Repo Virtual

by Corey J. White

“And you’re going inside?” Khoder asked.

  “Treating it the same as any other repo job,” JD said. “Only difference is I don’t have any keys or access codes from the bank. That’s why I need you.”

  Khoder nodded, tapping his arm with the tightly rolled fifty-euro notes.

  “What are we stealing?”

  “Some new killer virus. Can you do it?” JD asked.

  “Rampartment compounds are locked up tighter than my asshole. Be impossible from off-site. If I’m there with you, though”—Khoder paused, weighing options—“only difficult.”

  JD exhaled through pursed lips. “Good.”

  “Didn’t say I would do it, bro. How much?”

  “Your cut is fifteen thousand.”

  Khoder whistled. “Euro?”

  JD nodded.

  “And it’s Zero’s apartment, bro? Zero shitting Lee?”

  “That’s what they tell me. Could be lying, but I’m sure you’ll be able to confirm it now you’ve got the address. Take you long to break into the housing authority records?”

  “I basically live in there, bro.” Khoder stepped closer to the north wall and strained his neck to scrutinize the building plans. “Fifteen thousand,” he repeated, sounding wistful.

  “What do you need money for anyway?” JD asked. “You never leave this place.”

  “Gonna buy it; the Varket,” Khoder said, nodding up to the ceiling. “Renting’s for chumps.”

  JD frowned, impressed. “You’ll do it, then?”

  “One condition, bro. When you’re in his apartment, steal me something. Coffee mug, ashtray, butt plug, whatever; something he’s touched.”

  JD smirked. “Alright, deal.” His phone buzzed with an alert from the warehouse systems—he was needed on-site. He hit the accept button and looked back to Khoder. “We’re meeting tonight to finalize the plan. I’ll be out front at six thirty.”

  “Where you going, bro?”

  “Work,” JD said.

  Khoder sneered in disgust at the idea of a mundane job.

  JD unplugged the datacube from Khoder’s chair and let the system keep a copy. He pointed at the briefing docs still spread across the walls. “Keep them safe, yeah?”

  Khoder rolled his eyes and the files disappeared, replaced by a gaping anus penetrated by a middle finger. JD turned his head away, sounds of revulsion falling from his mouth unbidden. Khoder laughed and JD gave him the finger as he left the room, the kid’s bleating following him out the door and up the stairs.

  * * *

  Thousands of hours spent creating a universe for people to war over. Millions of people spending billions of collective hours fighting imaginary wars. Mining digital ore to build digital ships—every atom in the universe accounted for, artificial scarcity through detailed simulation. For eighteen years the simulation held. Children grew up inside it. They learned math through transactional trial and error. They learned spelling, comprehension, cusses and slurs through in-game chat channels.

  It was just as real as the real, sometimes more so.

  It was real until it wasn’t.

  It was real until the heat-death of that digital universe, locked forever inside a server farm in the formerly United States of America, data degrading year by year until only a corrupt reality remained.

  Corrupt reality? Which one? This one?

  CHAPTER SIX

  The afternoon dragged at the warehouse. JD’s hands worked absently on packing robot maintenance while details of the heist passed through his mind, vivid as any Augmented feed.

  He finished work at six, staggering his exit to avoid the initial tsunami of commuters hitting the street. Stepping outside, the humidity pushed back like a solid thing, and his knee ached with the damp. The smell of ozone was thick in the air, and dusk came abruptly, quickened by the cover of dark clouds. Something ached in JD’s hand—either bone or tendon, he couldn’t tell. Black oil slick beneath his fingernails, backpack hanging heavy off his shoulders.

  Three blocks from the shorefront warehouse a light rain began to fall and pedestrians scattered wildly, as though it might be acid. Raindrops streaked through the digital feeds like minute glitches.

  JD took the tightly balled windbreaker from the bottom of his bag and put it on, draping it over his battered leather rucksack. The rain pattered on the polyester shell, and the jacket swished with every swing of his arm. Maybe nobody else could hear it, but the rasp filled JD’s ears, drowning out every other sound of the city.

  He had forgotten about it by the time he hit the Ethiopian quarter, registering only the sudden quiet when he stopped at a crosswalk. The clean, old-radio patter of podcast hosts filled the silence, tinny noise escaping from the headphones that surrounded him, clinging to the skulls of the other pedestrians. All at once the motley chatter paused in sync for a broadcast ad from Songdo’s geographic “Happy Community” system. The gestalt of all those disparate bits of sound reached JD loud enough that he could decipher the jingle: public domain gospel music, touting the vegetarian-chicken place just up the block.

  The crossing went green and JD had to fight his hunger and step out onto the street; no fake chicken could compete with the bacon that still lingered on his palate after lunch.

  The rain had stopped by the time JD found Khoder waiting outside the Varket. The kid wore a plain black baseball cap and a vinyl jacket that must have cost half his cut of the repo job. He had a cigarette clamped low between two fingers—he covered his whole mouth with his hand as he struggled to pull any smoke through the rain-damp cig.

  “Cigarettes’ll kill you,” JD said by way of greeting.

  “Not if I fucking kill them first, bro. Burn them alive, one at a time,” Khoder said, grinning around the smoldering tube.

  Overhead the constellations of VOIDWAR glinted bright against the backdrop of clouds. A series of explosions bloomed slow over the city’s east—atomic suns born from supernova torpedoes, short-lived and devastating. Their flash and violence was emphasized by the city’s Augmented feed, always desperate to keep people invested in the game, keep them buying War Bond subscription packages.

  “Think one day they’ll change the real-world overlay to make it resemble VOIDWAR?” JD asked as they both watched the artificial sky.

  “Can’t make a city look like space, bro.”

  “A space station, then.”

  Khoder shrugged. He dragged on his cigarette and squinted against the smoke. “Wouldn’t matter if they did. Still the same shit underneath.”

  “Is it, though? Ninety-something percent of people in Songdo think they live in a clean, bright metropolis covered in advertising. That’s real to them.”

  Khoder pointed to the sky. “Shit, that’s Stokoe,” he mumbled, ash shaking loose from the end of his cigarette.

  JD nodded as though he concurred, but in truth he couldn’t read the virtual constellations any better than the real ones that lingered somewhere above the digital feeds, above the light pollution, above the clouds. “And?”

  “I know people in Stokoe.” After a beat Khoder added: “We could raid them.”

  The kid took a step backward, eyes still stuck to the sky, but JD grabbed a handful of his vinyl collar. “You’re not going back inside; they just got here.” JD nodded across the road to where Soo-hyun stood, waiting for a gap in the traffic with a harsh set to their mouth.

  “But bro, think of the loot,” Khoder said.

  JD shook Khoder violently enough for the kid to bring his eyes down from the sky. Soo-hyun wore a heavily constructed black neoprene hoodie, tight gray jeans, and cowboy-esque slouch leather boots they’d stolen from an auto-store and bragged about for a month. The boots were designer-ugly, but the theft gave them a certain criminal charm. A large black bag clung to their back like a baby orangutan to its mother.

  “They go by they,” JD said. “So be cool.”

  “I was born cool, bro.”

  “You were born an asshole.”

  Soo-hyun gave up waiting
and walked out into traffic—car tires shushed over the wet asphalt as they braked, and horns blared in warning.

  They mounted the curb and inspected Khoder. “What do we need him for?”

  “Soo-hyun, Khoder; Khoder, Soo-hyun. He’s on digital security.”

  “I thought that was your job,” Soo-hyun said.

  “If it was a legit repo job I’d have extra tools as part of the contract. Without those I need a hacker.”

  Soo-hyun held up a hand. “Okay, you’ve already said too much.” They retrieved a small pouch from their bag, lined with microwidth titanium sheeting. “Batteries, phones.”

  JD took the phone from his pocket, cracked open the outer casing, and dropped the battery and phone into the bag. He turned to Khoder, who held his phone tightly in one hand, looking at it as though he were reading something other than his own distraught reflection.

  “You’ll be offline for an hour,” JD said. “Two at the most.”

  Khoder’s head dropped minutely. Sadly he intoned a single “Bro.”

  He disassembled his phone with an air of ritual—sacred rites delivered on the street while all around them the city bustled. Cars hissed as they passed, people walked in tech-solitary silence, and a stray dog sniffed a garbage bin, cocked its leg, and posted to that canine message board. Khoder reached his hand into the bag and placed the phone and battery gently at its base.

  “Are you alright?” JD asked Soo-hyun. “You seem different.”

  They bit their lower lip and nodded. “I’m good, Jules, really good. Now, let’s move.” Soo-hyun didn’t wait for a response, they simply turned and marched away, slotting the Faraday pouch into their bag without missing a step.

  JD was used to Soo-hyun’s ferocious pace, but he kept glancing back to make sure Khoder was keeping up. Where JD could ram his way through the crowded sidewalks with his bulk, Khoder was a wraith. He slipped through gaps that hadn’t been there a moment before, as though the foul-mouthed boy were made of smoke.

  The building’s entrance screamed corporate wealth and design by committee, with walls in three different shades of fake gold, and pink marble flooring, all lit sickly orange from exposed industrial light bulbs. JD expected the automatic doors to stay closed at Soo-hyun’s approach, but they slid apart obediently to let them through, and stayed open as JD and Khoder followed. JD kept his head down and watched his feet carry him to the elevator, idly wondering if the building’s security was good enough to get a reflection off the gaudy tiles.

  JD found Soo-hyun’s stolen boots waiting by the elevator, one of them tapping quickly. “Is this the building?” he whispered.

  “Don’t be daft.”

  “Then what are we here for?”

  “I told you yesterday: planning dinner. I’m starving. You’ve got that money I gave you, hyung? Your shout.”

  “Why is it my shout? It was your idea.”

  The elevator opened with a faint digital chime. Soo-hyun ignored JD’s protest and bowed with exaggerated flourish, motioning him and Khoder inside. They hit a button near the top of the control panel, simply marked “R,” and the elevator jolted as it began to ascend.

  “Bro, this elevator is nicer than your apartment.”

  “You haven’t seen my apartment,” JD said.

  “I’m not wrong though, am I?”

  JD glanced up to see Khoder reflected to infinity in the mirrored walls, staring up at the intricately detailed decorations along the roof of the elevator car, painted with gold leaf or something like it.

  “Keep your head down.”

  “They look at me, they see fucking Gandhi.” Khoder tapped the brim of his baseball cap where wires ran along the edge, connected to AR microprojectors. “I’ll set you up before the job.” Khoder raised a middle finger to the small dome in the corner that more than likely hid a camera. “Ever been flipped off by Gandhi, bro?” he asked it.

  “How do you even know who Gandhi is?”

  Khoder shrugged, still watching the camera. “Searched for ‘famous skinny brown guy.’ He was a big deal.”

  JD shook his head and looked to Soo-hyun for support, but they just smiled. Their face said: “You brought him; he’s your problem.”

  The doors opened and Soo-hyun pushed ahead, carrying JD and Khoder forward on their wake. They stood in the entrance to a dimly lit restaurant called Orbital. The candles that topped each table provided the only luminescence, islands of fire in a sea of darkness. Human waitstaff, dressed all in black with faces shrouded, moved between the tables—shades of black shifting on black, black tablecloths, black carpet, sheer black curtains pulled back from tall convex windows.

  The city stretched beyond the wall of glass. Skyscrapers dominated the landscape, glowing with a million rectangular eyes, and Songdo Stadium loomed large in the panoramic view. As JD watched it shifted slightly to the left, as though its rounded roof were the shell of some massive tortoise, walking steadily across the city, demolishing everything in its path. JD felt light-headed, like he was about to pitch over sideways, then the sensation drained from his mind as he understood: the restaurant was revolving.

  Soo-hyun approached the restaurant’s host standing at a glass lectern, underlit by a tablet glowing with reservation details. She was the only visible staff with her face uncovered, and her features were odd—too symmetrical, surgically perfected—but undeniably attractive. She wore a long shapeless top, fabric transparent but decorated in Mandelbrot patterns, with a bra underneath like a wide black censor bar. JD preemptively elbowed Khoder to stop him saying anything inappropriate.

  “We need a table,” Soo-hyun said.

  The host’s face stayed blank. “I’m sorry, but we’re completely booked.”

  Over the woman’s shoulder the restaurant was mostly empty. JD opened his mouth in protest, but thought better of it. He leaned close to Soo-hyun. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “It’s gotta be here.”

  JD sighed and took the envelope of money from his back pocket. He slid out a fifty-euro note and placed it firmly on the host’s tablet. “If you look again, I think you’ll find we have a reservation.”

  “Under the name ‘Fuck You,’ ” Soo-hyun said.

  “Soo-hyun,” JD whispered, harshly. He turned back to the host: “Please, it’s my birthday.” He gave her his warmest smile.

  The woman produced a small blacklight torch and shone it over the currency, as though she could tell forgeries with her naked eye. Indignant anger swelled in JD’s chest, but he quickly quashed it—for all he knew the notes were forged. He took a small step back, ready to rush the elevator if the host reached for her phone to call the police.

  “While you’ve got that light out, maybe check me for crabs, huh?” Khoder said, to no response.

  The woman looked to JD and the edges of her mouth pulled back in the approximation of a smile. “Right this way.” She picked up three menus and walked them into the restaurant proper.

  “By the window,” Soo-hyun said to the woman’s back.

  The host showed them to a table, far from the other diners. “Your waiter will be here shortly.” She placed the menus on the table and promptly left.

  JD put his rain-damp jacket on the back of his chair and sat. He looked down out the window, and his body swayed with vertigo. He peeled his eyes away, and looked deliberately at Soo-hyun. “What is with you today?”

  “I had a really good talk with Kali last night. I’m feeling more myself than I have in a long time.”

  JD chewed the inside of his lip, but didn’t speak. A waiter appeared at his shoulder, face shrouded like all the rest, some features dimly visible in the light from the tablet resting on his palm.

  “Some drinks to start with?” he asked.

  “What’s with the veil, bro? You fucking ugly under there?”

  “Khoder,” JD said firmly.

  “What, bro? It’s cool; my grandfather was Dalit.”

  Soo-hyun handed the waiter all three menus: “Can we get thr
ee servings of the fried chicken, and three of the salt and pepper calamari. Oh, and three whiskeys, neat.”

  “I’m sorry, but the younger gentleman doesn’t appear old enough to drink.”

  “No,” Soo-hyun said, “the whiskeys are all for me.”

  “I’ll have a stout,” JD said. “And a coke for the kid.”

  “Yeah, a long fucking line of it, bro,” Khoder said with a grin. When the waiter was done keying the order he left the table without another word.

  “Was that true?” JD asked Khoder. “Your grandfather was part of the untouchable caste?”

  Khoder shrugged, attention now focused on something beyond the glass. “I don’t fucking know, bro. Just making conversation.”

  Khoder stuck his forehead against the window, and JD looked around the restaurant casually, careful not to let his gaze catch anyone’s eye. Most of the other diners were corporate elite: well dressed, with a rigid posture, as though each table represented a job interview, business meeting, or hostile takeover.

  “Alright, Soo-hyun; what are we doing here?” JD asked.

  “I told you: this is a planning dinner.” They sat up in their chair, eyes cast down to the city beyond the window, flickering steadily to combat the motion of the restaurant. “There,” they said. “What do you see?”

  JD followed their eyeline. Without the augmented layer provided by his phone, he saw the city as it was. From their vantage Songdo looked less like a precisely structured and engineered city, and more like a living thing. Mounds of garbage collected in alleyways, spreading like mold, and everywhere the city’s poor had twisted infrastructure to forge themselves a place where the corps didn’t want them: mini-favelas emerging in parks and the gaps between buildings. They must have seemed like cancer to the corporations, but JD saw only evolution, mutation; antibodies fighting back against the corporate infection, the illness of greed.

  “Buildings?” JD said. “Garbage? What am I meant to be looking at?”

  “The rampartment complex, right there. That’s the target.”

  With that new context, JD saw the structure emerge from the swamp of streets. Compared to the skyscrapers that towered over Songdo, it was a squat walled compound, four eight-story buildings joined together by enclosed skybridges.