of my apartment. I think they had a fence around the edge of the building, but I could cut that open. I’d probably land on another roof, but there was probably enough of a fall to do the job.

  “What the fuck was that?” Oh, and Marine was here. Great. This mind demon was making me sound like a psycho and now other people got to see it.

  “This guy’s really fucking with me, Marine. I think he’s a lizard person.”

  “Well, something’s wrong with you. Probably him too, but still.”

  The pizza was cooked questionably quickly. Really. Like three minutes, tops. It made me uncomfortable, but he left it and just asked if we needed anything else and then left himself.

  A quiet fell over the table while we were eating, at least after a few comments on how the meatball was okay and how hedging bets with the half cheese was a smart play. My newly fake hand caught my eye and it put a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. The waiter came back right then, for some insane reason scooping up the greasy napkins we’d used to dab the pizza.