by Gwynn White
Something about this new crowd, though, the ones who wanted to latch onto Jaden as a rising star, struck me as a lot more ruthless. A magazine did a spread on him when his song really hit after the movie released, and he got this flood of fan mail, including a lot of naked pictures. Not quite sidewalks full of screaming girls yet, but enough to unsettle me, sure.
This Tina person struck me as one of those who’d play nice to my face while she plotted murdering me––or at the very least, annihilating my relationship with Jaden by any means necessary.
It didn't help that she knew how to play to her assets. Her clothes were always skin tight and revealing. She wore pink or red lipstick on pouty lips and her hair tousled in that “I-just-had-sex” look. She also laughed at everything Jaden said, even when it wasn’t funny, and used that as an excuse to push her tits even further into his face.
I wasn’t sure how long I was supposed to be okay with her hanging around, honestly.
I glanced at Cass, and she raised a pointed eyebrow, folding her arms under her own ample chest. I recognized the look there. I knew Cass would have plowed the groupie’s face into a wall by now, or at least given her a good scare.
Rolling her eyes when I just shrugged, Cass pointed at the door.
“He’s got enough skanks to help him here, Al,” she said, loud enough for pouty-lips to hear. “He doesn’t need us, okay? Can we just go? Before I catch crabs from one of these parasites?”
Jon, unsuccessfully, stifled a laugh.
I glanced over as he was choking on the seltzer water he inhaled up his nose.
When I glanced at Jaden next, he was talking to Randy, who looked marginally more awake than he had on the plane. I watched as Randy introduced Jaden to a heavy-set guy wearing a club T-shirt who was probably the sound guy.
They shook hands. The sound guy laughed at something Jaden said.
“Are you really going to hover, Allie?” Cass said. “Because if he wants to get his ego––or his dick––rubbed by skanks, he’s made it clear he’s going to do it whether you’re here or not.”
I gave her a hard look.
At least she’d said that quieter, though.
“You know what would help?” she added, her voice faintly apologetic. “Leaving. Having fun. With your friends… who love you.”
I glanced at the other end of the bar. Pouty lips was giggling with a few of her friends, and flirting with the bartender, who was stocking the well on that side.
I waved at Jaden’s drummer, Corey, as he passed us next. Corey’s face lit up when he saw me. He paused next to me, adjusting his arms and hands around a cymbal stand and a loop of cords he was carrying towards the stage.
“Do you guys need help?” I asked him.
Corey thought for a minute. “Naw. I don’t think so.” He glanced behind him, where the bass player and the other guitarist were carrying more pieces of Corey’s drum kit. “Did you ask Jaden? He’s kind of in charge of all that.”
“No. He seemed… busy,” I said, hating how lame it sounded. “If you don’t think you’ll need us, tell Jaden we’re taking off for the day, okay? I promised Cass and Jon some sightseeing, and we’re getting hungry and real-coffee deprived. I wanted to wait until you got here, but it looks like there’s a lot of you.” My eyes drifted to the other end of the bar, in spite of myself. “Anyway, we’re doing the Big Apple thing. While you guys do the rock star thing.”
“Okay, sure, Allie.” Corey grinned at me. “Can I come with you?”
I smiled back. “Of course. But you’re stuck telling Jaden.”
“Yeah.” Corey sighed. “Probably not, then. We’ve got that photo shoot in a few hours. For Alter-Ro Feed. And Jaden wanted to meet up with Dervish at their hotel.”
I bit my lip. First I was hearing about either of those things, too.
“…but maybe we’ll get done early?” Corey added hopefully. “We can all get dinner before we play. I want to spit off the Empire State Building. Or get drunk and start a fight in the Rainbow Room.”
I laughed. “You want to get arrested, you mean?”
“Maybe just hang out in the Village then,” he said, not missing a beat. “We could join another protest of seers’ rights crazies, since they’re all supposed to be hanging in Washington Square Park right now.” He smiled wider, nodding at me, then at Cass. “Well, have fun, kiddos. Cause a ruckus for the rest of us.”
Adjusting the cords he carried around his shoulder, he resumed walking roughly in the direction of the stage.
I watched Jaden for another moment, waiting to see if he’d turn around, so I could let him know we were going. When he didn’t, I gave up.
Looking back at Cass and Jon, I jerked my head towards the door.
“Okay. I’m done. Let’s go,” I said.
Cass held out her hands in a mock prayer gesture.
“Hallelujah!” she said. “She has seen the light!”
Jon only laughed, but I saw him looking at me, his eyes holding a faint sadness.
9
New City
Walking down the street in New York felt like being on a different planet.
It wasn’t the size of the city, or the city itself, per se.
I’ve lived in cities my whole life.
I’d watched San Francisco grow and change over the years. I’d watched the buildings grow taller, more covered in virtual feed screens, more tech-enhanced. It wasn’t the density of people on the street, or the number of holograms walking amongst the meat-puppets, as Jon jokingly called the real humans. It wasn’t even the sheer overwhelming nature of a lot of the holographic ads, which seemed to be operating more on shock tactics and aggression than those on the West Coast. I’d been to New York before, so it wasn’t even New York itself, per se.
Something had changed.
New York had changed.
Whatever the exact differences, it felt like a fundamental shift, something that would bleed out past the boundaries of New York itself, and infect the rest of the country. As we walked down the street, I found myself thinking I was seeing the future, in a sense.
For that reason alone, I tried to figure out what it was about those differences that bothered me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, maybe because it wasn’t one big change, but a few hundred thousand tiny ones, each too subtle to pinpoint.
Seers were everywhere, for one thing.
I’d never seen so many seers in the flesh in my life.
I’d certainly never been so close to any before––close enough that I probably could have touched them, if I’d been more bold.
Then again, I might have gotten arrested for trying it.
I gawked like a full-blown tourist when three seer males walked down the sidewalk right beside us, going in the opposite direction. The four men with them were probably handlers, if not owners, and all were probably armed, but that didn’t make it any less weird.
Both the seers and their human leash-holders wore suits that looked tailored, that had to cost tens of thousands of dollars each.
Two of those seers passed closer than I’d ever stood to one of them in my life.
I saw at least one of them look at me, too, probably because I was staring.
I knew it was rude, but I couldn’t stop myself from staring anyway.
Their eyes riveted me the most––even more than their respective heights, all of which must have been over six-five, and the subtle, strange perfection of their features. One had eyes of a dark red color. Another had irises that looked striped, alternating between pink and dark brown.
The third’s eyes were such a shocking, turquoise blue-green they looked opaque.
None of the eye colors looked “natural,” from a human perspective, but I knew from the brushed metal collars ringing each of their necks that they probably were natural––as in, not contacts or any kind of cosmetic or functional enhancement.
All three looked roughly “Asian,” but not quite like Asian humans.
All three ha
d broad shoulders, long limbs, high cheekbones, and strangely beautiful faces with faraway-seeming eyes. None of them laughed or smiled––or frowned, for that matter. They all looked to be in their late twenties to early thirties, but I knew from watching the feeds that they could each be upwards of a few hundred years old.
Seers didn’t age like humans, despite looking so much like us.
For one thing, they lived to be about seven hundred years old, maybe older––no one knew for sure, how long they could live. Young seers supposedly looked like pre-adolescent children until they were around twenty. After about thirty or forty, they aged more gradually until they reached something like eighty or ninety years old.
From that point on, supposedly they didn’t age visibly at all for a few hundred years, all of them appearing roughly like they were in their late twenties. I had no idea what they looked like older than that, but I’d heard there were seers over six hundred years old living in the Himalayas and other remote parts of Asia.
I’d walked a few more blocks before it occurred to me that I’d never actually seen male seers before, not outside of the feeds. From what I’d seen on the feeds, females made up some percentage over ninety of all the seers imported to the United States.
We’d barely walked another block before we came across our first seer fetish club.
Two buffed security guards stood outside, both more obviously armed than the suit-wearing handlers of the male seers we’d seen on the sidewalk. I also saw one seer, female and leashed, obviously there as advertisement for the services offered inside.
Even with the guards, it still blew my mind a little, to see an entrance to something like that right on Third Avenue. In San Francisco the entrances to most seer clubs were subtle, to say the least. Locals knew where a handful of them were, but I’d been told the high-end ones didn’t have storefronts at all. Those clubs operated purely through client referrals, likely via income-limited feed portals and word of mouth among their rich clients.
In New York, it was like they’d just stopped caring.
We saw a few protesters too, but not in large numbers.
Feed marquees followed us down the street on the sides of virtually-enhanced buildings, showing images of the much larger protests happening in Union Square and Washington Square Park. I saw Jon keep getting pulled into the images there. Seeing frowns on his face a few times, I could also tell he probably wanted to go down there.
All of the feeds warned against traveling to the area.
Apparently they’d arrested dozens already, and while the protests continued through the night more or less peacefully, a few flare-ups occurred that had the cops gassing the crowds, forcing them back.
Since we didn’t have residency in New York state, we’d be treated as outside agitators. Most states dealt with outsiders harshly, to discourage inter-state protests and demonstrations, so if we got picked up in an arrest sweep, we’d likely spend at least a week in jail and face serious fines, even if it was a case of “wrong place, wrong time.”
I knew Jon knew that too, which is probably what kept him from bugging us to go down there with him.
Even apart from seers, the city itself felt more busy and crowded than any of the previous times I’d been. There was a kind of humming vibrancy to the air, like what you might feel before a big storm, or maybe an earthquake. Virtual reality terminals seemed to pop out of every wall and every streetlamp and kiosk. Thanks to the new “smart ads,” virtual people walked the streets alongside regular people, sometimes almost doubling the population.
Advertisements followed us for blocks when we accidentally triggered them, showing us how we’d look in designer clothes, telling us about the great opportunity we were missing by not using this or that bank, or not purchasing this or that insurance. Virtual ads tried to get us to tell them what we wanted for Christmas, what our favorite band, soft drink or coffee flavor was, what our ideal man (or woman) was like, usually by transforming the smart ad hologram into a famous actor or model.
Those same ads then tried to sell us a new car, a hair cut, a cruise to Greenland, whiter teeth, vintage wine, rare chocolates, a robotic pet and slinky underwear.
Between that and all of the robo-taxis, regular taxis and honking cars, I’m surprised more people don’t get run over. As it was, I bumped into people quite a lot, especially as we wandered through Times Square, where the number of both virtual and real people went up exponentially.
Truthfully, the smart ads were getting so good, it wasn’t always easy to tell the difference.
We didn’t stay in Times Square long, thankfully, but walked back to Fifth Avenue and headed north. Right as we were about to enter Central Park, I ran full-bore into someone, hard enough that I actually fell down.
Before I’d recovered, she hissed at me,
“Watch where you’re going… worm!”
The voice was thick with an accent I didn’t know, what sounded like an odd combination of Eastern European and Asian.
I looked up at her face, before I’d even made sense of her words.
Once I did, I couldn’t help but stare.
Her dark purple eyes bored into me from a height a good foot taller than mine, even if I hadn’t been sprawled on the pavement. She wore a faux-leather dress that barely covered her crotch and one of those green-metal collars connected to a long necklace designed to look like an old fashioned, link-chain leash. Her arms were covered in tattoos, as was her neck.
She had to be a seer.
Unlike the blank-faced male seers I’d seen on the street, or the affected seductive looks I’d gotten from the seer prostitutes standing outside of clubs, this one looked angry, and borderline dangerous. Her high-cheekboned face was hard, her purple eyes narrow and sharp, her mouth curled in a frown. She glared down at me, and I got the impression I’d scared her, too.
“Serves you right!” she said. “Watch where you’re fucking going!”
I could only nod, feeling my cheeks flush.
The shoes on her feet, in addition to probably costing more than a month’s rent for my apartment in SF, could have impaled my neck to the sidewalk without running out of spiked heel.
I was still staring up at her as Jon came up behind me, hauling me to my feet.
Then a man appeared out of nowhere.
Before I could speak, he raised a four-foot, dark green pole like it was a sword. He stood behind her, so the seer obviously didn’t see him.
“Don’t!” I began, holding up a hand.
He hit her with the rod, hard, in the middle of her back.
I watched her convulse––then drop straight to her knees as if someone had kicked her feet out from under her. She fell straight from her knees forward onto her face and chest.
I stared down in shock as Jon yanked me backwards and the rest of the way to my feet, tugging on my arms until I was more or less vertical. Unable to take my eyes off the female seer, who now lay gasping on the pavement, looking up at me in a kind of confused shock, I fought Jon’s efforts to drag me out of the way.
A synthetic leather boot landed squarely on the woman’s neck, pinning her face into the sidewalk.
“Jesus!” I looked up, looking at the man who’d attacked her for the first time. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Let her go! Now!”
The man looked over at me.
I flinched.
He wore those dark goggles I'd only ever seen on military types, made of that same, shimmering, dark green metal that was illegal for commercial use. I never saw anyone but military or SCARB with goggles that looked like that.
That wasn’t the only reason I stared, though.
Under the thick band of goggles and over a black uniform with no visible insignia, long, curly red hair fell to the man’s shoulders. His broad face was so covered in freckles, his complexion looked sunburned. He grinned at me, flashing yellowing teeth, and I looked over his broad shoulders and the studded, real-leather jacket he wore over the uniform shirt.
<
br /> A sense of unreality fell over me as I focused on his muscular hands holding the military-grade cattle prod.
Jon pulled me back further, fighting my still-resisting limbs.
A crowd began to form around the downed seer.
They kept their distance, leaving space around her and the man with the electric prod, but at that dividing line, they jostled and pushed one another for a view of the downed seer.
I kept staring at the redhead, doubting my own eyes.
I was sure it was him, though.
He’d stood, staring at me from outside the SFO airport with his two pals, not long before the bomb went off. I couldn’t say for absolute certain, of course, not with the goggles, but I knew it had to be him. Same beat up leather jacket, same hair, same height and build, same yellow teeth with the too-long incisors, same tattoos on his hands and neck, same scruffy, reddish-brown beard, same steel spikes in his ears.
The bartender said the guy who gave him the note had red hair.
I fought Jon’s tugging fingers, still in shock that he’d attacked the female seer, unable to believe it was the same guy––unable to believe it wasn’t him.
“Let her go!” I found myself saying. “Let her go! She didn’t do anything!”
I looked down at her face. Her eyes were wide. I saw fear in them, could almost feel it on her as she panted against the asphalt. She looked up at me with a pleading expression, her dark purple eyes openly asking me for help.
I didn’t know for sure that she was a prostitute, but I guessed she must be. Prostitution was still the most common work category for seers. They were also the easiest import permits to obtain. Even so, seer prostitutes were expensive compared to the human variety, so it still shocked the hell out of me that the guy would hurt her. You could get tagged with huge fines for damaging owned seers, especially in ways that might affect their resale or work value.
So where the hell was her owner?
No one would be dumb enough to let a seer they owned walk around on its own, would they? I couldn’t imagine it, not even in New York. They were too valuable.