Cyberpunk Trashcan

by Randall P. Fitzgerald

  “So, what do we do? Cops?”

  …

  Is she fucking serious? She’s not even looking at anything. She’s just staring at the wall behind the computer. I looked at the wall, just to be sure. Definitely nothing there.

  “SO! What do WE do? COPS?!”

  “Huh?”

  Her eyes sort of snapped over to me like she forgot I was there.

  “Oh, oh. I’m sorry. This is going to sound messed up, but I forgot you were here.”

  “So, what do—”

  “Right, I heard you. I think. Well, I think… maybe I know who did it.”

  “You’re going to say we can’t call the police.”

  “I am.”

  I sighed. Not normally my thing, but I felt like trying it on for size. Didn’t like it. Hope I don’t have to do it again.

  “Well fucking tell me then. What’re we doing?”

  “Look you’re just a customer and—”

  “And I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.” My heart is bad at pretending. “Where are we going? What are we doing?”

  “Seriously. This is not something I can let you be… you know, involved with?”

  I fancy myself a bit of a puzzle piece connector kind of guy. I puzzled some pieces together. Or pieced… puzzled piece connected. Some puzzled pieces. Together. And, well, yeah. Invisible super strong thing ransacks Marine’s workshop real neat and tidy like. She’s a smarty-pants tech girl with possibly brown breast knobs— last time I bring it up, I promise, she’s just still in the shirt. It’s a thing at this point— and something important that she doesn’t want me involved with is missing.

  “Advanced sex toy?”

  “Pheh, and die in a patent minefield? No thanks.”

  “So it’s AI then?”

  She stood up faster than I expected she could. Doesn’t seem to have the sort of muscle mass you’d think could get her out of a chair like that. She hit me on the chest.

  “Shut up. No. Fuck. Are you serious? Fuck. Is it that obvious? Fuck.”

  Easily a three fuck sort of situation. Probably worth explaining a little. AI’s illegal. HEY! That went quicker than I thought. Two companies have special rights to black box AI. Violating black box is the only death sentence still on the books. Everything else is brain scan and decorporealizing. Live out your life as a restricted permission sim. Most people do that anyway so it’s barely a punishment.

  “Look, I don’t care. I mean… I don’t think I care. I don’t remember that middle school robot ethics… thing. Did you do that? Like sex ed but for general intelligence machines?”

  Marine sort of slumped back down into the chair. “No. Maybe, I don’t know.”

  “So what are you even doing working with AI? On AI? Whichever.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’d hope so.”

  “I… look, I have needs.”

  I waited a second. Not an awkward pause second, it just seemed like that shouldn’t be the end of the sentence.

  “That’s really the phrasing you want to go with?”

  She just sighed and put her head in her hands. Flippant and prickish as I might be, this was a pretty serious thing.

  “Alright. Where are we going? Who’s got your magic beans?”

  “Vircore.”

  “Oh. Yeah, wow. Okay.”

  “Look, you don’t…”

  She trailed off. She wanted help.

  “I’ll be downstairs. You can’t espionage anything in those clothes. Maybe a hot yoga class.”

  Well, this was stupid. Maybe I’d live though. That’d be pretty good.

  Chapter

  THREE

  Vircore is a bit of an anomaly. They’re a WorldGov subcontractor with a board made up of military types. Active military types. They were tasked with the black box tech. Or are. The sort of place that something like eighty percent of all random conspiracies are about. Used to release regular press documents and that sort of thing but about two years ago they went completely quiet. Company still showed up on WorldGov budget reports or something, but no more news.

  Marine had changed. Like, not emotionally or anything. Into different clothes. And we were leaving. She had a backpack on, presumably with some fun toys in it. We headed out the back door of her workshop which, for reasons I didn’t understand, opened onto a main street. Probably they intended the door to her workshop to be the main door and she just didn’t like it that way. It made sense with the layout, thinking about it. She turned the shop’s back room into the customer area so people wouldn’t move around much.

  “If a gerbil sneezed in your ass, do you think you’d be able to feel it?”

  She stopped. I’d sort of meant for this to be a walk and talk kind of conversation.

  “What the fuck did you just say?”

  Her inflection was a little non-specific so I chose to interpret that to mean that she hadn’t heard me and would really appreciate if I repeated myself. Still, I chose to also add a clarification.

  “You know how people put gerbils in their ass? Like for sex? Well, gerbils sneeze, right? They do a little ‘cheh’ thing.” I curled my hands up near my chin for effect. “Do you think, if a gerbil was in your ass, that you’d be able to feel the sneeze?”

  She had started walking again before the explanation was over, and she was shaking her head now.

  “I just don’t think it’s such a stupid question. I mean, okay, your ass doesn’t have super sensitive nerve endings or anything, but you can sort of feel shit moving around in there. Like poop shit, I mean. And I guess dicks. I don’t know, though. I mean, a finger is like… that’s mostly your sphincter that’s feeling it, right? Or your anus? One of those.”

  People always look at you when you say words on the street you’re not supposed to say on the street. Anus was probably pretty high up. I think I do it too. Or at least you raise your eyebrows. Maybe it’s something to do with wanting to hear the rest of the conversation. But usually it’s in a judgey way, not a wanting to take part kind of way. That’s a sad thought. You could probably make a lot of friends if you just sort of hopped into those kinds of conversations. Unless it turns out to be about a medical condition. Not worth the risk.

  I caught up to Marine and was walking beside her, looking at her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “About the gerbil thing?”

  “You could probably feel the whole thing moving around.” She put her hands up to her chin, gerbil-like, and stared off like she was doing some pretty complicated math. “I don’t think it’d be enough movement.”

  “Right?” We walked a bit. “Did you eat anything?”

  “No, there’s a place I’m headed. They have food.”

  It wasn’t entirely beyond me that a place with food was unlikely to help us break into a major conglomerate to re-steal whatever it was they’d taken, but I was already sort of walking toward the place so it didn’t feel like complaining was apt to bring about a ton of change. Took us maybe fifteen minutes to get there. A little burger joint. Pretty ratty, honestly. I’d never been to it but it’s those hole in the wall places that really give you the good stuff and Marine liked it, so I decided a cautious optimism was probably in order. The door wasn’t the typical glass sort, I noticed as it was pushed open. And there were no windows. Maybe it used to be a bar. Bars can’t have windows for some reason. Weirdly, I don’t think that applies to poncey shit like microbrew tasting houses. I guess being proud of your ability to sip beer some guy made in his garage faggishly from a tiny glass is worthy of showing other people. Maybe it’s their way of saying “It’s not alcoholism if I wear a sweater vest.”

  The smell inside the place was burgerful. That was a positive note. About the only one I could find. The business was clearly not meeting health codes. And probably not meating health co
des, either. Eh? No? Fine. There was a bar across the room, confirming that at least, with a surly looking tubby girl behind it. Her hair was destroyed from years of dyeing and it looked like she’d tried to curl it but got confused and gave up halfway through. She waved us to a table as if her hand weighed as much as the rest of her so we moved over and took a seat in a rundown booth. Marine slid in on her side and I did—

  Son of a bitch. The seat’s warm. I gagged a little, but I hid it okay, I think. Why is it warm? Oh god, is it sweaty too? It’s fine. It’s not. I just have to believe it’s not. If it is, it’s ass sweat and I have to cover myself in gasoline. So it can’t be wet, because I have so much to live for.

  Tubba the Surly Waitress came over and dropped the menus on the table. She was chewing gum like some kind of sassy movie waitress without the quality control of a Hollywood production team. I mean it was sort of crazy. She was really doing it.

  “Drinks?” Really she said it like this: “Dranksuh?” And then gave a fat little sigh like this was ruining her day.

  “What kind of gum is that?”

  Marine looked across at me. I’ll assume it was disapproving.

  Waitress rolled her eyes over to me. “Whut?”

  How the fuck did she make everything seem like work? I swear to god. Enunciation was right out with this girl, looking was a chore, menuing was a chore.

  “The gum. Is it… like… what kind? Flavor? How long have you been chewing it?”

  She sighed and made a disgusted looking face. Not a disgusting looking face. I just want to make it clear that’s not an error. I mean… forget it.

  “You guysuh want dranks er nat?”

  “Water.” Marine answered before I could have any more fun.

  I was going to order a Diet Coke, but the burger cow started to leave before I could.

  “Diet Coke for me.”

  She flipped me off.

  I looked at Marine and hunched down to the table, covering my mouth on the waitressy side to whisper. “I’m seriously giving this place like a three. Even if the burgers are good.”

  “They’re not.” Marine looked around, lingering on a door toward the back of the place with an employees only sign.

  I sat back up, figuring it meant something but not bothering to pry. “Well, to be frank, it doesn’t surprise me. She doesn’t cook them, right?”

  “No. I don’t think. I don’t know who she is.”

  I leaned back in the seat and scraped a menu over to my side of the table. Pretty normal fare. None of that weird shit. No mushrooms or bleu cheese or any of that filth. I had a little hope in spite of Marine’s verdict.

  “Egg is really as far as you should go on a burger. You know? Familiar, but not used in a different way.”

  Marine didn’t bother with a menu. “I don’t know. I like a little adventure, I guess. Weird cheeses and stuff.”

  “So, are we supposed to talk about this Vircore thing or are we playing it cool like nothing’s up?”

  “Yeah, I mean… I guess we can talk about it.”

  “What’s the deal with the AI, then?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “I think I’m going to get a double. How thick are the burgers?”

  She hesitated, I guess expecting a bigger reaction. Gotta stay one step ahead, people. “I don’t… normal size?”

  “Well, that’s an absolutely fucking ridiculous measurement system.”

  “Fuck you, no it’s not.”

  “Okay, what’s normal? Fast food burgers are thin as shit and—”

  “Ah! Right there! See? Thin is relative. Ass. Thick to you might be just right to someone else.”

  “No, no, no. You said ‘normal.’ That’s implying a measurable average.”

  She furrowed, trying to find a way around my impenetrable shield of burger logic.

  “Give it up, girl. You tied your own noose.”

  Her eyes opened and she looked at me pointing. “Ah! But, but… uh… normal implies a shared societal… uh… thing. Right? So we live in the same society so we should have relatively narrow expectations of normal relative to one another. So it’s a perfectly acceptable way. You know this isn’t a fast food place, and you said yourself that those are thin. Meaning you know the average burger for a place like this one is a bit thicker at least. So when I say normal, you know I mean normal for a place like this.”

  Fuck. Time to abandon ship. “They don’t use Miracle Whip do they?”

  “Hey, no. We’re not dropping this.”

  “Look, Tubba is gonna be back soon—” She snickered at the name. “—and I need to have my order together or she’s going to bring me a dead rat or something.”

  Cookie Monster reappeared at the table and sat the drinks down. Two waters.

  “Ready?” She smacked her gum a few times.

  “I love you.”

  She sneered. “You want food or not?”

  “Double cheeser. Lettuce, tomato, double mayo. Is it Miracle Whip? I don’t eat Miracle Whip. It’s the devil’s semen.”

  “Gross.”

  She didn’t answer the question. Marine ordered a burger with only ketchup. Fries came with everything, so… you know, this isn’t a truncated ordering dialogue sequence for the sake of brevity.

  Tubba dragged the menus off the table.

  “There are other lines of work.”

  She flipped me off again. My food was probably going to be poisoned.

  “So I was thinking…” Marine started.

  “The gerbil thing? Me too. I realized you really only feel stuff in your assring, right there at the end. So I don’t think the weight would—”

  “Marine!” A guy voice called out from across the place and the sound of a door shutting came right after. I may have become immediately defensive without even seeing his… oh damnit. Ruggedly handsome face. “And friend.” He said as he came to the side of the table, his few days of stubble making me feel sexually inadequate.

  “Sup.” That was me. Not proud of it. No one says that. That’s not a human thing a human would say.

  Marine spoke up as he sat down. “Ally, sorry for the short notice.”

  I snerked. Ally? That’s a win for me, right there. He heard it and looked over at me.

  “It’s short for Aloysius.”

  Marine apologized. “I’m sorry he… he’s retarded I think.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Aloysius wasn’t any better, if we’re being honest. It’s a cartoon name. No one even knows how to spell it.

  “Is it?”

  He lost his handsome cool a little. “Oh? And your name’s so great Mister…?”

  “Percy.”

  He put on a victorious smirk. “Really?”

  “No. My parents weren’t horrible, unthinking monsters.”

  “Fuck me, both of you shut up.” Marine was annoyed. “His name’s Charles Lazenby and goes by Laze because he’s as self-conscious about his lame name as you are. Fuck sake, I came here…”

  The food was here. Tubba put the red plastic trays down and slid them toward us. She wore a genuine smile now.

  “Oh, Ally. You eatin’?” She practically cooed the words. Like a fat… a fat… pigeon-cow. Or something. I was going to do this whole thing without getting named, right? Mysterious protagonist. Ruined. Right out the window. Thanks for nothing, Marine.

  “Nah, I’m good. Thanks, love.”

  She smiled and left, swaying. Love? Are they dating?

  “Are you two dating?”

  Nice Marine. Good telepathy.

  “No, it’s just an affect, you know? Like in England and stuff.”

  Oh, fuck you.

  I picked up the burger because acting like I was above the surrounding events felt like a decent way to go. It wasn’t M
iracle Whip. I was going to get to the fries, but there was no ketchup.

  “Hey, can we get some ketchup?”

  The sigh was audible. She came back to the table empty handed and pulled some packets from her pocket. FROM HER POCKET. Why were they in there? That is not a ketchup storage area. That is not acceptable. She held them out and my hand instinctively moved under hers. What was I doing? I had to abort the approach. It was too late.

  “Oh, god damnit. Fuck. Are you serious?” They were so warm. I gagged. I didn’t hide it. “It’s body temperature. You want me to eat tomatoes that have been warmed up by your crotch heat? The fuck is wrong with you? Why are you even a waitress?”

  She’d walked away as soon as I started complaining. I had stood up at some point during my rant, and lacking anything else to do with her putrid crotch sauce, I threw it across the room. The aerodynamics of the packets sent them fluttering pointlessly around and they landed not very far away. I sat back down, crossing my arms to expose the depth of my disapproval.

  Marine’s eyes tracked slowly from me back over to Asshole.

  “I need some stuff.”

  “I figured as much. What kind of stuff, love?”

  “Yeah, love.” They ignored me.

  “Vircore stuff.”

  Asshole’s face went serious like Marine’s.

  “In the back then.”

  He started to slide out of the booth, stopping when I spoke.

  “Like… right now?” I waved my burger, holding it out to make my point.

  Ally looked at Marine who looked down at her own burger with little puppy dog eyes.

  “Fine.” He slid back into the booth.