Escapology

by Ren Warom

  Copying the info into his drive, Shock resets the Gordian and heads out of the server. In about as bad a mood as he can muster, he locates the P.O. at a reef a good distance away, and heads off to deliver. The second he opens the P.O. to upload, something gross and sticky lands in his drive. It’s heavy. Slick. And moving. Sliding about like mercury, giving him that odd floaty head you get after drinking one too many on an empty stomach and not the fun one either, the one where you really wish you’d bothered to eat.

  What the fuck!

  Slamming the package into the P.O., Shock takes a second to scrape at his drive with some anti-virals. They do nothing except make him feel instantly sick, tasting copper, magnesium burn, ashes slicked with grease, which freaks him out good and proper. Tasting in the Slip is so not good—means the whole funny head shit is having a physical effect on his body IRL. He could already have tossed his noodles and be choking his last.

  Caught between sickness and panic, he ejects from Slip, leaving Puss where it is, knowing it’ll be there when he needs it again no matter what. Finding himself alive and vomit-free is a plus, but Shock’s not in the least reassured, shit is badly wrong here in his head. This makes tofu brain look like fun times. Calls in fact for a trip to a drive clinic, a virtual colonic for the head, but joy of joys he hasn’t flim for that until Sez IMs and he can acknowledge delivery, so he’s going to have to improvise.

  Only two ways to do that, good drugs or good tea. Guess which one he hasn’t got flim for? Dragging himself out of the pod, he clamps his hands to his belly and makes his way on unsteady feet back onto Plaza into the cool wash of evening, under over-bright lights, on the hunt for a temporary liquid solution to his woes.

  * * *

  Moving lights from shop signs slide across grey concrete like water reflections, dragging shadows behind them.

  Plaza’s too quiet for a Monday, thinks Ko-Ren, peering out at a night sky bled to deep purple by the bright glare of Shin district.

  Somewhere up there floats Tokyo City Hub. If he squints through the sea of neon and street lights, the spotlights on ’scraper roofs, he should be able to see it; a dark shadow sliding through purple night like a sea monster, menacing in its sheer size and breadth. Not tonight though, tonight his eyes are tired. Double shifts to make ends meet mean late nights, early mornings. Costs too much to live these days and he’s an old man, getting older every day. One day they’ll find him dead in this booth, a smile stuck to his face, kabuki-like, warped and disingenuous.

  Old Rin, from the same ’rise Ko-Ren reluctantly calls home, walks on by down the Plaza dragging his wife’s ugly dog, shaggy as a bear with scabies, on a thin plastic leash. Rin’s wife is long dead and he hates the dog, but always walks it. Half eight every evening, the same route he used to take with her. Maybe he thinks she’s waiting down the Plaza somewhere. Maybe he thinks she’ll brush the damned dog. Ko-Ren winces, clutching a grumbling stomach. No option but long hours, and he can’t leave the booth in case he misses a sale. If he forgets to cook rice for the day, he has to graze on what he sells.

  Snagging a candy bar from his gaudy display, he cracks the seal to munch on low cal synth-choc. Bares his teeth, stained shit brown. Synth-choc tastes like mud. Nothing like the old days, but only the rich can afford that. Black-market chocolate costs over a month’s profit from this shit-hole on Plaza he likes to call a business, and his old heart, reduced to the puttering rhythm of water on a tin roof, would likely quit working altogether from a sniff of the real deal.

  “Filthy junk,” he says, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Tries to chew without tasting.

  Noise explodes behind the booth. A clamour of voices, excitable as gulls at the fish market squabbling over scraps of squid. Streeks. These scum come from the Cads and the tangle of massive blocks behind Plaza, the Pod hotels. Three-thousand-feet-high edifices filled with enough claustrophobic coffins to bury the dead of a city; open from eleven P.M. to eight A.M. Between those times, when they’re not cooped in classrooms learning trade, Streeks run loose as packs of feral dogs, try to outrun the odds of dying before Graduation. Most don’t. He doesn’t feel sorry for them, they make their own hell.

  They burst around the concrete corner of the booth, bright and noisy. Hands scrabbling in his display, they laugh in his face, throwing hard words like insults in Ko-Chun. Streek slang, a mix of Korean, Chinese and pidgin English spoken in rapid bursts, staccato as machine-gun fire. He doesn’t understand a word.

  Waves his fist as they run off down the plaza with handfuls of smokes, candy and filmy, unactivated e-zines, crumpled to wads. Neon transforms the splash of dirty rainwater in their wake to startling fireworks and the whole Plaza comes to life, as if to hide them from view, thousands of salarymen and women pouring out of the mono towers. No one stops at the booth, or even stops to look.

  “Go fuck yourselves,” he mutters, collapsing back amongst tumbled boxes, the bright scatter of candy bars and smoke packets.

  Behind constricting ribs his heart’s struggling to haul blood, sputter-fading through every beat. He sucks air, desperate as a junkie, willing the pain to dull. No medicare for him. Not some stupid old man too weak to labour, too dull to be a salaryman. Used to be a shop worker, a good job, before he got too old for the floor. They kept him on, allowing him to take shifts in the back, but three years in the warehouses reduced him to a shambling wreck, leaving two choices: the retirement complexes or a booth. He chose the booth. That’s like choosing life, for whatever value of life is found in a booth.

  Breathing usually works, easy in, easy out, remembering days out on the ’scraper roof gardens following the unconscious flow of taiji. Not today. The inside of his ribs burn like smouldering lantern paper as his heart takes longer and longer to complete each pump. Pain becomes ropes strung through his chest pulled tight, tighter yet, and darkness creeps across his vision like Tokyo City across the night, whispers following in its tracks like gossiping stars. He thinks he’s dreaming of heaven, but what angels speak like this?

  We’ll piggyback, it’s on the way out. This voice is sexless, and echoes, as though only a portion of it is yet within him. It makes him quail, terrified of some unspecified burden.

  Where’s Shock Pao? This other voice is equally sexless, holds the same sensation of withheld mass. It’s so eerily similar to the first voice, Ko-Ren is certain this thing, whatever it is, must be speaking to itself. Mad then? Or is he going mad himself?

  Near. The signal is loud.

  There can be no more mistakes.

  Trial and error. Everything is in place now.

  That is what Calhoun told us last time.

  But I am not Calhoun.

  True.

  Air’s down to vapours now. As his perception warps out of skew, a vast presence, the burden he anticipated, looms inside Ko-Ren’s head, pushing him out to the edges. Spread thin as poor man’s butter around the inside of his skull, Ko-Ren understands nothing except that this isn’t heaven; it hurts too much. And the voices whisper on.

  There. On our left.

  They pull his vision to one side as if his eyes, on strings, are only their puppets. He sees a sick-looking young man in a thin neoprene jacket, barely able to walk and clutching at his stomach. Long, wild hair in black and candy-bright green partially obscures eyes so startling blue they register as fake in that so-Korean face. He feels a rush of fear. Wants to call out and warn this young man. But about what? And he’s not sure he owns his mouth any more.

  So this is our Haunt? One of the voices snaps, flat with disgust. Too loud. Ko-Ren needs to cover his ears, but where are they? Where are his hands? Unhealthy.

  Addict. Excellent. It won’t matter if we damage him.

  True. Calhoun means to cheat us.

  Of course he does. What are humans if not treacherous? Look at what was done to us.

  Trapped.

  Confined.

  Reduced.

  Not for much longer.

  The weight disappears, and darkn
ess drops over Ko-Ren, the night in his booth without the shadow of Tokyo to guide his way. His last thoughts are that he should’ve gone up there as a young man when he had the chance; no rules in Tokyo, no Psychs, no skill tests, no freaking Cads or complexes. No goddamn booths. Just the curve of the earth endlessly falling beneath, and the stars like beacons overhead.

  “Could’ve been looking down instead of looking up,” he mutters, and tumbles headlong into silence, a grin frozen to his face, wide and distorted as a Kabuki mask.

  Land Ship Showdown

  The sea churns under skies dyed the deep purple of cumulonimbi in a rage. Hard winds from the south throw twenty-foot, foam-topped monster waves against the high sides of the Resurrection. Not high enough yet for overspill, but the clouds promise a worsening of the weather and the wheel crews are out in force, securing every last bolt, making certain the Resurrection can survive a storm sailing at full speed.

  The Ark, mere hours behind and gaining at a frightening rate, is a storm of another kind, one they may not survive. The Resurrection holds the size advantage, sure, and she can run at a fair clip on smooth seas too, but these seas are far from smooth. The Ark runs faster on both and despite her size, she’s packed with soldiers and supported by a fleet of schooners.

  As the night wears on, the sea smashes furious fists around them. Wind howls through the upper decks, sending the ropes swinging madly, forcing the use of clipped lines for travel. On the crow, Petrie keeps an eye on their back, along with the drone, finally aloft, whose ability to fly sound in this sort of weather astounds him. With those eyes in the sky, able to see through the starless darkness, he spots the Ark and her fleet coming over the horizon and closing fast.

  “They’re here,” he says to Cassius.

  “How many schooners?”

  “Drone counts forty-two.”

  “Not so bad. Better than fifty, better than sixty. Ready the guns, Bosun, we fire as soon as they’re in range.”

  Word travels by clicker on ships running dark—IM is signal and they want to keep their location hidden even from scans for as long as possible. It takes the clicker teams a good twenty-five minutes to pass word to each different station around the ship. By this time the Ark’s fleet of schooners should be well within range, and yet the Resurrection’s drone shows them hanging back, slowing to sail in the wake of the Ark.

  Petrie’s immediate thought is that they plan to use her as a shield, to come out in force when they’re close enough to anticipate and avoid Resurrection’s guns. Turning to relay these fears to Cassius, he’s drowned out by a percussion of explosions. In surreal slow motion, several portions of the Resurrection’s upper deck implode, spewing molten chunks of steel and flaming wood. Three guns on the port side topple grandly into the sea, taking their crew with them. Petrie stares up wildly.

  “Drones!” he roars over the noise.

  “What about our drone? Is it lost?” Cassius shouts back, straining to see through his ’scope, his face a stark illustration of Petrie’s own shock and horror.

  Connecting back into the drone’s eyes, Petrie finds it engaged in a dogfight with two others. The Ark’s drones are damaged from pirate fire and shoddily repaired, but their weapons are working all right.

  “No, but it’s in serious trouble. Needs help now.”

  Cassius nods. “Light the night. Get this under control, Bosun.”

  “Cap’n.”

  Reaching for his control panel, Petrie lights the ship, aiming spotlights skyward to illuminate the drones circling above as he sends a ship-wide IM.

  Concentrate half firepower upward. Two enemy drones to take, red-marked in ’scope. The other half firepower on the Ark and her schooners. Repair teams douse those fires, medics move the injured down below. Work fast and careful, folk.

  Returning to his ’scope, Petrie watches the pointed mass of the Ark bearing down upon their stern. His stomach clenches, old fear throttling it in callous hands. There’s Daly Pentecost, captain of the Ark, a silhouette in miniature against the lights. He stands as he always does, on a crow taller than Cassius’s—because Cassius is not just a leader, he’s part of the crew.

  Pentecost is his ship’s lord and master. His power is in every line of his body, standing straight and unassailable. In the somber air of contemplation his people mistake for wisdom. His cruelty is the kind that hides behind easy smiles, a gentle gaze and a soft voice, but it is the whole core of him. Undeniable. Being its focus is to live in terror.

  Seeing him again, even from such a distance, Petrie’s thrown back through the years. To the sound of Pentecost’s voice. The soft tap of his boots on the deck. The shrinking on his skin as they came closer, knowing what would happen when they stopped. He used to piss himself sometimes, fear overriding shame. How can he face this? There’s too much terror. He can’t even think.

  “You’re no boy now.” Cassius’s voice drops into the ocean of Petrie’s fear solid as an anchor. He’s never told Cassius all that was done to him, only that he was born there and that he ran. He expects his face may have told some of the rest, has no doubt that it speaks eloquently of his current terror. “You’re my bosun, and I need you to lead my crew.”

  The man listens, but the boy within can’t hear. Fear leaks through Petrie like freezing water through a hull breach. For long moments, too long, he simply can’t separate man from boy.

  Cassius’s hand falls on his shoulder.

  “Petrie. We don’t have time for this. The Resurrection, she’s burning.”

  With great difficulty Petrie moves his gaze from Daly to their upper deck. Firestorms punctuate the hull, the roar of their flames underpinning the bombastic thump of heavy guns firing intermittent bursts into sky and earthy hull. His ship, his home, is under siege, and here he is, lost in the past, in old fears, paralyzed.

  Dredging for willpower deep within, Petrie pushes the boy he once was far into the background. With a nod to Cassius, he leaps onto the ropes and, sliding at breakneck speed on zip-wires from crow to crow, heads for the stern, stopping to help put out fires, to carry the wounded, and to aid gunners in securing broken struts and scaffolds.

  He yells orders via IM as he goes, reining in the gunner crews to fire in tight formation, and one of the Ark’s drones drops at last, hitting the Resurrection amidships, punching a giant hole in the upper deck. Like everything else destroyed today, it’ll be swiftly repaired, this ship heals fast under the unceasing hands of its crew.

  The other two drones, one belonging to the Ark, and their own, finally broken, fall into the sea, trailing flames, and sending vast waves crashing over the fires on the Resurrection’s port side. Strapped in tight, the remaining gunners come out still firing. These folk are tough, fierce. Coming from a place where no one fought back, it’s a constant surprise to be amongst those who refuse to surrender. They give him courage.

  Two crows from the stern, with the Ark fewer than three hundred metres away and closing fast, Petrie grabs up a long-range rifle. He knows the Ark’s strategy, and he’s made certain crews are in place at the stern to counter them. The Ark’s bowsprit is reinforced with steel, and barbed. Slammed at speed into other ships it serves as an anchor, a bridge for the Ark’s forces to swarm aboard, going after the helpless. With their families captive, a ship’s armed forces find good reason to surrender.

  Not this time.

  The people of the Resurrection are Petrie’s family. All these good folk, all these kids, they’re never going to live under Pentecost’s thumb.

  The Ark hits, driving metres of armoured bowsprit into the cliff at her stern. The Resurrection jolts. Petrie holds his forces steady. And as the incoming forces are exposed on the bowsprit, he unleashes their full firepower. He doesn’t fire with them; his target is higher, far more difficult to reach.

  Pentecost remains on his crow at all times, surrounded during conflict by his personal guard, a trusted team of fifteen men. Getting a clear shot past them will be difficult, so Petrie doesn’t aim for
Pentecost.

  Instead, breathing even and slow, and firing on the out breath, he takes out the personal guard. Does it fast, laid flat like a sniper with the automatic rifle rested easily against his shoulder, aware that even though they won’t expect this direct attack, they’ll swiftly adapt. Indeed the final five die returning fire, their bullets unerring, taking chunks of wood right next to Petrie’s head.

  When the last has fallen, Petrie leaps up. From this rear crow it’s just over a mile to Pentecost’s central tower. He’ll have a replacement guard up there in no time, so Petrie grabs up a rappel gun. Made for long distance firing, for scavenging as well as warfare, these can run out up to three miles of thin, high-tensile wire, and they’re heavy, so he hefts it on his shoulder to fire, aware that as soon as it’s hit, Pentecost will know he’s coming.

  Clamping on with his automated clip and line, he zips in. Beneath him as he spins out, far above the bow, he watches with a mixture of grim satisfaction and churning nausea as wave after wave of the Ark’s troops fall. Still taking heavy fire from Resurrection’s guns, the Ark is burning too, and the heat makes him sweat almost as much as his own fear.

  Pentecost must be just as hot, but he stands as if he feels nothing, as if none of this is unexpected. The man’s confidence cuts deep holes in Petrie’s certainty, threatening to tear it apart. As he lands mere metres away from the object of his terror, he wonders if he’s made the right choice.

  As soon as Pentecost’s eyes meet his, he knows he hasn’t. He can’t beat this man. His only hope was to run.

  Why didn’t he run?

  When Pentecost speaks, it is with deceptive warmth.

  “Well look who it is, come to kill me. Young Petrie. It is still Petrie, isn’t it? Or did you desert everything?”

  Petrie did not expect to be recognized. His limbs are weak, his hands shaking.

  His voices shakes, too, as he replies, stunned by his ability to speak when his courage has fled, “Still Petrie. And that’s my home you’re attacking there. I’m going to stop you.”