by Sean Platt
“What if I want to do something the AI doesn’t approve of?”
“AI is impartial, Mr. Stahl.”
“Doc.”
“You should think of the canvas as an extension of your brain. It learns from you, like a baby learns from its mother. Children grow up believing that what their parents believe is right. Of course, if you are conducting illegal activities here, you’d better be sure to hide them well from your neighbors and…”
“I meant more like if I hire some company.” He winked.
Felicity rolled her eyes. “Escorts aren’t illegal.”
“Are you legal?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Tell me the truth…Doc. You’re going to buy this apartment, right? I’m not wasting my time dealing with your chauvinistic bullshit?”
“Hey, I’m just appreciating beauty.”
She waited.
“Yes. I’m going to buy it,” he said.
“Should I bother continuing?”
“I’m going to buy it after I get the full show.” He looked around the room, but there was no question that Felicity knew Doc meant the “show” was her parading around in front of him.
“Master bathroom over there.” She pointed. “Responsive shower, full robotics for cleaning, you get the idea.”
Doc gave a good-natured shrug and peeked into the bathroom.
“What else?”
Felicity sighed and led the way out, down the hall. They emerged into a room that kicked Doc in the balls. He tried to suppress his shock but failed. Felicity smirked.
“Every apartment on floor forty-five and above has a room like this.” She gestured at the half-sized pool and oversized hot tub. The entire room was made to look like it was outdoors, with rocks (or fake rocks), plants (or fake plants), and the pool with what, through holographic trickery, appeared to have a vanishing edge. “Apparently, the weight of all this water is tremendous and makes the building top-heavy. Does that bother you?”
Doc shook his head. He’d had no idea. The room was an opulent nirvana. And to think, he’d washed his own sheets that morning. He had just one Beam wall in his current apartment, and his holo projector was broken. His bathtub leaked.
“Plasteel mesh underneath. Fantastically strong, and monitored by a patrol of repair nanos backed by heavier-duty droids between floors. Much of the same technology used in the continental lattice, actually. If it can protect the NAU from Wild East missiles, it can hold this floor in the air. But for reasonability’s sake, the water is only two meters deep. Hopefully, that’s not a problem.”
Doc shook his head.
I’ve made it, he thought. Noah Fucking West, if I can afford a place with a pool…indoors…at the top of a spire…then I’ve goddamn made it and will never, ever have to look back.
Doc looked at the water sparkling in the light streaming through the window. While he watched, the agent touched something on the wall, and the glass began to darken and smother the late-day sun.
Never again would he have to fight to survive.
Never again would he be without something he wanted or needed.
Never again would he fall asleep uneasily, his mind preoccupied by what horrors the next days might bring. That was the curse of Enterprise, after all: The price you paid for the chance to roll the dice on — well, on earning a life like he now had — was years of fear and torment. There was no ceiling to what you could do, and you could become as wealthy and successful as you wanted. But he had to be honest: There were days when he’d wished for a Directorate life, and days when he’d thought of shifting. But those weak moments always came between Shifts, and somehow, every time he had a chance to go Directorate, things had been just good enough to keep him rolling those dice.
It had finally paid off. Here he was, preparing to buy his way into the elite.
And yet twenty years ago almost to the day, Doc had been at the bottom of society. Caught dealing counterfeit implants one day then stealing a shopping cart full of food from a homeless man the next. He remembered how furious he’d been then — not because he’d been arrested, but because DZPD had waited that extra day to surveil him. If he’d been arrested immediately, he wouldn’t have had that final night of terror, fleeing the scene of his crime without so much as bogus payment for his artificial wares. He wouldn’t have decided that the bottom was the bottom, so he might as well do what those on the bottom did. Stealing that cart had hurt him far more than the man he’d stolen it from. It had hurt him inside. Forever.
Standing in front of the pool with the vanishing edge and looking out over District Zero from above, Doc could barely remember those days. And yet he very much wanted to, for the sake of comparison and appreciating the rise for the ride it had been. But he’d survived. He was recession-proof. He’d made enough credits — and diversified them far and wide — that even a severe drought would barely dent him.
He’d never be in a Flat prison again, forced to fight for survival. He’d never be so flagrantly confronted by what he truly was, at the bottom of society’s barrel. The Flat had been like a mirror, and Doc had hated his reflection. Scrapping had turned to scheming, and struggle turned him criminal. The first months in Flat 16 had almost cost him his mind and humanity. Only meeting Omar before Omar was moved to Flat 4 had saved him. In the few months they’d shared the same walled city, Omar had held the mirror to Doc’s face and made him confront his reflection.
You are what you are, Doc, and ain’t nothin’ changing that right now, he’d said. The question is do you want to stay what you are or become something better?
Standing in front of the pool, Doc nodded toward Felicity. “I’ll take it.”
“I haven’t told you the price,” said the agent.
“Then tell me.”
“They’re asking 1.2.”
“1.0 via direct transfer. Immediately.”
“You won’t be getting a loan?”
“Did I forget to say ‘direct transfer’?”
The agent turned and touched her ear, and Doc realized that they’d never been alone. The sellers must have been in her ear throughout the tour. Maybe in her eye, too, projecting holos of the showing on their end while Felicity captured the images on hers. The realization was annoying. Doc made a mental note to outfit the apartment with a jammer the minute he moved in. He didn’t like the idea that guests could bring visitors into his place without Doc even knowing it was happening.
Felicity turned back to Doc and stuck out her hand. She had a wide smile on her pretty face. And why not? Real estate agents — be they former models or hard-fought scrappers like Doc — were Enterprise, and this one had just earned a 70,000-credit commission.
“The sellers are going to accept your offer. They’d like to port you the agreement. You can countersign with your ID.”
Doc subconsciously touched his temple, where a Fi-enabled memory port and authenticator would be if he’d ever had the disposable income to justify installing one.
“My implant has been acting sketchy,” he said. “Put it on the wall there, and I’ll fingerprint it.”
Felicity gave him a tiny smile, touched her ear again, and nodded when, Doc assumed, someone on the other end confirmed they’d heard.
Ten minutes later, after thanking Felicity (“Felicia,” she’d corrected), Doc was standing alone in his new apartment. Amazing how quickly things could happen these days. His account was a million credits thinner, and the balances of a few others were fatter. The Beam authentication had already transferred ownership to Doc’s ID. And to think: this morning, before doing his laundry, he’d opened his eyes on a squeaky bed in an apartment that was barely at the line, with one Beam wall, randomly wondering where Pop-Tarts had gone since his childhood.
There was a trilling noise as his new canvas’s connection picked up an incoming call, routed from his handheld. He didn’t want to accept video since the apartment was still empty of furniture, so he told the canvas to put it on the closest speaker.
&nbs
p; “Doc,” said a familiar voice. It came from the wall itself, somehow projected sufficient to fool Doc’s senses into believing Omar was standing in front of him.
“Hey,” said Doc.
“I’ve got a job for you.”
“Upgrades?”
Omar hesitated. “Something dicier, from our other line of work. Something that pays very well.”
Doc looked around the pool room then out at the city.
Never again would he starve. Never again would he have to worry. And never — never — again would he need to do anything to earn money that would risk his return to prison.
“Those doors are closed, Omar,” he told the disembodied voice. “Forever. I am what I am right now. And for once, I want to stay here.”
Chapter 2
Kate looked down at Levy’s body, the crack of his ass visible with his pants unbuttoned and halfway down. Her surprise quickly surrendered to a sense of gravity, and all the deflecting, joking tendencies that comprised her usual defense mechanisms departed. She was alone. There was no longer anyone to laugh with or at, and without that, nothing here was remotely funny.
If she’d let Levy do what he’d wanted, she might have gotten away without arrest (but probably without the Lunis stored in her shuttle; instinct said Levy would want it to sell himself), but even if she’d resisted, she’d only have been looking at ten years or so. Ten years in a Flat prison would be bad — she’d sworn she’d never, ever return — but this was miles deeper. Murder was a life crime. They didn’t even send you to Respero for murder most of the time because it was a bigger punishment to let you live. And because Doc Stahl had invested in significant personal maintenance upgrades that the specialist hadn’t removed during the refurb, Kate was built to last. Life in prison meant an eternity of suffering for someone like that.
She was locked in a room, stark naked, with a dead man at her feet. She was going back to the Flat for sure — maybe even Flat 4 in the middle of the consolidated Great Lake, where Michigan used to be — and would stay there for a very, very long time.
Kate looked down. This time, she wasn’t turned on by her new body. This time, she was spectacularly aware of just how much other people seemed to be turned on by it. If she didn’t figure out how to get out of here, the desirability of that body would end up being a significant detriment in prison once she was thrown into a world of hardcore criminals without protection, separation, or guards.
“Fuck.”
Kate’s first thought was that she had no choice but surrender. Not only was she in a closed room; she was on the motherfucking moon. There was one and only one lunar elevator, and it wasn’t the kind of thing you could sneak your shuttle onto. She could find a conventional rocket-based transport, but they were phenomenally expensive and didn’t launch without drawing attention. Her shuttle’s tanks were spent and couldn’t provide the thrust required to escape even the moon’s paltry gravity, so she’d have to dock to a booster — and even then she’d need to get landing clearance on Earth unless she wanted to take her chances crashing into an ocean.
But as loud as that first logical sequence of thoughts was, another force spoke much more loudly inside her. It was instinct. Right now, instinct sounded like a trapped beast screaming in her head: the defensive roar of a mother lion defending her young. Kate was not going to go back to prison. She was never going back. There were female-only Flats, and there were lower-level prisons with cells and guards for minor crimes. But this wasn’t a minor crime. This was murder. Or rather, it was murder of a federal official. Whatever prison she ended up in wouldn’t be one of the safer ones.
There was a small girl inside Kate’s skin (or maybe it was still a little boy?) that her instinct was desperate to protect.
A stern voice spoke inside her: I am never returning to prison.
But how the hell was she going to get out of it?
First, get dressed.
Kate hurriedly pulled on everything she’d tossed aside, unable to avoid sneering at Levy’s corpse. She was glad he was dead. Kate had been through too much to be forced into some asshole’s blackmail. She was better than that. She’d earned more than that. She’d clawed her way to the top, fighting hard for her whole life. She’d never been given anything. Everything she’d ever had, she’d gotten for herself. She’d been tortured, ordered killed, actually killed in a way (thanks to the realism of Isaac Ryan’s immersion rigs), and forced to flee after being transformed into an entirely unrecognizable person. She deserved some goddamned respect, and fuck Levy for getting in her way.
Pants. Shirt. Shoes. She dragged each item on in a trance, following her internal voice’s instructions like a map of an unfamiliar territory.
Her hair had fallen out of its ponytail, so, unable to find the band, she tied it into a messy knot. Then, without even meaning to, she hauled back and kicked Levy’s body hard in the side. The impact sent a shock of pain to her ankle. Blood leaped from Levy’s face and spattered the wall. Her shoe and pants remained blessedly clean.
After the surprising flash of anger passed, she looked down at her leg. That had been stupid. She shouldn’t have touched the body.
Why the hell not?
And really, the stern voice was right. Kate was on the hook for murder, and evidence linking her to the crime wasn’t exactly the main problem at this point.
Or was it?
She stopped, looking around the room. Then she looked at Levy.
He was going to fuck you, then let you go. He’d have to let you go. He couldn’t double-cross you and take it back, or you’d tell on him at trial. You’d have genetic evidence against him, and they’d listen to you after that “sextortion” scandal stink last year. So if he was going to let you go free to avoid that sticky issue, there had to be a way he was planning erase all that evidence.
Kate was still looking at the body.
Erase all that evidence.
The specialist had explained that the refurb mRNA that carried her new Beam ID throughout every cell in her body was equipped with a self-destruct mechanism. Her skin cells and hair follicles, once detached from her body, faded to blank within minutes. If she could get out of the room, there would be no conclusive forensic evidence linking Kate to the murder. There would be plenty of technological evidence, but Levy would have thought of that, wouldn’t he? Because he couldn’t screw the smugglers without having a way to hold up his end of the bargain with them.
Kate reached into Levy’s pocket and pulled out his handheld. She rubbed her hand briskly over its back, giving her palm add-on the signal it required to release the stem nanobots. She used her fingernail to draw a line to the device’s auxiliary port, following the procedure the specialist and Kai had shown her for using the only illegal upgrade she had — the only one likely to remain undetected in a normal scan.
The screen glowed a dull yellow. That was her signal that the stem bots had entered the handheld, had begun to reprogram it, and were waiting for her vocal command.
“I need a voice replication app.”
The screen cycled and scrambled as the bots began to improvise and adapt. Kai had told Kate, from her own experience, that the bots would usually download apps from The Beam and modify them, stirring their own creations as if making soup and erasing all of their own footprints.
The handheld’s screen changed so that it was glowing with a single, large green button. Text on the button read, Press to scan.
“Scan what?”
The screen changed to show an arrow pointing roughly in Levy’s direction then became the button again.
Kate held the handheld in front of Levy’s throat then pressed the button. A red scan line traced across the man’s neck, and then the screen changed again. Now it read, Force exhale.
“How the fuck do I do that?”
The screen became a series of graphics. It looked like a CPR demo.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
The screen changed back to the button, this time readin
g, Press to re-scan.
Kate knelt then put her lips to Levy’s. He was still plenty warm, but already too cool for a human. She fought a cringe, pinched his decimated and bloody nose, then blew into his mouth. His chest rose. Then, still holding his nose, she used her other hand to thumb the handheld’s button while she sat on his chest to force the air back out.
“The tragedy is that I know you’re enjoying this,” Kate told Levy.
The handheld chirped. The screen read, Ready for translation.
She stood and said, “What now?”
Levy’s voice returned from the handheld: “What now?”
Kate flinched. Then, staring at the thing as if it had bitten her, said, “Canvas.”
The handheld, in Levy’s voice, echoed, “Canvas.”
The room’s connection answered with a chirp.
“Remove all records of detainee Kate Rigby.”
A pleasant female voice answered, “Was the passenger detained in error?”
“Yes. It was a misunderstanding.”
“I show three concealed compartments on the shuttle belonging to this detainee, currently in Bay 12, spotlighted now.”
“Shut off spotlighting.” In the room, Kate shrugged to nobody.
“I do not understand,” said the canvas.
Kate didn’t think the idea of a confused machine made any sense, but she was at the end of her rope. She’d been arrested, stripped, nearly raped, then killed a man and made out with his corpse. She didn’t have any patience left.
“Motherfucker, do whatever shit you gotta to make those red lines on m…on Kate Rigby’s shuttle disappear, then forget about it!”
A pause. Then: “Detectors returning to bay.”
Kate laughed. From the handheld, Levy’s voice laughed back.
“Erase the entirety of Miss Rigby’s records leaving the station.” Kate paused. “What the hell. Erase her coming in, too.”
There was no way that would fly. You couldn’t just erase records willy-nilly from…
“Confirm: Records pertaining to Rigby comma Katherine, 0041224934-332, fall under Sector 7. Records will be hidden from compile but available in raw logs, accessible by officers with clearance, per NAU Protective Order 774.”
