 |
| "The day of reckoning is nigh." |
The amount of time that has passed and the actions I have taken between these two sentences were great. Particularly the ravioli I ate.
So, yeah, this is a cop out week. How so? Well, for one, this week I finished my rewrite of To Slice The Sky's chapter 2, and went back to chapter 1 as well. I started up some chapter 3 work. It's become sort of the dump chapter for exposition. I'm not really fond of that, but it has to happen some time.
So, yeah, It's been a couple weeks since I posted chapter 1, and now that it's been cleaned up some more I decided let's put chapters 1 & 2 together this week. So, yeah, let's get to story dispensing. Enjoy:
Oh, wait. Here's another picture of my dog so I don't have to look at myself. He is part robot and comes equipped with laser eyes.
C:\>01_Decks_n_Trips_n_Hollywood
"Get yer fraggin' hands up, punk," a peace officer shouted from off camera.
Center frame, backed into a corner, "I got your hands, poc." The data thief pulled dual pistols from inside a shiny, LED spiked, longcoat, "Right here."
Standard issue peacekeeping rifles thudded out streams of ordinance. The thief disintegrated into a pink mist before he could pull his triggers. Cracked mirrorshades, indistinct bits wrapped in ruined PVC, and those pistols were all that remained of the wannabe action hero.
Someone mimicked a gravity bomb.
Hearty chortle, "Nice one."
A high five slapped from the timestamp's direction, "Someone call public works. We're gonna need a cleanup." Sounds of someone entering the squad car, "Hey, JJ. You know how to make the dash cam zoom in? I wanna save this for my kids."
"Cripes, rook, just get closer with your body cam. What, ya worried yer gonna get some on yer boots?" The rest of the squad have good chuckle.
'POCS LAFF OVER THERE KILL,' The title, that got Decker to open the vid in a self-important rage, lost its flavor upon repeat viewings. He cared more about where that funny haired devin kept all the meat spattered on the pavement. Decker jacked out as the ventilated mirrorshade frames reappeared, center frame and intact on a smirking face.
*
Heat was the first thing to hit Decker through the cotton of nethaze. His body was splayed over an office chair that had seen better years. His feet rested upon a salvaged mattress that passed for a bed. Sweat crept towards Decker's unused, yet tired, eyes. It got wiped away after a few seconds of guessing where it was on his face.
His neuronet access came through a Pharrel Inc. subsidized graybox, grafted into his skull and synched to a Minjung-Ui Him palmtop computing unit. Decker's modifications heightened the net's resolution from the basic, public option, experience. While Decker was a whiz at cracking and modding, his box's limitations became obvious stacked next to the premium models Pharrel offered.
Nethaze still in effect, Decker pawed about for water. His body occupied the only unaltered room of his mom's ancient South Hollywood tract home, cut off from the virtual intelligence and associated home controls. He cursed the primitive constructor of the house's lack of belief in air conditioning advancement. Nine month summertimes without climate control in this room was something he and Trip had always meant to fix. Not like Trip, living cool and sweet in Decker's sister's old room, was falling over himself to help.
Decker un-velcroed his back, thighs and forearms from the sweaty vinyl and duct tape chair. Decker stretched to his full 1.7 meters and pantomimed a yawn that never came. Decker grabbed his coffee mug and smokes off a makeshift nightstand then tromped off to the backyard.
Outside the house was another over-baked July evening in Hollywood-SFV818. Sounds of the LA River flowing past his backyard helped drag Decker out of his Neuronet haze. Garbage, ethnic cooking, and cannabis hit his nose. The ability to smell confirmed Base Plane Reality, mankind's shared hallucination, had regained control of Decker's perception.
With a flick of a disposable lighter he lit his smoke and exhaled towards the glowing orange sky. Blocky monochrome text widgets made up Decker's standard HUD. Each drag off his cheap cigarette, followed by a swallow of molecularly recombined coffee, introduced a shifting series of graphs that hung in the air. The Augmented Reality graphical displays were ignored due to its unobtrusive design mixed with user apathy.
Decker had a knack for stretching limited technology with a little gumption and ingenuity. A skill that opened doors to freelance jobs, slicing for nobodies he found in juice bars on his nightly rounds, looking for low-hanging work. While a cred bump when things were tight, slicing was nothing that could be called a career. Decker's current firewall needed major upgrades before before it could handle more than Thin to Standard Intrusion Countermeasure Executables.
Pharrel Inc. capped out malware protection for free users. For all Decker's skill, he couldn't circumvent the locks without bricking his box. A cheating domestic partner's encryption trail capped out what Decker could pull off without fear of fried brains or severe viral infection. The skag pay working for no-class losers like himself didn't help when it came to upgrading his crappy piece of corporate government hardware.
Decker pinched the cherry out of his smoke with sweaty fingers. His mind danced with thoughts about what's happening in his life.
"Where does every thing lead to?"
"Where's my place in the grand scheme of things?"
"If a scheme of things exists in the first place why is there need for someone to shill coffee to neovogue rich pricks?"
Decker sighed, shaking angsty, navel-gazing thoughts from his head. The home security app announced an arriving occupant accompanied by the clang of the screen door.
"Decks?" From the front door.
"Trips?" From the kitchen.
"Decks," from the living room.
"Trips," from the living room, staring straight at Trip.
"Hey, guy?" Trip greeted his best friend and housemate. "What's the good word?"
"Bored. Kicking around vidfeeds on the net. Watched pocs shoot apart some devin Slicer a few dozen times," Decker chuckled to himself at the memory playback. "Pretty sure I've become successfully desensitized to violence. Class?"
"Utter skag, glad it's almost over. But I've got great news. Beer?" Trip offered.
"Sure, what's the occasion?"
Trip fetched beers from their fridge with built-in molecular recombination technology. They'd yet to see a Public Works fine for the extra 10g of matter they received each month for Decker's vacant folks. Nor had they been sent up to "The Bay" prison colony SFB510 to fight for their lives on 'Capitol Punishment' in the name of entertainment and utilities fraud.
Trip smiled as he handed Decker an already open beer, "Last week of Pharmacology school and I've already got a career offering. Cheers."
"Cheers." They clinked bottle tops. Decker took a swig, "No way. Who's the job with?" He raised an eyebrow, cracking the wry grin that comprised the bulk of Decker's expressions.
"Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals." Trip's smile snapped back into place with more vigor than intended.
Decker let out a drawn out, melodramatic groan. He stomped across the living room and sunk into the couch. "House! Entertain me. Save me from my friend's corporate, sycophantic, stoogeitude."
"Activating HoloDisplay, Custom 5 immersion," answered back a soft digital voice that emanated from hidden environment speakers.
The holographic image of a well furnished living room flooded into the bare space. The announcer agreed with the image about their current stuff sucking. They should buy some new stuff that doesn't look like it was salvaged from a recycling facility, "Because Pharrel Furnishing looks grrreat on you.™"
Trip walked into the middle of the display, "Exactly. We can finally live in a swank-ass luxury-condo instead of some tenement under the guise of an artist colony. Or, like, you know, your mom's house." Trip shrugged and gestured around at all the old lady tchotchke slag in the room.
"Why does that matter? I like it here," Decker looked around for the universal control tablet. "Where's the remote? Channel surfing by voice is sooo tedious."
"Don't ignore me, prick." Trip stopped containing his joy, "We can live in Ocean City."
"The job is in Ocean City? Ugh, Ocean City is so '50s," Decker made a face.
"Inorite?" Trip intentionally mistranslated Decker's tone.
Decker put his face into his palms, "Why would you want to move out of Hollywood to Ocean City of all places?"
"Face it Decker, Hollywood is ham on a hammered deuce. The air practically screams in your face at how angry it is to have people under it. You go on and on and on how much you hate it here and you want to leave. This is our chance to do our big move up in the world," Trip took a sip from his bottle.
"All our stuff is here. You really want to try and cram what can barely fit into a Hollywood two bed one bath to a crappier Ocean City juke joint?" Decker drank deep.
"Weren't you listening to me? I said we'd be set up in a sweet corporate unit. I was offered a job in Pharmacology Development & Application. Where else am I going to go besides Ocean City for that?"
"Ugh, we'll be stuck around a bunch of prickfaced buds and Ocean…ers. They eat clone meat out there and have no respect for anything but money."
"Decker, be reasonable. Most of the meat you eat is cloned. Besides, I thought you took trait against prions, guy. And, for once we'll actually have money. We can have new things instead of MacGyvering them. We can buy our upgrades. Your upgrades. Your headbox720, thing."
"C'mon dude, it's called a graybox. You know this. And seven hundred twenty petaFLOPS are a small part of the specs, thank you." Decker crossed his arms.
"You can probably transfer to a SBUX out there. It's not like they're exclusive to The 818. It's like you already have a job waiting for you," Trip said.
"What if you end up being embroiled in some kinda techno-thriller, corporate government, espionage plot and I have to come save your ass?"
Trip rolled his eyes, "You'd have to come all the way from Hollywood if you didn't move with me. Why did this have to turn into an anti-corporate thing?"
"You knew that I would do that before you brought it up," said Decker.
Trip's blood boiled inside his head. His short temper, belied by an external stoic calm, did not respond well to resistance for the sake of resistance. Trip gripped his sweaty beer bottle and took the most forceful drink he could. Foam bubbled out of the top, spilling from the neck, down his fingers.
Trip and Decker's disputes were rare. Most tense moments between them could be laughed away in a day or two. Both subscribed to how modern man had been socially conditioned: to choke down big emotions until copious amounts of alcohol and designer molecules were ingested. During the tenure of their friendship, Trip and Decker had come to blows three times. Each time, neither one had any proof besides painful physical evidence and rough ocular video from Decker's graybox. Trip's fist jarring the image and a lot of blurred stumbling made up the bulk of each fight.
Trip collected his thoughts as Decker eased into his side of the couch, thinking the debate concluded. A constant flow of commercial holograms swam around Trip's body and the wall behind him. The continued silence gave way to Decker cueing up a PhreeStreem™ of their favorite movie, the 2071 Gun Kata classic, Akimbo. Keeping the language its native Japanese made it ideal to talk over all the exposition parts.
"House, pause feed," Trip stepped forward through twin dragons. Under normal circumstances, they would have faded in to be revealed as the eponymous Akimbo's back tattoos. "Decker, what are you doing, man?"
"Starting our favorite movie. Then we can hang out and chat about how excited you are about your soul sucking new promotion from delivery boy."
Trip's eyes narrowed, "Dude, for once, I'd like you to take me seriously."
"Dude, I do take you seriously. I'm just telling you, Roplaxive is nothing but trouble." Decker stood up and reached high to put a calming palm on Akimbo/Trip's shoulder, "Ocean City will only frag you up and leave you that way. And most of all, dude, you know you can't leave without me." Decker's trademark, 'Please let me get what I want,' smile slipped from ear to ear.
And that's what caused Trip's self control to slip. "Decker, I'm tired of being held back by your fragging idealism."
The killer left hook that grounded him never registered on camera. The last sound Decker heard before hitting the floor was Trip slamming the front door.
***
Decker's jaw hurt.
Dusk was giving way to night. His vitals read that his concussion was mild. His biosings app warned of the onset of drowsiness and what that meant to his current physiological state. At least no brain or skull damage had been detected.
Decker fumbled towards the kitchen sink to get himself a mason jar of water. If he didn't see daily evidence of the purification systems, Decker would never believe what he was drinking was either ocean water or former urine. The effort of thought made him tired. He sipped some more water and shook his head.
"Bed seems nice," said a sleepy disembodied voice. It came from somewhere underneath the biosigns.exe alarms ringing in Decker's skull, trying to keep him awake in his concussed state.
***
Trip came back home after walking around with his fists balled up, breathing deeply and not thinking about much of anything. He caught his reflection in the ad emblazoned omniglass storefront of Famous Fab's #0001.5. He saw just how silly and terrifying he looked: a gangly, red-faced, '50s street tough throwback, ready to fragment whatever gets in the way. It had been enough to clear his side of the sidewalk. Trip's demeanor sagged at his appearance in the glass. Braving Fab's hour-long line, he tried to shake off the rest of the residual anger with a bacon-wrapped ripper dog and tots before tromping back home.
On the walk back, Trip resolved to take his dream job in Ocean City. Unclouded by excitement or anger, Trevor "Trip" Daniel Dawson weighed the pros and cons of a life changing decision like a grown up. It wasn't the cool or fun thing to do, but Trip had to make a man's decision.
After all, he was twenty-six years old. This was everything he had been working for since he first read his mother's Big Book of Pharmacopeia. Trip couldn't go on living in his best friend's mom's house whether she was there or not. Bringing someone to a house that looked like an old lady's home squatted in by a couple of techno-scabs increased the difficulty of sexual conquest.
Decker was in bed when he came back home. Trip loosed an automatic sigh of relief as he creaked across the floorboards. Certain the idiot ignored his biosign alarms, Trip dug around in his room for his stash of anti-inflammatory oxygenators. He loaded an injector with the pharmaceutical and pumped it into his sleeping friend's neck.
Trip first crafted the drug for Regenerative Neuropharmacology class as help to reduce hangover intensity. It turned out that it aided in reversing neural damage to the point of rejuvenation as well, turning a hangover into a learning experience.
He had to sneak back into the room a couple times to steal back some "borrowed" things, but Decker never stirred. Trip took one last look at his friend, said, "See ya, dude," and blew that popsicle stand.
Trip’s whole life fit into three mesh woven plastic cylinders, packed into his bike's sidecar. One contained a mess of chemicals that without a Pharmacology Neophyte Permit, could get him arrested as a street pharmacist or ecoterrorist.
Trip started up his bike, waved goodbye to no one, took a deep breath, then sped off down the road. He hoped the hiring process of Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals was as streamlined as the application process. He was about to finish out his last week of PharmSchool in the last place he wanted to be: in the presence of the human wreckage he had for parents.
***
Decker woke up with a start, amazed he'd fallen asleep. The night sky and a quiet house greeted him. Calling up a matrix green clock to center vision told him it was time to bail.
He had the dream again. The one where he found his brother half smiling/half horrified lying dead in their shared room. A shadow in the black; an inky darkness complete with glowing eyes staring back at Decker. Decker had dreamt the same thing since he was eight years old after he swore he saw the same thing in reality. Part of why he chose to pop DeMos and nootropics to avoid sleep. When not being knocked out, it paid being besties with a budding pharmacist.
The night was in full swing. Decker's heart sank from the state of Trip's hollowed out room. He didn't realize he pissed him off enough to move back in with his parents for a week. Decker stomped back to his room dressed in a huff. With a gear bag slung over his back and his strapped on Minjung-Ui Him, Decker headed out to The Canby. He was on the prowl for a slice job for the night. Or to suck down as much juice as he could to forget about being abandoned by Trip.
C:\>02_Trip_Sails_to_Ocean_City
"Use trusted Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals to help increase productivity while working at Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals." Read superimposed text over a beaming stock photo of a sexless model in a sharply pressed pantsuit.
"Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals Nootropics for a NooYou™!" A golden-shocked retro-future spaceman saluted to no one, helmet firm under an armpit.
"Usage of non-Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals brand products will result in termination. Look for the Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals seal of approval on all licensed and satellite partner products." A riot geared security guard pointed with their carbine to the mentioned seal of approval.
Promotivational posters above the left-side desk were Trip's welcoming committee to the new cubicle/office/lab. Two other men occupied the clear-walled cube. They barely registered another human presence.
The blonde one was zoned out, flicking at a holographic chemical chain model that spun with the motion. The other guy was asleep with his eyes open.
Trip set down his empty courier bag and took his seat behind the desk. The only feature on his side was a card reader. Trip tapped his employee badge, generating a confirmation tone. Display rods rose from small openings in the sides of the desk. A GUI for the non-augmented sprang to life with an animated Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals logo.
"Welcome aboard new Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals Employee no. TDD-PhA37381234," Blonde highlights and high cheekbones of an entertainment caste clone greeted Trip. The opening sequence, complete with theme song, advertised itself as a Pharrel Inc. production.
"Ugh, orientation media," Trip said to the room. "The worst, right, guys?" He looked over his shoulder to see his cubemates in the same stupor. Trip made a face of mingled confusion and exasperation, then returned to his vid.
"At RoPhar, we wanted our main headquarters to embody a feeling of being connected to something larger. We achieved that with sparseness and transparency. The entirety of this office network structure is an extension of that philosophy. Our safe manufactured diamond glass walls are a means to empower you with a sense of communal individuality.
"Everyone is on your team, but your specific group is its own dynamo of efficiency separate from all the rest." The narrator's peppy voice said to Trip. Holographic workers moved across the cubicle farm, sharing notes and giving thumbs ups to the camera.
Trip's floor was for the development of standard fare consumables. Vitamins, supplements, medications, OTC's, cognitive enhancers and anything else you could cram into a capsule made up the bulk of the Roplaxive Empire. A clone of pre-war model/actress Cindy Crawford insisted, "Without the consumables division the entire Roplaxive empire would dissolve."
"That's right, Cindy." Trip recognized the next clone from his favorite oldmedia flick, 'Fight Club'. "Roplaxive built themselves into the global leader in health and pharmacology during the American Reconstruction. Their cutting edge applications of radical medicine in a time of governmental uncertainty, Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals led America into a better, healthier tomorrow.
"They pushed the line of what humanity could achieve even further with the development of genetic rewriting traits. These traits at first were temporary alterations of an array of augmentation or cosmetic needs."
Trip tuned out Jack's droning voice touch on with the history of traits. He stayed awake in Pharmacological History 2029-2066 and knew Roplaxive's role in marketing traits, locking out cancer from the human genome, and developing the cure for Consumens Ferventis Sanguinis, after it claimed 2.3 Billion lives.
Trip was glancing around the room as the first narrator said, "...respect employee privacy and safety so much that everyone must be scanned upon entry to the premises and all time spent on on site is recorded. Active invasive transmitting devices are not allowed on company property and all must be disabled before entry. Anyone caught recording or transmitting company property will face penalties up to and including legal and financial ruin."
His eyes drifted to the moderate sized brick of matte white plastics that sucked color from the world around it. "As centerpiece of the whole cubicle, your Matter Recombiner serves as an all purpose hardcopy printer, consumable constructor and light food distributor* *charged to your corporate account and deducted from your paycheck.
"Each MR is networked to the central mainframe that controls the production and destruction of materials within the headquarters. All refuse is broken down into crude elemental components and recycled to be used again as something else. All the trash emptied in Roplaxive's HQ becomes pill capsules, vending machine fodder, and office supplies. This keeps us compliant with all Environmental Revivification Act standards, and aids in our goal of organic matter preservation in these hard times."
"So what is it we're supposed to be doing?" Trip asked the room at the end of the Pro-Roplaxive Brand diatribe.
This snapped the open eyed slumberer to consciousness. He failed at looking anything more than dazed, least of all busy.
The blonde stopped flicking the model he'd been batting around for the duration of the morning. He turned bloodshot eyes towards Trip's direction, "Didn't you watch the vid?" He wiped a clammy forehead. His perfect white teeth would be lost against translucent white skin if not for soft pink lips.
Trip observed his symptoms, "If you're hungover, I know a combo for that."
"Oh, for real? Fragging eights man! Fragging your mom's cakehole eights! Hook it up, bud. You got any pinks? I could use some pink to get through this day. It's a fragging draaaaaag, buddy."
"Uh, no, I don't have any pinks. Lots of things could be pink." Trip wasn't used to being called buddy by a total stranger. Especially one that wanted to violate his mother eight times before asking for drugs.
"He's kidding," The reanimated body on the other side of the glass cube spoke at last, "mostly". He kicked himself across the polymaterial flooring and extended a hand to shake. "I'm Allan, with two L's, he's Alan with one."
"Bud please, this Alan only needs one." One L interjected.
Trip accepted the shake, "Tri… Trevor, just Trevor."
Alan steered the group back on topic, "So, Tri-Trevor, what's up with those pinks?"
*
The rest of his work day was spent on an inordinate amount of coffee and cigarette breaks where he enjoyed neither. To keep their productivity numbers up, they set the cubicle MR for a few hundred random combinations of pill templates to dispense in fifty minute intervals. Trevor had initial worries of them being mistaken for real work. Allan set a trash can underneath the dispenser that, "Some clone will empty". Alan and Allan laid out the basic outline of how a day at "RoPhar" should play to avoid arising suspicions that you want to work more.
Apparently, Pharmacology was where the glut of the barely employable citizen class got dumped. It didn't offer much of a challenge to keep hitting 'Create Batch' on the MR. Any number of automated systems, or clone labor, could be sourced for that task. Jobs the department existed to give jobs to the people with the highest probability of purchasing the products they produced.
Trevor stared out the seventy-second level window of his corporate housing apartment's floor to ceiling windows. The company moved him into the same corporate luxury housing tower as the rest of the Pharmacology department. His unit's square footage was more than the house Decker and him had shared back in The 818. It came complete an open floor plan, MR hardwood floors and corporate approved art. The upgraded Virtual Intelligence automated amenities, not to mention the extra bathroom with a bidet option, were a much welcome touch.
Being two-thirds up a shining tower, with soft blue and white LEDs for lighting, created a sense of being part of the sky itself. The effect left Trevor feeling adrift in a city of clouds. He turned from the window and ordered up a glass of Irish whisky and ice. He was amazed how much better the Ocean City MR whisky tasted compared to distilled Hollywood rotgut.
He could see where the old Northeastern Megalopolis once stretched from the Boston and Cambridge areas down to America's former Capitol. Massive urban sprawls had been all wiped out or washed away by the floods when the Western Antarctic ice shelf collapsed. In its place, an architectural archipelago of skyscrapers rose over the Atlantic's silver waves. Roplaxive housing communities spread out in separated grid lines along the plate island rims.
Trip and the bulk of Ocean City's citizen population dwelt in the Northern sections of the city. Southwest, beyond Providence and Connection Island's twin layouts, above TMZSQR station at the heart of Foundation Island sat Ocean City's crown jewel. Roplaxive HQ jutted like an electric middle-finger to the rest of the world. But the tower's ever-present glow couldn't drown out the festering black sore behind it that was Clonetown.
From Brunswick to the former City of Brotherly Love lay Clonetown's jigsaw puzzle skyline. Inside that array of toppled structures lived the fluctuating clone population. Each one crafted with the responsibility of keeping Ocean City running in an efficient manner. At nightfall, their energy gets reduced as part of Ocean City's commitment to helping the environment.
Sipping his whisky, Trevor gazed over the sea of lights and RoPharm adverts glowing under the cloud layer. Sol's final rays bled into the edge of the western sky, causing Trip to wince. Excess moisture squeezed from his eyes.
"Guess I should feel lucky," Trevor said to no one.
He had achieved his goals. No more scraping by, eating compiled proteins when delivery jobs were scarce. No more slumming in a valley full of slag. No more needing Decker to repair their salvaged home goods.
Now, he could ask his apartment to order shiny new toys from the net on a whim. He could download the MR codes and construct it in his home, or have it couriered there by someone not him. If the mood took him, Trevor could even hop a cab to any of Ocean City's diamond-class shopping, dining, and entertainment districts. It would be criminal to ask for more.
"You have a caller," The house VI said in sultry female voice.
"Answer."
A hologram of Alan's head materialized in the living space, "Trevmeistervitch. Double L and I are heading out with some buds to The Pit, bud. We're gonna go watch some full bore, balls to the walls action bud. It's gonna be fragging eights, buddy! Eights!
"So, yeah, you wanna bud it up since you're all skagly out here with no buds, bud?"
Trevor swirled his drink and looked from the window to the floating animated head. During the work day, Alan indoctrinated with more Bud subculture than Trevor could tolerate. Having to hear how, 'Eights,' everything is still sounded better than his current plan.
"Frag it, I've got nothing better to do." Trevor shrugged and sucked a piece of ice into his mouth, "Except staring out the window, drinking."
"That's really fragging sad, bud. Well, getuponit rent-a-tent! It's sex-oozing bud makeover time. We'll be down in two-point-five." Alan's head blipped away.
"Call disconnected."
*
The Pit was spitting distance from Foundation Island's edge of 'The Wail Zone'. It was an obnoxious bright spot on a shady street that sneered at Clonetown across the water. Ocean City's best and brightest pill stuffers lined up around the block for dinner and bloodsport.
Known for its dinner entertainment, The Pit wasn't the only popular nighttime hot spot, but it catered to the bloodlust of its audience better than the imitators. As the original, The Pit had grown numerous champions under the name Brawl. Champions that were cheered on like heroes in match after match, until they were beaten into an identical face for the loser pile.
In the center of the establishment sat the eponymous pit. Four meters deep, it was ringed by invisible carbon-obsidian wire to keep in combatants. Repulse fields surrounded the lip to keep drunk patrons from climbing into their own dismemberment.
Around the room, Wild-eyed neovogues dined on chunks of pinkish white meat and drank goblets of 1986 vinted White Zinfandel. The carnage within the pit's bowels brought savage delight to the diners. Cheers and jeers were louder than the DJ supplied booming soundtrack.
Below, a clone with a gymnast physique had their skull make contact with the wall. Their burly opponent repeatedly smashed it in a series of cracks and thuds. On the fifth blow, their head popped into a chunky mess between his fingers. In the winner's knee was a fragment of a knife. His damaged implant groaned beneath, moving in a herky-jerk manner.
The Master of Ceremonies came over the environment speakers, "Members of the assembled gentry. Your winner and still Heavyweight Pit Fighting Champion. Braaaaaawwwwwllllllll." Applause erupted from the audience that fell into a unison chanting of, "BRAWL!"
The celebrated champion sat in the pit and spat blood into the dirt. Downplaying his battle damage, he pulled the knife remains from his knee, wiped a busted lip with a flesh deprived arm, and spat a blood loogie against the repulsors. Sounds of saliva sizzling on an energy field were overwhelmed by the crowd cheering for even more blood. He twitched his fingers in time with their chant, conducting their adoration.
Trevor and the buds were shown to their booth. Their hostess wore the same generic attractive face as the maître d'. Like most booths in the joint, it had a clear view into the center of the pit. Even for those that didn't, wall projections of each battle were everywhere, ensuring nothing was missed.
Brawl was escorted from the pit as the cubicle buds got situated. Ambient conversation rose with the music. Empty space was filled with pulsing bass, erratic 'Amen Break' beats, and juxtaposed string section of Manual Insertion's latest symphonic jungle track: Interstellar Odyssey.
Another server caste clone distributed drink menus to the table. Trip was stuck dead center of the booth flanked by the A(l)lan's. Beside each of them sat Dillon and Gerald. Trevor had met them earlier in the day. They were from the cubicle through on the other side of their glass wall.
A waitress walked by and Gerald's face contorted into a sneer at her presence. She distributed tiny meat hors d'oeuvre of a nondescript origin. She smiled like a gun was against her head. After depositing the tray of steaming meat she curtseyed then vanished.
The guys grabbed at toothpicks speared into the bacon wrapped snack, dipping it into créme fraîche.
"Some nerve from that copypaste," Gerald growled as she left. "Did you see that smile she gave? It's sickening when they try to act like us and get it wrong."
Allan laughed, "Gerald, you live in the wrong city for hating clones."
Gerald sulked, "Why do we come to this place anyway?"
Alan said, "Because, bud. As much as you hate dealing with clones, you love eating their meat and watching them fragment each other."
Trevor remained silent, trying not to look like a gobsmacked hayseed from The Confederacy. He'd never seen a dead body before, let alone someone being brained like a live episode of 'Capitol Punishment'. He repeated in his head, "It's okay. It's not a real person." His thoughts didn't stop the corpse being scraped off The Pit's wall from missing a head.
The music lowered and the MC announced the next fight. A clone wearing an oversized bowler hat waved a sheaf of smartpaper overhead. They walked the crowd, calling for wagers. All bets were in and the combatants were ushered out for battle.
As a lackluster fight limped along, the buds turned to drink for distraction. After the fourth round of Reboot-and-Rally's Trip was too drunk to care about the complimentary finger food being cloned human served by cloned humans. When the world stopped spinning was when he could remove it from his stomach. For tonight, the world didn't stop spinning.
*
"We done showed you the OC like you'll never ever see it again, bud!"
"Till tomorrow night!"
"I hope you swallowed some trait, cuz you're gonna be raw doggin' tonight, bud!"
"Raw doggin' his hand maybe."
A collective, "Ooooooh," of good jest.
"To the Trevmeister!"
"Trevorsaurus Wrecked!"
Blurred faces with bad facial hair under wide-brim tall caps shouted, "Trev! Trev! Trev!" around Trevor Daniel Dawson. Every time he tried to respond back, a decanter of some type emptied a burning sweet concoction down his throat. They hadn't been at The Pit for a while. Any of the garishly dressed men could be making all that ruckus. Trevor was worried, 'Trevorsaurus Wrecked,' was going to stick as a nickname. He let himself be whisked into the night by strange men with the worst good intentions for his well being. It seemed like they were at a new location every time Trevor stopped to look at his drink.
"I think I heard you say something this say something this morning about aaaaa-uuuuuuh, about some kinda hangoveremedy cure thing you could make for today?" The size of Alan's glassy eyes and pink mouth grew with some internal train of drunk logic. "Trev-bone! What is up with your fragging hungover wonder pill, dude?"
Allan slurred, "Like who comes up with this stuff?"
"Fragging Trevor, man… It's Tre, tre… Trevor!" Alan danced about the last bullet train back to the North side, making faux-rocking guitar sounds.
*
Every breath Trevor took burned, pregnant with indigestion and stale bacon-wrapped clone. That first night in Ocean City had been an erased chalk drawing of bright lights and highball glasses. It was roughly redrawn the same way every other night for the past three weeks.
Harsh cubical farm LED light did nothing to soothe his eyes. The move to Ocean City helped to grow them far too big for their sockets. Trevor slumped into his chair, understanding his lack of greeting from the first day of work.
"Morning, team," Some suit poked their head into the cubicle. His smile was reflective white coupled with oily black hair. "Just a little FYI. There's a tiny, impromptu, floor meeting. We're gonna get started in," he checked his watch like a douchenozzle, "well, let's say about five minutes. See you there, gentlemen." He exited stage right after a double pat to the top of the cubicle wall.
Trevor dialed up the morning prescription of three pills a piece, "It's too early for this skag." His stomach rumbled at the thought of listening to mission statements and goal orientations. Dillon knocked on the dividing glass between cubes. Alan pitched six capsules over the wall.
"You came up with these things in PharmSchool?" Allan asked after gulping down a glass of water.
"Yeah," Trevor had a longer answer. He had always meant to give the longer answer, about ethanol suppression at the blood/brain barrier, but the time was never right.
"Wow," Allan shook his greenish face behind his hands.
Gerald rapped on the glass. Everyone winced at the sound but gave a thumbs up regardless. Outside, bodies shuffled past the cubicle walls.
Everyone in Pharmacology fanned out in the empty space before the main elevators. Security guards made sure all exit routes were cut off in non-obvious ways. At the head of the group stood three men in sharp suits flanked by armed guards. One of the suits glazed over whatever was displayed on his smartpaper.
After everyone was corralled from the far corners of the cubicle farm, the suit rolled up their smartpaper and stepped forward. "Greetings to all our valued Roplaxive Group Inc. employees. I assume a healthy percentage of you don't know who we are, so allow me to make some introductions. We are the Decision Makers of Roplaxive Group Inc. and all subsidiaries and contractors."
He flashed an award winning smile that glinted in the overhead light. "I am Brett Richardson, Director of Advertising and Marketing. I'm sure my department's handiwork throughout the offices has kept you motivated throughout the workweek."
"To my left is Heathcliff Johnson the Director of Organics. Your division of Pharmaceuticals is under his jurisdiction," Heathcliff tersely nodded towards the audience.
"And to my right is Dick West, head of Synthetics. Since the next section of this meeting falls underneath his area of expertise, I'll turn the floor over to him. Dick?" Coughs and nervous golf claps sounded for a wasted segue.
"Greetings valued employees," Dick West piercing eyes that glowed neon green beneath a gray iris. "Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals is a company of innovation. We furthered the change of the human genome from a person's hard-written blueprint to a rewritable code that can be patched and updated at will. Our labs have cured mankind's worst afflictions in the past and will continue to do so into the future.
"After the collapse of this former great nation, Roplaxive led the reconstruction of what would become Ocean City. Today, our city is the jewel of New America's economic and political power. All of that was made possible in thanks to those willing to take a risk on something that everyone said was impossible.
"Of course not everything is perfect for Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals. And that's a good thing." Dick West let that last sentence hang in the air. A sea of bored faces snapped alert, each one trying to fake rapt attention. Brett Richardson adjusted his tie and cleared his throat. "Imperfection means there's still something for us to achieve. While we have the world's hearts, we lack the active engagement of their minds. With this culture of achievement in mind, our synthetic division is eager to reach out to fresh talent specializing in digital mediums.
"The Roplaxive Synthetics Division would like to invite Roplaxive employees and anyone they know to come join our team. We are actively searching for anyone skilled in network security, creative programing architecture, coding, and cybernetics, to name a few. If you, or anyone you know, possesses these skills, please direct these individuals to Human Resources with your referral. We're reaching out to the Roplaxive family first..."
Trip had stopped paying attention. His mind, clearer from the alcohol haze, raced through all the things he could tell Decker about in a ploy to get him to move out here and rescue him from his new Buds.
"...We look forward to building a better, brighter, bigger future for the benefit of all. That's the Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals promise." Dick beamed that radiant smile one last time.
*
Another pointless toast for another shot of poison on another identical night at The Pit. Trevor begrudgingly tossed the drink Down the hatch and waited for it to take hold. They were celebrating the news of Gerald's promotion. The ginger fraghead stole Trevor's work on a flexible carapace trait and passed it off as his own. Now he was being promoted to project head, and was now the bud's direct superior.
Trevor drank himself to the point where he felt okay about playing dress up in public. Everyone else in Ocean City seemed to be doing the same. Trevor was stuck at the center of the group, staring around the room at everyone. Even wearing the same gaudy costume as the rest of the crowd, Trevor never felt more than a hanger-on invited to the party.
Men were adorned in ruffled dickies, tufted ascots and other ostentatious neck wear that lacked collars. They hung on the arms of women all trussed up in wild tangles of synthetic fabric made into deconstructions of a cocktail dress. Variations of the word bud punched holes in the air. Each one competed against bursts of shrill guffaws to unheard conversations.
Trevor nodded to double L that he had to get up, pushing Dillon out of the booth. As Trevor cleared the seat he turned into a serving clone carrying a tray of drinks. The buds cackled at the display. Trevor fumbled to pick up the fallen glasses. The whole time he assured her he was so sorry and that it was all his fault. Her tear streaked make-up made her face look like a horror show. Trevor, taking this for offense, backed away in a hurry and fled to the restroom. One last look through the closing bathroom door, he swore that he saw two shapes come whisk the server off to somewhere.
Trevor voided his bladder and washed his hands in the sink. The vanity mirror triptychs were angled just right to reflect his profile into infinity. Every direction he looked held hollow eyes trying to meet Trevor's bashful gaze.
He thought about calling Decker. He felt guilty about how he left Hollywood, yet not guilty enough to call home. The mixology of emotions that rose up while alone was easier to ignore than deal with for a time. Washing them out with cocktails and company were starting to come up short. Not willing to go down the rabbit hole of self-loathing and introspection, Trevor splashed water in his face, checked his teeth and spit a chunk of phlegm into the sink.
The buds were ready to go when he emerged. Gerald gave Trevor a, 'nice one,' smirk and pointed over to the pit. The walls were newly redecorated with spattered remnants of what Trevor guessed was the serving clone. The Buds reconfirmed the next destination with each other.
"Yeah, let's hop this flop," Trevor said. "Bud."
No comments:
Post a Comment