Selba Prime Concern - Kids Corner
Word of the Day
LiveText (n): LiveText is a core product of Asynk Core's Biosynch technology. LiveText, or LT for short, is a way to send direct text messages or area based text messages between two or more World users with Biosynch memory inserts. LT can be sent instantly to anywhere on planet, and with very little lag time even to other star systems.
Cirrhosis is dead tired. A long day of chasing whilst simultaneously being chased can do that to a guy. The cab dropped him off at the Gravsling station, the hulking giant which the whole city circles around, but also avoids like a pariah. While the process is as quiet as you would think using controlled fusion anti-gravimetric repulsion would be, that also happens to be about the loudest sound one can hear and continue to have that ability. Said, the roads leading up look like a primitive hedge maze made of vibrant foam. The dampeners cancel all but ten-percent of the noise, and are usually bone white, but with holo-ads and graffiti they look as vibrant as the morning sunrise. The Gravsling itself looks like a factory centered around the world’s largest catapult mixed with the world’s largest cannon. A haze of steam floats idly around the complex, pulsed outward when the arm shunts and the cannon fires. It’s beautiful in a mechanical shock and awe sort of way.
As one gets closer the coming and going of slingshots and scramjets gets more apparent, and as you round the last soundbarrier it starts to look like any large transport station. The silence is disturbing however, as canceler poles are placed on every corner, bumping back waves to keep the travelers sane during the wait time. Customs is typically at least three hours and the Shot can only fire once every fifty seconds.
Cirrhosis breezes through customs, the operator is wearing his jersey. Cirrhosis wishes he’d packed some stims. All said, he has a small duffel with his suit and two days worth of clothing. Well that and a ceramic wristdart launcher. Just in case.
The terminals are dimly lit, with a mandate keeping the holo-ads below their typical blare. All said, an ad for Reecher Ale makes Cirrhosis’ mouth water, which makes Cirrhosis curse his eButler’s software encryption. Looks like Jeffy needs an upgrade.
“Fuck it.” He heads to a bar anyway.
Buttery Sluttery is a Chovian bar, a race Cirrhosis vaguely remembers from the news. Regardless, they are a mildly tentacled race (read: long arms) that is known simultaneously for being generally unbearably unbearable and ridiculously serious about it. However, when humans introduced them to alcohol they became the race of the party. A Chovian is working the bar, his large eyes closed to slits.
“Come in. Come in!” He sort of laughs through thick lips. Their heads are kind of longish. They have huge black eyes, but they are only open fully when on the offensive. A slit for a nose, no ears to speak of (something about their jaw handles that), and a meaty looking mouth full of rounded teeth completes the look. The bartender is dark for his race, a deep dry green. He’s wearing a Hawaiian print shirt and thick denim pants.
“Thank you. A beer, cold and large.” Cirrhosis sits down next to a beautiful red head.
“Pitcher, sir?”
“It’s like three o’clock. Sure, why not, eh?” He speaks to the woman. She is sipping a Holocaust Ash smoothly. She has slight features, a large mane of barely kept hair twisting in elaborate arabesques. Her eyes gaze at him drowsily. Barely interested. Her mouth opens slightly, she lifts the mug and holds it near her mouth. Her tongue only barely visible, hanging over her teeth. Her mouth purses gently as the mug comes in closer. She pulls it back a bit, breaking her hold on him by temporarily closing her lips together.
“Heh. Any longer and I’ll think you are recording.” She grins and sips her drink, giving him a once over and then purposefully turning to look at a vid screen to the opposite side of the bar.
“I’m sorry. I was just struck by your beauty.”
“Wow. Are you being cute or just a sleaze?”
“I’d like to think a little of both, Miss?”
“Chance.”
“From the ads?”
“Yes. I—“ She turns to see him, the compliment of being recognized making her slightly less dismissive. She looks at Cirrhosis again, and then her eyes look past him. E-query. She smiles broadly, a warm smile. “Cirrhosis Induction.”
“Funny, you didn’t recognize me and we must work in the same building.”
“The building is at least five hundred stories.” She giggles.
“Your ad is also for my race.”
“I’m not into sports.”
“Neither am I, but gotta pay the bills right?”
“Money is nice.”
“So it is. So it is.”
“Where you going?” She half looks at him, swirling her drink with the mushroom cloud umbrella.
“Torch. Got a meeting about the race there.”
“Wow. I’m actually going there. I’m doing a sort of reality advertisement for the station.”
“Small universe.”
“Smallest we got.” She giggles and drinks her drink.
[Alert: Twenty-six minutes to Boarding.]
“Oh.”
“Want to walk together?”
“Sure.”
The actual plane you get tossed in is rather huge. A long cylinder with shuttered windows and a covering of nubs and retracted antennae. Gunmetal all over barring a few identifying barcodes. From the station’s windows it looks like you are going to space in a giant baked potato. The metal dirigible hovers lazily at a docking spindle, baggage being shoved in this and that cargo hold.
Cirrhosis and Last barely have time to sit before lining up begins to get in there. The walkway has no windows and it leads into a round room with chairs circling it. The seats have elaborate straps and the passengers must stow all their belongings in one of the several storage units held on each row. There are stairs in four sections leading up and down to additional platforms of chairs and storage, with the pilot being on the top slice.
Cirrhosis and Last ask a steward to set them up in adjacent seats, and they get strapped in without incident.
The ship closes its doors and the whole of it begins to rumble as its gravity-well is created internally. Outside one can see the potato start turning on one end, internally it feels like falling and the chairs swing to compensate as the floor spins on an axis to stay below them. The internal center is now the gravity center of the ship. The floating metal building cues up in line to get tossed into space.
“That never gets better, does it?”
“I kind of wish I wasn’t drunk.” Last sort of smirks. Her eyes close as she turns on a program. She winces and then smiles, various chemicals being released in her brain compensating for her intoxication; or at least for the nausea so caused.
“So how long are you going to be on Torch?”
“A couple of weeks, I think. Recording all day. It’s going to get kind of stressful.”
“Yeah. I had to do a week of that in preparation for the Race. You know, show how I work out, prepping the horse, target practice, the works. Watching everything you look, think and feel is really fucking hard. Is yours twenty-four seven?”
“Yeah.”
“So... when you—“Cirrhosis had accidentally pissed on galactic ansible. Luckily, he hadn’t looked at his cock or anything. Still, he gets random LTs offering ridiculous amounts of rico for exceptionally disgusting work.
“Out of my contract. If I go in to a bathroom, or my bedroom, cameras are off.” She winks at Cirrhosis, who chuckles politely.
“Good good. So when are they opening the bar?” Cirrhosis coughs suggestively.
“Not soon enough.” Last smiles demurely.
Baby Doll Judah Stardust leans against the banister on the second floor. Her hair a swirl of spikes and highlights combating lowlights. She is a tall woman, even for the germline spacers she is bred from, lean but still in a feminine way.
A tomboy who wears micro-minis with tube tops. Both are green, with a grey vest over top. Her lips are covered in a deep red gloss, her eyes with heavy mascara. She’s smoking a small cigar, rolling it back and forth in her teeth.
Sunshine Apocalypse is new to the world of assassins, but with Peppermint White Ninja’s story and her relative confidence in just dropping by, Sunshine knows to be nervous. Sunshine hops off of the table she had been sitting on. Stardust’s eyes follow her. Sunshine’s eyes dart to Pepper, Stardust smiles.
“Long time, no see, Pepper. Hear you gave up the Call to sell Hachi-Cheechas to bloated businessmen in the Astral District.” She sort of giggles on words, Pepper looks angry. Stardust knows how to push his buttons. She's known where he was.. for how long?
“Yeah. After what we did—“
“We did that to survive, Pepper. Survive is the second rule of the Hunt. And the first—“ Stardust takes a big puff of her cigar.
“Always kill the target if the Call doesn’t say otherwise.” Pepper mutters. Blinks. Sunshine gets the wind knocked out of her as he tackles her through a rack of magazines. Six bullets carve holes in the cabinets behind where Sunshine’s head would have been.
“Holy—“
“Yeah. I’m going to need you to keep it cool. Go under that counter, there’s a passage near the fridge.”
“What?”
“Bounty hunter. Now go.”
“Pepper, darling? I know you aren’t dead, my eButler is still reporting across spectrum jamming. Please do come out, I’d hate to ruin your lovely interior decorations. Early period murderous steelworker?”
“Sorry, minotaur period pedophiliac gangster.”
“What?” Baby mutters and turns to see a knee-high blade come rushing at her from the wall to the left. She hops it easily, but she loses Pepper in the distraction.
The ceiling begins to drop heavy panels, Stardust jumps for the first floor and only gets clipped by a tile, but it janks her landing and she has to roll. Pepper is holding a gun to her head as she rights herself.
“Fourth rule.” No home-court advantage shouldn’t be exploited.
“Fucker, I wasn’t really going to kill her.”
“Lies.”
“Yeah. She your girlfriend?”
“No. Client. Sort of, not really. Jealous?”
“You wish. Guess that means you are a target too.” Stardust looks at Pepper, her left leg darts out and trips him, he manages to catch himself, but she boots him in the gut just as he reaches stance, and he falls over a chair, losing the gun. Pepper draws another gun from his left shoe, and positions himself behind a broken (now) table. Stardust takes a couple of loose shots at him, more judging distance than anything else.
Pepper shorts the lights, clenching his eyes shut while blocking them with his forearm. The lights go nova, then out.
“Fuck!” Stardust yelps. Pepper stands to shoot, but Stardust is gone. She shoots, from behind him, straight up. With a flare. The sprinklers start as the fire hits the roof, putting it out.
“Fuck.” Pepper dashes behind a support beam. With Stardust’s hack-level, the only level of eFerence possible is Complete, which means for Pepper too, but direct contact protocols can be implemented with bio-metric IP addresses. But the water shorts his bone-amps’ connection to his house drive, handled through a direct connection to the wiring inlaid in the floor. Translated: No more traps.
“You always were the planning type, Pepper.”
“And you were always borderline psychotic, Stardust.”
“How many times have I told you—“ Pepper turns as a leg blurs at his head, he manages to dodge it somewhat, the knee grazing his forehead. The left catches him on the side, causing him to fall backward into a stool.
“Call me—“ She pulls her pistol to aim.
“Bitch?” A chair slams into her skull from behind and she slumps over Pepper, shooting a round into the concrete.
“Weren’t you supposed to run?”
“Weren’t you supposed to protect me?” Sunshine grunts, kicking Baby Doll Judah Stardust in the head, just to be careful.
“Touché. Let’s grab some supplies and JK.”
“Where to?”
“Airport. Now move.” Pepper looks suggestively at Stardust, inferring that her eButler could still record what they say if they do it in front of her.
“Okay, whatever. But I get a gun next time.”
“If you’re good.”
“Anything new?”
“I’d call you right? I’m checking up on your lead. It’s hot, so I think I’ll get it taken care of on my next— Fuck! AI drivers are fucking maniacs!”
“What? Where are you?”
“Doesn’t matter. Look, lay low and keep as quiet as you can, I’ll LT you when I get the thing.”
“Right.” Truckee Dumpstar closes the window in his vision; fucking bountyhunters take forever to get shit done. Truckee would just buy people until he found his answers, of course that is how he got so far in debt to begin with, so…
Regardless. Truckee is bored and irritated, and ready to go proactive. He throws on his biggest fur trench, slips on some stiletto thigh-highs and hits the elevator from his penthouse apartment in T-Net Tower. Twenty-five minutes until the next dive interview. Truckee is fully wet, so he can do the broadcast from wherever, unless he wants there to be photos or low-tech options (then he needs a studio). Right now, wherever is going to be a cab headed to the Hinter. Truckee generally refuses to leave Hojo City proper unless being directly transported off-world, but the heathens of the urban sprawl have their uses.
“Char-els?” Truckee mutters under his breath, he hates when people eS at full volume, they look insane. Technically, one doesn’t actually have to talk at all during eS or full World-dive, but it is common, particularly with the under privileged. Truckee adjusts his day-glo beehive. Complete with animatronic bees. They itch, but such is high fashion.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who’s the next eS?”
“Cocodochi Laser Balloon Comedy and News Sexplosion.”
“Okay, I never agreed to extended cable.”
“They are offering one-hundred thousand rico, and they only present in sense-color anyway.”
“Fucking avant-garde deep-space news channels. How the hell am I supposed to understand the news presented only in colors and smell?”
“I have no idea, sir. They requested you take the dive in a restaurant. It’s very aqua, apparently.”
“Whatever the fuck that means. I need you to get me a contact in the Hinter.”
“We talking named streets or wilderness, sir?”
“Doesn’t matter. I need to find Iced Mocha. Not his gang, the individual.”
“So you want me to find this Mocha person?”
“No. Find me someone who can find me him. I don’t need you getting yourself killed; you already know how to make my coffee correctly.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll LT your eButler as soon as I can.”
“Thank you.”
Truckee sits for a moment, the city a blur of windows and floating taxis on semi-translucent streets. Considering how much money he owes Mocha, it would be logical to have a direct contact number, but all Truckee ever does is leave envelopes in bank vaults. Hell, the finger-gun guy was the first of Mocha’s men he’d seen in over six months. He breathes heavily, and LTs the taxi to take him to the nearest restaurant. Gotta get aqua.
Beatdown Bistro Bar and Lasik is a traditional food chain, like Your Mama’s Lips or Interplanetary House of Swarms. It’s from back before germline genetic engineering got so cheap that street urchins had full twenty-twenty. So basically country-faire plus on-site laser eye surgery, although the tables are mostly for show now. Only the bartender is even trained to do corneal replacements.
Truckee is sitting by the window in the back corner of the waiting room, trying to decide between something disg
usting he’ll need to throw up later and something disgusting he’ll have no choice but to throw up later. For some reason a waiter has decided to introduce himself immediately, instead of allowing Truckee to work up his nerve. “You want to hear our specials?”
“I’d rather not. Get me a Coke and something that isn’t deep fried.” Truckee closes the menu in disgust and pushes it across the table to keep it away. The foul words. Bulimia should always be a choice. “Oh, I’m doing a dive interview, so if you could just—“
“Of course.” The waiter nods and walks away.
Truckee straightens himself, pulls his chair in and puts his eButler on record-alert. In case someone tries to shank him while he communicates in pepper and magenta, or whatever the hell. Truckee closes his eyes and hits the tap. His skin warms slightly as his wet wiring accesses the net. A dull whirring sound only he can hear, resonating in his bones.
He opens his eyes and is somewhere else.
His office is sparsely decorated, green walls, hardwood floor, a single chair pointing at a wall mounted crystal-matrix television and a gunmetal filing cabinet in the corner by the door. With what Truckee does for a living, his house in the World should be an opulent estate, but Truckee isn’t really into elaborate faux domiciles. Besides the bandwidth he saves makes full-sense ansible possible without a diving board. Completely worth it.
His eButler enters through the door, a small garden is visible outside. The Board makes him keep it. His eB is an unimposing older gentleman, wearing a simple black tunic and shined black shoes.
“Sir, you are wanted Downtown in five minutes.”
“Thank you, Isla. Please pull the car around.” Truckee flicks through the filing cabinet, no email worth checking, and steps out into the garden in time to see Isla pull up a small black hover. The door irises open for the back passenger seat, and Truckee makes himself comfortable. The interior is all black, a small video screen is showing Selba Primetime, the national news. Isla is not visible in the car, a mere program, he is not required to maintain spatial integrity like sentient denizens of the World. At least not inside his owner’s car, as technically his eButler’s actual location is in a chip attached to Truckee’s brain.
The car starts driving down the winding driveway to the cul-de-sac, then that leads to a Road which leads to a Street. Driving and elevators are different in the World. The World, to be completely logical to exist over the entirety of known space as a cohesive whole, must have rules. Spatial and time construct rules. One cannot teleport in a world where download times could affect commerce between galaxies. So people move by foot, by car, by plane, whatever. But because it isn’t like the world outside, people can move at relativistic speeds in anything enclosed, so no light-speed bikes, but cars are good. Cars and the people inside go intangible on anything above a residential zone cul-de-sac, and move at the speed of light. That’ll get you to any terran location quite fast. Space travel allows for swallows far deeper and farther than any engine a man, or any other race for that matter, could make. So travel is thousands and thousands of times faster, but not instantaneous.
Regardless, to make THAT work without killing people with G-shock, is that the sense connection people have in the World is severed during travel. When a person, such as Truckee is now, is traveling, the windows go black and they feel nothing. Not anything Worldly or worldly. Nothing, but the sense of sight. About seven hundred people a day become junkies to the null between the departure and the arrival, riding bullet elevators up and down endlessly. Usually end up dying of starvation in the real world. Regardless, it makes watching the news the only thing on Truckee’s mind for about ten minutes, which is a good vacation of sorts.
Truckee gets out of his hover in front of a dull brown disk of a building, a disk on one side. Black fish swim across the surface, and the field around it is thick and lush, with no marked path to the front door. Truckee trudges through the grass to a small round door, knocks once, and ducks inside. The interior is far more plain, just a sparsely decorated earth-toned palace to cubicles. Plants growing everywhere, not really in any particular direction or order.
“Truckee?”
“Present. Where... are you?”
“Follow the ivy.”
“Like I have any idea what that even means.” Truckee asks his eButler to give him some pointers on botany, and manages to sort of lose himself in the general direction of a circular room near the center of the building. In the room is a large ring-shaped table in the center, long tall windows giving a vague light to the biomass-theme of the area. Two men are sitting there in awkward poses, Truckee remembers a boring class with hand cymbals in a gym on a backward planet in the Sprawl. Awful what one has to do to carry on business.
“Yo-ga.” He mutters under his breath, disgusted. Filthy habit, wasting ones time with relaxation when a simple down program does the job. The two men stop floating above the round table, extending their legs to the ground in unison.
One opens his mouth and everything goes white. It takes Truckee a second to realize that it isn’t what the man is doing on purpose. The entire room is white suddenly, like a flash of light that tainted everything equally, only outlines and shadows remain. And the men are frozen in place, one mid blinking the other mid introduction. Truckee panics, he can move unlike his hosts. Some sort of elaborate lag issue? Are his bone-amps broken? It is like this that a fat man enters from the left. Truckee stares at the man, who judges the two frozen businessmen with a shrug and sits at the table.
“Who are you?” Truckee grits his teeth, some fucking extreme hacker. The man is about six feet tall, about four hundred pounds, wearing a light grey suit with silver buttons. He looks unagreeable, like a person who is constantly in opposition to others. Right now he is grinning dully at Truckee. Truckee sits across from him. Or, as it is a round table, at about one hundred and eighty degrees from him.
“A conscientious objector.”
“To what?”
“Stealing?”
“What do you mean—“
“The Jewel.”
“Was stolen yes, but not by you?”
“No.”
“Then who by?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Then why are you talking to me?”
“Because I need to.”
“And why did you go to such, elaborate means to do so?”
“Because I need to do it now.”
“And why should I believe you?” Truckee has no need for a fat man’s opinion. Doesn’t like looking at them and doesn’t care what they have to say. If he was important, he’d damn well look like it.
“Because I am Iced Mocha.”
“What?” Truckee jumps from his chair, his hands pound the table. No way this is him, even with top-level plastics, it would take… but this isn’t real life. But the Conventions on World Access don’t allow for people to modify their avatar by anything more than ten percent (age, height and weight are common, but usually flatteringly so) off of your biological situation. This man looks absolutely nothing like Iced Mocha, and worse, he appears to be sweating through his suit. “You have a mod avatar?”
“I froze time.” Gesturing at the two suits.
“Right. But Mod avatars are illegal. You would have to constantly hack the Servitors to even…”
“Mods are the least of my worries.”
Truckee shouldn’t be arguing now. He knows that this is serious. The man he owes his life to, his livelihood to, hacked into the World to tell him something, when he could have just followed him and used the Lasik machines to boil his eyes or something.
“Why are you here?”
“You have someone poking his nose somewhere it doesn’t need to be.” Epic, he knows about Epic. Truckee leans back in his chair.
“I had something stolen. I was simply looking for it.”
“Why would I need to steal something I could merel
y ask for?”
“Valid.”
“The Hunter. Call him back. I don’t have your item.”
“But I saw-“
“That man definitely didn’t work for me.”
“But he-“
“Learn to actually LOOK at people before you make assumptions based on their appearances.”
“Fine. I’ll look at your underlings more thoroughly next time.”
“You are late for your interview. Check out illicit sales.” And ‘Iced Mocha’ disappears from the room. No walking, just gone. The color flashes back. The man who was about to talk says nothing, instead a smell comes out, like cooked turkey sandwiches and Truckee just knows it’s the first question.
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Epic Death finds himself standing in the Dusker district under an underpass, but over an overpass. The missile had been launched by some sort of ridiculous defense program in the garage. Apparently manual override equals death. So Epic had to call a cab to take him to the whorehouse. Traveling in style. It is in the limbo between over and under that the cab drops Epic and Big. A dinged alleyway staring at this shitty factory on top of a shitty old skyscraper, this factory that is a brothel. A hooker factory. Chesty’s Barrel of Salt Water is Gravsling adjacent, meaning it’s within the first dampener wall. Epic has his eButler filtering sound, but it’s still about ear bleeding levels of loud. The pillars are covered in some sort of algae, the water runoff from the overpass drizzles down the building, making the windows streaked with dirt as opposed to completely composed of dirt. Epic couldn’t guess what the factory was originally for, maybe wiring, nothing too big because the steam vents are too small for anything heavy.
Epic cocks his gun before crossing the street, pockets it and walks over, Big toddling behind.
“Not a-allowed to enter! No warrant, b-baby!!”
“Right,” Epic walks in the front door and the kid stands there. Epic shrugs, and walks back out, lifts the kid and continues inside. “You play nice, okay?”
The place is lit by shards of holographic plating stuck here and there. It’s a typical strip club setup, bar to the left of the door, behind the attendant’s podium. Six stages with barrels for chairs, back wall has a dj booth and four curtained doors to the backroom. Attendant looks at Epic, the baby, and back at Epic.
“Two please.” Epic puts his left thumb on a scanner on the counter. The attendant smirks and waves him in. The inside has blocking nodules attached on the support pillars, so Epic can finally hear. The music is a sort of tribal beat mixed with guttural moaning, very popular in the Hinter. Epic thinks it is trashy, but appropriate considering the bartender appears to be: around seventeen, drunk, about seven months pregnant, and topless. Well she doesn’t appear topless, she definitely is topless.
“What you have’n?”
“Syphilis most likely later, but how about we start off with a double shot of whiskey. Kiddo here’ll have a milk. Still growin’.” He says, putting Big on a stool and taking one next to him. Bartender pours his drink, slams it, and then repours it for him. Baby’ll end up retarded, but considering the parents, that was probably to be expected. Big drinks his milk with a straw.
“You got any scanning software, my wetwiring is jammed.”
“Scanning… Bartender has a GUN.”
“Anyone else?” Epic sips his whiskey and eyes a stripper working the stage to his right. Slim blond with six tits, a half-breed or a germer with a sick sense of fashion. Regardless, it makes Epic glad he doesn’t have to drink the milk. There are about twenty men, four strippers, the DJ, the bartender (her baby) and the door guy. Dramatic lack of bouncers. Odd. The smokey haze is reflecting holographics and lasers, the beat is steady.
“Four men behind the curtains.” Big finishes his milk and starts to get off his stool. A curtain flits slightly, the bartender drops to the ground, and Epic dives for the kid. Shots ring about him as he crawls behind the bar, the bartender is fucking with her gun. Epic kicks her in the head. Looks at Big, and kicks her in the stomach. Better off that way.
“I need cover. Can you hack the lighting?”
“Lets seeeeeee---- Accessing!” Big sticks his hand down the front of his pants, Epic grabs the bitch’s gun. Loads it, and checks his. Set to take a look around. His head goes up just as the lasers start spinning randomly, the fog machine billowing smoke. Epic can’t even see to the end of the bar. No idea who’s friendly… he can’t just shoot wild. What he needs is to get to the back, if Mocha is here he’ll be back there. Straight shot if he hops the bar, and hooks at the six-tits.
“Okay. I am going to need you to stop playing with yourself and hold your gun. Er… the metal one.” Epic grunts, trying not to look at Big, who is obviously masturbating. Epic is going to find whoever owns that fucking store and fuck him in the eye with a taser. Big grabs his gun from Epic. Epic wipes his hand on the bartender, only to get stickier. Yeah, syphilis at least. Epic throws the kid at the six-titted stripper’s last location, sideways like a grenade. Kid is shooting halfway through his arch above the first row of barrel chairs. Epic jumps the bar and chases after. The smoke is thick, the lasers blinding, and his eButler is getting hacked, so some sort of spiral is freaking out in his peripheral vision. All that and he still sees the hooker with the pool cue in the corner of his eye, and he kneels while shooting slightly up. Manages to get sternum between all those titties. Damn shame, beautiful set, if a little grimy. Big is shooting at someone ahead and left, the flashes and noise are at least accessible stimuli.
A goon appears to his right, one of the patrons in an ‘I boot for Newts’ T-shirt, some sort of tree hugging group that believes woodland creatures deserve World access. Guy fights like he votes, with one hand and without really paying attention to the real issues: such as coming unarmed to a gun fight.
“Fucking pacifists.” Epic shoots the guy in the mouth thereby ending his freedom of speech. Or ability of speech. Or something. Places to be.
The spiral in his eye is getting bent, warped, darker. Epic cuts the Network, and reroutes his eButler through his internal holographic memory array. His vision clears and the normal suite of icons appears in concentrics. Small gold axe selected and Epic is in Threat Assessment™, a program that assesses objects and non-objects placing them on possible vectors, etc etc whatever. Dude with a gun rushing from left. Epic shoots him square in the face, not even really looking. Epic pays a lot of money for top of the line dampeners and unlike expensive liquor, it’s actually worth something.
Small semi-transparent arches from the 9pm and 1am zones, Epic dives behind a stage, half a dead hooker dangling over the edge. Not a looker, of course being in two distinct pieces has that effect, but even still.
“Why are you here?” A man yells.
“How could you not know?”
“What?” Hard of hearing or does he really not know?
“Well, now it’s not going to be funny?”
“What?” Epic is halfway around the stage, he can sort of see a bald man in a tight tracksuit. Too tight. His voice sounds choked, his stomach looks choked.
“What’s it to you?” Epic mutters.
“Heh. Not much really.” Epic pulls his gun right at Mocha, inching along the ground. Mocha vanishes. Fuck, the lasers aren’t hacked. What happened to…
Gunshots from behind the curtains. Epic rushes through, gun first. A typical strip club backroom, dinghy, poorly lit, pop
ulated by arbitrary garbage. Chairs with wide arms and thick sturdy legs. A few booths or something, lots of bullshit doors, presumably to “guest quarters” or “bathrooms”. One has itself open and inside is a blinking light. Threat Assessment™ can only ID shit Epic’s ocular can see, so he kicks the door the rest of the way open. Six vectors flash crimson, Epic jumps back as slugs hit the wall behind him, one grazing his left shoulder. His eButler handles the pain and attempts to halt the worst of the bleeding. Epic’s right hand gets four shots off, hitting two men in the chest, some sort of high backed chair with restraints attached, and some guy’s arm. The room is huge behind them, but Epic can’t catch baring that quickly. The guy who had the arm, was holding Baby by the foot, but drops him, it. The arm and the child, both. Big is unconscious, or off or something, probably got em-pulsed. Judging from the room Epic saw, he took at least four guys down before that, so Epic probably owes him a rescue attempt.
Epic rolls left, putting a wall between him and the assassins. Big is still in there, so he reloads and throws his left hand around the corner popping three shots at chest level as he spins on the jam of the door and into the room.
Shots actually hit a guy, but a flurry of gunfire greets Epic as he shoots back in kind. A cavernous depot full of random boxes and cords and other actual factory items. Apparently the whorehouse remodel is recent. Or the operation here requires the machinery. Regardless, there are three guys hiding somewhere in what looks like an assembly line for twisted metal parts, and Epic needs to find the real Mocha.
He risks running to Big, putting the chair by the door between him and the expansive room that extends just off the platform with the boxes. The chair has pivots and there are controls behind it, must be for whatever all the room is full of. Whatever guys Epic hasn’t killed already have pulled back into the assembly area, leaving Epic alone with Big and two dead bodies.
“You alive?” Epic asks. He has his eButler do a direct-connect and attempt to reboot the kid. The factory is really quiet, no hums or metal moving. Epic looks around, Threat Assessment™ is blanking out. Just the two of them and pipes. Well, and like conveyor belts and some sort of grinder, maybe.
[Rebooting… please wait.]
A machine starts somewhere overhead, pulling chains around the factory floor. Chains with hooks holding android bodies. Fuck, hooker factory. Six vectors turn crimson, Epic hides behind the chair.
[Rebooting… please wait.]
“Hurry the fuck up!” Epic darts his head out and spies two flunkies riding the head conveyor. One is hanging from the finished product hooks. There must be another control panel, most likely in the rooms across the warehouse. If Mocha is here, that’d be him. The floor is about a tavis field long, vaulted ceiling to a point, exposed beams with the windows are all shuttered. Huge overheads light everything blandly. A second floor rises on the far side, a few unlit windows in a big rectangle held by girders and only accessible by a ladder or perhaps by jumping off the top of that grinding machine. Recycling old droids for newer, bigger breasted models. Civil rights violations added to the docket, Epic slides under the chair to the control panel. It’s the primary, Mocha must be hitting the emergency shit in the office. It’s a ton of buttons that Epic can’t make heads or tails of, and without World access he’s stuck with blind presses.
“Hello, son!” Big is to his left. Epic isn’t sure they should be here, besides his brethren are being slaughtered. Bad form, really.
“Can you access these controls? I need to stop that grinder.” Two vectors, Epic hits one, and the other ducks behind a bin full of ears and labia.
“eFerence makin’ connection unavailable!”
“Yes, but can you work the machine?” Epic is squinting at the hook guy, still dangling there like a fucking sloth. Do they even train gang members anymore? Epic pops him between the eyes and he doesn’t even drop. Shit. His hand slides the grip on his gun back, almost like he’s going to spin it by the trigger, historical drama style, but the butt aims straight back when he hits the secondary, blowing a small explosive back. Shooting the gun clean out of his hand and halfway across the factory and also blowing a sizeable hole in the thigh of the guy standing behind him. Guy yelps and falls down the stairs to the right. Epic is making freshman mistakes now, and is down to one gun.
“Schematics found.” Epic smiles. Of course, a droid would know how to run the kind of factory it was born in. Perfect.
Peppermint White Ninja never feels comfortable at trendy places. Give him a burger, a beer and waitress in a tight shirt and you’ll get a good time, but you get him in an alien-themed restaurant that uses gravlifters to make it freefall and you’ll see the old man drop his chicken six times before getting it with the chopsticks.
“It’s freefall, how can you even drop something?” Sunshine Apocalypse rolls her eyes.
“Fuck if I know. Why are we even here?”
“You told me to pick the last place I’d find you.”
“So you pick DJ Laser Eyes?”
“I’m hungry.”
“I thought models didn’t eat.”
“Myth.”
“Like the sex nebula?”
“I thought that was real.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Definitely got hit with that one then.”
“Gullible.”
“At least I can do chopsticks in zero gee.”
“I’m sure that’s a marketable skill.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“You are a model, right?”
“Sure, why not?” Sunshine tips her head slightly, her hair floating absently around her head.
“So you have no clue why you are being chased?” Changing gears.
“Not one. You think—“
“Nah. They wouldn’t have told Stardust anything.”
“Perhaps because I’m—“
“You’re not that pretty.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“You a confirmed bachelor?”
“What?” Pepper’s turn.
“Or just an ass?”
“Okay, who even says ‘confirmed bachelor’?”
“Who calls a supermodel out on her beauty?”
“I was being facetious?”
“Or just an ass?”
“Probably both.” Pepper shrugs.
“Given.”
“But I doubt a crazed fan hired Stardust. She isn’t cheap.”
“She was wearing a micro with no panties.”
“She’s a slut.”
“Given.”
“Just not cheap. She wouldn’t do a C-grade without some serious rico behind it.”
“C-grade?”
“Assassination of a civilian would be C-class, well only if it’s a celebrity.”
“I’d like to believe I’m more of a B, at least.”
“With me in tow, you are a low A, actually.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Which means more money.”
“Which means more attempts.” Sunshine picks at her pasta, noodles floating around on arbitrary vectors. Silence.
“You got family? I wouldn’t trust anyone but family.”
“I… no. I can’t.” Her eyes close slowly, remembering something.
“Endanger them?”
“Go back or that either.” Her mouth purses.
“Daddy issues?”
“Prostitutes have daddy issues, models have low self-esteem.”
“So what’s the deal?”
“My parents disowned me about sixty years ago when they decided to join the cult of Mu’halla and didn’t appreciate a movie I made about their religion.”
“Oh right! I remember that. You played Infinity; didn’t you win Best Actress in a Religious Cult Reenactment, Musical or Diorama?”
“Yeah, but I apparently didn’t portray their living god to their liking.”
“Awkward.”<
br />
“Parents are the worst critics. They love you for your shittiest work, and disown you when you actually manage to learn how to act.” She is getting despondent, Pepper decides to redirect.
“Whatever. Look I got a safe house in the Sprawl.”
“Sprawl, ew.”
“It’s that or getting friendly with Stardust. She isn’t dead and she will be looking.”
“Does she know about your house?”
“Nah. Bought it just this year, retirement present. Scrubbed money, so she wouldn’t find it unless you were followed. I have more enemies than just her.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere?” Pepper shrugs.
“Not that where.”
“Checktiza.”
“Deep Sprawl. Ew.”
“Heh. It’s not that bad.”
“I hear they have, like, organic farms.”
“Religious cults are common on new worlds.”
“What if I get mauled by like a cow or something?”
“That’s not something that would actually happen.”
“Really?”
“Weren’t you in some period-epics?”
“No. I think you have me confused with someone else.” Sunshine looks at him, almost alarmed.
“No, no. Weren’t you in ‘All in the Hay’?”
“Oh. OH. Yes, those were all CG.”
“Right.”
“I don’t do livestock.” Case closed.
“Let’s find you a way off-planet.” Pepper says through a sigh.
“What about you?”
“I will play decoy.” Smile.
“Decoy. Won’t you need—“ Confused.
“A decoy. Yes.” Frown.
“I have a stunt double.”
“Local?” Eyebrow raise.
“Yeah, she’s a bit of a fighter.” Shrug.
“Rather not use another person I’d have to protect…”
“I got nothing.”
“Wait. Red light district.” Matter of factly.
“Um… I… ew.” Looking Pepper up and down.
“Yeah. No. You’re relatively, well known.”
“Why, relatively, thank you.” Broad smile.
“No problem. Now, what does that mean?”
“That a guy over there by the bulkhead won’t stop staring at my tits.” They both look and wave, he looks away.
“No. Robots.”
“Okay. I have like a maid, but unless you want her to fold that bitch’s thigh-high socks or something, no compos.”
“Seriously, do I need to spell it out for you?” Pepper shoots a snowpea at a woman floating in the booth above them. Fucking inertia’s a bitch. Strangely his absentmindedness with a chopstick is not correlated to his freefall fighting ability. It’s the delicacy of the operation that is his problem. Never been a finesse man, which is why he plans everything ahead of time.
“Apparently so.”
“Fine. Finish your food we’re going on a field trip.”
“If you rape me, I’m sooo not paying your fee.”
“Understandable, pass the crab.”
The Gravsling throws the F.C. Peaches into high orbital inclination, the ship then fires its gravlifters and uses a brief repulsion to skirt the gravity-well for the jump gate. The giant potato activates slots along its surface, allowing the displays internally to show the passengers a brief view of the universe before the lifters create their temporary Lagrange and the ship swallows to Selba Station.
“Man, we really shouldn’t be this drunk.”
“Heh. Probably not.” Last smiles haphazardly.
[Prepare to disembark at Selba Station. Thank you all for riding with us.]
“Fucking Gravsling should just throw actual ships.” The F.C. Peaches is just a throwing vehicle; a real starship cannot go planetside, despite what Cirrhosis might prefer. Fusion engines tend to scald the natives; also the equipment isn’t really made for huge gravity fields. But mostly it’s the burning alive part.
Selba Station is several habitation rings on a central spindle. A metal stick with glass and complex composite-metal rings around it. There are eight total rings, for various purposes and decked out accordingly. Each end has a thicker ring which passenger ships dock to; there are hundreds of ships docked and several coming and going along computer-guided vectors. AI pilots handling all, but the smallest ships, and even those are required to use AI to land at the station. It takes about sixty minutes for the F.C. Peaches to get through the queue and get scanned for explosives. It takes dock on the highest ring of the spindle. Oros is a large habituated dome in the center of this ring. Ten minutes later and Cirrhosis and Last are stumbling onto the promenade with their luggage going through some sort of robotic tunnel or another. Either way, they have six hours on Selba Station, their next ship is running late.
Oros Promenade is set up like a small city, measuring only twenty miles in diameter. The central arm is hidden behind a huge waterfall that fills the central lake. Gravity is only at about .66 Earth-standard, so the water flows languidly, spilling in spirals around the rotating pillar. The lake is lush with birds and moisture hungry trees, boats floating lazily filled with lazier tourists. Canals run through the whole city, small thin crafts taking people here and there. The buildings are all very tall, averaging at least seven-hundred stories, as space is limited. That said the city has an old world charm, Venice if Venice was in space.
“What do you want to do?” Cirrhosis asks Last, looking over a banister at the lake. A guy could get into a lot of trouble in a city like this.
“I’m hungry.”
“Aren’t we all.” Someone says.
Cirrhosis spins on his heels, Last barely notices. A tall man in a reflective black tunic is standing behind them. Thin in build, graying hair, but still smooth in the face. A stern look about him. His hand goes for his pocket and Cirrhosis stands between him and Last Chance. She glances over and her eyes widen.
The man pulls out an identification chip. Small clear circle with a gold star floating in it. Federali agent. Cirrhosis loosens his sphincters, but Last grasps his arm. Guilty much?
“What’s going on officer…”
“I’m a big fan. You handle a crossbow like none I’ve ever seen.”
“Hey, thanks. If only my manager thought so.” Cirrhosis laughs heartily. Guy is checking his profiles; his eButler is reporting at least sixteen inquiries. Mostly in his professional record, but a couple in his previous “work”.
“But that’s not why I’m here.”
“And here I was going to LT you a senser.” Autographs are ancient history. It is all about sensers, the moment you meet a celebrity captured from their point of view. Down to whether or not his balls itched, which they do. Cirrhosis scratches absently, already bored, and turns to the lake. “What do you want?”
“I hear you’re pulling out the Race.”
“Yeah. Still not sure, I’m going to Torch to talk to Toro’s board. Then press junk for Captain Suzaku’s Hot Pickin’ Go-Go Chicken . Actually, I’ll probably still end up racing, whether I like it or not.”
“Two weeks.”
“Yeah. Very soon now.”
“Yeah.” The agent is staring at a big red boat near a pier to the left. It’s floating low, heavy with passengers. A floating nightclub. Well, dayclub… whatever. The two floor ship is covered in beaded curtains, but occasionally the artificial winds blow just right and bright colored light escapes. A silence continues, so awkward that Last Chance feels obligated to leave. She taps Cirrhosis’ arm and points at a nearby kebab stand.
“What do you want?”
“Toro.”
“I believe he’s married.”
“He’s a criminal.”
“And I have hair on my head, and that lake seems to have water in it. Oh look, a boat.”
“I want him arrested. The truce has lasted too long. We
can’t keep just allowing these things to happen.” He gestures at the boat. A drunken topless woman stumbles out of a door. That kind of dayclub, apparently.
“So you want me to what? I’m not clean either.”
“But you reformed.”
“Sure, which is why my dealings with Toro are all on the level.”
“You owe him how much money?”
“Restitution from before. Regardless, I’m paying that debt with legal acts. I’ve never been involved with Toro in any other way. He wants the Jewel, he’s paying me to win it.” Cirrhosis wants a beer. Sadly, no one is paying him for that. You so rarely get paid for what you really want to do, just what you thought you wanted to do when you were in college. Or when you got nearly fatally wounded in a knife fight in a bar on an orbital space station in the Sprawl.
“You know things.”
“I believe I told you about the water and the boat, right?”
“About Toro.”
“Not about Toro. I know better than to even learn one single thing about him.” Cirrhosis nods firmly. Never. The agent frowns. Agent…
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“Agent Lipservice.”
“Charmed.”
“You know things.”
“About a lot of people, Vii Ariable for instance.” Cirrhosis looks to Lipservice for approval, seeing none, looks away.
“There is something very big going down. I have word that the prize for the Race has been stolen.”
“So what if it has? Toro has no reason to steal that which I would have won anyway.”
“What if he isn’t as confident in your abilities as you are?”
“Please. Who even has a chance?” Cirrhosis chuckles, besides Toro would have just made him steal it at the awards ceremony.
“Heh. I bet on you too, but a bet isn’t a sure thing.”
“Neither is armed robbery.”
“No one said the thief was armed.”
“Please, fucking grandmas are armed these days. And who steals something as well guarded as a Jewel without at least A gun.”
“It wasn’t that well protected.”
“Fucking obviously.” Cirrhosis grits his teeth. This conversation’s is going nowhere, slowly. At least it could pick up the pace. Last is probably finished her kebab, kebabs sound good… forgot he is still drunk for a second. He grabs the banister for support, the spinning starting to set in.
“Look, I need an in at Torch. Either let me tag or become my—“
“It is a free universe. You want to go to Torch, you go. I won’t stop you. You want to take Toro down, fine, but I am not going to double on Toro—“
“But if—“
“But if shit, Agent Lipservice. I do that and you won’t be able to find a fucking quark with my quantum signature associated with it. I know at least that much about Toro.” Cirrhosis squints into the Agents eyes, trying to see intelligence in them. Seeing only naïve duty, he turns and walks to the kebab stand.
Agent Lipservice grips the banister tightly. No luck today. His bones rumble and his eyes close, gotta check in.