Today I had to go see one of the boys from the old days. Julio had always been able to hook me up with anything I needed. He was one of those guys that just had connections to what seemed like everything in the underground. In those days it had been things to turn real-life into quivering representations of flowing colors. But what I needed now was not mescaline but information, and from what I remember, he also dealt in that.
I headed towards the rail station to be on my way. Cars had become a thing of the past, especially in the city. With the advent of the high speed light rail, anything with an internal combustion engine was just too slow and too expensive to maintain. Electric cars were big for a short period, but fizzled out when people realized they weren't saving any money. A large portion of the population had started using electric cars, charging them nightly. Power plants had trouble meeting this surge of use, so they jacked up the cost of electricity to pay for new plants. More power. More electric cars. More demand.
Classic. The new regime ended up doing something useful for the nation to meet its transportation needs: they invested in high speed light rails. This was a system much like a subway but instead of digging long, intertwined tunnels and installing many tons of metal tracks and electrical equipment, a series of strong magnets were used. The magnets would be energized as the train got close to them and would actually levitate the train. The train would simply adjust which magnets would energize, effectively pulling and pushing the train along.
After a few failed attempts, they finally got it right and dumped magnets all over the place. The magnets were cheap to manufacture and there was plenty of labor available to build the trains. You didn't even have to pay for the service, it was pre-packaged in your taxes. Rumor has it that after the downfall of the electric car, the abandoned plants that died out were haunted with old engineers whispering Ohm's Law. Can you imagine? veee is equal to eye arrrrrrrr.
I left my house and walked a few blocks to a light rail station. It didn't take long for it to show up and I hopped on. The usual fare of company greeted me with blank stares and empty eyes. Workers. Mostly workers. I saw a couple of Lurkers as well. Lurkers were a by-product of the new dictatorship. Because the government brought in a high level of paranoia, they decided they needed insiders to get the scoop on the common man. Lurkers were people the dictatorship paid to spy. Most of them appeared as any old common worker. They performed the same duties, rode the same light rail routes, and bought food from the same grocery store as any common person. Most even had a family. However, Lurkers were provided a stipend from the government when they had useful information. The government was so paranoid that one of every ten persons was a Lurker. It was as simple as that. Most didn't even try to hide it. They'd wear nicer clothing, have multiple communication devices, and even carry on conversation with the government about what they witnessed during the day in a public place.
The two Lurkers I saw were probably a husband and wife. They were talking about a recent discovery about a small sect of the city that was plotting a quiet overthrow of their employer. They laughed as he described the execution of the discovered group and imitated what it would be like to walk around without a head. I chuckled too. It was a good impression!
Julio was a pretty easy guy to locate. He didn’t make any effort to hide himself from the network. My HUD glasses were loosely connected to the global wireless so I just tapped into that and queried his location. As I suspected, he was at home, conveniently adjacent to a rail stop. It would take no time to get there, as the light rails move very quickly. At one point it was stated that their top speed was 550 mph, but I always felt that statement to be a bit of an exaggeration. The trains had no glass windows and are completely encased by a nice alloy. This is to help people deal with the speed issue and give the idea that you aren't really moving, by removing the visual stimulation of high speed travel. The trains are also equipped with a sort of G force negator which actually interferes with the G forces being applied to a person as the train speeds up or slows down. Speeding up and slowing down without the person every feeling like they moved even an inch.
The rail stopped at a location near Julio, in what could be described as a bad neighborhood. Trash littered the station and a few people loitered the area, probably trying to bum smokes. The housing was old; part of the early rash of living quarters built from the new government. They needed something quick and dirty, and that is what they got. I hopped off the train and put my glasses in my pocket. Julio's home was non-descript, perfect for someone that deals in the underground but not too far in. I rang his doorbell. Hopefully he was home.
A short man, with dark brown hair matted from the bed greeted me at the door. His eyes narrowed, squinting at me from the sunlight. His clothes appeared slept-in and they hung loosely on his frame.
"Do I know you?" was the distant question that came from his lips.
I smiled at him. "Yea. Yea you do."
Julio often asked this question even if you’d spent the entire last week with him. Not much is known about him other than his trade work in the underground. Hell, I'm not even sure if 'Julio' is his real name but it was the name he preferred to be called and the one he registered to the government. He finally nodded his head and stepped aside letting me enter his home. He never took his eyes off of mine, however. I hated those eyes. They were stone cold gray and eerie. I could never read a single emotion off of them. Julio was a very unique individual. He also scared the crap out of me sometimes. Well, most of the time.
"You need mesc?" he asked. Ahh straight to the point, he definitely remembers me. I sat down on a lazy chair and shook my head. Rarely was Julio up for conversation and small talk so I just dove right in.
"Not anymore. I ah, I need some information on someone, it is a bit on the classified side". Julio nodded and sat down near a terminal and also grabbed a tablet. He tapped at it a few times and returned back to me with that disinterested gaze. For a guy that claims he never touched any drugs, he sure looked out of it. But I believed him. One of the reasons Julio has been at his art for so long was he presented himself as completely forgettable. Nobody would ever suspect this man to partake in any crime. He truly gives off a feeling of transparency. Once when I was on a particular emotional mescaline trip and Julio was my sitter, he confided in me that he sometimes felt lonely. Sometimes, but it was part of the life he chose. That was the only time I've ever heard him speak about his personal life. Actually, that was probably the only time he ever told me about anything at all. It gives me the chills thinking about this man's past and what may have happened in his early life to bring him to where he is now. Maybe something crazy happened like his parents were murdered in front of him or maybe he was part of a strange science experiment gone wrong. Something horrendous had to have happened for Julio to turn out this way, right?
Maybe he was just weird.
"I'm trying to find information on Rimer. I want to know why he went off the grid and ended up dead. I found this list of names from a classified document, listed under 'Foreign Exchanges'." I continued to explain the video and how I noticed that there was a look-a-like for Rimer when receiving his prestigious award. Julio just continued that empty stare, every now and then tapping on his device. I handed him the list of names and he transcribed them into his device.
"One moment" was all he said and we sat there in silence. The hum of a heating unit was the only audible noise but I knew streams of data were moving around us, generating its own form of noise. One of those streams, hopefully, had my answers.
Silence. For five solid minutes. Julio sat staring at his tablet with an eerie stillness and I tapped my foot impatiently. Typically a data stream could be pulled within mere microseconds; the best results appearing instantly. This was interminable.
This query, however, was obviously a bit trickier, even for someone who dabbled in the dark edges of Persistence. I was about to say something, anything, and his device gave a low 'ding.' That meant only a singl
e result. Something brighter and cheerier would have drawn the user into selecting from several streams to dive in further, but this one sounded mournful, as though the tablet were disappointed in its ability to serve its master.
His blood-rimmed steel eyes scanned the stream and he turned them on me slowly, again without emotion. Damn, what was wrong with this guy?
"I found your information." he said. "There is...a snag though."
"What sort of snag are we talking about?" I replied.
"We will need the proper authorization to access it. Without it, I can do nothing for you." he stated.
"O...K. How does one go about getting said authorization?" I asked.
"I'll need some DNA, patriarch-level or higher." he said, matter-of-factly. "Actually, now that I think of it, one of my clients should fit the bill." His eyes cleared a bit at that, taking the edge off.
He scribbled a note onto his tablet and flung it in my direction with two fingers. I saw it flutter towards the edge of the screen, then disappear. Seconds later, my data jack tingled and the edges around my HUD glowed a faint blue.
"You'll find his address on that note. I don't care how you get it, but with his DNA I can get into your file. Good day." he said with an air of finality. He turned back to the device and became consumed with some sort of video footage. I took the hint and headed out the door.
As I touched the doorknob, my data jack tingled. But not the same tingling feeling when data is received, this felt more sporadic and sharp, as if someone had dropped a handful of sewing needles onto my head. I looked up, dumbly half expecting to see an ethereal ghost hand.
I realized it wasn't my data jack, but actually the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. Something wasn't right. I looked back at Julio who had almost fallen asleep, the news video still rolling on his tablet.
Opening the door confirmed my paranoia: coming up Julio's walk was a Sharper and a Pounder. It was a different Sharper than the one I’d sent limping away, no advantage there. They immediately saw me and quickened their pace. I considered my options. One: slam the door and run out Julio's back entrance. Two: try to talk my way out of conflict with the punks. Three: well...Three was obvious. I’m not sure I’m ready for any injuries though.
"Come with us, and there won't be a problem," announced the big guy. Pounders were kind of scary if you didn't know anything about them. They were often big, powerful, and angry. Not nearly as nimble or clever as a Sharper but could practically smash through the walls of a building. However, Pounders were pre-programmed. Some time ago, an A.I. company decided to use old cadavers acquired from universities as bodies for robots. This was illegal, so they had to convince university kids to sell them the bodies out the back door. Once acquired, they would rip out anything inside and install alloyed bones and cheap electronics with simple memory and program sequences. Basic motors allowed movement and with a little work, you essentially had a robot zombie. The company wasn't very cautious about their practice and they went down incredibly quickly. It wasn't much of an ethics question, the Pounders just became nuisances. Failed missions from faulty electronics resulted in a few unplanned homicides. Companies just can't float that sort of thing forever. Strangely, after the corporation was brought down, the zombie-bots mysteriously became confiscated by the new government and put to "good-use". Not just a few were taken, but all the known zombie-bots. Fast forward to now, and you have one of those zombie-bots, obviously programmed to take me hostage with a Sharper as an additional threat from the new government. I'd started thinking that some brass was interested in my corpse, and probably not to become a new zombie-bot. Lucky for me, I'd handled these Sharper and Pounder thugs before.
The Pounder stared at me with lifeless, soulless eyes, waiting for me to answer its poorly recorded threat. The Sharper blinked and licked his lips. "Yea hurry up, ok?" he said as he drew one of his knives. This Sharper was dressed in a fitted tuxedo with smooth black hair. The government treated their goons fairly well, as long as you performed. This Sharper was probably a successful government contractor, hence his nice attire. I closed the door behind me, leaving Julio in his peace to get some sleep. The sun was still bright, with low wind. It was a day meant for doing your favorite thing.
"Look, I don't know what you want but I'm not going with you," I stated. The Pounder repeated his phrase. After he finished, a tiny blue light flickered behind the Pounder's eyes. Then the Sharper's eyes also flickered the same blue spark, but this time in a continuous pulse. I narrowed my own eyes at them, "Can I go now? I'm going to miss my bus".
I'm not sure what happened first: The shadow from the Pounder's fist starting to come down on my head, or the Sharper's attempt to get a lock on my arm and hold me down. Regardless, they both failed. I dove forward between them, tucked my head, and rolled back onto my feet. I quickly turned around and saw the Pounder's turn sequence engage, puffs of smoke escaping his poorly done stitches from the motors beneath. The Sharper was, of course, much faster and already lunging at me with his blade. His lunge was poor, though, his arm fully extended. I side-stepped the attack and he toppled over, falling to the ground. The Pounder was almost finished with his sequence when my foot landed on the side of his knee. A loud snap occurred and he toppled down, unable to use the motorized joint. He repeated the initial query of wanting me to go with them as he attempted to get back up.
The Sharper was standing up by now, trying to intimidate me by tossing the knife between his hands, like an old thug from the early years. Just then I saw the blue light blink behind his eyes. The Sharper paused. He then did something extremely odd, and said "Yea, he's not going down easy. Let's try another time, with the right group". The Sharper then turned, and ran straight down Julio's walk, performed a perfect 90 degree turn and ran down the street. He never looked back. How very mechanical for something that was mostly human.
The Pounder was still trying to get up, but had broken another connection in his neural network. His cognition unit had probably shorted and was causing the device to spit out gibberish from its already shattered memory. It always broke my heart a bit to see someone's loved one used as muscle for crime, especially seeing as how poorly they were constructed.
Julio's pistol fired suddenly and loudly, the bullet transforming the Pounder's head into a mist of gore and electronics. Julio looked up at me, "Next bus comes in five minutes, you’d better hurry." He turned, went inside, and locked the door without another word.
Chapter 6
I heard a few electronic beeps and then the locking mechanism clicking into place. Julio had effectively blocked my re-entry. I decided to follow his advice and get on that bus. Noticing the small, unobtrusive sign marking the pickup point, I headed to stand under it.
A few moments later, a short balding man joined me. He didn't say anything, only staring straight ahead. His eyes were glazed over in that eternal state of being completely checked out for the day. Obviously, he just wanted to get home and relax.
I didn't pay him much attention.
The bus shuddered to a stop and its doors popped open. I got on first and held my wrist over the little machine mounted to the dashboard, allowing the scanner to pick up the microchip implanted there. This ride would dock me about two and a quarter, but that didn't bother me too much. At least I had a ride, and I was going home. Home, to recuperate, and to eat. I was starving. I plopped onto an empty seat and stared out the window.
The man who had shared my bus stop decided to sit down next to me. He had been walking straight past, but then stopped, straightened, and sat down almost as an afterthought.
The bus lurched off, and we were alone in the darkened cabin.
"Hey there friend, we need to talk," he said, the irises of his eyes flashing blue sparks in their dimness.
"Is that a fact?" I said, projecting a sense of calm that I could no longer feel.
"Yes. You are looking for informa
tion. Information that is highly guarded. Information highly protected." he replied.
How did all these people suddenly know who I was? Those blue lights were giving me the creeps. I had never seen that particular color of spark before today, but I knew that if those goons I'd left behind flashed blue, and this guy did too, then it didn't take a genius to figure out that there was connection.
This person was bad news. What I struggled with was his angle. We were on a public bus, with a driver, video cameras, and a handful of other passengers. There was no way he would try to off me here. He could be stalling for time, communicating with some controller who was sending a few extra Pounders to greet me as I got off the bus. Or he could be genuinely concerned for my well-being.
Like that ever happened.
"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. What's it to you, spook?" I said with some measure of bravado.
He recoiled slightly, as though I'd slapped him. And I had, really. I guessed he didn't know that I had seen his spark. He was essentially a marionette doll, being controlled by some person who jacked in directly to his brain. The lower bodily functions such as breathing and blood flow were still maintained, but the higher motor functions had been hijacked. Willingly or unwillingly, these days it didn't matter. This guy could have touched a dirty jack and some hacker had slipped in unnoticed. Or he could just be looking to make a quick C-note. Either way, I didn't care. He was trouble.
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