Bottle Born Blues

by Conor H Carton

  In front were three IPS members, wearing lighting rigs that illuminated the sewers for a 20-metre distance. Overlapping lighting meant no shadows for something to hide in and ambush us as we drew near. We were heading to a blood lake area where preparations were minimal. Our route would be outside any predators’ hunting range, but stupidity was always fatal.

  Off we marched, with the IPS crew falling into step with my pace. We managed to travel as a unit rather than stumbling scrum. It had taken me three months to figure out how to get them to work in formation and now we fell into it perfectly. The journey to the inspection point was uneventful—no attacks, cave-ins, or gas bubbles. The inspection point seemed ordinary enough too, at first. There was an anomaly, a recess in a sewer wall that wasn’t on the map or on any inspection reports I called up on the link. There was nothing remarkable about the recess in itself; it looked like an inspection port found near any blood lake.

  That was the problem. We were too far from the nearest blood lake for there to be an inspection port, which made it very likely that it was in fact a smugglers niche—the point where an inbound courier dropped off a delivery and an outbound courier picked it up without the two ever meeting. Naturally, such niches had pretty serious security, way beyond anything I could deal with, and the best plan was simply to pass by.

  Curiosity, perhaps the single most dangerous force in all the systems, caused more trouble, chaos and disaster than anything else, nudged me to request the nearest IPS shine a light into the niche. It looked like a smugglers niche, four meters deep and empty, except for a glistening geometric-like pattern on a rear wall, above floor level.

  Three things happened simultaneously. I saw the pattern, Jovial made a move, and I died.

  There was a saying attributed to the Red Halls: it isn’t dying that kills you, but waking up and realizing that there’s no rest for the indebted.

  I woke up to the realization that my problems weren’t going to be escaped by something as simple as dying. I’d have to work much harder than that. The initial moment of wakeful clarity about the cesspit of my life vanished and the shock subsided enough to let pain register. I fell to the floor and screamed. This was the best thing to do as it triggered a response from an IPS who stepped over and shot me with a cool dart. This was standard protocol for someone attacked by a blood-lake predator, which usually resulted in them falling down and screaming.

  The dart numbed the pain sufficiently for the person to think and be mobile enough to move from the problem area. Finding no predator to kill, the crew re-formed, two supporting me, and we marched to a pre-planned recovery spot. Once there, I took the charm from my pack; it would speed up the recovery process so that I’d be reasonably functional within hours rather than weeks. With that, I lay down on the sewer floor and slept for the remainder of the shift.

  The alarm awakened me and I headed back to the office with myself and the crew intact, which made the day wildly successful, and one I was in no mood to celebrate. Which was very unfortunate as it appeared that Lincoln was, and she wasn’t about to let me escape. I saw her waiting at the Red Eye 20 and it was clear she’d seen me.

  She ambled over and smiled gaily. “Ready for the night of your life? You’ll never have tasted beer like this before in your life.”

  With that, she headed off and I followed. It took less energy than resisting and the prospect of cool beer was inviting. Lincoln walked past the office quarter and turned into the Old City, the remains of the original Thiegler, dating back to pre-war times in several places and no later than post-war reconstruction in others. I’d passed through it a couple of times before, but always in a hurry, so there’d never been time to take in details.

  Lincoln was walking leisurely, so this time I could soak up the place. There was a jumble of building styles and sizes, no sense of underlying order, and it was impossible to keep track of where we were going. We turned at a large glass bowl of an edifice with rainbow colours and hazy shadows cast by movements and lifeforms inside. It was suggestive of stories of other lives and activities, and when I looked back, there was a diamond-shaped, metal-clad building in its place.

  I turned back to Lincoln, but she was no longer in sight. I stood shocked for a second, but then she appeared from a shadow between two identical, low-rise brick office blocks and called to me. “Come on. Beer won’t wait!”

  Stepping into the shadow, I found myself in a wide room filled with long tables where lifeforms of all types were sitting, standing, hovering, or hanging while eating, drinking and talking. There wasn’t a lot of noise however; just cheer-filled murmurs and whispers that created a welcoming atmosphere of unthreatening sociability. Lincoln was moving across the room and, judging from the various greetings, was well known. I followed her to a table beside a wall with a nice view of the room. The only other chair was positioned so that I’d be sitting facing Lincoln with my back to the crowd. Whatever this was going to be, it was much more than a social event with a colleague; this was Lincoln’s event to manage as she saw fit.

  When I sat down, a natural female human came and wiped the table with a cloth before asking for our order. The table was already clean, but when she was leaning over to wipe it, I got a clear view of very nice beasts supported by a charcoal-gray work shirt and a nerve-stick in a holster at her curvy hip. It was a low-power version, capable of disabling temporarily, but not killing. The message was still very clear: be nice and enjoy the view or be carried out and dumped on the pavement.

  Lincoln offered a cordial greeting. “Hey Nanteer two Top Drawers, a mixed scald for the Screw-Top and a scale one, extra sauce for myself please, how is the new space working out?”

  “Great. It’s much more convenient, and that was a good tip, so thanks. Drinks first, food to follow.” When Nanteer walked away, the view from behind was as pleasing as the front and I allowed myself linger a little before turning back to a grinning Lincoln.

  “All natural, not a single charm on her. She owes it to no one but her ancestors not like you and me Screw-Top.”

  “If we’re going to be eating and drinking together, call me Shakbout.”

  “That’s a bit of a mouthful and very formal. Screw-Top is more relaxed, more honest.”

  Lincoln was needling me. Why? We shared a common heritage and didn’t come from any natural line of life. We’d been built to order. We also spent our lives ignoring that fact; otherwise, it would overwhelm us and destroy us. Having it called up the way Lincoln was doing, was a dangerous game. If a Natural did this, they’d risk severe punishment in the name of maintaining civic harmony. No court would rule for murder if death were the result. They’d simply rule it suicide.

  Context mattered too. At work in the locker room, it was recognized that tolerance was required to give everyone space to work with one another. Sitting in the dining hall was different. This was a public space and words had a very different weight. I was so battered by the day, and numbed by the charm, I wasn’t going to take offence quickly. “Let’s be honest. Why am I here? What do you want from me?”

  Before Lincoln could respond, Nanteer appeared and placed two large glasses of dark froth-topped beer before us. She departed without a word.

  Whatever direction the conversation might have taken was lost in the glorious, enticing sight of the delicately fragrant brew. Without waiting, I took a mouthful and realized that I was in the presence of a masterpiece. The hoppy taste filled my mouth and then my brain with pleasure.

  Lincoln put down her glass. “Sorry for that, Shakbout, sometimes I speak without thinking.”

  “No problem. This beer is astonishing. Why is this place not packed to the rafters?”

  Lincoln’s expression held an are-you-joking? cast. “The Losers Lounge is in the Old City.” Realizing from the vacant look on my face that that wasn’t enough of an explanation, Lincoln smiled patiently “The Old City was designed as a retreat for the Imperial Court if Thinger was invaded. It’s designed to be unnavigable to anyone without a
trinket. Rather than try and unwind the process, the city was simply expanded around it, and the Old City became a place where you could become deliberately lost. Even the lost need to eat, so the Losers Lounge came into existence and it developed from there.”

  “How does anyone find their way around the Old City if the spell is still in force? I don’t think Imperial trinkets would have survived that long.”

  “True, they didn’t,” Lincoln agreed. “However, you’re forgetting something: the Imperial Court required a lot of support staff to help with relocation, as well ensure the Court could continue. Someone had to make trinkets for them, so after the Vanishing, they decided that getting lost was the safest course of action. So they moved here, including the trinket makers. Still, getting a trinket is no easy task. The inhabitants of the Old City like to keep its secrets.”

  “How did you get one?”

  Lincoln grinned, waved a hand, and took another quick sip. “I won it in a bet. When I saw you at the Red Eye, you looked as though you’d seen a ghost during the shift. Had you?”

  The events of the day, the beer, the relaxation of tension that had been building between us all lent themselves to me being colossally stupid. “I did.” The words leapt from my lips. Damn, I’d just blown up my life … again.

  Seeing a ghost was rare, with a significant population of re-animated corpses—or more correctly, Involuntary Public Servants—working everywhere, it seemed that ghosts should be more common. Placid, free labour for a myriad of mundane tasks needed to be done to keep Thinger operational. A consciousness without a body was much rarer; they needed a physical anchor, usually a charm, though there were stories of using mirrors, books and entire living spaces to make it work.

  Seeing a ghost happened when said ghost was trying to leave its current anchor and take over a body, killing the person in the process so it could have full control. This was considered to be a Priority Security Threat and if you survived the process, you’d have had to turn yourself in for a full examination—one you might not survive. If you did, you’d spend the rest of your first life under surveillance, a guaranteed slot as an IPS subject to experimentation in the Red Halls.

  All of which was bad, but not terrible. I was confident Lincoln wouldn’t tell anyone. I was much more concerned that she’d not know when to stop asking me for details, or that I’d be able to head her off without it becoming a problem. Revealing enough to satisfy her curiosity could put her in danger; then I’d have to drag her further in so she’d understand the scope of that danger, which would cause her to be displeased with me for doing so.

  I was going to have to try for a fumble, enough to indicate the truth without actually revealing it, and hope that she had enough experience to recognize that leaving well enough alone was the best strategy. I didn’t fancy my chances, but was pretty much stuck, and so I told Lincoln a story about a terrible afternoon I’d had many years previously.

  “I was walking and not paying enough attention to where I was going, turned a corner and stepped into an arrest by a posse of Retrievers. There was an elderly lifeform on the ground with an arm raised to ward off blows. That arm had the most charms I’d ever seen on a single person … a huge variety of sizes, shapes and colours. I couldn’t imagine such a jumble would be effective. Surely they’d knock each other out with crosscurrents, never mind the strain they’d place on whoever was wearing them. By the time I’d unscrambled my thinking and was about to retreat around the corner, one of the Retrievers spoke. It had a strange whispery voice, a little rusty as if they didn’t vocalize often, but still clear.

  “It said, ‘Citizen, you’re the designated witness to the delivery of the sentence of the sub-committee for Regulation and Enhancement of Living Citizens on escaped prisoner, Dialland Jovial.’ And with that, the Retriever spun its bald oval head, which sat on a stalky neck. It had a grille for a mouth and three very large multi-coloured compound eyes. Staring at the man on the ground, it continued. ‘Dialland Jovial, you were found guilty of transgressions against the community of free citizens in Thinger. You fled lawful custody and in doing so have renounced grounds for appeal or clemency. In the presence of this designated witness, a sentence shall be applied.’

  I explained how the Retrievers hummed simultaneously and Jovial shimmered until he slowly faded away. All the time, his small chapped mouth was moving, but I could hear nothing. Finally, nothing was left of him. The Retriever turned to me and told me how I, a “faithful Citizen”, had performed my duty and would receive the appropriate bounty for my work. The Retriever placed a hand to my chest and I received a download.

  As I told Lincoln about that day, the events in the sewer started to stir within me. I was drowning and knew it without being able to stop it.

  “Ahhh,” said Lincoln knowingly. “That’s why you’re not in the scheme, down in the ship-pots. Anyway, tell me about the ghost. It was Jovial, right? What happened today?”

  Eyeing Lincoln, I realized the old saying was correct: the truth will shit on your head and smear it all over your face. This was particularly true if someone had slipped a speakeasy into your beer. So I told her.

  3

  “Thyson Archer was a Brew-Master.” I took a long, calming breath as I scanned the ceiling, retrieving memories.

  Lincoln looked at me questioningly and I realized she was Near-Natural, not directly Bottle-Born like myself. She had birth parents, her Ornamental aspects the result of cross-gene manipulation brewed into earlier generations and stabilized over time so that perfect product was maintained and exclusivity assured by a restricted breeding program. I knew, but hadn’t remembered, that the orchestrated breeding of Ornamentals had stopped long ago. It was too obvious for the post Radical-Reason public consciousness to handle, and the hidden processes of the bottle farms were much more acceptable. New Ornamentals arose from interbreeding among existing varieties, something that happened rarely due to purposeful structural difficulties built into each group to discourage such an outcome. Mongrel Ornamentals had no value to developers, whose vanity re “creation” was limitless.

  Anyone who came directly from a farm like I had, knew exactly what a Brew-Master was and assumed that everyone else did. Lincoln had started from a natural-human base and been transformed into an Exotic. I’d started as an Exotic and been transformed into human form different roads to the same common ground.

  I stopped, then started again. “A Brew-Master is the person who manages the technical operations at a bottle farm. The measure of a Brew-Master is in parts per million—how many in every million hatched lifeforms were successfully drained and trained, to use industry terms. An adequate Brew-Master can deliver about 150,000 on average across a full cycle, an average Brew-Master can deliver up to 250,000, and a top-rated Brew-Master can deliver up to 330,000. No one breaks 400,000. The competition for Brew-Masters is fierce. The differences a good one can add to the profits of farm owners are astronomical, as are the fees they command. They have to be, because a Brew-Master is the most dangerous occupation a natural-born human can have.

  “All Brew-Masters have to be Naturals by strictly enforced law. A legal career limit spans 10 years and there’s a mortality rate—from natural and non-accidental causes—of 99.98% within six months of retirement. The Standing Committee had a serious dilemma regarding Brew-Masters; they needed them to safely harvest the energy from the lifeforms and deliver the array of workers required to sustain the desired life. They fear, rightly, that Brew-Masters could use skills to deliver workers who’d do the Brew-Master’s bidding and become a problem for the Standing Committee in nasty, violent ways.”

  I stopped to gauge her reaction. She seemed riveted and I continued. “In the north-east corner of Thiegler is a PEELO company super-farm, the first super-farm in fact, that’s been burning for 450 years with no sign of stopping. There’s a structure, where the top portion leads to a narrow walkway and then to a small platform, that overlooks the vat house. This is the point of origin of the fire and t
he hottest part of the farm—it’s where the fire is monitored and also where Brew-Masters, considered threats, are taken and thrown into the flames. It’s rumored that the proposal was made as a joke during a Standing Comittee meeting . . . and now it’s official policy.

  “Any natural human can apply to be trained as a Brew-Master and huge numbers do. They play the public lottery as well, so they’re used to thinking they can beat the odds and live to spend their money. The training process is aggressively selective; one in a thousand makes it past the first training round, less makes it to the end. They don’t fail. They simply make a mistake in the process and it kills them. Apparently, it’s the biggest source of clerical-grade IPS staff in the systems, and generates significant revenue for the Standing Committee.

  “Thyson Archer was successful all the way through the process and was picked up by the Orisimi Configuration to work on one of their farm complexes. One of the reasons that Mengchi wasn’t ground to dust after the end of Ingea’s war was the fact that energy-rich lifeforms grow more successfully here than any other location in the systems. Mengchi is responsible for 90% of total production in the systems and it’s never been possible to replicate the effects anywhere else. The Orisimi Configuration, by the by, is one of the other systems that can support homebased production. They hire Brew-Masters from Mengchi to run the farms, and follow a similar policy to the Standing Committee regarding them.”

  “And Archer?” she prodded gently when I stopped to reflect on vivid memories.

  I refocused and smiled dryly. “Archer was an exceptional Brew-Master with an instinctive understanding for the process. This gave him unprecedented control over the details of draining and training. He could fine-tune the process to deliver results that would have had him burning in the PEELO vats if anyone had the slightest inkling. They didn’t, because Archer chose the best possible disguise for a clever lifeform. He appeared to be slightly below average, making just enough mistakes to prove comforting to his employers while remaining worth employing.