Future Days Anthology, page 13
part #1 of The Days Series
“Ha! Sure, sir,” Trilling said. “But, seriously, put it out of your mind. Kito Industries know we’ve got ‘em licked.”
“Don’t start me on those bastards...” Schmellmer paced right to left. A stick figure appeared next to him: a cartoon! It seemed made from brushstrokes of black and blue paint. Human in body, but with a head like a... dragon or a seahorse or something, with two anorexic horns on its head. It followed behind Schmellmer, mocking his walk.
“This is Ms. Seren,’ Jada heard Trilling say to the ficty-screen, ‘my attaché. She’ll be doing work in the field itself, face-to-face with the natives. Scholarship kid knows the lay of the land.”
Jada looked at Trilling. He was already looking back at her, his smile placid. Why hadn’t he noticed the stick figure? They shared the same fucking screen.
“Well?” Trilling asked her. “Say hello to the big man.”
Jada realized her mouth was slack. She looked back at the screen to see Schmellmer glaring at her, his anorexic paint-twin doing the same beside him.
“Erm...” This was a test. It had to be. “Good day, Mr. Schmellmer, sir.”
“So, what’s your plan?” Schmellmer asked, frowning.
“Simple...” What was it? Shit… “Firstly, the clearing of the immediate construction zone.”
“And?” Schmellmer said. The stick figure mimed along with the word.
Trilling. This had to be Trilling’s doing. He was going to break Jada, so he could look good or... something! Screw him! She could do this.
“And, secondly, the removal and, and... destruction of all installations left by Kito Industries in the Pipelands.”
Schmellmer fell silent, staring. Jada dug fingernails into her palms.
“Fine,” he said.
Jada smiled and nodded. “Thank you, sir.” Fuck you, Trilling.
At that moment, the stick-figure waved a hand in front of Schmellmer and Schmellmer was naked.
“We need people who aren’t afraid to stick it in K. I’s face,” Schmellmer said. He didn’t seem to notice his nudity. “Let me tell you, if I could just get my mitts on their board...”
He began to punch the air in front of him, shuffling in that way boxers did. Jada watched in horror as the CEO’s paunch shuddered and his long balls danced.
“Oh, fuck!” she said.
Trilling looked at her, eyes wide above a fixed grin. “Jada, Hon; something the matter?”
Bastard! She wanted to scream. Fuck-nut bastard! But she wouldn’t let Trilling beat her. She couldn’t process this. Correction: sociopath Jada couldn’t process this. Too much paranoia.
Pink Star-Ship, she thought.
She opened her eyes, gazed at Schmellmer on the screen and laughed before she could stop herself. So much for sprinkle-brain Jada!
“What is this?” Schmellmer demanded. Maybe he grimaced, but Jada couldn’t take her gaze off his tiny mottled penis.
Something like electricity burst in her chest. The room lit up and the ficty-screen vanished.
“What the--” she heard Trilling mutter.
Jada looked up to see an arm-long silver shark swim in circles through the air. It swam too fast for her to make out any detail. Reality seemed to warp around it, leaving a trail of strange light, blue beyond blue.
Some kind of laser shot from its nose. Jada ducked.
It wasn’t meant for her. The shark was aiming at the walls. Carving on them.
‘Bastard!’ Trilling screamed. He had a holo-projector in his fists--must have taken it from a hollow nearby--and charged toward the critter. The slogan was:
Chewzee Head-Gum
It’s the mind-pop!
The shark-thing quivered in the slogan’s light and jolted away, across the boardroom and over the table, only to continue its vandalism upon the far wall.
“I’ll get security!” Jada shouted to her boss and did so over her neuralware.
“Grab a projector!” Trilling shouted back, already bounding away toward where the Shark sliced at fake alabaster.
She did so. The slogan read:
Phaliconda Nine
Because a handgun should get you noticed
The pair of them chased the shark-thing around the boardroom. It seemed to hate the projectors’ holo-lights, darting away on contact.
“Jada! Corner it!”
They trapped it in a crossfire of advertising. It shook and twisted as if on fire, unable to break free of the low ceiling’s corner.
Jada heard the doors burst open behind them.
“Security!” a woman said.
“Shoot, damn it!” Trilling shouted.
Jada flinched as two rail-pistols discharged themselves. The Shark’s flank burst open. A scream of weird light, a sucking sound, and then something hit the floor with a clang.
Silence. The shark-thing lay still on the tiles.
“Are you fine, Sirs?” the security woman said.
“Smooshy,” Trilling said, panting, “Real smooshy.”
Jada bent to look at the thing on the tiles. It appeared to be made from an alloy of steel and glass, as insane as that notion clearly was, with the most ravishing patterns all over it. Looking through the rail-shot holes, Jada could see the thing was entirely empty. Just a hollow, beautiful casing.
“What was it?” Jada said.
Trilling sniffed, then said; “Kito Industries.”
“Kito?” The casing looked like no machine she’d ever seen or heard of.
“Yeah... industrial sabotage. Fuck! I mean, who-else-but?”
“I guess.” Jada looked up at the Shark-thing’s wall carvings. “Woah.”
A dozen images of the brushstroke-man’s head, of the seahorse-dragon face with its slender horns.
Trilling gripped her shoulders. “Jada, snap-out! Throw me some ear!”
She met his eyes. They seemed frightened.
“Jada, tell no-one, you tune?” Trilling said. “If Schmellmer finds we let Kito bend us over our own board he’ll shit rocks, angry rocks. Me and you, J-Hon, tune? You tune?”
“I won’t say a thing.”
Trilling stroked a thumb against her chin. “That’s my girl.” He gave a wolf-smile and strode off toward the security detail. “Same for you two!” he said. “Now find someone to melt these walls clean.”
“Sir?” said the armored Security woman.
“What; can’t speak Anglurati? See to it, Ass-flask! Now!”
“Yes, sir!”
Jada realized she’d taken on a laser-toting... thing, while still regular sprinkle-headed, doe-eyed Jada. Scary. Scarier still, she’d thought about Trilling’s ‘pliant’ dick moments before that, when she hadn’t been herself. Ugh. High-functioning sociopathy wasn’t all sweetness and light it seemed.
✽✽✽
The Hoidrac couldn’t quell his own mirth! The Stain had not known what hit it! Oh, oh...
In time, the Hoidrac settled down. Flippancy, when all said and done, requires deepest contemplation.
A sphere sped into the Hoidrac’s awareness, froze, and then transfigured itself into an acquaintance of the Hoidrac.
::Greetings,:: announced the acquaintance.
::Greetings,:: the Hoidrac replied.
::We had planned to bond-tickle, recall? It is the time of the moon-hand-dance.::
::Oh,:: the Hoidrac mumble-shrugged, :: My mistake: I thought we had planned for the time of the dance-hand-moon. Apologies, but I have a matter of frivolous import.::
::Why are you mooning around these vents so?:: the acquaintance asked. ::And why have you taken an aspect of ironic human masculinity?::
::Because--::
::Wonderful! It would be giddiest jape to bond-tickle as male and female!:: With that, the Acquaintance became a she. ::What do you think?::
::Begone!::
::Oh you!:: the Acquaintance called, speeding away.
The Hoidrac returned his focus to the singular and vital mood-vent. He would watch. He would wait.
✽✽✽
Life was humid down amid the pipes, of course, and Jada--currently sprinkle-headed--was thankful she could afford perspiration buffers. Unfortunately, the Pipeland’s countless inhabitants could not afford such implants. They stink up the early evening, each individual’s whiff pouring into a general fug that clung to the streets and alleys between, beneath and inside the pipes.
But Sister Mergotsi stood out even here. Jada supposed her order had rules about not washing. It took all Jada’s patience not to pink star-ship into superpath mode and tell the old woman to pull whatever dead animal it was out of her vestments.
“We were here first!” Sister Mergotsi told her. “You corporate vassals never lifted a hand to help here until you spied profit. Did you build this, girl, hmm? Did you?” She gestured to the plasterboard and wire mesh chapel behind her. Districts of tangled piping rose behind it in the far distance, all the way to the horizon.
The chapel stood beside, or more correctly leaned upon, a water pipe some twenty feet in diameter. In front of the chapel stood eight poles of various heights, rising from holes in the steel grill floor. Atop these poles squatted replicas of ancient televisions, their screens set to static fuzz. Sister Mergotsi was a skyharborite, a cult who believed one could reach god by gazing at TV static, given its ultimate source was the big bang.
“Sister,” Jada said, “with all due respect, we were here first. When the department of social works privatized three thousand years ago, several companies that later submerged into Raichundelia Polyconglomerate acquired shares. I’m certain you’re a valued member of this community but the unpleasant fact remains it is a community of squatters. That said, Raichundelia wishes to help this neighborhood thrive. When the new construction is completed— “
“And who decides who gets to live in this ‘Construction’?” Sister Mergotsi said.
“That’s a matter for your community,” Jada said. “We would— “
“For the pipe gangs, you mean!”
Jada took a deep breath and got rewarded with the smell of roast vent-lizards from a passing kiosk-mech. Still; a perfume next to Sister Mergotsi. This whole situation made Jada uncomfortable.
“I think the best course is to dismantle your chapel--my security here will help with any lifting--and for you to address any complaints to our meme site.”
“Ha! Like I can afford neuralware!” Mergotsi threw her arms in the air and Jada covered her nose. “There is a tap inside this chapel. It provides free, clean water to those in need, though no doubt you would call it stealing. Have you ever seen deformed babies, young lady, babies lacking brains due to bad water?”
“There will be clean water in the constr-”
“Have you seen a mother when her new-born fails to have a face?”
Jada needed to scream, so she thought of a pink star-ship instead and no longer had to.
“Tear down this mess,” she told her security. “Escort this woman off our premises.”
Jada strode to her skim-limo.
“Your accent betrays you!” Sister Mergotsi shouted. “You were like us, once! You were li-”
The limo door shut, and Jada told the driver to head to the construction site. On her way she passed the detritus: immigrants from Calran and Psiax; groups of nem-heads waiting for a fix; teenagers in thongs, their skins tattooed with adverts for start-up companies. They smoked on pooka-joints and combed each other’s hair.
Nothing is wasted, Jada thought, everything in the cycle, everything for sale. Through the limo’s shaded glass, she could see Raichundelia’s local HQ, its tungsteel bulk soaring above the pipes. Millennia past, it had been built as the foundation of a planned space-elevator, but anti-gravity got invented and the project became obsolete. Waste-not-want-not: might have been a motto of Raichundelia if someone else hadn’t bought the rights already.
Something had been bugging Jada about Trilling’s behavior earlier that morning, and now she wasn’t sprinkle-headed she’d grasped it. How had Trilling known to use a holo-projector to fight that Shark-thing? Why such confidence light would hurt it?
She accessed her neuralware and brought up a ficty-screen and keyboard. Jada wasn’t sure what to type, so, instead, she drew the strange face of the brushstroke dragon-man and ran it through the company wikiverse.
The wikiverse threw up HOIDRAC.
Jada hadn’t the faintest. The attached article didn’t mention Kito Industries. Hoidrac were... either a myth or some alien species. Well, that might explain the shark’s freakish casing.
The Hoidrac home-world was of this universe, the article explained, yet was contaminated by a... localized reality-tear into another, smaller universe called the Geode. Having evolved on a world drenched in the Geode’s radiation, the Hoidrac could happily prosper in either and could flit about the two, given the right technology, the right circumstance. Hell, but this shit was hazy.
Jada lost the thread for a while, but her interest got hooked again when she read of Professor Lundhast’s hypothesis that the Geode was a sort of drain to our own reality, collecting (and being entirely composed of) the thoughts and 'aesthetic sensibilities' of every species in the universe. A footnote explained Professor Lundhast had eventually been sacked from Harillia University on account of smoking crystal meth through a tapir.
Much of the wiki article, Jada noted, had been redacted by someone in the company. Recently, too.
The skim-limo turned a corner into a great open space. Hundreds of derelict pipes had been sliced and removed to make way for the new construction. Only bare concrete remained; a grey, undulating land of house-sized pipe fittings.
Jada smiled. If there had to be favela then they’d be Raichundelia-owned. Ahead lay a landscape of chrome scaffolding--eighteen stories of nothing but empty lattice and occasional stairwells. The desperate ingenuity of the local population would do the rest, building the walls and floors of each story from whatever junk they could find.
High rise favela: the future of underclass living. Here, the dog-eat-dog ecology would be accelerated and refined. A strong, ruthless and--above all--useful cream would rise. Just as Jada had. And just as Sister Mergotsi had sunk. The thought of Mergotsi made Jada grimace. The smelly hag had made soft, off-switch Jada almost cry.
The limo entered a complex of empty, concrete fixtures. It had kept countless pipes of every size in place but now those tubes had been removed, leaving a maze of crescents and arches. Graffiti covered all vertical surfaces. Rubbish, the floors.
Jada thought about the holo-projectors they had used to ward off the shark. Maybe it wasn’t the projector’s light that—
A noise. An insect whine. The limo's windows shattered. Jada screamed and covered her head. She felt the limo belly-flop onto concrete as its AG unit gave out. Engine dead.
A railgun's crack. The driver’s throat burst.
“Fuck!” Jada watched him slump forward against his belt.
She tried to access her neuralware. Nothing. Fucking blocked!
A shadow crossed the window. Hands grabbed her shoulders. She tried to break free, but more hands grabbed her head. Jada kicked and yelled as the two men pulled her out the limo.
“Geturfameee!”
“Shut it, bitch!” The larger man said. He had his arm around her waist. A flash of silver before her face: a blade.
“Walk.” The smaller man, a blond, chuckled.
They dragged her down an access corridor that reeked of piss. Her new shoes stumbled on rat shit and candy wrappers.
“They’ll pay you!” Jada shouted. “My boss will make you rich!”
“He pay for corpses?” the large man asked.
“Pay for corpses,” the smaller man repeated, chuckling again.
Corpses? So why not just kill her back at the limo? No...
“We’ll fucking kill you!” Jada shouted, praying someone might overhear in this wasteland. Her words echoed off concrete. “Step on you leeches! Scram while you can!”
The big man kicked her in the belly and she rolled to the floor. Evening sky above--they were out of the access corridor. So, this was it then; pain, humiliation and death on the floor of some derelict courtyard. Jada’s stomach twisted. At least her sprinkle-headed self wouldn’t suffer. That’d be embarrassing.
The walls were covered in the most remarkable graffiti.
✽✽✽
The Hoidrac became puzzled. He hadn’t expected... whatever was happening. Whatever it might be it was serious, and serious was the lowest form of absurdity.
These two males’ sudden appearance seemed forced. Artificial. The Hoidrac looked at what these two males planned to do.
Oh. That. A common male-human performance--subconscious revenge on authority, their birth-givers and an indifferent universe by means of bloodshed and their generative organs. Cold blades and colder lusts, if you will.
How drearily uninspired. How boring an intention.
It wouldn’t do at all.
✽✽✽
She’d tried to get up and they’d punched her in the head. Warm trickle-trickle from the scalp. Woozy.
Jada was more interested in the walls. The dragon-faced man was all over them, in many different styles and paints. Most were fresh, but she could see pale, dusty variants that must have been painted decades ago.
“Roll her over,” a man said.
Blue light, pale blue, filled her vision. She could hear the men shout. A series of rail-shots. Something like static kissed her skin.
Jada looked up. The two men were doused in a familiar, unreal light. Faced one another up close, screaming. Their hips had merged in a bubble of gore.
The brightness became too much. Jada shut her lids. There were those blobs you get when you close your eyes after bright light. Two blobs. They looked like clawed hands.
Dark again. When she opened her eyes a silver pillar stood in the middle of the courtyard. She scratched and crawled and stumbled to her feet, head burning, bleeding, babbling.
The pillar was made of that Hoidrac stuff, the glass-steel. It resembled two men; armless, their torsos stretched and twisted around one another in a dual corkscrew. Up top were two male heads, skulls fused together at the back, faces in opposite directions like some past-and-future-gazing god. Beautiful.
