LiveText To: Last Chance
LiveText From: Torch Interest Front
Miss Chance,
This text is to inquire if you might be available for a short-term position as a SRAdgasm for our new Torch promotion. We need someone who is fully wet and can work 24/7 from Torch in a semi-scripted sensivise reality program we would like to use to spark some additional interest in our station, in light of the Race of the Ancients being held in Crimson.
Please come to our office in Corialisana so that we might speak one-on-one, assuming you are interested in the offer.
Thank you in advance,
Horota Arnis
Director of Marketing
Torch Interest Front
Peppermint White Ninja lives in an old four-story warehouse in the Corridor. Basically, think of where columns of cement and clover-leaves of highway converge into a knot of unnatural monolithic girth. Add some gene-line enhanced trees that can live off of artificial light, and the dull roar of the slingshot trains. Well, let’s just call it dense-urban pre-gentrified.
The warehouse is made of concrete and metal for color. It looks like it will be here in ten-thousand years, but also like it has been condemned for at least that amount of time. Pepper calls it “homey”, Sunshine looks at the steel doors and calls it a “rape factory”. Regardless, she still follows him inside, because one of the local crab-analogs has followed them from the train station, four streets ago.
“He likes your perfume.”
“He is vermin.”
“He was here before we were, so maybe we’re the vermin.”
“Crabs live to be like, eight.”
“Okay. His ancestors or some bullshit. I’m just making conversation, you want a beer?”
“Do I look like I drink beer?”
“Vodka?”
“Now you’re talking.” Sunshine sits on a large wooden table. The inside is still set-up like a warehouse. Big bulky furniture in sparse supply if not sparse in size. A well-lit rape factory, at least.
“Here.” He hands her a glass, a huge glass. He brandishes one for himself, fills it half-way and chugs it before pouring her one. She grins while he pours himself a second, sipping her own demurely.
“So you are a retired…” She knows.
“Bounty hunter, yeah.” Pepper sits on a nearby couch, it’s covered in paint for some reason or another. There isn’t a drop of paint on any surface of the rape factory, so it must be imported from some other location. Perhaps there is a franchise of them.
“Why did you quit? I mean, what are you—thirty?” Sunshine lies, he looks forty at least, but people live to be three-hundred a shot. That is nothing. Hell, he could be a re-fresh junkie and secretly be her great-grandfather on his third-body. Never hurts to compliment.
“A job. I was hunting a guy by the name of H.O. Abobo, real dynamic fella. Liked doing freefall murders in open space. Gang leader. Drug dealer. Overall, class act.
“Anyway, he worked the Sprawl for like eighty-years, and the Federalis let him because it was lawless in most parts and any strong character has a habit of stabilizing his domain.”
“They just let him kill people?” Sunshine has never heard, or even thought of Colonial Government, much less the Federation, as anything but the people who protected you from pirates, manned the LaGrange and demanded fifteen-percent of her checks. Her contact is much more in the GovNet sense, with the politics and general bull-shittery that comes in planetary governments, but even that is more of the blur she hears on the news-vids while getting her nails painted.
“Let’s just say they had an unagreed upon agreement. He keeps his shit small and off the big worlds, and they look the other way if a body is seen orbiting Tarnek-5.
“Anyway. One thing leads to a mother and a senator’s ship stalls out orbiting a little shithole called Tenda. Deep nowhere, but if you want to shoot-the-loop in less than a week, you gotta skirt the Sprawl.
“So Abobo’s men fucking kill the Senator without so much as a ransom or shit. Strip his cruiser and they, get this, try and sell the parts to the Senator’s home planet.”
“Small universe.”
“For real. Anyway, that shit is too blatant to ignore, so the Federalis hire me and my buddy to axe him.”
“Just the two of you?”
“See that’s what I wanted, but the Federalis throw us each a team of six agents. Buddy of mine invites his girlfriend, she has her own team. Then the Federalis have an all Federali team. It's a cluster. Biggest problem is, bounty hunters are two things:
“They are solo projects, and they can only be trusted to watch out for themselves. Code of the Hunt.”
“Question?”
“Yes?”
“This isn’t making me feel safer.”
“I’m retired. I sell candy now. Trust me. Trust the candy man.” Pepper smiles, his dreadlocks forming coral-reefs in midair. He’s kind of handsome in a ridiculously goofy sort of way. Physically about forty, about six-flat and on the thinner side of flabby. A man who was obviously active in previous years, but obviously no longer living the rigorous life of his physical twenties. That said, his eyes say that he is at least a hundred in actual. Pale skin, a dusting of a beard, hands that are scarred and calloused from manual labor.
“Follow up?”
“Yes?”
“Refill?”
“Quite.”
“So you have these teams…”
“Yes. Three teams. One is Federali pretending to be Hunters. Then one led by me and one by my friend.
“We go into this guys place, fucking hornets’ nest of fuckers. Everywhere my eB is poppin’ yellows.”
“What?”
“Bounty-heads. So we split up, playing it cool. Well, one thing leads to another, the Federalis we got teamed with were bloodthirsty freshman at their first spring break. And it is a blood bath every which way to the air lock from the bulkhead.
“Lost my original left arm. Fucker shot me, and then came at me with a fucking chainsaw. Who the fuck fights with chainsaws?”
Sunshine shrugs. She does not, in fact, know who the fuck fights with chainsaws. She doesn’t intend to find out either. Pepper scratches his arm, protectively.
“So yeah, comes down to five people in the mess hall. Abobo, me, my friend, this guy named Toro, and this bitch my friend wanted to bone. Oh yeah, his girl tagged with us, completely breaking the Hunt, should have known that would lead to trouble. Some jackass had hit the grav control with a sub-nuke and we were like free-fall sword fighting.”
“Okay, so, swords but not chainsaws?”
“Guns plus windows equals explosive decompression. Guns are okay for internal corridors, but the mess hall was on an extendable arm for morale or some bullshit.
“So we slice around, I have my remainder of an arm tied off in a sling and I’m all hopped up on stims and adrenaline. I get a good one in on Toro. Young kid, he’s big now.”
“Oh yeah. Toro is behind the Race isn’t he?”
“Big contributor, yeah.”
“He’s a bad guy too?”
“Son of the space killer guy, yeah. So, I slice him something brutal, kid has a twelve pack and his internals are considering external positions. And then the fucked up part happens.
“H.O. pulls the hatches. All of them. He has a fucking pendant that looks like a Genova Hex. That octagon with the six stars with the lines joining them into one bigger star. He pushes the middle one when my buddy hacks him something good, H.O. was a terrible swordsman, and the fucking pendant controls every hatch on the station.”
“Holy shit.”
“I know. He kills all his men to get us.”
“But you and Toro survived.”
“Four of us did, yeah. By… well…”
“Yes?”
“We found two guys in a pod. We killed them. It was us or them. Fast or die. We killed them in cold motherfucking b
lood. Just two douches who working the engineering room, no bounties. Completely breaking the Hunt. Cold motherfucking blood in cold motherfucking space.”
“So you quit to sell candy?”
“Pretty much.”
“Anyone else live here?”
“No, why?”
“There’s a woman upstairs watching us.”
Pepper spins around so fast you’d think he was possessed. But the ghost is upstairs.
“Stardust.”
Last Chance wakes up a new woman. Okay, so she wakes up the same woman with several thousand more rico in her account and enough stims in her system to give a racehorse a heart attack. She showers in her shit-hole little apartment in the Lower Chokehold, the place where dreams go to get smothered in industry and advertisements for same. Puts on her best dress, newest stilettos and primps her crazy woman afro into something resembling more of a mildly mentally unstable look, and hits the street. The Chokehold is near the Gravsling, northwest Hojo City, buried under factories that are in turn buried under warehouses. It is dark, but continuously maintains a damp warmth.
Late last night, Last got an LT for a job. Big one, but they want to meet her in person and test her wiring. She tried to point them to the ad, which they had obviously already seen, but they didn’t want the anguish and pain of death. They actually laughed when she said she was too classy to do nude scenes, which is awkward in text form. Last agreed to the meet, mostly just to get out of town for a while.
Regardless, Last chance gets up early and catches the first slingshot to Corialisana, the Ivory City to the south.
The train-station near her house is the best part of the neighborhood. The building is tall and clean, with all of the clear hov-roads leading in and out of it at various heights. Thicker carbon composite ramps lead the many shots in and out of the station. The shots are cool green cylinders running in between two tracks of ionicly charged rails. Last doesn’t understand the concept, but she knows it’s like magnets only not. Inside it looks like a normal train, just with better lighting and less homeless people. Also there are folding seats and places to put your purse that lock and unlock with your fingerprint. Maybe it’s more like the scramjets low-tech worlds use, Last ponders, putting her purse above her seat. Last has never ridden the Gravsling to get off-planet, but it is exactly like that, as the companies supplying the interiors are the same.
The countryside is a total blur, the shot moving at seven hundred miles an hour, but the video-screens show footage of the area and you can dive the Rail’s website and sort of do a walking tour. Last isn’t much for tours, even virtual ones. The video is rather soothing though, if you find salt-water taffy production details to be soothing.
Last wakes up at the station, refreshed, and with her hair only slightly more disheveled than it was when she originally styled it. She walks off the platform to a building of sleek white lines and tall corridors. Dark green holographics point to this location or that on the tiled walls. She pulls up directions and an arrow appears semi-translucent in her vision. She LTs the company and her arrow is adjusted for a car they sent for her. Like a dream, really. Sunshine would totally gag.
“Miss Chance, I trust the trip was to your liking?”
“I absolutely loved the video-thing. Who knew they made so many things out here in the woods?”
“Corialisana is the second largest city on Selba Prime. It is not just woods.”
“That’s what I thought until I saw the video.”
“Have you bothered to look out of any windows since arriving?”
“No, why?”
“Walk this way, Miss.”
“Oh.”
Coral-Cor was started by Victor Corialis after the Colonial Revolution and was the leader in jump-gate technology, developing (with partners) the intergalactic ansible system and the LaGrange system that eventually overtook the traditional jump-gate. This made the Corialis family rich beyond most peoples’ ability to even consider spending. Eventually, two or three cloned bodies later, Victor decided to retire into political life in the Sprawl, where he thought he could do the most good.
His eldest son, Stephen Corialis took over the company business, and focused his father’s ideas beyond the original jump-gates and ansible service and into big business. Stephen Corialis is a visionary entrepreneur, it is said he could sell a man his own pants for profit, then convince the man to sell them back at cost. Developing extremely major breakthroughs in travel, communication and science is his major endeavor. When it came time for Stephen to retire, his idea of retiring was buying about a thousand square miles on a then first-stage world in the Selba System. He called it Corialisana, because he felt cities were always women, and that he didn’t want people to think he had a big ego.
To say Corialisana is lavish, might be correct but doesn’t get across how very clean it looks. A city of marble pillars, clear multi-level hov-roads, giant starscrapers made of screens that project themselves invisible except for the pillars. Everywhere pillars and arches. People used to question if Corialis’ “pillar-fetish” was a more personal desire… Regardless, due to its particular design, there is light everywhere in the city, regardless of whether you are on the ground floor or the nine-hundredth. Hence the Ivory City, the City of Light.
Needless to say, most of this is unknown to Last Chance. Not that it wasn’t mentioned in the video, just that she fell asleep before that part. The city is quite crowded, but still has an airy feel to it, very fresh in its neutrality. She is first stricken by the sheer size of the place, easily as big as the main brunt of Hojo City, and that all the cars are silver or white.
“Why are all the cars silver or white?”
“Corialis’ orders, Miss.” Last is helped into a small hover, she sits in the back.
“He’s still alive?”
“Oh yes. Alive and building, running this city (more or less) with his seven sons and their twenty children, and on and on.”
“What sort of business does he run, then? Like an architect?”
“He started off in development of new technologies. He created and helped to build the first Gravsling on Mars. After he ran a multi-system company off that technology, and its improvements. He had his hand in, along with a group of others; on the amplification systems that incorporated full World access through the ansible networks. Now he really is just into architecture though.”
“Oh wow.” Last had really stopped paying attention after the first sentence. The city is quite charming, all clears and whites, with grey used sparingly. Even the people dress in neutral tones, and they all look pretty well off as well. Perhaps they all work for Corialis, or maybe they hide the poor people on the bottom floors. Seems to work in Hojo City, at least usually.
“Please do watch your step we are about here.”
A giant structure hulks before them. A huge series of rectangular buildings, all stone white, interconnected by semi-translucent tubes and walkways. The car pulls into a large archway and stops in a courtyard lined with coarse sand. Last about loses a shoe on her way to the door.
“Welcome, Miss Chance. I hope your trip was a safe one. Please follow me.” Says a man of slight build, taller than Last, but thin. He’s wearing a white suit, just like the driver, which makes Last feel out of place in her dark clothing. The lone bit of color in a world of ivory cleanliness. She wants to ask about his diet, but thinks that inappropriate job interview talk. That and she’s too busy admiring the hallway. Easily thirty feet tall, the thin walkway has vaguely gray doors and a faux-marble floor with spinning veins of pink and teal.
The guide steps in front of a door and it turns clear and slides up into the wall. Inside is an office with sense-recorders, a chair, and a desk. All whites and subtle grays, apparently Corialis can control people’s offices as well.
“Please sit. Horota will be with you, momentarily.” And with that he leaves, presumably to go purge
his latest meal. Last is feeling rather bloated.
A door behind the desk sort of appears, and a man walks through. A bigger man with a big mouth and deep set eyes. He looks rather jovial; he is the kind of person who might be fun with a couple of beers. Last is thirsty.
“Hello, I’m Horota Arnis. Care for something cold?” Horota gestures at his desk and the move is lost on Last.
“What?”
“Drink?”
“Water?”
“Lemon?”
“Please.”
“So, I saw your latest work. The ad. Brilliant piece of marketing. Truckee really knows how to reach the people of the Colonies.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty proud of that. I think my intestines really sold it.”
“Indeed. Well, I guess you might want to know why I brought you here.” Horota starts speaking as Last takes a sip of her water. He taps at his desk for a second. He has a recessed keyboard positioned out of Last’s sight. A view screen appears in her vision. It is of a satellite colony orbiting a dark red gas giant.
“Torch?”
“Yes. We need to get word out to tourists and executive types that Torch is the hub of choice for jumping the Sprawl. We believe, with your current notoriety, as well as Torch’s involvement in the Race of Ancients, that choosing you would be the best way to communicate Torch’s strengths while taking advantage of the spotlight the Race will bring to everyone involved.”
“Isn’t crime a problem there?” Last remembers a news-video from last week, some sort of gang violence or something. She really had just been waiting for her dye to set.
“That is just the view we need to erase, Miss Chance. With advanced Federali agents being recruited as we speak, Torch is becoming one of the safest locations in the Inner Arm.” Inner Arm meaning the sort-of-Sprawl, the no-man’s land between where the inhabited systems are plentiful to where they are sparsely splayed out.
All interstellar travel started at Earth, for humans obviously, but as FTLs got cheaper the planets nearest Earth got colonized first. Scientists quickly found that agreeable conditions exist on a least one planet in every ten systems, particularly when terraforming using nano-machines and germ-line geneering are factored in. That said, the biggest number of colonies exist closest together, as jumping is still somewhat expensive, in so far that it requires resources as well as at least outpost stations to refuel, and the length of physically possible Lagrange leaps makes a sort of wall as to how far people can reasonably go and still expect to get back in a reasonable time frame. The outliers, be they bad ventures by planet-swapping entrepreneurs or colonies started by non-traditional organizations with ideologies outweighing their business models, have tended towards lawlessness. There are certain zones of sanity and proper governmental function, but with near infinite space and resources, even if there is no money to gather those resources, there is a lot of room for corruption. As those resources that are truly necessary, heavy helium and nuclear materials, are not either easy to gather or in particularly high supply. This leads to localized governments, a lack of observance of the Federation or GovPlex protocols, and a divergence from the social norms. Some parts of the Sprawl are even off the World, choosing to be completely alone.
However, the Sprawl is in the center of known space. This is the reason places like Torch matter, because to get to Selba from Earth, one must shoot the Sprawl. Last has no idea why this is so; something about hyperspace distortions and gas giants, as well as a sort of circular route around the area that initial colonization took and the locations of other sentient species colonized areas, but suffice it to say the Federation only has so many posts, so unofficial stations run by big corporations or the Colonies themselves, are the primary refueling resource. Big business. Big money. Last finishes her drink.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Simply put. We want you to live on Torch for a couple of weeks, record how life is there from an outside standpoint. We’ll record live and broadcast via ansible to the World.”
“So a reality show, then? How heavily scripted?” Last is in negotiation mode. She isn’t terribly good at learning lines, but with in-eye teleprompting she only needs to be literate. That said, she still isn’t very good at lines.
“Scripted events, trips to all the bars and governmental facilities. You’ll have a “job” on site as well, but what you do at those locations is up to your discretion.”
“How much?” Last sort of sighes, looking at a sculpture in the corner. Some sort of polyfiber motion structure, looks like a man getting raped by a building, all torso distortions and beams. Last learned quickly that while you should always ask how much, you should never seem interested in the answer. A independent film where she had worked four months in the Hinterlands in a tent in thirty-below weather for a grand total of room and poorly cooked board, had taught her that well enough. Horota coughs.
He is holding an index card. Crisp. Last takes it gingerly, attempting not to touch Horota’s hand. No flirting in business. There are too many zeros for this to be correct. She looks up. Horota smiles, he leans back in his chair.
“No nudity.”
“Of course. This is for investors, Miss Chance.”
“Seriously. None.”
“Yes.”
“At all.”
“Of course.”
“When do I leave?”
“Where are you?”
“Walking out of Box. You know where I can find Destiny on planet?” Epic is stomping down an insanely bright sidewalk, wishing for sunglasses or a down-program or like full retinal removal. Also it would be nice if the woman directly behind him would kindly shut the fuck up.
“Could you stop screaming?”
“EEeeaaahhhh!!!”
“No. Seriously.” Woman looks to be about fifty, her eyes are squirreling back and forth, and she hasn’t closed her mouth in six blocks. Her dark-brown hair is pulled tight and wrapped with copper wiring that looks like it was stripped out of a television, and she’s wearing a dress comprised of semi-transparent layers of plastic. She looks like a severely groomed puffer fish.
“EEeeeaaaahh!!!” Her tongue darts forward quickly. In and out in and out. Epic turns around and continues walking. Wishes he’d taken the girl over the shots.
“Destiny is held up in a few locations in the Captial. You need a specific—“
“Nah. Can’t give the tip.” Plus he’s not really sure who he wants to talk to exactly. Girl went quiet. Epic starts walking slower, closer to the store fronts that just started alternating with warehouse offices.
“You talking out loud?” Epic LT’s his contact. Fucking crooked cops can’t be trusted, apparently. What’s the world coming to? Epic dodges into a store marked Big Big Baby’s Shoes for Babies.
“I’m in my office, why?”
“Bye bye.” Code words for ‘you’re tapped’. Epic should have disguised himself for the meet. Rookie mistake. Screaming bitch was probably a druggy with her eyes hacked. With money on the line like Truckee says, there are no limits to the irritating bullshit these fuckstains can throw.
Big Big Baby’s Shoes for Babies is a local chain, a few obnoxiously red stores with blinking strobes and holographic children dancing on stripper poles. Very old fashioned. Epic has apparently hid in the flagship store. Android children are everywhere, gyrating on sale signs, dry-humping actual children as they try on stiletto-heels to go with the latest micro-mini. Fucking general public would buy anything they see on television apparently, even if it was on television on Earth like seven years ago.
“C-C-CAan I help you?!” A small African-ethnic ‘child’ asks, using the deep booming voice of a race announcer. Epic is reminded why he hates children. Even artificial children. The child is wearing a thong-diaper, four watches and blue high tops.
“I’m looking for the Jewel of the Ancients, you got that here?” Epic asks, walking into the store q
uickly. Try to get as far back as possible before the shit hits. The child follows him in.
“Leeeeet mee seeeeeee…..” The baby dances as it searches the inventory, looking citywide, looking distribution wide… “Item not fizzzound!” The child jumps, Epic jumps, the front window shatters. Bullets start hitting walls, Epic intuitively grabs the kid, runs through screaming randoms, and leaps over the sales desk.
“Call the cops, kid.”
“Calling!”
Epic peeks over the counter. A thick haze has filled the air around the desk. Force-armor. This must be where the physical rico are kept. A few bullets hit the shield, and they are gently pushed away and into the walls to either side.
“You got an ETA?”
“Police ssaaay they will beez at location in X-actly seven-T four secondzzz!!” The baby is dry-humping Epic’s calf, Epic grimaces and pushes the child away by the forehead. Epic has seventy-four seconds to get out of here if he wants to get to Destiny before they can plan a better attack.
“Is there an escape route from the location?” Three guys are wandering through the screaming civilians and horny infants. They keep kicking huddled people to see their faces. They don’t know he’s back here for sure… The smoke mixed with the shield’s haze.
“Yeeeaahss. O-nly accezzz is to employeeez, b-b-baaby!”
“Then can you open it please, we are in danger.”
“Let mee think… Ak-sezz allowed!” A small hatch begins to open between the crescent-shaped counter and the floor. Epic sees a latch in the carpet and pulls to see a set of rungs leading down a sort of slanted habittrail. Epic climbs in, looks at the kid, and decides to bring him along. There might be more doors that need opening or something.
About thirty minutes of climbing somewhat down and somewhat straight ahead, and the dimly lit tube opens into a storage room. A storage room full of guns. Exotic guns mostly; grenade launchers, polarity shifting pulse weapons, taser whips, exotic matter shots, some sort of quantum dildo looking thing the size of a horse’s… lots of wrist darts.
“Where are we… uh…”
“Big.”
“O—kay. Big, where is this?”
“SAA-ide businezz, son!” Big toddles over to a set of grey wallmounted drawers, and pulls out a baby-sized handgun. Epic grins, apparently the androids moonlight as GovNet security. About a hundred and sixty-eight years ago, after the war made people wary of governments with guns, planetary police functions were privatized. Typically city’s commissioned local businesses, but the capital is zone-based, and at least one of those zones is protected by android infants with sex-drives. GovNet runs the country security, with the GovPlex running planetary, Colonial running interplanetary and the Federalis doing non-planets and space. Add a small bracelet and you complete the look.
“I’d like to hire your services, Big.”
“K-krazzy.”
“Alright. You got a car?”
“Wheelzz? Upstaarzz!” The baby breaks into a run and dashes for the left. Big running is a brisk walk for Epic, a few flights of stairs and they get to a garage with two street tanks and a hover. Epic heads for the hover.
“Can you drive?” Epic raises an eyebrow as the door irises open. There is a regular sized lounger in the driver’s side and a few small stools in the back. The hover is a long smooth teardrop with nobs for the grav-pulsers underneath and a couple smoothed into each side. It’s red and there are a couple of police barcode scanners on the roof, as well as a strip of holographics along the roof and sides. Normally this car would seat four… ish, but with the stools and the size of these officers, Epic would assume eight.
“A—AYE!”
“Is there a manual override?” Epic sits in the driver’s seat and turns on the engine. His eButler sends a hello to the car, and the car accepts. A steering wheel folds out under the GPS screen. “Do you know where I can find the Destiny gang? They caused the attack upstairs.”
“Accesssssing… Our pA-trol picked up sixxx gan-g memmmbers in the Gravshot arr-ea. Files place a major hii-deout in a bro-thel callzz Chesty’s Barrel of Salt Water. P-pendin’ warrrrant.” Big sort of gurgles as he sits in the passenger stool. His legs kicking as he belts in, leaning back and forth against the half-back to his seat. Safety isn’t as important for AI, as they have no internal organs per se, and are sturdier regardless.
“Car…?” Epic sort of taps the wheel.
“James.” A disembodied ‘British-ethnic’ voice says calmly. Cars always seem to be English…
“James, can you put that location on the GPS?”
“Ten miles north and west, Sir.”
Epic Death begins to de-park when a missile destroys the back half of the hover. De-lightful.