Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity

by Robert Brockway

  It was cleverly re-appropriated garbage.

  Giddiness fluttered through his chest and caught at the base of Red’s throat. He’d learned the trick behind the magic, and the sheen was flaking off already. He cast new eyes on his surroundings, and found the oaken walls to be porous plastic sheeting. The kind they used to seal temperature between control zones. Zippy had layered them, one atop the other, in a randomly staggered pattern to simulate wood grain, but the effect essentially vanished up close. She’d come a long way, Red had to admit, and the funds needed to construct this place in the heart of the ‘Wells were an astonishing testament to her newfound influence, but whatever his Zippy had turned into, she was still playing pretend. She was still something he could recognize.

  He spent the rest of his idle period trying to identify the other furnishings. It was like a game, now: The antique, faded lampshade was an old smartpaper magazine with the surface carefully worn away to transparency. The three-legged, cast-iron end table was actually half of an upended industrial terminal lock — those big, three-pronged seals that closed off the central chemical feeds when they did construction. The ornate hat rack was a skilled fusing job, but ultimately nothing more than a handful of graphene support beams wrapped in texture-paper. When he picked it up, it weighed only a few ounces. He had just managed to shrug off the last of the tension, when a chime sounded (with all the lingering resonance of ancient metallic bells, of course), and the inner door swung open. James sauntered out, smiling viciously, and flopped onto the bench beside Red. He adjusted the cuff of his slacks on one crossed leg, straightened his citrine tie, folded and refolded his hands, and then, after a long silent moment, nodded toward the door.

  “You’re fucked, mate,” he chirped.

  Red had known it was a longshot, playing Zippy’s name like that. The odds that she would still be alive and living in the ‘Wells were slim. That her name would mean something to the doorman on her floor? Those were astronomical. At no point had Red been optimistic enough to think ahead to this moment, and consider how she’d deal with him when they came face to face again. Red had thought they’d left things amicably enough, but his memory was skittish on the best of days, and besides, you could never tell with Zip. She didn’t play her reactions straight. He once saw her sob a tearful goodbye to a pug-nosed teenager with crimson streaks in her hair, right before she slipped her stiletto into the girl’s spine as she turned to leave.

  The memory of that moment had settled inside of Red. It built a fire in his belly and sent puffs of doubt up into his chest every time he put his back to her. It might have been the reason he slipped away that night, instead of saying goodbye. He couldn’t really recall.

  Red set his jaw, attempting to look more confident than he felt. He willed his knees to flex, his back to straighten, and his feet to shuffle forward — out of the parlor, and into the den.

  Zippy was sitting casually, one leg thrown sideways over the arm of a weathered leather lounge (though Red could tell, by the secondhand familiarity of ownership, that it was actually molded from the same grade of plastic as all of his own furniture.) Her prosthetic leg was off, tossed haphazardly on the floor. She had one arm sprawled across the chair’s back; her face leaned into her own curving palm. The pose was carefully orchestrated nonchalance. It set Red on edge.

  “Hi Red!” She squealed, with the expected precocity, “You been gone long! I sure missed you!”

  She flashed him a smile, but the eyes stayed flat and angry.

  The childish persona, Red knew, didn’t extend beyond speech patterns and body language. Behaving naturally was a kind of cultural phobia in the ‘Wells. People only truly showed themselves to their closest friends and family. They had a second, public persona for everybody else — the uncertain, and the mistrusted. Three years ago, for a period of about four months, Red had been privy to Zippy’s actual persona. She was passionate, outspoken, prone to severe mood swings, and employed a cutting sarcasm that frequently crossed the border into cruelty. Her real speaking voice was a kind of urgent monotone; her adopted speaking voice was something between a mewling kitten and a mentally disabled eight year old girl.

  Apparently, Red had lost the privilege of speaking to the real Zippy.

  “Hey Zip,” Red began, and went to drop coolly into the matching recliner across from her own. He’d forgotten about the illusion, however, and threw himself down expecting cushy leather, only to find hard, unyielding plastic. His elbows knocked painfully on the arms, and he partially slid onto the floor, but managed to catch himself mid-fall and stabilize there. He froze, and decided to try to play it off.

  I meant to do this, Red told himself, this is how I want to sit: My ass hanging mostly over the edge of the seat, supporting my weight entirely with my elbows.

  The strain was clearly showing on his face. Zippy smiled hesitantly at first, but burst out laughing despite herself.

  “Jesus Christ, Red,” she spoke, her natural cadence peeking out between shuddering laughs, “Just…just sit up. Okay? You’re not fooling anybody, you god damn goof.”

  Red gratefully heaved himself back up and settled down again into the unforgiving plastic.

  “It’s uh…good to see you again, Zip.”

  “Go fuck yourself with that,” she threw off the platitude with a wave of her hand.

  “Listen, I’m sorry to bust in on you like this. I woke up dosed down in the dark floors, and some psychopath with this freak…robot…man-thing was chasing me and-“

  “Maurice,” she filled in, “yeah, he’s a fucking horror show. Those burnouts he uses to build the things? Some of them were ours. We tried to merk him once, and those monsters of his came out of the god damn walls. We only ever saw one or two, scouting, but when we brought our troop down there to put a bolt in his skull, suddenly there were dozens, everywhere.”

  “Jesus…there was only one of them after me and the thing still nearly got me,” Red shuddered.

  Hands in the dark, somewhere just behind…

  “No, that’s how he plays it. One to one. Watches the hunt on a feed in his hovel. He gets off on it. Only if you come strapped and itching do they start rolling out of the fucking shadows. You trip a lot down there?” She gestured to his bleeding hands.

  “Yeah, crap everywhere. You know the old tubes.”

  “Old tubes, my fine and jiggling ass. You think that was garbage you were falling over? Janitor’s only job is clean-up and maintenance, every minute of every day. If there’s trash there, it’s because he wants it there. Shit was obstacles for you. Or some of it was, anyway: There’s less trash than you’d think. Most of the ‘junk’ in the halls is just more of those things, laying on the ground, playing at heaps of scrap, or hanging from the ceilings, waiting for the word.”

  Red had no words to respond. His mind slipped that information away and suppressed it, desperately trying to keep him from considering the implications.

  He stared at her leg — the false one abandoned on the braided rug — instead. He’d never gotten the full story behind the amputation (some kind of fire in the ‘Wells, he’d gathered, back when she was just a girl). The prosthetic was a slender, colorless, arching crescent. Its surface was polished and smooth like obsidian, but reflected the light in a way that suggested something vaguely gelatinous. That was today’s leg, anyway: She changed the model routinely, constantly revising and crafting replacements.

  Some were practical, little more than metal tubes with kinetic generators in the ankle; some were life-like facsimiles – slim, pale ankles, long toes with elaborate polishes — while others were more like art projects or random impulses. One week, she’d bolted on an empty liquor bottle with a single metal screw inside. It jangled with every step. When pressed, she’d only said that she “liked the sound.”

  “So you think you can, what? Show up, do a few pratfalls, and then we’re solid?” Zippy broke the silence first, as always. She had never been content to sit quietly for any length of time. When they li
ved together and Red would become too caught up in his mixes, he’d pull his focus out of the BioOS only to find Zippy gone. She wouldn’t return for hours, and when she did, it was always bleeding, drunk, or both.

  “I can explain…” Red began by reflex, but found nothing to follow it.

  More silence.

  “Where’d you go, Red? Hell if I’m going to sit around and pine for my missing junkie, but we both knew I had enemies. You up and vanish, like you did? I thought I’d gotten you fucking killed, you prick.”

  “Zip, I’m like the wind…” He answered, with mock suavity.

  She laughed, but it was flat. He’d meant to leave it with the witticism, but Zippy narrowed her eyes, and he tried again:

  “Truth? I have no idea why I left. I was working on a new bliss mix, right? I think that’s what that was supposed to be: Trying to balance the inactive body-high of a cannabinoid with the active joy of an amphetamine. Does that sound right to you?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” she chuckled nostalgically, “that first proto had you only seeing blue. Had to paint the whole squat just so you could get to the toilet.”

  “Yeah! That one. Well, the second proto wasn’t much better. Near instant blackout. When I came to, I was in this big old-style flat just below Industry. Beautiful place. Giant bed with these huge, pillowy blankets – real ones, not the thin little mesh-weaves you get from the ‘feed. It was all swank and luxury, until I opened my eyes. Turns out I’d spent all my credits on kid’s toys while I was out, so I came to surrounded by - and I mean every inch of the room totally filled with - these little robotic elephants. They did a jig when you made eye contact. I guess in the missing time I must have carefully arranged them all to point right at me before I passed out. So the second I sat up, the whole room exploded with these trumpeting, dancing rainbow elephants. I laughed for an hour straight. Then I got up to head back to the squat and just…didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go back. No reason I can place. I just got this fear when I thought about going home. So I didn’t. I just started over. Like I do.”

  “Nice story. Funny. I can’t really say as I give a shit, though. I didn’t ask why you left, or why you didn’t come back. I asked why you couldn’t shoot me a message. You know, a simple: ‘Hey, Primal Tong didn’t get me while I was out buying proteins, and has not severed and mounted my left testicle on his warbanner. I just got sick of looking at you and decided to dance with some gay-ass elephants instead. Later.’”

  “It’s not a good reason,” Red conceded, intending to append further, better excuses. He came up with none.

  “It’s not a good reason,” he repeated instead.

  More out of intolerance for the silence than forgiveness, Zippy threw up her hands and looked away.

  “So get the fuck out of my ‘Wells then.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder,” she clucked her tongue and raised an eyebrow, either impressed or offended that Red had the balls to persist.

  “You know I’m not making it out without a guide. Even when we lived here I could barely leave the squat without you steering me.”

  “Hey, sure thing. James will take you to the border of my territory – it’s right there at the edge of the grass - and will happily throw your ass firmly out of the mystical realm of My Fucking Problem.”

  “Zip, I…I’m in trouble here. Okay? I need help. I think I may have ran with a beta…”

  “Oh, you son of a bitch. You’re going to – no. No, you’re not going to lay your life on my fucking shoulders again. I’m not taking that.”

  “Zip, I can p-“ Red started, but Zippy slapped her palms flat against the arms of her chair.

  “Don’t say it! Don’t you dare fucking contract me, Red. Not me, not like this. Maybe we didn’t have much, but it meant something, asshole.”

  “I can pay.” Red said, and carefully avoided her eyes.

  This time, she let the quiet settle.

  When she spoke again, it was in the girlish squeal of her other persona: “A deal’s a deal, mister. You know that! Let’s go, but I go first!”

  Zippy practically bounced to her feet, kicking her discarded leg up and into the socket of the prosthetic with one smooth motion. She pulled a long, winding strip of orange fabric from the faux-iron coat rack, and wrapped it in an intricate pattern around her body. When she was done, she snapped the trailing end, and the whole thing vacuumed tight to her form, ending up as something like a cloak. She swung open the door to the foyer, and James stood a little too suddenly, pupils still stuttering and flexing from the recent BioOS activity.

  “What’s all this, then?” James said, motioning to Red’s apparently bafflingly intact limbs.

  “We gots a contract,” Zippy whispered with the pretend gravity of a child playing at doctor, “so now we have to go to Red’s house to play.”

  “You rotten little bastard,” James laughed at the bashfully shuffling Red, “you know how we work in the ‘Wells, yeah? Business is business. Any job is more important than any relationship, but you never mix a paycheck and your mates. The second you offer work to a friend, you ain’t friends anymore. You dumb sod; did you have the slightest as to what you were doing?”

  “Red knows all the rules. I told him those already and he’s pretty good at the game already so let’s go already!” Zippy snapped the release and swung the front door open. Red looked out at impossible grass, at singing birds and flowering trees in a concrete stairwell.

  James whistled appreciatively: “You knew the etiquette and you still burnt her like that? You’re a bit of a bloody cunt, aren’t you mate?”

  Red had no rebuttal.

  “Got a search-alert hit while you two was making nice in there,” James addressed the impatiently bouncing Zippy, “a couple of ‘loggers up in Prince Johnny’s territory talking about headhunters renting access. Looking for a pretty serious runner, by the money of it. They were wearing blue suits, to hear tell.”

  Zippy’s eyes went wide, with mock or genuine astonishment, Red couldn’t tell.

  “So what?” Red asked, and bent to examine the grass between his fingers. The identification game he’d been playing in the parlor was still bouncing around his subconscious.

  “Sew buttons,” Zippy retorted, “use your noodle, Red. Don’t you ‘member your nursery rhymes? Blue suits and black boots mean…”

  “New recruits. Jesus. Oh, holy hell. You don’t think they were A-Gents?” Every joint in Red’s body locked at once.

  Zippy nodded, emphatically. And for a moment, nobody moved.

  “Welp, flitting about with our dicks firmly in hand doesn’t seem to be helping, so let’s try another tack,” James said and strode to the edge of Zippy’s lawn. He stared up at a solid mass of steel, and banged once. A voice answered immediately, and James launched into the careful web of lies, bribes, threats and insults that negotiating for passage entailed.

  “Shredded circuit boards,” Red said.

  “What’s that, mister?” Zippy turned on her tensile heel. She bobbed slightly, up and down, like a buoy in gentle seas.

  “The grass,” Red continued, “couldn’t place it. It’s shredded circuit boards, isn’t it? The jellied kind, I mean. The living ones.”

  “Ayup,” she answered, “they’re bio-lodge-ick-al. I feed ‘em bugs sometimes and sometimes other things.”

  James was wrapping up a short spiel that mostly consisted of the word ‘bollocks’ and an elaborate pantomime of punches. When his argument was finished – the denouement consisting of a rapid series of furious uppercuts and mock sobbing – the man on the other side of the peephole stared quietly for a few seconds, then disappeared out of sight. A section of the wall swung back, crackled like electricity, and slid away. He and Zippy quickly ducked through, and Red turned to follow after them. Having only the one springboard leg, he noted, leant the girl a whimsical, comical gait.

  Almost like skipping.

  Chapter Eleven

  The man kicked lig
htly in his sleep, like a dog dreaming.

  It was precocious and pathetic, though the effect was somewhat diminished when QC realized it was most likely muscle spasms from an abiding gas-trip. She hardened her posture, forced alert tension into her joints, and sat forward on the edge of the dining bench, a mouthful of sour, stale, disassembler-laden spit at the ready. Sad cuteness aside, the muscle twitches meant he’d probably be waking soon. In full effect, a gas trip meant near-total paralysis. Presence tended to shut off the nervous system more completely than Voyeur, but any kind of movement was only possible in the ramping down phase of either - what they called ‘The Shame.’ It was Factory Girls like her that originally coined the term, to describe the leg of the trip just before the finish, when the posh, Presence-using attendees first started to disengage their genitals from one another and get used to the idea of behaving like human beings again. Eventually, the phrase carried over to the casual users too, though most didn’t have the funds for Presence, and certainly not to rent private viewing rooms at the Fights, so they had no idea what the actual significance of the word was.

  But the Shame only lasts for a few minutes, and always comes at the very tail end of a trip. The stranger would be coming up soon.

  QC made an ornate shape with her fingers - the index crossed under the middle and extended, the ring and pinky fingers splayed out wide - and pressed twice into her thigh. She waited a few seconds, until the square patch of skin began to pulse a dull emerald, signifying confirmation. She extracted the double-sided needle/spoon that she kept threaded into her collar, and pricked at the center of the luminescent flesh. She spooned up a single droplet of blood, and deposited it on the sleeping man’s temple. He was lying on his side now, and any substantial movement on his part would shift the blood, thus tripping the Motion-Sensing nanobots within. The MS weren’t an official strain; just leftovers that her regular flushes couldn’t catch. They might be going rogue inside her right now, tearing and mutating her cells from within. But if she was stuck with them, she figured she might as well use them, and had them wired to her black market control kit. There was no telling if there were enough still active in there to actually signal the alert to her BioOS, but a chance was better than nothing.