Nightlord: Orb

by Garon Whited

  All in all, I think I got a tenth of what that ring was worth. I know the man has to make a profit, but still!

  I’ve mentioned it before: I hate being cheated. Sorry about the rant. And now I’ll shut up about it.

  The things possible for a man with cash are several orders of magnitude larger than the things possible for a man without. Anyone with money is, at worst, eccentric. Anyone without money is a bum. As much as my stomach wanted to make use of my limited funds, there were larger concerns. Clothes that looked right for the period and place. Luggage to conceal a big bastard of a sword. A sack, or a box, to hold that unpleasant glass ball. And paint. Quite a lot of paint.

  A thrift store helped with my clothes. Everybody seems helpful when you have a job interview and need something that goes with a tie. Fashion in ties has changed, too; they tend to be thin, usually less than an inch wide. Sport jackets have foam shoulder pads, too. I thought those went out of style with zoot suits. Nice shoes are still in style, though. I also found a beat-up valise for my other clothes, a musty bowling-ball bag for the Evil Orb, and some curtains with curtain rods for wrapping up and disguising Firebrand.

  The Black Ball almost didn’t fit in the bag; bowling balls are somewhat smaller and much lighter. I also worried about the handles tearing loose. A little reinforcement with duct tape and a couple of lengths of bungee cord settled that. The bag still bulged, but the Sphere of Suck wasn’t going anywhere. I also scrimped up enough power for a couple of minor spells—mostly a don’t-notice-me on the bag, but also a psychic blocking spell on it. I didn’t want anyone taking too much of an interest in it.

  That thing makes me nervous.

  Once dressed to play the part of Upstanding Citizen—or, at least, Innocent Bystander—I moved on to the now-open library and their public-access computers. A little research found a couple of licensed gold and jewelry dealers. None of them were local, but we could pay them a visit tomorrow…

  I counted cash and wished I had enough to buy dinner. Well, it’s not the first time I’ve gone hungry. Paint for Bronze was more important. She didn’t like being disguised as a Clydesdale, but it was the only thing anyone might possibly believe. The less attention we attract, the better, but she’s going to attract attention whenever she’s seen. Best to minimize it by pretending to be a normal horse. A giant horse, but otherwise normal.

  What are the local laws about horseback riding, I wonder? Do I need a license or a permit? And how accepted is it? Will we get pulled over regularly, or will the cops shrug and go back to their doughnuts? This could be important to know.

  Thursday, August 20th, 2048

  We relocated to Pittsburgh to find someone who would let me hock my jewelry. I finally sold the loot for something closer to a reasonable price. I’m sure “my dear, departed mother” would have understood about my financial hardship, and the guy behind the counter was both sympathetic and disbelieving. I didn’t feel cheated for selling at a discount in his case. Part of the purchase price was his willingness to go along with my story—especially since I still didn’t have any identification—and wanted cash.

  After that, I started searching for someone to help me with an identity. I’ve met more drug dealers, muggers, prostitutes, and other criminal classes in the last week than I’ve met in my entire previous life. They seem to alternate between three major attitudes. Some don’t want to talk to me at all. Others want money to tell me anything—“I need someone who can set me up with a fake ID.” “I dunno, man, I don’t think I know nobody.” “Mr. Franklin would be grateful.” Paper changes hands. “Oh, him. Yeah, he’s all right. You could talk to…” The third type seems to peg me as a mark and try to rob me.

  The first type is pretty much a wash. The second type takes cash and moves me, sometimes, up the criminal food chain. Since I perform all my illegal pursuits after dark—it’s safer for me that way—the third type helps finance the second type. Afterward, I generally stuff the bloodless corpses down a manhole. I can open the things with one finger; I don’t need a tool.

  Yes, I’m careful. I have a handkerchief to avoid leaving fingerprints. Bloodstains in my clothes soak on through and are absorbed into my skin. I also wear makeup to hide my skin tone and a cheap pair of sunglasses for my eyes. It’s faster and less time-consuming than spells. There are some advantages to a technological society.

  On the other hand, there are some severe downsides, too—especially for an inhuman, blood-drinking monster.

  During one of my midnight investigations, a sizable number of law enforcement professionals chose to make some arrests. In other words, I was in a crackhouse when they raided the place.

  I was on the ground floor, having a quiet conversation with “Q-man” and my friends, Mr. Grant and Mr. Franklin. “Q-man” was quite willing to give them a ride back to his place and was telling me about a friend of his own. A number of other people were occupied with various forms of chemical self-abuse around us.

  About that point, a red light over the front door started blinking.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “People out front,” he told me. He glanced down the hall and saw a similar light over the back door was also blinking. He didn’t bother to tell me what it meant; he sprang to his feet and sprinted upstairs.

  When the operator of an illegal establishment starts moving at his maximum speed, it might be prudent to do the same. Just as a rule of thumb.

  Twin bangs announced the presence of uninvited guests. The cops blew down the front and back doors. Men in body armor rushed in, shouting for people to get their hands in sight and down on the floor and all the other things policemen say when they’re waving guns around.

  Q-man and I, meanwhile, made the second floor and dumped a pile of child-sized chairs from the landing. I was impressed at his forethought. The chairs clattered and bounced down, catching in the railing and in each other, turning into an instant barricade. It would take a minute or two for someone to climb over them, much longer to actually clear the stairs.

  Q-man went to a bedroom, threw open the window, and unrolled one of those fire-escape ladders. In the dark, he couldn’t see the cops waiting below the window. I didn’t feel any overwhelming urge to tell him, either. Regardless of whether or not we did business, he was still a drug dealer.

  I hurried around the upper floor, checking out the windows. Cops all over the yard like beer cans after the football game. Apparently, they don’t like it if people leave the party early when they’re trying to have a drug bust. Can’t say I blame them, but I was prepared to be a little rude in the interests of not being arrested. Running was my first choice; I don’t like assaulting policemen. They’re doing their jobs. As a general rule, I like police. What I don’t like is being taken into custody.

  The north side of the house had a strip of yard and a driveway. Beyond that was a wire property fence, overgrown with weeds and vines. And beyond that was another lot, this one with the burned-out shell of a house. Best of all, there were no officers present on that property and no good sight-lines to any of the officers I could see.

  I forced open the sticking window—it was still less noise than breaking it—before I backed across the room, out into the hall, and took a running start. The dive through the window was clean, the trajectory perfect, the range a bit off. I landed well, hitting, folding, rolling, tumbling. I launched just a tad too far. I also had a lot of momentum to kill once I landed. I skidded to a halt under the remains of the porch, right through the wooden slats for keeping animals out. Fortunately, the noise was minimal compared to the shouting behind me. I stuck my head up through the burned-out porch floor, took stock of my surroundings, and headed for a nice, empty area farther away.

  I circled around to see what was going on. Not because I particularly cared about the fate of Q-man or his clientele, but because police procedure is good to know when you’re potentially a hunted felon.

  Changes from the things I remember: They made use of high-voltage sti
cks. Mostly to the legs, I noticed, which minimized risk to the heart or head. They used wide, plastic things rather than handcuffs—specially-designed zip-ties of some sort, I think. I didn’t see any chemical agents in use, but they might forego those to avoid drug interactions. They also showed no hesitation about shooting people with big-bore weapons; the ammunition was some sort of beanbag round. While a man juiced to the eyeballs can’t feel the hit, he still gets knocked flat by it.

  More disturbing was the aftermath. They didn’t fingerprint their prisoners. They peeled open eyelids and used a handheld device to shine a flash of laser light in the eye. Retina prints? Probably. They also had some sort of pen-sized, single-use gadget. They drew the thing in an S-curve over the cheek or back of the hand. Collecting skin for DNA analysis? Checking for drug residue? I wasn’t sure.

  I wasn’t too worried about any of the capture methods. Day or night, I could probably snap the plastic ties. At night, beanbag rounds and shock-sticks would only annoy me. But if they ever did get me into custody, what would a retina scan show? During the day, would it be normal? Or, since my eyes see in ultra-high-resolution, what would they look like to the scanner? Worst-case, if they scanned my eyes at night… well, they’re black. Solid black. Black eyeballs without iris or pupil. Is it possible to get a retina scan off that?

  And the skin-scrapers. What does my DNA look like? Human? Or human with symbiotic organisms? Or inhuman, due to viral modifications?

  Important note: Do not allow myself to be taken into custody.

  I faded into the night. I’m a vampire. We do that—some of us better than others. I did my best.

  All in all, I have to admit I’m not cut out to be a street thug. I don’t have the proper vocabulary or attitude. This really slows me down in getting low-level crooks to send me to crooks higher up the food chain.

  Worse, I’d have to say I’m not making a profit. Street thugs are robbers because they want money, not because they have money. Still, my cash supply stretched further than I expected.

  To help make ends meet, I went job-hunting. It was either that or start actively hunting for wealthier victims. I don’t like killing people for money.

  Very quickly, I was introduced to the realities of being an undocumented person in a computer-organized, cyber-tracked society. I had to give up my ideas of being a substitute teacher or even a part-time computer monkey in any capacity. Not only have my skills gone out-of-date (Welcome to the year 2048, you fossil!), but I have zero credentials, education, or work history.

  I’m also told it’s not a good economic period. According to the news, it’s a horrible depression, with pundits bewailing the fate of the working class. Maybe it is, but anyone who does have work generally has a pretty decent standard of living. I guess it all depends on what you’re used to. The homeless are plentiful, though, and steady, full-time jobs are hard to find. Maybe the country is in a depression; I wouldn’t know. I’m not an economist. I know it’s possible to make ends meet if you aren’t picky about where you live or what you do. I don’t think that’s a depression. Maybe a recession. It’s the lack of major luxuries, not a lack of important things—food, clothes, water, that sort of stuff.

  Then again, electricity is a luxury to me, so what do I know?

  I’m not picky. I have fairly regular day-labor jobs through the local employment office. They aren’t even temp jobs, just one-day things that pay off in cash. Automation still hasn’t completely taken over construction, yard work, and general mover jobs. I have to remember not to show any exceptional strength for my size—and to file down my fingernails in the morning. And no grinning; I can’t show my teeth.

  So far, I’ve got a closet—excuse me, I mean a miniscule (!) one-room apartment—on the third floor of a tenement. It’s unfurnished and likely to stay that way; I don’t plan to live here for long. I share the pair of bathrooms down the hall, which works out well since I tend to shower around sunrise and sunset. That doesn’t yet conflict with anyone else’s hours, which is good, but daylight savings time is likely to cause problems…

  Yeah, I’m back to Plan A. People don’t forget about their Evil Overlord overnight.

  Speaking of problems, I have dental hygiene issues. With the shockingly low magical potential, I’ve had to resort to brushing and flossing.

  This does not work well. My teeth are sharp, remember? I try to floss and the line parts immediately. It’s like trying to floss between knives. The string snaps before it does any good.

  Toothbrush bristles aren’t any better. Sure, I can brush my teeth, sort of, but it ruins the toothbrush. I wind up spitting plastic bristle bits out along with the toothpaste. They don’t make a super-tough toothbrush. On the other hand, they do make an electronic, ultrasonic thing they claim can do the work of a toothbrush. I’ll save up for one. In the meantime, I’ve had to resort to mouthwash.

  And don’t get me started on how the flavor of toothpaste and mouthwash seem to set my mouth on fire, either. It’s nowhere near as bad as actually being set on fire, but it’s a daily thing for me. I’ve also got a minor issue with my tongue. It’s monstrously long, but most of it retracts down my throat. It still hurts like hell when I bite it, though, and that makes the mouthwash even worse. It’s like swishing and spitting gasoline.

  That’s fine for Bronze, but not for anything organic.

  In other news, it feels as though my transformation takes longer, here. Do sunrise and sunset take longer on a round world? In Rethven—or Karvalen, or on Planet Plate—when the sun came up, it came up over the edge. Does rolling up around the curve of the horizon make a difference?

  One major change I’ve noticed is not in the bathroom mirror. The first time I stepped out of the shower after a sunset, I realized I wasn’t in the mirror. I was there when I went into the shower, while the sun was still up. When I stepped out after dark, there was nobody there. I have no reflection at night. This is about as disconcerting as seeing your reflection blink. I had to play with the shower curtain, watching it flap spookily in the mirror. I tried it with a towel, but it tended to fuzz out and fade.

  Is it related to surface area? Proximity? Mass? I had water all over my dark-grey skin; the droplets weren’t visible in the mirror. What are the rules on whether or not something disappears in the mirror along with me?

  People can still see me at night. I change normally—darkened skin, sharper nails, the works. Without a mirror, I can’t see my own eyes, though I assume they still turn into solid-black orbs of darkness that suck the souls out of mortals. I don’t have a reflection. Does it have something to do with this world? Is that how it treats the undead? Or does it have something to do with Tort’s spell for evicting my darker self? Is my reflection trapped in a black bowling ball? Or has it wandered off on its own, somewhere?

  Hmm. Where would a reflection go? And how would I get it back? Wendy could stitch a shadow back onto Peter, but a reflection? I don’t even know where to begin. Put up a mirror in the room where I lost my reflection and see if it’s still hanging around, maybe? Shout into the reflected room and see if anything comes into the field of view to investigate? Or is there some way I can go into the mirror after it, to look around and see if I can find it?

  If I crank up a magic mirror at night, will people on the other end still see me? It’s not using a reflection, as such… but I don’t know how this works. Will they talk to an empty mirror?

  On a lighter note, my investigation into the criminal classes has yielded some positive results. I am now the proud owner of a fake ID. It’s not a whole identity, but it’s good enough for any application where a person just needs to see it. It won’t stand up if someone tries to check it in the computer, but it’s better than nothing.

  My name is Vladimir Smith, a name I find much funnier that it probably is. It says I’m an organ donor and I’m supposed to wear glasses if I drive any non-autonomous vehicle. I’ve also got some leads on getting in touch with a man who can set me up with a whole false identit
y, rather than merely a fake card. I guess there isn’t a whole lot of illegal immigration in the Pennsylvania region. Hopefully, I’ll also be able to afford a credit card, bank account, skinphone, and a Google Cabs account. Things are looking up.

  Bronze is hiding in a public park about six blocks away. She’s right next to the playground equipment. Well, she’s not exactly hiding; she’s blending in. We burned off her paint job so she could pretend to be a statue and conserve her energy. A couple of official-looking types in city uniforms came out to look at her and scratch their heads, but nobody has yet gotten around to bringing in a crane and moving her. I suspect she can stay as long as it’s cheaper for the city to leave her where she is.

  She actually enjoys people-watching. She also thinks it’s fun that the local kids treat her like a park fixture for climbing on and running around. According to her (via Firebrand), none of them have seen a real horse, only pictures on the cyber. She’s kind of popular. She was even in the news, an article about an anonymous donation to the playground area. Nobody’s claimed responsibility for her.

  Since she’s not moving, she’s expending almost no energy. She doesn’t need to graze, and the Ascension Field is actually feeding her faster than she’s using it. As long as she just stands there, she’s effectively charging her batteries. This is a good thing for her disguise as a statue. To be fair, it’s an impressive disguise.

  I keep the Orb of Evil in its bowling bag. This is stuffed in the back of the top shelf of the closet. It isn’t happy. It’s never happy. I don’t care. I’m not sure what I should do with it, long-term. Drop it in the ocean? It’ll sink to the bottom for some geological period, then show up again. Drop it in a volcano? Maybe, but anyone over four feet tall does not simply walk into an active volcano. What does that leave me?