Metatropolis

by John Scalzi

  It’s not the same thing as trust, but it’s like trust.

  She reached into her pocket and palmed her butterfly knife right-handed, slipped the pepper spray into the left. Caught the glance across the children’s heads that told her Ernie had seen her do it, and nodded agreement when the quick jerk of his head sent her up to the front of the line. She flipped the knife open, hiding it from the kids with her body. The motion made her tag ring on her bracelet with a clear sharp chime.

  “Open the door,” Ernie said when they came to the next lock. Cadie brushed her tag against it and pushed it open with her shoulder, telling herself to be ready for whatever was on the other side.

  Nothing, and the sharp beat of her heart left the taste of rotting metal in her mouth as she turned left, then right, and made doubly sure. Her pulse ratcheted down a half notch, and she was just about to slink forward and clear the offices opening off both sides when the door to the nearer one flipped back and she found herself face to face with a man with a gun.

  She reacted almost without knowing it, taking in so many details in an instant—the stubble on his cheek, the way his gun shook in his hand. It was just adrenaline. She didn’t think for a moment that he would hesitate to shoot her.

  Her left hand came up and she maced him in the face. His gun went off; the head-spinning boom almost blinded her. But he’d flinched, and the first bullet must have missed her, because she didn’t feel it hit. She stepped forward, the knife rising from her fist like a scorpion’s sting, and punched him under the ribs. Hard, something shoving her hand down. Thunder against the side of her head, a blow as if somebody had struck her on the ear with a cymbal. Hot air kicked against her cheek as the gun fired again and he staggered into her. The knife driving down her fist because he leaned against it, and how was she on her knees? How had that happened? He slumped on top of her, everything slippy and wet, his shirt tearing away from the knife blade so she could see the dark ink of the tattoos across his chest. Should his skin be that white under the red? Maybe all the blood was on the outside now. She fell under his weight, hard thump as her head hit the floor.

  Her strength all swirled out of her like somebody had pulled a cork on a string.

  SHE woke briefly at the bounce of the gurney as paramedics lifted her into place, woke again as they slid the trolley into the elevator—Are you sure? Cadie thought, unironically—and felt herself going under, swept along a tumble of semiconsciousness and battered on its rocks. “I need my daughter sent them,” she said, or tried to say, but there was something over her nose and mouth and the paramedics looked at her as uncomprehendingly as farm animals.

  She would have panicked—she tried to panic—but even the adrenaline could not keep her above water when the tide of exhaustion swept over her again.

  THE next awakening was gentler. Gray, soft, in cool sheets. Someone beside her, because Cadie could hear the breathing. She turned her head and opened her eyes, and found herself face to face with Stephanie Shearer.

  The rustle of sheets must have alerted Shearer, because she looked up from her omni—opened flat in reader mode—and smiled. “Awake pretty fast,” she said, and folded the omni away.

  Cadie made a noise that she meant to be a word, but it came out as more of a wheeze.

  “Sorry,” said Shearer. “I can’t give you a drink. The bullet perforated your intestine. But it’s all fixed now, and you can have a swab. Will that help?”

  Helplessly, Cadie nodded. She managed to raise a hand to take the soaked sponge on a stick that Shearer handed her. There wasn’t enough water in it, but it did ease the stickiness on her tongue and palate. A few moments later, she managed to croak, “What happened?”

  Shearer took the swab away. “You got shot. And then managed to knife the shooter fatally. Don’t worry, we have very good lawyers, and you’re unlikely to be charged.”

  “Firuza,” Cadie said. She tried to make it sound like a question, but she couldn’t get her voice to lift at the end.

  “Safe in the Cascades. We have a place there.” Shearer smiled, dunking the swab in the water glass again. “Distributed living. You can go see her as soon as you’re well enough. I mean, assuming you want to stay with us.”

  Cadie wasn’t ready to think about that yet. So she said, “You were the artist.”

  “Artist?”

  “On the cubicles.” Her voice was coming back. “You painted the cubicles in the dormitory.”

  “Busted,” Shearer said, smiling. “You saw me coming. I thought they needed something to make them feel like home.” She rummaged in her pocket, came up with something, and laid it on the bedside table with a soft chime.

  Cadie lifted her head to look, aware now of the tug of needles in her left hand. It was the circular bracelet, and now—she saw—there were three tags on it. “Is that mine?”

  “Can’t keep you on probation when you’ve gotten shot defending us,” Shearer said. “What do you say?”

  “Your people. In Ukraine. You still need help?”

  Shearer nodded.

  So did Cadie, though it made her head spin. “All right.” Then she pressed her head back into the pillow and closed her eyes against the dizziness. “I’ll do it. You know the thing about your Utopia—”

  She didn’t open her eyes to look at Shearer, but she felt the tension, heard the creak of her chair as she leaned forward. Shearer said, “It’s not a Utopia. It’s just maybe something that sucks a little less. And it’s not mine.”

  “Yeah,” Cadie said. “Whatever.” It took a minute for her to gather her strength. “This will never work.”

  A longer silence this time, until Shearer said, “It’s hope. Even if it fails. It’s hope. We need hope. We need to learn to trust the people we ought to trust again.”

  “Yeah.” Cadie swallowed. Her throat still ached with dryness. She wondered if she had enough strength to ask for the swab again. “I can’t argue with that.”

  UTERE NIHIL NON EXTRA QUIRITATIONEM SUIS

  JOHN SCALZI

  Now we come to my story, and to explain my story, I need to expand a little on what I saw as my role during the creation of METATROPOLIS. As I’ve mentioned, I was the editor of the project, which meant that in the early stages I needed to help direct the world-building conversations and move them toward a workable plan. Later, when the stories came in, I gave feedback to the other authors about what needed to be tweaked in their stories. The good news in both cases was that I was working with really smart, really talented and experienced writers and creators, so in that respect my responsibilities were very easy and simple. Go me.

  But I was an author here as well as an editor, and the editor in me decreed that the author in me would be the “spackle” of the anthology—that is, if after all the stories were in there was some aspect of this shared world still left unexplored, that I would go in and cover that hole. And as it turned out, there was one small hole: The stories of METATROPOLIS were indeed meta—that is, they looked beyond cities in interesting and fascinating ways. However, that meant to me that there needed to be a story actually situated inside a city, from the point of view of someone for whom the cities were simply “home.” So that’s the story I assigned to myself.

  And because I’m dumb, I gave it a title in Latin that I can barely pronounce. Shhh. Don’t tell.

  When people look at my wedding photos, they often wonder what the pig is doing in the wedding party.

  Well, let me tell you.

  IT all began, like so many things do, on a Monday.

  The first thing I remember is my little sister Syndee poking me in the cheek.

  “Mom says it’s time to get up,” she said.

  I swatted at her with my eyes closed. “It’s too early to get up,” I said.

  “It’s nine thirty,” Syndee said. “Says so right on your alarm clock.”

  “The clock lies,” I said.

  Syndee started poking me in the face again. “Mom told me to tell you if you missed your pla
cement appointment that she would make you regret it.”

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” I said, and then rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. I could hear Syndee stomp off, calling for mom. A couple minutes later, I heard someone come back in the room.

  “Benjamin,” said a lower voice than my sister’s. It was mom. “You have your placement appointment in an hour. Time to get up.”

  “I’m up,” I said.

  “There is no definition of ‘up’ that includes lying in bed with your eyes closed,” mom said.

  “Five more minutes,” I said. “I swear I’ll be up then.”

  “Oh, I know you will be,” mom said, and that’s when she poured a pitcher of water onto my head. I tried to jump out of bed and got tangled in my blankets, and fell head first onto the rug.

  “That’s better,” mom said.

  I rubbed my head. “That wasn’t necessary,” I told mom.

  “No,” mom agreed. “I could have poured hot coffee in your lap instead. But either way, you’re out of bed. Now you get into the shower. You have five minutes for that. After that I switch the shower over to graywater, and I know how much you hate that.”

  I pulled myself off the floor and stomped over to the bathroom. Mom was right; graywater sucked. Technically it was filtered to be just as clean as regular water. Psychologically I didn’t want to bathe in water one filtering process away from someone’s kidneys.

  “Five minutes,” mom said again. “And don’t think I’m not paying attention. You’re not going to miss this appointment, Benji.”

  “I’m not going to miss it,” I said, starting the water.

  “I know,” mom said. “Because I’ll drag you there by the hair if I have to.” She walked off. As she walked off I saw Syndee smirking at me.

  “Should have got up when I said to,” she said.

  “Piss off,” I said. She smirked some more and flounced off. I stripped out of my underwear and stepped into the shower and stayed in it until that sulfur smell told me mom had switched the tank over to graywater. Then I soaped up, rinsed off and got out.

  TEN minutes later I was standing on the curb, waiting for at least one other person to come out of the complex and rideshare. You can take a pod by yourself if you have to, but it comes out of your overall household energy budget, and we were already splurging on the standard water for showering. If I solo’d a pod to my appointment, mom really would drop hot coffee into my lap. So I stood there for a few minutes waiting to see who would come by.

  “Hey, look,” someone said, behind me, stepping into the pod queue. “If it isn’t Benji.”

  I turned and saw Will Rosen, one of my least favorite humans, and Leah Benson, who was one of my favorites. Sadly, Leah and Will were a couple, so spending time with Leah meant having to tolerate Will, and him having to tolerate me. So I didn’t see Leah all that much.

  “Hello, Benji,” Leah said.

  “Hi, Le,” I said, and smiled, and then glanced over next to her. “Will,” I said.

  “You’re up early,” Will said. “It’s not even noon.”

  On cue, a pod swung up on the track and opened the door to let us in. I considered telling them I was waiting for Syndee and taking the next pod.

  “Coming, Benji?” Leah said.

  I climbed in.

  “Parker Tower,” Will said to the destination panel. He was off to work.

  “Kent Tower,” Leah said. She was off to work, too.

  “City Administration,” I said.

  “Running an errand for your mom?” Will said, as we started moving.

  “No,” I said, more defensively than I intended. “I’ve got a placement appointment.”

  Will feigned a heart attack. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “That means you actually took your Aptitudes.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and looked out the window. I was trying to avoid this conversation.

  “Miracles do happen,” Will said.

  “Will,” Leah said.

  “Benji knows I’m kidding,” Will said, the same way he always did when he was doing some serious knife twisting work. “And anyway I think it’s great. He’s the last of our class to do it. He always did things on his own schedule, but I was beginning to wonder how close he was planning to cut it.”

  “Now you know,” I said.

  “Well, congratulations,” Will said. “It’ll be nice to know you’re part of the contributing part of society now. That you’re not just relying on your mom to get you through.”

  That was when I decided I’d had just about enough of Will. “Thanks, Will,” I said, and shifted position. “So, how’s your brother these days?”

  Will got a look that I guessed you might get if you had something very cold and hard suddenly thrust up your ass. I treasured that look.

  “He’s fine,” Will said. “So far as I know.”

  “Really,” I said. “That’s great. I always liked him. The next time you see him, you tell him I said hello.”

  Leah shot me a look that said stop that. I just smiled pleasantly as pie for the next couple of minutes, until the pod slowed down, came to a stop, and then opened to let Will out. He was still sitting there, glaring at me.

  “Your stop,” I said.

  Will snapped out of it, gave Leah a quick kiss, and hustled himself out the door of the pod.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Leah said to me, as we started moving again.

  “Well, he asked for it,” I said, and motioned back to the platform where Will had gotten off. “You saw it. He was crapping all over me in that ‘I’m just kidding’ condescending way of his. Like he always does. Tell me he wasn’t trying to push my buttons. Like he always does.”

  “He was trying to push your buttons,” Leah said, agreeing with me. “But you don’t do much to stop him, Benji.”

  “I think asking him about his brother stopped him pretty well,” I said.

  “There are better ways,” Leah said.

  “Are there?” I asked. “Leah, you know I love you, dearly, but the guy you’re dating is kind of an asshole. Why are you still with him?”

  “You mean, why am I still with him, and not you?” Leah said.

  “It’s crossed my mind,” I said.

  “I remember trying that,” Leah said. “I don’t remember it working out very well.”

  “I was young and stupid,” I said, and gave her a smile. “I got over it. Really.”

  Leah smiled, which was something I liked to see, and looked out the pod window for a moment. “Benji, you were always very cute,” she said. “But as much as you’d hate to admit it, Will has a point. You’ve been taking longer to grow up than the rest of us did. When the rest of us finished our studies, we took the Aptitudes and got jobs. You spent your time sleeping in and screwing around. Will’s right that you’re the last one in our class to take your Aptitudes and to get placement.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “There’s Taylor White.”

  Leah fixed me with a look. “You’re really going to compare yourself with a guy who was eating crayons until he was fifteen,” she said.

  “That’s a rumor,” I said.

  “It’s not a rumor,” Leah said. “I saw him do it. Art class. It was a green pastel. He nibbled it, Benji. And then he put it back. I had to share the pastel box with him. It was disgusting.”

  “Nibbling’s not the same as eating,” I said.

  “Does it really matter?” Leah said. “Taylor’s a sweet guy, but we both know he’s going into the assisted job track. You don’t have that excuse. You’re two months off from being twenty, Benji. That really is cutting it close.”

  “I don’t know what that has to do with you going out with Will and not me,” I said. We were coming into Leah’s stop.

  “I know, Benji,” she said. “That’s sort of the problem.”

  The door slid open. Leah reached over and kissed my cheek. “Good luck today, Benji,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said. Leah slipped
out of the pod. “Hey,” I said. She turned back to look at me. “Even if you’re not going to date me, you could still do better.”

  Leah looked like she might say something to that, but the pod door slid shut.

  AND so I landed in the office of Charmaine Lo, Public Assignment Officer for the city of New St. Louis.

  “Ah, Mr. Washington,” she said, from her desk, as I walked in. Behind her was a large monitor that took nearly the entire back wall of her office. “Why don’t you come and have a seat.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and admired the monitor. Lo followed my gaze to the monitor and then looked back at me.

  “It’s a monitor,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s nice. I need to get one of those for my bedroom.”

  “Not unless you have a special dispensation from the energy board,” she said. She was looking down now at the tablet monitor that held my case file.

  “I’ll have to talk to my mom about that,” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  Lo looked up at this with a look that told me I had failed, badly. “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “You’re the son of Josephine Washington.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “Must be nice having your mother on the executive board of the city,” Lo said.

  “It’s not too bad,” I said.

  “I voted for your mother in the last election,” Lo said.

  “I’ll tell her that when I get home,” I said.

  “I hope you understand, Mr. Washington, that your mother’s stature and influence won’t help you here,” Lo said. “Job assignments in the city are based on merit, not nepotism.”

  “I know,” I said. “Sorry. About the monitor thing, I mean. I was trying to make a joke.”

  Lo looked at me for a moment. I decided not to make any more jokes. “Sorry,” I said again.

  “Well, then, let’s get to it,” she said, and tapped her tablet. The wall monitor sprang to life with thousands of boxes, each with text in them. She pointed at the wall, and looked back at me. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.