The streets were busy for a Monday after dark, and good for him. Better hunting here than anywhere else in the city, since only the down-and-out and the wealthy stupid used cash money. Few wealthy stupid but lots of down and out here. And if his tecmate weren’t completely fragged, he’d find dollars two blocks ahead. Nothing there but some abandoned buildings and a tiny, unused park. Weird.
At Third Avenue, he paused for a few motor cars to grumble past, felt the crackle of electricity and whistling wind of the aeros as they zoomed overhead like big metal June bugs. A flock of teenage boys on powerblades swept around him, beyond fast, almost invisible, like supercharged specters, heading north, in the direction of the bridge. The lure of the whore, he thought. Irresistible, if you still had life in you.
Yeah, well, he didn’t give a shit.
He turned north, toward 120th. More abandoned buildings, more shadows. Fewer humans. The “park,” as it was called, was just a small bit of open space—maybe a couple of thousand square feet—where the trees and undergrowth had overtaken everything manmade. Dark. Dark as it could get in the city night.
Why the hell would anyone with dollars be in there?
Drug deal? He snickered. No such thing as drugs anymore. You just charged up your tecmate and rode the motherfucker. Some said there were still pharmaceuticals in the wild blazing nighttime, but if there were, they were so far underground that a mole would never find them.
An iron rail fence surrounded a well of pure blackness. He shoved the gate open, which made a sound like his old uncle drawing his last breath. Nothing to see within. A rustle of leaves and brush. His tecmate was all kinds of fouled here; just a gyrating compass needle in his field of vision that made him dizzy. But he knew was close.
Something touched his shoulder, and he spun wildly. A pair of luminous eyes was glaring at him, inches from his—wide and way too bright.
Jesus God.
“What?” he growled, switching on his most menacing voice. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Dollars,” came a deep voice, so full of bass he felt the vibrations. “You’re looking for dollars.” The voice rose and became sharper, mimicking the sound of his brain voice. “‘Locate dollars.’”
Was this character his target? He couldn’t make out any features in the darkness, nothing beyond the horrible gleaming eyes. Typical Fusion accent. Somehow, the man knew about him, his quest.
He knew.
Something in his field of vision moved, and he realized the figure had lifted an arm to point into the darkness. As his eyes adjusted, he realized the man was big—very big—and wearing fine clothes. Stylish sweater, a scarf, and a fedora. Nothing beneath the brim but those luminous eyes.
As he gazed after the pointing finger, he saw something glittering in the murky, ambient light from the street. Something big and gnarled-looking, gleaming oddly in the darkness. Unable to help himself he took a few steps toward it.
It was gold.
It was gold.
Nothing else looked like that.
“Illuminate.”
His failing tecmate refused to respond but for a brief flicker, which highlighted the shape long enough for his eyes to absorb the sight of it.
Twelve feet tall, it had to be. Stylized, even abstract. A caricature of a human—maybe—but with an oversized, grotesque head, with strange, tendril-like protrusions where the face should be; a pair of broad fins, or wings maybe, running lengthwise down the back of its elongated torso. All gold, its burnished surfaces reflecting the distant, hazy city lights. It looked alive.
“Dollars for you,” came the deep voice, and Turner felt the presence of the man behind him. Not threatening, but invading his personal space.
“Back away,” he said. “What is this? What the hell is this?”
“Your target. Maybe?”
He took a few steps toward the towering gold beast, which seemed to possess a brilliant inner fire, and he swore he felt waves of heat rippling over his body. All awareness of the strange man fell away as a strange ecstasy overcame him, a sense that this massive, impossible construct of glittering metal was somehow sentient.
He reached forward and laid a hand on the smooth metal—which felt warm and silky, almost wet, beneath his fingertips. As he slid his hand over the finely sculpted surface, a sudden, stabbing pain in his forefinger made him jerk his arm back, and he realized his finger was bleeding. Profusely. He glimpsed a shiny black stain on the golden surface where he had touched it.
“Son of a bitch!” He wiped his finger on his pants and leaned closer to peer at the gleaming gold skin. There. A thorn-like spine protruding from the otherwise smooth surface. As he studied the bizarre contours, he realized the thing was covered with them—hundreds of little metallic spurs with needle-sharp tips, as if designed for defense. Defense against what? This damned thing should not exist, not in this little park, not anywhere. Where the hell could it have come from?
He spun around, his eyes questing in the darkness for the big man. It took several moments to discern the impeccably attired, elephantine shape standing next to a tangle of foliage near the iron fence. “Hey,” Turner called. “What is this thing? Tell me about it.”
The stranger said nothing further, and Turner spun back around to stare at the golden beast. His finger throbbed, and he reflexively slipped his hand into his pocket to apply pressure against the fabric. He touched something wrinkled, coarse, and dry. He knew what it was, but he knew it shouldn’t be there. Couldn’t be there. He closed his hand around it and withdrew it from his pocket.
A ten dollar bill. Old—like all cash money—dirty, blood-streaked, and faded, but real. He hadn’t had a bill of any denomination in so long he’d all but forgotten what one looked like.
What the glorious fucking goddamn?
He heard a hoarse bark behind him and turned in time to see the silhouette point at him and then, with astonishing speed, disappear through the gate to the street.
“You! Fat man!”
He didn’t want to leave the statue, couldn’t leave it—it was gold, for God’s sake! What about those spurs? Could he break some of them off—enough to comprise a respectable sum? He reached for the statue again, this time very carefully, until his fingers fell upon one of the sharp projections, and he gripped it gingerly and tugged. Fixed fast; maybe with a tool of some sort he could trim it off. He let go of the spur, but he must have let his finger drag over its edge, for again he felt a fiery jab in his flesh, and he cried out more in frustration than pain. He shoved his hand back into his pocket, swearing under his breath at his ineptness.
He touched the crumpled paper in his pocket—and realized something was different. Thicker. Smoother. Somehow, he knew what he would find. Pulling out the contents of his pocket, he discovered another blood-streaked ten dollar bill. That hadn’t been there before either.
“Messed up, messed up,” he whispered to himself. This time when he touched the statue, he intentionally found one of the thorns and pressed his hand against it, ignoring the hot spike in his flesh. He peered closely at the fresh black stain on the metal, and he watched in surprise and awe as it slowly shrank to a dark pinpoint and finally disappeared—as if the golden skin had absorbed it.
This time, he found a twenty in his pocket.
More blood, more cash money.
With this, he could hop an aero down to the East Village and buy a drink. No answers there, to be sure, but it had been a long time since he’d had a decent glass of gin. Or better yet, scotch.
He reached for the statue, slapped his hand against one of its smooth curves, and let it drag until one of the spurs caught his palm and opened his flesh.
Another twenty in his pocket. The stuff was still legal tender, even if it was bad news. He even had enough of it to buy the fat man a drink, if he could find him again.
What the fuck did they mean his tecmate couldn’t be updated?
He could certainly afford updates now, but much to his shock, his tecm
ate was just plain dead—or had somehow been blocked from receiving the datastream. How the hell could he get blocked? He’d heard of it had happening once to a fellow fugitive-recovery agent who’d brought in a rogue, high-ranking government official. But that was years ago, and he had never done anything like that. This was grim, grim, grim. Still, not necessarily an insurmountable situation, if you knew the right people in the hierarchy. He didn’t, but Felix might.
Felix Callander: the closest thing to a friend he’d known in his adult life. One of the working poor, like he used to be, but loaded with connections and always thirsty. Felix ran in different—important—circles, and Turner could learn things from him.
“Hell no, you can’t make things appear out of nowhere, not even with uber psych mods,” Callander offered. “Now, I’ve heard on the pipe that a few betacorpers have learned to use their tecs to move things. You know, little things. Nothing big. You have to know how to focus your energy.”
“Ever seen anyone do it?”
Callander looked incredulously at him. “I think it’s a load of shit. Why you asking me, anyway?”
“Just curious.”
Callander took a long slug of his tequila. He didn’t look comfortable sitting in a semi-respectable dive bar in Midtown, not in the company of someone who paid only with cash. “What’s happened to your hands, amigo? Brigands get the better of you?”
A noncommittal shake of his head. “Just been working.”
“At what?”
“Manual labor.”
“Obviously turning some dollars. You sure look wired, though. And those cuts are bad.”
Turner glanced around the bar, a cozy little joint called Bitters, dimly lit and reasonably quiet, with only a smattering of patrons, most sitting in dark isolation, absorbed in communion with the world via their tecmates. Then…there. Outside the small, grimy window that faced Park Avenue. The big man again, eyes beneath the fedora peering in at him. The huge head nodded, then abruptly vanished.
Constantly now, ever since Turner had found the statue: the big man showing up for a second or two and then disappearing. Never lingering or offering an opportunity to exchange words. Turner had lain in wait for him near the golden beast a few times—in vain, of course. The stranger appeared at his own whim. Like a fucking ghost. A fucking fat ghost.
Yeah, and what was the nod for? Tacit approval for Turner bleeding himself dry and refilling his veins with alcohol?
“Yeah, I saw him,” Callander said, clearly having witnessed Turner’s brief visual exchange with the man. “Captured his face, what I could see of it. He a brigand?”
“You got his face?”
“Yeah, but he’s wrapped up in that scarf. I’d shoot the image to you if you could use your tecmate.”
“I was hoping you could help with that.”
“Sit down and shut the fuck up.”
Turner’s heart sank. “Seriously. I don’t know anybody else.”
“You think I got connections like that? I wouldn’t do that for somebody I gave a shit about.”
“What about fat man? Can you ID him?”
“Nothing’s coming up.”
It had to be the big man blocking him. If he could be responsible for a gold statue that turned blood into money, he could damn well jam Turner’s tecmate. This all reeked of some dark intrigue that specifically target him. Of course he had enemies. Anyone who’d been in his line of work had his fair share. But to the last soul, every brigand he had ever turned over had been small time, unconnected to people or systems that could worm their way into his electronic sphere. Hacking was an all but dead art; there wasn’t anybody who didn’t leave a unique footprint in the system. And if you broke into the system and left your footprint, bye-bye you. Forever.
Callander was obviously leery of leaving footprints—with good reason. A few of the fish he had snagged were prize-winning.
Turner gave his companion a long, thoughtful stare. He was itching to share his discovery, which to now had been his and his alone; no other soul ever ventured near that dark corner of the park. He knew he shouldn’t…he couldn’t…but somebody had to know its secret, how it could exist. Callander had his circuits in everything. He might protest, but if he didn’t know something about anything, he sure as shit knew how to find out.
Turner couldn’t keep bleeding himself forever. His left hand was infected.
The fat man had nodded.
“Come on,” he said, dropping a pile of bills on the counter. “I’ve got something to show you. You gonna like it.” As he rose from his seat, he noticed the grizzled barkeep eyeing the money as if it were a heap of steaming shit. The old man didn’t reach for it until Turner and Callander were on their way out the door.
“You keep paying in cash, they gonna take you for a brigand,” Callander said. “You got no tecmate, so how you gonna prove you not a brigand?”
He didn’t bother to answer. They dodged a cluster of standers on the moving sidewalk and fell into a brisk walk in the stationary lane, heading north. With his tecmate as dead as a cinder, he couldn’t even hook in to take advantage of the city’s most meager city transportation service, and Callander sure as hell wasn’t going to pay. Once they got up to 42nd Street, half a dozen blocks north, they could find an aero that accepted cash money.
“Hey, isn’t that your man?”
“What?”
“Over there,” Callander said, pointing across the avenue. “Fat man alert.”
Sure enough. The figure was unmistakable, striding up the sidewalk like a human grizzly, one end of his violet scarf trailing from his thick neck like a fluttering banner. As he reached the corner at 37th, he turned, the eyes beneath the hat’s brim as brilliant the golden statue itself. The huge head bobbed up and down—another approving nod?—and then, with shocking speed, the man vanished again.
He must have stepped onto the moving lane.
Yeah, right.
At 42nd Street, Turner flagged an aging, foul-smelling aerotran and fed a stack of bills into its meter, which accepted them with a dry groan, as if it had indigestion. He gave it an address near the park, which it barely understood—most riders just mentally fed it the fare over their tecmates—and it whisked them up into the fast lane, five stories above the road. Three minutes later, they were disembarking at the corner of Third and 120th. Callander hadn’t said squat the entire time, and now just stared at the sidewalk as they trudged toward their destination.
His eyes would light up soon enough.
They slipped through the iron gate and wandered back into the darkness, which was bereft, as always, of any other human presence.
“You’re shitting me, right?” Callander said. “We gonna dine with rats?” But something had caught his attention: something that gleamed in the dim, filtered light from the street. He took a few halting steps toward it. Turner couldn’t see his face, but he almost heard Callander’s jaw hit the ground.
“I want to know,” Turner said, his voice a coarse whisper, “what this is. How it got here. How it does what it does.”
“What does it do?”
Without an inkling of what he was doing, he grabbed Callander by the back of the neck and, with all his strength, shoved him forward, smashing his face into the golden beast’s torso. A sickening crunch, and black blood was spraying over the gleaming surface, a strangled cry escaping Callander’s throat.
Turner immediately released him, reeling in shock at what he done.
He hadn’t intended this to happen.
Why, why, why, why, WHY?
Callander’s body slid to the dank concrete at the statue’s feet, his eyes rolling up to gaze into Turner’s in disbelief, reflecting Turner’s own internalized question.
On the ground, the edges of several bills peeked around Callander’s sleeve.
“That is why.”
Callander’s eyes followed his gaze; registered brief comprehension. Then they closed.
For a second, Turner froze. Callander mi
ght have just captured his image. If johnlaw were to process the final cell files of his tecmate….
Nothing he could do about it now.
He glanced upward and, in the dim light, saw the jagged, barbed spines protruding from the statue’s flanks. They were longer than before. Bigger.
“I didn’t mean to,” he mumbled, doubting that Callander could hear him. “I didn’t mean to.” He knelt and gazed at his friend’s ruined face. The flesh of his forehead and cheeks had been shredded, and blood was running in thick rivulets onto the pavement. Callander’s jaw hung open and his chest heaved as he struggled to breathe.
Turner lowered his hand to his friend’s face, felt the warm slickness spreading onto his fingers. He rose, went to the statue, and wiped his hand on the hot, burnished metal.
He actually felt a shifting in his trouser pocket.
Dollars.
He went back and forth between his bleeding friend and the statue a dozen times. By the time Callander stopped breathing, Turner had almost a grand in his pocket.
He never saw the fat man watching him from the gated entrance, but he felt the hot, approving gaze like a pair of twin suns on his back. Like a cataract of blood pouring down on him from out of the darkness.
When he turned to leave the park, he knew that Callander’s body wouldn’t be there later.
In fact, by the time he made his way out through the iron gate, he was pretty sure it was already gone.
Tecmate, final images, blood, bone, and all.
He inquired of a couple of tech engineers he knew, but they assured him there was nothing they could do to help him—not if his tecmate had been blocked by the Central Nerve. And if it had simply expired, his only option was to have it replaced, which would cost more blood than his brain could ever conceive.
Additional complication: if the implant wasn’t dead, and an unknown party was actually jamming it, then attempting to replace it would almost surely be fatal.
You just didn’t fuck with a live tecmate.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 Page 17