Future Days Anthology, page 14
part #1 of The Days Series
Jada pink star-shipped to her sprinkle-head-self. Better appreciation that way. She stepped closer.
A plume of indigo whooshed out of the top of the pillar, from a slit between the fused skulls. Most of it--whatever it was--didn’t come down. It got carried up, away on the Pipelands’ thermals. Some did fall though, unhurried as snow, and Jada caught a piece.
A leaf. A translucent blue leaf with luminous mauve veins. It felt like plastic to the touch.
Mystified, she gazed at one of the glass-steel pillar’s male faces. Behind silver misty glass was a real face; pink, motionless. A fringe of blond hair. Its eyes flickered open, puzzled and wide. Its mouth screamed soundless behind the glass.
Jada passed out.
✽✽✽
She woke to static. Twenty televisions gazed down at her from their iron poles. Blackness beyond them.
Jada's head stung. She was laying on a mattress in some big dark room. She was certain she had dreamed of televisions, but her stirring reason told her she’d been passing in and out of consciousness for some time. Where was she?
“Where do you come from?” A woman’s voice. “What dirty street bore you?”
An old woman came into focus. She had cropped white hair and wore a vest and shorts. Sister Mergotsi. By the smell of her- or lack of such- she'd clearly showered.
“Monsil cluster, west block,” Jada said, and she realized she was her empathic, sprinkle-headed self. Of course: she had been so before she’d passed out. A shame; her superpathy’s six-hour time limit might have clued her up as to how long she’d been unconscious. “Monsil’s a welfare-ziggurat. Better than the Pipelands, I guess.”
“But not nearly as fine as the back of a limo, eh?” Mergotsi said.
Images of the attack flashed in Jada’s mind. The limo’s glass shattering in the EMP-blast, the driver’s throat exploding. The men and the pillar they became.
“Easy, Girl,” Mergotsi said, sitting by her on the mattress.
“How long have I slept?” Jada asked.
“Two nights.”
“Huh...” Jada stroked her head and felt what she took to be primitive stitches. She recalled the last time she had spoken to this woman. “Why’d you help me, Sister?”
“Someone has to set an example,” she said. “Besides, the Hoidrac let you be.”
That seemed to remind Sister Mergotsi of something--she pulled a packet out of her vest and opened it. Shimmering powder inside, like wing-dust scraped from a blue butterfly. Sister Mergotsi dipped her thumb in and snorted what it collected. She offered some to Jada. Jada shook her head.
“What is it?” Jada asked.
“Geode-leaf, powdered,” Mergotsi said. “A gift from our deities.”
Jada shivered. She recalled the translucent leaf she had held. “I thought you prayed to static, Sister.”
“I can worship God and adore the Hoidrac concurrently, can I not? The Geode-leaf has rained all over the Pipelands. Those of us who adore the Delighted Ones now offer a new narcotic to the street, to those masses that have nothing to lose in doing so. With each snort the cracks in reality grow.” She laughed, gazed into the dark. “Talk about a gateway drug...”
Mergotsi’s cackle bit at Jada’s skull.
“I have to go,” Jada said.
“Where to?” The old woman asked, her laughter sliced short. “Your big-hearted Polyconglomerate?”
“They’ll be searching for me.”
“Trilling knows, you know,” Mergotsi said, smiling. “About us, about Hoidrac-worship in the Pipelands. He’s tried to hide it from his masters for years. He’s afraid--like you--of being taken from the great credit-teat. The great stain!”
“It works,” Jada snapped. “It’s not always pretty, but our system works.”
“Its fear works, my girl. Its fear. The Hoidrac offer humanity something better.” She dipped her finger in the packet and snorted more dust. “We can’t win here in the Pipelands. Not now. I dare say we’ll all perish, but what a statement we shall make tonight! The Hoidrac do so love a performance...”
Jada recalled what she’d been thinking before the attack. The Shark from the Geode--it hadn’t feared the light from the holo-projector. It had feared the slogan, the advertisement. Trilling had known that all along, of course.
“Can I leave, Sister?”
“Of course; why should I harm you? Our patron Hoidrac didn’t. He must think you central to the narrative. He's of the least order of his kind- by a long way- but the most perceptive about humanity's foibles.” She shrugged. “Perhaps that makes him exactly what we need. You’ll find a hatchway over there. It leads up to pipes near your headquarters.”
Jada got up and marched toward it, head pounding.
“Be careful, girl,” she heard Sister Mergotsi call. “It’s madness out there.”
✽✽✽
GRABTHEGUNGRABTHEGUNOFUCKINWAYAMIALLOWINGTHOSELOOTERSINTOTHISMALLWHATTHEHELLARETHEYDRESSEDLIKEANYWAYESYOUAREIKNOWYOUAREDDIEMYLEGMYFUCKINGLEGOONAND-
Vents no more; whirlpools into the Tangible realm! Pouring a leaf-stream down the widening vents had been a flourish, barely a jape, yet the result had proven an unqualified marvel. The humans were saturating their minds in the stuff.
And the female human; what a phenomenon! What appreciation she possessed! And, and the way her temperament kept vaulting, faster and faster! Could it be (dare the Hoidrac think it?) she was on the threshold of some audacious and seminal psychopathology?
The Hoidrac had to ponder his--
The Hoidrac’s acquaintance materialized. Again.
::I’ve brought some of our friends,:: she informed him. ::we’ve something you simply must see!::
Three hundred and seventy-six other Hoidrac materialized. All their aspects were an ironic comment on stereotypical human gender-duality, each one of them passing male and female signifiers to each other’s appearance at the speed of pulsed thought.
Marvelous. Yet another fad. How many centuries might this one last?
The Hoidrac was on the cusp of suggesting his peers expire, when he recalled something.
::My dear,::he addressed his acquaintance, ::would it be possible to borrow that superb transience-armor of yours?::
✽✽✽
The first thing Jada saw when she climbed out of the manhole was a dead girl face-down under the twin moonlight. She’d been one of those advert-skinned waifs. Now every commercial on her flesh had been defaced by some blunt-yet-scratchy implement. Her blonde hair ran pink with skull matter.
“No...” Jada wanted to be sick, held it back. She looked around.
She’d come out into a derelict workshop inside a huge pipe, the concrete torn from its top so as to let light in. The night sky poured through the rusty framework that had once held the concrete in place. Machine tools stood silent in the gloom. Further down the tunnel, someone was kicking the shit out of someone else.
Someone saw Jada and stopped kicking someone else. They raced toward her.
A woman, mid-twenties, topless and entirely tattooed. Not adverts, though. Hoidrac caricatures, scores of them, seahorse-faced and fucking.
“Fucking bizness-dress, I sees!” she said to Jada. “Fucking Exec!” She had a crowbar.
“Wait--”
“I’ll brains you like that derma-whore!” The woman’s face and hair were splattered with leaf-dust. It sparkled amethyst.
Jada crouched and held her hands up. “Please; don’t hurt me, please!”
The woman ran at her, crowbar raised above her head.
Jada pictured one big-ass pink star-ship. She flew at the woman’s chest and bit hard into tit. Rubbery, soft. The tattooed woman howled and fell back on a lathe, clutching her chest. Jada grabbed the crowbar and cracked the woman’s nose and shoulders. She spat a nipple in her face and walked away.
She strode further down the tunnel, past the balled-up, armored figure on the floor that her enemy had been kicking. She was surprised to see it was the security woman, the one who’d helped fight the shark-thing back on the stratobarque. Jada would have left her lying there, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling sprinkle-head-Jada would be all whiny when she switched back. No way. Jada needed to be on form, whatever side of the mental fence.
She pictured another pink star-ship, became sprinkle-headed again.
Jada crouched down. “You okay?”
The Security woman’s mouth and nostrils were dripping with leaf-dust. She’d been force-fed. She gazed in horror at her own fingers.
“Bees,” she mumbled, “Cubic bees...”
Drugged to high-fuckery. Jada stroked the woman’s hair. The night whispered of distant gunfire and shouting.
“Listen to me,” Jada whispered. “It’s going to be fine, but you have to ride this out. You have to be brave.”
“Brave...”
“Attagirl.”
The Security woman nodded and closed her eyes. Carefully, Jada checked her for weapons. Someone had already taken her pistol, but she had a blade--an Eversharp. She stuffed it in her jacket’s inner pocket. She stroked the woman’s hair once more then moved on.
Jada stopped at the end of the tunnel, checked the street beyond. Raichundelia's local headquarters lay on the other side. To her right, she saw security men lining up captured graffiti artists against a shop front’s grill.
Jada shuddered as railguns cracked. The graffiti artists ripped at their chests and tumbled.
Jada pictured pink star-ships, became a psycho once more.
How to get across? These Guards looked shook up enough to fire on anyone. She watched as one of them took a rifle-looking thing and aimed at the shop’s spray-daubed grill. An advert splattered against the metal, clear as day. It read:
There’s always time for granola!
--MAXIGRAN--
An ad-gun? Incredible. She knew sprinkle-Jada was going through some pathetic crisis about capitism in both philosophy and practice, but, to superpath-Jada, a rapid-fire ad-dispenser was as good as it got. Besides, she would be the one to right this situation and the Polyconglomerate would know it. Everything would be back to normal. Better even: Jada would come out on top.
An unmanned kiosk-mech galloped down the street toward the security men, its hooves ringing on steel. Someone had filled its kiosk with oil barrels topped with a burning rag. The security men ran and the kiosk-mech charged after them.
Jada took her chance and belted across the street.
✽✽✽
“Shit,” Trilling said, his mouth wide. “You’re alive...”
Jada ran across the cargo bay floor toward him and his complement of twitchy guards.
“Got car-jacked,” Jada said. “They killed the driver and I escaped.” Jada stepped over the corpses of rioters. Effigies of Hoidrac lay beside them, freshly smashed.
“Thank, thank god...” Trilling said. “Must have been friends of these bastards.” He gestured at the body-strewn floor.
After this, Jada thought, Trilling is going down. He had that look. Whatever, Jada would make certain of it.
“I know about the Hoidrac,” Jada told him.
Trilling stared through her. His lips twitched.
“We’re gonna hit the roof and hop on the ol’ Stratobarque,” Trilling announced to everyone. “We’ll take it from there.”
“That’s running away,” Jada said.
“All-due-res, J-Hon, you haven’t been here. It couldn’t get any hotter--”
The walls of the cargo bay began to curdle with blue light. Geode light. The floor under a guard began to ripple.
“Whu-?” he said, and his bones got pulled into the floor. The rest of him held still a moment and then wobbled over, bursting on the tarmac.
“Holy-fuckohlee!” Trilling belted toward an open doorway. Jada caught up, kept pace. Railguns discharged behind them, followed by screams and wet smacks.
Trilling and Jada barged through the doorway. Trilling span around and slammed its heavy-looking door shut, just as a guard ran toward it.
“Motherfu--”
The door locked. Silence.
They were in a concrete room, ten-by-ten, bare walls and some metal crates. An ad-gun sat on one of them.
“Where are we?” Jada said.
“Inside plan B. The panic bunker.”
“Serves us right for panicking,” Jada said.
“Ain’t over till the fat-bitch ululates.” Trilling grabbed the ad-gun from off the crate.
The door started to ripple with blue light. Trilling fired a commercial at it. The door returned to normal, save for a toothpaste advert daubed upon it. Jada realized how the gun worked: nanites, had to be, altering the color wavelength of any surface’s molecules.
“I’ll put this on wide-fire,” Trilling said, and he shot at a section of wall near the door that had started to shimmer. The ad was five-foot wide now. The current logo: eyes to the future, ear to your heart.
Trilling covered all the walls, his finger tight on the trigger.
“Why bother?” Jada said. “You’ve killed us both.”
“We’re safe here,” Trilling said. The ceiling rippled, and he blasted it. “Just sit-pretty and wait for help.”
“Fucking idiot,” Jada said. “We’re a toxic asset now, can’t you see that? Schmellmer will just cut his losses and drop a plas-bomb on us. It’s what I’d do.”
“Schmellmer doesn’t have to know squat!” Trilling said, checking the walls. “C’mon, J-Babe; two schlubs attack you and you think you’re Tactical Tammy or some shit.”
Jada squinted. “I never said there were two.”
She couldn’t see Trilling’s face, just the back of his head.
“Crap,” he muttered.
Jada pulled the blade out of her pocket and lunged at the small of his back. Trilling span around, the blade missing him by inches. He grabbed for Jada’s throat with his free hand but only managed to rip open the top of her shirt.
“Fuck...” he said.
Fuck. He could see her tattoo: two protective eyes underneath her collarbone. She’d had it since her days back in the cluster. Back home in her dirty street.
“Tattoo?” Trilling frowned. “A ghetto tattoo?” he said.
“Knew you wouldn’t approve.”
Jada watched as Trilling’s eyes went wide, something about her tattoo. She felt a tickle inside her ribcage. She looked down to see a clawed, vaporous hand emerge from her collarbone. Of course. A tattoo was art, a doorway!
“Fuck this,” Trilling said. He twisted something on the ad-gun and fired it point blank into Jada’s chest. The advert slammed into her, kicked the air from her lungs, threw her on her back. The concrete stung her ass, spine and skull.
“No-cred cunt!” Trilling shouted down at her. “You can take the bitch off welfare but never vice-v!”
Jada rolled around in pain. Where was the blade? She’d heard it scatter.
“When we get out of this, Hon-bun,” Trilling said, “I’ll pay off your corporate loan and own you!”
Scratching came from the walls. Trilling fired a round at it.
“We could have been friends, J-girl!” he said. “More ‘an that, you tune? But you had to shove your beak in. I trailed your neuralware, saw you look up that... dirty, dirty H-word.”
Scratch-ah-scratch on the ceiling.
“Fuck-bag!” Trilling fired another round. The scratching ceased.
Jada spied the glint of blade, fought agony to reach it.
“Wonder what happens if I tighten the focus all the way on this gun,” Trilling was saying. “Stick a beam of pure unadulterated commercial through its hide.” He growled. “You hear this you alien jerk-rag?” he shouted at the ceiling. “I’m kicking to fucking spray!”
Jada rammed the blade into his ankle.
Trilling squealed, toppled.
Jada got to her feet and booted Trilling in the head. Again, again, again.
He passed out, his wolfishly handsome face now a bloody bulldog’s.
Jada had to think. Schmellmer would vaporize this place, doubtless. A plasma bomb would be minutes away. Time for a career move.
Had she gone insane? To hell with it. Jada ran to the door. Locked--a safe code. Shit...
She gazed down at Trilling.
Of course. Why ever not? But, damn it; she’d need sprinkle-head. She’d an eye for these things.
Pink Star-ship and her brain structure shifted. She took a moment to look at Trilling, the floor. She considered the possibilities, the methods, the styles. Not the best canvas, but...
Do it. Fucking do it. Pink Star-ship.
She took the blade and sliced at her own collarbone, desecrating the commercial on it. There: a start.
Trilling was delirious when she took the blade to him. He muttered dreamily as the eversharp sliced belly and breastbone. She splayed his jacket wide, spread-eagled his arms. They made surprisingly good horns. Then she ladled out his intestines. Trilling must have died about then.
Jada stepped back. Pink Star-ship.
Good work so far, she had to admit. She planned a moment and then Pink Star-shipped back before she might puke.
She carried on in this way, Star-shipping back and forth, adding to and smearing out, contemplating her work of gore-art as she went on. She got good at switching rapidly, so much so she didn’t realize she did it. A blur of grace and savagery. It felt good. She felt as one.
Jada stepped back from her impromptu piece; a mural of a Hoidrac face. She couldn’t even recall which Jada she was.
The Hoidrac rose from the blood, bone and silk suit fresco. It stood there, armored in light. More beautiful than Luharna seen from on high.
“Please,” she told it. “Take me away.”
The Hoidrac carved words in the air between them.
::Such beauty::
She ran into its embrace. They vanished long before the building vaporized.
###
About James Worrad
JAMES WORRAD LIVES IN LEICESTER, England, and has for almost all his life. Currently he shares a house with a cat and another writer. He works for a well-known brand of hotel, an occupation that never leaves him short of writing material.
