AfroSFv2

by Ivor W Hartmann

  My phone beeped on the third floor and I clicked the stud in my ear.

  After a moment of silence, Low’s adrenaline charged voice said, “Three minutes,” then he hung up.

  Two minutes and forty nine seconds later, I walked out onto the street just as the van we’d jacked for the job pulled up. The side slid open and I jumped in. We rolled on like nothing was nothing.

  Low and Casey were in the back and Tealson was driving. Moha was still out there somewhere. As we threaded our way through traffic, I pulled out a small black bag from inside my jacket and tossed it to Low. We made eye contact. Respect. Bless. One of his long lanky arms snaked out and caught it in mid-air, his dark angular face expressionless. Casey was dialling Moha on the screen, his high yellow face a little red from the run, his brow creased in concentration, the corners of his mouth expressing a touch of worry. Moha picked up and the sound of his breathing came through with sirens in the background. His position popped up on the screen. I leaned over to look.

  “Motherf...”

  Moha was in an office building, trapped inside a cordoned off area. Police and corp security were searching and people were being slowly evacuated and searched.

  “Drop the bag, preferably somewhere hidden and retrievable and walk. We’re on the corner of Desolation and Fourth. Don’t forget to walk funny,” Low said, ended the call, and the little red dot vanished from the screen.

  Tense minutes passed.

  “Maybe we should call him again,” Casey suggested.

  “Let’s wait a few more minutes. Don’t want the cops or TerraCorp to track the signal,” Low answered.

  We waited. It was almost a game, seeing who would crack first. Two minutes later I said, “Call him.”

  Low dialled the number again. Moha picked up the phone, his breathing erratic, his location barely changed from the last call.

  “I been shot,” Moha’s voice sounded weak and in pain. “Didn’t say nothing cause I thought I could make it...{huff huff}...There’s a lot of blood and a lot of mechas...I ain’t gonna make it. Get the fuck out.” We listened to the wet sticky sound of Moha coughing. It sounded like his lungs were leaping out his chest, one grisly chunk at a time.

  “We’re not going to leave you,” Low said, “just hang tight, okay?” He disconnected the call and turned to face us. His eyes were grim, stress bruised.

  “We need him. We all got out of TerraCorp with a different piece of the device. We need his part for the damned thing to work.”

  “What you saying, Legs won’t pay?” Tealson asked from the front seat.

  “Oh he’ll pay. But without Moha’s piece, he’ll try to stiff us.”

  “Fuck we gonna do?” I asked.

  “How ’bout we drive in, grab him and drive out. Shoot down anyone gets in the way,” Tealson said.

  “You seen how many mechas there are out there?” I asked. “What you got a death wish or something?”

  “Look, we can’t sit here all day with our dicks in our hands,” Low said. “We gotta do something.”

  “What about the device?” Casey asked.

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “Let’s put what we got together and see what it does.” Casey suggested.

  In response to our curious glances, he said, “Reality displacement. In the lab where I got my piece of the device, there was a bunch of equations on a screen. At the top of the screen it said ‘Reality displacement.’”

  “Reality Displacement? What the fuck is that?” I asked, “teleportation?”

  “There’s been a lot of street-chatter about that lately actually,” Tealson said, swivelling around to present us with his broad face, wide nose and thick lips, peeking out from his immaculately groomed beard that blended in with his large afro. “Black tech alphemists have been vanishing. Some heavy paranoia underground. You know how many players would give half their kingdoms for that kinda edge?”

  We all looked at each other. We had to get Moha out somehow. When in doubt think outside the box. After all, his part was connected to ours. Maybe we could just magic him home.

  We began opening the little black bags containing the pieces of an experimental machine we’d stolen from different labs in TerraCorp’s labyrinthine R&D department. The operation had gone smoothly except for the most important part. Our getaway.

  After a few false starts, we managed to piece the thing together, the hole where Moha’s section should have been, clearly visible. The thing looked like a mix between an organic saxophone, a fat man’s exotic staff, and a melted bazooka made of calcified alien flesh.

  “What does it do?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” Low replied.

  “It looks like...I don’t know what it looks like,” I said.

  Obram

  My old man always said, ‘No one owes you a living.’ I took that to mean ‘fuck off kid’, so I did. Signed up to TerraCorp straight outta high school. I joined the security department because I always wanted to ride my own mecha. Sure, I could wait until I was as rich as I planned to be, but aside from the cops, the only folks I’d ever seen ride mechas were actors in the movies and corp security guards.

  If you’ve ever seen my ugly mug you’ll know, a dead pig’s got a better shot in Stellarwood than I do. As for the police department, let’s just say they ain’t popular in my barrio, Jugglers Pass. My aunty Bonnie also works at Terracorp. She’s upstairs in admin. We have lunch together sometimes which is nice.

  I come from a family of vampires on my mother’s side. A lot of folk hate us. They call us palefaces and whitey and cracker and blame us for every goddamned thing wrong under the sun, including funnily enough, depleting the ozone layer and altering the electromagnetic field in such a way that most vampires were killed off. A low melanin count is not conducive to health in the twentieth century.

  According to most history books, my ancestors were responsible for nearly destroying the planet. Maybe so, but what’s that got to do with me. I wasn’t there. I’m just a nigga like everyone else, trying to survive in the PC.

  Growing up as a kid was hard. We lived in Romania for a while then moved on to Jugglers Pass when I was eleven. In Romania, we were treated differently. No one really messed with me but I didn’t really have any friends either. On the one hand I was popular but on the other I wasn’t close to anyone at school. Was it because I was half vampire, half negro? I guess so but to tell you the truth I have few memories of those days. In Jugglers things were different. I had to fight.

  My folks were both blues musicians. Papa sang and played the guitar. Mama sang too and played the harmonica. They spent a lot of time in FreakTown. I loved going down there with them. If it was a school night, they’d usually leave me with Mrs Gonzalez, the Witherspoon’s maid, and her twin daughters, Mona and Mango. I still see them now and again.

  But on the weekends, Mom would use her natural sunscreen concoction—brewed by an old witch who was friends with Pops from way back—and we’d get in the old junker, drive out of Romania through Dhoti, then take the Nawa underpass to Jugglers up through Ozu to end up in FreakTown.

  Out of all their songs, my favourite one recorded, with my father singing in a hiccupping staccato style and my mother backing him up with her sweet barbershop croon, went like this:

  Baby, when you’re sad (don’t wonder why)

  I swear I hear the angels cry (love don’t die)

  Threw a spear into cupid’s heart (screw that baby!)

  Now his head’s on a stick just for you (love you babe!)

  and now his heeeaaad (yeah he dead)

  is on a stiiicckkk (now that’s sick)

  just for you! (thank you!)

  My parent’s story is one of love overcoming the odds. She lived in privileged Romania, one of the last vampire enclaves. He was a handyman straight outta Jugglers, where in the words of Old Devil God ‘We always go for the jugular/slash open arteries to reveal the art of murder.’

  When her folks found out, they were upset
. There were tears, raised voices, threats, attempted bribery, and more tears. In the end it was decided that the young couple would marry and live in a small house in Romania that belonged to an eccentric uncle who recently died without any children of his own. It was conveniently out of the way. I went to an exclusive private school and was the odd one out. A drop of colour in the privileged world of the last vampires.

  Grandpa died when I was eleven. Grandma basically threw us out. She’d had enough of the embarrassment. It hadn’t diminished with time as she’d hoped but had grown into a most burdensome sore that refused to heal. We’d had enough of Romania by that point anyway. In one way or the other, we were all ready to leave our gated community.

  It could have been a paradise if we were not reminded regularly in some small way or another that we were not truly welcome. The only reason my parents stayed so long was for me. They wanted me to get a good education. My favourite classes were Philosophy, Martial Arts, and Engineering.

  School was different at St James. The work was easier and I blended in a lot more because Jugglers was a multicultural community. I spent a lot of time in the sun in Jugglers and my skin darkened to the point where a lot of kids looked like me. My schoolmates eventually found out that moms was white though and I got teased...bad.

  “Nigga’s Mama look like a pus bag! She one big ol’ pimple! No wonder he an only child. His papa scared to squeeze her too tight! Afraid she might go splat! Got Milk! Ha ha ha!” Shit like that. I got into lots of fights defending my mama’s name but then so did a lot of kids. ‘Your Mama’ jokes were a common game. The trick was not to get riled up but come back with a badass response like, “Yo mama so fat, her waistline is the equator,” or “Yo mama so scary, she give xombies nightmares,” or “Yo mama so nasty, she gave your pops a blowjob then kissed you goodnight.”

  Most kids were cool with me though and I eventually made a few friends. And despite the teasing, everyone who got to know my Moms loved her. She was the kindest soul in all the world, her heart open to all who needed love, from stray kids to lonely old folk.

  We lived in an old building that Death Star—the department of services—had given up on, so the residents fixed it up themselves. We were one of the first to stop paying council taxes and get away with it.

  After graduation, I considered college because my grades were pretty good and a scholarship was a genuine possibility. Then I found out about the fraternities and their paleface parties. Racist niggas would paint themselves to look like vampires, straighten their hair if they hadn’t already, and pretend to walk, talk and act like white folk. Fuck that shit.

  TerraCorp training was hype. We started out with exoskeletons and those of us that passed moved on to the mechas. I was a natural, top of my class, and they assigned me to the xombie squad. My team and I spend most of our time out in the desert hunting xombies. The eggheads in the lab prefer we bring ’em in alive; they’re trying to isolate the agent that animates them.

  There’s fame and fortune waiting for the corp that figures out what makes xombies tick. How do they survive out in the desert without succumbing to radiation poisoning? How do they sustain their population out in the wasteland? Can we train them to perform tasks for us? Why do they all die so soon after arriving and being caged? These were their biggest questions.

  As for commercial applications, xombies were good for several things. Medical students trained on their corpses. After all they were no different from huemen physiologically but for their skins which were grey and had the ability to lighten and darken into beautiful fractal patterns suggestive of many ’scapes and levels of worlds.

  Xombies have superior physical abilities, though my Martial Arts instructor would have said that anyone could do what they do if they believed in themselves and worked relentlessly for it.

  Xombies communicate by a combination of strange resonant sounds that mimic nature and the city. If it is a language, it must be one of subtle metaphors where a tree falling in a forest and a bell tolling combine to represent some unstoppable force composed of love or something.

  As for their genes, all attempts to observe their DNA have led to strange results. According to the scientists, instead of DNA they have strange micro-singularities that pop in and out of existence. The scientists have dubbed it metaronin.

  Automobile companies used them as crash test dummies (they damage similar to huemen but can heal from multiple compound fractures and bleeding, both internal and external, within hours). Pharmaceutical companies harvested their body parts and extracted various elixirs for use in a multitude of products, including, if the urban legends are true, food for the masses.

  I reckon xombies must live on cactus and lizards which are poisonous to huemen, but no one has yet to see them eat, drink, shit, or fuck, and no traces of any such activity have ever been found, out in the wasteland or in their bodies. One thing’s for sure. No matter how many we bag, more keep popping up out there. They’re not really dangerous or ugly like on screen.

  What I mean is they don’t attack huemen like in the movies and their flesh isn’t all rotten and falling off. That only happens to them after we give them over to the white coats upstairs. Everyone’s seen the videos on WhoTube of caged xombies acting like the ones in the movies, but they’re not actually like that in the wild.

  Xombies are incredibly strong and fast and do defend themselves when our crew rolls up, but we’re heavily armed and good at what we do. Our kill to capture ratio is just over 1:1 which is better than most crews. Some of the other crews regularly kill twice as many as they bag alive.

  Fanta reckons xombies must have some kinda super sense that lets them douse hidden underground sources of water. He says he saw what looked like the entrance to an underground tunnel once but it was during a sandstorm and the cams were malfunctioning.

  Some scientists believe they’re able to metabolise the energy of the sun in some way. Others claim that xombies don’t actually exist. That they are in fact empty spaces of grey nothingness that just happen to be shaped like huemen. Why? According to this faction, because we huemen observe them.

  They claim that the patterns we sometimes observe in xombie skins are simply reflections of our own inner psyches, like inkblot tests; that xombies are quantum phenomena of our strange reality, conjured up by the ghosts of sins past, wandering the wasteland. Like the desert was more than a desert or something. Crazy shit, right? I’ve heard them arguing in the cafeteria about all sorts of weird ideas.

  Our mechas are top of the line, equipped with a wide range of weapons as well as a state of the art life support system that takes care of all our basic needs. We go out on ten day patrols, the four of us, Padox, Fanta, Killer, and me, living in our giant mechas, tracking xombies. They come equipped with rations and supplies that can last a fortnight so we plan our ops carefully to make sure no one dies out there. Xombies tend to be solitary creatures by nature and it takes time to track and bag ’em.

  We’d just returned to the city from a patrol on which we’d bagged four and were planning to go out celebrating when the alarms went off and Mack burst into the changing room out of breath, his fat face streaked with sweat, his double chin bouncing around.

  “Gunslingers have broken into the labs and stolen a prototype. Killed one of the guards. They’re going nuts upstairs. You’re all on overtime. Triple pay and six months wages as bonus to anyone who bags the bad guys. Back in your mechas, now!”

  This was not good. I had a meeting with a very dangerous man known as Legs, a Freaktown hood who’d recently bought out my bookie. My old bookie was a decent man who gave a man a chance to pay off his debt. He rarely got violent. Legs, on the other hand had threatened to break my legs if I didn’t pay him back yesterday. I only had half the money but I was hoping he’d give me an extension. After all, I couldn’t pay if I wasn’t mobile.

  “Did you say six months?” Killer asked.

  On the other hand, if I got that bonus, I could afford to pay Legs back an
d pocket a touch on the side. I really needed to quit gambling. It wasn’t good for my health or sanity.

  “Yes, you heard me, now back in your mechas, all of you!”

  “Back in my mecha? Man, fuck you! I got a date tonight. You know how long I been waiting to bang this bitch. A month, nigga, a month!” Padox shouted.

  “You talking about Rhonda?” Killer joked “Sheeeit nigga, I banged that gal the first night I met her. You need to step up your game, son.”

  “Man, fuck you. I know she ain’t even fucking with your stingy ass. Jerry curls dripping all over the place. You so stingy, I bet you use engine oil on your hair. Get the fuck outta here, you banged Rhonda. Old men in retirement homes get more play than you do!”

  I kissed my teeth. Dumb niggas elevating pussy while disrespecting the womb. Didn’t they know Rhonda was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister? Didn’t they know she could have been their Mama in another life?

  “Look I know y’all just got back from the outside but this is big. When’s the last time anyone got triple pay?” Mack asked.

  “But only the cops are allowed to ride in this zone.”

  “Don’t worry, this is bigger than the cops. We’re talking government contracted tech here. Suit up, mount up, and ride out people.”

  We looked at each other and shrugged. I got out of my civvies and back into my suit then joined the rest in heading to the hangars. I saw panic on the faces of some of the folk upstairs and we grew grim.

  “What got taken?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. They’re not saying. But we got the perps on cam. We’ll patch ’em through to you once you’re mounted along with a proximity sensor that’ll activate if you get within a hundred yards of any of the pieces that got taken,” Mack answered.

  “Listen Mack,” Padox said, “our mechas need to be overhauled between missions.”