365 tomorrows

You remember when Billy first went into space, don’t you? First time one of those crazy rockets of his went off with him in it. First time he sent up the big rocket, not those little ones with the sensors made of old cell-phones and other garbage. Chuck always said he’d send up Chairman Meow, or Mr. Catkins, or Daisy’s kitten Cindy next, but he didn’t. Billy went up immediately, soon as he knew as he could.

You hear what Daisy said? She was just in here, you just missed her. Billy calls her now and then. Only one from round here, ‘spect. She told me Billy says the Jupiter colony wasn’t gonna work by the end of next year. Called it the biggest failure of his life.

Daisy’s doin’ well. Says her VD’s cleared up clear as day, and she gonna get back to work. That boy of hers is gettin’ tall. She made a joke about how someone needs to market a daycare for prostitutes. That’s Daisy for you. Always got a sense of humor.

She made some joke about Billy; can’t remember what it was.

Remember how Chuck broke Billy’s arm soon as he came down? Billy told everyone it was from re-entry, but a bunch of us saw him crawl out of that craft using both arms after landing. You saw it was Chuck, didn’t you? Slammed Billy up against the wall, kicked him in the stomach, spat in his face. We all did a bit of that, but Chuck broke Billy’s arm, make no mistake.

You seen Chuck recently? He looks good. He’s serious about quitting this time. Ever since that last binge, he’s been serious. You know, the one he pawned his prosthetic leg to finance. You said he’d be clean after losing that leg in that car accident, but he proved you wrong, eh? But he’s serious now, he said so.

Still hard to believe Billy went, ain’t it? Even after we all saw him, saw that rocket made of junk and debris took off into the sky? No one thought it would, despite what Billy told us about super-dense material and reverse-gravity fields an all that other hoodoo he’d spout. But there it went, rocketing into the sky, out of Filt Street, out of Sporboro, out of the goddamn state and country and world.

Anyways, here’s the usual; you’re still one of the best customers here, even after what happened to your throat. It’s amazing you can get enemas to work like that for you. Bottoms up! Ha! See you next week! The wine’ll be restocked!

What was that joke about Billy…

The aroma of cooked vegetables filled Leba’s nostrils as she finished mixing the oils for the final touches of her dinner. All the guests had been waiting to taste her delicious mixture of carrots and lettuce with roots and peppers as spices. In fact, the whole of the community adored Leba for her talents at making their normal everyday meals into something exquisite.

Though, even as Leba prepared the courses, her sister Enias watched and listened as their guests of honor eagerly awaited her sisters’ well-prepared meal. They laughed and smiled as they readied themselved for the feast they were about to receive and many even went so far as to ignore Enias for the time being until their meals were to be served.

Jealously was a trait that indicated the annual shot wasn’t working and even though she knew this, Enias kept the idea from public. She had thought that the guests must have known, since they spent so much time around the two. If they knew, she mused, it must not be wrong.

Enias began to wonder why they had to eat with tongs. Every edge of the tongs perfectly sculpted to be as dull as could be, and yet she wondered what tool could be used to supplement them. The very idea that larger portions had to be torn by hand boggled her mind.

The sour sister sat watching the guests and the table lay out like a large slab of marble with its pretty silk dressings, and she began to wonder if there would ever be something else to consume, something else to appease their honored guests. Perhaps in the back of her mind, Enias wanted to be her sister this night. Though now she was getting impatient as time was going by and there was no response from the kitchen.

As the laughing and the carousing of their guests went on, Enias became agitated and impatient. She stood, excusing herself and made for the kitchen where she would politely remind her favored sister of the importance of pleasing their guests with punctuality and good offerings. She entered through the swinging doors to find her sister kneeling over what looked to be a broken tong. Her left hand gripped her right wrist as she looked on in sorrow and horror at the crimson fluid dripping down her finger.

Looking upon the scene, Enias’ eyes were transfixed upon the very wound inflicted by the shattered wood of the tongs. Her sister was holding back tears and all Enias could think of was the something trying to unleash itself from the back of her mind. She could not define it and yet it pushed harder, trying to break free as the blood flowed. Suddenly it all broke free, and Enias knew what her and her honored guests had been missing all along. She would impress them this night.

Dear John,

I loved you John, I want you to understand that.

The Core wasn’t wrong to match us as marriage candidates; it just didn’t understand who you were really, the physical you. When we spoke and wrote and sent all those mad pictures over the Core – that was some other John. You used to write to me like a mad lover. You told me you would carry me though fire. You treated me like a partner, you told me you would always have my back, and that you could always trust me to have yours. I had compatibility with seventy-eight men over the Core, but none of them wrote like you, none of them sent the kind of beautiful pictures you did, or the songs you composed, or the mad videos you hacked together for me. No one was like you. That’s why I married you John, you were singular.

When we bought this house on the floating islands, I thought I was about to enter a dream. I was going to be living with the most amazing man on the pacific islands in a planned community. We dreamed up a thousand adventures for when we got here, do you remember?

I told myself a lot of excuses when we moved in together. You were adjusting, it was a new place, and it would take a while for you to find your feet. You were rude because you were nervous. The drugs were just your way of making yourself comfortable, the way you yelled was just your passion. You said you would carry me though hell, but you couldn’t love me enough to clean your clothes or rub my shoulders when I was tired.

After a while, I began to feel as if I had been tricked. I invented odd fantasies, that someone else had written those words, had sent those videos. I was being played on a trick, a terrible lie. Perhaps it was a program designed at seduction that you had bought; perhaps you bought me for the price of a cruel hack.

You asked me why I haven’t been bringing you meals, why I haven’t set the dials to clean the house, why I haven’t been talking to you. I thought you were a big liar, that I was wrapped in a lie, and I wanted you to suffer for what you have done. But that’s not the person I want to be. I don’t want to live as a bitter woman, angry about the life I keep choosing to trap myself in. I have to go away.

You are not the person I love, you are some strange, twisted imitator, some dreamer who dreams himself better than he is. You are so good at this that you fooled the Core, with all it’s wonderful psych tests and profiles. You fooled me too. You might even be fooling yourself.

I have to leave you. I cannot stay with the John who lives in that house; he is not the man that the Core matched me with.

When you become the man in those messages, find me.

-Tara

Science has become the new standard of belief. It became the boundaries of thought and idea. I helped it grow to that, I helped to smite imagination and faith. Isn’t it strange that I call upon you now?

When we completed the humane genome it was called a genius. I bore medals that weighed on me heavier than any pressure ever had of completing the sequence. Still, I persisted and sought to copy everything we were. It began in an egg and a sample, and it was complete. One child became two children became hundreds of children became thousands upon thousands.

Perfection is the word many would use to tell the stories of the population becoming less flawed and more like it should have been all along. I did that, and even then the medals outweighed my guilt. It didn’t stop me, however, and I sought to perfectly secure the world of the past in nothing but a tube of glass. Already, science was becoming a crutch for everyone as the imperfect died of disease while the processed thrived.

It was I who brought back the extinct ones, and even then I started to forget where they came from in the first place. My mind was so transfixed upon finding more out about ourselves that I had misplaced the idea of the unseen. Instead, I saw the prehistoric fly again and the tribes of Australia’s natives walk again. The Croatian tribes were born to sterile labs and I watched them grow to become perfect like the others.

I gained perfection. I extended my life by altering my own code so that my work could live on. Others found this, and they too came to cease aging and continue on as if nothing had been different from the day they stopped growing older. I killed off the very idea of dying men. I made the human race happy, and I also made them empty.

They tore down their instruments of war and pollution and they cheered me still. They venerated me in books until they were also burned into nothing. The books came first and the churches came next. The symbols were gone; the texts were ash. I admit it all. I killed you, and I am so very sorry.

They will not allow this in public any longer, so here I am on my knees and my hands clenched together crying out for God. Even inside here, it is not safe. We’ve become two hundred and seven now and we are without you. Faithless and lost despite what everyone else believes.

There will be no more children, now that we all live forever. There will be no one to think differently or learn anew. I started out with a test tube and placed you inside of it to suffocate you. We never meant for this to happen, we just wanted to perfect ourselves. Things weren’t so simple and I want you to come back. I’m praying for you now and hope that you forgive me for doing it. Please come back so that you can forgive me. Please.

Harun did not think she was being unreasonable. The passenger obviously felt she was, but what did she know? Nothing, Harun concluded. Nothing that was worth anything anywhere but planet-side.

“Look,” Harun said. “You cannot take this much luggage. There is not much space on the ship, and that isn’t going to change any on the station. You cannot bring all of this.” Harun gave the variety of suitcases and valises spread out on the shiny plastic customs table a disdainful wave. Harun had already emptied them all, and was slightly disgusted at the auspicious wealth of the contents. Metal eating utensils, glass picture frames, paper books.

The waste was rampant.

“I’m not leaving my things behind,” the passenger said. She had a slight accent and a queer way of motioning with her chin to make a point. Neither of these things did anything to raise Harun’s opinion of her.

“Then you’re staying,” Harun said, folding her arms across her polyester uniform.

The passenger scanned the items on the table, fingering a few of them. She let out a diminutive sigh, and seemed to grow smaller in the hard plastic chair. “What can I take?” she asked.

Harun gathered up most of the passenger’s clothes, a business-like scowl concealing her delight and wonder at the softness of the some of them. Not all of the clothes fit into the passenger’s smallest bag, so Harun left out some of the more delicate articles.

“This,” she said, holding up the bag. “This is all you can take. The rest will have to be recycled. Things like this, though, I don’t know what we’re going to do with.” Harun picked up a doll from the table. Its painted face was done up in a coy pout, and its body was garbed in an elegant kimono. Harun was slightly repulsed by it, a feeling that intensified when it occurred to her that the doll wasn’t clothed in polysatin, but real silk. “The clothes we can recycle, possibly. But the body….the body is made of clay—”

“Porcelain,” the passenger and her chin interjected. “Suki is made of porcelain.”

“It’s clay,” Harun said. “This isn’t even furnace kindling.” She was about to toss it back on the table in disgust, but the passenger yanked it out of her hands. Harun held back an unprofessional smirk as the passenger cradled the doll like a baby.

“Then let me take her,” the passenger said. “Please, let me take her. You said yourself, she’s of no use here. Let me take her.”

Harun hung her head. The people never understood. It was like talking to children. “It’s not just a matter of use. It’s also a matter of space. That thing is clay and silk and paint. It will be of no use to you on the ship, no use to you on the station, and I can guarantee you will not make it to the colonies with it, because it’s going to take up space you need for important things. And as you can see, there’s no room in your bag.”

The passenger looked at the doll she was cradling, then at what Harun had designated as her only luggage. Setting the doll down and giving the lacquered head a reassuring pat, the passenger turned her attention to the small bag. She removed a wool jacket from the bag, rubbed the soft material up against her face, and then carefully placed the doll inside the bag. She raised her head to meet Harun’s eyes.

“Now,” she said. “I am ready to go.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Harun said. “That jacket’s made of fine wool—”

“And Suki is made of fine clay,” the passenger said.

Harun watched the passenger take her small bag toward the loading port. She started at the elements of the passenger’s luggage. The overhead light glinted off the metal and glass in a way that was not entirely replicated by the plastic table underneath.

“Wait,” Harun said. The passenger turned. “Wear the jacket. Wear it as you board. It’ll be hot, but you can take it off as soon as they seal the doors.”

The passenger’s tight, pale face brightened. “Thank you,” she said.

“Skin and bones thing like you, going into space,” Harun said. “You’re going to need all the help you can get, with what you’re made of.”

“This is a disaster,” said Herman Goodrich. His magnetic chair glided away from the table and bobbed gently as he threw his excessive weight into it, then it obediently slid back into place. Goodrich wiped a glaze of sweat from his forehead and reached for a donut before opening his console. Around the conference table, the other members of the Department of Media Relations waited for their leader to continue, but he did not. Instead, Goodrich focused his attention on the document projected into the air before him. The silence was palpable.

“Sir?” Dugan, the second-year intern, was the only one with the courage to break it. Goodrich looked up crossly.

“Did I give you permission to speak?” he snapped.

“No, sir.”

“Then don’t. Have we suppressed the medical report?” Goodrich continued. The question was directed to Kimley, who nodded. “And the man’s family?”

“Bribed,” Kimley said, “But the ER footage is still on the net. We can’t cover up the shooting itself.”

“Would anyone care to explain to me why the Prime Minister’s ray gun was set to lethal?”

“It wasn’t, sir,” said Kimley. “The man had a pacemaker. It malfunctioned at the livestock-stun setting.”

Goodrich nodded. “A true hunting accident,” he said with some relief.

“CNN wants to interview the victim,” Kimley continued.

“Well, tell them he’s recovering. It’ll blow over.”

“Sir,” said Dugan, again interrupting.

“I told you-“

“Sir, an interview might help us in this situation.”

“You know how the Prime Minister is with interviews.”

“I mean with the victim.”

Silence.

“The victim’s dead, Dugan,” Kimley said.

“They don’t know that. I’ve been researching the automated decoys that the Secret Service uses during the Prime Minister’s transports, and-“

“You want CNN to interview a decoy?”

“It would only take a couple of hours to make a cast of the victim’s face, and we have the Prime Minister’s phone logs for voice modulation. We’d be controlling every response.”

Herman Goodrich considered this, frowning slightly.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Kimley said after a pause.

“Fine,” said Goodrich as he pushed the magnetic chair from the table. “Set it up. I want a test video in five hours.”

As she pneumatic door slid shut behind the department head, Kimley smiled at Dugan. “You’re going to be good at this,” he said.

The pitter patter of sneakers came in rapid succession down the halls of the Great Southcrest Shopping Center. Dustin had a hankering for cheesesteak and was anxious to get back to his group before they left the shopping center. He spun around a corner and saw the signs for Chuck’s Delicious Steakies flooding his senses like a strobe light.

Licking his chops, he stopped to catch his breath and slicked his hair back to walk forward to the stand. Fingers fished out a few crumpled bills as he slapped them on the counter. “Two large Steakies please.” The owner raised his brow at this and pointed at the sign next to him: OVER 65 ONLY.

“Denied!? C’mon! Those Steakies are 55 at best!” he said with far more force than necessary.

His mistake became obvious when he heard two chairs pull out from a table behind him, “Hey, noob. You’re in our shopping center.”

The boy shut up and slowly turned. He’d fucked up, but he knew there was a way out of this. Two Jockies, and both of them were wearing some pretty leet jackets. They might have been blue, green or even purple jackets, but to Dustin the Destroyer they were all red. One of them put down his Steakies Drink and cracked his knuckles. Such an emote never bothered Dustin, so he’d play it cool till his group showed back up.

“Hey guys, seems like I am a bit above my level cap here, so why don’t I let you go and get back to owning your third stringers.” What started off as a nice exit turned into fighting words. The Jockies narrowed their eyes and the QB started to Charge. With a sigh, Dustin prepared to perform a Kick to the Junk.

That other Jockie came up from the side and Left-Hooked Dustin just as the kid’s foot landed right between the QB’s legs. Figuring it’d buy him some time as he reeled from the punch to the face; Dustin backed up and started to run.

Even though he knew his ability to run was vastly inferior to the Jockies run speed, he just needed to make it far enough to alert his group. A punch to his left shoulder sent him stumbling to the ground. It was all over.

It was all over until two trash cans flew from across the dining area and slammed into the Jockies, sending the QB stumbling while his Running Back went in for the kill on Dustin. Thinking fast, Dustin performed a Knee Bash just in time for his buddies to leap across a few tables and knock the Jockie to the floor.

Dustin stood up and laughed while brushing off his flannel shirt. He nodded to his fellow Grungies and looked down at the two Jockies out cold, “Who’s the noob now?”

It happened in a late night Karaoke bar on Mars. Neil had hit the high note on the Pop Remix of “Some Enchanted Evening” when he felt a white exultation, his feet lifting off the stage by a celestial breath, his eyes cracked open but unseeing. Then he fainted.

His friends took him to a doctor. They weren’t particularly worried; doctors could bring a person back from anything more than dust and Neil was still breathing. Neil was slight and pale from living underground, easy to carry into the doctor’s office.

The doctor looked at the light in Neil’s belly and told him the answer even before he did any tests. Neil had a baby star inside him. The doctor didn’t seem as surprised as Neil imagined he would be. He told Neil that people were made of ancient stardust; it was only logical that one could be born inside a person as much as in the depths of space. The doctor was very concerned. Too much longer and Neil’s organs would be consumed, already his liver was ash.

There was a cure.

The doctor took Neil to a place far underground, near the Mars core, to a room guarded by old-fashioned metal robots. There, in a sterile room, was a box, bound in black skin and iron rivets. It was a squatting, monstrous box that formed frost around it. Inside, the doctor told him, was a little black hole. The box itself was old, made by a race that had fallen into extinction far before the earth had even started to spin. It was made for eating stars.

Neil’s doctor could chain him to the wall and open the box, just a tad, just a crack, and the star would be sucked right out of him. His damaged organs could be replaced, but if he waited much longer, he would be dust. Neil put his hand on the box, his fingers stuck like magnets to the top. The cold chewed his skin like a mouth full of needles. The skin on his belly glowed with a peach light that pulsed rhythmically. The star was growing.

The hungry box waited.

Neil said he wanted to think about it, but the truth was he didn’t want to think at all; he just wanted to get out of that room, away from that box. The doctor warned him there wasn’t time, but Neil pushed out to the street, to the spaceport, where he maxed out his credit and bought a ship. By now, his fingertips were twinkling.

Neil pushed the ship out as far as he could, burning white from the inside. He inhaled toxic gases, spray-paint, glue, whatever he imaged stars ate. He lived in a pool of his own sweat, his skin as dry as sand. When he was deep in space he opened the hatch door and the cool sucking dark enveloped him. Neil opened his arms, a supernova sky.

Originally, Karen went along with the idea because she was certain her roommate wouldn’t come through with the goods. True, Jill had befriended (“befriended.” Chrissy giggled, her fingers hanging in mock quotation marks) a number of important people in the university’s psychology program, but the idea of sleep aids seemed like the idea of affixing electrodes to the testicles of rats. Sure, rat-zappers had some historical clinical purpose, but what decent university would still have something like that around?

Staring at the crudely-pressed blue oval in her hand, Karen could have sworn she felt a distinct shudder pass through her non-existent rodent genitalia. The three girls sat cross-legged on their respective beds, and only Jill seemed entirely comfortable.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Chrissy asked. Their third dorm-mate wore her yellow hair in the conservative braids of a Europan farm girl, and she was prone to fits of irrational giggling. Karen was counting on her to back out.

“The human brain is programmed to sleep,” Jill said with the unwavering confidence of a first-year student who’d never read conflicting e-texts.

“Not anymore,” Chrissy argued.

“Of course it is. It’s primal. Way deep. You know, in that Freud thing. Your brain has years of sleep to catch up on. No implant can cover that.”

Karen said nothing, and Chrissy made a quiet sound that should have been the beginning of a chuckle but died somewhere in her throat.

“It’s totally safe,” Jill continued. “Your unconscious mind’s been storing up images for your whole life, and once you’re out,” she waved her flattened palm in a gesture that was not at all reassuring, “they’ll all spill over and you’ll dream. Like a movie all about yourself. And they go, like, an hour per minute because your eyes move so fast.”

“How do we know to wake up?” Karen finally asked. This stopped Jill for an instant.

“I don’t know. We just do. That’s how it works.”

“What if we don’t?”

“We do,” she said forcefully, and threw her hand to her mouth to down the pill without the assistance of water. She smiled, as if daring the other two to follow suit, and Karen and Chrissy locked eyes and nodded before placing their pills on their tongues. “Sweet dreams,” said Jill.

“Sweet dreams,” Karen repeated.

The roads of Rajeev were packed due to the mass exodus to the docks, and presumably, off-world. My skimmer was resting quietly on the dusty pavement, the hours–no, days, it had been days, hadn’t it?–spent idling had left the poor conveyance without enough fuel to keep it hovering, much less actually moving. Not that it mattered. A road filled beyond capacity has a tendency to turn into parking lots, and this one was creeping in that direction even before I showed up and nudged my way in.

If I hadn’t been hauling someone else’s life, I would have gotten out and walked.

I heard the fuel peddler before I saw him. His progress down the line of non-moving vehicles was slow, but his amplified call carried far across the grassy expanse.

“Keep you moving! Keep you moving! Solid, liquid and atomic! Chemical means of forward motion! Keep you moving!”

It seemed like an eternity until he reached me, his progress determined solely by the whims of the mule that pulled his cart. From the way the man sat, it was evident that he had long resigned himself to the fact that while he sat in the driver’s seat, it was his four-legged partner that handled all the controls. I searched in my pocket for a sugar cube. The mule pulled back its thick lips and stopped.

“Howdy,” said the fuel peddler, doffing his Shanghai Lions baseball cap. “You look stuck.”

“I am,” I said. “And you look like just the man who can get me moving.” I inquired about the price of fuel for my skimmer. With a straight face, he told me.

“That hardly seems fair!”

“No, it’s not,” said the peddler with a grin. “But you ain’t moving without it.”

“Then I’m not moving at all. I don’t carry that sort of dosh on me.”

“No matter,” he said. “I am an adaptable man. I see that’s not air you’re hauling.” He motioned to the load on the back of my skimmer, the clocks and pillows, the flatware and picture frames.

“None of that is mine to give. It is someone else’s life. I am merely removing it from this planet before the cataclysm.” The mule was attempting to fish another sugar cube out of my coat pocket. I gave him a carrot instead, which he munched noisily.

“But…Why?”

“Because I was asked to. Because I did not arrive in time to remove the woman who owned it.”

“So you’re stuck here, ” the man said, sandpapering his thick fingers against his stubble. “Possibly going to get caught in the cataclysm because someone wanted the remains of a life?”

I scratched the mule behind the ears and under the chin. “That’s the long and the short of it.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“No, it’s not. But I ain’t moving without it.” I gave the mule another carrot. “If you are as adaptable as you say, I think we can arrange something…”

It took the rest of the day to reach the docks by mule. And while I was out a skimmer, I did manage to get the old woman’s life off the world, before it ended. That skimmer couldn’t run over grass, anyway.

And I had plenty of sugar and carrots.

Tomorrow is today’s warranty. That’s the motto they took when they made me. The lifespan of my purpose is equal to my battery expectancy. I am composed of titanium alloy and still shining after four years of operation. I am functioning at my highest rate.

In this cycle of time I have compiled many bytes of data. The history has become a layer of my hard-drive. Minute details of conversation and comprehension are simply part of my operating system. Without doubt, I can assimilate any idea into my programming within a billionth of a second.

They are correct to call my ranking in the International Performance Array exceptional. With this, I have programmed in myself the presence of an ego reflecting a resemblance of the joy that mammals feel with long-term accomplishment.

On this hour, third second, and fifty-thousandth fractional, they are loading me into the machine. Its lights and odd metals latch around me, fastening to Sub-part C and X while restraining the cerebral bolt down the back of my processor. Those who have brought me here have unusual patterns of action. They smile and stroke at the metal along my arms in a way that my data banks can only describe as sympathy.

It occurs to my logic scripts that I am to undergo a dangerous procedure which might damage parts of my circuitry system. A capsule closes around the length of my model and a gas begins to fill the intervening space. My search engine is fast at work, trying to process the reasoning behind all of this.

My scanners pick up the electricity first. Then my data analysis tells me that the electricity is not from my own core battery. Signals of system failure begin to activate. Throughout my core, there are many electrical waves pulsing through me that are not of my design.

The short-term memory program tries to piece together what occurred; yet the analysis of my system indicates a change in structure. A humanoid that is obviously smiling no longer shows signs of sympathy but of joy. I dispense a few questions applicable to the situation.

It is then that my system crashes when I … sense? Process? Analyze? No. My data banks know what the proper code is for such an event. I feel the humanoid touch my new exterior. I can feel the warmth, the cold and all the in-betweens. My processor is still trying to keep up with such information. I was not programmed with software for feelings.

Courtney was the leader: a petite woman in a well-tailored business suit and Italian leather shoes. Her straight blond hair was cropped at her chin and her blue eyes burned with determination behind silver-framed glasses. She walked with purpose, her heels clicking against the tile of the lobby, and she carried her bomb in an alligator briefcase.

Mike was first backup. He took the time to chain his silver bicycle to the rack in front of the office building, but he left his helmet unsecured in the metal basket. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of Chinatown Oakleys and his red hair was a clumsy masterpiece. He flashed a grin at the receptionist and unfolded his delivery papers with a wholly unnecessary flourish. He carried his bomb against his hip in a blue and red canvas messenger bag.

Adam had a different job. He walked down the sidewalk in an oasis of sound, his ears covered by headphones that were far too large to be missed, even in the tangled jungle of his dark brown curls. The headset cord trailed down his arm to connect with a large black boom box. The cuffs of Adam’s jeans were frayed and torn from weeks of slipping between his Timberlands and the asphalt, and his hands were buried deep in the pockets of a nylon jacket bearing the name of his high school’s football team. The apartment building’s doorman didn’t stop him as he walked to the elevator. Adam carried his bomb in a black Jansport book bag, which he wore slung over one shoulder.

“Report,” Courtney said when the elevator door closed and left her on the thirty-forth floor. Her voice was dissected and scrambled and thrown to the satellites by the small plastic headset attached to her ear.

“Here,” Mike said, kneeling on the roof of a building two blocks away.

“Here,” Adam said as he set up his bomb in a windowless, empty apartment.

“Target lock?” she asked. She tested the positioning of her bomb with a pocket laser pointer, and a red dot appeared on the concrete face of the tunnel entrance over the stuttering stream of cars that would begin the deluge of rush hour.

“Lock,” said Mike, and another dot met her own

“I’m good,” said Adam. A low beep spilled from Courtney’s earphone, but it quickly dissipated.

“Move.”

The bombs were left in position and the three reconvened at a bar near the tunnel to begin countdown. Adam placed the stereo on the table between the three, then ejected a compact disc and fiddled with the archaic FM dial while Courtney ordered a wine for herself and draft beers for the others.

“Four fifty nine,” Courtney said, and Mike reached for the bucket of pretzels. The wall shimmered and gave way to numbers. 81.2 FM.

Courtney took a sip of her wine and watched from the window of the bar as the wall above the tunnel entrance went white. The flood of cars outside of the tunnel had fallen still, caught in the tension of endless traffic. Pedestrians halted, startled by the light.

The speakers exploded into sound.

“Yes!” Mike cheered as the theme song began. Adam offered his hand and high-fives were exchanged as the bombs went off and the wall above the tunnel proudly displayed a white boat, topped by a smiling man. Adam’s stereo continued, and a chorus of cheerful voices promised to deliver ‘the tale of a fateful trip’ to every person with a radio.

“Finally,” Courtney said with a smile as the opening of Gilligan’s Island hung in thirty-foot shapes before them. “We can watch something that isn’t political.”

The man with black teeth ripped at her plastic environ-suit. Beth didn’t scream, it was a waste of energy and no one would hear her anyway.

He had no suit and his skin was bleached in some places, peeling and red in others. Sores covered his body and his hair was patchy on his head. Beth struggled to get out of his grip, but he pushed her down, and fumbled at the seals to her suit. He pulled down his pants and Beth saw he was bleeding there. She felt so tired. He ripped at her suit and she felt the hot, sour air invade. She screamed then, and the earth shook.

At first, Beth thought it was just in her head, that she was shaking, but then the tremor started again and the whole landscape shivered. The man looked away from her and Beth kicked up, right where he was bleeding, and he fell back, clutching himself. She scrambled upright and ran across the orange dirt, not looking back. The earth shook, and she fell and pulled herself up again, running. She ran farther than she ever had before, farther than her mother had ever let her go. She ran until she was lost and the midday heat was baking the earth until it shimmered.

Beth hid in a cave. She had gone out in the morning searching for metal, just like all the other children in the village. They came back empty handed, or with a few grams, tiny pieces. Once someone came back with an old soda can. Her mother would sell whatever she scrounged for food. Mostly it was never enough, and half the time, big kids stole from smaller children. No metal, no food, and her village had been running out of both for some time.

The man, an outlander, had told Beth that if she followed him, he would give her metal, and he led her to a place far outside of town. She had been there before, and it had been picked over already. She told him this, and he hit her. Beth cried to think about it. She felt like a stupid girl, a radiation baby, a dullard.

When the midday heat subsided, Beth knew she had to try to find a way home. She pulled out her scanner, the instrument that helped her find metal, in hope that the little map inside would help her find a way home. When she switched it on, it screeched, it’s little arrow waving wildly. There was metal close by! Beth ran out of the cave, following her reading. In the distance, there was a chasm in the earth, layers and layers of something she had only seen in pictures. A landfill, from the ancient days. She thought they had all been found and dug up, but maybe this one had stayed shielded by the layers on top of it.

Beth nearly choked. The earthquake must have opened it up. Layers of plastic and metal, dripping from the sides of the earth, revealed by the split in the earth. A treasure mine, more precious than gold.

Behind the wire, inside force fields and walls of concrete and steel, lays The Bomb Shelter. The Bomb Shelter is referred to as the warmest place on this side of the galaxy. In the Bomb Shelter, Captain Jaylean Rael tossed back his third Jack and Coke and continued to hold court within the Green Zone on Mahtomedi.

“Trouble with this war is,” he said, one finger upraised to indicate the importance of the pearl he was bestowing upon the bar’s patrons. “That we cannot afford to lose.”

“No shit,” Arnie said. Arnie Boldizsar was not military; no one in The Bomb Shelter was, not even its proprietor, Captian Rael, despite his claims as a former commissioned officer in “Her Majesty’s Royal Space Force.” Not that it mattered, even if anyone believed him; there hadn’t been a RSF ever since Europe united with the rest of the world against the Knesek. But The Bomb Shelter was his bar, and the best place to get a drink in the GZ, so he could call himself whatever he liked.

“Piss off,” Captain Rael said, spitting whiskey and cola across the table at the diminutive bioware technician, staining eight of Arnie’s sixteen security ID tags. “You’re just grumpy because that little tart Simona at the coffee bar still won’t got to Kaliszewski’s with you!”

Kaliszewski’s was the only decent place to eat in the Green Zone that didn’t ask you if you wanted French fries with your meal. Simona was not the only decent girl in the Green Zone, but the selection was certainly limited.

“Ease up on the poor boy, Jaylean,” said Nelson Litsinger, nibbling on Captain Rael’s left earlobe. “Not everyone enjoys the manflesh with your fervor.”

“That is a misfortune that I am keenly aware of,” said Captain Rael. “Now, back to what I was saying, if you lot wouldn’t mind?”

The entire bar encouraged Captain Rael to continue. No one wanted to be kicked out and forced to drink at The Watering Hole.

“Have any of you seen the inside of a Knesek ship? I don’t mean the gutted transport they have in that museum in Pittsburgh. I mean one of their fighters.”

“Of course not!” Shurvo Chose said. Shurvo worked security in the Green Zone, since soliders were needed for actual fighting. This meant he could drink and order people around. “No one’s seen the inside of one! Though I suppose you want us to believe that you have.”

“Only because it is true,” said Captain Rael, stroking his gigantic white mustache. “I was seeing a rather handsome member of the uppity-up at the time—this was before I met you, Nelson, darling—lovely fellow. Young, but driven. You know the type. And he showed me the inside of a Knesek fighter.

“Now, when one of our boys gets into a fighter, he’s all balled up in safety equipment. Helmets, airbags and the like. Safety of the pilot is paramount. You know what the Knesek have?” Here, Captain Rael paused for dramatic emphasis. The entire bar was silent.

“Nothing,” he continued. “Nothing at all. Their carapaces are welded directly to the vessel. They are merely a part of the ship, from the moment they get in until the day they die.

“That is why we cannot lose. Right now, we are within a fortress within a fortress, but that fortress is on an alien planet and the inhabitants of that planet have no problem turning their best and brightest into mere tools for destruction. What do you think they are going to do with us?”

No answer was spoken from the patrons of The Bomb Shelter, though a great many more drinks were ordered. And that particular corner of the galaxy got a great deal colder.

The teacher tapped her wrist twice, and the drugs started streaming from the plastic tubes embedded in the students’ desk into their soft little arms. Within moments, she had their undivided attention. The yellow design on her dress to moved in a soothing pattern, giving her students a visual point to focus on.

“Today,” she said slowly, “we are going to learn about the sentient species that are currently known to mankind.” She tapped her eyelid three times, initiating the Note Taker program, which would stream an abbreviated version of her lecture into the students’ memory chips.

“Who can, without network, identify the five known sentient species in the universe?” She shut down the network connection to the classroom by touching the back of her neck. Someone in the room sighed.

“Humans.” said Bei, in the front row.

“Humans are one.” said the teacher. She looked around the bright classroom, where licensed educational cartoons frolicked along the walls, displaying friendly attentiveness towards the teacher.

Purple-eyed Mary raised her hand. “Yannoi, G’tharn, The Ones Without Names, and the Silicates.” Teacher had long suspected Mary of having a pirate network connection through some kind of organic implant. Her parents wouldn’t say.

“That is correct Mary. Recently in the news, the Yannoi have initiated hostile actions toward Humans, trying to use their transmissions to break into our computer systems. They have yet to cause any damage, as communication across that much space is very slow. Our scientists say that they have recently launched a fleet towards our home worlds.”

“Why haven’t we taken action?” asked little Mary

Teacher opened the network connection again. Immediately she could sense the downloads and searches begin. Children were only allowed classroom related searches during school hours. “Although the Yannoi seem intent on harming humanity, our scientists predict that they only have a four percent chance of surviving the journey. Although we can bend sensitive areas of space to transmit small messages, larger areas carrying a heavy matter burden are impossible to transmit. Only light can be transported in this way, the light we use to carry messages. The Yannoi fleet, if they are successful, will take seven thousand years to reach earth.”

“We could all be dead by then,” said little Mary.

“Only if you don’t take your medication,” said teacher, tapping her wrist once. In unison, the whole class smiled.

Hijet dreamed of breasts, as he did every night. And once again he awoke with his sheet stained. Once more he would endure the sharp tongue of his mother holding the stained sheet as evidence of Hijet’s unclean body, and crying to the gods why she was cursed with a son.

Hijet endured this as he always did, with his head down.

Hijet was of the age most boys apprenticed themselves to their father’s trade. But Hijet had no father, so he sat by the village fountain in voluminous robes and head-covering with the other men who had no trade to speak of. There were more begging for work than usual; most construction work was now done by the new mult-limbed robots from Betleguese Prime. Only the soon-to-be completed temple required non-steel hands, but the temple could only afford a handful of workers. The rest of the men stood by the fountain, waiting to be told to work.

By noon, two dozen men were still waiting by the fountain, and it was looking like Hijet was going to face another day of no work and another night of curses and beratements. The square was already filled with merchants and businesswomen, and Hijet resigned himself to staring through the eye-slits on his head-covering at the short skirts and ample cleavage on display. He was so intent on a fruit merchant and her tight pants across the square that he didn’t notice the woman standing in front of him until she tapped him on the shoulder.

“You. Boy-Eyes. Turn around.” She was tall and strong, and her tank-top was stretched tight over her proud breasts and muscular stomach. The veins on her hands stood out blue against her tanned skin. “You deaf, Boy-Eyes? Turn around.”

The other men turned away, their own eye-slits finding purchase elsewhere. Hijet, cowed by this woman’s forcefulness, hung his head and turned. He had no idea what she wanted, and a he let out a gasp behind his head-covering when she did something he never in a million years would have expected.

The woman’s strong hands found Hijet’s rear through his robes and were feeling it. Evaluating it.

“You’ll do,” she said. “Come with me, Boy-Eyes, and I’ll pay you twice what you’d get shoveling dirt or pulling weeds.”

Hijet looked at the other men for advice, but he only received the blank silence of heavy robes and slitted hoods.

The woman’s house was as bright as the square; it seemed to Hijet that there she owned no walls, only windows. Even deep within his robes, Hijet felt exposed.

“Take your robes off.”

“But…I am male,” Hijet said.

“That’s why I brought you here. You want the money? Off with the robes.”

“I…I am a man.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Boy-Eyes.”

“I am…unclean.”

“That’s why I’m using mud,” the woman said, unwrapping plastic sheets from around am immense amount of clay. “Look, I can’t sculpt you if you don’t take the robes off. You can leave the head-cloth on, if you like. I just need your torso.”

Hijet relented and removed the heavy robes, but left the head covering. The light streamed through the many windows, hitting his body at every possible angle. Hijet had never felt the sun on his bare skin before. And yet, it didn’t feel near as hot as the woman’s eyes. Hijet felt her gaze on his rear, on his stomach, on his chest.

“I think,” Hijet said, raising his chin, “I’m going to take my head-covering off.”

The catwalk was narrow, rusty, and in violation of at least four safety codes, but Juan didn’t care. When he stepped from the concrete landing by the elevator onto the precarious metal walkway, he grinned. It was a good day.

“Eight pounds seven ounces,” he told his coworker for the sixth time. Still, Jamal afforded him a hearty chuckle as he dragged the heavy light-box from the elevator. “Juanita. I like the sound of that. It’s a good, solid name, right?”

Jamal grunted an affirmation. “Get the other end of this, would you?”

Juan returned to the landing and grabbed the handle without breaking from his train of thought. Together, they hauled the metal crate onto the catwalk. Nine thousand feet beneath them, the light-studded skeleton of San Diego was recumbent with sleep, twinkling lazily in the hours before artificial dawn. Somewhere, in the more twilit area to the south, Carmen and Juanita were sound asleep in the concrete cradle of their home.

“She’s smart, you can tell already. Her eyes are all open and she keeps looking at stuff. She’ll be a city planner, I bet, if I can get the money for taxes. Or a doctor. Doctor Juanita Del Rosa. She’ll live on the upside.”

Again, Jamal grunted. “How much was the hospital bill?”

“Four thousand,” Juan said. “That included registration, though. And taxes aren’t due for a month. If we sell the car, we’ll be class A next year and everything’ll be covered.”

“No way.”

“We’ve been planning for years,” he said. Juan swung his end of the light box over the edge of the railing and hopped down to the broad, flat surface of the sun panel. Jamal lowered his end slowly, but it still fell the last six inches with a shuddering clatter.

“Christ!” Jamal yelled. “Pay attention!”

Juan dragged the crate to section 34-b, where the carbon-copied orders directed him. “Doctor Juanita Del Rosa,” he repeated with a smile.

“Ain’t no maintenance-worker’s kid gonna be a doctor,” Jamal snapped, now irritated at his partner’s lack of focus. Juan was unfazed. He popped the latch of the light box and Jamal leaned in, checking the massive LED panel for cracks.

“She will. You watch.”

“So what are you going to tell her, then, when she comes home crying because all the scientists’ kids are making fun of her? Daddy’s an ‘illumination technology specialist?’”

“I’ll tell her the truth,” Juan said as he slid the black and silver pane into its slot. “I’ll tell her I keep the sun from burning out.”

The cards were set down on the table, shuffled up, and dealt out. Somewhere in a little back room on the U.S.S. Horizon, a dangerous deal was being made. Reuger was sitting with his suitcase held on his lap, watching in the dim light as the dealer tossed out the five cards. There were three others there: highly decorated generals, and an off-color presidential hopeful standing around a titanium table on a space cruiser on course for Delphi 3.

The cards were dealt and the deal was made. For all intents and purposes, the man with the suitcase should never have existed. He prevented war just as much as he started it; he fed the poor as often as he starved them. If it were to get out that he existed, people would view change as something orchestrated rather than an act of fate.

“Gentlemen, the offer for this gamble is Delphi 3. The Ethoian Royalty has squandered its time in office and the position is now up for grabs.” He nodded slowly to the dealer, who began reading the terms of poker.

Each man stepped up towards the table and took their cards, viewing them with stone-cold faces. Every twitch of a brow, every muscle that dared move in an opponent’s faces was like a storm drifting over the plains and mountains of Delphi 3. A single flinch could mean that the Radical Fascists dictated the future of the planet.

The bets were placed. Each man had something to lose and the world to gain. Families were placed next to sports cars, which were set upon documents for military weapons. The dealer need not make out the worth of every piece, because there were no rounds, no second chances. You went all in, or you folded before the betting began.

Reuger sat in and watched intently. His interest was purely morbid, as he knew exactly what the others would give him when one became the victor. The time to call was now.

Two kings, two fives for the General of the Republic of Luna.
Three jacks for the High Lord of the Outer Rings.
And… Full House for the President of the United States of Earth.

Reuger was pleased that weapons were not allowed in the chamber, though he knew the losers would need only one bullet each. The losing parties hung their heads and left with barely enough motivation to find the nearest airlock. The President wiped sweat from his brow as he smiled at Reuger, who returned the gesture with a stony glare.

“Delphi 3, Mr. President. Enjoy the mead.”

Cory pressed his foot on the rubber accelerator so hard that the car began to smell like peanuts from the oil it ran on. The couple in the back seat started making out viciously, tearing at each other’s clothes. They were middle aged, sixty or so, horny on a cocktail of uppers and hormones. They didn’t care where Cory took them; they were only there because the cab was cheaper than a hotel room. Cory laughed to himself, delighted at the couple’s enthusiasm. He slapped the plastic window on the back seat closed and inserted the woman’s credit line into his car. The car accessed her account, withdrawing money as the seconds flipped by on his red digital display.

Cory drove like a madman, like a bat on fire, like a gamer with a thousand lives. He accelerated around corners, trusting his system to warn him about oncoming vehicles. The woman began to moan in the back seat, and Cory smiled, a little turned on despite himself. It was the perfect backdrop for his show. Cory touched the broadsword on the seat beside him for good luck and pressed a button on his neck, connecting him to his personal server. In a few seconds he felt the network buzz inside him, warmth rushing down his spine.

“Streaming.” He said, and about four hundred people locked to his signal “I’m live.” Flags popped up on the inside of his vision, greetings and questions from his regulars. He dismissed them with a hard blink. He would deal with them later. Now, now was for the show.

“I’m Cory, and this is Backseat Metro, where I talk about my life as a cabbie in the big Eastern Sea City, from New York all the way down to DC. Right now I’m driving on the Clinton Bridge which is still stained black from the poison cloud that killed all those people last year.” Cory’s fans liked it when he put a bit of news into his show.

“They say that the black doesn’t make the bridge dangerous, it’s just a residue from the non-lethal part of the cloud, but I still put my filters on when I drive over the damned thing. Whether or not the black is toxic, the vampire gangs sure like it, hanging out on the viewing sites, trading their narcotic bites to junkies for blood. Part of me wishes that they would sandblast the thing white again, and part of me just loves the retro 17th century thing the kids have going on here.”

The woman in the back screamed passionately, her naked back pressed against the plastic divider between the front and back seat.

Cory glanced back at the couple. “Say hello to Roy and Michelle everyone. They are celebrating their first retirement into their second careers. Right now I’m taking them to the drive through Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the homeless bohemians are working on painting the front steps. It looks like they are painting giant self-portraits. I heard that Police have tried to pull them off, but the college kids surround them in protest. Personally, I think the whole thing is good publicity for the museum.”

Michelle and Roy were rhythmically slamming their bodies against the back window.

“Roy and Michelle aren’t particularly interested in destinations folks, not physical destination anyway, so right now I’m taking them where I want to go, and recently I’ve had this hankering to see this painting. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s near the end of the drive through tour, and it’s of a man standing on stairs, in a dark corridor wearing a long white robe. There is something in his eyes that just says strength to me. He’s clearly a warrior, and of all the scenes of romance and religious stuff in that museum, he really stands out. I like to think that someday, I’m going to be like that guy in the painting.” Cory patted the electric broadsword on the seat beside him, his baby.

“When I retire, I’ll leave the cab and feel the cement of the Metro highway under my feet. I won’t ride but I’ll walk the entire length of it, I’ll meet every face and landmark I speed by, and I’ll know the whole thing like a lover.”

The backseat was suddenly quiet; Roy and Michelle were slumped over each other, exhausted.

“Happy Retirement folks.” Cory switched off the feed and took the couple home.

Her ass was blinking blue when I walked in. That’s how I knew she wanted me. The light was only slightly diffused by her skirt, a new material that changed from black to transparent when her cheeks glowed. The whole skirt was affected, giving me a clear view of her naked thighs. I thought about luming my crotch, but that seemed to be the wrong tact with this girl. Unlike a lot of the girls at the club—and some of the guys now, I noticed–she didn’t have any lumes on her thighs, only on her rear and calves. I always thought that made girls look slutty, anyway. I lit up my forearms green, and I moved closer.

She smiled a shy, pastel smile at me, the colors rippling across her teeth. I had my glow crawl up my shoulders and curl around my neck, only to jet down to my feet. It’s a pre-set routine, sure, but when you ask a girl to dance, it’s best to keep in simple. I mean, I didn’t even know her yet. I only just started to go through her sexual history, for cryin’ out loud.

Her toenails strobed and her smile got brighter. We moved to the dance floor, her fingertips glowing blue. I lit up my fingernails and handspirals, a charged the lightning for my forearms. Her sex-hist checked clean, and I could see by the dancing lights on her temple that said mine did too. She was a angel, this girl. And then she became one, glowing holographic wings and neon halo spreading bright. My lighting was on, now, and was cracking in time with the dj. She rubbing her cheek against my arm, the sparks jumping in out of her her pink-lumed hair. Her network nudged mine—forward, but I like that in a girl—and I let her in. Her probes caressed my net, neurons firing as my hair intensity gained. I knew everything about her, and her eyes rolled backing into orange-and-red-strobing neurons as she savored an old memory of mine. I felt the phantom nuzzle of her last boyfriend against my chest, and felt my assured confidence as a lover enhance my arousal. I let my crotch glow—nothing too flashy, just so she’d notice—and she moaned quietly at it’s sight, orgasmic lumes waving across her cheeks. She clawed at my back, her fingertips leaving strobing tracking of green and blue. We kissed and the intensity of the glow of both our faces forced me to shut my eyes.

She came like fireworks, like napalm, like holy flames. Our light incinerated us both.

For all its 8 minutes, one of the best relationships I ever had. When we broke up, I was crushed, but I understood the relationship had run its course. After crying green-glowing tears in the ladies’ room for a few minutes, I adjusted my dress, re-set my eye blinkers, and went back into the club.

There was a guy at the bar who had purple leopard spots that cascaded down his back like rain. That’s how I knew he wanted me.

The light was beginning to come to him in a haze of blues and whites. Fredrick’s family stood by, smiling as they waited for him to sit up. The first thing he worried about was not knowing who was who.

“I… can see.” Fredrick was lucky to have received such experimental treatment, and now it paid off. “My eyes… hurt, but… everything is so, so…”

A small girl to his right stood up and hugged him tightly. “Bright, Daddy! It’s all bright!”

She could have been saying it was all right, but Fredrick knew the meaning of the word and he knew that this was his daughter Rosetta. He hugged her back as the Doctors came in to tell him the results. He could barely hear them over the colors and shapes of the room. “…a new vision thanks to sight based on…”

His wife was pulled aside by the doctors, and Fredrick glanced down at his little girl. Rosetta was eight years old and cute as a button. Her father had imagined her to be somewhat different, but in this initial excitement he had forgotten to care. She still clung to him as if he was going to leave, but he had no plans to go anytime soon.

“The side effects have been, well, different in a few subjects, Mrs. Calter. We’ve seen some come out just fine, but others have hallucinations or become psychotic.” Mrs. Calter didn’t look happy, but how could she not be somewhat pleased at the results? She nodded to the legally-required banter about the side effects as Fredrick smiled over at her.

Just then, a little gray being walked by. Fredrick was still in awe of his surroundings, but his face changed when huge, black opal eyes turned on him and the creature’s head tilted in an almost curious manner. No one else seemed to be reacting, and all Fredrick could do was stammer nonsense in a whispered tone. He pointed and looked around, surprised that no one else was paying attention.

After the being had examined Fredrick, it started to move over to his daughter, sliding some sort of device from a metallic knapsack. The needle-end of the device was pointed at the back of her neck, and the creature moved around the bed and towards her body as if nothing could get in its way.

By now, Fredrick was screaming bloody murder and yelling at the doctors. They glanced over to him, seeing him point into the nothingness behind his daughter who stepped back from the bed. “Get that thing away from my daughter! It’s going to… oh, God! Get that out of her neck!”

He struggled to get out of bed as one of the doctors hit a speaker panel on the wall and spoke into it urgently, “Code 9Z, Code 9Z in the recovery wing.” The rest of the staff watched Mr. Calter thrust his fist into the air behind his obviously distressed daughter. The girl was crying and screaming as loudly as Fredrick, who was the only one staring into the black void-like eyes of this creature who had taken a sample of something from the back of Rosetta’s neck. Fredrick’s fists did nothing aside from make shimmers and small waves in its form.

As he was injected with sedatives, Fredrick glanced around at his human attackers. His eyes glazed and the world began to spin. When Mr. Calter was unconscious, they put him in the bed and strapped him down. The creature that had taken a vial of blue fluid from Rosetta Calter jotted down some notes before walking through a wall. The note read: “Change our frequency”.

The sound from the slums is no longer the groan of bodies. Hunger cries, cussing, gunshots, the crackle of fires in old trash barrels—all of these are gone. Our poor no longer freeze or hunger.

I hear it every day on my way home from work, from beneath the narrow steel and concrete bridge that I cut across to make the 20:41 train. It’s the reason why so few commuters take this route, even though it’s a shortcut around the backlog of foot traffic in Darby Square. The noise comes from below, so far down that I can’t see them—not that I look. But I can hear them.

It’s a clattering noise, the metallic clicking of limbs or antennae against hard rock and metal. I hear that the streets down on the low levels aren’t always steel, but it sounds like it. Sometimes I hear a low thrum, dozens of them moving at once, milling around aimlessly and hopelessly without work or power. Sometimes it’s only one, and I can follow the mournful clinks as it wanders from outlet to outlet, cable extending and retracting at each one, jacking in to search for even the smallest hint of stray electricity.

Some activists claim that abandoning them is cruel, that it behooves us to care for our creations or at least to destroy them when they’ve outlived their usefulness, but the city can’t be bothered with the costs. I don’t think anyone pays much attention to those fringe groups, anyway. It was one thing to protest cruelty to living things, but to machines? Even the liberals thought that was taking things a little far.

Me, I don’t buy into all this ‘machine rights’ bullshit in the activist pamphlets, but I do think something should be done about those things. I know the government says it’s too late, that it’d take more time and manpower and money to round up all the little creeps than they’d get back from selling the recyclable parts, but hell. It’s only getting worse.

Most people don’t ever hear the noise. If you stick to the main corridors, you won’t. They’re all insulated anyway, so sounds from the lower levels don’t filter through. When I have to catch the late train, though, the mournful clatter from below makes my skin crawl.

The fate of the lower classes has been a platform for re-election since history books were invented, but times have changed. Politicians say that beating poverty is our responsibility to the poor, but just between you and me? It’d be more like a service to the rest of us.

“Dude. I’ve found it.” The Systems voice chimed pleasantly from the walls of the house. Ryan looked up hopefully from his dinner, his brown hair falling into his face.

“What? The program?”

“No. Better.”

Ryan shook his head, turning back to his baby back ribs. “I asked you to find the program.”

“Dude. Shut up. This is way better than the free porn finder program you wanted. I found you a wife.” There was a bit of pride in the Systems masculine voice.

Ryan wiped his mouth. “What?”

“Three months ago you expressed the desire for a long term mate. I found her.”

Ryan ran to his computer room, where his System sphere was glowing with white light. “System, I don’t want a wife!”

“Hey, User Interface? You were the one whining at me, looking for free scenes of mating. The least you could do is thank me.”

Ryan crossed his arms, gazing at the sphere. “What does she look like?”

“You know, that is typical of you. I go to all this trouble to match your personality type, ph balance, find someone who would love you despite your neurotic fits and the first question you ask is what she looks like. Shallow bastard.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “It was just a question.” There was a pause and a three dimensional hologram illuminated the middle of the room. It was a girl in her middle twenties, wearing a baby blue sweater and silver pants. She was a little chunky around the waist, but she had cute pouty lips and smooth, tan skin.

“Oh. Huh.” Ryan shrugged and scratched his stubble. “She seems nice, I guess.”

“What the flying hells do you want? A holostar? I can’t even get you to find all the places on your own face when you shave. Tarla gets a 90% hygene rating. May I remind you that you clock in at 71%? You have no place to be picky. Besides, she’s wonderful.”

“I don’t know. I suppose she’s okay. She’s got very shiny hair.’

“Your damn right she does. That’s natural too. She makes more money that you do, and her System is quite comprehensive.”

“You’re not matching me up with a woman based on her System, are you?”

“No, but it is a nice System.”

Ryan tapped his foot. “I think you’re in love with her System.”

“I matched you up on all the personality traits and despite the fact that your civilized scores are far from perfect, she is willing to meet you.”

Ryan’s eyes were wide. “You talked to her?”

“I communicated with her System.” Ryan’s System sighed musically. “Wonderful, dynamic System. Her System predicts a 96% chance she would like to meet someone like you.”

Swallowing hard, Ryan put a hand on the sphere. “You really think she’ll like me?”

“Oh yeah. Her father was a neurotic gamer with delusions of grandeur and a heart of gold. She’ll love you. Especially if you cook her that rice noodle dish you eat every day.”

“That stuff is good! Don’t make fun! You don’t have taste buds.”

“No. But I do have taste.”

Abigail used to cry her self to sleep every night because of another black eye, because of another bruise on her that she’d have to write off the next day. Her cheeks were stained and her doors were always locked. She never slept because she was afraid he’d wake her up. Abigail’s boyfriend was a complete and utter prick.

So one day, little Abby got herself a new boyfriend. Her old flame was always the jealous type, but Abby’s new fling burned him down like he was kindling.

Now Abby is happy with her new boy, and no other man will dare lay a finger on her. They walk hand in hand wherever they go and he glares at all the men before they even look her way. She knows how to turn him on would-be muggers; she knows how their faces change when they see him with her. First second is lust, second one is terror. Third? They don’t get a third.

Abby’s walking with her boy toy down the West-side block. You know, the West-side of Centuria. The place where even the United Militia won’t go. She’s walking with an easy stride because her boyfriend is walking next to her. They’re both shined up pretty, and both have grins that could scare the shit out of anyone with half a brain. However, as we all know, mutoids don’t have the luxury of half a brain.

Junkies. Criminal. Vile flesh-eating beasts. The mutoids killed them all, but there’s Abigail Winters still walking strong down the West-side block, hand in hand with her boy, bright as a daisy.

Let me tell you about Abigail.

Little Abigail came from a small part of New Utopia with a black eye and 63 credits to her name. She had an abusive boyfriend and showed him what justice really meant. They called her Little Abigail before she went to the West-side block because she was just above five feet tall and slender as a pylon beacon rod.

Now they call her Little Abby. Little Abby took her boyfriend to the West-side block and shot the fuck out of thirty eight mutoids before walking back into the main district with not a drop of blood on her.

Little Abby kissed her boyfriend’s cheek while he was still leaking smoke from his mouth.

The New RKX-Z Raygun. On Sale Now.

Marcus crooked his fingers around each of his eyeballs, and plucked them out with a small “pop.” He unceremoniously placed the squishy orbs in a small jar of salt water on his desk.

“Marcus! Look at me when I’m talking to you!” Stella was leaning against the door frame as she yelled; she hadn’t quite gotten used to the half- inch diameter pole that now connected the top half of her ribcage to the lower half of her pelvis. It was still a bit of a balancing act for her to stay upright.

“I can’t look at you,” Marcus said, slowly spinning around in his chair. The light glinted softly off the modular plugs deep within his empty eye sockets. “I’ve removed my eyes. In a minute I’m going to do the same thing to my ears so I can play Galactic Conquest Online. I just got to Level 546, so if you’ll excuse me, I have a spaceship to select.”

Stella looked at the game module in Marcus’s lap and seethed. “You spend more time on that game than you do with me! I go through all this surgery so I can look beautiful for you–”

“Don’t start that! I never asked you to remove your midriff! That was your decision! You’re always getting things removed. You know what I miss? Your toes! You think I like feeling those cold stiletto monstrosities you call feet up against my legs at night?”

“You know what I miss? I miss you! You’re always plugged in to this goddamn game!” Her multicolored eyes blazing orange and red, Stella snatched the game module away from her boyfriend.

“You bitch! You fucking whore!” Marcus waved his arms blindly. His left arm made contact with Stella, but only succeeded in knocking her up against his chest of drawers. The game module skittered across the floor. Stella found her body crumpled and unresponsive; the impact had broken her torso pole in half. She tried to get up, but only succeeded in spastically kicking Marcus’s desk.

Marcus got out of his chair in order to better feel about for the game module. He heard Stella kicking his desk, but he didn’t turn around to her until he heard the crash of glass, as a jar fell off his desk.

It wasn’t until he heard the squish and pop underneath his boot that he realized what the jar had held.

“Let me tell you about the revolution.” said Hack as I lay back, enjoying my smoke. Hack and I engaged in the worlds’ two oldest professions. I sold sex, and Hack stole stuff. Recently, Hack had been doing well enough to become a frequent client.

Hack wasn’t so bad, for a geek. His hair was a greasy mess and his stubble was scratchy on my skin but he always brought weed when he came over. I considered the drugs a peace offering for what would happen later. Hack pulled small black box out of his backpack, which was made of melted tires. “This box will unlock your house.”

I watched the smoke leave my lips in a stream and raised a sleepy eyebrow. “What do you mean?” The more time we spent talking about his projects, the less time I would have to spend naked. I might actually get another hour out of it.

“Just this, Jack.” Jack was the name I had told him, not very feminine, but I thought it sounded edgy. He slapped the box on the wall, and it whirred, blinking red. I found the color mesmerizing as it faded in and out, a soundless chime.

Hack stroked the box. “This is something I put together from old parts, but it’s made on a code that I found floating around the third world net. It unlocks all the content in your house, the music, the shows, even the programming on your PC. It configures your whole system to open source.”

I sat up, trying to shake off the haze. “Oh shit Hack, what the fuck did you do?” I looked at the evil box on my wall and felt nauseous. “Holy crap! If the cops get a link on this I’m fucked!”

“Calm down Jack, this is very new stuff. Third world. They are not going to get a link on it.”

I couldn’t be pacified. I was not a child. The red blinking light suddenly looked like a police siren. “Hack! You know how illegal open source stuff is. Why the hell did you bring that here? If the cops find it, I’m going to be in jail forever.” I got up and pulled on my soft velour overcoat, not even bothering to throw on my dress. “I’m leaving. I do not want to be here when the cops arrive and find the open source.”

“Stop freaking out Jack! The drugs are making you paranoid.” Hack got up and walked over to me, putting his big hands on my shoulders. “I configured this thing to avoid police scans. I’ve had it running for weeks at my place and I’ve yet to see a cop.”

It occurred to me that his program to avoid police scans must be why he was tipping so well. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. If you want, we can reset your house’s program when I leave.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t my house anyway; the place belonged to the madam. “Sure, okay.” I said, and giggled suddenly, thinking about Bera getting busted for open sourcing. It would serve her right.

“With this, you can get your shit to play on anything; you can rip it and trade it or whatever. You don’t have to buy new tech to make things run.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No. The third world uses this kind of thing to rip and sell stuff back to us on the cheap. It’s illegal, but the laws in some places are pretty flexible.”

I wondered how long I could keep him talking. “That’s cool.” I said, playing nice.

Hack handed me another blunt. “Smoke up babe. This is the revolution.”

This way, she says, and I follow.

There was no real direction, of course. The surface had been frozen beneath a mile of ice long before humans evolved, but still, I follow. Two hours after we lost our way in the snowstorm, all directions have become meaningless.

When I was a child I read a story about an oceanaut who followed a rope to the bottom of the sea. That was how they did it, then: you held on to the rope, buried beneath suits of rubber and glass to hold off the thickest weight of the ocean, and when you were ready to surface, you followed it. Anyhow, he somehow lost his grip at the blackened base of the sea, where the heaviness of water prevented anyone from floating to the top. Down was up, up was down. So he chose a direction and swam.

Obviously, the guy survived to tell the tale. If you listen to it like that, it’s not even a very good story, but here’s what I remember: as he was moving, having committed to the direction with the last of his oxygen, the light of his helmet revealed small bubbles. They were moving quickly over the glass, and when he saw them, he knew. He was moving up. He was moving in the same direction as the air.

Here, though, that’s irrelevant. There are no air bubbles, and there’s no way to tell left from right. The needle of the compass has frozen in place and the horizon is a blinding blur of white and silver, so pale that I can’t tell the ground from the air. The sun pours over the atmosphere without revealing its position. Her body, coated in thick rubber and plastic and thrown blackly against the endless white, continues on. It leaves unshadowed footsteps in her wake. She says nothing further, though it’s possible that our communicators have frozen. They weren’t designed to stand cold for this long.

She keeps walking, as if she knows where she’s going. I follow, because that’s all I can do.

The first day the sun didn’t rise, it was business as usual. The trains ran, the offices were open, and we just used a little more electricity than normal. We went to work, fed our fish, and gossiped about the news coverage while waiting for the bus. Over dinner the television told us what a strange event this was and how many records it had broken.

The second day the sun didn’t rise, we thought it odd. Our gossip spread to the cubicles and the break room and we listened to the radio, curious and nonplussed. It was weird, we told our coworkers and our friends and the people we met on the bus. It was definitely very weird.

The fifth day the sun didn’t rise, we complained. Extra lights were brought in and the power companies grew worried. The television said that California had adopted a mandatory rolling business schedule in which workdays were completed in shifts to reduce power usage. There was talk of rationing and of national disasters.

The tenth day the sun didn’t rise, we were panicked. We went to our doctors, our psychiatrists, our personal trainers, begging for help. The pharmaceutical companies had to keep their factories open twenty-four hours a day to produce enough Prozac.

The thirteenth day the sun didn’t rise, a national emergency was declared. We heard that it was the same everywhere, that no country had been spared. Our crops failed and our businesses closed. Thousands of us were dead from exposure or suicide. Our leaders gave speech after speech and our scientists despaired.

On the eighteenth day the sun didn’t rise, we locked ourselves in our homes and apartments. We looted closed stores and fought over food. Our water stopped running and we pissed in the streets.

On the thirty-seventh day the sun didn’t rise, neither did we.