The Machine Killer

by D L Young

  **FIVE STAR TACOS DE CHORIZO** NEXT LEFT!

  DO YOU KNOW JESUS, FRIEND?

  HOLO TATTOOS, BEST IN THE CITY!!!!

  Some paid to go ad-free, but blocking tech was expensive and Maddox was tightfisted by nature. Besides, it cost nothing to ignore sales pitches…

  BUY ONE BLOW JOB, THE NEXT ONE’S ON US!

  …or at least try to ignore them.

  He walked on, working off his whiskey buzz, painted in the neon glow of towering holos. Dancing hamburgers. Shoot-’em-up plugin games. A soccer star pimping his signature line of sports clothes. A couple blocks ahead, the Dishi beer anime girl stood twenty stories tall, projected against the face of a standalone condo building. She downed a beer, tilting the mug high as white froth spilled down in rivulets between and around her gravity-defying breasts. She finished and put her hand to her mouth and giggled, then the cycle started over and she lifted the mug again, spilled, and giggled. A line of hovers moved slowly across her face, the automated trudge of the lowest and most crowded of the stacked transit lanes that extended up over a hundred or more stories, each level less crowded than the one underneath it.

  As it always did, the City’s brightness and noise soothed Maddox. Its crowded walkways of bespectacled strangers offered refuge, peace of mind. Its towering megastructures—the daisy-chained buildings known as hiverises that housed hundreds of thousands, even millions—were timeless, immovable mountain ranges, concrete gods who watched over the City’s valley floor. He’d never found the City intimidating or overwhelming as some did. The City was home, its ceaseless throb as natural to him as the beat of his own heart. Sure, you had to keep your wits about you, otherwise trouble would find you, but the street knew who the suckers were, and for the most part it parsed accordingly.

  Home was a thirty-story midrise in Tribeca, where Sixth Avenue merged into Church Street. In a previous era it had been a government office building of some kind. Its featureless facade of rust-colored brick and rows of plain rectangular windows shouted twentieth-century public sector austerity. Maddox sometimes wondered what the building had looked like back then, before it had been gradually covered—as most of the City’s buildings had—by a rainbow motley of graffiti tags and stencils and freehand pieces. Naked was the word that came to mind. A building with no markups seemed incomplete, unnatural. A mannequin’s face with no distinguishing features, fingers without prints. Maddox’s favorite graffiti on his home building occupied ten square meters of space just above the entryway, a scene depicting a datajacker in virtual space. Viewed from behind, the jacker sat cross-legged with his arms extended, palms up like some Hindu deity. Floating above one hand was a data visualization, a shiny black cube with COMPANY SECRETS etched on it in red letters. Dollar signs flowed into the other hand, shaped like a funnel cloud of swirling bills. In the background, a trio of corporati in three-piece suits looked on, their faces wide-eyed in horror, hands atop their heads in helpless disbelief as they watched the jacker rob them of their precious IP. Maddox had never been the superstitious sort, but when he’d first seen the piece during his search for a new apartment, a part of him couldn’t help but think it was the City’s way of telling him 250 Church Street was the right address for his new digs.

  “Good evening, Mr. Thornbush,” the doorman greeted him, using the fake name Maddox had rented under. The old man politely dipped his chin and touched his hat. His glove was dingy and threadbare, matching the rest of his stained, well-worn uniform. Still, he wore the outfit proudly, with the same professionalism and sense of duty with which he performed his job. The old man seemed perfectly content, even happy, with his place in the universe as the longest-tenured doorman on Church Street.

  Maddox smiled and nodded, then paused as the man opened the door for him.

  “Cesar, where are your specs?” he asked.

  The man looked to the ground, his lined face knotted with uncharacteristic worry. “I’ll find them.”

  “Don’t tell me you lost another pair.”

  “No, no,” the man protested, still looking down. “I just misplaced them, that’s all. I’ll find them, I’m sure of it.”

  Maddox stood in the doorway. Building gossip had it old Cesar was about to get the boot. He was old and forgetful, and he was always losing his specs, making it impossible for him to call a taxi or perform other services for the building’s tenants. There was talk of petitioning the condo board to find a replacement.

  Maddox backed out of the doorway and told the old man to close the door. He blinked through his specs’ menu, found the factory resets and activated them. A few moments later a confirmation window popped up. He removed the specs and handed them to the old man. He’d never really liked this pair, anyway.

  “Here,” he said. “I got these free when I bought a timeshare.” It wasn’t the most believable lie, but it had been a long day and he was tired. He knew the proud old man would never accept anyone’s charity.

  The doorman looked up at Maddox. “Sir, I can’t take your—”

  “Give them back when you find your own.”

  Shaking hands slowly reached out and took the specs. “I will, sir.” The man’s voice trembled with restrained emotion. “I can’t tell you how grateful…” His voice trailed away.

  Maddox shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “It’s no problem,” he said, finally breaking the awkward silence. “Like I said, they were free.” He pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  Minutes later, he sat on the tiny concrete outcrop of his tenth-story balcony, wearing boxer shorts and smoking. He never liked to sleep when he was whiskey buzzing, and he was still a cigarette or two away from sober. A breeze came off the Hudson River, three blocks to the west beyond the seawall, and cooled his skin. He’d left the TV on in the condo, and the muffled voice of a newsperson came through the glass door. He caught bits and pieces of stories. Something about a terrorist bombing in the financial district, then a corruption scandal in the City’s waste removal department, followed by the protests over a proposed cut to the dole, the subsistence income most of the City’s jobless residents relied on. Another day in the City.

  He blew smoke rings into the air beyond the balcony. They floated away, twisting and folding and losing their shape as they dissipated in the softly pushing breeze. Specs, he reminded himself. He’d have to pick up a new pair in the morning.

  Anarchy Boyz Chapter 3 - Lexington Avenue Raid

  “I don’t want any upgrades,” Maddox repeated, his patience thinning. His head was foggy with too little sleep and the dull throb of a hangover. The vendor, hunched over the specs, hummed in disapproval. He was a little round fellow with a wiry mop of dark hair. Russian, maybe Ukrainian, from his accent. He made small adjustments to the specs’ temple arm with a tiny screwdriver. An elastic band around his head held a jeweler’s loupe against his left eye.

  “I make good deal,” he said without looking up from the pair of refurbished Kwan Nouveaus. “Three apps for price of one. You not find better deal anywhere south of the park.”

  “I’ve got my own wares,” Maddox said firmly.

  Again came the hum of disapproval, but at least the man stopped trying to upsell him. Behind the counter, a row of holo displays flickered, rotating through scenes from the street outside. Security cams. Above them, on a larger display, a pair of youths with model good looks argued passionately in Russian. Some serial drama. Maddox only understood bits and pieces—his Russian was sketchy even when he wasn’t hungover—but the bad acting needed no translation. The camera zoomed slowly as the argument cooled and the youths drew closer to one another, their disagreement forgotten as they pressed their mouths together in a sudden fit of passion.

  “Sorry,” the vendor said sheepishly, looking over to the display. He flicked his wrist at the holo, flipping over to a news feed. “My daughter’s program,” he said, then added, a bit too defensively, “I never watch such silly things.”

  After a few final tweaks, the man hande
d Maddox the specs. “You try for fit now.”

  The specs rested on Maddox’s face comfortably. He blinked a sequence, and a config menu appeared, superimposed on the lens. He tested the eyetracking and the blink and subvocalization sensitivity and checked the logs to make sure the pair had been wiped as clean as the vendor had claimed. His eyes flitted and twitched as he rushed through the menus and reset the defaults to his liking.

  “You’re very fast with eyes,” the vendor observed. “You’re datajacker, yes?”

  “Pastry chef,” Maddox said, finishing his checks. He removed the specs, nodded. “These are good.”

  As he handed the vendor a small stack of bills, something on the news feed caught Maddox’s attention. The financial district terrorist bombing. Same story he’d caught a piece of last night on his balcony. BREAKING NEWS scrolled across the display in flashing red letters as the newswoman spoke.

  We’ve got an update on yesterday’s bomb attack at Takaki-Chen Engineering’s headquarters in the financial district. The death toll now numbers fourteen. A spokesperson for the company said the global firm’s employees were shocked and devastated by the senseless act—

  “Bah,” the vendor said, gesturing the feed away from the story to a soccer match.

  “Change it back,” Maddox said.

  “Why you want to see such terrible things?”

  “Change it back!” Maddox barked.

  The vendor looked at him sourly, then turned and gestured at the holo. The news feed returned.

  …the detonation occurred at four p.m. local time. Police say the bomb was an improvised device, detonated remotely, and they’re reviewing public camera footage for suspicious activity.

  Maddox swallowed. Four p.m. Takaki-Chen Engineering. He’d been datajacking that very company at that very hour, poking around its digital insides while someone was blowing up its offices in the real world. This was not good, he thought grimly. He turned and left quickly, the bell on the jamb tinkling as he pulled open the door and stepped out onto the noisy, crowded walkway.

  Not good at all.

  ***

  The zoom on his new specs was good. Even at 50x magnification, the scene outside Maddox’s office building was clear and crisp and didn’t wobble. He watched from a fifteenth-floor fire escape several blocks away, looking for…he wasn’t really sure what for, actually.

  The scene in front of the entrance looked like any other weekday morning. Busy, congested, people hurrying the way they only seem to do in the morning. Coffee cups in hand. Long, purposeful strides, destination bound.

  Maddox paid a handsome rent for his tiny cramped office in one of the City’s nicer domed neighborhoods. Most of his professional counterparts normally worked out of run-down tenements on abandoned streets. The City’s empty nooks and crannies, places the police had long since stopped monitoring with cams and drones. But after his stint in the corporate world, Maddox found he could no longer stand such filthy, dilapidated conditions. He’d grown accustomed to a clean, well-lighted working space, so he’d donned the fake identity of a business consultant and rented a small-but-pricey office in the heart of a busy commercial district. The neighborhood also had some of the best noodle joints in the City, which had been an added bonus.

  Maddox watched, hoping the sinking feeling he’d had after watching the news feed was nothing. Hoping his datajacking gig and the bombing hitting the same target—on the same day—was just a bad coincidence. A minute later he realized it wasn’t.

  A dozen police hovers converged on the building, blue and red lights flashing. Two ground cars and a paddy wagon skidded to a stop in front of the entrance. Ten cops clad in full rhino armor poured out of the wagon and hustled into the building, brandishing stubby automatic rifles. The cops in the ground cars jumped out and cleared the walkway in front of the building, damming the flow of pedestrian traffic.

  Lifting his view from the street to the tenth floor, Maddox found his office’s window. Nothing happened for a long moment as Maddox watched and held his breath. Then a white flash flared and the window shattered outward. In the next instant Maddox heard the telltale thud of a stun grenade.

  He stared in disbelief at the raid on his office. The hovers floated around the building like angry hornets, lights blaring. Through the broken window, he caught glimpses of rhino cops moving through his office.

  What the hell was happening?

  He blinked up the call menu in his specs and dialed the only person who might be able to tell him.

  **END OF PREVIEW**

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  Acknowledgments

  My sincerest thanks to the wonderful people who took time out of their busy schedules to read and provide critical feedback to an early draft of the story. Thank you all so much!

  - Audie Wallbrink -

  - Ki Harrison -

  - Phil Craig -

  - Francisco Ruiz Diaz -

  - James Stirling

  - Jamie McGregor -

  - Joseph Bartlett -

  - Darren Oram -

  - Jay Dalziel -

  - Michael T Emeny -

  - Trevor Bivens -

  Copyright and Dedication

  CYBERPUNK CITY BOOK ONE

  The Machine Killer

  By

  D.L. Young

  Copyright Notice

  ©2020 David L. Young. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, or distributed without the expressed written permission of the Author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters and events in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 1-7346522-0-9

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7346522-0-8

  Cover art by Ignacio Bazan-Lazcano

  This book is dedicated to David Bowie