Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity

by Robert Brockway

  James nodded.

  “The dose was supposed to put me back there for twenty-eight hours – just a bit longer than the max — to see if it worked at all.”

  “And it didn’t?” James’ attention was diverted. He’d caught something in Zippy’s tone. Red couldn’t detect anything amiss in the callow tittering himself, but the lithe, redheaded man seemed to find reason for concern there.

  “Not even a little. Eleven hours into the trip, and bam! I wake up down in the Blackouts being chased by a bio-hacking hick and his pet monsters.”

  “You sure you’re the only tester, then? Maybe they don’t know it doesn’t work yet, yeah? Or maybe it just didn’t work on yo-” James paused their conversation, and stepped silently up behind Zippy, listening intently.

  Red straightened his spine, pushed air into his chest, and thrust his arms back, trying, futilely, to relieve the mounting stress between his shoulder-blades. His spine cracked painfully instead, and the lungful of air left him in a rush. A swirling vertigo took him, briefly, and the atmosphere turned sour.

  Ah, hell.

  Spinal cracks and sharp breaths. What was he thinking? That’s Flashback 101. Red couldn’t decide if he should be apprehensive of the unknown chemical cocktail he’d just released into his own brainstem, or grateful that he might not have to spend the next few hours totally sober.

  Fortunately, the vertigo passed almost instantly, and the air quickly clarified in his nostrils. Almost…too much so. The mentholated sharpness in every breath — it was like high-end Presence. But Gas doesn’t store in spinal fluids; it stores in fatty tissues.

  Can’t be Presence, but it feels like it. So what feels like Presence? Nothing, really. Kharon mixed with hallucinogens? Some kind of muted Euphoric?

  Red shook the concern away – it was all moot now, and worrying about it would only lead to a turn when the flashback eventually took hold. Whatever takes you, takes you. Roll with it or get rolled.

  Red turned back to face the rebar forest where Zippy and James were arguing with the unseen Irishman, and stopped short. Standing kitty-corner from him in the little alley, not more than five feet away, was a twitching, gangly giant. He was seven feet tall if he was an inch, and hunched painfully against the low ceiling. Red glanced over at the metal curtain they’d come through, and found it still sealed. The rebar mesh was impassable for a normal person, but especially for a behemoth like this. He glanced around to confirm: There was no other possible entrance.

  Red screwed his eyes shut so hard that his ears popped, and sketched out what the corner of the alleyway would look like – sans colossus – when he opened them again. It was a tried and true lucid trip technique: Vividly picture normality, and when you open your eyes, it will be there. At least for a little while.

  But it wasn’t.

  When the optical noise cleared and Red could see again, the giant still stood opposite him, its body layered in a fine patchwork of thin, razor-cut scars. In place of a face, there was a midnight-black leather mask with no visible openings. A bright blue bull stitched across the forehead was its only ornamentation. The man was breathing heavily, his hands in constant motion. His featureless head seemed to somehow regard Red with equal parts lust, insanity, and confusion. A narrow slit cut itself free of the mask at mouth-level, and parted. When the brute’s jaw opened as if to speak, Red saw that there was only a whirling mesh of gears inside.

  He took in breath to scream, but the sound was muted by a hot, flat thump from James’ vortex cannon. When the debris settled and he finally regained his balance, the alleyway was empty again.

  Roll with it or get rolled, Red told himself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Pardon me,” Byron, immediately chagrined by his initial outburst, more politely inquired after the unseemly young blonde standing over him: “I said, pardon me…”

  There was a thick, electric syrup building in his neck — what Byron recognized as the early onset of a particularly vicious Gas-flu. The mix he’d just used must have been of considerably lower quality than he was accustomed to, as the pressure being exuded into his ears and behind his eyes was already becoming insufferable. He would require further chemicals, post-haste, with which to combat it. While he realized and understood that something untoward was currently happening to Red’s door, this hangover, if left unchecked, would quickly grow debilitating. He wouldn’t be much good for anything if that occurred, so Byron did the responsible thing, and took a moment to stumble over to Red’s Rx-feed.

  He slipped the plastic wafer into the slot there, and placed his palm against the cold metal dome, authorizing contact to his own BioOS. It thrummed eagerly as the factories and assemblers within spooled up, awaiting his request. He glanced sidelong at the spinning, cruciform of his personal operating system, and it obediently slid outward, across his eyes. It settled into place with an aquatic wobble, and the auto-context brought his Rx Home screen to the forefront. Byron focused on the vibrating apothecary bottle (the icon that he’d assigned to his custom Hangover Mix), and the hive of activity buzzed against his palm in response. When it ceased, he plucked the card out and thumbed the silken square emblazoned across its backside into his wrist. A small number ‘5’ pulsated softly next to the bottle. He focused on the number, and it blipped over to four. He felt a surge of solace course upward through his veins, settle the fury behind his eyes and soothe the asperous path being traced across his spine. He sighed, and turned amiably to the woman.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” He tried again.

  She waved a dismissive hand at him, still focused on the strange warbling sound the door was emitting. The significance of it was lost on Byron, though his first impulse was, quite reasonably, to flee. Having his chemicals balanced again did wonders for his memory, however, and he recalled that Red’s quaint little flat did not, in fact, possess an alternate exit. So he sat contentedly on the living bench, crossed his legs at the ankle, and waited.

  He was still trying to reconcile his realities a bit, after stumbling up through the purple blur of the Gas trip. The transitional period was always filled with such muddled uncertainty – this world and that one tumbled, oozed, and conjoined in his thoughts. The tall man with the fragile legs, the screaming dinosaur, the rather shabbily dressed blonde girl, this blank hovel of Red’s - which belonged where? It was like shuffling the pieces of two different puzzles and trying to reform them into one cohesive whole. Details flittered by, seized, and then became lost again, like waking from a dream.

  Byron opted instead to focus his efforts on a simple and easily executed task: He would inventory the apartment. He looked about him, once, and was done. Red’s home was a bare and cramped place. A series of photographs stood on the sill between main room and kitchen area. An empty glass sat on the table to the side of the bench, and a set of tousled jeans lay strewn across the bench and floor. There was one miniscule, sealed porthole in the kitchen, and no other windows.

  Well, back to the matter at hand:

  The woman was swearing baroquely and with gusto as she paced through the threadbare apartment. Finding nothing of apparent use, she sat down, a bit too close for Byron’s liking, and began to press a confounding series of patterns into the patch of bare skin that her trousers left open on her upper thigh. When this was done, she extracted a delicate needle from the collar of her aged silver duster, and made a small incision in the now softly pulsing flesh. Byron’s stomach churned, but the drugs came down and quelled it instantly. The girl then carefully pooled a few drops of blood with the other end of the needle, which was apparently equipped with a miniature spoon, and stood. She walked the two paces to the doorway and deposited the droplets at precise points around its base. When she was done, she mumbled something to herself, tapped her thigh, pierced the flesh, and repeated the whole process. Byron reasoned that the woman was either activating some kind of black market nanotech, or else was completely insane and simply did not respond to pressure well.

&nbs
p; Something suddenly occurred to him, and then un-occurred to him just as quickly. He seized on the faint outline of an idea: He was in Red’s home, that much was clear, but that struck him as a rather odd place to be. The only contact he had with Red was to commission and retrieve his custom blend of Presence, but if that was his purpose here, then where was Red? Why had he dosed up on his dealer’s living bench, instead of retreating to the atrium of his own home, as was customary? And why on Earth was he emerging from his trip with the Gas-flu of an inferior mix? Trying to force the memories seemed to provoke the headache again, however, and it promptly began to chew through the alchemical fog. So he dropped the matter for now, and redoubled his efforts with the girl instead.

  “Pardon me, ah…girl? Strange girl? If you could inform me as to our current predicament, perhaps I could go about making myself useful…”

  “I doubt it. You talk like an asshole, and I can’t think of a use for an asshole right about now. If I need to shit something out, I’ll give you a holler, ‘kay?” The girl snapped, then turned away and smeared a thin line of blood across the upper lip of the doorframe.

  “Good lord,” Byron stammered, “I meant no offense, I assure you. I’m afraid I’m still just a bit befuddled from my recent chemical excursion. I intended nothing untoward, and indeed, only wish to help with…whatever this activity that you’re engaged in happens to be. Fixing the door, I assume?”

  The girl laughed sharply, then paused to stare at him in bewilderment.

  “That’s a door drill, jackass. As in ‘a drill built for people to bust vacuum seals and open doors that aren’t theirs.’ When they break through the last chamber down here, the vacuums up top will send this thing flying right open, and whoever’s out there, will be coming in here. Understand?” Her tones were sarcastic and clarion, as if speaking to a particularly obstinate child.

  “I assume they’re not here to suck our dicks and pat our little asses dry, on account of all the breaking and entering, so sure: You want to help? Here’s the plan: What I’m really, really hoping is that the impact from that door flying open sets off the pyrotechnics my ‘bots are building on top of the frame here,” she said, gesturing to the trail of blood she’d smeared across the upper lip of the door. “If – and that’s a big ‘if’ – they pull enough sulfur, magnesium or phosphorous to build anything explosive and if – huuuge fat fuck of an ‘if’ – they’re even still functional, they’re still just built for show. They’re not gonna do shit in the way of damage, but maybe they’ll scare whatever son of a bitch is walking through them enough that they miss these…”

  She jogged the few steps to the kitchen bar and gathered up the photos there, then returned and spilled them in a heap before the entryway. They landed atop the blood spots Byron had seen her placing on the floor, earlier. For good measure, she flicked another dollop across them.

  “I have a strain of assemblers turning the silicon in this pile of sentimental bullshit into an industrial grade lubricant right now. Those I know work, at least. I used ‘em today back at the fights.”

  “You’re a Factory Girl!” Byron exclaimed happily, cheered that the two of them at least had a location in common. “Do you work at the Hangars? Why, I’ve been there just this evening!”

  She glared at him, blinked twice, and then continued.

  “So if God suddenly picks this moment to unexpectedly smile on my poor and well-fucking-trodden ass, then whoever’s on the other side of that door is going to come in here blind and dazed, slip on this pile, and go careening right towards you. That’s how you can help: Knock him aside, then charge out there and shove through the others, if there are any, so I can slip past you all and run way the fuck away as hard as I can, forever and ever. Amen.”

  “And what do I do then?” Byron smiled back at her, glad to have a task to busy himself with.

  “I don’t know, die? I fucking put them off guard and got you out the door. You take it from there.”

  “Hmm, well: I’m not much for confrontation, I have to admit. I’m afraid I don’t clock a lot of in-body hours these days. I suppose…” Byron stared at the ceiling and glued scraps of thought together until they resembled a whole: “Yes. Yes I suppose I shall run away also.”

  “Solid,” the woman replied, made a masturbatory gesture with her hand, and then turned away from him.

  The pair of them fell silent, and stared grimly at the whinnying portal, waiting for that last, fateful pop to sound. She was poised like a sprinter, centered low, with her partially bare leg thrust forward. Byron noticed that the cuts there had already coagulated, sealed, and vanished. The medic ‘bots in her control panel worked, at least. That was a heartening sign.

  The whine changed in pitch, contacting some material of a different density, then dropped to a low, shuddering growl.

  “Won’t be long now,” she warned him.

  He beamed pleasantly back at her.

  “So you probably want to stand up,” she clarified, “for the charging?”

  “Oh yes! Brilliant.” Byron stood and brushed himself down. Then he unsteadily bent himself toward the door, adopting what he hoped was appropriate charging posture: Shoulder lowered forward, head tucked against his collar bone.

  There was a sharp suck, and the panel flung itself violently upward into its housing. A stocky fellow in an elegant, dark blue suit, complete with top hat, stood in the doorway. His features were an unceasing, twisting blur, as if somebody had pressed their thumb into the photograph of his face, and smeared the ink there. The byproduct of a very expensive identity concealment system, Byron recognized; he sometimes saw its ilk employed by security at the galas he was irregularly required to attend, up in the Penthouses.

  The suited man, for his part, seemed utterly unimpressed by the tiny spark and gentle puff of smoke that followed.

  Byron saw his cue, belted out what he had always imagined a barbaric yawp to sound like, and thundered forward. Just after his first step was placed, it occurred to him that the blonde girl had not outlined the scenario that presented itself now: Namely that the man, not blinded in the least by light or smoke, would be standing and calmly considering them from outside of the apartment. Nor had she foreseen that Byron, now not having a stricken, fallen intruder to tread upon, would be himself charging through the industrial lubricant on his way out the door. But it was too late for reconsideration now: His leading foot was already hydroplaning on the greasy remnants of an old photograph, separating his legs painfully, and sending him into an unplanned lateral split. Byron felt a sickly tear in his groin as he slid downward and forward into the man’s torso. He involuntarily hugged the fellow about the waist as he fell, and futilely tried to regain his footing in the thin puddle of lubricant. Though not distracted by the lightshow or felled by the grease, the fancifully dressed man did seem slightly taken aback by the pale, ungainly gentleman who greeted him at the door, then dropped into the splits and glided across the foyer to hug him gently around the midsection.

  And that was enough of a distraction for the girl to make her move. She leapt forward, using her momentum to forcefully expel a mouthful of spit into the man’s vague, sketchy features, before crashing into the awkwardly entwined pair, sending them both sprawling. The stocky fellow screamed, and scrabbled backward into his companion’s legs (there seemed to only be the one, fortunately: Another unfocused head and gold-filigreed top hat with the body of a graceful, slender young woman). The blonde girl seized Byron by the back of his shirt collar and hauled him up into a crouch, then launched into a dead sprint down the constricted, twisting corridors. Byron’s feet, still greased, allowed him to slide frictionless behind her as she fled, all the while stuck in a cramped, tense squat. The rotund gentleman was still prone and flailing all about the cramped hallway, pawing at the obscured area where his face should be. His female partner frantically shoved at him, trying to pass and give chase, but the fellow grasped and clawed at her, and she could not extract herself from him. She could only watch
helplessly as the blonde girl disappeared in the distance, pallid gentleman in tow. Byron, at a loss as to the proper etiquette of fleeing a crime scene while skating backwards, timidly waved to his fallen attackers.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Red scrambled over the shattered fiber-board, scraping the insides of his thighs as he went. He felt a trickle of hot blood well outward from the point of contact, and begin to itch its way down his leg. An obese man with a long chemical burn across his forehead was regaining his feet just as Red crowned the wall. The man’s eyes went wide, and his broad, tattooed jowls flopped thickly as he waddled across the room to retrieve a ridiculously over-sized sword from its scabbard. Red ducked under the first swing, and his panicked yelps managed to draw James’ attention back to the apartment that he and Zippy had just torn open, and already moved on from. James caught Zippy’s eye, then tossed his head derisively back to the cowering Red. She gave a curt nod, and James reluctantly began digging through his canvas bag.

  The man’s blade had caught in the paneled ceiling on his last upswing, and he was wheezing heavily with the effort of extracting it. He had Red completely cornered inside of a small makeshift shower/office. With no exits and the man towering above him, Red could only wince at each huffing yank, wondering which would bring the blade free and crashing down into him.

  He closed his eyes. And something wet splashed across his face.

  Oh god, he thought, I had so much love to give.