by Various
The nursery door burst open, admitting a single figure—a man in a feathered mask. The motion cameras picked him up instantly, focusing on the looming image of the mask as it closed the distance to the crib.
The stranger reached down, grabbing Jessaca with a hand under each arm. She did not appear to struggle, instead willingly accepted the man’s embrace. Clutching the baby to his chest, he strode across the room to the balcony doors, undid the set of locks, and opened. The wind swept into the nursery, brushing back the curtains.
The stranger gave one, final, purposeful turn back towards the cameras. The feathered mask was expressionless as he paused.
And then—jump. The cameras followed the descent as long as they could, catching the wind as it whipped about the man’s robe. The towers of Adantan reached upwards towards the falling figures. Baby Jessaca never made a sound.
Merah did not need to see his face to know the stranger’s identity. It was the final act of desperation from a man he had known since childhood. Why, Sehran?
“Merah?” Fila’s voice cut into his thoughts. Merah glanced across the bed at his wife, then down to his daughters, asleep in his arms. The Rajah penthouse was basked in quiet simplicity, an odd turn considering the chaos of the previous night.
“Sorry. I was… elsewhere.”
“I can’t imagine the kinds of monsters that…” she paused. “That was no rain dancer, Merah. An imposter.”
Merah kissed his wife and then his daughters in turn on the forehead. He looked out through the balcony windows, searching the morning sky. Clouds rolled lazily across the atmosphere, light and wispy.
What to hope for? Last night had set into motion two very distinct outcomes. Again Merah glanced down at his children and then up at the sky.
“Imposter or not, it will not matter,” Merah said. “The video is out there—my brother’s men leaked the whole thing last night. All the people will see is the mask.”
“Why would your brother do such a thing?”
“He’s gambling on chance. The same chance as those who took Jessaca.” And which do I hope for?
“What ‘chance’ is that?” Fila asked.
“Whether or not it rains today.”
Tim Maughan became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Limited Edition” in Arc 1.3 (Sep. 2012), edited by Simon Ings.
Visit his website at timmaughanbooks.com.
* * *
Novelette: “Limited Edition”
Short Story: “Zero Hours” ••••
Short Story: “Collision Detection” ••••
LIMITED EDITION
by Tim Maughan
First published in Arc 1.3 (Sep. 2012), edited by Simon Ings
• • • •
EUGENE SURESHOT, one mile tall, strides through the wasteland. Where his limited edition trainers hit the ground deserts bloom, city blocks rise and mountains rip themselves from the ground. Vistas erupt from each footfall, spreading like bacteria, mingling, creating landscapes. New places from the dead ground. Civilisations rise, intricate detail evolves around the soles of giant feet.
Then Sureshot stops, as if something blocks his path. He looks up. Looks left. Looks down and then looks right. He breaths and condensation forms on the screen. Sureshot steps back, raises a foot from the ground—leaving behind light-trails of glass skyscrapers and steel domes, and puts one limited edition kick through the screen, so all that Grids can see is the rubber sole, embossed tick logo.
Grids and College both flinch, then try to pretend they didn’t. Glass showers the sofa. Sureshot steps through what’s left of the screen, now just nine feet high, and brings one perfectly clean limited edition crep down through College’s mum’s coffee table. It smashes, splinters, spraying broken mugs and cold tea. The drops fall like slo-mo rain on the carpet, which is transforming itself around Sureshot’s feet into streets and parks, buildings and city blocks. Infinite fucking detail, like Grids hasn’t seen since the last time. As he looks he can see little statues of Sureshot, his face on billboards and video screens. So small, so complex, a perfectly formed world on the carpet-scale.
He looks up again, and Sureshot leans in to meet his gaze, their eyes locked, their noses so close they nearly touch. Sureshot breaths, condensation on Grids’s spex.
Sureshot speaks, gravel tones, Atlanta drawl. “This is my world now, understand?”
Fade to black. Red tick logo. Just do it.
“Shit fam,” says College.
“Hype ting,” says Grids.
“Bit too hype,” says College. “IMO”
“Yeah. But nice kicks tho man,” says Grids
“Oh seen,” says College, “serious nice kicks fam.”
• • •
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• • •
“GRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDDSSSSS”
Melody’s voice comes hurtling down the cliff-face of the tower, echoing off the concrete.
“WHAAAT?” Grids screams back. Him and College look skyward, scanning the matrix of windows. They can see her head, the glimmer of her hoop earrings, leaning out of the 11th story balcony, a sparkle of gold against the faded, damp pastel of the Barton Hill monolith.
“What girl want now man?” says College.
“GRIIIDS PUT YOUR SPEX OOOONN,” Melody screams again. Echoes.
“I GOT NO CREDIT,” replies Grids.
“WHAAAT?”
“NO CREDIIIIIT.”
“Jesus fam, nuff shouting,” mumbles College. “Girl give me focus-static bruv.”
“THEN GET YOURSELF UP HEEERRRE”
Grids looks up again. Melody’s head has disappeared, back into the tower. He stares up at the grey, flat ceiling of low cloud, lets himself soak in the sounds—the drone of traffic, the synthetic bass rumbles, the tick of ancient, processed drums. For a second he lets himself drift, reverse-vertigo, as the towers circle and sway around him, synched to the distant, filtered breaks that ebb from unseen speakers. Their tops fade into the stationary drizzle, and the fear hits him again, flooding him with insignificance, as though any second they could come alive and crush him like a wounded ant. Nothing scares him like the insignificance. He fights the urge to run, but can’t kill the need to climb, to be high, to be safe, to dominate.
“We should probably move man,” he says to College. “She sounds pissed.”
College sucks his teeth. “She always sounds pissed.”
• • •
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• • •
Piss-stink lift. Squeak of kicks on laminate. Knocks on door. The bass and snares are louder on the 11th floor, de-tuned 808 hits vibrate up through Grids’ shins, but it’s reassuring up here. Safety at altitude. Significance.
He hears chains unhook, bolts slide. Melody pulls back the orange, paint-chipped door, looks them both up and down.
“’Bout fucking time,” she says.
“Hello Melody,” says College, his voice dripping with mock civility. “It’s very nice to see you.”
She screw-faces at him, shakes her head. Turns her attention to Grids. “What the fuck? Been trying to inbox you. Where your spex?”
Grids pats an upper arm pocket on his stormsuit. “Got no credit.”
More head-shakes from Melody, followed by a sigh. “Wasteman. You can use my mum’s network. She give me the password, but don’t be doing no sketchy shit, yeah?”
“Oh, so we can come in then?”
asks College.
They follow Melody in to the flat, her bunches and earrings bouncing at the sides of her head, and Grids’ eyes fall into the dark skin at the nape of her neck. He feels a twinge of affection, and embarrassed he covers his eyes with the spex from his pocket. Melody ’tooths him a PostIt with the passcode—a seemingly infinite string of digits and symbols. Blink—network settings. Blink—connect. Blink—cut. Blink—paste. Green tick. Online.
Melody’s mum’s flat feels safe. It’s clean and warm, and smells of food, enough to make Grids’ stomach rumble. Not that it takes much, he’s not sure when he last ate, maybe last night. Money must be tight, thinks Grids, there’s only Melody’s mum and the three kids, but she works and holds this shit down. She doesn’t like him much, or at least not Melody hanging around with him, but apart from that she’s alright. He feels pangs of jealousy in with the hunger.
“So what’s the fiasco?” asks College.
“Check your timelines.”
Grids pulls down a menu out of his periphery, blinks icons. The air around him fills with windows and doorways, images and words, rumours and opinions, music and politics. Lies nestle with facts, jokes with atrocities, the exotic with the mundane. More information than the human brain was built to handle floats about him in a multicoloured, vari-textured, ever-shifting mosaic of triviality. Grids tries to stay away from the timelines; there’s too much insignificance, and it’s contagious.
Grids yawns, shakes his head. He defocuses on the swarm so it goes translucent, looks straight through it at Melody. “Yeah. And. What?”
She screw-faces, and he feels embarrassed again, because she looks cute when she does it. Not bimbo, high-street, wannabee-gamer cute, but smart, confident. And cute. He kinda likes her, but he’s known her for time. Since they were little. Plus her mum would kill him.
She sucks her teeth at him. “Can you not see what everyone in the ’codes is chatting?”
Grids sighs. The timeline thing is such a chore. He blinks a couple of times, sets filters by popularity and neighbouring postcodes, and the swarm reassembles itself around him. A few things jump out, elbowing other tweets and posts and topics out of the way—a police beating in Lawrence Hill, a big graf bombing in Easton, some body in the canal by Feeder Road, and a skunk-factory raid in Brislington. But one thing stands out, dominating his view, pushing its way to the front. A video file, bare retweets.
Grids clicks it. It’s a spex cam capture, stereoscopic. Brief disorientation of being-there-but-not. He’s in/not in a small room, scruffy walls, lit by fluorescent tube lighting. Stacks of red shoe-boxes, white ticks on the side. Arms that he can’t control extend in front of him, grab a box, flip off the cardboard lid.
“Oh seen,” says College behind him, clearly riding the same clip.
Pulling aside tissue paper, dropping it to the scuffed floor. Underneath are two trainers, white leather with grey plastic details, red ticks. They’re turned to face him, a signature stitched in flickering OLEDs. Eugene Sureshot. Underneath: Limited Edition. This Is My World Now.
“Yeah, they’re nice kicks,” says Grids. “And. What?”
Melody sighs. Again. Grabs him by the shoulder and drags him over to the window. South Bristol lies in front of him. Infinite fucking detail. From up here it looks like the carpet-scale world spreading out from Sureshot’s kicks in that ad, but twisted and broken, weathered and greyed, stained and British. An unplanned, confused mess of roads and buildings, housing estates and railway tracks—the grey and brown occasionally broken up by defiant patches of green trees and parks. It’s decentralised and pointless, never ending until it fades into the ever-present drizzle bank, and all he can see on the horizon are the flashing warning lights on the bent-paperclip shapes of cranes and communication towers. He thinks again about that Sureshot ad, and how Bristol looks like someone bio-hacked his shoe’s terraforming virus to make something poisoned and already dead. Or even that this is what was their before, this is the wasteland, waiting for Sureshot—or the next man that’s big enough to wear those kicks—waiting for them to come along and make their mark. Wipe it all out, trample it down, and start over again.
“Stand here,” Melody says, impatiently, “and blink the geo-tag man.”
He blinks the slowly turning globe icon. Instantly a huge arrow appears above Bristol, spinning and bouncing, and he knows straight away where it’s pointing down on to. Avonmeads Retail Park, sandwiched between train tracks and a muddy river, half-hidden under the concrete sprawl of the traffic filled St Philips Causeway fly-over, looks out of place amongst the grid of infrastructure and housing, like a scrap of unwanted paper—like a discarded burger wrapper—that’s been blown on to this huge rolled out map, or a crumpled note pinned in place with electricity pylons and aerials. A nowhere-zone studded with near-forgotten retail brands and fast food franchises, a glorified car park that would have been abandoned to the rats and seagulls if you could download coffee, fried chicken and cheap household goods straight off the timelines.
“Shit fam,” says College, “It must be Foot Locker, innit.”
“What?” says Melody, “Foot Looker long gone. It’s Sports World now.”
“Not even,” says Grids, “Sports World shut down fam. It’s a Track and Hood now.”
“Whatevs,” says Melody. “Fact is they’ve got them Eugene Sureshot kicks right now, and they ain’t even street date until next week.”
“And the rest. They ain’t meant to be out for another ten days,” says College.
“Damn, I want them kicks.”
“Me too.”
“Then lets go get some then,” says Melody.
“But I’m skint,” says Grids.
They three of them all look at each other for a second, then laugh.
“Seriously,” Grids says, looking at Melody, “You wanna do this, yeah? No gaming?”
“No shit I do. What else you gonna do today?” She shoots him back a cheeky grin. “But if we gonna do it, we gotta do it quick. That clip’s been all over the timelines for like nearly a full hour fam.”
“Shit. Yeah. We gotta move fast. Like now. And we gonna need more mans. Like a few. Most of BS4 is gonna be thinking the same, probably worth a collab. College, can you get us somewhere we can talk?”
“Yeah, think I know a place. I’ll get it running then I’ll hustle some people in. And get the Smash/Grab server prepped.”
“Nice, but keep it tight yeah? On the down low until we’re actually running. Shit, I need to go get changed while you sort that. Oh, and Melody?”
“What?”
“Can I beg some credit?” Grids holds his rumbling stomach. “And has your mum got any food in?”
• • •
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• • •
“Fuck me. This shit is embarrassing man,” Grids looks down at his heaving, over muscled chest, barely contained by the overlapping plates of shining armour. “I mean, Jesus Fuck. Look at me bruv.”
Melody giggles, twirling a battle-axe with blood-stained blades the size of hub-caps above her head like it’s a majorette’s baton.
“You can fucking talk,” he says back to her. “Take a look at yourself. Cover yourself up girl, serious.”
Melody giggles again, insensibly sized breasts jiggling. “You know I’m hot. You wish you could get with this.”
“Heads up,” interrupts College, from under the oversized brim of a purple, gold star festooned, wizard’s hat. “Lawrence Hill crew incoming.”
There’s a flash of light, a swirling of mystic winds and a puff of magical smoke, and suddenly there’s a green skinned ogre and a hooded ranger stood in front of them. Text floating above their heads reveals the
m as Flex and Brainstorm.
The other three burst into fits of giggles.
“Fuck you man,” says Flex. “And fuck you too man. Seriously. Look at me. Man look like a special needs man".
“Dunno blud, orc-style kinda suit you Flexman.”
“I said fuck you man. Hate this neckbeard-virgin epic fantasy shit. ‘Throne of Shadows’—what does that even mean? Why couldn’t we meet in one of them mafia games or World War Two or some shit man?”
“Cos them games are full of people bruv,” replies College, “and where there’s people there’s the Feds, innit. This game is dead son. No one’s monitoring this shit. Plus it’s free innit.”
“I ported into the wrong place at first” says Brainstorm, flicking what looks like sticky black gore off his pretty green cape. “Had to murk some goblins fam.”
“Really?” College asks, genuinely interested. “How was that?”
Brainstorm shrugs. “A’ight.”
“Alright games masters, y’all can compare your experience points inna minute,” says Grids. “We got shit to sort and we ain’t got much time. Flex how deep you rolling today?”
“Dunno, reckon I can drum up ten, maybe a dozen mans. Short notice innit.”
“Safe, that’s good. Reckon we can get the same from Barton ends. Should do us. But they all gotta drag their asses into this shameful place and get registered, seen? Like College said we’re using this cos its dead and free, plus it’s got its own pervasive messenger so we can all chat in the real and the Feds won’t know shit. You get me?”
The orge, the wizard, the ranger and the scantily dressed she-warrior all nod back at him. Grids shakes his head and tries not to laugh.
“College is gonna be outside, running media,” explains Melody. “Me and Grids and our crew will take point in Track and Hood. You guys will be on crowd control.”
“Alright.” Says Flex. “I get you. Look, don’t take this the wrong way. This is your run so I got no problem with you guys taking point. But my boys, y’know, they ain’t gonna be happy unless a minimum of most of them come away with a pair of those Sureshot kicks. You get me?”
