Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity

by Robert Brockway

  Gas. No question.

  But why would the angular woman dose him with Presence? The last thing he remembered was some talk of transfusion, a muddy sense of fear, and then the forest. That, at least, was consistent with a Gas dosage: Memories were always fuzzy coming in and out of a trip. Red recalled the nurse asking his preferred anesthetic. He had her scan his Rx card and queue up his Sunday Morning Mix: 6 parts crowd-control quality euphoric, the kind the riot squads used; 4 parts opiate (it didn’t matter what type, his algorithm simply bought the cheapest available on the day’s market – they only served to ease the transition from euphorics, anyway); 1 part psychoactive plant alkaloid. The latter was expensive, but synthetics made him grind his teeth.

  And then what?

  And then forest.

  Dammit! Did she load the card wrong? Presence doesn’t make any sense: It’s not a relaxant. If anything, the potential for arrhythmia would be a deterrent for its use as a sedat—

  Something moved.

  Something moved beyond the treeline.

  Red was standing in a small clearing, just wide enough to fully stretch his arms before touching bark. It was twilight, and by the smell of the air, this was a pre-industrial epoch. The rainforest was temperate. North America? Europe maybe? Red was terrible at geography. History, too. He’d always flipped the School Channel over to watch reruns of the chemistry threads instead. Still, through basic experience, he knew that all eras have a feel, and this felt like 18th century, northern hemisphere, possibly pacific. He ran through the brief catalogue of pre-industrial northern pacific predators that he’d encountered (and usually been eaten by), during his various beta tests: Mountain lion, cougar, bear, wolf, coyote – but this one kept to the treeline. It knew what man was, and knew to be wary. Should it know that, in this period?

  The movement stopped.

  Red’s focus would not resolve. Forests were like low resolution parallaxes: His eyes had been trained to focus on the details in front of him, thanks to decades of screens and BioOS displays – they had trouble with distant impressions. He made a mental effort, but muscle memory kept bringing his gaze back to focus on the trees directly in front of him. Look beyond, damn it.

  The shadows and parallax brought a wave of helpless fear surging up into his gut.

  Red fought back his basic survival instincts, and called up logic: This was Presence. These forests did not exist anymore. And nothing in Presence could damage you. It can hurt, sure, but the most you’d wake up with was the premature shakes and some nausea. In past beta tests, Red had found himself in dozens of unscouted locations: He’d been mauled by bears, eaten by lions - even had a shark drop on him once, breaking his neck. That was an odd one. Never did figure out what happened there; it was over too fast.

  The only trick was to be prepared for it. If you can keep from falling victim to shock, the only lasting damage a bad Presence death could inflict was some light retinal detachment, a bitten tongue, and maybe a few weeks of night terrors.

  He sighed loudly.

  “My money’s on black bear. Doesn’t feel far enough North for grizzlies,” he told the darkness.

  Something detached itself from a long, damp shadow. It stood upright, on two legs, too thin for a bear.

  “Oh hey, you’re people! Dang, I always forget about Indians. Sorry, fellas. Listen, I know you’re probably pretty confused and all, but I’m not a magician or an angry god, okay?” He vividly recalled the three stake-burnings he’d suffered through, and tried again: “ME NO MAGIC MAN.“

  But the thing came at him, way too fast for human. Way too fast for anything organic. It moved with the bounding gait of muscle-graft, but that was impossible. In an instant it was on him. It clapped a hand over his mouth and shoved him to the ground in one fluid motion.

  In place of a face, there was only a fine, intricate mesh of chaotic, bloody wire.

  He tried to scream, but the sound came out high, thin, and distant. His tongue contacted a fleshy, porous membrane sealed over his mouth. The bitter taste of astringent and copper. Sound dampener?

  His attacker tilted its head sharply, listening for something in the forest.

  Another quick, bird-like twist of the head as it tracked the unheard sound, and then it was up and bounding away with the bouncing hobble of its artificially enhanced muscles. It disappeared back into the shadows.

  No, there it was: To the left now.

  “Listen, I’m sorry man,” Red kept his voice deep and low, so as not to kick on the dampener. “I thought this was a Gas trip. I think I’m confused here. Am I in some kind of reserve? I don’t mean to be trespassing. If you’ll just point the way out, I’ll get right the hell off of your property.”

  The thing snapped around to face him suddenly, as though surprised. It hissed. And Red realized the size was off: The first one was taller, thinner. This one was squat and thick. The hissing took on a stereo effect, and Red saw that there were more of the things now, surrounding him. A checkered pattern of lines bisected the world into little squares. They grew rapidly larger, then disappeared, and Red felt the bite of a net seal around his body.

  The net constricted. Red felt the soft thwack of little vacuum pumps thrumming against his skin. He fell to his side. The squat thing approached him, treading on broad metal cylinders, split down the middle, like cloven steel hooves.

  The face that bent to examine him was normal in every respect, save for the eyes. In their place, an exquisite grid of silver threads shimmered and rippled with unseen movement. It stood and croaked to the others.

  Most of them stood on prosthetic legs: The long flexible crescents they called Bounders, similar to the model Zippy sported, but these tapered back up from where they contacted the ground, and terminated in cruel, shining points. There was one in back that seemed entirely unmodified: Just a bearded, dark-skinned man of average height and build. But in his hands he carried a whip with a micrometer lash. Where it brushed along the grass, the blades segmented into pieces and blew away.

  The eyeless one croaked again. The language sounded vaguely Russian, but thicker and with more intonations. A bit of Cantonese in there, perhaps. Red had bunked with an Imported girl for a time. She came from outside the city, and for no reason he could recall, Red had decided she was Russian. They squatted together in an abandoned cable-skiff, moored to a crane outside of a half-built apartment complex. In that short time, he learned enough to recognize the sound of her language when spoken, but not enough to understand any of it. The second he began to comprehend what she was saying, he slipped the anchor cable and never looked back.

  The tightening net finally coughed and shuddered to a halt, just short of piercing his skin. Red peered up helplessly at the cloth-eyed man-thing. It stooped to touch him. Red flinched, but it merely seized a protruding section that served as a handle, and turned to walk away, dragging Red behind. Dry leaves crackled and split beneath them as they skipped and skidded along the forest floor. The bearded one followed, never making eye contact. The prosthetic-clad ones bounced crazily at the rear.

  There was no sign of the first man – the tall one with the wire face – and from the casual pace this new group kept, they either didn’t know of, or weren’t concerned with him.

  “Hey, guys,” Red began, but the second he spoke, the bearded man reared back and, without breaking stride, kicked him in the face. His eyes went unfocused, and he yelped in pain.

  “Stop being such a pussy,” QC was telling him. She smiled fondly down at Red, silhouetted against the blinding white LEDs in the ceiling above her.

  Back in the lab.

  “What happened to your nose?” QC asked, dabbing at a bit of blood on his face.

  Red returned her smile wearily. She had that little fold between her eyes that she only got when she was worried, or intensely drunk.

  “He woke up!” Zippy cried from somewhere unseen, “now we got to go or else they gonna catch us!”

  Every joint was clogged with a thick, sludgy
ache, and his muscles burned at the movement, but Red hauled himself begrudgingly to his feet. His eyes felt pressurized, his ears needed to pop, and his mouth tasted like rotten fruit from the blood already backing up into his throat.

  “I need my pants,” Red whispered to QC, before realizing that the dampener was gone. “Why am I always without pants?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “How long?”

  “Ten. Fifteen.”

  She leaned casually in the doorway of the scrub shop. The difference in air pressure buffeted her with wafts of ozone from the shop behind her, chicken smells from the market in front, and the angry chattering of ancient, vaguely Asiatic women from all sides. Her elaborate, high-collared blue suit was tailor-made for her body every single day: It adjusted on the fly for slight variations in her body-shape, and it monitored and controlled ambient temperature, humidity and pressure based on a set of independent criteria for optimal metabolization that were freshly compiled every 120 seconds. And still she pulled at the stiff, lacy collar uncomfortably.

  The tightness in her throat would not abate. Too many cultures clashing in too tight a space. Too many agendas. Too many opportunities for misunderstanding. Too many variables, plain and simple. Group of three Caucasians in grid 21-85C: Their threat levels were low, but signs of medical trauma – malnutrition, drug addiction, recent bruising – were apparent. Six Asians in 15-320B, eyeballing a display of bubble-packaged nanotech strains. Their body language and posturing dictated moderate threat levels. A skinny girl with a faded market-code tattoo was hunched over by the stall’s entrance, continually scanning for watching eyes. Could just be a hopper playing lookout for the shoplifters; could be a scout for rival agencies looking into wetwork.

  Categorize, analyze, dismiss or neutralize.

  But there were too many, and the conditions shifted too rapidly. No easily sortable groups. No pre-established algorithm for crowd interaction. That left her operating on Guerilla Theorems only, and she always struggled with those.

  “It’s in the gut,” today’s Albert had told her, when she first voiced her concerns about going into the catwalks. He apparently missed the irony of assigning mathematics to instinct.

  Albert stood up and slipped past the crone with her brandished broom-handle truncheon. She ululated at him unhappily.

  “That was ten,” he answered back. “It’s been fifteen minutes.”

  This day’s Albert sidled up beside her. His skin was somewhere between raw and translucent from the freshly stripped flesh. They’d managed to get his face into the scrub shop’s neutralizing bath and deactivated the blonde girl’s disassemblers before they had a chance to do any real damage, but Albert’s face still glowed with the sensitive pink of freshly exposed skin.

  “You look bashful, Albert.” She told him, and his thick, uniform brows lowered as one.

  “Humor does not become you,” he told her flatly, stepping past her and into the press of bodies beyond the narrow entryway. He had to turn sideways to slide his stocky frame by. The muscle accelerators did what they could, but there was little to be done about bone structure. He would always be on the bulky side. He looked like a fat little bulldog that some fanatical owner had dressed up in an archaic, blue and gold formal suit. It was not the optimal form for an Alpha Gentleman. It would impede his progress in the A-Gents someday, if it hadn’t already.

  “Your jacket needs to be let out,” she replied, knowing it would bother him.

  “You say that, Victoria, and yet you know that it is automatically fitted.”

  “I do,” she affirmed, and watched him flush even redder.

  “I have asked you not to speak with me unless relevant to the mission. I have filed this request with Hanover.”

  “Hanover has made me aware,” she answered.

  A solid cluster of high-level threats: Mostly Caucasian youths, bags under their eyes. Cheap bulk-assembled primary clothing, paired with more expensive, designer-tagged accessories. Importance placed on superficial status while lacking quality fundamentals, indicating interest in advancement without the means to do so. Motive. They were trying not to look directly at her, but shared a series of hushed conversations and furtive glances.

  “72-75, grids B and C” she told Albert, looking to her right.

  “I see them. A moment, please.” He was silent as he ran the Guerilla Theorems. “Not enough influence to risk public confrontation. They’ll shadow us. It will be the alleys, if anything. Split at first contact. Drop low, fire high. They’ll run when surprised.”

  “Queuing up explosive rounds for maximum psychological impact,” She added, reaching inside her jacket pocket and tracing a semi-circle on the control pad sewn inside her lapel. Her hand came out with a cigarette, and lit it casually.

  “Following suit,” Albert said, and glanced over just as she lit her cigarette. He then made a show out of patting himself down, finding his own cigarettes, and lighting one as though the desire seized him suddenly upon seeing hers.

  One of the boys flinched — probably getting a waveform message — then lapsed into the dead-eyed twitch of cognitive input. The group broke as one and shuffled away. Victoria scanned the crowd again, searching for the next most prominent threat. Albert found it first.

  “12-36A. Worn patch track on the wrist indicates addict in withdrawal. No physical training, hands too shaky for effective weapon handling. Likely attempted theft of secondary electronics.”

  “Pickpocketing?” She scoffed, “You’re qualifying pickpocketing as the new primary threat?”

  “There is a threat inherent in every situation,” Albert quoted code at her, “no matter how trivial. Categorize, analyze, dismiss or neutralize.”

  Victoria sighed, and flicked her lit cigarette randomly out into the crowd. Somewhere, a voice yelped and swore in pain.

  “5-355A,” Albert recited, “below average height, balding and overweight. Low self-esteem may exaggerate perceived slights. Wounded pride dictates he retaliate.”

  Victoria had been instantly annoyed when she first laid eyes on her Albert for the day. An A-Gent’s grid was registered in terms of optimal reach: Anything within ten grids of an operative could be dispatched with interpersonal action, thrown weapons or firearms. Ten to twenty grids allowed for thrown weapons or firearms. Anything beyond twenty meant firearms only. The fewer dispatch options the grid-range presented, the riskier an A-Gents situation became. Victoria’s lanky limbs and quick eyes gave her a slightly extended grid, just as Albert’s stockiness limited his. To partner, they had to pair and average their grids to get the mean they’d be operating on for the day. The downgrade in grid-area made her feel cramped, and awkward. She took a vindictive satisfaction in the fact that, though this Albert outranked her by two levels currently, her reach and reflexes had her set to overtake him in sixteen to eighteen months, depending on job performance. She’d applied for a transfer almost instantly, but Hanover had coldly noted her weakness in Guerilla Theorems, and denied the appeal.

  “Hanover: Vitals,” she said just a little too loudly, and a dozen pairs of eyes shot their direction, then quickly looked away and sped up their pace. A small, but noticeable radius of avoidance fluttered outward from their position. The bones in her skull vibrated, and she heard the thin, ghostly tones of Hanover reading off the vitals in her area.

  Albert glared at her.

  “Overt tactics. Using societal position to lower threat levels,” he noted dismissively, “public confirmation of A-Gent status dictates entirely new algorithms.”

  Albert’s gaze followed Victoria’s, to the man who’d been struck by her flicked cigarette. He was now trying desperately to hunch down in the crowd while stumbling in panic toward the catwalk exits.

  “New primary?” She asked him pleasantly.

  He chewed his lower lip and ran the numbers.

  Ambient temperature in Catwalk seven-hundred-forty-six: 101.4 degrees. 80% humidity. Foot traffic: Severe to dangerous flow. Capacity reached or
imminent. Primary Threats scanned in area: Maxwell “Axe-well” Tax, murder in the first degree. Samiya Cole, aggravated manslaughter.

  Security stills of an emaciated figure sporting a row of blue spikes on his head and a demure woman in a yellow Sari flashed up. They disappeared when she finished scanning them.

  Anya Volich, sixty-two counts of assault. Record expunged.

  An image of a familiar face – the old scrub-shop nurse – flickered onto her BioOS display. Victoria resisted the urge to turn and stare.

  Sweat began to spring up on Albert’s brow. The numbers were inconclusive, she gathered; he was having trouble identifying a primary in-grid threat.

  “Your fellow agent,” she quoted code back at him: “In absence of sufficient primaries, vigilance should be diverted to fellow operatives. There is always a threat: Categorize, analyze, dismiss or neutralize.”

  He swiveled to face her slowly, his raw skin pinching at the edges. She smiled winningly back at him, and almost laughed when his nose began to twitch.

  “Result!” Albert practically screamed, grateful to break the tension.

  A pulsing red dot thrummed in her peripheral vision. She glanced over to it, then slowly returned her gaze to center, confirming interface permission. Scrolling text filled the conical area in the center of her visual field. Images and thumbnail videos flung themselves outward in staggered concentric circles. The text was a cobbled together mini-biography of a smallish blonde girl. Pretty. Her delicate features offset by short hair done up in haphazard spikes. In the thumbnail, she was glaring up from a plate of garbage noodles at a lean-to on some lower-level catwalk. She was sticking her tongue out at whoever had taken the picture, indicating some level of affection or intimacy. She was wearing the same antique, silver-foiled duster and one-legged trousers as she had been when they’d first encountered her, down in the fleeing Beta’s flat. Victoria gave the bio a quick scan, pulling out key points: Quintessential Caroline McGinnis — with a name like that, her parents had probably been ‘Loons. She was either very lucky, or very resourceful to have survived the severance. Psychographic web-crawl indicated recklessness, anger, and strong impulses. An empathetic streak was revealed by her video-feed queue — mostly cute animal clips and social injustice memes. A tendency toward anti-corporate sentiment showed up in her shopping habits: Sparse purchases, even for the poverty line, indicated that Quintessential Caroline preferred to spend her money on off-market goods and software. Employment was also unlisted, but her search history – side-effects of unbranded strains, what to look for in a flush – hinted at a recent stint as a ‘Factory Girl in the arenas. Likely littered with malfunctioning or unstable nanotech. Last official housing was a hovel slung below Catwalk 393 on the North Post side of level 4566, time-shared with a Simporn addict named Moon. She took days, he took nights. That was two years ago.