Citizen D
Page 5
Then it was three months of balancing and finger exercises to stimulate new nerve growth.
Dr. Kline said the upgrade would help me understand people but my personality is set, and it’s unlikely that it will change.
I walk into the media room. A few people are in cubby holes looking at screens.
I find a spot away from them and put my thumb in the box. The screen turns on. I check my email. I have a reply from my high school math teacher.
I sent him a picture of one of the letters in Ancient. I traced letter to a drawing program. That way you couldn’t tell it came from a metal tablet.
A text appears on the screen. “Greetings Adam, this symbol is the Greek letter PiΠ. It’s an irrational number with an approximate value of 3.1416. Thank you for your interest. – Math A.I. teacher 113.”
I log in and type in a search engine: “bone replacement for arthritis.”
Doctor Kline said they used synthetic bone paste by the gallon. It was cheap, like one or two credits a cubic centimeter.
The screen displays a bunch of sites that do bone replacement. Shops in uptown do a few fingers at a time. It’s a thousand credits a bone.
There’s plenty of back streets augment shops, but they replace hand bones with metal alloys.
A lot of new arrivals come from prison covered with gang tats. They get their hands shot up with titanium alloy and think they’re gonna take over.
One problem with that attitude, everybody in D-block knows how to fight dirty. If you sport gang colors, it’s only a matter of time before someone kicks you in the knee. Then when you’re down, a half dozen random guys will fuck your shit while others stand to watch for the robocops. You’ll be eating all your meals through a straw for a few months.
So gangs assemble inside buildings. Mine is the local 48 gang.
There’s always some new arrival that just got his hands shot up with titanium alloy, and now he’s going to make everyone at fight club his bitch. You see them coming. Covered with the prison tats and shot up with steroids. The refs will put him in with a tank - a guy with a metal head, ribs, and hands.
By the end of the round the new guy is coughing blood, and the crowd wants more. So the trainer shoots up the prison guy with painkillers and speed. They rarely last past round two.
Sometimes when they’re punched hard in the ribs, you can see them cough a mist of blood.
Fight club is distilled rage. I don’t connect well with other people, but I do understand pain and anger and wanting to hit something so hard that it breaks bones.
At fight club, you either bet or fight. There are no spectators; the price of admission is blood or money.
Paying money is easier on the body. Even the best fighters have only five or six good fights in them before the accumulative damage slows them down.
If my hands were synth bone, I could hit hard without hurting them. From years of abuse, I got arthritis in my knuckles. The doctor said it’s not bad enough to do anything right now.
I’ve seen bone augment shops before, but I never asked if they shot synth bone.
A window pops up on the screen. “Your room is ready.”
I walk back to my room and step inside. It smells like lemons. The window blind is open, and it lets in the late morning sun.
I’ve lived in this apartment since I was eighteen… four and a half years. I don’t think I’ve ever opened the blinds. In fact, I don’t remember having a window, just a TV, toilet, sink, and mini-shower.
I look at the monitor. “Hello, Mother.”
The screen comes on, and a middle-aged woman with brown hair and eyes looks at me. “Hello, Adam.”
“Can I get on the internet using the TV?”
“Yes, Adam,” Mother says. “It’s the same as in the media room, but instead of using a keyboard and mouse, you use voice commands.”
“I have a project, and I need equipment. But-”
“You leave it in your room, and it gets stolen,” Mother says, “and if you take it with you, you get mugged.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“What kind of equipment do you need?”
“A good camera with a USB port.”
“What kind of pictures do you want to take?”
I hesitate. I don’t know if what I’m doing is legal.
“I’m a licensed counselor. That means that what you say to me is confidential. If you told me that you were going to kill Harry, I would alert the police. You have my strict confidence if violence is not involved.”
“Really?”
“It’s all covered under the main menu in the TV; just select ‘Services’ and scroll down to ‘Counseling.'”
“Oh… okay. I want to take a picture of a TV screen.”
“There is a special camera that syncs with the screen refresh rate. Cameras start at two hundred credits. What kind of image are you trying to capture?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“That’s okay.” She smiles. “Do you want a color or black and white image?”
“Black and white.”
“Do you have a lot of detail that requires high resolution?”
“Yes.”
She cocks her head to the side. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to take a picture of?”
“Text.”
Mother nods her head for me to continue.
This gesture I understand; it means elaborate.
“I want to take a screenshot each of the Ancient Tablets. Then turn them into files that my skull computer can understand.”
“Adam, may I access your medical files?”
I pause and think. “Yes.”
“I see you have moderate broad spectrum autism. Would you like closed captions for the display of emotional content?”
“Yes, please.”
She smiles. “Adam, you can use a software program that converts the images that your eyes see into files your office software can understand. Would you like to download the software now? It costs thirty-five credits.”
“Yes,” I say.
“The fastest way to download is to go back to the media room and plug a cable into your data port.”
“No, I don’t want anyone to know I have a skull port. That’s just asking to get your skull caved in.”
I force a smile. “It’s okay; it’s not your fault.”
“I am pleased that you understand.”
I take off my shoes and get on the bed. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
* * *
It takes three hours to download the program and another few hours to figure out the software. The eyes see well for a few degrees of vision. About fifty-two million dots per inch.
For the computer to capture the detail of each letter, I must look at each one. That’s a million letters that I would look at for one second. The project will take months.
I decide to get started immediately. I’m sitting on my bed and staring at each letter as it rolls past my field of vision. I practice holding my eyes still with my lids half closed. It will take me two hundred and seventy-eight hours to finish at this rate.
My stomach growls, and this time it will not be ignored.
“Mother, where can I eat that won’t take too much time and I won’t get my ass kicked.”
Mother takes over the screen. “The cafeteria on the first floor is neutral ground. It’s under constant surveillance, and my robot sentries are always nearby. This is also covered under the main menu.”
“Thank you. Screen off.”
Now I remember. My old crew didn’t like the food there, so we always ate somewhere else. I just forgot about the place.
I walk out the door, go down the hall and hit the elevator button for ‘down.’ A few minutes
later a full elevator opens on the first floor.
I step out, walk down the hall and get in line. It’s a standard step-up. To the right are the burgers and fries. To the left is the dinner line. I grab a tray, plate, bowl, and silverware. I walk up to the soup station and push “Lentil.” A metal arm fills a soup spoon and fills the bowl. I move down, and another arm delivers a slice of green lasagna.
The last station is a desert. I ask the screen, “Do you have banana shakes?”
A young woman’s face appears on the screen. “I have banana flavored shakes.”
“What’s the difference?
“I don’t have tastes buds, but the people I survey say the difference is night and day. The shakes are filled vitamins and minerals – very healthy.”
The shake comes from a compartment in her chest, and her robot arm puts it on my tray.
I look around the cafeteria. It has evenly spaced rows of a long table with breaks every few meters. The seats are stools are held down with bolts.
I find an empty spot and sit down.
I look at my food and eat. The meat in the lasagna is algae. The lentils are real, I can tell by their texture. Bean substitute doesn’t have two halves. It’s all one piece.
The flavored banana shake smells more like banana and tastes more like vanilla. It’s not bad, just different. I don’t care much about flavor. It’s all about how fast I can eat and get up before someone punches me in the back of my head.
I glance up a few times. It’s mostly men at the table. Women tend to stay in women’s only buildings. Women get along better than men, so they have bigger gangs.
You can only get five or six men together before they fight among themselves. Women don’t have that problem.
I finish my meal and head back to my room. I keep my head down and don’t make eye contact. Once I get back to my room, I let out my breath. “That wasn’t so hard,” I say out loud.
I get back on my bed, turn on the TV, and watch Ancient letters scroll past.
CHAPTER 8
There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. That’s 3,600 seconds per hour. There are 1, 247,111 letters in the Mars’ Tablets. That’s 346.42 hours of watching the TV scroll through the Mars’ Tablets.
It took me fourteen hours a day for twenty-five weeks to finish. Now the images are loaded into the data crystal in my skull.
I checked out the main menu on the TV. Our building has a gym on the top floor. I spend an hour a day pedaling and watching letters on the screen. It’s soothing.
I also found some life-saving information off the main menu. You don’t have to wait in line to get paid. I just tell Mother to tell the unemployment office to send the credits to her, and she can load the money into my phone. It takes an extra day to get paid, but I don’t have to wait in line.
Food in the first-floor cafeteria is free. My only expense is a hundred credits a month for an internet connection. Since I’ve stopped drinking, I’m saving money – about nine hundred a month.
With the six months in rehab and another six months of scanning in Ancient, I’ve managed to save 9,847 credits. As a class D citizen, I can have a savings up to 25,000. Medical accounts then there’s no limit. There’s a lot of good stuff on the main menu. I don’t know why I never looked. I drank a lot when I watched TV, maybe that’s it.
It’s nice not dealing with the outside world. The only gang I worry about is the local 48 gang.
Mother lets me know when the elevator and hall are clear. That allows me to get back and forth to the cafeteria without meeting the wrong people. I haven’t been in a fight for a year.
I bought software that stitched the Ancient letters back into tablets. Now I can view the images at fifty-two million dots per inch.
I’m lying on my bed and staring at the first Mars Tablet. It’s an image from the crystal computer sent down the synthetic optic nerves to the back of my brain. The ancient letters are black against the white ceiling.
I look at the first tablet. The letters look perfectly spaced. There’s an arrow etched on the upper right-hand corner pointing down. From the articles I’ve read, the pointer means Ancient is read up to down and right to left.
I get up and take a piss. I’ve hit a wall and take a break. I zip up and look at my bad knuckle.
I have been checking on bone augments. Like the doctor said, it’s not illegal, except when you add metal. If you get metal bones, you’re armed and dangerous – a violent felon.
London has parlors set-up to replace the bones in the hands and feet. They charge a thousand credits a bone. There are twenty-seven hand bones.
It would take me years to pay to get my hands augmented. I can’t wait that long. The only way I can safely walk the streets is with a crew, and any gang will want to see you fight. With synth bone hands and feet, I could hit and kick hard. Hard enough to knock a man down but not hard enough to cause permanent damage.
My skull bones and jaw are already synth bone. The doctor said he increased my skull by ten cubic centimeters. Now I have double thick dura mater layer that’s between the skull and brain. He put in the extra padding because he didn’t want his hard work damaged.
The old me would have picked a fight to test drive the new hardware. But I like my brains, so I am thinking of avoiding getting punched in the face when possible. But things being what they are, it’s only a matter of time. I want new hand bones before then.
Looking at my hands, I notice they’re scarred. When I flex my right middle finger, it doesn’t straighten all the way.
Stratford station is twenty blocks. Just outside D district. It’s illegal for me to be there after dark.
The main menu was full of useful information. Like violent crimes are ten times higher at night. The lowest rates are between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon.
“Mother, what is today?” I say to the TV.
“It’s March fifteenth,” the speaker says.
“What’s it like outside?”
“Partially cloudy with a temperature of ten degrees centigrade. You might want to wear your jacket.”
“Yes. Thank you, Mother.” I put on my coat that’s hanging on a hook on the closet door.
“Going out?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“First time since you got back from rehab?”
“Yes.”
“Are you nervous?”
“I think so.” I check my balls. They’re still hanging low, which is reassuring.
I put my hand in my pocket and finger the gift card. It’s from reality show beat down. There’s a little over twelve thousand credits left.
My old crew quit school at sixteen, got their own flat and collected unemployment. But old gang encouraged me to keep going to school. Zane said that if I graduate it’s like we all graduate.
Two years later I got my high school certificate, left the orphanage and got this apartment. I’ve been unemployed the whole time.
I smile and think of my old crew. I was the designated navigator after a drinking binge. With my genetically engineered liver, I can sober up in an hour. Then on the walk back to our apartments, I’d steer them around trouble when I could. When I couldn’t, they’d take meth to warm up for the fight. Those were good times.
“Adam,” Mother says. “You’ve been staring at the door for the last five minutes.”
“Yes, Mother,” I say and turn the knob, open the door and leave.
I get in the elevator and go down. It doesn’t matter what door I go out of, the 48 building gang will see me. I step out and head to the main exit. There are plenty of people in the lobby. They’re sitting in cubby holes and pretending to read their tablets. Instead, they’re people watching.
I’m in luck; the girl gang is out front. I get along with them because I don’t fuck.
I walk down the steps, and a voice from behind says, “Hey, Adam, it’s been awhile.”
Leaning against the railing are six girls in a row with their coats on and
their hands in their jacket pockets.
“Yes,” I say, to the biggest woman. I don’t remember her name. I don’t think she ever said it. “I had brain damage, and it took a while to heal up.”
“No shit.” She takes her hands out of her pockets.
I look to make sure her hands are empty then I show her my teeth. “See, they’re made of nanites that go together like Lego blocks.”
“They look good.”
I smile. “Thank you.”
She steps back, and I turn around and walk away.
I keep moving and think that’s the most I’ve spoken to a woman since high school.
It’s daylight hours, so I’m allowed to roam London proper. It’s kind of weird. In twenty minutes, you can be out of the whole D-block scene and enjoy London during the day. Then at night, you’re back in the D zone.
In half an hour, I’m outside the D-block and walking past the Aquatics Centre. They shut down Stratford Station to add more room for native frogs. Restoration doesn’t start for another year, so this is where the London underground scene is hanging out.
Then the Gov will shut this place down, and the tents will roll up and move to another location.
I walk down the concrete steps that lead down into the old railyard. Tents and carts on wheels are lined up on each side. It’s a mixture of food and massage parlors. A couple of inkers.
I use my gift card to pay for some fish and chips. It cost twenty credits; it’s the most I’ve paid for food in a year.
I lean against a pole, and people watch. It’s mostly D citizens, but some people dressed up. Must be class C and B.
I survey the area and eat. The booths have fortune tellers, prostitutes, food, a couple of jewelry and used tech booths.
The equipment used to inject synth bone is like tattoo equipment. That’s my best way to find an underground augment parlor. I walk into the first tattoo tent. A young woman with dragons on her arms walks up to me.
“What do you want?” she asks.
I lift my hand and show her my crooked middle finger. “I’m looking for a bone augment for my arthritis.”