Parallel

by Anthony Vicino

  I opened my mouth to answer, but somebody beat me to the punch line.

  "He's the guy that's gonna kill you," a deep voice like rolling thunder called out from behind the kid.

  Georgie spun so quickly his ass cheeks slid off the stool and he flopped to the ground. A man, not ironically named Boulder, towered over the kid.

  "I think you made him piss his pants, Bo," I said, looking into the giant's eyes. The two pinpricks of black were the only point of weakness on a body stacked haphazardly with nanite-infused muscles.

  "Why's he going to kill me?" Georgie whimpered from the ground.

  "He wants your time," I said.

  "Well, too bad. He can't have it." Georgie tried faking confidence, which might help in some places, but Lucky Lou's wasn't one of them. "I have the best insurance money can buy."

  "Won't help."

  "Why?"

  "He's an Intuit."

  Georgie's face went through such an extreme color change that I figured cosmetic nanobots hiding beneath his skin must have been responsible. Either that or he finally realized the desperate nature of his predicament. Possibly a combination of both.

  Insurance be damned. An Intuit like Jack Dunn would only need a couple minutes tromping through Georgie's nanocomp to hack the kid's Time Bank account and drain it. After that, Georgie could say goodbye to all those years he'd carefully collected, 'cause he'd be staring at his final ten minutes. A parting gift thanks to the Safeguard. A safety protocol only one Intuit had ever managed to crack.

  Ten minutes ain't much time, though. Just enough for panic to really grab you by the balls.

  Bo ignored the Uppie at his feet. "Boss wants to see you, Tom."

  "Oh?" I pivoted in my chair and glanced past Bo's prodigious bulk. At the far end of the bar Lucky Lou leaned against the second-floor railing overlooking the current Stream fight. "What's he want?"

  "You know how it goes." Bo shrugged with the indifference of a man just doing his job. "I'm the delivery man. He tells me to come get you, I come get you. Now, you good to walk or am I carrying you?"

  "That won't be necessary." I stood quickly, causing my barstool to tip past the point of equilibrium and clatter to the ground.

  I stepped over Georgie, still sitting on his ass, and headed towards the mass of human biowaste writhing on the dance floor.

  "Wait!" Georgie yelled. I turned, if for no other reason than pity. The kid, now standing, trembled with the reality of his predicament. "What do I do?"

  Bo quirked his eyebrow and tilted his head knowingly.

  I sighed. "Can you get him an escort to the top?"

  "Sure." Bo sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of a hand covered in cheap back-alley tattoos. "But it'll cost you."

  "You heard the man," I said, turning to Georgie.

  "I can't..." Georgie started. "My dad can't know I'm down here. He watches my accounts. He'll kill me if he finds out."

  I pointed to Jack Dunn. "That guy is probably gonna kill you first."

  Georgie made a pathetic sound like a puppy being kicked. I didn't know I had any heartstrings left to be tugged, but somehow that noise found one.

  "How much to get him to the Middle?" I asked.

  "10,000. Or six months. Your choice."

  A steep price for saving Georgie's ass. Then again I didn't want this kid's death hanging over my head if somehow I made it to the pearly gates and they were looking for a tie breaker to decide my fate. When you're getting ready to die, you start thinking about these things. You start hedging your bets.

  "Fine." I extended a hand, which Bo happily grabbed.

  BLINK.

  I activated the nanocomp buried in my brain. It flickered once as though someone was testing a light switch before a torrent of high-speed data blazed through my temporal lobe. My fingers tingled and my heart triple kicked before the microscopic nanobots scurrying along my neural highway could compensate.

  Connected to Lucky Lou's subdivision of the Stream, I probed the private network created between Bo and myself, pinged his nanocomp, and transferred Georgie's babysitting fee—three fights' worth of money, though it wasn't like I could take it with me when I was gone anyhow.

  When I blinked out of the Stream Bo was smiling and Georgie only looked like he’d been crying a little.

  "Do me a favor," I said to the kid, "don't ever come back down here."

  Having padded my pocket with a little extra karma I turned and headed for my meeting with Lucky Lou.

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