Dawn of the Courtezan: Phase 01 (The Eighteenth Shadow)

by Grafton, Jon Lee

  Too late, prick.

  Tara Dean wished she was in New Hampshire. There had been a tourism ad for the state showing a beautiful summer lake projecting daily in one of the hospital’s free holozines. She had never been there, wasn’t even certain where New Hampshire was on a map exactly. But she sure as hell was feeling a kinship with the state’s motto, Live Free or Die.

  The phrase ran through her mind as she stuck the blood soaked middle finger of her right hand through the broken window in response to the deputy’s request. A botulinum dart instantly answered her gesture, shattering on the door with a sharp tink. Glass fragments from the dart’s fuselage lodged in her eye, burning wickedly. She frightfully jerked her arm back inside and the Mustang swerved wildly as she winced, struggling to keep it on the hovroad with her foot jammed to the floorboard the whole time. The neuroparalytic residue on the tiny shards of glass began to numb her face.

  “Asshole!” She screamed, her left eye now weeping and bleeding uncontrollably.

  She squinted, made out the black, pill shaped form of a second security drone flying directly overhead. She was flying so fast that the drone had a difficult time maintaining its course. It was attempting to blind her with its searchlight but was unable to get far enough ahead. Instead, the drone’s high intensity floodlight illuminated the hovroad before her for 25 meters in each direction.

  The drone’s automated voice returned, ripping through the Mustang’s com, “Fugitive Tara Dean, prepare to be stopped. We will manually disable your vehicle in eight, seven, six…”

  Tara gasped. And not because of the second drone.

  She gasped because a long string of bouncing blue lights illuminated in the black fields ahead. The lights were on her right, far off yet, but heading straight towards the hovroad.

  There was no time to process it all… the next few seconds faded, melted, congealed into a slow, indefinable parade.

  She remembered feeling the drone’s insulated Faraday projectiles impact the Mustang’s port stability fans, doonk, doonk, doonk. This caused the fans’ electric turbines to seize, and the hovcar immediately heaved left. The freezing, blood-soaked steering wheel spun out of her hands, snapping two of her fingers sideways. She wailed with agony, clutching her broken left hand to her chest. To the right, illuminated by the drone’s floodlights, came charging two, no three, four blue-eyed robofoxes!

  What ARE those things?!?

  The animals tucked their legs against their bodies, fearlessly ramming headlong into the hovcar’s right front quarter panel. The impact, combined with the failure of the lateral stability fans, caused the Mustang to flip, up and over, launching across the gravel shoulder into the surrounding fields of winter corn. The hovcar rolled over once, twice, three times in mid-air before impacting the dirt, landing on its roof in a ball of sparks and rubbled metal.

  The levfans on the hovcar’s belly whined chaotically as Jessica Lopez’ ultra sensual voice stated on com, “Oh goodness, you have experienced a vehicular accident. Do not panic. Contacting emergency services. You have experienced…”

  Moments before impact, halfway through the first mid-air rotation, emergency charges detonated along crumple junctions in the Mustang’s roof supports. The top section of polyaluminum cabin blew free and Tara Dean’s unconscious body was instantly enveloped and ejected in a sphere of airbags that launched vertically. As the hovcar rolled on beneath her, smashing to pieces, the emergency collision sphere came bouncing back to Earth, spinning harmlessly into a fallow marijuana field on the opposite side of the hovroad.

  When she awoke, Tara’s head, no, her soul… felt as if someone had been beating it with a lead boot.

  White bedding? So much pressure.

  A fabric of some sort surrounded her. She winced with pain as she tried to move her arms. They were pinned by the cloth. Glass cuts in her eye, broken fingers, agony. The cold sky above was black as an asphalt hovway and she could see stars shining in every direction. She squinted painfully through the caked tears and dried blood.

  The next thing that came into view was a large black dog. The beast panted happily as it eyed her.

  The dog said, “Birds and lies hide behind dying eyes, Tara Dean.”

  Is that dog talking to me?

  She blinked. Her skin burned. How many broken fingers? She thought she saw a person, a dark figure standing behind the animal. The person was leaning in to examine her.

  Another face appeared, more clear, unshaven. The man’s skin was pale in the light of the rising moon. He wore a straw cowboy hat and smiled congenially, cocking his head to one side. The dog next to him cocked its head in precisely the same direction.

  She tried to move again, but her face compressed with ripping pain. Every bone in her body must have been crushed.

  Broken fingers… glass in my eye.

  “Don’t try to move. You’re safe now.” said the man. “You’ll do best to just relax.” The voice was calm and even, a southern accent. His hand was on her shoulder, but she only heard the soothing words, ‘Everything’s going to be all right now…’

  There was nothing left. She allowed herself to collapse into the white fabric bedding. The bedding was hot with the heat of her body.

  “Who are you people? The cops?”

  The man’s face drew itself into a near smile, “Not exactly, ma’am.”

  She felt unconsciousness returning. Broken fingers sweeping down her eyelids in mercury waves. Her skull came to rest upon a beanbag of warm honey.

  Tara blinked one last time.

  She tried to smile and said, “Well, cool. Then can I crash with you tonight?” before falling into a field of darkness.

  Only the darkness was illuminated by far gone shafts of moonlight glowing down like security drone spots. And it was no longer winter. She could hear the sound of humming, summertime cicadas. It was the sound of love returning. The same emotion that had so often filled the days of her youth.

  Excerpt from The 2079 C.ommunity N.arcotics E.nforcement D.ivision Trainee Hologuide authored by Franklin Fhelps:

  “Remember colleague, your hands are guided by the benevolent hand of The Architect. When engaging a citizen violator, try to resist using terms such as: “arrest,” “apprehend,” “incarcerate,” “imprison” or “jail.” These terms apply to individuals perpetuating actual crimes. In reference to non-violent drug offenders, we shall specifically employ the term “assist.”

  For example; When detaining a violator based on a positive alcovap sweep, you shall say to the individual, “Citizen! You are under the influence of alcohol and are presently making decisions that negatively impact society. On behalf of the (Insert Municipality Here) Community Narcotics Enforcement Division, I am assisting you to protect the citizens of (Insert Municipality Here).”

  If a violating citizen is indigent, unemployed or otherwise socially compromised, then the Compassionate Reforms Division of the IRS will be contacted. CRD-IRS will pay first the arresting officer’s commission, then loan the citizen the necessary funds for self help education at an FDIC insured Bmod hospital. Once the addict has passed four weeks of Level 1 Basic Enlightenment (five hours L1 telecommuting permitted each business day) and the hospital board deems them sufficiently briefed in correct protocols, they will be discharged, issued a Pleasium script and supplied with a large quantity of janestamps, which may be used to purchase marijuana at any participating dispensary.

  A blood alcohol monitoring algorithm will be added in the citizen’s combud OS for a period of twelve months following discharge. Any subsequent auto-infractions by the same citizen within that year will be credited to your account at a rate of twice the original commission.

  Please note, commissions are up to 90% lower for unemployed citizens. The rehabilitation burden on the government is far greater for such individuals. For example; The arrest of a homeless alcohol addict pays only 80 digidollars. Whereas employed citizen arrests currently bring a 500 digidollar commission.

  Pursuant t
o IRS Directive 96H, citizens who are unemployed at the time of their arrest shall be sent directly from the hospital to a government sponsored labor placement facility. Six weeks of manual labor building hovways, scrubbing solar arrays or deseeding hemp bushels is compulsory for all unemployed citizens. Citizens who perform well shall be considered for a permanent Federal labor position at either Terra or lunar based work colonies. If you wish, you may inform the arrested (unemployed citizen) that the IRS garnishment of their future wages to pay back hospital debt is leveled at a fair and just 30% over cost, amortized over six, twelve or eighteen years after employment is established.

  Families of those individuals who refuse work outright, or those who cannot work due to age or infirmity, have the final option of holosigning IRS FORM W69. Via FORM W69, the violator’s family agrees to pay all associated back taxes for their relative’s Bmod therapy. Citizens without family, or with families who cannot, or will not, agree to holosign FORM W69, are referred to a qualified CVSW to begin euthanasia training…”

  Chapter 1.8 – You Just Met the Boss

  Lawrence, Kansas – May 2078 – Four Years Five Months Before Event.

  She was just another University of Kansas girl seated despondently on the dry side of a rain-slicked coffee shop window. Just another blonde betty watching the world of downtown Lawrence go past, wondering what certainties, if any, the future might hold. The botany workforce was saturated, the rent was late, and a mountain of student loan debt loomed over an otherwise flat horizon. She considered herself lucky to get a spot at the narrow metal holobar facing the hovstreet, though the crowds had thinned in the hours since mid-morning, and there were now open stools to either side of her. There’s a reason the coffee shop was so popular. The Rowdy Pony had the strongest javaballs in the state.

  Top of the fond, as the kids like to say.

  It was her favorite place to come put on a buzz and get some creative head-space. The shop was a fixture on 8th Avenue, situated around the corner from the Massachusetts Street walking mall. Its tall, glass storefront windows faced the white-washed stone and red brick exterior of the ancient First National Bank building. The bank building was long since converted to an upscale restaurant, but per local zoning regs, the owners had kept the facade traditional. With half-dome windows and high, decorative cornice molds intact, it still looked like an antique bank. All the buildings in downtown Lawrence were antiques, literally built in other centuries so as to give that section of the city the appearance of an old time holoflix set, if one took only a passing glance.

  She had often had the same reverie while getting blended in The Pony – that of being a wallflower seated in a choice balcony high above the stage of life circa 1899. If she couldn’t get a seat at the holobar and watch the show, what was the point? She would take her java and float.

  Today, however, the open stool had proved one of few fortunes. For hours the rain fell gray as her mood, yet downtown was alive with typical Saturday afternoon activity. Snapping from her daydream in the time it took to return a ping, she was reminded that it was, in fact, not 1899. She was just another blonde betty living through another late May, 21st century afternoon.

  A COD buzzed around the corner, floating a standard six meter elevation over the sidewalk. The small gray drone was the size of a rugby football. She watched it pause momentarily, wallowing in its antigrav field above a kid in a hoodie with a silver hovboard strapped to his back. A green LED at its base illuminated and the drone continued on, moving seamlessly away west towards the crowded walking mall.

  Couples strolled past the coffee shop window hand in hand, some leading Fidos of various breeds and sizes. Both humans and battborgs looked so happy! A stubby hovstreet vendor in a red-striped hat did a brisk trade, selling grilled tofu and petri-chicken gyros beneath her yellow hovcart umbrella on the nearest corner. Everywhere people chatted into their combuds. From inside, if one didn’t know better, it looked like those using a combud had gone batshit and were just chatting with the wind. A pair of Asian businesswomen directly in front of the coffee shop glass talked especially briskly in Mandarin. They were hiding under The Rowdy Pony’s green awning to escape the day’s drizzle. The girl imagined their lives; clicking happily away, negotiating easy, lucrative transactions with high profile clients in Kuala Lumpur or Berlin.

  I should have majored in com-sci.

  Employment on the mind, this one blonde betty in a million returned her focus to the projection of The Journal World holonews floating above the glass topped bar between her and the rain outside. She took another drag off her cheap, disposable vaporjoint, blowing streams of smoky water mist out her nostrils. The synthdiamond tip of the joint glowed blue each time she took a puff.

  I doubt the want-ads have refreshed any new job prospects in the last three minutes, Dorothy.

  Her gaze again found the Asian business ladies. The women had lightly bronzed, perfect skin to compliment their perfect features, and both were smartly dressed in purple pinstriped suits and prim jackets, causing the girl to look down mournfully at her sagging, blue hemp overalls and ratty Chuck T’s. Her tomboy blonde locks were tied in a messy bun. She was not the sort of betty to make time during a busy semester to tan up for summer with a carotenoid injection from the nurse’s station.

  Like I have the digis for a tan anyway. Or perfect features.

  In the more idle, vain days of her youth she had often wanted to correct the slight bump along the bridge of her nose. It would have been easy to get a new nose if she had the scrill; D$9,000, one hour of outpatient nanobot surgery at the Hovstreet 31 shopping mall. But then she would be one of those people.

  No way, no how. Best to live with the gene map the sky gave you.

  In this self-serving, depressed state, the last thing this betty desired was unwanted advances from men. Compared to the garrulous rodeo of humping and monthly, full moon visits to the Planned Parenthood kiosk at the student union that defined her roommate’s sex life… the girl was practically a nun. She giggled for the first time that day and took another long, satisfying drag off her vaporjoint.

  Which is why, like a nun, I haven’t had sex for nine months.

  She again giggled and said to her reflection in the rainy window, “Oh Ingrid, you little Indian tramp…”

  The voice from behind surprised her.

  The words were so equable yet clearly phrased that she nearly jumped off her stool as the man spoke, “In all fairness, your colleague Ingrid Dutta is a psychology major. Could you expect anything more of one seeking such a… plebeian degree? Now botanical genetics, that is a truly admirable field of consideration. Wouldn’t you say?”

  She turned and blinked.

  Another PingMe troll? Where did this dude come from? Not through the front door… I’ve been sitting right here.

  She tried to shake off her mid-afternoon javaball buzz. Never before had she laid eyes upon such a well dressed man. He wasn’t tall, but he wasn’t short. He wasn’t terribly muscular, clearly not fat, nor androgynously thin like so many of the college boys. Her scientific mind immediately came to the conclusion that from a standpoint of morphology, he was precisely average, though absolutely unique! Was he young?

  Dog, I’m blended.

  The man’s age was tough to determine, but if she had to guess, she would have placed him in his early 30’s. He wore polished, but not offensively shiny, black dress shoes and a slim fit, two button Merconi suit made of immaculately combed hemplinen. The suit was sharkskin taupe, with barely visible pewter pinstripes. She noted how perfectly it accented his piercing, amber eyes and titian brown hair cut into a classical, side-swept style reminiscent of the simpler times. He was clean shaven. His features were sharp, strong, and he smelled… like nothing. If the smell of nothing could hold an incomprehensible allure. In the man’s breast pocket was a folded, Earth-brown handkerchief and with both hands he held before him a crisp, black fedora.

  It was the presumptuous smile that made her uncomfortable.


  She regained her composure and looked at him square, doing her best put-off, “Mister, if I had a digi for every fellow who looked up Ingrid’s profile on PingMe, I’d be queen. So yes, she’s my roommate, and no, I’m not going to scan you her Ipv7. Okay? Have a good day.”

  She waited for the usual acquiescence. Or at least an up and down glance reviewing her cup size before fleeing away like a squirrel. But this man was no squirrel. His eyes never left hers. Not even a second attempt to bring up Ingrid. In fact, the man bowed his head politely and took a single step backwards out of her personal space.

  His voice was beyond eloquent, “My apologies, ma’am.”

  Spoken with a pleasant, melded accent of old British and perhaps Jamaican patois? Very different from the Kansas drawl she was used to.

  He continued, “Please, however, rest assured, I have less than zero interest in your roommate. Nor do I wish to engage you in discourse for purposes associated with romance. I was simply attempting to be humorous. A social skill not so forthcoming in my particular case, I’m afraid.”

  She liked him immediately, but not like that. He reminded her of the big brother she wanted but never had. Damn. It was his large captivating, yellow eyes. She had never met anyone like this man in her life.

  Something about him still made her nervous, “Well, no worries then. We’ll call it good. See ya, pal.”

  She turned back to the want-ads projecting their viewer-customized, neon messages above the holobar. Five seconds passed.

  Still there.

  The man’s presence… irritatingly uncomfortable and humorously pleasant.

  Five more seconds passed, ten more… she spun back ’round. This time his smile consumed her.

  “Yes…?” she managed, feeling instantly high.

  The man nodded eloquently in her direction, “I see you’re a woman of practical merits, Ms. Nichols. A character attribute I find most compelling. Allow me to reiterate, my reasons for engaging you in conversation are not those with which you are apparently accustomed. Rather, assuming you have an interest in employment in the field of agricultural science, I am here to offer you a job.” He blinked his amber eyes and tilted his head inquisitively, gesturing towards the empty stool beside her, “May I?”