Tetra-Phi 5 News
Reporter: Noxious
N:I have with me here the legendary transvestite nightmare herself, Truckee Dumpstar.
T:Charmed.
N:It is her, correct? I mean, that is what all that means right?
T:In this day and age... No, not really.
N:Oh. I just thought..
T:There is a difference between a transvestite, a transgender and a transexual. I would say that I am largely none of these, but more something in between.
N:I didn't mean to bring up such a serious subject.
T:Gender is AIDS level serious to me. It is something I try to reinvent daily, whatever part of the spectrum I feel closest to that day will dictate how I dress. There is no logical reason that I can conjure that someone has to be one hundred percent anything at all. It is all choices and feelings, concepts lost on plebeians most times. I think that, above most else, fashion is the best indicator of identity a person can give. It is interesting that that indicator can change every day, is it not?
N:I guess so.
T:I can be how I feel, and I can show that outwardly or not. Such is the freedom of such choice. I have nothing to prove, but can prove it instantly with the change of a mere hairstyle or the switch from dress to slacks.
N:Yes, but-
T:But what? I understand that i show myself as something of a joke, that largely, I am a joke, but that does not give you the right to question me on something so basic. My title, chosen by myself, is a play on what people like you think every day when they see someone who does not fit in convenient boxes. I defy logic so that I can break it down. Tirade aside, now, did you really have a question for me?
N:I, well-
T:Then I will say good-bye then.
The Hinter starts at the six-hundred block of Hojo City, when 600 Avenue gives way to Ambivalence Boulevard. Truly the Hinterlands started as urban sprawl in the East of Hojo City, but as the space started filling, and people started looking for new places to suffer in desolation, the Hinter spread through about half the continent. Selba Prime has only three real cities, four if one counts the Hinter as its own city. Teuvnasis, while the so facto capital of the Hinter, is not par for the course, so real tech still works out in the boonies. Truckee picked up a real car because AI drive programs aren’t GPS updated outside of the numbered streets, and with the winding and dead end one-ways would be impossible to drive otherwise. A ground based vehicle is also necessary as the plastifiber roads give out at about 550 East, and the GovNet doesn’t allow hovers outside of what would be the 650’s.
Generally, Truckee just didn’t want to get jumped by some hillbilly because he HAD thought he was going it alone. That said, he was happy Epic came along when they had to refuel the beast. Epic had done this before, and therefore saved Truckee the embarrassment of looking stupid in front of a shopkeeper who had a drifting left eye. He also saved him of the disgust of having to actually exit the vehicle at the truck-stop to buy said fuel, as well as get directions. Epic could only get so close with a GPS hex, and needs some sort of baring to get anywhere useful past the sort of pseudo industrial shanty town of tracked houses and cookie cutter yards fitted with hovers on cinderblocks.
“Guy there says we take this road up about fifteen minutes, hit the loop and exit. We should be there in like a half hour.”
“You spoke to that urchin?”
“Okay, I’m positive you only call, like, kids living on the subway, urchin. That guy is easily fifty and lives in that trailer behind the station. Seemed nice enough guy to me, anyway.” Epic points at a rather large looking car, and sort of shrugs at Truckee’s response, being: Truckee almost loses his breakfast, lunch, and previous night’s dinner.
“Living in a car? Is that even possible?” Truckee mutters as Epic gets back in the vehicle, pulling out of the station on to a road filled with as many active cars and dead and or smoking ones. That said, the speed limit dips a bit, giving time for a good look-around. Should one desire to do such a thing.
“Some people living in Astral Complex have apartments smaller than the car we’re in now.”
“True enough. And I suppose if one were to live in a car, you would know the roads better.”
“That isn’t a car. It’s an attachment to a car.”
“Attach? Like a semi-train?”
“Kind of. Some people live on the road so much that it doesn’t make sense for them to have a house that can’t move with them.”
“But doesn’t that thing run a fuel depot?”
“Gas Station.”
“Sure. Isn’t that store entirely stationary?”
“Yeah. I guess so, huh? Maybe this is where he was driving to?”
“I can see why you would choose to live here.” Truckee mutters as Epic swerves to avoid several children playing with an old rusty keg-shell.
“You gotta live somewhere, right?”
“Regardless. Do you know much about this place?”
“Ex’s?” The area beyond the named streets, but before you get to the parts where people tend livestock. Ex’s isn’t really a town or anything. Just a place where people go to find themselves, lose other people, and make money any way they can. “I used to live here probably seventy... seventy-five years ago.”
“How old are you? I wouldn’t have placed you as a refresher.”
“Please, anything to keep me doing what I do. I’m about two-fifty, like… yeah, two-forty nine. Anyway, the area around here is pretty tame, get a bit farther and I wouldn’t want to be wearing a fake beehive on my head. No offense.”
“I don’t consider it offensive that the ‘people’ of this area would be incapable of understanding the depth of my fashion.”
“Okay, so I’ll be talking when we get there.”
“What I’m paying you for. Can you tell your child to stop doing that?”
“Big, could you stop fingering yourself?”
“It’s how I charge mah bat’ries, Son!”
“Genital friction, eh?”
“Yeah!”
Turning to Truckee, “It’s how he generates his power.”
“I am well aware of that. Thank you for the update.” Turning to the window. A lovely sight to behold outside. Fifty to an hundred story buildings as far as the eye can see, all with small to medium sized lawns for the area. Meaning they have about a half an acre to play with, mostly chain fences and dilapidated random artifacts of H
hinter-life. Your arbitrary playground equipment in this yard, a giant flaming alter to some God or another in that one, in another a pool filled with a fluid only the flaming alter God could guess at, etc. Truckee is positive his life has become a fever dream, or a parody… Perhaps he is being filmed right now, and the crew will come and laugh and laugh from out behind the barn filled with rusting hover-bases.
“It’s what you pay me for.” Epic chuckles lightly as Truckee pops the collar of his trench against the foulness outside the safety of the vehicle.
“Right. I’m just going to pretend to sleep, could you alert me when we get somewhere worth opening my eyes for.”
“What? You don’t like abject squalor?”
“Eventually even sights as lush as yonder tire fire are just too wondrous to take in further.”
“You’re not going to like your second update then.” Epic grins, turning a corner and narrowly avoiding several overturned shopping carts.
“Why is that?”
“We’re driving to that tire fire.”
“Fantastic. Should I change, or is my current outfit up to it? Are tire fires a black tie affair? I kind of always assumed business casual, but I could be wrong. Big, your opinion?”
“Tire fires are against the law!” Big points at the fire, accusingly, as if one had to accuse the fire for it to be properly notified of its incorrectness. Truckee nods to Big, who seems satisfied with that being agreed upon.
“So stripes
then. I’ll see if I have anything in the trunk.”
Apoplexxxy is where they are headed. A behemoth of a bar that just happens to be tire-fire adjacent. Or perhaps is the official sponsor of the tire-fire. It does appear to be taking up about half of the property one way or the other. Regardless, the bar is six stories, made of sturdy looking wood beams set in a sort of pseudo-Asiatic style, with several shingled roofs overhanging thin beamed balconies. The walls are white painted concrete covered in various graphiti and day-glo motion adverts. Mostly vulgarities punctuated with beer prices and topless women. Epic parks the car as far away from anything else as possible, and sets its alarms to synch with his eButler. The car is easily the most expensive in the lot, with most others of the one-door-is-a-different-color-than-the-rest variety. Truckee, at the behest of Epic, changes into a simple black pair of pants and a more reasonable orange button-up. With some additional goading, as well as upon hearing a cat-call from a rather dirty looking obese man driving the bottom half of an old ice cream truck, Truckee lost the wig with the bees for a more subtle brown wig set in a short ponytail.
“You actually have some semi normal clothes. What did you bring those for?” Epic asks, actually genuinely curious.
“Business. I can’t go so stellar with my fashion choices when I am meeting with people who are considering dropping a billion rico on my race. Sometimes even I need to ratchet it in to make that donut money.” Truckee sort of laughs, self-consciously straightening his shirt as they walk towards the bar.
“Big, can you keep scanning and eS me if anyone has a weapon.”
“Sure!” Big laughs, toddling after them on his short legs.
The bar has a very open interior. Concentric ringed floors hold several round tables a piece. Each of the four sections has maybe eight total stairways to the one below. Each segment is perhaps three feet below the last, with booth tables lining the perimeter. The very center houses a square bar centered around a pillar covered in mirrors. The very back of the highest level is cut short, presumably the bathrooms and kitchen, judging by doors and who is entering and exiting them. On both sides are wide staircases to the floors above. The floor directly overhead seems to be a dance floor of some type, as music and the dull thud of people moving can be heard over the clamor of people eating.
The clientele tends to be skewing a bit older, with physical forty being about average. Everyone is very much from the area, looking weathered from the wind and sun. Clothing ranges from ten years ago fashion, to barely being held together by decaying threads and congealed dust. Truckee wouldn’t so much as consider looking at a menu for a place like this, but Epic is hungry and so they end up at a booth near the back. A woman with a robotic arm leads them to their table. She is actually quite striking to look at, dark brown hair held back loosely with a small leather bow. Her top is filled quite nicely, a denim corset tied tightly with thick black string. Her curvaceous thighs held at bay in tight hunter green cargos.
“Can you tell Bloodstain that he has a visitor?” Epic grins to the waitress, as she hands him a menu. She smiles back, awkwardly at first. Looking at Epic, then at Truckee, then back at Epic.
“He doesn’t work here, sir.”
“I know. Here, but not. I feel that. But tell him that Epic is here to see him.” Epic unfolds the menu, and only gives the waitress a sideways glance as she walks off. Truckee keeps watching until she goes down a set of stairs and he loses sight.
“A cyborg?” Truckee is almost unable to remain seated, his fascination almost palpable.
“ Never seen one before?”
“Goddess no! I heard that such things used to happen many years ago, but I thought that anyone old enough to have undergone the process would have died or been rejuvenated with regular appendages.”
“I had a robotic leg once.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Kind of a pain in the ass though, got rid of it pretty quickly. They work with your nanomachine subjectors, so you have to have your bone amps and most of the time your eButler is making it work ‘naturally’. It’s a big drain on resources, basically, but I’m sure with advances in technology, they are better at it now. Sides, being able to stomp through a wall was pretty fun.”
“Why would you do that now?”
“Guess she must like the power or something.”
“Maybe she was born without one the first time, so she didn’t have the nerves to clone a new functioning arm.” Although in that case, you could get yourself germlined during refresh sessions.
“She could be a purist.” Someone who refuses cloning because it isn’t natural, not a terribly common psychosis, but it is the basis of the LTZ.
“The Hinter is so fucking interesting sometimes.”
“Yeah, say that when you get so hungry you are forced to eat whatever ‘Chicken ala Tyler’ is.”
“Who the fuck is Tyler?”
“That is the question.” Epic shrugs, his eyes move ever so slightly to behind Truckee’s left ear.
“Why, I happen to be Tyler.” A man says, walking up to their table. Epic is completely unfazed, but Truckee is confused. He expected Tyler to be some sort of a chef, wearing all white with one of those douchey hats, not a thirty year old wiry man in tight jeans and a leather jacket with no shirt underneath.
“Well put a cap on that rap, I’m not here to speak to the cook.” Epic can smell a firstlife from a mile away, and a peon from even farther.
“Yes, Mr. Death. I am here on behalf--“
“Be-havin’ your ass back there and get me fucking Bloodstain, I’m not here to fucking talk to some flunkee.” Epic puts down his menu, and actually looks at Tyler. Truckee wouldn’t want to have to meet with that look.
“Man has a gun in his jacket!”
“Yeah. I can kind of tell.” Epic continues to stare down Tyler, who isn’t really effected by the front. Probably used to people yelling at him by now, especially if he is the one who cooked what the table next to them is having. It might be duck. Might be. Tyler just looks at Truckee, who attempts to bore a hole into the table with his eyes, then Big, and turns to leave.
“Enjoy your meal.” Tyler mutters, and walks off.
“Why did you do that?”
“Guys a gatekeeper. He came out to make sure that I am who I say I am. I had to prove to him that I am serious, and that I am worth the time.”
“So how do we know if it worked?”
“If we don’t get shot in the next six seconds, then someone should be eSing me in ten.”
“Fantastic.”
“Upstairs. Back of the club, bring your friends.”
“Well, looks like we aren’t going to die.” Epic stands, lifting Big out of the booth and sitting him on his shoulder.
“I’m not getting my hopes up.” Truckee says as he stands; best not to set your expectations too high.
The second floor is, in fact, a dance club, thick fog covers everything in a haze. Rapid fire lasers and holographic dancers add an air of sophistication to what amounts to a guy hardjacking his eButler into a sound system. The ‘dj’ is just sitting in the corner in a chair. The seventy or eighty people dancing don’t seem to care, they are all either too high on sensers or too high on physical drugs. Epic and Truckee manage to meander through the crowd to eventually find the metal door leading to the back offices.
“There are eWarfare shizzy in here!” Big looks somewhat alarmed. Epic holds one finger to his mouth, and silences both Big and Truckee. Anything they say is being recorded, probably anything they send and receive as well. He cuts his link to the World, and gestures for Truckee and Big to do the same. No use in getting hacked two times in a row if one can avoid it.
The hallway beyond the door is dimly lit, the music reverberating echoes the whole way. Doors line both sides, but anyone would guess that the red door at the end was where this was headed. Epic reaches for the knob, but it opens ahead of him.
A tall man, covered in moving tattoos, greets them.
“Deathmarch Bloodstain, you insufferable prick!” Epic laughs, shaking the thin man’s hand firmly, then pulling him in for a one-armed embrace. Deathmarch laughes as well, old friends apparently. Truckee only vaguely remembers the man from the office, Deathmarch nods to Truckee and gestures them inside.
“What’s with the bot?” Deathmarch is looking at Big, who is somewhat anxious looking, he’d be worse if his access was turned on and he saw how many bounties are on the man’s head.
“Picked him up on the way. Useful here and there.”
“This man has two guns on him, one in the desk, and six in the metal cabinet ova there!” Big points at Deathmarch, who feigns innocence by moving backward and waving his hands in front of himself, and grins.
“I know, kiddo. Thanks.” Epic laughs and takes a seat in front of Deathmarch’s desk. Deathmarch offers the two a drink, pours three and throws a bottle of water on the counter for Big to sip on in case he wants it. He sits behind his large gunmetal desk, and folds his hands.
“And you wanted…?” Rising intonation meaning question; and the answer is…?
“Someone stole the Jewel.” Epic cuts the chase; Truckee snorts his drink a little in surprise.
“I see. You think I did it?”
“No. We think Iced Mocha did.” Epic lies. They don’t really know who stole it anymore. ‘Iced Mocha’ talked to Truckee, and now Truckee isn’t sure. Epic met the gang, and now he’s almost positive against. Why is someone dropping his name on them like this? What could they possibly hope to accomplish by leading the two of them around.
“I doubt he’d be able to pull something like that off. Maybe the theft, but not reselling it. Destiny has like two lifters worth their weight in the drugs he pays them with, and one of ‘em is stuck running a fucking front restaurant on Torch. Something like that is one of a kind; you can’t sell something that hot easily. Federalis would be on you in fucking seconds. Freeze your accounts over ansible, and you’d be fucking stranded wherever the fuck you decided to pull that bullshit. Nah. This is something higher caliber than that. You got enemies, Mr. Dumpstar?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“You got enemies that could hack a government mainframe constantly for at least a couple of hours?”
“I met a guy in the World who could freeze time.”
Epic and Deathmarch both look at Truckee carefully. Epic drinks his scotch, and Deathmarch lights a cigar.
“You—When did you meet this guy?’ Epic asks finally.
“Right before I came to pick you up. He said he was Iced Mocha, but he didn’t look anything like him.”
“He live hacked his avatar AND froze time?” Deathmarch only half asks.
“And it was an ansible meeting, so…” Truckee mutters.
“Look. His gang is working from Torch right now, but I actually have no idea where that guy is. I doubt if he is who you THINK he is that he’d be there. They’re spinning their shit down right now, I’m pretty sure his second in command is running the local racket until they solid an exit strategy. The crackdown of late scared most everyone out to-“
“Orii Chi Chi. The only colony that owns its LaGrange.” Epic states blandly, holding his hand out for another drink. Truckee pours for the three of them.
“Yeah, all the leaders and most of their men left Torch a few weeks ago. He’s not that big of a deal… At least I thought. Fuck if he can pretend to be such a peon for this long, fuck knows what ties he has to stay that fucking low radar. You guys probably need a lift to Orii right? And weapons… lots.”
“Something very off the charts, and weapons we can take through customs.” Epic says gravely.
“You got money for that?”
“I got lines of credit that boggle the motherfucking mind, can I please just get off this godforsaken rock all-the-fuck-ready.” Truckee sort of laughs, and then downs his glass. Shit here is getting a little too serious.