by Ben Chaney
“Yes...yes, of course,” Sato said, “Which leads me straight to the point. The Commander and I agree that your service to this City has been more than exemplary, but your abilities far outstrip your station. John Kabbard, I would be honored to have you for my new Chief of Security.” The words seemed to take the wind out of the room. Kabbard instinctively glanced at Andreas. The young Suit seethed in the corner, holding an eerie silence. Kabbard tensed, sensing the kind of rage that could slip so easily to violence. This kid is a killer...
“Andreas here has done a great job for us, but it’s time for some new blood in this administration,” said Sato, “He will assist you in the transition.”
Andreas excused himself from the room with a rapid click-click-click of his patent leather shoes. In the silence that followed, Kabbard realized that the Commander and the Governor were waiting.
“I appreciate the offer, sir, but...my place is here with the EXOs,” Kabbard said. An assistant entered the room, quietly placed a tall glass of clear water on the table in front of him, and left.
“What, do you think, is the purpose of the EXOs?” Sato asked. The question was almost insulting until Kabbard started thinking of an answer.
“To secure the Border...to protect law, order, and democracy for those on the other side...” Kabbard stopped, interrupted by Sato shaking his head.
“I asked what you think,” said Sato, “Men like you aren’t impressed by the official version, and I know it.”
That knocked Kabbard back a step. There might be more to this Suit than the squeaky-clean public persona. Kabbard’s true opinion stuck in the back of his throat. He knocked back the glass of water, swallowed, then took a breath. Forced the words out.
“Public opinion and control. Government uses the idea of an Enemy to keep civilians afraid. Scared people are easier to unify. Easier to distract. It’s our job to keep the fear fresh and the wheels turning,” Kabbard said. Twenty years of accumulated cynicism in a handful of words. Commander Gorman shifted his stocky frame uncomfortably in his seat, and looked at Sato. The Governor blinked. Shook his head as though suddenly disoriented.
“Well...there it is. A surprising view for a civil servant to say the least. Thank you, Sergeant...though the next question is obvious. If that’s the case, why stay?” asked Sato.
“Ours is not to reason why,” Kabbard said.
“...but to do or die. Tragic and beautiful,” Sato said, “But I wonder. Would you be willing to hear a better reason?”
Kabbard furrowed his brow, skeptical but suddenly alert.
“The EXOs remind our neighbors beyond the Border of our power and authority, so that they don’t even think of crossing the wall. You and your men, in effect, keep the desolation of the Slums from infecting the best of Humanity, but that by itself is unsustainable. So what’s the solution?” Sato waited for an answer. Kabbard had none to offer. The governor continued.
“We protect our Border so that we can preserve our strength. If we preserve our strength, we can not only grow, but flourish again and hasten the day when City and Slum are one and the same. When the Border is dismantled and prosperity returns to all.”
Kabbard looked down, staring at his glass of water. A solution? Peace? Repatriation? His mind rejected it instantly. A liberal pipe dream, and possibly a dangerous one. Yet his palms slicked with sweat on the cool glass. Sato leaned forward. Continued.
“John, this is impossible without a man like you. I need someone who understands the Slums. Someone who’s walked in the rows of Falari Market. Someone who knows the people and someone who the people know...on both sides,” Sato leaned back, “It’s a lot to take in, I know...especially after the day you’ve had. Go home and think it over.” Sato stood up and extended his open hand. Kabbard did the same and accepted the handshake. He nodded to Gorman, turned, and left the conference room on the way to the lockers.The commute back to his Inner Ring apartment went by in a flash. A blurry, distracted Superway train ride through the dingy high-rises of the lower middle class. Peace is impossible. The Slums might as well be a separate country. A separate hostile country. They’d never trust us again.
“Watch your step. Watch your step,” said the artificial woman’s voice through the Superway speaker. Kabbard looked up, disoriented. Stood and shuffled out with the other red-eye commuters into Seraphim Station. The cavernous commercial hub throbbed with neon advertisements that clawed at his attention. All around, people were absorbed in their Neurals, browsing restaurant menus, ordering clothes, and podcommenting on aggregator blogs. Apps as extensions of their minds and bodies. A few played aug-games, dodging simulated green fireballs they threw at one another. Kabbard’s law enforcement Neural allowed him to see through all the privacy-mode blocks. He ground his teeth as he disabled it. No one was watching the news. Or giving a damn about the third world country a shuttle-ride away. They flooded in and out of the segmented Superway cars like blood cells flowing through a vein, gathering at the Commons’ hundreds of shops and kiosks. Consume, rinse, repeat. If they only knew.
IAfter a half-hour trip over skywalks, up commuter lifts, and into the Alessi Building, Sergeant Kabbard arrived at his single studio box in the wall. Neighbors passed without a glance as he buzzed himself in, shut the door, and plopped down in his beat-up recliner.
He looked around. Cardboard moving boxes stacked in each corner. How long had they been there? Seemed like only last week when he found Shannon’s note saying that she couldn’t ‘take anymore’ and was leaving with the kids. Their family pictures sat off in the corner, still encased in thick, green bubble wrap. He’d moved out of their dream apartment in Whitlatch and into this squat. Must have been, what, four years ago? five?
The long nights. The endless browsing through her Neu feed, waiting for a message, or worse, a news update. The painful, silent dinners and days off. The nightmares. The outbursts. She’d had enough. He both hated her and understood.
Kabbard got up and stepped outside to the shallow balcony. The City wound down to its midnight humming glow. The soft roar of civilization filled him as his civilian-clothed body tingled and twitched from Augmentor withdrawal. My City... he thought. All the sacrifices he’d made for it. Had he really helped at all? No clear answer came.
He looked up. High above the scraper-tops, the hazy spire of Sedonia Tower stabbed into the sky. The red light at its peak blinked silently like a watchful eye. He chuckled to himself.
“Well...it’d be one hell of a paygrade bump.”
6
Savings
Six Years Later
AS ALWAYS, THE long daily pilgrimage to the Pits began in the dark blue haze of the gathering dawn. Bodies streamed out of their hovels to join the march, all in silence. Only the clink and rattle of handmade equipment and the shuffling of feet advertised their passing. Some didn’t want to wake their children. Some, the oversleeping T99s. Others kept quiet for no other reason than the fear of what the day might bring.
Matteo stretched in the gloom of the container apartment. His body ached as usual, but the pain had gotten lighter over the years. Already he stood as tall as Jogun ever had, and tight whipcord muscles wrapped his slender frame. It had taken four years of chores with Utu to get to this point. Changing bed-pans, washing soiled linens, bathing the elderly—all worth it. The healthier he got, though, the less he wanted to be around sick people. And there were other kids in need of Utu’s help. The old man had smiled. Seemed to understand. ‘Go find it,’ was all the Doc said.
Still looking. Matteo thought bitterly as he threw his gear into Jogun’s old satchel. Blowtorch. Ball cap. Tape-patched sunglasses. Handkerchief. Airtank. He didn’t need it much anymore, but sometimes... Curling a lip in disgust, he shoved it in the bag.
Breakfast was a hastily-cooked ball of rice. Lunch would be too. He shoveled some uncooked rice into a plastic bag, tossed it in the satchel, and yanked the draw-string shut. He switched off the hot plate and scooped his breakfast out of the pot with a bare
, calloused hand. All five scalding mouthfuls were eaten in seconds. His stomach still growled on his way to the door.
Hand on the latch, he paused. Looked at the camouflaged metal plate in the corner by the door. He knew how much was in there. Down to the milligram. But the urge to check anyway was irresistible, especially at the start of another day in hell. Matteo put his satchel down and crouched in the corner. Uncovered the hidden compartment. Inside were three plastic containers, each no bigger than his palm. He picked one up. Breathlessly pried open the air-tight lid.
Kale seeds. Hundreds of them. He caressed the top of the little pile with a fingertip, feeling each of the pin-head size pellets. The other two boxes housed the tomato and spinach versions. Four years of savings. Enough to keep him fat on rice, chickens, and greens and still have plenty left for months of Utu’s advanced treatments and remedies. But they were worth more than that. Nine-point-eight more grams of Kale seed, and he could afford to hire a Lifter.
Matteo felt the rough skin on his left forearm where the jailbroken RFID would go. A new life. A new identity. A ticket across the Border. Word was Lifters could hack a new ID into the chip, square it with the City networks, and arrange for transport over the Border. No one ever came back. Most assumed that meant death. Plenty of ways to die here, too...without trying... Starving to death or getting crushed in the Pits among them. The only other option was the Nines. With them, he could make nine-point-eight grams in no time, but what would he have to do to get it? ‘No blood.’
Matteo replaced the cap and returned the box to its hiding place. His stomach growled again as he stood. Pushing out of the front door, he tucked the sensation away for the ten mile trek to the edge of the Slums.
In the wastelands, beyond the fringe, the silhouettes of hulking cargo freighters, hover-liners, and vehicles of all other sizes and descriptions signaled arrival at the Pits. Although the place didn’t get its name from the scrapyard. Vast man-made sores yawned open in the ground as far as the eye could see. Deep terraces filled to the brim with garbage. One of Matteo’s magazines said they were made by something called ‘strip mining’ before all Earth’s ‘industrial resources’ ran dry. Flying scows from the City flew over the Pits, dumped their loads, and flew away. Scores of men, women, and children did their best to dodge the incoming trash then converged on it to get first pick of what fell. Watching them belch a few fresh tons, Matteo rubbed at a ragged scar on his shoulder. A bad day. A falling chunk of countertop had almost killed him.
His new job, while it paid slightly more, wasn’t much better. Few workers survived past the age of eighteen.
Sparks fell from the ship’s hulls in the distant scrapyard as the first Cutter crews got to work. Gigantic chunks of scrap metal were already falling to the dirt in violent, ground-shaking crashes.
The mood of the workers lightened when they formed up into their usual crews. Chatter, joking, and singing rose with the sun. Matteo approached a crew of four Cutters.
“I’m tellin’ you bro, she can’t get enough! We did this one thing last night...” A short, stocky Cutter stopped when he saw Matteo. Matteo smiled.
“‘Chu lookin’ at, freak? Move on!” said one of the others. Most crews were like that nowadays. Utu had called Matteo a ‘savant’ when it came to machines. He could strip an engine block down to clean, usable parts in ten minutes. Not normal and not appreciated like he would’ve thought. Matteo gritted his teeth. Kept walking. He listened to the other conversations while he stewed.
“I’m tellin’ you, that’s what I heard! They grab you up and shoot you to the damn Moon! Ain’t sayin’ I believe that shit!”
“—and maybe if you wasn’t so lazy, we’d do a decent Cut once in a while!”
“Whatchu know ‘bout a decent Cut?”
“My cousin! He heard it from Suomo hisself! They’re payin’ triple salvage on the shit...some shit about ‘parts for the struggle.’”
“Triple salvage?” Matteo blurted out. That kind of seed would go a long way. A crew of three young men no older than seventeen turned angry glares on Matteo.
“You wanna keep your fuckin’ voice down!?” the shadow-skinned one rasped. “Don’t everybody know ‘bout this yet!”
Matteo didn’t flinch. He stood straight and stared them down.
“If you wanna keep it that way, cut me in. What are they lookin’ for?” he asked.
“Oh I’ll cut you!” the thin, scrappy one said, pulling out a sharpened metal wedge.
“Ruka, chill,” the command from the dark Cutter seemed to slacken Ruka’s muscles. “Blood wastes time and attracts attention. ‘Sides, an extra hand might work out.” The Cutter casually turned back to the third man. The move was subtle, but Matteo saw him mouth a word into Ruka’s ear. ‘After.’ Good to know.
“I’m Samir. That’s Ruka and that’s Taliq. Get your gear, follow us, and keep your mouth shut.” Matteo pulled up his shoulder strap and followed. The four of them climbed through a ragged tear in the lower hull of a skyliner called ‘The Somnium.’ Just inside, crews swarmed all over the hover-engine room, grabbing everything that wasn’t riveted down and torch-cutting anything that was. The shell of a fusion reactor came down in minutes. The workers’ only protection against the radiation: rubber kitchen gloves, thread-bare track suits, and expired re-breathers they’d found on the walls.
Samir wasted no time getting up the metal stairs and through a hatch at the aft end. He led them through the maintenance corridors, a twisting, turning, climbing series of angular, high-ceiling passages. The path grew pitch black as they passed the last of the early crews and their lamps. Samir took out glow sticks, cracked all four, and passed them around. Shaking them bathed the hexagonal tunnel in blue-green twilight. Deep in the aft end, they finally reached an untouched block of engineers’ quarters. Two bunk beds per room with all the trimmings intact.
“Okay, we’re lookin’ for batteries, copper wire, and any kind of switch you can find. Lights, TV, window, A/C, whateva, so long’s it turns on an’ off. Get the plumbin’ pipes too, ‘specially PVC. Go,” said Samir. All four of them took a room and got to work. Matteo glanced around his first bunk in an instant, mentally marked his targets, then stuck the glow stick between his teeth. Batteries in the emergency floodlights. Copper wiring in the wall sockets, intercom, and light fixtures. Light switches from the door, bathroom, and shower. Panel switches for the wall-mounted monitors. Circuit switches from the climate control box. He squinted behind his sunglasses and handkerchief as he torch-cut PVC pipe from under the sink. All flew into his satchel, and he was on to the next room. And the next. And the next.
With his bag filled to the brim, he pulled it shut and stepped out into the corridor. Glowing light still flickered from the others’ first rooms. He grinned, stuffed his glow stick in his waistband, and pulled the hoodie down over it, dousing the light. Their route to this section played back in his head. Reversing it was easy. He stepped carefully past the rooms and turned into the inky darkness of the main corridor. Bye, Samir.
Less than halfway down the path, he saw lamplight appear. More crews headed aft. He wondered if Ruka would pull a knife on them too. He thought about warning them, but his heart sank when they came into view. A young worker and his younger friend, neither over thirteen. Both lay motionless against the bulkhead. Both burned beyond recognition. The eldest seemed to have tried to carry his friend away from the fire before collapsing there in the tunnel. Matteo tried to wake him. No response. Only a vacant stare.
Hotburst. They were common enough. A Cutter would torch right through a line and trigger a fireball, cooking all inside the compartment until the gas pocket burned away. Smoke gathered in the passage as Matteo crouched beside the boys. He reached into his bag and took out his air canister. The sight of it made the callus under his nose itch. He dropped the tank into his hood, wrapped the tube over his ears, and fastened it under his nose. The air inside tasted stale. Metallic. He put down the rushing flood of memories to focus on fi
nding the way out.
The morning had been difficult, but continuing through the rest of the day drained him. After leaving ‘The Somnium,’ and the threat of bumping into Samir’s crew, he crossed the yard to join a Cutter crew on a Virton Energy bulk-freighter. The afternoon and early evening was spent climbing all over the ship, rappelling from the sides, and cutting massive gashes in the bulkhead so the chains could yank it down in sections. No one was killed. He thanked God for that. But the injuries weren’t any easier to see. A crushed leg here. An open gash there. Those always happened.
The sun dipped under the horizon by the time he got in line for the Seedmaster. The blue-uniformed, squat City man sat behind a table just inside the open hatch of a City Municipal shuttle. Two armed guards, likewise uniformed, stood silent beside him. One by one, the Cutters, Runners, and Medics took their day’s wages. Each hung their head after. A bad sign.
Matteo’s turn came.
“Job?” asked the Seedmaster, smacking loudly on a wad behind his lower lip.
“Cutter,” Matteo said, “Worked ‘The Somnium,’ ‘Virton JF-145,’ ‘The Sedonia Queen—’”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” The Seedmaster reached behind the desk. Matteo stood on tiptoes to watch. Five giant duffels of seed sat behind the table. The Seedmaster sunk a plastic scoop in one and brought it to the table over the scales. Matteo got excited. Gotta be at least an ounce in that scoop!
The Paymaster tipped it over the scale tray, dropping a trickle of seeds. Stopped. Matteo sank as the tray was emptied into a plastic baggy. He could count the tiny seeds by looking at them.
“Point-oh-eight grams. Next!” shouted the man as he handed over the bag.
Matteo lingered, scowling at the bag. Weak for a Runner. Damn insulting for a Cutter. He did the math in his head. A hundred-twenty-two more days of this to hit the nine-point-eight goal. A hundred-twenty-two more days to die....IF they don’t cut rates again.
