Chapter 2 - The Morning After
“Filter the gorched sunlight,” Stephen snarled, squinting. Nothing happened. “Lights? Dim? Hello?”
A memory pushed through morning fog, then another. “Oh. Right. I got arrested and killed people.” He rubbed his eyes, sitting up. “And am not home.”
“Do you do that often?” a voice asked curiously.
He turned, surprised, to see a young man looking at him curiously. The youth was standing beside the bed, thin and frail and hairless, wearing only jeans and a shirt. Stephen muttered something about flavour of the month makeup then noticed his eyes. They were wider than eyes should be, full of a pupil more like a cat than a human and the rest of the boy’s eyes were swirls of colours, currently a montage of colours swirling and changing.
Stephen stared. “Impressive. That must have cost a lot.”
The boy blinked. “What?”
“Ah, your eyes?”
“Eyes?”
“The ones on your face?” Stephen said, bemused.
A hand reached up, touching his head. “Oh! The -“ he frowned. “ones on my head?”
“You have another set of eyes? Wait. Never mind. Don’t need to know.”
“I don’t think so.” The boy bit his lip. “Someone would have told me if I did. Probably.”
“So they’re not a body mod?”
“Oh! No. They’re mine.” The boy gave him a vaguely worried smile. “That’s right, isn’t it? My eyes are mine.”
“Unless you rent them out to people, yeah. You new at English?”
“Oh, no. I just have trouble figuring out where they are, and describing them. I can’t see them.”
“If you could see your own eyes outside of a mirror, it would definitely be a body mod.” Stephen sat up, sniffing. His clothes reeked of sweat. “I think I need to have a shower.”
“It’s free,” the boy said, studying him curiously as Stephen got up. “You seem fine.”
“What?”
“You’re not even dizzy,” the boy explained. “That’s good. Better than the last guest.”
Stephen took a deep breath. “What are you talking about?”
“The poison.”
“Poison. Right. What poison?”
“Oh, Alison poisons everyone who comes here. It’s a precaution to make sure they don’t do something stupid.” The boy grinned. “She had to give me the antidote.”
“Great. I’m in the house of a bounty hunter who might be hired to bring me in and has poisoned me. Wonderful. Does the shower system work?”
“System?”
“It’s not broken, is it?”
“No, but the water is cold.”
Stephen gave him a blank look. “Water?”
“From the shower?” the boy said.
“Why would a shower have water? It’s a sonic bath.”
“It is?” The boy blinked, his eyes swirling to shades of green and pink. “I always thought it was water. It feels like water.”
“Right.” Stephen walked to the door, then stopped. “Sorry. I’m a bit out of sorts. I’m Stephen.”
“Olen,” the boy said. Stephen nodded to him and left the room, entering the bathroom.
Stephen closed the bathroom door slowly, staring at it. “It’s not even automated.” He looked around the bathroom. “Uhm.”
He poked his head back out. “Olen?”
The boy came out of the bedroom. “Yes?”
“What is it? Some kind of joke?”
“It’s the bathroom.”
“Seriously?”
The boy stared at him, his eyes shades of pink and orange, puzzled. “Unless Alison did something to it.” He poked his head in, looking around slowly. “Looks normal to me.”
“Shit on a stick.” Stephen stared. “This is ancient. It belongs in museums. In museums of museums.”
“It’s cheap, and the old one apparently got corrupted by some singing virii, so Alison got the oldest thing she could find. I like it, except when the water isn’t hot.”
“How does it work?”
“You turn the metal thing, close the door, and water comes out.”
Stephen followed Olen’s finger, then nodded slowly. “Okay. Thanks.”
The boy nodded, yawned, and wandered back out.
“Sink?” Stephen said hesitantly. The mirror on the wall hummed, and a sink came out of the wall to stop in front of Stephen, being a knob and small basin of steel.
“Good morning,” the sink said cheerfully. “Do you need a shave?” The mirror glowed a pale yellow, Stephen’s face forming in it. “Excellent symmetrical lines. Well proportioned face. I can easily give you a close shave.”
“Ah. No. I was just seeing if you were, well, modern.”
“Oh, I’m a few years old. I keep bugging for an upgrade, but I never get one. Do you like sex?” it asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you’re human. I assume that means you do. I mean, do you mind if I, you know, with your implants? A virtual experience?”
Stephen stared at the sink. “This is real, right? I’m not having some horrible nightmare?”
“Oh, sure! Be that way. You’re not the one who’s been stuck alone since they removed a shower with no one to have sex with!”
“You are a sink,” Stephen said firmly.
“So? That means I don’t have needs? Wants? Desires? Haven’t you ever yearned for something special to while away the passing hours with someone?”
“You’re a sink.”
“Speciest!” The light went out on the mirror, and the actual sink retracted into the wall with a click.
“Sink?” No reply. Stephen turned on the shower, managing to get it to warm water.
He swore softly a few moments later. “It’s called Shampoo,” Alison’s voice came from outside the door.
“I know what it is!”
“Good. Then don’t get it in your eyes again.”
Stephen came out a few minutes later with his clothing on and hair dripping wet. Alison was in the middle of the kitchen, taking the side out of the table and scowling at it. “Don’t drip over the floor.”
“Do you have something that dries hair or cleans clothing?”
“The sink does all that.”
“The sink isn’t speaking to me. It wanted sex.”
Alison didn’t even look up. “You should have said yes. Otherwise it confuses whites and colours.” She looked up into the silence. “That was a joke. Just yell at it or something. You have a name?”
“Stephen.”
“I see.” She turned back to the table. “I hope you like nuked food. Having to use an old generator that just heats things. The real one is busted.”
“Maybe it objects to making poisons?”
“Can’t see why it would after this long,” Alison said without pausing a beat. “You recovered faster than most.”
“Nanites,” Stephen said with a shrug.
“Ah. Well, unless you know how to fix this thing. Wait. You’re rich. Never mind. I’ll just turn it into performance art.”
“It’s a older generator?” Stephen walked over, frowning at it. “Huh.” He looked at the one counter. “And that is?”
“Food cooker. You take real food, and it cooks it. Five seconds, any meal is done. Borrowing it from a neighbour who collects appliances. He thinks that some day the generators will all fail and he’ll save us from the dark ages of fossil fuels, whatever those are.”
“Oh.” Stephen squatted down, frowning at the generator. He took the toolset from Alison and opened the side up more. “Huh. A friend of mine used to make these when we were younger He liked to restore antiques.”
“I see.” Alison stood, walking over to the counter and began to unwrap black bags from last night.
“Something wrong?”
“No.”
Stephen chose the better part of valour and began to try and find the connecting wire to the source feed.
“I didn’t know those had auras inside them,” Olen Stephen said from behind him.
“Aura?” Stephen said, looking over at Olen.
“He sees things as auras,” Alison said absently. “Not really useful at all, but it’s come in handy sometimes.”
“Huh. Can you see what’s wrong with this thing, then?” Stephen asked.
Olen looked at it, frowned, and then shook his head. “Sorry. It won’t tell me.”
“It won’t tell you.”
“I think it’s shy.”
“So auras talk to you as well?” Stephen said dryly, looking back into the generator and changing the toolset. The generator finally shut off and he flicked a few more tools out of the set, making a welder and starting to fix some older wires.
“Oh! No. I read minds,” the boy said. “Its mind is shy. And things are hard to read at all anyway.”
“I see,” Stephen said slowly, calmly, and raised his mental barriers without even thinking about it. It was something every one of the privileged was taught in order to safeguard secrets. He hadn’t felt any presence at them, but a good enough telepath could get pass passive barriers easily.
It explained why Alison kept him here since they weren’t related. Telepaths could be scarily useful if they didn’t fall apart.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Olen said softly.
Stephen finished remaking the one wire and looked over. “Which?”
“The barriers.” The boy glared at him, eyes filled with dark shades of blue and red. “I wasn’t even peeking!”
“Sorry, force of habit.” Stephen turned back. “And no, I’m not lowering them. I’m one of the rich, after all.”
“You’re not very trusting,” Olen said, sounding more than a little hurt.
“I said I was rich. Not being trusting is the same thing half the time. Sorry.”
Alison snorted. “At least he’s honest about it. Well?”
“Almost fixed, okay?” Stephen fiddled with it for a few moments. “There. You’ll need a new one soon, though: preferably a modern one that doesn’t have wires in it. The wires can’t be put back together more than probably twice more without trying to reconfigure the inside, and I’m not insane enough to attempt that.”
He stood, flicking the power back on.
The generator hummed, sputtered, and died.
“So, maybe it was more than wires then.” Stephen scowled at it.
“You can fix it then,” Alison said. “We’re going for a walk. If you do a good job, I know several other people who could use theirs fixed as well.”
Stephen looked about to say something, then just nodded once tight-lipped and opened the generator back up again.
Alison assembled a small gun from the black bags and handed it to Olen. “Here,” and a second she tossed beside Stephen.
Stephen looked at it, then up at her. “I thought you said you were shopping.”
“I was. You need a custom generator for decent weapons.”
“Well?” Alison said once they were half a block away. She was walking slowly so Olen could keep up without getting tired and keeping a general eye out for trouble, or for interesting ways to make it. It was early morning and the streets deserted save for sanitation rats and a few people well on their way to becoming corpses, recycled for food, or scrap metal.
` Olen looked up. “I couldn’t get much from his head. His shielding is really good.”
“No surprise there. Anything useful?”
“He was dreaming about some nightmare from childhood a lot, and was scared of it. Something living in a room just for clothing, if that makes any sense. At least, I think it was clothing. It was a soft grey like what he took from his aura. That’s clothing, most of the time.”
“A closet?”
Olen shrugged. “I think he called it that. I’m not sure. It was hard to – to see anything, to understand any of it.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Anything useful from his aura?”
“No. It was strange. Empty. Of purpose, you know? But there was something else, like a second aura, hiding from me. I’ve never felt something like that.”
Alison nodded slowly. “Let me know when you get into his mind.”
“I –”
“I know you don’t want to. I don’t care about that. He killed four police men, a cyborg, and two bounty hunters in one evening. That warrants suspicion on my part, and I’ve always wondered if the rich bred their own psychics anyway. Only real explanation for hum surviving a run-in with Anderson and winning. He’s dangerous, and I need to find out if my plan is worth keeping him here. Got it?”
There was no reply so she looked over. Olen was just standing ten steps behind her, his face blank and distant. She sighed and walked back, then waited.
He blinked a few moments later. “I went away?”
She nodded. “You just stopped, though, nothing worse. What I said was he killed people, and I need to know if hiding him at all is worth this trouble. The bounty was taken off the ’web entirely sometime last night, so likely his parents will begin looking for him or offer a discreet reward for whoever returns him. I could use the money.”
Olen nodded. “I’ll try, but he’ll likely sense it sometime.”
Alison smiled. “Have him take it up with me then.”
“’kay.” Olen hesitated. “Jack knows.”
“Ah. How?”
“System implants, I think. It’s hard to read shamans, but whatever implants Stephen has were noticed by Jack.”
“So he just knows that something is up. No matter, unless he wants to lose his other eye. You can send that to him, if he starts poking around the place.” Alison turned back towards the apartment. “You up for a probing tonight?”
Olen thought about that for a few moments. “I think so, as long as it’s not another AI. I’m still sore from the last one.”
“Good. I’ll show our guest the area, get him to be able to find his way back, and maybe take him out tonight. Simple drop and run, and if any thing spots us they’ll focus on him. It should be nicely confusing to whoever is looking for him.” She chuckled. “We should do this more often.”
The generator was intact when they returned. Stephen had made himself some eggs and steak and was eating them at the counter.
“Got it on the third try,” he said. “Had to solder some wires together, so you’ll need a new one before the week is out I imagine.”
Alison ordered up an energy drink, handing it to Olen, and got herself some deep fried cheese smothered in chilli sauce. “Bounty is off officially, which means it’s likely gone underground, to other hitters. Quiet professionals who will get the job done and not leave craters behind them. You’ll be safe enough here, but I don’t abide freeloaders.”
“You want me to work?” Stephen asked, looking shocked.
“You fixed the generator, didn’t you?”
“That’s just a hobby, not work,” Stephen began indignantly, but happened to catch a glance at Olen, who was looking at Alison wide-eyed. He looked over; she seemed calm, but from the teep’s expression she definitely wasn’t. “Fine. I used to be able to fight well. It’s a better job than repairing things.” He shuddered. “I’d never live that down.”
“The way today is going,” Alison said sweetly, “that could be the least of your worries.”
“You’ve never been to a social event back home then.”
“Speaking of those, you can come with me now. Walk. Learn the neighbourhood. See if anyone tries to kill you.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“If they try here, you’re paying for damages.”
Stephen looked around the room slowly. “I see. Why? I mean, it’s obvious no one else has.”
Alison levelled a small gun at him. “Your attempts at humour are failing, rich bitch.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Ah.” Pain flared along his arm as an energy beam sliced through skin. “You weren’t.”
“You just shot me!”
“Don’t make fun of my home again, and maybe I won’t shoot you again. Besides, it was only a scratch.”
Stephen rubbed his arm. “You could have just told me that.”
“Actions speak louder than words. Especially if the action involving shooting someone. Now stop whining.” She looked at Olen. “Keep an eye on Jack. Chat with him if you have to. We’ll be back shortly. Anyone comes trying to kill rich boy here, make them fall in love with him or something.”
Olen nodded. “All right. But I’d rather do or something. It would be easier.”
Alison snorted. “He’s not that ugly. Well, maybe his aura is?”
“His aura is ... different. Lots of green. I meant it’s easier to make them forget him, or something like that. Love is hard. Too many variables.”
“What does a green aura mean?” Stephen asked.
“That it’s green,” Olen explained.
“Oh. Right. I should have guessed that part.”
Alison shook her head and walked to the door. “Come on. You can see the real world. It’ll be an experience.”
“This isn’t a world. It’s a carnival.”
Stephen stood a few steps discreetly behind Alison and looked at the world. Cyborgs and freaks walked alongside normal humans and enhanced animals. People of all shapes and sizes moved about on their own business, barely giving anyone else a glance. Sculpted beauties walked beside three headed freaks who talked out of the small of their backs. Armoured animals prowled around their masters or searched for food among the weaker dregs of society dying in side streets or curled up under people’s feet.. Defence systems promised instant death, various fanatics screamed imprecations and hoped for subliminal conversions, a woman devolved into ooze as a genebomb went off inside her, and an addict off to the side had dropped over dead, giggling as he snorted a dose of resurrection just before dying.
And there were lights everywhere, crude and garishly bright, and advertising that rushed into the synapses and tried to burn desire into corneas. Stephen shuddered.
“I am glad you didn’t give me a bigger gun. I’d be tempted to turn it on them.”
“Most of them would probably thank you,” Alison said, and there was no humour in her eyes at all.
“But how do you live like this?” Stephen demanded, sidestepping an eight-legged dwarf who seemed to be made out of glass.
“The same way people do anywhere else: because it’s what life does. Because once you get up in the morning and eat something it never seems to be quite as bad as it really is. Because life is the only game in town, and we only get one shot at all. And, mostly, out of spite.”
A man with razorblades for skin lunged as a neighbour only to find the other had replaced their blood with acid. They died with horribly gasped laughs.
“Silicon brains and cyborg babies,
Psychic freaks and dead brains,
Demon or angel, god or monster,
saint or sinner, living or dead,
Inside or Out: which will you be today?
We are the future: Identity is illusion.
Self is replaceable: Duplicateable, erasable.
We are the futures
We have come too soon
No one understands us
No one really knows us,”
voices sang through a livefeed, words almost hauntingly familiar to Stephen.
“Lots of people believe that,”: Alison said, catching his interest. “It’s all crap, of course. We’re the past. Everything is, that dies.”
“Some of us don’t.”
A cyborg keeled over slowly in the middle of a sidewalk, scavengers looting the body even before its last vital signs flickered out, a rasped whisper when what was left of a human mouth begging for burial, for prices paid and wars fought. No one listened. No one could afford to, or it might all fall down.
“Hah! Something does. Something is lost. Or you wouldn’t be wanting to live. The body knows what the mind forgets.”
“It does?”
“Survival is important. Maybe especially if it doesn’t matter if you live or die.”
An addict screamed piteously in the throw of some terrible psychedelic nightmare. Two children have pinned a third to a wall and poured acid on her, to see if she has any useful trait against it, and are telling her to stop screaming since it if works she can glow in the dark.
“Someone has to help them,” Stephen said softly. “Someone has to save them.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Alison spat on the sidewalk, which called her a rude name. “Like this is something new to you?”
“I saw it, on vids. I always thought it was fake, made up to get viewers.”
“You want to help them? Find a way to make nanites work without having to be replaced every few years. Find out why, since nanites can make anything, things still actually cost money. Find out why no one has ever had robot servants. Find out why people still die, Stephen, and why they have to.
“Heroes.” She spat again. “A hero is just some mind-burned idealistic fool who thinks the world can be a better place and convinces other people to abandon reason, believe them, and die for some stupid dream that’ll never be real. Heroes never understand anything about the price the world pays for dreams to come to. Most of them probably would think the world deserves it. Moral egotist bigots, the lot of them.”
“That’s not a hero.”
“It is in my books,” Alison said coldly. “Heroes just want everyone else to be like them, to destroy people. They can’t abide real freedom, because it means living in the world as it really is, all wild and unpredictable, where everyone can be bought and sold and romantic dreams are crude jokes.”
“So you’ve known a few?” Stephen snapped, stung.
“Killed a few. Safer for the whole Gorch’d human species if I do.”
“I don’t see how. It’s something to believe in.”
“And die in. Always tom die in, but the heroes never do the dying. It’s always other people, otherwise the hero never lives long enough to be one. You try and be on, and I swear I’ll hire myself to kill you.”
“That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”
“Not by half.”
A trio of street mimes built a house in System as the walked through the real world, smiling at images only they could see. Two young lovers moved carefully through the crowds, bodies fused together in passion. A sell-outs body glowed with advertising ads for some branch of the government, tattoos swirling to life around him.
Something nagged at Stephen but he ignored it, looking around slowly. Three skeletal children huddled before a flickering holovid that read ‘Food. Please.’
“Things like that just shouldn’t - shouldn’t be. Damn it, generators can make anything.”
“It costs in energy, and source stuff. You should know that. Nothing lasts forever.”
“So you just ignore this?”
“What, starving people? No. Begging people? Yes. They could come up with better ways to get food.”
“Like what?”
“Killing people and robbing the corpses,” Alison said promptly, sidestepping a torso with legs.
Stephen stopped, ignoring the sidewalk’s annoyed beep telling him to keep going. “What?”
“Quick way to get money, and more useful for life skills. Knowing how to kill people and not die is generally helpful. You should know that.”
“Now I see why things here are horrible.”
“You don’t see anything,” Alison snapped. “The real world is about survival, and that costs. You don’t learn how to survive by living off of things other’s give you, you learn how to by taking what you need.”
“By stealing, then.”
“You call it that; I call it hunger.” Alison looked at him. “You can’t just think things ad are and that fixes them. Not even utopia would fix them. People are people. The Crapocracy, for all that it’s got wrong, at least was founded understanding that. No one can make people better, not without them no longer being people.”
A listener plodded past and Alison waited until he was gone, looking over at Stephen. he was just watching people go by like a stunned tourist, wincing at a few of the more extreme body mods.
“You’re all evil,” a voice screamed to their left. “Foul! Befouled! The body is a temple you have perverted!”
“Shit. Get down,” Alison said tersely, diving for the ground.
Stephen followed, noticing a good half of the crowd was doing the same, or running away.
“Knights templer. Fundamentalists who think all changes to human bodies are evil.”
“Oh. Where?”
“Guy in the white suit.”
“Where?”
Alison grabbed his head. “Don’t look, and close your eyes.”
The explosion came a few moments later, a wall of sound rushing over them and down the street. Alison stood slowly, helping Stephen up. “Brain dead idiots.”
A small crater smoked gently half a block down the road. A few people had swaggered over to relieve themselves in it and make rude comments. A few people were trying to retrieve limbs or moaning in pain.
“Fundamentalists kill fun,” Stephen said. “You know? Fun? Die?” To Alison’s blank look.
“Funny. Listeners and the like will be swarming this place soon, so we better get back,” Alison said, walking back towards the apartment.
“You said something earlier,” he said quietly, falling into step beside her.
“Lots of things.”
“I meant about nanotechology.”
“What, the whole time problem?”
. Stephen nodded. “It’s not a problem.”
“Pardon?”
“My grandfather fixed it, setting a breed rate of some kind so even if they do decay it doesn’t matter.”
Alison stared at him. “You’re joking.”
Stephen shook his head.
“Fuck.”
“I don’t know how they - why they -“
“Money. Shit. That’s low, even for the Company proper. Back home, now. We’ll talk later. I’ve got an assignment to do, you need to some kind of work.” She took a deep breath and managed a grim smile. “I’d like to say that would really change things, but I doubt it will. People have to want to change first.”
“And change always hurts,” Stephen said quietly, and neither of them said anything else during the walk.
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