Shadowrun: Spells & Chrome

by John Helfers

  But Moses thought they looked like real snakes—beautiful, colorful, electric, eclectic, squirming, mesmerizing, fireworks-come-to-ground-just-for-his-very-own-pleasure snakes.

  He stood on the corner of Western and Seneca, eyes locked onto a thick cherry and grape striped snake that twisted seductively in the water pooled between his size-eleven feet. He liked this city because it rained almost everyday.

  The snakes only came out for the water.

  “And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.” Moses liked that particular Exodus quote because of the water part. His father was a minister in Renton, a fire-and-brimstone Baptist … or was that Lutheran … who’d named all his children after significant folks from the Bible. Ruth was the oldest, followed by Jacob, Abraham, and Isaac. Moses was the youngest, and the only one who’d remained wholly human. Father said it was a sign that Moses was destined for great things. Moses thought it was a curse. He didn’t have his sister’s naturally-keen hearing or Isaac’s tough skin. He didn’t have Abraham’s fine-looking tusks or Jacob’s affinity for magic.

  So he had to turn to tech to compensate. And tech was damn expensive.

  He touched the tip of his boot to the pool, sending out a ripple that made the cherry-grape snake dance.

  The snake had crept down from the overhead neon sign advertising “Live Nude Dancing Elves.” Moses idly wondered if any place advertised dead ones. He tapped his foot and the snake wriggled faster.

  Moses hadn’t given the snakes much thought until a handful of months past. That’s when the microscopic vision subsystem implanted in his cybereyes malfunctioned. The series of minute optical lenses, designed to magnify objects up to a thousand times their normal size, splintered during a fight with a trog razorguy. Moses, who’d emerged battered but victorious, had been on a run with Taddeus and a few others into the Barrens, and they didn’t pull enough nuyen from the job to get his lenses replaced. Didn’t matter—he was kind of glad he hadn’t, as rather than magnify the snakes they now enhanced their color and sometimes spun pieces of them away like one of those toy kaleidoscopes kids looked into. The cracked lenses made the snakes breathe, too—Moses saw their sides moving in and out, and when he cocked his head just right, as he was doing now, he could see their tongues flicker from between their invisible fangs to taste whatever interesting things were in the water.

  In fact, Moses hadn’t realized Seattle’s sidewalks had snakes until the lenses cracked.

  “Move it!” This came from a muscle-bound troll who cursed and stepped off the curb to get around Moses. “Go stand somewhere else, you ugly vatjob!”

  Moses flicked his tail at the oaf, but the troll was quick, already on his way down the street. Moses liked his tail—it was one of his favorite modifications. A meter and a half long, covered with tiny lizard-like scales with mirrored surfaces, it had a built-in light at the end that he sometimes read by. It was one of those balance tails, weighted and grafted onto the base of his spine and keyed to a processor that monitored his center of gravity.

  He’d gotten his shaped dermal plating at the same place he’d bought the tail—from his trusted ripper doc. Paid almost full price for the plating and had it stylized with ridges at the elbows, bumps across his forehead for the heck of it, and made to look like he had great abs and a broad chest.

  Made him look better than human.

  It was decorated just above his heart—not with tribal art or hieroglyphs like most favored—but with “EXD 3:6” in reference to the Bible verse: “Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.” Moses hadn’t been able to find a verse that at the same time mentioned Ruth, but then she had a whole book devoted to her.

  He had Doc add a wet sheath over the top of the plating some months ago, save for the spot on the chest with EXD 3:6 on it. It was a variant of a dermal, but modified to feel cool and slippery, sexy, glistening … sort of like snakeskin.

  The cherry-grape snake writhed faster as Moses continued to stare.

  The sheath was great because thugs had a hard time grabbing onto him. He’d tried to get a chameleon modification with it, but Doc said combining those features was a few years away. So he settled for adding a near-meter-long head of fiber-optic hair, bright orange with a cascading effect of yellow and red at the tips to make it look like fire. Because he styled it often, it was wearing a little thin in places and sections of it needed to be replaced.

  That’s why Moses had come down here tonight … to get some nuyen to pay for more hair and some other enhancements. He had his heart set on getting some horn implants. He’d been fitted a year or so ago for bull horns, but decided they were a little too big, and too expensive. Last week he’d put some second-hand goat horns on layaway, at the same place he’d get the hair replacements—from his trusted ripper doc. Bright, white horns with a mother-of-pearl glaze—fixed implants, as the retractable ones were a little out of his price range. Doc promised that the horns wouldn’t itch.

  Some of Moses’ other implants did, and scratching them in public had gotten him banned from more than one establishment. The penile implant was the worst, with its mentally-controlled gel reservoirs and synthetic skin that he had some sort of allergic reaction to. He hoped he could remember to ask Doc for some more ointment for the rash.

  “Nuyen,” he said. “Came down here to get me some.” He repeated “nuyen” until it became a mantra that twisted in time with the cherry-grape snake. “Nuyen for the tech-fix.”

  “What’s he starin’ at, ya think?” The speaker was an elf, a live one, but she wasn’t nude or dancing. She was wearing a sand-colored plastic dress that crinkled when she crossed her arms in front of her probably-enhanced chest.

  “The puddle. Maybe he lost something in it.” Her companion was also an elf, face painted garishly and lips three times any natural size. “Didja lose something in it, mister?”

  “Lose? Lose yourself. Get lost,” Moses said. They stood too close to the water and made it harder to see the snake. He heard the sand-colored dress crinkle as the pair strolled away. The snake could swim freely now.

  An ork peddler walked by, selling hot soyjerky. Passersby commented on the spicy smell. Moses couldn’t smell it. He couldn’t smell anything.

  Moses had a direct neural interface connected wirelessly to the various built-in computers nested in the implants that allowed diagnostics checks—and said checks told him several things were either malfunctioning or were overdue for maintenance … his failed nasal receptors for example. They’d been out of whack for the past eighteen … or was that eighty … months. His enhanced taste buds didn’t register anything either. He could be eating … well, pretty much anything … and not hurk it back up because of the taste. He only ate to keep his strength up and because his super thyroid implant demanded it.

  “Should get ‘em fixed,” he said. “Maybe.”

  He’d need a lot of nuyen for the repairs. He had Kevlar bone-lacing with RFID sensor tags, a blood circuit control system, and a datajack engraved with elaborate Japanese kanji-signs that he couldn’t read … it was a used model and so he hadn’t been picky.

  “Nuyen,” he said. “Sashayed down here to get me some.”

  The encephalon he’d went under the knife for six or so months back hadn’t helped. Hardwired into Moses’ brain, it was supposed to boost his information-processing. It only seemed to scramble things now. At least the math subprocessor unit whirred along without a problem; he could calculate rent and utilities in a nanosecond, and it doubled as an alarm clock. His internal GPS worked without a proverbial hitch, too. It’s how he found his way to this corner without making a single wrong turn. Too bad he hadn’t thought to load his sister’s address into it. What was her name? Ruth. Yeah, that was it.

  “Ruth. Nuyen. Nuyen. Nu
yen.”

  The radar sensor was another matter. It was supposed to emit terahertz and ultrawideband radar in frequency pulses, analyzing Doppler and bounced signals. It never had worked right—another piece of used equipment he probably shouldn’t have had installed without first asking Doc for some sort of warranty. At least it functioned as a motion detector, except that it never registered the snakes. He’d remember to ask Doc for a warranty on the pearlized goat horns.

  Once more he thought about taking what little nuyen he had stashed away—coupled with what he was going to score tonight—and spending it on repairs to his existing systems. But he really wanted the goat horns, and he was being good by repairing at least one of enhancements—his fiberoptic do. Besides, if he spent all his nuyen on repairs, he’d never be able to afford the cyberfins he’d been thinking about. Saw an advertisement for them a couple of days back … or was that a couple of weeks … or months?

  His memory played tricks sometimes.

  “Nuyen,” he said. “Came down here to get me some.”

  His regular ripper doc could implant the webbing between his fingers and toes so he could manage the butterfly and backstroke in record time. Of course, Moses knew he’d have to take swimming lessons first.

  The two elves returned, the sand-colored plastic crinkling a little louder.

  “Geese,” Moses pronounced them. It was the right neighborhood for hookers. The women were looking for someone to dock with—for nuyen, naturally—their gander probably somewhere close by for safety. Moses wouldn’t mind docking with the one with the overlarge lips, but he needed to save his cred for the hair replacement and the fins … and to fix something. What attachment was he going to repair? Besides, his father had taught him to stay away from those kinds of women. They were sinful. Moses was SIN-less

  “And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with the fathers; and his people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither thy go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Deuteronomy thirty-one-sixteen.”

  “Talking all Biblical. Still looking in the puddle, he is,” big lips said. “Yo, Clint.” She sidled up to Moses. “You interested in a little whoring, maybe we—”

  “Get lost,” Moses said.

  “S’matter, don’t like elves?”

  “Live nude dancing elves,” Moses said, looking up at the sign again.

  Big lips shuddered and swayed down the street, arm-in-arm with plastic dress.

  “Tadd would’ve spent his nuyen on them geese.” Moses missed his old chummer.

  The last time they were together Taddeus told Moses he didn’t discriminate enough, that he bought pre-owned cyberware on the black market when he should be shopping at legitimate places. “The legal clinics won’t deal with the stuff you’re putting in your brain,” Taddeus had said. “Who knows where that stuff came from? I oughta turn your doc into the authorities.” Tadd said other things, too, but Moses hadn’t had his data filter turned on, and so could only remember a few sentences.

  Ripper docs, shadowclinics, Taddeus wouldn’t have anything to do with them, Moses knew. But then Taddeus didn’t have near the modifications as Moses. Taddeus wasn’t quite better-than-human. Tadd was still mostly human.

  Moses had been better-than-human for several years.

  “Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen.”

  He liked his ripper doc ‘cause he could pick up modifications that weren’t exactly legal, and he never had to supply an ID or SIN. And it wasn’t like he had these things done in a back-alley filth parlor with half-used, unsterilized medkits at the ready in the case of accidents. It wasn’t technically a black clinic or a body bank. His Doc had a real medical degree and operated out of the basement of a tattoo parlor, a real high-end underground clinic. Moses had done his research before going under the knife. Doc hadn’t had his license pulled for any of the usual reasons—too many malpractice cases or amputating the wrong limb. He’d simply experimented a few times on a few unwitting and later protesting patients … and got caught. Moses wasn’t unwitting; he underwent each modification with both insect-like compound cybereyes wide open, and he didn’t care when Doc suggested a little muscle doping now and then or a little trial genetic infusion.

  And Doc was a real ecologist, as green as they came. He believed in recycling—bioware implants, nanoware, cyberware, augmented limbs. Because Moses bought most of his stuff second-hand from Doc, he could afford the integration system for all his simsense and networking devices and the bundle of skillwires with multi-functionality. He wouldn’t have been able to buy tricked-out cyberears if they’d come right off the assembly line.

  Moses thought he might ask Doc if those ears could be tweaked just a bit, so he could hear the snakes. The cherry-grape one might have some juicy secrets to share. He glanced back down at the puddle. Yep, the snake was still there.

  Doc was good at providing discount prescriptions. Moses had to take three … or was that four … pills a day to stave off biosystem overstress, and another couple pills to treat his temporal lobe epilepsy. The latter malady was an acceptable side effect of having so many cyber implants. Doc said the condition was chronic and degenerative and that if it got much worse Moses would need corrective gene therapy or maybe a little brain surgery. If Doc was going to go back in Moses’ brain, maybe he could finesse something with the memory center or somesuch. Moses really wanted to remember his sister’s address.

  Taddeus had called Moses an aug-ad, an augmentation addict, and said he wouldn’t go on anymore runs with him until he got his head straightened out. Moses figured Tadd just didn’t understand about not being satisfied with being human. Moses was almost there … satisfied … but not quite. He just needed a few more adjustments. He had mood swings because wasn’t quite happy with things they way they were now. Sure, he was better-than-human, but he could stand to be a little bit better than simply better-than. Tadd was probably just pissed about the mood swings. He’d be back. Him and the others would come crawling to Moses for help on another dip into the shadows.

  Crawling, like the cherry-grape snake was crawling. Moses watched it slither to another puddle. He followed it.

  “Gotta go this direction anyway,” he said. “Up the hill.” His internal GPS told him he had two more blocks to go, all uphill. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Get thee up into this mount, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel.”

  Two more blocks up, around the corner, and then down an alley and he’d have plenty of nuyen for the hair and the swim fins and … what was he going to have fixed? His fang implants? Only one of those had snapped off.

  “Two more blocks for the nuyen.”

  The snake obliged him, slithering along as if a guide, though a few storefronts later it changed color, turning yellow now, and then green. When it split in two and turned sky blue, Moses realized it wasn’t the same snake, and it wasn’t nearly as pretty. He’d go back and find the cherry-grape one later, after he scored his nuyen.

  One more block. “Just one more, and what—”

  Just short of the next corner Moses saw the rude troll who’d called him a vatjob. He was leaning over a human woman sporting rabbit ears and a fox tail, vulching her, maybe hitting her up for drugs or nuyen or … .

  “Oh, it’s the vatjob.” The troll turned to face Moses and stuck out his jaw to look menacing. He had a submachinegun in his right hand, barrel pointed at the pavement. The other passersby on the sidewalk gave him a wide berth. “Mind your own business. Bit-brain bakebrain whackjob nutjob vatjob.” The twin blue snakes cavorted around the troll’s big sandaled feet.

  Moses cleared his throat: “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting a human … er Hebrew, one of his brethren. Exodus two-eleven.”

  “Definitely a nutjob vatjob.” A line of drool spilled over the troll’s lowe
r lip and extended to the pavement, striking the head of one of the blue snakes and sending Moses’ temper flaring. “This is between me and Foxy Foxtail, so move it.” The troll raised the gun in threat.

  “And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. Exodus two-twelve.”

  “What are you talking about you—”

  “King James Version.” Moses’ wired reflexes kicked in and he bent and pulled a combat knife from a sheath in his boot and hurled it using all the strength in his synthetic cyberarm. Should have been wearing body armor, Moses thought as the troll dropped to his knees. The troll shouldn’t have relied only on a secure long coat that he hadn’t even bothered to button. Moses threw a second knife from the other boot, finishing him.

  “And he killed it,” he quoted. “And Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar round about. And he cut the ram … err, troll … into pieces; and Moses burnt the head, and the pieces and the fat. Leviticus eight-nineteen and twenty.”

  The fox-tailed human squealed and sprinted across the street, leaving Moses to stare at the twin blue snakes undulating in the spreading troll blood.

  A lone goose in a barely-there skirt screamed and drew Moses’ attention away from the snakes.

  “Nuyen,” Moses said. “Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen. Came down here to get me some.” He kicked the submachinegun away. Moses didn’t care for guns. Sure, he could use them, and he had a smartlink for a heavy pistol he lost on a corp-run. But he preferred knives because they didn’t make as much noise. He turned the troll over and retrieved his knives. He shoved them back in the boot sheathes, more worried about speed than the blood, and rifled through the troll’s pockets as gawkers came to stand over him. “A credstick. Good. Got me some nuyen I wasn’t expecting. Not a whole lot on it, though.”

  “It’s the puddle guy.” The goose in the crinkly dress was back.

  Couldn’t she find someone to dock with? Moses wondered. She was pretty enough. Maybe she ought to lower her price.