SF in The City Anthology (28 page)

Elegance gulped and tried to keep her hands from shaking. “Well, we can retire to a
very
nice part of The City now, though I would recommend finding a place far off of the grid.”

“This is more than enough money to permanently change our identities,” Charlisle said. “We could start a charity to help out people in the Gorse, and no one would even guess that we had grown up there.”

“If we’re changing our identities,” Elegance’s palms sweated on the plush steering yoke, “perhaps a
union
of sorts would be best for maintaining solidarity in our partnership.”

It was Charlisle’s own turn to start sweating. “I’m sure that would bring us together in new ways…and it sounds more than awesome to me.”

“Just one thing,” Elegance let a smile creep onto her face.

“Yes?”

“You had better buy me a sizable ring.”

The two of them laughed as they flew off into the darkness for a less than certain future, pleased that they had “received the reward for such hard labors,” as Charlisle would later put it.

***

After planting the explosives that would light up the hangar like Central Authority’s annual Originator’s Day celebration, Toshiro managed to drag the body of his fallen friend to the small unguarded transport by the hangar’s very own latrine. Much to his surprise, a man emerged from it cautiously. From what he could tell, this gentleman had gone to the restroom just in time for the fighting to start, and the fellow had decided to wait in there until the fracas had ended. It was then that Toshiro recognized this individual as Mr. Chul Buyobuyo; a wealthy business man who had once fought for the rights of people affected by poor Central Authority policies and who gave money to the widows and orphans of The City. Then his name popped up on a list of men and women who had sold out to CA.

Toshiro tied up this man and sat him down in the back of the transport. While he didn’t have the hacking skills of Elegance, he did have a prisoner to tell him the codes for opening up the soccer field’s trapdoor. As the small craft exited the underground lair, Toshiro laid eyes on the crashed jet. Death never pleased him; whether it was a friend’s or an enemy’s time to leave that world. However, the sight of The Club’s jet smoldering in the stands gave him something of a relieved feeling, as did the sight of explosions beneath the field’s closing hangar doors.

He had wondered what happened to the aircraft, until he laid eyes on a single man walking towards the wreckage, a massive sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. Toshiro had heard that the CA had rifles powerful enough to bring down airships, but he refused to believe it until he saw that wraith approaching the fallen jet. While he couldn’t positively identify the sniper, he liked to think that it was Devon Globa who searched through the flaming remains. The anthropomorphic frog creatures weren’t the CA’s only weapons to turn on their handlers.

***

Toshiro had never visited the Gorse in his life, and the labyrinth didn’t disappoint his sense of apprehension. He thought it wise to drop off Mr. Buyobuyo in a safe place before continuing on to the agitators’ headquarters. A blue skinned motorbike taxi driver, who Ángel had met by chance once and learned to trust, would take care of the prisoner until a later time when he would be called on as a witness against the atrocities of Central Authority and the select few who controlled it. Mr. Vernal almost felt sorry leaving the Mr. Buyobuyo with someone who smelled so foul.

Since he already found himself in the repellent ghetto, he thought it a good idea to visit the address Elegance had sent him. To his surprise, he was greeted by an older woman when he arrived at the small apartment. He hadn’t imagined that the youthful criminals would hold this elder in such high regard.

When she had invited him into her house, he felt more of a desire to speak of his apprehensions with someone. The Dark Unit still prowled The City somewhere. It wasn’t difficult to picture Central Authority bouncing back from that evening’s defeat. If he was to be the agitator’s new leader, then some other fiend would probably become the new equivalent of Og, and the cycle would continue once again.

“Do you believe that history truly repeats itself?” Toshiro asked his host. “I have a bad feeling that the
steps
I took tonight won’t change anything for the better.”

“It may be above my head,” the older lady said, as she paused the song, “Kimi Wa Aisareru Tame Umareta,” that played on the old fashioned CD player in her kitchen. “I would tell you to not worry about it. The suffering of this world
will
come to an end. Your actions cannot change human nature. Until the very end arrives, there will always be a battle between good and evil. You
can
do what is right and rest easy that you didn’t drift along with the crowd around you.”

“I’m not sure that your advice makes me feel any better about the whole matter, but I appreciate it none the less,” Toshiro sighed and smiled.

“Have some cookies then,” she pushed a plate of them his direction. “Sometimes troubles can be forgotten for a time.”  

Bonus Episode 1: “Mixx”

              “When the school bell rings, out comes the owl’s wings.” That was the motto every student at Thrashtown High knew by heart but never spoke aloud. Nestled in the Coulee District of Prefecture 28, this sizable educational center had the outward appearance similar to a prison’s and almost as many inmates. As the double decker hoverbus that bore 110 students landed at the facility’s parking zone, one young man stepped foot out of the vehicle and stared at the looming structure glumly, the school’s all too familiar secret slogan bouncing about his mind like a racquetball on speed.

             
The Coulee District received its name due to the vast canyon that ran through the midst of it, but not through the rest of the prefecture. Whether this depression resulted from natural causes or the detonation of a powerful World War III era weapon no one could say. Its cliff face and the educational institution that rested on it served as the meeting place for two worlds: the slums of the lowerworld and the colossal residential towers of the lower middle class.

Like many sixteen year old boys from the “elevated suburbs,” Mael Tremolo had a deep interest in mecha animation, online gaming and hovercycle racing; his parents disapproved of the latter most of all, but he had purchased his Karadag 3000 “crotch rocket” with his own money, so they had little room to complain. Everyone acquainted with Mael knew that he worked his butt off as a programmer on the biological computer systems at Vigil Brothers Incorporated while still managing a B+ average at Thrashtown. Of course, he also participated in a dozen different activities ranging from Kendo Club to TCHS (The City Honor Society). Like most of the students in middle class educational institutions, he was strung out on Minervite. He had to be if he wanted to keep up with his workload.

“It’s not a fair system to our kids,” his father said often. “When I was a boy, you could get a quantum computing job as long as you had experience and a doctorate degree. Now everyone has to have a deca degree. How do they think that ten years of college will better prepare them for the job market? Half the new graduates in my department can’t tell an EDOC code from a Troubadour script. It’s just an excuse to put programmers further in debt. That’s all.”

Needless to say, the pressure was on Mael to not only get into a good university, he had his eye on Fallskate University of Technology, but also to save up money for the gratuitous price tag that came along with it. As he walked past the double rows of body scanners and subjugated himself to one of the day’s three mandatory strip searches, all he could think about was the crushing tuition that awaited him in a few years.

A security automaton searched his anus with a cold protuberance.
Will I be able to get a CA loan, or does father make too much dinero
[43]
? The machine proceeded to scan his irises, ensuring that
he
truly had arrived at school in his own flesh (an absence was a crime punishable by a year in the juvenile detention center). Can
I swing the Healthy Bodhi Bioethics scholarship? That will shave off an additional 10,000 ECUs, but only two people receive it annually
. He lifted a finger and let a blood sample be drawn by the machine.
Maybe I should start a mlog and post my thoughts on xenobiology research with affiliate links for residual income
?

With his daily examination/humiliation complete, the youth proceeded to his locker. A strip of holo adhesive had been placed near his storage unit’s electronic lock, and it was broadcasting an advertisement for Zeldenthuis Beverages. Mael tried not to laugh at the moving image which displayed a group of young men, with titanium hard abs and the masculinity of adult bulls after testosterone injections, sitting alongside supermodels on a beach and throwing back beer like there was no tomorrow. Of course, it said in bold fount just beneath this ad: “You can’t have it now, but boy will you enjoy it when you do!”

“Ha, there’s a beer ad on my…locker,” Mael’s best friend Ernst Juvonen laughed as he tore the holo adhesive off.

“Wait, are you stoned right now?” Mael asked his friend quietly, but still with a smile.

“The security drones can find bombs, guns and biochemical weapons on you, but red eyes and the smell of pot still gets past them somehow,” Ernst giggled and leaned against his locker.

“You’re a real baka
,” Mael shook his head. “If you ever get caught, your life is over for sure.”

“It’s a lot easier to hide your,” he paused to think for a second, “
condition
than you would think. I don’t have any human teachers this semester, and the freakin’ AutomaTutors don’t know their left hands from their…” he stared at both hands intently. 

“You are so high,” Mael chortled and shook his head.

***

“Now class, today we are leaving our study of Burroughs behind and applying psychoanalytic criticism to James Joyce’s work for this unit.” The AutomaTutor rolled along on one large sphere and eyed the students with its single bulbous eye, the numerous profanities written about this sensor in graffiti lending it a scrappy look for a machine that specialized in teaching the Literary Theory and Analysis course. “Have you all paid for and downloaded
Chastman’s Guide to Joycean Texts
,
Dubliners Summarized
,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
and
Ulysses
?”

“Yes,” the class moaned as a unified whole. All but Andrew Klein and Morowa Persson hated literary courses, or at least Mael felt this way himself. They had only made it twenty minutes into the period when Artur Birkeland lost his cool and leapt from his seat, banging his head against the nearest wall until he passed out.

“Please keep calm everyone,” the AutomaTutor continued to project “his” lesson plan onto the wall at the front of the room. “I have alerted the infirmary, and nurses will arrive shortly.”

The whole class continued with their introduction to Joyce’s life, as Artur’s head bled all over the floor. Everyone in that room could tell what had happened, since they had seen such erratic behavior hundreds of times before. Attending school for eleven hour days, followed by several hours of extracurricular behavior, a few hours at a part time job and then finally a long night of homework took its toll over time, especially since the youth were expected to do so six days a week, eleven months a year. Of course, the school system had a clear solution to this problem. Approximately 88% of high school students took Minervite, a government and school approved stimulant, to meet the huge workload laid before them. Up to 96% of college students used it regularly.

Every once in a while, a Minervite overdose would occur, driving the user temporarily insane. Violent behavior often resulted. Mael had a friend, Timon Bicchieri, who went crazy trying to prepare for a final in combinatorics. He took so much Minervite that he jumped from his 54th floor window one night, but not before he had scribbled nonsensical mathematical formulas on every wall in his room.

By sixth period, Mael already felt like a deteriorating old man, worn out and incapable of concentration. He reluctantly pulled a package of Minervite out of his pants pocket and sent a mental message to the “female” AutomaTutor that taught his Philosophy class, informing her that he was taking the prescribed dosage. He included a digital copy of his doctor’s note just to be safe.

The small silver package had an image of a tiny owl on the front, its wings spread wide. Tearing the packet open, Mael let the small green pill inside fall into his hand. He had enough practice swallowing this “medication” to do so without water and in the middle of class. Within only a moment of consuming the Minervite, a hot fire welled up inside his chest, and his fingers started tingling. A sudden urge to complete his digital packet on Spinoza overcame Mael, and this physical and cognitive high carried him throughout the rest of his day.

Since the number of students attending Thrashtown High had reached ten thousand that year, the “lunch” schedules had varied a great deal between students. Mael had the good fortune of eating his food in the company of Ernst and his second good friend, Esteban Çelik. By that time of the day he only had one more class, Bioengineering, to complete before going to his afternoon extracurricular activities.