Digital Venous

by Richard Gohl

  The male from the club was talking about the music going on inside. Like most Napean nightspots, the “music” was generated by the thoughts of the people using ETP in the room. A particular music application was visible on the iris, and by selecting certain images, colors, numbers, and patterns while dancing, each person contributed to the sound being produced. There was not necessarily a particular rhythm or melody just a wash, a mélange of sounds that evolved to the mood of the group. It was very popular. It sounded awful.

  The Napean man who’d been in the club, the one with the beak, was talking to Button Nose. They were all very animated, hyper, talking frenetically and gesticulating madly. Shane watched and listened.

  “I’ve been researching ancient music—it’s so weird,” said the tall beak man. Somehow he was playing the music through his body. Shane realized it was coming through his mouth. The others in the group stopped their conversation, intrigued.

  “Oh, I just had this done—with the nose! There’s a micro-speaker in my throat. It amplifies my voice…” He activated the speaker and his voice came out as if through a megaphone: “HELLO LAKESIDE!” It was deafening. They all fell about laughing.

  Shane allowed himself a moment to examine each of them. They were typical Napeans—good storage fodder for the space program, they did their duty in that regard. But they lived utterly oblivious to events outside their direct sphere. In a way, they had to.

  “Or,” continued the beak man, “it plays music. It uses my skull as a soundbox. Noise escapes here and here,” he said, indicating his ears. “This song is…” He looked at the playlist on his eye. “It’s Gary Glitter. Twentieth century!” The song came out crystal clear and loud.

  “What is that noise?” asked the large-eyed woman, punching the air backwards and forwards.

  “I just said. It’s old music.”

  “No, I mean that ‘boom boom boom’ thing. What is that?”

  “It’s the beat,” replied Beak-face, nodding heavily.

  “It sounds… mechanical,” she said. “Robotic,” added Vampira.

  “It used to get them dancing. They’d move arms and legs around at the same time as the beat.” Beak-face was a real ethnographer.

  “All together?” asked Button.

  “All at the same time,” confirmed Beak. “How horrible,” said Vampira.

  “Moronic,” agreed the other, fourth woman.

  “That’s what happens when one person makes the music—before the music actually starts,” said Beak-man.

  “What?”

  “Someone would sit around and just make up a whole lot of different noises, with a beat…”

  “So one person did all that?” “Yes. They would write the music.”

  “That’s insane,” said Button Nose, laughing. “Selfish!” added Vampira.

  “And… that person would then put the music on a memory disc. A big round, black, flat disc. And then everyone would buy it.”

  “How long did the music on the disc go for?” she asked. “A few minutes.”

  “And that was one sound?” Button Nose loved music.

  “Just one set of noises—and they’d listen to it over and over and over.”

  “So they all hold up their discs…” she asked.

  “Records,” corrected Beak-man.

  “Records… and that made the sound?”

  “Well, yeah,” he confirmed.

  “How awkward,” she said. “I know.”

  “It’s so much better, what we’ve got now.”

  “Oh, there’s no comparison.” The others nodded their approval. “Frickin’ Freakoids,” said Shane disparagingly under his breath.

  He pushed on, making his way to the front wall and gateway of the research facility and saw everything locked and under twelve-camera live surveillance. He decided to begin at their destination and radiate outwards.

  Using his scanner, he began on the Eastern side, moving slowly west, but in a north-to-south zigzagging pattern. Nothing. The bioscanner couldn’t see clearly through Lunatex, so Shane had to carefully enter every disused building in the area. He was sure he would find them, and if they weren’t in this area, he at least had a breathing space.

  Shane was within five hundred meters of the facility. The three major apartment blocks in this area dominated the skyscape. Done in a historical architectural style called modernist, the buildings seemed to be melting, or made from some type of fluid, or soaring overhead at impossible angles.

  The structure closest to the Bauhaus Service building was deserted. No one had wanted to live so close to an area where there was twenty-four-hour live surveillance. Napeans figured they were under surveillance enough already.

  Shane wondered—and it had happened before—if someone was harboring the escapees. He turned south from the vacant building, deciding to survey some of the modernist apartments in the area.

  The honey-glaze glow from the moon was now gone, and it had grown very dark. The group of buildings on the northeastern side of the modernist precinct looked like flowing pleated white skirts, being quite slim at the top and then billowing at the ground floor. The windows were set into the creases that ran all the way from top to bottom. He entered the ground floor of the apartment. There was music, a dance area full of people swaying and gyrating, and a swimming pool—all popular. Shane strolled around the pool and saw a man standing watching the dancers.

  “You live here?” Shane asked. “Yeah. Can I help you?”

  “Had many visitors tonight?” asked Shane.

  “Oh, the usual extras: boyfriends, girlfriends, locals… hangers-on.”

  “Anyone… unfamiliar?”

  “Ah, there was a couple. Came in about six. Looked pretty relaxed. On something. Had a swim and then left.”

  “Appearance?” asked Shane. “What are you, a guard?”

  “As it happens, yes, I am. Can you describe them?”

  “Are you serious? I wasn’t paying attention. I’m on some really good gear myself…”

  “Try.”

  The Napean sighed loudly. “Guy had long black hair, was muscle. I actually thought he was a guard—I know you guys like to take that ‘rip and tear’ muscle ‘roid. She was, actually, a stunner. And was she built…?” The Napean nodded to himself smugly, spreading his fingers apart and putting his hands up in front of his face as if he could feel the woman who was standing in front of him. “I mean, she had a body …”

  “When did they leave?”

  The man looked upwards, thinking hard. “Er… half an hour, hour ago. What are they ‘sposed to have they done?”

  Shane replied, “Doesn’t sound like them. Thanks anyway.”

  Shane went back out into the Napean night, reactivated his eye scanner, and headed north. One by one, he slipped into the ground floor of the other three apartments, but they were quiet. He swept back westwards along the edge of the Ancient Orient precinct. This wealthy area had wonderful views north along the range and west out to sea, and was extremely tight on security. Moving north and then east, Shane came to the expansive apartment, vacated for as long as he could remember. It was the last checkpoint in the area. Failing this, he would have to travel south, from gate to gate along the eastern wall.

  There was one peculiarity with the right-hand side, Napean eye at night, and especially a guard using any of the scanners. There was an eerie faint glow in the eye. It was actually very dangerous and Shane knew it. He regularly turned it off.

  Through an open window he looked into the darkness of what had been the foyer of the apartment block.

  Two small organic shapes lit up orange on his iris, high up near the roof. They were just pin points. He shut off the scanner, moved closer, and looked with his naked eye, trying to gauge the distance so he might tell what the objects were. Shane changed to night vision, giving him a clearer view of the landscape. Across on the western side, up high in the building, at the top of ten flights of steps, someone was sitting on the roof, leaning up against s
omething. The door to the roof had been removed, so he could only see their two feet.

  Shane removed his gun from the back of his belt, primed it, and then put it back.

  Keeping perfectly still, he flicked back to his scanner. The person sitting was still there. The feet moved. The person was doing something with their hands, something vigorous. He was shaking or cleaning some equipment. Then Shane saw another figure walk past the gap in the roof and stand, partially obscured, next to the sitting person.

  Female, thought Shane. How did she get in? He could sense them getting ready—but to do what, exactly?

  Then he remembered. The report had stated that the pair were last seen on top of a building in the Roman precinct. Two little birds, thought Shane.

  He moved quickly, silently, around the inside perimeter of the building, looking for a clear line of sight. Briefly he saw a human shape walk to the edge of the building, look around, and then disappear again.

  Shane had the ability for detachment at moments of heightened awareness. Both a blessing and curse, because with courage, foolishness was never far away. He knew it was a remnant shadow trait from his previous twenty-second-century self. Shane had always loved playing virtual war games and frequently came away from a session without sustaining a single hit. It was dangerous to build up this sort of confidence, and he struggled to suppress the idea that he was bulletproof. The key was to work harder and be more cautious in attacking your competitor.

  He had engaged in hundreds of arrests and had been hit by real ammunition, people, or other weapons too many times to remember. If it weren’t for generic body repair and Napean medicine, half of him would be missing.

  He began the climb up the steps. There was no noise and if the two people on the roof had been moving around, they had now stopped. As he neared the top, he heard a slow, scraping sound. Flicking on the scanner Shane’s entire field of vision flashed orange as someone swung down on a water pipe, using the heel of their boot to collect Shane’s forehead. As he toppled backwards, a laser bolt slipped out of his gun and up through the roof. Shane then fell down two flights of steps, coming to rest on the landing of the seventeenth floor, and blacked out.

  From above a voice said, “Shit, Evan, I’m hit!”

  “I’m coming. Don’t move,” he replied.

  “I can’t jump,” said the wounded woman. “I can’t stand—my leg…”

  “You don’t need your leg to fly. Get up.” Evan helped her up. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m only going to slow you down… leave me…”

  She was in a lot of pain. Her upper leg now had an indentation where the bolt had shaved past and burned through. At least there was no blood. One “advantage” of being shot with such a weapon was that the wound cauterized itself.

  Evan paused to think. “You can’t stay here. He’ll be traced and you’ll be found…”

  “I’ll take my chances, ” she said.

  “You’ve used up all your chances. Fly in, as planned. When I drop to land, you keep going. Keep going until you reach the perimeter. There are numerous exit points in the northern corner.”

  “And what about him?” she said, indicating the guard. “Don’t worry about him. He fell a long way down.”

  They grabbed their bags and their weapons and jumped from the building, flying over the high walls of the research buildings.

  Shane woke only minutes later and scrambled to the rooftop, cursing his poor form, to find the two Subs gone. He ran back down the stairs, across the street, deactivated the southern wall security system, and opened the gate. In the distance, he heard smashing glass. He ran to the end of the fifty-meter building and, looking round the corner, saw the man inside the facility. The area was well-lit. Shane scanned the scene for the woman. In the building, he thought. She’s already gone inside the building… Shane edged forward and with a clear line of vision on the man, aimed and fired a white-hot bolt of matter that was so dense it was molten. The escapee dropped, arms flailing upwards. Shane moved in quickly to check if he was dead, hovering over him like a ghost. But where was she? he wondered. The building was huge but each section had been compartmentalized; she couldn’t have gone far. Shane needed this to be cleaned up post-haste. Reinforcements were sure to arrive at any moment. It didn’t take him long to work out that she’d flown the coop.

  He climbed back out the window and ran toward the Greenhill gate. Looking west down a narrow lane, he saw three guards heading south toward the research building. They didn’t see him, which was just as well; he was out of uniform, and well out of his neighborhood. Breathless, he came to the edge of the research facility wall. Looking through a window, he could see the Greenhill gate. It was closed and there was no one around. There was no way she could have escaped here. Shane began running back, northwest along the perimeter, where the Napean roof came down to meet the external wall. It was unfamiliar territory for him, but there had to be an exit point from the facility.

  And there it was. A double door, closed but unlatched. The wind was keeping it shut. He could hear it howling away mercilessly outside. He turned on his bio-scanner, and as he pushed open the door, the wind caught it and slammed it back hard into the wall. Shane stepped through, reeling back as the cold night air bit into his face. He had no doubt that she’d attempted the dangerous run across the freezing desert plain to the Greenhill transdomes. He strained to examine every shape, every mound, bump or rock in the surrounding landscape for her body, but it was hard to keep his eyes open. She wouldn’t survive for more than minutes out here, thought Shane. Either way, she’s free.

  Shane reported the good news to Magellan immediately. The two had flown into the Service facility with winged body suits to steal as much N.E.T. as they could carry out. Apparently Wilson had an ill teenage daughter that he hoped would be saved by the treatment. Their plan was to escape from the Greenhill gate and, under cover of night, run across the desert to safety underground. Shane made sure that the news of their failure and his success was widely publicized.

  Chapter 15

  Eyeball

  MADI AND BES were given the job of going out and getting an iris or two.

  One afternoon, just after the return of the real workers, Madi and Bes walked back through the searing heat to the Crafers gate in the East.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked the returning workers. “We need medicine.”

  “Good luck with that; they won’t help you—not now. Once the gates are shut, that’s it. They’ll all be gone.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” said Bes, feigning disappointment.

  Bes was an attractive woman with big, dark eyes that flashed with energy and emotion. She was petite and fit, having worked as an exotic dancer in her teens. There was never a moment’s hesitation with anything she did. Her honesty and verve was an attractant to all men.

  Men tended to find Madi scary. Tall, solidly built with long blonde hair and blue eyes. She had a quicker wit than most and an unpredictability that together could create in others, especially men, a feeling of insecurity.

  Despite the darkening world above, the hot dry wind pulled at the women’s hair as they scurried across the covered pathway to the Eastern gateway to the Napean city. There might be a brief window where they could catch a guard still around the perimeter gate.

  Through the brown perimeter wall, in a tower above and to the left of the gate, a bright light shone, silhouetting a figure inside. The girls waved and yelled out. They couldn’t be sure he was listening.

  “Two guys have taken over our house!” There was no response. “Hello?” called Bes. Nothing. Madi continued trying.

  “We managed to escape but now we have nowhere to go. No one will help us—the guys are dangerous. They’re in our house! We can’t get rid of them. They say they’re just waiting for us to give in to them…” The silhouette disappeared, and then a second later, the main gate opened. A Napean guard peered through.

  “Can you help us?” asked Mad
i. “You’ve got much better guns than them. And they’ll listen to you…”

  “We can’t go down there…” said the guard. “But no one will help us.”

  “Can’t you get someone else to help you? It’s against the law for us to come down there without an edict.”

  “They’ve invaded our home.” The guard was losing his patience.

  “We’ll make it worth your while,” Bes said with a smile. She grabbed her breast with her right hand and her crotch with her left, and just stood there. She turned out her palms and extended her arms. Madi followed suite as if to say, “Take us.”

  The gate closed again. Silence. “Hello?” yelled Madi.

  “Please! We need your help...” The two girls looked at each other blankly, unsure as to the outcome. The small doorway at the left of the gate came open. Two fully armed guards came out. They looked identical.

  “Two of them! Fuuuuck,” whispered Madi.

  “It’s fine. Relax,” said Bes through the side of her mouth.

  As the guards approached, Bes bounded up to them, grabbed one by the hand, and said, “Thank you, thank you. You are wonderful and so good-looking.” She looked them up and down. Madi sealed the deal, promising, “We’ll pay you back in full, don’t worry!” The two girls smiled at each other cutely. The guards shot each other a sideways glance.

  “Okay, then. Let’s get rid of these jerks for you…”