by DeVere, Taya
To all underdogs out there:
The black sheep, the odd ducks, the rejects, the loners.
You make this world go around.
DVM Press
Vaakunatie 16 D 14
20780 Kaarina, Suomi-Finland
www.dvmpress.com
www.tayadevere.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Taya DeVere
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Suomi-Finland and United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, at DVM Press. Vaakunatie 16 D 14, 20780 Kaarina, Suomi-Finland.
For information about special discounts available for bulk purchases, sales promotions, fund-raising and educational needs, contact [email protected]
ISBN 978-952-7404-08-9 First Ebook Edition
ISBN 978-952-7404-09-6 First Print Edition
Cover Design © 2020 by Deranged Doctor Design - www.derangeddoctordesign.com
Ebook formatting by Polgarus Studios – www.polgarusstudios.com
Editing by Christopher Scott Thompson and Lindsay Fara Kaplan
CONTENTS
SHORT STORY — ABOUT A GIRL
CHAPTER 1 — THE CLOSET
CHAPTER 2 — THE LONDON EYE
CHAPTER 3 — 2 YEARS EARLIER
CHAPTER 4 — IN THE BLIMP’S SHADE
CHAPTER 5 — AFTERGLOW
EPILOGUE
i — Dear Reader
ii — About the Author
iii — Final Thanks
iv — UNCHIPPED Series Release Schedule
ABOUT A GIRL
A short story in the world of the Unchipped series
Fifteen years. That’s how long it took for her parents to give up on her. Hannah sits at the kitchen table and stares at the drained, weary woman across from her. The middle-aged woman’s hand moves to the right, a vape pen pressed against her lower lip. The red lights on the AR-glasses blink as Hannah’s mother looks as if she’s staring straight at her daughter. Still, anyone who spent more than half an hour with this woman would know better: she’s oblivious to Hannah’s existence.
Hannah leans over the table toward her mother. “So, where are you sending me this time, Tricia?”
It’s not surprising that her mother shows no sign of acknowledging her words. She’s too far away from this reality. It’s a small kitchen table, only two feet across. She’s close enough for Hannah to see a few new gray hairs on the side of Tricia’s French bob cut. But the table might as well be Hyde Park.
Only a year ago, calling her mother by her first name would’ve been enough to pull the woman’s mind from the charts and numbers and notes she’s lost herself in. Tricia would have been livid. Unhinged. But a lot can happen in a year.
If Hannah’s father were here, he’d give her a long speech about the new technology. How it’s rotting everyone’s brain, how the AR dooms humanity. Face-to-face meetings, another human’s touch, a real connection… They’ll all soon be extinct. At least, according to Fred.
Nothing like that will ever happen to Hannah and Benny. They won’t be taken over by AR and turned into mindless robots or whatever it is this new future city is about to do. Though her father’s right about her mother, that’s for sure.
Despite the neighborhood gossip, Fred hasn’t moved out, nor is he living in an institution somewhere. He’s not dead, either. His slightly hunched back and dull gray business attire can be found somewhere in Europe. But rarely at home here in London.
“Fred’s on a plane to St. Petersburg,” his secretary Lidia would tell Hannah when she called her father’s number. If she still called. The last time she did was on November 3rd 2086; a year and a half ago. She remembers the date because it was a day before her birthday. Hannah had hoped her call would help Fred remember the special day and send her CC’s to spend at ShopDrop, the newest virtual reality mall just outside Holloway. But Fred never picked up his phone. He didn’t send virtual coins either, just an e-card with teddy bears on it. Like Hannah was still six or seven years old. Maybe he thought she was.
“Fred’s in the annual Helsinki meeting.”
“Fred’s traveling from Brussels to Berlin.”
“I’m so sorry, dear, but the Wi-Fi on Fred’s plane is down for security reasons. Would you like to leave a message?”
It’s hard to keep up. So, Hannah doesn’t. Her dad is gone more than he is around. And she can’t blame him one bit. Who would want to live with a woman who stares into space eighteen hours a day?
Tricia takes off the AR-glasses. Hannah watches her blink as her eyes get used to the yellow kitchen light. Tricia lifts her gaze and scans the kitchen cupboards as if they’re England’s greatest miracle: something she’s never seen before. Would her mind crack and shatter into pieces if Hannah were to introduce her to a steaming cup of black tea?
Once her brain recovers from the reality-gap, Tricia taps an address into her notepad on the table. She always keeps the notepad with her. It’s one perk of her job as a city council member. She gets gadgets and the latest technology. Like she’s someone important.
“Pfff…” Hannah rolls her eyes. Her gesture causes Tricia to abandon the notepad, where she’s opened a map of London. Just get on with your lecture, woman, Hannah thinks. I have pills to pop and people to do.
“This is for your own good, Hannah,” she says. “Things are changing.”
“Oh, because you got Chipped, the world’s a different place now? Guess what, Mummy-o? For the rest of us earthlings, the planet’s still flat, and the sky is gray. Some of us still need to leave the house. But don’t worry, I can take care of myself. You just dive into your new, blinking life. I don’t need you or one of your stupid chips.”
“Forget about the chip. That’s not important. Just because I got one…” Her eyes wander back to the cupboards. Something there must be more fascinating than this conversation they’re having for the umpteenth time.
Tricia’s brow furrows. “How are they to fit us all in one city?” She seems to be talking to someone other than Hannah. “I don’t care how many apartment complexes we’re building. The numbers don’t lie. There are too many of us.”
Hannah waves her hand in front of Tricia’s glassy eyes. “Ever heard of roommates? How about families and relatives living under the same roof? Isn’t that what they used to do in America or Mumbai or one of those countries?”
“Mumbai is a city. Not a country.”
“Whatever, Tricia.”
Tricia leans her elbows on the kitchen table. Her long, boney fingers slide into her hair and stop at her temples. Locks of gray-black hair poke out. She looks electrified. “People need their privacy. Nobody’s looking for a partner these days. They don’t want kids. People want to live alone.”
“Just like you and Fred.”
Tricia sits back up and fixes her posture. Like road guideposts, two tresses of hair poke out on both sides of her oval-shaped head. “That’s enough, Hannah. With all the ‘Hannahs’ you’ve pulled lately, I wouldn’t bring your father into this conversation. Which news should I share with him first when he comes home?”
“If he comes—”
“Do I tell him about those repulsive photos? Or your lovely little drug habit?”
Fucking photos. Hannah’s so tired of hearing about them. Why, o
h why did she keep copies of her products? She should have just kept it all online. Keep the business going. Fill the orders. Take the pervs’ money. Rake in the virtual coins, and call it a day. Who prints anything on actual paper anymore?
But she had wanted to show Benny. Maybe today she’ll finally show them to him. It’s time for her to nudge them out of the friend zone. Hannah wants him to see her in that light. As an adult. Striking and lusted after. A woman worth two hundred and forty coins per photo. Some days more.
How was she to know Tricia would go through her stuff while she was out ditching school?
Hannah leans back on her chair and crosses her arms on her chest. It’s her turn to investigate the kitchen cupboards on the walls. “I told you already. Those pictures were just a joke.”
“And who’s laughing, Hannah?”
As tedious and tiresome as these mandatory lectures are, it’s not the end of anything. Tricia makes the same threat every time. Hannah will be sent away. To a home. An institution. What did they used to call them? Do those things even exist anymore? Maybe out in the countryside or up in Ireland, they’d have a few left… Boarding schools? Yes, that’s what they’re called.
What a joke.
Three years. That’s when Hannah will be of legal age. Old enough to leave London behind. To move away from these pathetic googly-eyed people who couldn’t tell a real person from a hologram if it kicked them in their lady parts or dude-junk.
How is she supposed to grow up to be a decent human being? Of course she’s into pornography. Why wouldn’t she be mixing and matching pills, patches, and stickers? Hunting for the next high is the only useful thing to do. Fred’s away three hundred days a year. Tricia plays a strange VIP in some augmented reality where they count numbers and stare at maps and talk about faucets and pipelines and wells. None of these people know how to touch or feel or care for anything but this new reality. Some new fucking miracle city.
Why would she wait? Everyone else around her is so far gone. She’s the only one left in the here and now.
When Tricia is not working, she’s shopping for yet another new, well-cut AR-suit. A world where you can become someone new in a matter of a few seconds and ten chip-credits. How is Hannah to compete with that? Maybe that’s why she tries new things. Things like taking naked pictures of herself and selling them online. Stealing and trying some of her mother’s Happiness-Program pills. Just to see if they’d make her high or low.
But all they did was make her dizzy.
Tricia fingers the black edges of the AR-glasses. Are these few brief minutes outside her new reality giving her withdrawal symptoms?
“The place is called Kinship Care. It’s just outside the city. Across the green hills, where we used to have picnics when you were a kid.”
One picnic. We went out there once.
“And it’s just for now, love. The people in charge of the chipping are about to solve overpopulation. But until they do, it’s not safe for you to be here. I can’t tell you more right now, it’s classified.”
Classified my ass, Hannah thinks, but instead of saying it out loud, she rolls her eyes.
“Once it’s all done and dealt with, once the city is up and running at full capacity, I’ll send the driver for you. You’ll come home, get your chip, and we can all lead somewhat normal lives.”
Hannah can’t help but smirk. If she had a finger for every time Tricia’s made this threat, Hannah could make a fortune. With that many fingers, she wouldn’t even need to find a real alien for the perverts that keep asking her for “something with tentacles.”
“Okay then. Green hills and Kinship kingdom it is. Here I come. What should I pack? And while I’m at it, should I toss Fred’s stuff out your bedroom window and buy him a bus ticket so he can join me?”
After rubbing the bridge of her nose and smoothing her hair back, Tricia picks up the black glasses with the blinking red lights. “You’re going, Hannah. Not because I want you to, but because if you stay in London, you’re as good as dead.”
“Little drastic, aren’t we Trish?”
But her hands are already swiping up and down, left to right and back to left. She’s gone back to sheets and diagrams and other things more intriguing than her self-destructive, boring teenage daughter. That’s what she does, after all: escapes and ignores. And here Hannah thought that starting a million-coin business on the dark web would score her—if not praise and respect—then at least fifteen or twenty minutes of undivided attention.
Hannah gets up, grabs her jacket from the floor, and walks out of the kitchen. In the front hall mirror, she fixes her wild brown hair up in a ponytail. Benny would like to see the back of her long, fragile neck; she’s sure most of them do. At least the ones who are not interested in aliens and their tentacles.
***
The city looks odd yet also familiar. The part of town where she grew up got the red glowing tiles later than the rest of London. Some buildings around her radiate warm air, some blink with an unnatural neon-red light. The trees, bushes, and grass seem less green than they did before the augmented reality started to appear in Hannah’s neck of the woods.
It’s all so dull. While the rest of the world is ravaged by mass-deaths—people killing themselves or shooting into crowds—the United Kingdom languishes in an unbearable uncertainty of what’s to come. Ever since the surgeons, nurses, researchers, and programmers who do the chipping arrived from the headquarters in Finland, the Happiness-Program has been available—to some. These people now call the UK by a different name: City of England.
Some people are against the program and the changes it will bring. Some people live for the change, for this new technology that will turn humans into machines—or partial machines. That’s how Hannah understands it, anyway.
She’s not against getting the brain implant. Her mother got it months ago, when her work won her a spot at the top of the list. She was one of the first people to go to the hospital for the procedure. Hannah’s not excited about it either, though. She couldn’t care less. Their pills won’t give her the high she seeks, but they also won’t harm her. Because she won’t turn into her mother: sitting at the kitchen table working twenty-four-seven. No. She’ll have the best of both worlds.
Anyway, the chip wouldn’t be much different from the birth control capsule she got from the school nurse a year back. Any treatment, no matter if it’s a shot or a pill or an implant, needs to enter your system—one way or another.
She takes a right from Abbey Road and continues toward the hospital. Her watch phone with a virtual assistant she’s named Pingy, buzzes inside her jean pocket. “Read message,” she says. Her mother would cringe at such ancient technology. But Pingy provides Hannah with all she needs.
Pingy beeps the tune she selected for Benny’s messages.
AT THE ROOFTOP
“Answer message,” she says. “Be there in five.”
The front of the hospital glows neon-red. Multiple drones circle the building, delivering messages, medicine, and body parts from donors. Or that’s what Hannah thinks they deliver.
Pingy plays Benny’s jingle again.
CARTWHEELS OR CANDY?
Hannah waves her hand outside the hospital doors. Two sliding doors whoosh open. She darts inside and brings Pingy close to her face. Dodging the small self-driving scooters and buzzing drones, she half-whispers,
DEFINITELY DOTS
An elevator dings next to her, but to get where Hannah’s going, only the stairs will do. The elevator’s see-through walls would provide a clear view for any prying eyes. Not that anyone knows her here. But they know Benny. At the age of twenty-one, he’s the youngest coder in the hospital.
She stops to look around. When she’s sure that—much like her own mother—no one has acknowledged her existence, she pushes open the door to the staircase. Like so many times before, Hannah starts her long climb up to the top. On the fifth floor, she stops to catch her breath. Long brown curls dance around her face. S
he fixes her ponytail, then continues her climb.
At the top, she walks out onto the roof. The red circle in the middle of the roof is lit, glowing eerily in the weak sunlight. In the middle of the ring, Benny is kneeling down and investigating the ground. Hannah approaches him.
“You know you look like a complete nut-job, don’t you?”
The man looks up. A boyish grin spreads across his face. Benny stands, his arms flailing above his head. “This must mean the city’s almost set. I can’t believe it’s finally happening.”
“For some of us, at least. Like you and my mother.”
Benny turns to look at Hannah. The girl’s annoyed expression wipes the grin off his face. With a few long strides, he’s by her side. Hannah squeals as Benny grabs her, pulling her into his arms, lifting her up into the air.
“Well, I don’t have my chip yet, Teddy,” Benny says. He sets Hannah down and fixes the loose curls behind her ear. Is that more than a friendly gesture? Could it be? “But once I do, I’ll hack the operating system and get you way the fuck up on the waiting list.”
Hannah rolls her eyes but can’t stop herself from smiling. Would he do that? Would he care that much?
Benny starts toward the small shed behind the staircase entry. This is where the hospital keeps the drones that are not in service. This is where Hannah and Benny have had their secret meetings for five weeks now. And counting.
Benny taps on the electric pad by the door. The shed opens. The space was once used to store the hospital’s helicopter. But now, hundreds of snoozing drones blink their little red lights, taking up all the wall and floor space. It looks like the night sky, but instead of twinkling, the stars are bleeding. Benny sits down on a pile of blankets and white pillows. Just a few of the items he’s stolen from the hospital rooms downstairs. It’s not that he’s after blankets and pillows, but they need a place to consume the rest of the goods Benny’s job provides them with.
