Cold Reboot (Shadow Decade Book 1)

by Michael Coorlim

  The brutal structure towered some dozen floors above me, like a soviet-era bunker more than a place where people lived. Aside from the graffiti its exterior was uniformly plain, save for narrow bands carved in parallel lines every few floors, and regularly spaced hand-span sized tinted windows, the structure's only nod towards aesthetics.

  It was both impressive and profoundly depressing. I realized I'd been standing and staring up at it for a few minutes and shook myself out of my trance-like state. There were two sets of doors set into the walls in front of me, and through the closer ones I could see a lobby with mailboxes, more doors, and a courtyard.

  I approached them, noting the slim box with a slot running through it fixed like a lock overlapping where the doors met. Guessing that my ChicagoCard acted like a keycard — Scott hadn't given me any other keys — I pulled its envelope out of my jacket pocket and noticed, for the first time, that it had my address scrawled on the back, just above Scott's email address.

  500 Block, w. 42nd street

  Apt 245

  Scott.Morris@DHS.chi.il.gov

  Fortunate for me, because I'd been too distracted during the trip to pay attention to where the taxi was going and I couldn't even remember if anyone had mentioned my apartment number. West 42nd street... I wasn't familiar with the neighborhood, but it put me somewhere on the south side of the city.

  I swiped the card. Nothing.

  I tried reversing it and swiped again.

  Nothing. Not even an error beep. Maybe the lobby was unlocked during the day.

  I gave the door a pull.

  It opened easily, without even so much as the resistance of a latch. Nothing barred entrance into the Block's foyer.

  I slipped the card back into my jacket pocket and entered the small tiled foyer. Both of its side walls were covered with banks of small mailboxes, some out of reach above my head, identified by apartment numbers running from the 300s to the 400s. I didn't see one for my own, but that only meant it was located in one of the other entrances.

  I stepped over a spreading puddle of oily water seeping through the tiles of the floor to the doors separating the lobby from the courtyard. These doors, unlike the doors I'd entered through, were locked, but again, swiping my card didn't have an effect, and it didn't look like there was any power to the lock. Fortunately the glass panes were missing, and I could step right through the frame into a dirt and gravel inner courtyard.

  This was... this was not a nice place.

  I couldn't see anyone, but clearly felt eyes upon myself. From the courtyard I could see the interior walkways ringing each of the first three floors, separated from the courtyard by nothing more than thin iron guardrails. Anyone higher could be craning over and peering down at me, and I'd never see their silhouettes against the murky gloom of the polluted sky above. As in the Department of Human Services office I felt exposed and vulnerable, but this time the dangers I imagined were more venal than vain.

  Chipped sidewalks stretched into the courtyard from each of the six foyer entrances – two at opposite ends of the wall behind me, two in the wall opposite, and one each in the shorter walls far to my left and right. They converged in the center at a circular foundation for some long-missing structure. Maybe it had been a gazebo or a fountain once; now it was flat concrete with bent metal struts poking up. The slices of courtyard created by the sidewalks' intersections were cracked earth and gravel littered with discarded objects amid pathetic tufts of frozen weeds. I recognized a tricycle and a child's shoe in the section nearest me, and I made the decision not to investigate more closely.

  I ascended the matte black aluminum steps nearest me, gazing up to the landing and past it to the overcast sky above. It'd be dark soon. If it warmed up a little, it might snow. I wouldn't mind if the courtyard were covered by a thick white blanket.

  Apartment 245. Second floor. Pity it wasn't something higher, something more isolated from whatever business went on down in the courtyard.

  Each door I passed on my way down the walkway was indistinguishable beyond the occasional bit of graffiti or a half-hearted attempt at a holiday decoration long past the point where they should have been taken down, and each apartment had a tall narrow window alongside the door. Some of the doors had decals warning of alarm systems or unfriendly dogs, but they looked so old and faded that I had to assume that they'd been placed by people who no longer lived here.

  Midpoint up along the frame of each door on the side opposite the windows was a flat plastic plate about the size of a playing card, similar to those down in the lobby, though I hoped my door's lock was in better shape. They didn't have the card slot, though... so I guessed you swiped the card? How far from the plate? Did it matter in which direction?

  I passed units 227, 228, 229, and 230. At the corner of the courtyard, the walkway split into a four-way intersection near another set of stairs. A sign informed me that a laundry room was down below. The short hall ahead – ending in one of those narrow windows I'd seen from the street outside – contained a pair of brightly lit vending machines.

  When I reached the intersection I took a look to my left and saw a trio of boys slouched against the walls. All were dressed in the same stiff paper clothes that I was wearing, topped with bulky jackets, though where mine was a solid pale blue with Mercy Hospital's name across the back, theirs were covered in multicolored geometric patterns.

  I turned the corner and quickened my stride past the 230s. Something about the teens made me nervous, set my senses on edge. The walkway took on a surreal quality, the broad LED lights set above casting a too-white light that made everything seem too perfect, too artificial. I knew, somehow, that those boys had been waiting for me, that they'd heard me coming in, that they'd slouched there, out of sight.

  231. 232. 233.

  I couldn't help myself from glancing back over my shoulder. In that brief moment, I saw that one of the boys was gone, and a second had started ambling after me, hands in his pockets, very specifically not in a hurry. The third hadn't moved from his spot.

  I turned the glance into a full ninety-degree turn, to make my fears less obvious, though I don't think I was fooling anyone. I paused for several eternal seconds, gazing out over the courtyard, hands on the icy rails. Down below, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the missing boy emerge from the stairs and set off at a brisk pace that would take him to the stairs in front of me.

  A flanking maneuver.

  I started walking again, resisting the urge to run. He'd chase me if I ran. Christ, was this really happening?

  234, 235, 236.

  Almost there. Why was I so scared? They were just kids. Kids in a bad part of town.

  Maybe it was unfair to think that they even cared about me, but I was lost, I was anxious, I was without any kind of context for the world I'd woken up in. If they were predators, everything about me screamed "victim", and I wasn't hiding how nervous they made me very well.

  Maybe they were more than just kids. Maybe they were members of a local gang. I'd grown up in the suburbs, and even after moving to the city I'd only lived in gentrified north-side neighborhoods... gangs were the stuff of dire warning and cautionary tales from my mother. They were the reason you avoided certain subway stops, and now I was living here, among them, a sheep among wolves.

  My eyes darted towards the courtyard, but didn't see the young man below me. Maybe he'd reached the stairs already.

  A coldness descended over me. My shoulders squared. My breathing slowed. My gait leveled. All at once my panic seemed distant.

  The doctors at the hospital had called it depersonalization and recommended that I see a therapist. All I knew was that I was glad when everything stopped feeling so real. When it was like I was watching someone else, I didn't feel like I was standing on that precipice, where one wrong choice would send me tumbling into an abyss.

  I reached my door without turning to look at the boy I knew was closing in behind me. I pulled the ChicagoCard out of my pocket, turned it arou
nd without looking, held it close to the plate, and pressed my thumb firmly against the plastic.

  There was a click. I barely had it open before I slipped inside.

  CHAPTER 2: A CUBE TO CALL YOUR OWN

  As soon as the door latched behind me I leaned back against it, closing my eyes, listening for footsteps, hearing only my heart's steady beating. A shuddering breath escaped my lips and I slid to the ground, legs collapsing under me, nausea threatening to rise and spill out over my only outfit.

  I've never been good with confrontation. I've never been in a fight. I don't even cope well with rudeness. Back in the 2010s I'd go blocks out of my way to avoid dangerous-looking bus stops, I'd switch train cars if I was alone and someone threatening-looking boarded, and cancel plans rather than deal with the shame of showing up late. It was just... easier to avoid trouble.

  In a few moments the light-headedness faded, and I opened my eyes. Precious little light filtered into my apartment through the window near the door, but there was a flat-screen television set into the left wall that, while displaying a black screen, shed a dim light. Enough that I could see the switch near the door above me.

  I reached up and fumbled it on.

  The weak artificial light cast by the circular LED disk in the ceiling above was sufficient to illuminate my small but furnished apartment, somewhat reminiscent of the dorm I'd lived in during my years at the University of Illinois. It was all one room, a perfect cube that combined kitchenette, bedroom, and bathroom. A futon couch across from the television took up most of the floor space. I don't think there was enough room to open the drawers of the small dresser under the flat-screen while the futon was extended into a bed.

  Tile flooring ended the last few feet of the apartment opposite the door, a makeshift kitchenette with overhanging cabinets, surprisingly little counter-space, and a small sink. A mini-fridge was next to the counter, with a microwave sitting on top of it. The appliances looked high-tech but poorly cared-for to me, but the wording on the buttons had been worn away by years of finger-pressing, and the decals were peeling off. At the end of the kitchenette was a small alcove with an enclosed plastic shower stall next to a toilet in a space so cramped that you would be forced to sit on it with your legs clamped tight.

  The biggest surprise was the TV. Most of my fixtures and appliances were cheap, and while the television's casing was showing its age, it was pretty big. Seemed like a major luxury for such a cheap place.

  I looked down at the key-card in my hand. Passing the ChicagoCard in front of the plate while jamming my thumb onto its surface had been a reflex action, automatic. Something well practiced to the point of thoughtlessness, carried out because I was too busy fretting about dangerous-looking teens to second-guess myself. Even if I couldn't remember how modern locks worked, my body did.

  Maybe that was the key to getting by in 2025. Getting my confused brain out of the way, letting my body take over.

  First things first.

  I peeled the paper shirt off of my torso, careful not to rip it, and left it and my trousers neatly folded on the kitchen counter. I felt sticky and oily from the short walk from the cab to my apartment, and badly in need of a shower, no matter how cramped.

  I crossed to the small bathroom alcove, got into the stall, and turned on the faucet. The plastic shower head jutting out of the wall sputtered and shook, and I took a quick step back as jets of water blasted out against the tiles. At least the water pressure wasn't weak. If I was lucky, the building would even have warm water.

  As I waited for it to heat up, I stared at the woman's reflection in the streaked metal mirror above the toilet. She didn't look like me. Not like I remembered myself. I had trouble connecting what I saw to who I felt I was.

  She was a decade older, nearly forty and by the look of the lines on her face they hadn't been easy years. Her hair was shorter, dyed dark red. The roots would be showing soon, and I'd need to decide whether or not to keep dying it or go back to my natural blond.

  Her body was fit for her age, far fitter than I'd been ten years ago. Professional-athlete fit. I couldn't stop staring at the way her muscles moved under her skin when she raised her arms, or at the scars that lay atop her flesh. There weren't many, but they were foreign to me, what the doctors at the hospital had said were long-healed tears and lacerations.

  They'd also said that some of my ribs and fingers showed signs of having been broken and set again only a few years ago. The FBI Agent in charge of my formerly-cold case wanted to know what I'd been up to. Frankly, so did I. The doctors didn't have answers for either of us.

  I felt like a stranger here, in this body. How could I expect anywhere to feel like home?

  ***

  After my lukewarm shower I toweled off and walked, naked, back into the center of my apartment. I'm not a nudist or anything, but I only had the one hospital-issued outfit left, and it would have to last me until I made the trip to buy more. They weren't the sort of things you could really wash, so I'd been doing my best to make them last, keeping them as clean and dry as I could.

  I stood there, naked, contemplating the television. It was thinner than the top of the line flat-screens had been in the 2010s, almost cardboard thin, almost all screen with very little frame, affixed flush against the wall. It would have cost thousands back when I came from, but from what I'd seen in the hospital it was probably the equivalent of a black and white TV whose channel you had to change with a pair of pliers.

  "Let's see," I said to myself. "No buttons, no switches, no remote. Oh god, if the last tenant lost the control I'm going to be pissed. Maybe you're a touch-screen?"

  I tapped the center of the screen with my forefinger, and it sprang to life, sudden brightness almost blinding me as music blared at an ungodly volume.

  I yelped and began swiping my fingers across the screen, trying to turn it down or off or something. The picture shrank slightly to display white icons against a black sidebar on either side of the picture. I tapped the one that looked the most like a speaker, and the sound muted.

  "Jesus." Was the last tenant deaf?

  Some of the other icons were pretty self-explanatory... volume controls, tint, a little gear icon for settings... but nothing that looked like a simple channel selector. And there were others that were more obscure. A globe. A rectangle with... stink lines? Waves? Wi-Fi signals? I didn't know.

  An hour spent playing with it taught me that the flat-screen wasn't a television. Not really. The little house icon gave me a screen showing the status of the appliances in the house. Light level. Refrigerator temperature. Toaster oven power level. Shower pressure and temperature.

  "Shower goes on." I pressed the shower button. "Shower goes off."

  The water cut before I could hit the button again. Huh. Voice activated. Cool.

  An even cooler discovery was that the box with stink-lines connected me to my ChicagoCard, still in the pocket of my outfit over on the counter, which let me check out my government assistance credits. Everything in the apartment was networked together, and the screen allowed me to monitor and control it, and there were other screens that let me know whether I had anything in my mailbox (no), what the vending machines were stocked with (chips, candy, and soda), and the status of the laundry room — half of the machines were out of service and two were in use.

  When playing with the shower lost its entertainment value (surprisingly quickly), I discovered that the screen also allowed me to access the Internet. I didn't find anything like the television or cable channels I was used to, but instead thousands and thousands of individual video channels. Some, those with bigger marketing budgets and corporate backings, were presented more prominently than others, and many were grouped together under the umbrella of major content providers, but if I really looked I could find everything from professional indie production companies to some kid screaming catch-phrases into his phone.

  There was so much choice, so much variety, so much of it virtually incomprehensible. Ten yea
rs of entertainment and consumer taste evolution that I'd missed.

  "Is there a search?" I asked, half to myself, half to the television.

  A search window popped up.

  "Uh. Law and Order?" It was the first show that popped into my head.

  A huge list of channels, spin-off series, and episodes scrolled by.

  I tapped one at random, and it brought up an episode of SVU from 2016, a year after I'd gone missing.

  Watching it was... well. Uncomfortable. None of the plot-twists were surprising, and maybe that was because I was used to the show's formula, or maybe I'd seen it before. I couldn't really predict what was coming next, but at the same time it seemed very familiar. I didn't like how that felt. Like I was brushing against memories I hadn't had yet.

  "Directory," I said.

  A new screen came up, a long alphabetized list of people's names on the left, letters along the top. A phone directory? No, I corrected myself, a voip directory.

  "Erica Crawford," I said.

  The list scrolled down to a section that matched my name. There were three hundred of us. My name's not that uncommon, but that seemed excessive.

  "Erica Crawford Illinois."

  That narrowed it down to fifty.

  "Erica Crawford Illinois born 1987."

  No results. Guess I wasn't in the system yet. This system, anyway.

  An idea occurred to me, a terribly masochistic idea, one that made the pit of my stomach twist. "Baxter Collins. Illinois. Born 1985."