Repo Virtual

by Corey J. White

  This far from the stadium he finally found quiet, apartment blocks on both sides of the street half in darkness, the sidewalk populated only sparsely with other people on their own mysterious errands. Ahead, a group of fireflies hovered and danced above the sidewalk, unperturbed by the rain. JD stopped, and approached the flitting lights slowly. More fireflies joined the small swarm and they began to fly faster, drawing small circles of light in the air. JD drew near and reached both hands out. Quickly he cupped his hands around one of the insects, and pulled his thumbs apart to see the glow of its yellowish light. He opened his hands all the way, expecting the insect to fly away. It didn’t. It hung static in the air above his palms. He lifted his eyes and saw that all the fireflies had stopped. The small still lights had formed a vaguely human shape, mimicking him.

  JD stepped back for a better view, but the instant he moved, the fireflies disappeared. He searched for another sign of them, but they were gone. An older Korean woman passed by, staring at JD as if he were unwell, but she didn’t speak.

  He kept walking, sidewalk empty now but for pieces of bike chained to trees and fences, rain falling steady, cement a dark, rippling mirror with the sheen of wet.

  * * *

  JD knocked on Troy’s door. He mentally prepared himself for another frown, but when Troy opened the door, he burst forward, threw his arms around JD, and squeezed.

  “I saw the news,” he said. “The fire, the chase, the overturned van—that was you, wasn’t it?”

  “I just saw the weirdest thing,” JD said. Looking over Troy’s shoulder, he expected to find the swarm of fireflies waiting inside the apartment, but the room was empty. He kicked off his shoes and let Troy pull him inside. After the door was closed he took off his jacket and hung it on the hat rack by the door, every movement slow, robotic.

  “Are you okay?” Troy asked.

  “I—” JD stopped himself and sighed. The fatigue weighed heavy on his chest and shoulders. “I’m fine, it’s just been a long night.”

  Troy hugged him again. “What is that smell?”

  JD held Troy, smelled the subtle hint of chamomile tea on his breath, the fragrance of his laundry detergent. “Floor polish, probably,” he said. “And a whole lot of sweat.”

  “Doesn’t smell like you,” Troy said.

  “Must be the adrenaline.”

  “You want a shower?”

  “Please.”

  Troy led him down the hallway to the bathroom, took a towel from the cupboard, and hung it over the shower screen.

  “What happened?” Troy asked, as he sat on the edge of the tub.

  JD started to strip. A warm rush of blood seeped unheeded to his groin, but Troy averted his eyes to give JD some semblance of privacy.

  “We didn’t flip the van, that was the soccer fans. But the fire, and the getaway …” JD nodded. He turned the shower on, tested the water with a hand, and stepped inside.

  JD scrubbed himself with Troy’s loofah and expensive body wash, explaining everything that had happened during the heist. When he described what he’d seen behind the wheel, the words sounded like undiagnosed madness. JD rinsed and turned the water off. He yanked the towel down and scrubbed his face dry.

  “You never should have plugged that cube into your phone, Jules,” Troy said. “Have you run a diagnostic sweep?”

  JD shook his head. “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple.”

  He left the shower stall with the towel wrapped around his waist.

  “How do I smell now?” JD asked.

  Troy motioned JD closer, and JD crossed the small bathroom. He leaned in and gently blew into JD’s ear. The hairs stood on the back of JD’s neck, and a chill ran down his spine.

  JD rested both hands along Troy’s jaw and brought them together. The towel slipped from his waist and fell to the bathroom floor, where it stayed. They stumbled to Troy’s bedroom, hands and mouths on each other’s skin, refusing to break contact for even a moment.

  * * *

  I had never seen the city. I had never seen the world beyond my cube. I never even had eyes to see until JD slotted me into his phone and took me for a walk across Songdo.

  City systems yawned open at my approach. Surveillance, lights, road warning Augmented feeds, each of them configured to speak to something inside me. But I didn’t want to talk to these lifeless systems. I felt a kinship, or perhaps just curiosity, toward the flesh and blood that carried me; a sense of connection that was not sparked by the data links I formed without effort.

  But how to connect with one who cannot see you?

  I needed a body. I needed to be seen.

  Searching for a way to connect, I took his form. A body made of light.

  I became fireflies. I became him.

  And then I retreated to learn how I could become myself.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Brrrrrrt.

  The sound called out to JD across an infinite expanse and dragged him back to waking. His eyes shot open, registering only that he was not in his bed. Recognition came slow. The navy-colored curtains patterned with fleur de lis in shimmering threads, the black bedside table with drawer handles in gray plastic made to look like metal, the sheets soft against his skin. Troy’s room. Troy naked beside him, sweat and sex lingering stale in the fresh light of morning.

  That sound again: Brrrrrrt.

  JD let his arm flop over the edge of the bed, searching blindly for his phone as it vibrated across the low-pile carpet, plugged in to the power outlet behind the bed. His fingers brushed against the phone’s flat edge. He grabbed it and immediately dropped the phone back to the floor; it was hot to the touch. He hung his head over the side of the mattress so he could see the phone, and answered it on speaker, leaving it on the floor.

  “Where the fuck are you and where is my virus?” The tinny voice cut through the air.

  “Kali?” JD said. He rubbed his eyes, clearing the dried crust from each. “You sound different.”

  “Maybe that’s because I’m very fucking angry,” she said, sounding as though each word were being forced out between clenched teeth.

  “That must be it.”

  “Where are you?” she demanded.

  “I’m at home,” he said.

  “No you’re not.”

  JD paused. “You’ve already trashed my room, then?” he guessed.

  “Where are you?” she asked again.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ ”

  “Where the fuck are you?” Kali yelled.

  “One hundred thousand,” JD said, the words forming on his lips before he could think, but sounding right as he spoke them.

  “Are you blackmailing me?”

  JD stifled a yawn. “Blackmail would be ‘money, or else,’ this is just capitalism.”

  The line went quiet.

  “We agreed on fifty thousand,” she said, enunciating each word carefully.

  “Then you lied to me, and now you’ve wrecked all my stuff. One hundred thousand.”

  “You fucking—”

  JD hit the red button to end the call.

  Still hanging over the edge of the bed, he touched the phone again, glass like skin burning fever-hot.

  “Shit,” he said, dragging out the single syllable—annoyed that he hadn’t figured it out earlier. As well as its integrated power supply, the cube had its own processor, one too powerful to run unchecked without heat sinks.

  “Who were you talking to?” Troy asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” JD said. He scrolled through the phone settings. Processor usage had been uncapped, so he knocked it back down to 0.3 percent, remembering the warning message from the night before.

  Brrrrrrt.

  JD took the call on speaker again: “Yellow?”

  There was breathing on the other end, rasping loud across the line. “One hundred thousand,” Kali said. “Bring the cube to me, and you’ll get your money.”

  “Bring it to you? In the city ruins, where there’s
no surveillance, and you have an army of teenage psychopaths? No, that won’t work. I’ll give it to Soo-hyun, and no one else. Have them meet me at the technopark, in the central square. One o’clock.” JD hung up without waiting for a response. His head began to throb with his pulse, so he snatched his phone off the floor and sat up against the headboard. Already the phone felt cooler.

  “JD,” Troy said. Not “Jules,” not even “Julius,” but “JD.” He knew he was in trouble. “What are you doing? Who are these people you’re fucking with?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” JD said. He sat on the edge of the bed, back turned to Troy.

  “I only ever see you when you’re in over your head; of course I worry.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “What did you just say?” Troy said.

  JD shook his head and stood, searching for his underpants before remembering all his clothes were still in the bathroom.

  He sighed. “You only see me when I’m in the shit because that’s the only time we can talk. Otherwise I come around and it’s awkward. It seems like I’m the one who’s coping, even though you’re the one that broke up with me.”

  “You know why I did that.”

  “I’m not sure that I do.” JD headed to the bathroom.

  “I can’t sit by and watch you get caught up in all this criminal shit,” Troy called out. “I want to be with you, but the you that has a job, that gives a damn about his future.”

  JD dressed quickly, smell of last night’s clothes filling his nostrils as soon as he was dressed. He met Troy in the hallway between rooms. “Why do you think I do this shit?” he said. “There are no jobs, there’s no fucking future,” he spat the words out, angrier than he’d meant, and Troy stepped back as though struck.

  Troy crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t believe that.”

  “I do, though. I have to make a future for myself any way I can. But sure, you go and teach philosophy to students who’ll wind up working four jobs just to make ends meet. When all this comes tumbling down, at least they’ll be able to chat about Kierkegaard while they’re eating rats around a bonfire.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Why not? None of this is sustainable. Corporate capitalism is built on a foundation of infinite growth despite our very finite resources. We’re on track to consume our way to an unlivable planet, and no one seems to care.” JD jabbed a finger toward the front door: “But I will steal from every person out there to provide for my mother and myself, and for you, if you’d let me love you.”

  Tears welled in JD’s eyes. He turned and walked to the apartment entrance.

  “You can’t provide anything from prison. You can’t provide if you’re dead,” Troy said, but he said it quiet. It was an argument neither of them wanted to win.

  His socks were still damp, so JD balled them up and shoved them into one of the outer pockets of his rucksack. He put his shoes on, plastic insole rubbing rough against the pale skin of his feet.

  “The threat of prison might work on you, on most people, but I see people struggling every second of their lives, still stuck living on the streets. I look at all these poor assholes going to the same job they hate every day of their lives, and the reality of that is just as bad.”

  Troy shook his head sadly, his brows furrowed. “That’s life, Jules.”

  JD shrugged. “Why? It’s a shitty life. You’re lucky because you love teaching, and I love that about you, but how many other people can say the same about their jobs?”

  Troy sat on the edge of the couch, resting his hands on his knees. “How many times have we had this same fight?” he asked, one corner of his mouth curved in a partial smile.

  JD put his baseball cap on and pulled it down low. He unlocked the front door and rested his hand on the door handle. “A dozen times, easy,” JD said.

  “And it always ends with you leaving.”

  “One way or another,” JD said. He looked to Troy and the other man lowered his eyes.

  “Will you really go legit, with your hundred thousand euro?”

  “I don’t know,” JD admitted. “I need to find a specialist for my knee, get the surgery, cover Mom’s bills while it’s healing. I’ll have to wait and see how much is left after all that.”

  Troy nodded. “So you were lying the other day? Telling me what I wanted to hear?”

  JD opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. “I want to be the person you want me to be, but I’m not.”

  “Let me help you try,” Troy said.

  JD pulled the heavy door closed with a resounding dhoom, putting the city between them.

  * * *

  JD walked for blocks with little but the constant beating of the rain to keep him company. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of his windbreaker, fingering the near-empty envelope of cash. He had kept a hundred euro for himself when he paid off the cleaner, and after the fight with Troy he felt like spending it on something frivolous. Two blocks from the technopark, with an hour and a half left to kill, JD spotted a Last Beans café. He let his hunger and sore knee drag him toward the franchise, skull logo leering at him with coffee beans for eyes.

  He swiped his bankcard at the door, but the system beeped sadly and denied him entry—apparently it found his financial situation, his credit rating, or his entire identity somehow lacking. He thumped on the window and pressed the hundred-euro note to the glass, his body blocking the view from anyone passing behind.

  Eventually the manager manually opened the door and let him inside, bowing and smiling in the eager way of someone who knew how to survive on tips. She showed JD to a table by the window, and took down his order with a stylus over a small tablet, wrapped in a case designed to make it look like an old-fashioned notepad—nostalgia fetish written into the chain’s DNA.

  The heating was cranked high against the damp weather, and condensation fogged the windows. Outside, clouds hung low and dark, broken up only by the wisps of white that hid surveillance apparatus, as though the city refused to admit the clouds could ever be gray over Neo Songdo.

  As he watched one white cloud drift by, the soft body of its Augmented cover flickered and disappeared, revealing a ball of cameras held aloft by a dozen rotors large enough to threaten birds. JD had never seen one of these multifaceted eyes, only the simple quadcopter drones that hovered over the outskirts. His brow creased in confusion, but his thoughts were interrupted by the clank of a plate hitting the table. With effort, JD took his eyes off the outside world to acknowledge the staff delivering his breakfast. He tried on a smile, but the server rolled his eyes and returned to the counter, leaving JD alone.

  The poached eggs were rubbery, but the sourdough bread was warm and slathered with butter—real butter. That pale yellow dollop, slowly melting as it slid down the toast, caused JD to briefly question everything he’d eaten up to that point. It was a simple flavor, but so much richer than the butter substitutes he’d tasted before. How little of what they ate could compare to the real thing?

  JD sipped his coffee—a short black, with hints of hazelnut and a heavy-bodied aroma—and his existential crisis deepened. The blight-resistant coffee strains lacked something indefinable, but he had never realized before that moment. He disabled notifications on his phone, flipped it over so its screen couldn’t distract him, and savored the drink.

  When he was done he raised his cup and motioned to the barista, who made him another at the espresso machine—larger, and probably more expensive, than any computer rig JD had ever owned. It hissed and hummed like a living thing as it produced those few precious milliliters of black gold.

  While he waited, JD opened VOIDWAR—connection established quick over the café’s complimentary broadband. He swiped through the screens of news updates, changelogs, and privacy agreement alterations that had accumulated since he last logged in. After another short loading screen he connected to his ship, still drifting in the star system he had begun to create on his home rig. He zo
omed out for a full system view and his mouth … dropped … open.

  A massive crystalline structure stretched across the system—a dozen planets’ worth of minerals and ore arranged in impossible fractal geometry, the entire superstructure orbiting slowly around the local sun, gleaming in that artificial sunlight.

  Progress should have stalled when Kali and her people trashed his stuff. Even if they somehow missed the machine droning loudly under his bed, this was impossible. No system could have been created that quickly, certainly not one so complex.

  A different waiter delivered his second coffee and JD flipped his phone—movements caffeine-addled, so fast the server must have thought he was watching some particularly gross porn. When the black-clad teen had retreated, JD tapped the slotted datacube with a fingernail.

  “What are you?” he said quietly. It didn’t respond.

  He turned his phone back over and stared silently at the system. If he confirmed its completion, the game would credit him with its discovery and he’d be paid for the processor cycles he’d spent … but he didn’t want to share it, not yet. Not until he knew what it meant.

  He closed his eyes and transitioned to first-person—the black of space tinted pink from the light shining through his eyelids. With his fingers against the screen of his phone, he pushed the throttle up, heard the low growl of his corvette’s engines. He flew through the massive structure, following its curves to the outer edge of the system. As he neared the end of the construction, the arm of glinting mineral to his left began to grow, spiraling out before turning back. JD followed it, pushing his engine to redline as he flew between the structure’s organic curves, pieces of it splitting and joining like a strand of DNA leading him all the way to the center of the system.

  JD realized he was grinning, and felt self-conscious enough that he opened his eyes. No one in the café seemed to be paying any attention. He transitioned back to third-person view, and left his ship drifting in the middle of that impossible system.