Wake up. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. We all do it at various intervals and occasionally even the comatose get a reprieve on their sentences. I have no cognitive reason to dislike the sensation of waking. It is one of the few things we have in this world that reminds us that we exist, in some form or fashion, that reminds us we are still alive. The concept itself holds no sway with me one way or the other but the sensation of it, that moment just between when the subconscious retreats and the consciousness takes over always feels like being plucked from the air and sent hurtling back towards the earth, bound to leave little more of my legacy than an impact crater. They say it's good to be alive but sometimes I have to wonder.
Alive, in this case, means that the pungent odor of week-old summer garbage wafts up from the riverbed, through the tiny apartment to form the front lines of its assault on my nostrils, bringing me from that half-lucid state of awareness fully into myself. Shit. You'd think I'd learn to go to bed with the window closed.
I sit up and rub my face with my hands, enjoying the few more moments of blackness, but it’s hardly silent. The alarm that pulled me from sleep continues in its persistent attempt to keep me out of that void of half-filled memories. I appreciate it almost as much as I hate it as I reach over and silence the thing.
There are another few seconds, hovering between wakefulness and the blissful hell of sleep before my bladder rouses itself enough to remind me it exists as well. I can’t really fight it anymore after that, so I get up. I hit the button on the wall to let the toilet unfold itself so I can take care of at least one problem. Naturally, the thing sticks halfway and is only prodded to show itself with a good stiff kick. Make that two problems solved, but one I paid for.
My eyes are drawn to the mirror and I find myself staring into my own face, haggard and sleep-deprived with bags starting to try and form under my eyes.
A soft chime sounds over a tinny speaker while I’m in the middle of taking care of business and a detached woman’s voice follows, “You have fifteen minutes remaining on your rent. If you wish to renew, please contact the office. Valid forms of payment include credit, debit account transfers, and verified scrip with partner companies. Failure to vacate the premises at the time of expiry may result in forfeiture of assets, time card credits, or termination. Please consult the office for further details. Thank you.”
At least the robots are polite when they threaten to kill you. I finish up and close the toilet again and hold up a hand to go through the day’s events.
Russia and the Euro Union are meeting again to discuss the ‘Problem in the Americas’. They’ve neglected to include Canada and Mexico in the talks, yet again. Most of their politicians are bought and paid for by our corporations, so nothing major will come of it. It looks like there were only about 228,412 deaths yesterday, no lottery winners. That’s a shame. The downside of using the death toll as a winning number instead of balls drawn is some of the digits repeat. I missed out on the suicide draw, myself, with the final total 4,627 Oh well; it’s only money after all, right?
A scheduled spree shooting every day this week at the Woodland mall catches my attention. If they counted the idiots attending that as suicides…Oh well.
A new message that appears in my inbox pulls my attention away from an article about a possible border skirmish between Renulto-Phillips and Rising Sun Oil on the north side of town. I open the message and lay my hand out flat to let it project more fully. For a few moments I’m greeted by a spinning logo for Civic Wireless and the friendly letters ‘Please Wait’. While I wait I pull on my jeans and shirt while making sure I wasn’t leaving anything behind.
“Hey, if it isn’t my favorite auditor, Zero-One-Two-Eight,” begins a voice I’m all too familiar with, Bill, my account manager, “I’ve got a live one for you.”
I raise my hand back up and look at the message, catching a glimpse of Bill’s well-fed and rosy face in blurry, pixelated graphics before it finally clears up momentarily. Next to him is an image of a spinning head that I pay more attention to, “This is Shirow Aka…Ak…Hang on…Akimoto. He’s a tier two client on the, uh, Holly Data account. We got word from the company that he was seen in the Frontier Fiber-Net district. Naturally, the two don’t want to play nice with each other, but Frontier gave the go-ahead for you to go into the district. The last thing they want right now is a fight on the Icarus floor. They’d wind up catching a spanking from their parents,” he lets out one of those wheezing, hoarse laughs, followed by a quick bout of coughing, “Anyway, it’s the usual audit. Go in and verify. If it is him, extract and take him home and they’d prefer in one piece if possible.”
I close the message and unlock the door’s deadbolt, and drop the rental card in the maglock release while ordering up a car. Frontier’s not a great place, but they should know better than to be dabbling in Holly’s honey pot. But, their scrip is down 7:1 against Holly’s so they’re likely getting some pressure from the top too. I try not to follow politics too closely but it can’t be ignored entirely. Too much of my job depends on knowing the layout of all the different pieces. It pays to pay attention.
I head down the hall, trying my best to ignore the smell of piss, shit, fresh spray paint, and the futile efforts of some sort of air freshener to cover it up. The elevator doors open, showing all manner of graffiti and the sight of what looks like a dozing bum.
“Hey man,” the bum says. Guess he wasn’t dozing after all. Damn. “Hey, I got my house took by...by...uh, fuck,” he says, slumping further back against the wall of the elevator.
“I don’t recognize them. Are they on the Icarus list? Symbol FUK?” I can’t help myself sometimes.
“Look, I just need a hand man. Have you got any spare scrip? I could do, you know, things if that’s your--”
I hold out my hand flat, showing him a projection of my work badge, “Should I ask for your ID?”
Suitably he recoils while covering his wrist with a free hand, “Jesus fuck man! Never mind! I’m tryin’ ta sleep here! Christ…”
Finally, the elevator doors rattle open and I head through the lobby, past the office, and out the doors. The air smells rotten and sour from whatever shit the nearby refinery is pumping out but I take a deep breath all the same and pay for it with a good cough while the car pulls up. It’s not a bad one, a recent model, and when the door opens it doesn’t immediately look or smell like anyone threw up in it recently. I’ll take what good luck I can get wherever I can get it.
As I climb in I hear a gentle chime from the speakers followed by a soothing, disembodied voice, “Welcome, please enjoy your trip. Would you like to earn credit towards HandiCab scrip while you ride?”
“No,” I say as I settle into the seat.
“Are you sure? You could save approximat—“
“I’m sure,” I grunt at it as the door closes. The worst thing about cars that drive themselves isn’t the ethical dilemmas, the question of liability, or any of that. It’s the fucking advertising games. HandiCab is middle of the pack. Their scrip is accepted almost everywhere, but it takes way too much to actually be valuable.
I take a brief glance up towards the sky, catching orange sodium tinted slate staring back at me before turning my attention back to my news feed. In the older days a phone could get lost, stolen, or more likely dropped and broken. Companies learned that was a fairly convenient excuse for employees to miss work call-ins and started providing them with these handy projector wristbands. They proved less expensive than the implant models but far less prone to accidents and ‘accidents’ than regular phones, and most only removable with a particular key. You hardly even notice it after the first week or so.
Everything is routed through the bands; ID, banking information, work history, social media, news, if it’s in electronic form, it’s all there. Unscrupulous people, hackers, will take them and edit them to get access to all manner of places they shouldn’t be, steal money, and otherwise wreak havoc on people and companies. Those are easy enough to catch. The ones with real backing will get surgically altered enough to match, at least roughly, the individual whose identity was stolen.
That’s where my job comes in.
The car slowly rolls up to a checkpoint and stops. Signs are posted and plastered all over the place warning against trespass and the penalties of failing to heed their writing. I roll down my window as a guard approaches, wearing a Secure Solutions Inc. uniform as though the refurbished military vehicles didn’t have the logo plastered on them enough.
I open my hand and offer him my work badge as he looks at it and me carefully, then lifts a scanner pen towards it. Several times the tiny machine beeps at him before he finally speaks up, “C-can you make it bigger?”
I give him ‘that look’ but of course, he has to swell his chest out, “The code, we can’t scan it. Make it bigger now or we’ll have to bar you from entering.”
A little more bass to his voice there tells me he’s trying to keep his cool. I zoom in on the CQR code and show it to him again. This time a green light accompanies the beep and while the air drains out of his chest. Yes, it’s legitimate.
“Thank you, sir. Have a nice day and welcome to the Frontier district. Do you need instructions to—“
“It’s a self-driving car, just flash it,” I manage to say without too much ice, I think.
A quick sweep of the flashlight and the car starts rolling again while I raise the window back up.
It doesn’t take long before the car is pulling up in front of a C-shaped apartment block and I’m getting out. I make my way towards the security booth in the lobby and the guard there apparently got my description because I’m greeted with nothing but fake smiles from a dour female face, “Can I help you?”
“I’m heading up to six for an audit. Do me a favor and keep the drones off the floor,” I raise my tone a little on the word ‘floor’ letting it sound like a request.
“Oh no problem, Fido’s still recharging from its last round. Won’t be but another thirty minutes or so before he can go again,” she motions towards a vaguely dog-shaped robot tucked away in the back of the booth.
“Good. There may be reports from the floor but no need to rush off to alarms.”
“Oh don’t worry hon, we all got the word. There won’t be anyone who comes running unless you decide you need help,” she is still smiling as she speaks but I can’t help but catch a slightly mocking undertone. Let it go.
I head in towards the building as the buzzer sounds at the door, pushing my way in through it and heading towards the stairs. I’m not too keen on elevators most of the time and that bum put me off trying a second time for a little while.
As I ascend I start grabbing and tugging on my t-shirt and rubbing my face to make it a little looser, letting it go slack just enough that I look off in all the right ways.
This place isn’t much better than the rent-a-room. It doesn’t smell, but the walls are dingy where people have come along and rubbed against it, wrote on it, tried to wash said writings off, and generally given up. They don’t pay for it, exactly, why should they bother trying to take care of it?
I exit on the sixth floor and start hollering, “Paco! Paco you motherfucker! Where’s mah money!?”
Of course, no one bothers opening their door to look. They aren’t ‘Paco’. I continue until I reach the door I’m looking for, hammering my fist against it, “Paco! You sumbitch! You cock sucking son of a whore! Give me mah money!”
“Paco ain’t here!” comes a voice from the other side of the door. So I press, knocking and kicking at the door.
“I know he’s in there you liar! PAACOO!!”
The door opens and I find myself face to face with a rather impressive-looking Glock. It’s got a compensator built-in, some decent milling on the trigger guard, and it’s attached to this stringy guy that looks like he’s about as short of sleep as I am.
“Paco. Ain’t. Here. Fuck off,” the stringy guy manages.
I put my hands up for a moment before grabbing the pistol in both hands and moving it offline. A spin puts the stringy guy at my back as he pulls the trigger and the slide bites into the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. A quick twist and pull and the pistol is in my hands solely.
I continue the turn and put two into Stringy’s chest, then push him backward as he falls over.
Next is the guy on the couch who looks like he hasn’t lifted his ass from it anytime within the last two or three years. He’s trying to drop the videogame controller and grab for…something. I don’t give it or him the time of day more than to put two through his grape.
A familiar-sounding but faint click reaches my ears through the wall to my right a half-second before it’s shredded by full-auto gunfire. There’s a dull pain in my ribs as I hit the floor and a slight grinding sensation.
I look down and find two rounds caught by the t-shirt. No penetration through the Kevlar but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t hurt like hell. Broken ribs at worst but I get up. I’ve still got a job to do.
A quick look and I put two rounds through the wall, aiming at the center of the zippered holes. A soft thud lets me know he’s at least down.
I poke my head in briefly and, sure enough, right through the side of his neck. He’s let go of the auto and is busy trying to hold his blood in but, it’s going to be a futile effort.
My focus turns on the other occupant of the room where my pistol is already pointed. The guy looks like the one in my briefing, sure enough, “Hands!”
He puts his hands up, he’s not interested in trying to fight, and I’m glad.
“Who are you?” he manages to squeak out at me.
My hand is throbbing already and my chest is still grinding away with each breath, “Nobody. Down.”
I motion with the pistol and he sinks down to the floor. I shift the pistol to my left hand and dig in my pocket with my right, coming up with a rolled-up piece of plastic-looking material and shaking it out. The Audit, as we call it.
I kneel down on the Asian-looking guy’s back and wrap the material around his head, holding it closed with my left hand as he tries to squirm, “Hold still, this will only take a second.”
Data starts scrolling around the outside of the plastic Audit, measurements, eye color, hair color from root to tip, ear shape, skin translucency, and so on. I don’t pay it much mind, it’s just collecting. Words appear along the top edge, “Connecting, please wait.”
This part always seems to take forever.
“Connection failed, retrying,” the words say.
“Just give it another minute or two. Your cell connection here sucks, by the way. You might let management know. Comfy?”
He shakes his wrapped head as it finally reads “Connection established, transferring…”
“There we go,” I say and the Audit replies, “Negative Match.”
I pull the Audit off from around his face and the grateful look of being able to breathe is the one that remains on his face as I put a bullet through his skull.
ns 15.158.61.17da2
