She groaned and opened her eyecubes, pushed up to sitting. The holobeads strung in her hair clacked against each other. Here in real-flesh, they still made her hair look like iridescent green scarabs. In the Underworld, of course, she didn’t need holobeads clacking together around her ears.
Her tiny bed, just large enough to hold her motionless body, was crammed into a windowless closet. She reached up behind her left ear and unplugged the tie-in jack from her socket, then knocked on the door. “Chinya?”
No answer.
She slid off the mattress, staying hunched over so she wouldn’t doff her head on the shelves, and eased open the door. “Chinya?”
“Here out,” Chinya called.
Redcholate walked through Chinya’s bedroom and into the lounge.
Chinya sat on the floor in front of a low table, peeling yellow squirters. “Come some and have,” she said, holding one out.
Redcholate sat on the floor beside her and took the squirter. “Why don’t you just have the nutrition panel peel these?”
Chinya grinned. “Peeling them reminds me of my granma.” She never used Getho Sector 1 street dialect when she talked of her family. Maybe my ancestors’re listening, and I want them to understand me, she’d say.
Redcholate was sometimes jealous of Chinya’s family. They all lived nearby, and got together for weekly real-flesh dinners. Dark ages behavior, but not cringy. Kinda sweet. Redcholate couldn’t even mem any of her grandparents. She tore the thick peel off the squirter and popped it in her mouth, squealing at the sourness.
Chinya laughed as she reached for another squirter. “You’ll get used it to. You just snack up for a? You going under back?”
Redcholate shook her head. How to explain Watson’s bizzo intel request, or her reset to jero when Redcholate’d gone back to the room a milli later? Or the Forger’s refusal to meet real-flesh? Everything was so bizzo. “I got a job to do meatsack style.”
Chinya finished peeling the squirter and bit into it. Through the pucker, she said, “But meatsack style style isn’t your.”
“I know.” Any normal intel request, she’d still be under, and probs already be bringing the intel back to the client. But the Forger’d said he wouldn’t take the job. First time he’d ever done that. Maybe she should just jack back in and just tell him what she wanted. Intel on the Butcher. How hard was it to say those words? But even as she considered disobeying Watson’s stipulation, pain stabbed her cranium and her gibs quivered. She felt the blood drain from her face.
“Sick you?” Chinya asked. “Squirters sour too?”
“No, I’m K.” Redcholate pushed to her feet. “Meatsack style isn’t my style, but for this payout, I’ll change my style so fast it’ll rip your socks off at the scalp.”
Chinya laughed. “One good. K, I’ll be here back when get you.”
***
At night, the Getho quarter of Alessandro City was 100% humid, 100% stinky, and 100% dead. Everyone who was everyone spent their nights in the Underworld. Cozplayas and rubies went to the Underworld for fun. Entrepreneurs like her went for work. Bituminous Tarsi was the galaxy’s intel hub, and tens of thousands went under to deal, steal and peel.
K, the Forger didn’t want to meet real-flesh. He was the primo forger on Bituminous Tarsi. But she’d met dozens of forgers in Dirtburg, the Underworld’s intel business sector, and she’d never met any real-flesh. And she didn’t know 99.999% of them well enough to ask them to unjack. She only dared to ask Tanto. Barely. Just a simple transaction in Dirtburg, made a millio times more diffy by Watson.
So she sloggo’d down the street like a numbseed.
Finally she got to a moving walkway. Chinya could only afford an apartment deep in the Getho, five blocks away from the nearest moving walkway. When Redcholate’d arrived on-planet three years ago, poor and friendless, she could only afford to rent a closet in Chinya’s apartment. But they’d become best friends, which was daebak, so Redcholate didn’t move out even though she could afford to now. Chinya’s friendship was more important than a fancy trou apartment or nearby skimmercabs.
The moving sidewalk whisked her free from the snaggly, dark plazstik buildings of the Getho, toward the shiny jewel at the northern edge of Alessandro City. Skimmers started passing overhead. Soon, another people mover swept up from the left and joined with hers. Passengers from LoRen to the south crowded on, and the people mover hummed under the new load. Something about the LoRenners—shab clothing, doldrous faces—reminded Redcholate about something, but she could never mem what it was. Anyway, they were all headed north. Just like her.
Up ahead, the shiny jewel resolved into beautiful, slender towers of silver plazstik. Silvery trees. Silver lights. Silvery skimmers. All looking out over the edge of silvery cliffs to the ocean. The HiRenDist, where all the fancytrou forgers lived. Probably the Forger lived there too. But she obvs wasn’t going to see him.
Of all the forgers she’d met, she respected Tanto most. He was brillio. The night two years ago when she’d finally made it into Forkin—the most exclusive forger bar in the Underworld—he’d laughed, clapped her on her avatar back, and bought her first digital bag of beer. He was a full-fledged forger himself. Not in the Forger’s league, but still he held his braincase above the flood. And he never looked down on intel brokers like Redcholate.
OS, she said, query Tanto’s OS for his address. Meatsack address.
Her OS didn’t reply. On a range of 1 to 10, she’d set its pleasantries settings to 1. No yes ma’ams or right aways. Less braincase chatter. It wouldn’t answer until it got the intel she needed.
As she entered the outskirts of the HiRenDist, she got off the moving walkway. No use traveling any further just to potentially double back. So she strolled down the nearest static walkway, looking up. Up was where most of the life in HiRenDist happened. Ground level was for the late-night insomniacs and shamblers no one living in the HiRenDist wanted to see. The walkways didn’t shiver her gibs or anything, mechas kept them clean and evaced anyone from another dist who attempted to set up house on the streets. But the shops accessible to foot traffic catered to people like her. Tie-in sockets for rent by the hour in dremacaves. Budget hook booths. Cheap food in silver-glitz stands. Selling a tiny piece of the HiRenDist to people who then went back home to LoRen or the Getho, feeling as if they’d lived in luxury for a few millis.
Tanto’s OS has responded with his address, her OS said. A small arrow appeared at the bottom of her vision, pointing to the left. Take the moving walkway one stop east.
She traveled deeper into HiRenDist. Her OS directed her to one of the tallest buildings. She went inside to the security corral, a plazstik floor to ceiling cage. A security mecha, boxy and black on a long, looping track, let a group of three people enter, then zipped over to her position.
“Scan or purpose,” it said.
“Purpose. I’m here to see Tanto.” She suddenly realized she didn’t know his last name. She didn’t even know if Tanto was his real-flesh name. But the mecha seemed to know who she meant.
“Present thumbnail,” it said. She told her OS to authorize access to her bifile and lifted her right thumb. The mecha scanned her thumbnail implant, then said, “Tanto is waiting for you. Third floor. Suite 3001.”
After a swift elevator ride, she pressed her right thumb on the pad at the door to 3001. A milli later the door opened.
A view of the cliffs and the silver-capped Thaumaturge Ocean wrapped around the entire apartment. The sound of waves crashed against the hard surfaces. “Heol,” she said. She’d never been inside a proprietary view apartment before.
“This view,” said Tanto, unseen from a view-facing couch, “makes it almost pleasant to unjack.”
Redcholate walked around the edge of the couch and puddled beside him. She studied him out of the corner of her eyecubes. Another meatsack she’d never seen. He looked almost like his avatar. Short. Compact. Pleasant. But there were two differences. Hana, he had masses of crinkles around
his eyes and dark stubble all over his face, unlike his smooth-faced avatar. And deul, he was missing that brisk professionalism he exuded in the Underworld. Real-flesh, he was low-energy, scruffy, deflated. Kinda like an empty bag of beer. All for all, he skirted the edge of bogus. But probs he’d created his avatar when he’d still had meatsack energy.
Far below, thirty meter waves crashed against the cliffs, then fell back, defeated. Everything silver: sky, clouds, cliffs, sea. As if she and Tanto were looking into a sterile future.
Tanto sniffed, rubbed his nose, then sighed. “I don’t know why I bought the 100 meter view upgrade. I’m almost never unjacked to see it.”
“It’s koo, though.” She held her breath as a pod of 5 massive waves—at least twice as large as the others—rose up and crashed against the cliffs, one after the other, in quick succession. A twirl of silver and purple sea birds rose up from the cliffs and circled, calling. They sounded lachry. Like they knew something sad she didn’t yet.
If she had a view like this, maybe she wouldn’t need to go off-planet. She could buy an apartment like this one. With the proprietary view upgrade. And Chinya could move in too, and all her family. They’d all be happy together. But the joy she felt at that vision of her future was engulfed and washed away by a joy twice as large. Joy about traveling off-planet. Of leaving Bituminous Tarsi. An insistent joy, barging in where it wasn’t needed. Just like in the Underworld with Watson, it was as if someone else were feeling the emotion instead of her.
Tanto glanced at her, then back to the view. “Why the real-flesh?”
The question startled her out of her brooding. “A job that needs flesh-to-flesh transmission.”
Tanto nodded once, long and slow. “And the Forger won’t meet you real-flesh. So what is it?”
She hesitated, then leaned close, whispered, “Intel on the Butcher.”
He drew back like she’d just smacked him. “I’m not touching that job.”
At his refusal, her lumen twisted, heaved. She tried to hide her gagging, but he saw.
“Red, you sick?”
She shook her head. That wasn’t important now. “But, the payout is… loops.”
He stared at her, bloodshot eyecubes wide. “You cray, Red? You wanna end up like Alae Mestro and her entire planet? Eaten alive by cats the size of skimmers?”
“But… but you’re better than she is. You’re a Bituminous Tarsi forger.”
“Not as good as the Butcher. And even the Forger won’t touch this, so what does that tell you? Look, you know that the best forgers can track someone in the Underworld by their personality.”
She nodded.
“Well, the Butcher’s the best of the best. The Butcher’s got personality lookouts on all the best Bituminous Tarsi forgers: the Forger, me, Tickle-Me-Foot. As soon as any of us start scouring around for intel on the Butcher, we’re dead.”
“I know all that, but—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Don’t get involved in this job. All I can say. Unless you want your braincase scoured. Permanently.”
Pain lanced her eyecubes. “But I need the glims.”
Tanto sighed again, then held out his thumb. “Here. Take this. It’s a forger I know. Used to be good. Even taught me a thing-a-three. But he’s lost all his clients. So maybe he’ll agree.”
“Thank you!” Redcholate approved incoming data with her OS, then touched her thumb to Tanto’s. A bifile appeared in her cranial embed. As soon as it did, the pain in her cranium disappeared. She sighed in relief, and stood to take one last look down at the Thaumaturge Ocean. Then she turned back to him.
“Tanto, why’d he lose all his clients?”
He laughed, already pulling the jack out of its outlet. “If you want the intel enough, does it matter? Just watch your spine, Red.”
He stretched out on the couch and plugged the jack into his tie-in socket. His body seemed to lose all cohesion as he went under.
“Thanks, Tanto,” she said softly before she left, though he couldn’t hear.
Chapter 4
Variegor
Date: 2412
Armintor stumbled off the shuttle gangplank and onto the hot stone of the spaceport. The air smelled of sweat and terror.
A man with eyes that reminded her of shiny black beetles stood, hands behind his back, waiting. Flanking him stood two groups of adults. One group had fancy uniforms like him, with shiny buttons, and shiny shoes, and shiny hair. The other group wore dingy coveralls, scuffed shoes, ragged expressions.
In another life, this might have made her giggle, for the man looked too stern for his own good. Yet today all she felt was sick fear, and the now-familiar prickle of tears in her eyes. Her head felt heavy all the time, as if it were filled with the blue fungus. Perhaps she was infected with Blue Mist Plague but no one knew it yet.
She stood, numb, watching the man as he strode slowly down the line. He scanned each Blue Mist Plague orphan with a bulky handheld device, then directed each child to one or the other group of adults.
Soon the man stopped in front of her and scanned her with his device. He made a sound halfway between pity and scorn. “Beta. G-class. Subdamaged.”
The word made an impression on her. “Subdamaged?” Her voice sounded weak, trembly, tearful.
He inspected her down the long sharp line of his nose. “Never address an Alpha again without being addressed, Subdamaged.” He shoved her toward the shabby group. A coveralled woman steered her into their midst.
Armintor followed the group to a sad barrack. She pulled on a dingy beige coverall. The woman cut her hair with a pair of scissors. And she began work that day.
The first several months went by without much impact on Armintor’s psyche. She worked in the kitchen of an Alpha restaurant, where she consistently failed to comprehend even simple instructions. Gradually she received less and less intellectually strenuous work until she was monitoring a dishwasher, which was the most unchallenging job besides mopping the floor. Just enough intellect remained from the fugue to allow her to understand her tasks.
Her only safe place was her bunk, the middle bunk of a three-stack in a Beta barrack. She fell into it every night as soon as she got home from the kitchens, and didn’t get up in the morning until an older Beta pushed her onto the floor.
Armintor’s job monitoring a dishwasher included ten-minute cycles where she could wander away from the mecha to go to the bathroom, to step outside, to chat with her friends—if she’d had any friends.
“If you’re not back at your machine when the cycle ends,” she vaguely remembered someone saying to her, “you’d better either be dead, or wishing you were dead.”
This threat had not made much of an impression. In fact, she tried not to think at all.
A fellow Terry’s New Earther tended a dishwashing mecha two down from hers. She didn’t know him, for he’d grown up in Charles Town, but she recognized the misery coiling off him in invisible waves. Habitually late, he also slunk away from his dishwasher at every opportunity.
One month after Armintor had been assigned to her dishwasher, the boy’s mecha was making its usual strident notification that its cycle had ended. An Alpha strode in: tall, muscular, imperative. “Whose dishwasher is this?”
“B-bil,” a nearby Beta answered.
“And where is this Bil? Is he dead?”
The Beta shook his head.
Bil slunk back into the kitchens just as that moment.
“Is this yours?” the Alpha asked.
Bil hunched his shoulders and nodded.
“You must be an offworlder.” The Alpha cocked his head. “Bil. Do you understand why Alphas have to force Betas to work?”
Bil shook his head. Armintor looked from Bil to the Alpha. An echo of her former curious nature wanted to know why Alphas forced Betas to work as well.
“It’s because Betas are naturally unable to survive without Alphas organizing their lives.” The Alpha glanced around the room, and Armintor felt a spike o
f cold fear when his eyes briefly met hers. He raised his voice. “Offworlders might look at our system and assume Betas work to benefit Alphas. But that’s not true. It’s the opposite of true. You need us more than we need you. The essence of an Alpha is to help Betas. We help you become the best version of yourselves you can be.”
The Alpha drew a short black stick from a holster at his side. With a practiced wrist flick he telescoped the stick to a half-meter length. “Bil. You understand why I need to punish you, right?”
Armintor’s breath rasped in her lungs. She had thought she couldn’t feel anything, but she now realized she could still feel fear.
Bil turned white. “No,” he whispered.
“We only punish Betas to help you learn. Sometimes we must punish you to death, to teach others. That’s the option I’m going to choose for you, Bil. Your death will allow these other Betas to learn. Some are experiential learners. Others learn by listening or seeing. Your death will teach them all. You should be proud.”
When Bil turned to run the Alpha lunged forward and tripped him. Bil crashed to the ground and tried to scrabble away on all fours. The Alpha shoved his black stick into Bil’s back. A harsh sizzle filled the kitchen, followed an instant later by Bil’s screams.
The screams etched themselves into Armintor’s brain. His writhing seared her eyes. Her throat scraped against her own screams until another Beta came up behind and clapped a hand over her mouth. Armintor fought against the hold, her body on fire with rage, with terror, with a hopeless knowledge that this was what life was truly like.
The Disk Mirror Solution (Galaxia Mortem Book 1) Page 3