“Hey.”
He looked away like I wouldn’t fucking notice. I had a lot of frustration I was working through and I was really excited to dump it out on ol’ dickneck over here, but Marine touched my arm. That shut me up, but it didn’t really do anything for my frustration. I lost my fucking hand. Don’t I get to be a little bit annoyed? Don’t I get to take it out on somebody? Okay, I’m grateful she’s got some mysterious guy who has spare robot hands lying around. That’s great. Super. But fuck, my arm hurts all the way up to the shoulder and this stabilizer is pulling at my meats in weird ways that I’m just really not enjoying. But how do I complain about it, you know?
The staring problem lessened as the buses we switched to took us into the less opulent parts of the city. Somehow that sort of annoyed me just as much. Oh, that’s fine. Just another guy with a missing hand on the ol’ hoverbus. Nothing weird about that. Hands get lopped off all the time. Stare at my stump, you gormless shits! It’s not even healed over! What, do you see this sort of shit every single day?
“Can you believe these people?”
Marine looked at me. “What people?”
“These bus people. It’s not even noon and they’re refusing to stare at my stump.”
She furrowed. “You… want them to stare at your stump? I mean… arm. Wound.”
“Stump. It’s a stump, Marine. Don’t be weird about it. And no. I hate them. They shouldn’t even be allowed to be in the same room as my stump.”
“I don’t…”
“Of course you don’t. How could you know what it’s like to have a stump?”
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“I’m fucking with you, Marine. Jesus. Seriously though, who is above staring at a stump? I even have fucking glowing mesh shit on it. It might as well be a gimpy flashlight.”
“I’ll stare at yer stump.”
I looked across the aisle to see what mouth those distinctively dim sounding words had come out of. A middle-aged man whose dick was guaranteed to be hidden by the massive, taut balloon of poor eating decisions that poked out from under a stained white t-shirt. If that part got your mouth watering for a glass full of fat-flap sweat water, then boy howdy are you going to love the rest. He had on sweatpants. A fashion item ostensibly created for people who intended to seek fitness which had never known the lofty heights which its creator had dreamed it would reach. And they were held perilously deep in the cracks between his thighs and what no human would call a crotch by rainbow colored suspenders. He was smiling, missing at least one tooth, and he had pinkeye. Oozing, disgusting pinkeye.
I narrowed my eyes involuntarily from the disgust I felt in the most pure, honest part of my being. “What. The fuck. Is wrong with you?”
He frowned and the pinker of the orbs in his head rolled inward toward his nose. He looked down at the floor and, mercifully, said nothing else.
I turned back to Marine. “Have you ever seen one of these bus people out in the world? Seriously, where the fuck do they come from? Where do they go?”
She shook her head, covering up a wide smile and turning her head past mine to look out the window and hide her laughter. That was probably enough to make her a more decent person than me and I liked it. Still, it only encouraged me. She’d have to accept responsibility for that one day. Probably when one of the bus people dragged us into their lair and used us for weird sex games.
It was our stop and we got off and I resisted the urge to scream at another bus troll who was clearly going to be patient zero. Just fluids coming from every hole and he was coughing straight onto a newspaper like it was the most normal thing in the world. He fucking sneezed and didn’t wipe any of it. It was all over his lips and he kept licking them. Fuck me, how do these people even come into being? What sort of childhood leads to that sort of thing?
Whatever, we were off the bus. It was in the past and I’d resolved to buy a scooter or something else I could ride on the sidewalk and never get on a bus again. Assuming I survived whatever cocktail of human disappointment I’d breathed in so far.
My concerns over the early symptoms of tuberculosis sort of fell away as Marine stopped in front of what was clearly a junked electronics yard. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t have been a deep concern for me, but there were at least two dozen heavily tattooed men standing around wearing Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts. I like to think any reasonable person would have been upset by such a sight, at least outside of any tropical resorts or cruises, but I may have been alone in that one.
All of them turned in unison when Marine stepped into the yard. I heard a quiet beep from the one nearest to us. We must’ve tripped something. He came walking up, not as smiley as I’d have liked. The yard of dismantled robot pieces added to the general feeling of dread surrounding the entire encounter in a way that even the midday sun didn’t diminish.
He looked past Marine to me as soon as he got to us. “Who’s this? You know boss don’t like no strange ones.”
Oh, I’m strange? Me? Sure. Fine.
“He’s with me, that’s all you need to know.” Marine’s tone was not one I’d ever heard her speak in. She took on a gruff sort of air when she was on the phone sometimes, but this was a whole other level. It was cold and distant. “Where’s Darvish?”
“Who says Darvish wants to see you?”
“Look, here’s how I’m going to lay this out for you. You’re clearly programmed to know who I am and I know you are a shitty robot with about three functions. Skip the script. Where’s Darvish?”
I saw the robot guy’s jaw clench for a second as he went bolt upright and was basically ready to defend Marine with my stump, but he straightened after a few seconds, pulling the collar of his shirt to his mouth.
“Sorry.” He looked at Marine. “I have been instructed to tell you that I apologize for delaying you and that Mister Darvish will see you right away.”
I was now more terrified of Marine than I’d ever had reason to be. I considered, on the positive, that she hadn’t had me murdered at any point in spite of my constant mocking. It further occurred to me that I worked for her and that I was, very possibly, an actual henchman at this point. The questions about the nature of our interpersonal relationship were growing fairly quickly and, panicking, I did the only thing I could think of. I poked her butt with my stump as soon as we entered the building. The guy who was guiding us had waited outside and there was no one else around. She spun around, just barely containing a “yip” sound.
She was pissed, looking back past me as she complained in frantic whispers. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
“I got nervous.”
“So you… stumped… you stumped my ass?”
“It made sense at the time.”
“Do you have any fucking clue where we are right now?”
“… I mean…”
“You mean what?”
“No?”
She gritted her teeth. I turned, bracing for a hit, but instead I felt a vice-like pinch on my nipple.
“Ah! Ah! Ah! No! What’s happening? What’s happening?!” I whispered the words in a panic, flailing my hand and stump. “Stop, stop, stop.” She was using fingernails. That’s just crazy. You can’t do that sort of shit. What if my nubbin came off? It’s like she wasn’t even thinking.
She finally let go and I doubled over, rubbing at it with my remaining hand.
She leaned down next to my ear. “No more bullshit, Laze. I’m serious. This is serious.”
I nodded, rubbing my nipple, and stood back up. We walked through the building, which was basically junk from wall to wall. We passed through a pair of hallways, eventually coming out into a large, messy workshop. Sparks were flying away from one of the benches. The man standing in front of it was bone thin and shirtless, unless you counted the thick covering of silver body hair that wrapped his torso. He turned around at the soun
d of footsteps and raised his arms.
“Mariiine! So good to see you! Oh, how long has it been!”
He spoke in a nasal voice, tossing his welding torch down carelessly before walking over. He put his hands on Marine’s shoulders and rubbed them back and forth, staring with eyes that would have made anyone uncomfortable. He had to be pushing a hundred, skin thin and tan.
“So,” he said, almost salivating. “You’ve come for a favor, haven’t you?”
She pulled back from him, her face stern as ever. I understood the cold voice now.
“I’ve come to collect on a favor, yes. Not ask one.”
“Oh, such a serious face always.” He reached a hand out and she pulled her shoulder away from it. He looked up just after that and then back down to Marine, never once putting eyes on me. “But we shouldn’t talk here.” He pointed up at the ceiling, smiling like a psycho. “Always little birds.”
He took us to a room just off the workshop which had a small table with a teapot and some cups. When I sat next to Marine he frowned, seeming to notice me for the first time, but cheered up when he saw my stump. I failed to find confidence in his delight.
“So how have things been?” He said the words casually as he poured a thick brown liquid from the teapot. “The price of groceries has become unreasonable hasn’t it? And I shudder to think what I’ll do if I can’t get my fruit. It keeps me virile, you know?” He looked up from the cups at Marine’s chest and chuckled through his nose.
Marine’s face, for her part, was as stern as it had been, with hints of annoyance flashing across it as the man spoke.
“And the children these days. So mistrusting. It’s society, isn’t it?”
Marine spoke, her voice serious. “I don’t care about any of that. I’ve come for—”
Darvish slammed his fists on the table. “We must have chats before business! Chats and tea! There are rules! Rules!” He was breathing fast, his eyes darting back and forth across the cheap table cloth under his fists.
He passed out the cups and I took a sip from it. If I were forced to describe the taste politely, I’d have suggested that he’d poured about six pounds of sugar into a bowl of water filled with heavily used athletic socks. I forced a smile to keep from vomiting and put the cup down.
“Delightful tea.” I choked the words out.
“Isn’t it? Some find the taste is not to their liking.” The words felt sinister somehow and he looked across at Marine who drank deep from the cup without flinching. I convinced myself that she had turned off her ability to taste things. It was really the only way she could manage a straight face with that shit in her mouth.
“We’ve chatted. We’ve had tea. Now business.”
“Oh, but the spirit of such things—”
“You don’t care for spirit. You care for rules. We’ve followed your rules, even complimented your tea. I want my favor.”
He looked at me after Marine spoke. “Yes. Yes, you did give compliments.” He shifted his eyes around, looking at nothing but lost somewhere in his own mind. “Fair play, then. What have you come for?”
She grabbed my stump and slapped it on the table. Darvish beamed an insane smile.
“Oh dear, oh dear. He has a need. And you have a favor.”
Marine stood.
“Let’s do it now then.”
Darvish stood as well, his eyes locked to Marine the entire time.
“A wonderful time for favors. Let’s begin.”
Chapter
ELEVEN
We were going down another set of stairs. Honestly, I was starting to get a little bit annoyed by the whole underground lair thing. It’s a bit ridiculous. I get it, don’t get me wrong. It makes way more sense to be below the ground as opposed to on a roof or something. There were drones all over the place. Whatever, I don’t care how much sense it makes. I don’t like it. I want a scenic view for once if I’m going to be marched into someone’s den of weird secret shit. Just put up some of that mirror film that makes it really hard to see in. Maybe put some blankets over the windows. It’s not that hard.
My bother over the whole underground lair thing really came to a head when we got to the bottom of the stairs. This creepy geriatric pervert had a massive entry way with a ten foot tall, crazy thick steel vault door. It was on actuating arms with a roll-away track as it was too heavy for any size hinge. The stairs came into the main room from a far side so you really didn’t see it coming until you rounded the final corner. It was a massive, spotless white cave aside from the dark gunmetal color of the vault door. Fifteen foot ceilings and we were, what, maybe thirty feet underground? No. See? This is ridiculous. Who built this? How does this sort of thing slide past a contractor as remotely okay? And what about the underground utility lines and shit? Can you just move those to the sides? Did this old psycho get a permit? He didn’t seem like the permit type. But then he loved rules almost as much as he loved seeming like a rapist, so maybe he did. Fuck me, who gave him the permit? Did they ask what he was going to do with a giant underground bunker? Or how he intended to build it? Was the city accounting for it in their plans? Why did everyone seem to have one of these? I had an apartment. A shitty one. With tin foil taped over the windows to keep spooky spy signals and the sun from ruining my private time. It worked for me, but I was getting seriously jealous. I bet Marine had an underground lair that she wasn’t telling me about. Who knows what she had down there. Probably a bunch of cool AI shit. Black boxes full of world destroying versions of herself that probably had bigger boobs. What a bitch, holding out on me like that.
“What’s something like this cost?”
“Hm?” That nasal, gravelly old man voice made me regret asking immediately. “Costs nothing to dig a hole.”
I remembered he had an array of simple robots out front of the place and figured it was possible he just had them do the work. We were definitely here for a reason, so I figured it was safe to assume he was resourceful. The door was another matter. Though I could kind of reason how he got the thing down here. Could have done it in pieces small enough to fit in the stairs. Or maybe even done it in the dugout area at the bottom. Probably need a crane to hold the thing up. It didn’t really matter, I guess. Logistically speaking, I didn’t have access to the sort of real estate necessary to have my own robot army dig out a tunnel for me to hide a giant vault of… what was in the vault?
Darvish made us stand back as he went to a single small keypad next to the massive rolling door. He was pressing buttons for what seemed like way too long. Easily a minute. Furiously pressing keys the whole time. He stopped just before the last one and looked over his shoulder at us, then back to the panel to press the final number. Klaxons sounded and warning lights in yellow and red flashed around the door. Hydraulics hissed to life and pulled the massive metal disc from its place embedded in the wall. It moved smoothly down into the groove in the floor and was rolled away. The room behind was a hundred yards deep, at least, slowly being brought into view by lights that faded up from nothing.
The room’s owner skipped in, pleased with himself and Marine moved when he had. I figured it was safe enough to follow so I moved into the room myself. It was nothing less than a showroom of immaculate pieces of robotics equipment. None of them were familiar to me, though pieces of some bore markings I had seen before in commercial bots. Everything custom. Legs, arms, full robotic torsos. The stranger things were vacuum-sealed against the wall in clear plastic. Organs, from the looks of them, but with odd patterns across them and connectors and ports laid into the meat.
“A hand, is it? A hand. How’s the wrist? Still good? Hm?”
He skulked around Marine brushing a hand across her back and lowered his head by my shoulder when he came to me. The only thing I could imagine would make a human’s breath smell like his was the ready consumption of copious amounts of cat shit. He grabbed my wrist and walked his fing
ers up the length of the stabilizer.
“Oh, nice, nice. Keeps it juicy. Shame.” He looked at Marine and laughed. “Won’t get to do the prep myself.” He looked back at me grinning wildly. “It’s a big favor I owe her, friend. So you get a big hand.”
He walked away, hunched, mumbling. He had crossed about half of the room when I felt like talking to Marine wasn’t likely to get us both killed.
“A big favor? Have you seen his dick?”
Marine shot me a “shut up” glance and so I did. She looked back forward, her eyes locked on Darvish. “I’m sorry for this.”
I’d started to tell her it’s fine, but Darvish shouted for us.
“Coming to see your toys or not?” His voice trended away from psychotic whimsy back toward irrational anger, nearly growling by the end. “I’ve got things to do, Marine. No time for this.”
If it were up to me, we would have run to the table to look at his freaky hand collection, but it wasn’t and Marine walked calmly and patiently.
“You owe what you owe, Darvish.”
He coughed, his eyes bugging as he did. “That I do, girl. That I do.”
The table was covered with hands. Some of them metallic, some polymer covered. None of them with skin. Auggies weren’t so weird anymore, but they were the rough equivalent of wearing a giant gang symbol where your missing limb was supposed to be. The poor couldn’t afford the limbs and the better-off got ones covered with at least reasonable looking sim skin. It was a one-way ticket to getting harassed by cops and Virsec idiots pretty much every time you went out. Facial recognition would pretty much flag you for a shakedown even if they couldn’t prove gang membership. Or so the stories went.
The weirdest stories came from the semi law-abiding side of things. There was a strong black market for official brand-name prostheses among the lower earning groups who just couldn’t afford to have the operations done. Adding to that, there were enough doctors left who still gave enough of a shit to do the operation with no questions asked. Doctors weren’t liable for anything past the procedure. Still, there was a patent and copyright issue in place surrounding the limbs. Three of the four companies who made them had filed suit against the black market purchasers and gotten a permanent injunction against unauthorized use, very specifically, of the software inside the prosthetics that universally interpreted brain signals to the false limb. Essentially, it was considered to be piracy and the limbs could be sieged because, on appeal, the WorldGov general appellate court had found that disabling the limb still kept the owner in possession of software they did not have a viable license for. You can probably sort of see where this is headed. Police and Virsec, a duly appointed private community enforcement subsidiary of Vircore, were allowed to seize the offending limbs.
Cyberpunk Trashcan Page 8
