by Hugo Huesca
I checked the covers of the ones at the front of the pile. Sirens of Titan, A Scanner Darkly, VALIS, The High Crusade… They were science fiction books. Old ones.
“You read this stuff?” I asked him. The covers had strange, dusty illustrations on them, almost cartoon-like. I wasn’t into it at all.
“We used to play some great sci-fi games back in high school, remember? Well, these books right here inspired most of those.”
“I don’t have time to play games anymore,” I snapped, a tad angrier than I expected. You don’t have time to waste on kids play with a family to feed. “Maybe Van would enjoy them more, I don’t know.”
“Sci-fi is not really her style,” Kipp said. He looked sad all of a sudden. Probably trying to guilt me into accepting the gift. Master manipulator that one.
“Tell you what, I’ll check them out when I have some time. I’ll let you know what I think, but if they turn out to be some erotic weirdness from a hundred years ago, I’ll make you eat them.”
“Sounds great to me, man. Old books taste delicious. Anyway, about this game I’m playing—”
My phone buzzed. I got a message on a group chat. It was from Darren’s crew. Suddenly I wasn’t having fun anymore.
“Listen, man, we’ll meet another time, okay?” I told Kipp. “I gotta meet some guys from the neighborhood. It’s kind of important.”
“Sure, Cole,” he conceded, his face a blank mask. “Another time, for sure.”
I said a hurried goodbye and hastily carried the cardboard box upstairs to my apartment. All the while panting under the weight of the books and wondering what the hell was I going to do with all that paper. Damn Kipp and his… neohipster shit. I’d gift him some rocks next time, so he could carry them around on his wheelchair, see if he liked it. I suspected he just wanted to make me carry a heavy box up an entire flight of stairs. What a messed up sense of humor.
It was the last time I saw him alive.
I walked to the Cañitas Park after that. I was grounded, yes, but it’s very difficult to take a grounding seriously when you are the one footing most of the bills. Anyways, I would’ve stayed home, but I didn’t want to piss off The Ferals.
That’s what Darren’s crew called themselves. If you wanna laugh, do so when they aren’t watching. Mostly, they were a just a wannabe-real-gang, kids my age and lower with one or two Strikes to show for all their troubles. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t rough you up if you got on their bad side.
On the other hand, a bit of a rough up was better than pissing off Darren. Darren was the real deal. He had been in prison already, for killing the guy who stole his girlfriend. Got out for good behavior three years later, thanks to some new city-wide politic to help rehabilitate the young criminals.
Darren was twenty-five and not rehabilitated at all, but he hadn’t killed anyone else recently, at least.
I worked with The Ferals sometimes. Not that I liked them, see, but they did hang around Lower Cañitas. I could either be their friend or their competition.
I’m a lover, not a fighter. I’m not good at either anyways.
The Ferals waited for me in their usual hanging spot, the humid tunnel by the Cañitas Public Park. The park looked more like a piece from an apocalyptic movie than a park: wild grass growing at waist-height and the rusted ruins of a playground hiding underneath it. If you didn’t watch your footing, you could smash your foot against a former seesaw.
I arrived at the Feral’s tunnel in less than ten minutes. They were already there, about seven guys and four girls, all dressed in black and leather Hot-Topic-copycat. They had neon green and purple hair styled in pointed directions and combined with bald patches.
Hey, guys, the punk movement called, they want to sue for copyright infringement. But when you are breaking the law you don’t have time to innovate in fashion, so I guess they can have points for dressing as punks “ironically.”
“We’ve been waiting for you, Cole,” said a tanned guy with more muscle mass than everyone there put together, including me. Looked like a bull from afar. I mean it. That’s what steroid-concoctions could do for you nowadays.
“I’m here, Darren. What’s up?” I told him.
“We heard about your Strike,” a girl with a shaved head told me, with fake pity. That’s Darren new girlfriend, Chimera (Real name Magda Libermann. But don’t call her that or she will go ballistic). “We are very sorry. Poor Cole.”
“That’s what you get for going Scripting without a spotter, noob,” said a Feral who had glued some spikes on his jacket shoulders.
“Beat it, Curse. The pay was good,” I said.
“If you had told me I’d have sent Curse with you, or Ghoul. Scripting alone is dumb, Cole,” said Darren.
“Yeah, hindsight is 20/20. You know I’m a loner, Darren.”
Darren considered this. “Yes, that you are. Otherwise, I’d think you’ve been avoiding us.”
“Of course not,” I lied, “but I may need to put some distance between me and the street, guys. I’m on my third Strike.”
“You going wage-slave?” Bliss asked me with disgust. She was a small, angry girl whom I had dated for a whopping half-a-week. “I thought better of you.”
“I have bills to pay,” I said. Had they asked me to come so they could roast me or something?
“Chill, brother,” said Darren, “we worry about you, is all. We are your friends, Cole. We know money is tight. When we found out you were in a bad rut, Bliss here thought ‘hey, we should throw good old Cole a bone.’”
“What do you mean?”
Bliss circled around me like a shark making a show for the fish it was about to eat. She loved doing that, believed she was being intimidating. “We need a spotter. A couple of us got a hit, we found out the mayor keeps some real nasty pictures on his computer. We are going to break in and grab them. Some e-mags will pay a fortune to cover the leak first.”
“That could get us all in jail real quick,” I said. Going against the mayor? No judge would pull his punches.
“Let’s hope our spotter is good, then,” Bliss said. Then she grinned.
“If you want, of course. We doing this as a favor to you, Cole. I can place any Feral on spotter duty and they’d take the easy money happily.”
They offered me a thousand dollars. A dollar didn’t have the worth it used to, but a thousand could pay the bills of the month.
Still, the risk…
Darrel saw the doubt in my face. “No pressure, Cole. I understand if you don’t want to take the risk. Think it over, will you? But hurry up, because we sail today at midnight.”
“Yes Cole, think it over,” said Curse, and patted my back.
It took only the walk back home for me to decide against it. Too risky. Even a city like San Mabrada kept an eye on its mayor. No Script was good enough to leave without a trace.
Still, the spotter was the safest duty of all… Just give the alarm if you see any trouble, then book it.
I remembered Mom’s expression the morning before. Like someone who knew her son was a criminal who was going to end up in jail before turning twenty-one.
No, I could do without the money.
When I came home, I saw Van and Mom waiting for me in the kitchen. Mom looked happy, which was strange because I had just been outside while grounded. Van had her sight glued to the floor. Her phone waited on the table.
I suspected something was off immediately.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered when I came close. She took care Mom didn’t hear her.
Mom handed me the phone. An email waited on the screen. “Congratulations, Cole! You got the job!” she said, almost beaming with happiness.
It was from Xanz, the placebo murderers. I had a new job as their junior-executive. That meant coffee-go-getter.
“Oh. Wow.”
“You start on this Monday,” Mom explained. “The pay is not much, but it’s something and I just know I’ll get a job soon enough. Our family is safe, Cole. We
will start to pay bills again.”
Xanz. I guess it fitted.
“Any other offers?” I asked.
“Only one.” The application process is automatic, that meant no further offer was going to come along.
Thanks, Van.
That evening, Mom cooked for us. Spaghetti. We had eaten just takeaway ramen for a week now. I hadn’t seen her so happy in a long time. As if she had lost ten years.
During dinner, Van wouldn’t look at me.
I lay awake on my sofa-bed after that, counting away the hours. At ten, I sent a single message to Darren. I’m in.
Half an hour later, when I made sure Van and Mom were asleep, I got out of my sofa, grabbed my Goodwill’s jacket and sweater, put on my jeans, and left home without making a sound. Ten minutes later I was on a night-bus towards San Mabradas’ City Hall.
I felt like a monster the whole trip. It felt like the mere prospect of spending five years slaving away for Xanz was tearing my soul apart. If I had one.
Anyone would be better. Anything. I only needed some time to send more applications. But I couldn’t break Mom’s heart like that. I felt like a coward. Probably because I was one.
I was going to get the money from The Ferals and use it to pretend I was working with Xanz. Then, after I found another offer, I would pretend I had been fired and switch to another company.
That was my plan. It was my best shot.
I got out of the bus one block before City Hall. Downtown San Mabrada looked like artificial night. The tops of the skyscrapers sizzled with the activity of a thousand giant neon holograms dancing with each other, showing ads for god-knew-what product in their scantily dressed backs. Giant women of shining exaggerated curves bent over each other trying to claim the attention of Saturday night street-roamers. Cowboys and astronauts fought each other with phallic guns while trying to look cool for any observers. Company mascots panted and ran around the sky like twisted angels, mixing the black sky with purple, orange, red, green, and blue. Made me dizzy just looking at it. Lower Cañitas had no holograms, no blaring music loud enough to make the glass panels of the buildings shake following the beat. No one there had enough money to buy what they sold.
It was sickening. Perhaps it was the air, which was a mixture of hologram-sizzle and smog.
The Ferals waited for me in their favorite club, Gluttony. It was a shit-hole of a place, frequented by drug addicts and gangs. It managed to stay open by the virtue of dirty money and it avoided the police by virtue of being a money laundering front for the Mayor.
Its interior looked sketchy. Like, designed on purpose to be sketchy. I guess the Mayor wanted as little clientele there as possible, to divert attention from all the money he laundered inside. Tough luck, mister, the ugly part of your city loves sketchy. Feels like home.
That meant it was connected to his personal servers. I knew the plan Darren had without him needing to tell me anything. Script their way into the Mayor’s personal servers and use the credentials there to get into the protected intranet of the City Hall. Release the pictures from there and make it look like a leak. They would get paid without the police suspecting anything.
Unless they were already surveying the club. In which case, The Ferals would be in trouble. Scratch that, we would be in trouble.
“Took your sweet time, Cole,” Darren said when I found him sitting on his favorite table. With him were Bliss, Chimera, and Ghoul. Ghoul was already pretty drunk. He bled from his nose, and he was trying to contain the stream with a handkerchief.
“Idiot tried to get handsy with a bitch from Underside,” explained Chimera when she saw me looking, “he’s lucky she only broke his nose.”
“She was making a pass at me,” Ghoul complained in a pained voice.
“No, she was baiting your ass, and you fell for it,” said Bliss.
I took a seat and grabbed a cold glass of something alcoholic which tasted like piss. “I’m here now, what’s the plan?”
This was the plan: Darren had a contact inside, one of the bartenders. The contact had told him about the pictures and about what kind of firewall the net used. The Ferals already had the perfect Script for the job and the only thing I had to do was spot for them outside Gluttony. See if any strange IP monitored the place all of a sudden. Check out any approaching cops.
The usual. Just like Bliss had said, them inviting me was charity. Ghoul could have easily done my part without trouble.
Don’t get fooled by the gesture. The gangs took care of their own mainly because it made them more loyal. Darren hoped this stint would secure him a new permanent member of his wannabe gang. He would milk this favor as soon as possible and I knew it.
I wasn’t planning on joining The Ferals, or anyone else. I’d need to tread carefully with him for a couple months.
“Alright, let’s get to it. Cole, you know the drill. If you see anything suspicious, let us know.”
They ventured deep into the club to meet Darren’s contact. They would go straight to the management office and log in from there. I headed outside, glad to put some distance between myself and Gluttony. The smoke of the place was enough to get you high. You also ran the risk of some guy decking you in the face because he thought you looked at him funny. It had happened to me the last time I was there. Must’ve been sixteen years old.
The outside of Gluttony was almost as loud as the inside but at least the music wasn’t trying to give you a seizure. I reclined against the wall and tried to relax. Just wait an hour here and I would be a thousand dollars richer and could stay away from Xanz Inc. At least for this month.
After that, then, who knew? I never thought about my future much. No point thinking about ugly things. I supposed it was going to be a short sad affair. Lower Cañitas didn’t offer you many chances of something else. Perhaps Van would get out if she was accepted into a good college. She would need to play fewer videogames and spend more time studying, though. She wasn’t going to like that.
A neon hologram gained my attention while I was distracted. I had been staring at it without realizing it. Probably not healthy for my brain, some of those adverts were riddled with subliminal messages. This one seemed alright: I didn’t get the sudden urge to subscribe to a mailing list or something.
It was a blond woman dressed in a silver military suit, her lap covered in strange medals. Instead of dancing sulkily around, she was standing at attention, examining the people beneath her with a mix of disapproval and a mocking smile. Not an attitude that would get her many sales of whatever she was there to announce. She had a spaceship behind her. It was barely big enough for her, even smaller than a car.
Her software must’ve recognized she got my attention because she turned to look straight at me with her gigantic blue eyes. Her expression became authoritative and she pointed down.
Underneath her floated a sign, red letters on a bright white background. It said:
See the Galaxy. Join the Paladin Defense Force! We are waiting for you, Cole
—inside the Rune Universe—
I shook my head at her.
“Forget it, I can’t even pay for the subscription. Go bother someone else.”
She lost interest in me and went back to her normal pose like I wasn’t even there. It almost felt like a real woman rejected me.
No, screw you lady, I wouldn’t play your escapism bullshit even if you paid me. I had seen the videos on the Internet of those obsessed gamers of the first generation Virtual Reality Systems. They threw themselves into their make-believe worlds while their real bodies slowly wasted away. Some of them died when their mindjacks malfunctioned and the feedback burned their brain-cells.
The media had attacked the VRS with all it had: VRS wiped children's’ minds, made them schizophrenic, psychopaths, made them lose their grip on reality, was the work of the devil, the apocalypse draw near, and so on. Whatever you could imagine. And yet the VRS phenomenon grew unhindered under colossal, ever-growing demand.
I wouldn
’t admit I felt curious about the whole thing. Instead, I masked my curiosity behind a mask of indifference. Mask something long enough and masks tend to stick.
Even with the constant jolt of adrenaline I got every time I heard a siren in the distance, I started to doze off. What was taking Darren so long? I checked my phone. Less than an hour had passed.
The stream of people passing in front of me was unchanging, like a loop. Same clothes, different colors, different faces, same expression. Some looked at Gluttony with curiosity, but it lasted only until they caught a glimpse of the interior behind the smoked-glass windows.
Crowds have a way of making you feel alone no matter how hard you try to pretend you are not part of them.
My phone vibrated. Finally! I needed to go to bed, and forget all about Xanz, The Ferals, and Rune Universe.
“Hey, Darren, what took you guys so long?” I asked without looking at my phone.
“Cole?” said a man with a somber voice. “This is Kipp’s uncle. I’m afraid I’ve some bad news…”
CHAPTER FOUR
Kipp
Kipp’s uncle talked for a couple minutes. Someone must’ve turned down the volume of the entire world. The stream of people drifted around me like people do in a dream. I gave the man single word answers, wondering when someone was going to scream at me “surprise! You are on video! Say hi to my million followers, kid!”
A couple hours ago, Kipp’s digital nurse found him when it ran a routine diagnostic over his bed. Nothing anyone could do. He hadn’t suffered. It had caught him by surprise. He was playing some game when it happened.
I had just talked to him. He visited me and brought me books. He seemed fine. I mean, he looked like he always did: hanging on by a thread, but very much alive.
Alive.
I had joked about him being dead. Just a few hours ago…
The funeral was to take place in the hospital’s chapel. I refused to believe Kipp was gone, it had to be some sick joke. I needed to see it for myself.
