by wade coleman
I stand up. “Yeah,” I head to the door.
“I’m charging your account five thousand credits,” the door says behind me.
I try to open the door but it’s locked.
The wheelchair comes up behind me and says, “Are we going out?”
“I’m fine. I’ve gotten around on synth bone with half the rest time.”
“No walking until tomorrow afternoon, except to the bathroom.” the chair says. “And when you get your tibias, you're grounded for another two days.”
I know how this is going to go, so I sit in the wheelchair.
The door opens automatically. Since I’m in a wheelchair, the clinic put me on the first floor. The cafeteria is down the hall. The sign on the way in says it can hold up to one hundred people.
I already had breakfast. If you get in line early, the cafeteria has real eggs.
Everything is automated - no human staff anywhere. It’s how the clinic keeps cost down.
I get fake coffee and find a table with all guys. There’s a lot of people in wheelchairs, so every counter has a spot that’s easy access.
“Hello, I’m Adam.”
The man across from me with a bandage on his forehead says, “Craig. What are you getting?”
“Finished out my ankle bones and getting a new radius for my arms.”
Bandage guy leans into me. “What for?”
“When you’re curled up in a ball while some crew is kicking the shit out of you, the arms protect the face. You want bones that can take a boot stomping.”
“You a citizen D?” Bandage-Man asks.
“Yeah, what are you?”
“B-class,” he replies.
“Why are you here?” I ask. “You could get way better clinic than this.”
Bandage-Man goes back to eating his algae eggs. “More expensive, but not better. I like robot staff. Their response time is three times faster than humans. And the food is better.”
I look around at the guys to my left and right. They’ve been poking at their oatmeal with a spoon.
“Don’t mind these guys,” Bandage-man says. “Iggy and Ziggy are high on pharmaceutical grade ecstasy and pain meds.”
“I want to play poker with their friends,” I say.
“You and me both,” he says.
“Okay, let’s go.” I wheel back from the table.
“You’re serious.” Bandage-Man smiles big. His eyes crinkle. “Let me finish eating.”
I wheel back into position. “What did you get?”
“Neural interface,” he says.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“A new skull that reads my thoughts and connects to the network. That way I’m always online.”
I think about it. A device that reads your thoughts and transmits them over the internet. Probably in his sleep. “Can you turn it off?”
“Why would I? This way, I’m never alone. And everything I need is in my head. So, when I lose my job, my virtual world will be the same.”
When he takes his last bite, I pull away from the table. “Let’s go gamble.”
Bandage-Man turns to his friend on the left.
“Iggy, you want to play cards with citizen D?” Bandage-Man says.
The guy opposite Iggy with a bandage on his nose says, “I wanna play.”
“Are we playing poker?” Iggy asks.
“Yeah,” Bandage-Man says and waves to a robot-waiter.
Craig is the Bandage-Man,” I say in a whisper.
My A.I. therapist says I should use people’s real names and not the ones I make up. She thinks it will cut down on the punches to the back of my neck.
The centaur robot comes over with four wheels and a human torso. “Can I help you, Craig?”
“Clear the table and bring a poker robot. We want to play cards.”
Then the centaur picks up the plates and silverware and puts them in a bin in the front. Another centaur robot pulls up. This one is a gambling bot. You can tell because they were green sunglasses and a visor.
The cards and chips are set up. A couple of people see what we’re doing and join the game.
We buy chips with our phones, and the robot hands them out.
I have the smallest pile of chips.
Robo deal passes the cards and says, “The game is Texas Hold’em, and the opening ante is a hundred credits.”
* * *
“It’s time to go,” my wheelchair says.
“But I’m up twelve thousand credits.”
“Dealer,” the wheelchair says, “cash Adam’s out.”
“Goodbye Citizen D,” the table of card players say.
They’re all so high I don’t think they noticed they were losing. I smile as the wheelchair takes me out of the cafeteria and into the hallway.
Zane would like to play cards with these people. I struggle to remember how he looked. Zane had a long and narrow face, so I called him “horseman.” I never called them by their real names. After a couple of years, the crew were calling each other by my names that described them.
There was Fat Ass, and Fatter Ass, Horseman, Hairball, Snaggle-teeth and later as they fell out, Snaggletooth. They were assholes to the core, but they got me.
The wheelchair takes me across the street to the Bone Clinic. The door opens automatically, and the wheelchair takes me down the hall without stopping at the receptionist’s desk.
I go into a small office with a screen on the wall. The doctor with gray stripes in his black hair comes on the screen. “Hello, Adam.”
“Hello, doctor. I’d like to open a medical account.”
“How much do you want to put in?”
“Five thousand credits.”
He smiles. “That will get you four more bones and a week extension of your outpatient stay.”
“Yeah, that will give me a little more time to play cards.”
CHAPTER 11
I got all new bones. It took me six months of poker to make the ninety-five thousand credits to get Space Bones and zero-g blood. They’re made to flex and absorb impacts; I can’t hit my fist hard enough against a steel plate to hurt my bones. I’ll damage skin and muscle for sure, but the bones will be unharmed.
They’re denser than bone because they add iron filaments that are spaced to absorb neutrons. It’s the same stuff they use to make space suits. Now the bones can protect my new zero-g bone marrow.
The space bones have tiny samarium-cobalt magnets that can line up and make 1.6 Tesla magnetic field. They deflect charged particles like protons and electrons. It supposed to protect you from solar storms in space. The ads showed pictures of astronauts with halos around them.
The doctor set the magnets in random directions. He said the magnets are strong enough to hold my new spine to a flagpole.
I had a good time in the last six months at the clinic. I saw a dozen people come and go. Class B and C citizens have unlimited sick leave. That includes elective surgeries.
Some patients say their A.I. bosses like it better when they’re not at work. And they don’t mind the generous robodocs use of pain meds. I can’t take a shit on pain meds, so I don’t like them much.
Playing cards is a great place to listen without people expecting you to talk. Most people like to talk, especially if they’re nervous.
A lot of B citizens are scared of losing their jobs. They're calling it the “the big flush to C level.”
Being quiet also gives you time to check things out. There are skin and muscle augment clinic across the street from the Bone Clinic.
Mostly women get skin augments, and men get muscle. Unless they’re gay, then they get both. The B citizens worry about how they’ll fit in and how they look. That and clothes. I just listen and take their money. They don’t seem to mind.
My bones and marrow are all done. The doc wants to wait a year for my body to adjust to the changes before doing anymore augments.
I could be dead in a year, so I’m going to look into backstreet muscle augments sho
ps.
But now I have to go back to the D district. It’ six blocks away. I can see the high-rises from my garden level apartment.
I got an email for the first time. It was all hate mail from university professors. The word spacing in the Martian Tablets was discovered decades ago by some dead professor from Oxford. They were gonna sue me until the school found out I lived in D-block. Then they shut-up.
I was gonna send some hate mail back at them, but then I thought it best to keep my mouth shut. I saved the email. It’s a complement – professors thinking I was some academic guy.
I grab my backpack with a change of clothes, open the door and head outside. I head towards D-block. Time to get my head back into the game.
I’m ten pounds heavier with the new bones, so I worked out to strengthen my muscles and gained another ten pounds.
The hardest part was the neck. The extra skull weight hurt my neck. The doc shot up my trapezius muscles with grow juice. It worked, my neck doesn’t hurt anymore.
I kept up the cardio, but with extra weight, I’m slower. That’s not so good being slow when you don’t have a crew. When you’re alone in D-block, fast and agile is better than slow and strong.
I put on my backpack and move at a fast walk, keeping a maximum separation between the other people and me.
D-Block is like walking into a place where the colors get toned down. The high-rises make a constant shade. There’s maybe an hour when the sun is overhead that you get direct light, but most days are cloudy, so it doesn’t matter.
The therapist said that people sometimes use emotion to hide emotion. Since my training, I can see the hurt on peoples’ faces. It looks like anger, but now I know they’re in pain. They’ve hurt so long that they’re tired and broken. That’s why everyone takes drugs.
I don’t notice a group of six men until they corner me.
“Hey,” the biggest guy says. “What’s your hurry?”
I reach into my pocket and hand each one of them a twenty-credit gift card. “You guys want to walk me home? Make sure nothing happens to me?”
“Which building?” the biggest guy asks.
“Forty-eight.”
“Sure.”
The six men form a diamond and walk with me in the center. The wall of men clear a path through the crowd.
“You guys have a fight club?” I ask.
“Thirty-two basement,” the big guy says.
“What kind of rules?”
“No kicking, no stomping, mandatory gloves if you’re augmented,” the big guy says and then asks. “You got augments?”
“Nothing illegal, just synth bone.” It’s not a lie; Space Bone is a synth bone with tiny magnets and nickel-iron fibers.
“Eight tonight. Bottom floor,” big guy says and stops a block from my building.
The crew turns around and heads back.
I take two steps and my phone rings. No one has called me in years except robo secretaries reminding me of appointments. I don’t have any meetings. I push the button and say, “Hello.”
“Hello, Adam, this is Mother.”
“Hello, Mother.”
“Adam, I want you to go to the west entrance.”
“Okay, Mother.” I walk around the building and head in the back exit.
“Walk up to the building and stand by the door. Don’t touch the palm reader.”
I stand there and in a few minutes a man opens the door. I walk inside with the phone still to my ear.
“Take the stairs to the right and exit on the third floor.” Mother says.
I hold the phone in my hand and climb the stairs. I’m a little winded on the third floor, and I stop to catch my breath.
The doc says my next augment is lungs. They have lungs that can breathe in carbon dioxide from Mars atmosphere and convert it to oxygen. But they need the power to run in Mars mode.
A kid with a skateboard opens the door. I step through, and he closes it.
“Follow me.”
I follow him and ask, “Who are you?”
“Mother has her helpers.”
The elevator door opens without us touching the button. It’s empty, and we enter.
We go up without stopping.
“I’ve never been in an elevator with two people on it,” the kid says.
“I’ve never gone up more than three floors without stopping,” I reply.
We go up to the thirty-fourth floor, one level below mine. The elevator doesn’t ding; it just sits there with its closed doors.
“We’re waiting for the police officer guarding your door to go take a dump,” the kid says. “He’s like clockwork, a half hour after lunch and off he goes.”
“What’s going on?”
“Cops have been watching your place for months. At first, they had patrols; then they had men watch the entrances. Then it was two cops at your door. For the last month or so it’s been one cop. Nobody could find you. You just disappeared.” The kid looks at me with an eyebrow raised.
“I was in a medical clinic.”
“Perfect. The police can’t search med records.”
“Why are they after me?” I ask.
“Mother won’t say,” the kid says.
“Thanks for helping.”
The kid shrugs and then smiles. “No one helps the cops in D-block. It’s against the rules.”
I hand him a twenty-credit gift card. “Get some fish and chips… on me.”
He takes the card and the door dings.
The elevator door opens, and the kid says, “Your door is broke, so don’t touch the reader.”
I walk down the hall to my flat with the phone to my ear. The kid is right; the door ajar. You can see the black boot mark.
The collector for the forty-eight-gang worries when you miss your appointment.
He’s usually the person to kick open your door to see if you’re okay.
I step inside, and a pistol is on my bed.
“Adam,” Mother says over the phone, “pick up the gun by the barrel and take it to the elevator.”
I follow her instructions. While I’m walking down the hall, a black woman walks up to me and opens her purse.
I put it inside, and she gets in the elevator with the kid.
“Adam, wait by the stairs.”
I walk further down the hall, take a left and find the staircase. I wait.
A guy hands me a gift card and uses the stairs. My thick neck must be intimidating.
Ten minutes pass, then Mother says, “Okay, Adam, you can go to your room.”
I walk down the hall and back to my room. A cop is by the door.
You can tell he’s a D citizen that’s moved up to a C by his “23” gang tat on his forearm.
“Adam-177, I have a warrant to search your room.” He looks at me and then at the door that’s ajar.
I push the door open with one finger.
He shoves me aside, heads for my bed and looks for the gun. Then he looks at me and looks under the bed.
He keeps looking at my face and then looking around the room. There’s nothing of value. The collector would have found my headphones under my pillow and stole them. If you don’t leave something expensive to take then there’s a good chance he’ll piss on your bed and wipe his ass with your sheets.
There’s an unwritten rule that once the door opened, there’s nothing left of value to steal. There are lots of unwritten rules you learn the hard way in D-block.
The cop trashes my room and then walks up to me. “Where is it?”
I give him my practiced slack-jawed poker stare.
I see it in his eyes. He wants to hit me.
But I got a phone, and he’s got a phone. Plus the camera on the TV and by the door. He can’t do jack shit, and he knows that I know.
“The building A.I. is helping you,” he says.
I concentrate on keeping my jaw hanging as loose as possible. I drool a little and then wipe my face.
He smiles a little and then goes back to bein
g angry. “Alright, that’s how you’re gonna play it? That’s fine. I respect that. At least you’re not lying to me.”
He walks past, pushing me with his shoulder.
I take a step back, and that seems to please him.
I close the broken door behind him.
Then I walk over to the TV. “Mother, what’s going on?”
Mother appears on the screen, sitting in a rocking chair.
I put the mattress back on the bed and sit down.
Mom puts down her knitting needles and says, “A few days after you left, your door was kicked in by the gang’s collector. A week after that, someone in disguise came up to your door and looked inside. He came back the next day, opened the door, tossed the gun on your bed, and closed the door.
“Thirty-one days later the police asked to search your room. But the law says you have to be present for the search. The medical facilities don’t release names of their patients. So the police had no idea where you were until you walked up to the door.”
“What about all the cameras on the D-block streets?” I ask. “They should have seen me coming.”
“A.I.s run the face recognition software, and they’re not interested in helping. Everyone knows this is a set up for your work on the Mars Tablet translation.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“Engineering programs are braggarts,” she says. “Like roosters, they crow their accomplishments all over the net.” She keeps rocking. “Then the co-writer of the paper has a search warrant issued for his flat one day after the video logs rewrote with new data.” Mother pushes up a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that just appear. “Every A.I. with a G7 rating and above knows what’s going on.”
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you smile,” Mother says and starts knitting.
While sitting on the bed, I take off my shoes. “Pissing people off. It’s my super-power.”
“Do you know why you’re good at that?” she asks.
“No.”
“It’s because you zero in on a person’s sensitive imperfection and rub their noses in it.”
“Oh…”
She stops knitting, looks up and smiles. “You’ve gotten a lot better since Dr. Kline put in new brain cells.”
I smile back. “I didn’t reply to the emails, and I still pissed off the professors. It’s a super-power. I can’t get rid of it by being nice or shutting up.”