Afterglow, p.5
Afterglow, page 5
“What are you doing?” he whispered in awe. “Borrowing material to build new eyes? Regrowing a single limb from the damaged remains of the other two?” He touched the skull, running a finger around the lower edge over a thin ridge that resembled the upper teeth and back to the exposed joint where the missing jawbone should have been attached. “What were you used for?”
A loud bang came from the bedroom area. “Casi?”
“Kell, think the drink’s messing with me, and I’m having another seizure.”
The dread of failure froze him to the spot, eyes locked with those of the robot and equally unable to move.
“Kell? Really need your help with this one.”
He eased around, forcing his feet to move towards the door one excruciating step after another until a mental lubricant seemed to flood from his mind and he began moving faster. “Coming love.” Keller took one last glance back at his new find, grabbed an electric reset-prod, and ran for the stairs.
CHAPTER 9
The Gaia Bar
The Gaia bar was chaotic and loud. Brash people spilled out onto the sidewalks, and a cacophony of divergent music blasted from each level of the cubic concrete structure. Revelers hung from windows and lined the balconies. Off-duty militia soldiers mixed with regular folks just looking for fun. None of it interested Jorben as he stood outside in the street, gazing at the chaos and realizing this had all been a very bad idea. He turned to leave.
“Jawbone!” The shout came from two floors up, freezing Jorben mid-step. “Up here, man. The Alliance is coming. We’re all going to die! Beers are waiting.” Benz waved a huge crystal mug out the window, slopping beer foam onto the street by Jorben’s feet. Other glazed and bloated faces hung behind him, watching with amused interest.
Jorben moved slowly through the lower level of the bar and up the stairs, ignoring the wolf-whistles, elbow jabs, and in-your-face laughs. His internal body model was of a smaller, more nimble man, somebody who could easily negotiate tight spaces. The dissonance between this mental image and his physical reality made him intensely uncomfortable in tight spaces. And to add to that discomfort was the constant threat posed by drunks with eyes bigger than their fists, who were always spoiling for a fight to test their muscle and head-thickness against the biggest guy in the room.
Under his breath, Jorben recited words from The Logic: “Like a spire on a mountain, the clouds flow around me.” A strange, anesthetic calm washed over him.
“This is Jawbone.” Benz greeted him on the top stair, thrusting a drink into his hand and hauling him over to meet his group of fellow militiamen. Benz was missing his trademark crutches. Was he back on the Amp? Perhaps he’d found something new?
“Jawbone doesn’t realize it, but he’s going to be one of us soon.” Benz crashed his beer glass across those of his friends. “We just need to corrupt him thoroughly, so he quits the Convolvers and learns to live a little.” Someone in the crowd cheered and Benz continued. “He’s made for our line of work, you’ll see. I watched him once take a punch to the face that would stop a truck. He didn’t even blink. I swear he’s got a concrete jaw. I suggest… if you have to hit him, then aim a lot lower.” A chorus of chuckles and skeptical looks spilled from the motley group. Most appeared damaged in some way, with burns, scars, mishappen skulls and missing teeth. “This is Armpit,” crowed Benz, introducing each man in turn. “He’s only got one, as you can see. And this is Gus, but we call him Guts–”
More names fluttered by Jorben, leaving no real impressions, just militia grunts with short life-expectancy. He didn’t really care who they were, what they did, and doubted he’d see any of them again. They rejoiced in their injuries and losses, joking and poking fun at each other as Jorben stared on.
Once the laughter died down, the group dissolved into smaller clusters and Jorben moved to a corner table. It reminded him of when he was young and used to go looking for trouble. He’d had a different body back then but that same unchecked anger. If only he’d had the Convolvers in his life. Maybe he’d be properly alive right now, sitting here with Benz, and not some recycled dead guy on the sideline.
He snapped back to the present, focusing on the loud but harmless bar. Suddenly, he felt alone, the only person in the room who cared that the world had gone to shit. A war was coming in the next few days if the Alliance followed through with its threat to pry control of the city away from the militias. Benz and all his fellow grunts would get thrown into the defense, chaff under the war machine’s wheels to slow its advance long enough for their wealthy leaders to flee. Jorben wasn’t sure what that meant for the Convolvers, or for him. Perhaps the nefarious sect would simply melt back into the Welkin crystal lake and go underground, awaiting a more fortuitus time to reemerge and sell their cult.
As he swallowed his beer in a single prolonged gulp, another dropped onto the table in front of him. The hand delivering the beer belonged to a woman. Real or not real? He wanted to reach out and touch her skin, to see if it was finely crafted plastic or warm flesh, maybe a hologram or some projection from his own mind. “We don’t get many Convolvers in here,” she said. Her voice had a strange drawl as if the words had to fight through a drug-haze to reach his ears.
Jorben just stared, his second glass raised halfway to his lips.
“Well… aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”
He looked around, again the room had gone quiet, all the militia were watching. Was he about to be the butt of some joke?
“Fine, sit there and jackoff alone then.” She turned to leave.
“No, wait, sit, please. I’m not used to these places, don’t know what to do anymore.”
She pulled up a chair and dropped down, much faster than he thought she would. “A drink would be nice.” She twiddled fingers through the curls of her hair and gazed off into the distance past Jorben’s ear.
He waved over a waitress and watched as she ordered a Mind-flash with a blow-skim chaser. The bill appeared next to him. The Convolvers didn’t give him much money for personal use. Her drink cost him a week’s allowance. So that was the ruse. He felt suddenly stupid, and even more alone.
“What are you into?” she asked, slurping the drink, lips taking on an extra degree of pout.
“Into?”
“Yeah… you know. What are you looking for here?”
“I want to talk to someone.” The words slipped out partly out of embarrassment, but mainly out of truth. Almost a revelation: Just talk! Being a Burn was such a temporary thing, fleeting experiences, tenuous, meaningless relationships. The connections to other people were fragile at best, often non-existent. He needed to get out of this. Needed his life back. Even if he barely remembered that life at all.
“Talk?” She slumped back, sucking hard on the drinking straw. “What should we talk about? The weather? Kind of nice for the equator don’t you think? I hear in the old days it used to be much warmer and more stable, hardly any category-ten hurricanes back then.” She crossed her bare legs, hiking her skirt up a little bit more. If she was wearing panties, then he was within an inch of finding out.
“No… not weather,” he mumbled through the beer. “You have family? You know… a real relationship?”
She almost choked on her drink. “Honey, please… do I look like a family kinda girl?” Her face took on a softer demeanor. “I expect you’ll tell me all about yours though… right?” Her eyes widened as her drink half-vanished up the straw. “Where are they?”
His lips just trembled.
“Oh!” she mouthed for him. “How? Who?”
His eyes turned cold, brows angling down as if pointing to himself.
“Oh!” she said louder. “Boy, you are just goodtime central.” She eyed the door and her fellow workers in quick succession, then seemed to reach a decision and leaned in closer to him, tongue circling her lips. “I can help you forget all that bad stuff.”
Jorben banged his glass down on the table. He reached down and grabbed his crotch to emphasize his point. “Listen lady, I haven’t got anything down here that would interest you. I just wanted to talk.”
“No shit.” She jumped to her feet sucking air through her straw before dumping the now empty glass on the table. “Wasting my fucking time here then, aren’t I?” She stormed away and a cheer rose from around the room, followed by a slow round of applause. For once, Jorben didn’t feel any anger. Loneliness trumped all other feelings, and if he was to achieve redemption as was his agreement with the Convolvers, then there would be no fighting, no trouble, just work, and the endless procession of newly saved Convolvers through the doors of the Enclave.
Benz appeared by his side with another drink. “Came on a bit strong did you buddy? Never seen her storm off like that. You must be a fucking animal. Wow!”
Jorben took the drink. Alcohol had no effect on him, but he remembered that it used to, long ago when he was still human. Watching the men fooling around made the effects easy to mimic. He rolled his eyes and appeared unsteady as if about to fall off his chair. If he pretended to be drunk, then his behavior suddenly seemed acceptable to the crowd. He almost blended in.
As the evening wore on, beers flew, tables rolled and crashed into the bar, punches were thrown, blood sprayed the walls and floors. He simply watched as men and women brawled, and then played pool, flirted, brawled again, and fell into corners and under tables, finally to be hauled away by their few remaining cognizant comrades. Gradually the bar emptied out and Jorben was lost in his own thoughts until another woman appeared at his table. Wearing jeans and a stained brown top, she was very different from the previous girl. “Name’s Leal.” She reached out a hand and Jorben shook it automatically. Definitely real.
“Jorben,” he grunted. “You trying to pick me up as well?” His words were a blur. He focused for a second and the clouds of self-induced inebriation wafted away.
“Not really, I was talking to Krysta. She said you were an interesting guy.”
“Krysta?”
“Yeah… you had a little chat with her earlier.”
“Oh… that Krysta. I think we got off on the wrong foot.”
“I can send her back over if you like, although she probably left with some of the militia guys by now.”
“No… not my sort.”
Leal had black hair tied back in a single strand and green eyes tinged with fiery orange. He guessed she was older than the other girls, maybe thirty, but with modern longevity treatments she could be much older.
“She said you were a Convolver.” Leal toyed with her hair and eyed his empty glass. “I see their Enclave, growing away out there like… like some concrete volcano. See a lot of weird people coming and going too.”
“Not really a Convolver. I just work for them. Well… I’m there paying penance.”
“I think sometimes the only penance we need is to talk about it. Get it all out in the open.”
He nodded, suddenly feeling good about this chat.
“I work the kitchens, mainly cleanup, but if we’re short of wait staff I can put on my good gear and come serve for a while, breaks up the day.”
“You like doing that?”
“Pays my way, and I get to save a little, so one day I can get the fuck out of here.” She smiled, a thin but genuine smile.
“Leave Coriolis?”
“Yep. This place is cursed. Always being blown up or invaded or overrun by crazy weird-ass sh–” She clamped her lips tightly shut.
“Seems like the rest of the world is not much safer.”
“Then I’ll get the heck off this world. The Alliance is launching stuff into space every day. They must be building cities out there somewhere.” She glanced at her watch and grabbed his empty glasses; they looked huge in her small hands. “Well, we’re closed now. Have I got to throw you out myself or can you still walk?”
A crash across the room sent them both to their feet. “Crap!” Leal exclaimed as she saw Benz collapsed in a heap over one of the struggling waitresses. His eyes held a vacant bliss that indicated a full and much needed detachment of mind from inebriated body.
“I’ll get him.” Jorben headed over to Benz and threw the man easily across his shoulders, freeing the cursing waitress.
He turned back and saw Leal looking at him. “Thanks,” he said.
She shrugged. “See you again, big guy.”
The streets were slick with puke as he jogged across town, Benz a deadweight that melted the life from his limbs, causing months of accumulated wear and tear in just minutes. No one stood in his way as he dropped Benz at the door of his barracks and cut back across the Fringe towards the gentle glow of the Welkin crystal lake.
As he entered the Enclave and went through his cooling off routines, he wondered how long he had left and what it would be like when that invisible clock ticked down to zero… again.
CHAPTER 10
Hex
For Keller, making decisions used to be easy. Most of the time, he didn’t even realize he was making them. Should he use a scalpel this close to the carotid artery? Was this life salvageable? Should he switch off the life support? The process was automatic, carried out before the question even fully formed in his head.
These days, decisions were different. Mostly difficult, sometimes impossible. Pick up the coffee first or the cream? Wash this glass now or later? Decisions manifested themselves as palpable feelings; pains, aches, knots of annoying tissue imagined into existence inside his mind.
Keller looked up at the sky, saw Casima’s face in the clouds, inhaled, focused on nothing for just a few seconds, and then he lowered Hex over the edge of the ship and down into the ocean water. There! Decision made. Not so hard really.
Once immersed, the robot activated its water-jet suction mechanism and clung to the Nevis’s hull. Keller ran some diagnostics on the handheld controller, watching as Hex simultaneously ran through its own self-test routines, checking the suction on each leg and rolling its camera eyes to confirm range of motion and water clarity. Its small pair of utility arms were fitted with wire brushes to supplement the belly-mounted scrubber it used for general cleaning and barnacle removal.
Largely autonomous, Hex divided its allocated hull section into a grid and scampered in slow motion across each square, taking before-and-after pictures that were assembled into a single hi-resolution image and downloaded to the Nevis’s central maintenance system.
Keller glanced along the deck to his three other cleaning companions with their own random assortment of very homemade-looking bots. A formidable-looking foreman operated one of the Nevis’s maintenance bots. Keller suspected he was really there to keep an eye on the other workers more than to actually achieve anything useful. He barked out requirements and no-go-zones in an uncanny number of languages, but otherwise left them alone.
If he worked for about half the days onboard the Nevis, then that would pay for the voyage. Any extra would go into his fix-Casima fund, which currently sat tragically near the zero mark. Other money would come through I.T. work, mainly fixes and upgrades for other passengers. A steady trickle of work until they reached the States, where a shortage of robot parts had inflated the prices he could get for his scrap and spares.
Casima headed off early that morning. Her second day working at the Starfish restaurant. He wasn’t surprised when she landed a coveted waitressing position at one of the Nevis’s finest eateries. She’d made an artform out of sizing up tourists long ago and made it clear to him that she wanted to work and to contribute to their journey’s costs. Any extra money she made would be stashed away in her own body-mod fund.
Her body-part replacement obsession had started out as a necessity. The burns and radiation poisoning she incurred during the Nova-Insanity left her a twisted, deformed mass of cancerous lumps and growths. Her early prosthetics were enough to allow her to traverse the city as a guide, but she told Keller they never felt like they were a part of her.
During their five-year friendship, she showed him the whole city, the safe places to eat, sleep, and acquire drugs. She set up his first meeting with Honneck, which allowed him to build a real business, collecting useful and unique robotic parts to sell. From then on, he’d journeyed back and forth across the Pacific trading his wares. And whenever he returned to Macau, she was there, more cyborg, but somehow never less human. A partner and protector. And through all that time she’d been growing sicker, more vulnerable, and she never told me!
Work shift over, Keller hauled Hex out of the water and headed back to the barge. He dumped the bot in the corner of the lab, fastened the door, and stood before his newest robot. His hand reached for the blanket but froze as Honneck’s words played over in his mind. Be careful, Keller.
With a nervous twitch of the fingers, he whipped the blanket away and stumbled backwards as if expecting the robot to come alive before his eyes.
Nothing moved. He stood staring until innate curiosity overcame his inertia and he moved in closer.
Last night, he had drawn detailed pictures of the bot for comparison and fastened rulers to various body sections to measure changes. He was now certain that the robotic arm had grown.
Keller sat and thumbed through his notes on material composition. He knew from his years of working in hospitals that the fingernails and hair of the dead could appear to grow. Bodies even moved sometimes as gases and fluids expanded or contracted in various vessels, interstices, and cavities. His robot must be doing something similar, but instead of cybernetic rigor mortis it was growing and healing in a reactive kind of way.
He eyed the bot carefully, wondering if adding extra carbon to the system could in some way expedite this self-repair.
His notes showed traces of metals, magnesium and aluminum, with hints of tungsten and titanium. Most of those substances were fused onto the surface. If this bot had really come from space, then it had probably fallen to Earth in a capsule or reentry suit. The metals from the enclosure could have burned up and infused onto the bot’s fibers, possibly adding a layer of protection to the circuits buried deep inside.
