SF in The City Anthology (15 page)

One girl she used to know, Elei Vogt, had been a member of the Isshiis, when they still visited her home. A disturbed man who had been fired from Iktsuarpok Technologies took refuge
in the Gorse. He wanted to hack into his ex-employer’s computer system and wreak havoc, but he needed a great deal of computing power to do so, and he lacked the money to buy the needed devices. As one of history’s cruelest accounts of improvisation, this man kidnapped a half a dozen girls and hacked into the nanotubes running throughout their brains.

The crazy devil never even fulfilled his mission. Iktsuarpok had a tight security system, which traced the hacker back to his hovel in the Gorse. Though the company’s agents arrived too late to stop the ex-employee, they did appear in time to be handed what was left of him by an angry father who had caught up with his daughter’s abductor first. To this very day, the girls had never awakened from their comas. A few of them, like Elei, did not have parents, so Grace’s small church had provided homes for them. Grace did not have enough money to support Elei herself, but she visited the girl often, bringing small gifts whenever she could manage. The Christian woman now feared that something similar had happened to Elegance and Charlisle
, if not worse.

Grace decided that a trip to Prefecture 56 would take her mind off of the present troubles in the Gorse. She could speak with her fellow church members, all eleven of them, that evening and devise a strategy for finding the missing gangsters. Having rarely used travel points earned from her cred card, she would be able to make the round way trip to the neighboring prefecture for free. She wanted to see exactly what this Copy Rites business was all about, and it would provide her with a topic to talk to Mictlan about next time she saw him. He seemed very set on an atheistic worldview, yet she felt that there was an unobtrusive way in which to share the Gospel with him. She had seen plenty of sign wielding fanatics in her youth, shouting at the crowds around them, calling young girls whores and well-dressed men homos. Grace had asked
these people how they felt they showed God’s love to other’s in this way. They called her a neo-hippy.

On her way to one of three metros that ran under the Gorse to nearby prefectures, Grace decided to drop by one of her neighbor’s homes to pick up more information on the missing teenagers. Rhys Calumny lived in an apartment only a block from Grace’s. He was the biggest gossip the Gorse, and probably The City as a whole, had ever seen. A popular misconception that persisted even to the day and age of The City was that women had monopoly on hearsay. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Grace thought to herself,
he that goeth about as a talebearer revealeth secrets: therefore meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips
[21]
, as she knocked on the door of Rhys’s place. She hoped to avoid a conversation heavy on the gossip, but Grace also knew that this lonely gray box repairman knew everything going on in the Gorse before anyone else did. Besides, Grace knew that she wasn’t perfect – far from it as a matter of fact. The sins she struggled with may not have entailed meddling in others’ affairs but they were sins nonetheless. Grace took in a deep breath before Rhys answered his door. She wished to show him as much kindness as she did to other Gorsers.

As one might expect, Grace would rather not have the interests of others written here. While Rhys ran his mouth about the “problems” with his neighbor’s lives, Grace tried to keep him on point as much as possible. He revealed no new information about Charlisle and Elegance, except his theory that they probably eloped and found a job with the adult Charon gang. Grace didn’t care for theories about other peoples’ lives, but she told Rhys she appreciated his help, and
she gave him the leftovers of her oolong tea. When she would begin looking for the youth in the future, this contact, gossiper he may be, would help out tremendously.

Grace had lived in a riotous home as a child, and this background perhaps shaped her into a frugal shopper more than anything. Every year she would get a Daviz’s coupon book and use it to the fullest extent possible. When she found a bicycle taxi, she handed the driver a voucher for a 40% discount on the fare. He just rolled his eyes and took off right as she settled down on the second seat of the bike. Bicycle taxis may not have had the speed of motorcycle taxis, but they cost less, and Grace enjoyed looking at the scenery around her as they took the slower pace. She was probably the only person in the Gorse who could look about her and find something positive to look at in the ghetto. 

Her driver was a lean, muscular man who wore a blue and white striped tank top, his pale white skin burning in the bright sunlight that now shone upon them. Grace did not understand it herself, but the sun’s rays burned skin more easily in this day and age than in years past. She asked her driver as unobtrusively as possible if he had worn sundeflector lotion that day. He had not done so simply because he could not afford it, which ruined Grace’s mood. When they arrived at Imugi station, Grace made a point of paying her driver an extra-large tip. She didn’t mind saving money on the fare, since that affected the taxi company more than the cyclist, but she never gypped working men and women when it came to tips. Research indicated e
nough people did that already.

After the grateful yet surprised man rode off, Grace got in the short line leading to the “Emerald Status Ticket Window” inside the station. Though she traveled much less than in the
past, she used to ride to Prefecture 54 every day since she worked as a doctor’s secretary for a time. It paid much better than Grace’s current employment, but she didn’t like taking orders from a machine. The autonomous medical doctor demanded much of her and showed little common sense when it came to patient priority. All the stress from putting up with that “hunk of silicon” had finally pushed Grace out of that career path. Now that she didn’t visit another prefecture every day and rarely at all for that matter, her traveler’s status had fallen to a third tier of benefits. Still, a discount was a discount. 

Having picked up her digital ticket, Grace waited patiently for her ride to arrive. When it did, she was not surprised to see no one leave the graffiti drenched cars. No one from outside the Gorse wanted to come into it, at least not that time that day. Few people could afford to leave the neighborhood, so at least Grace wasn’t crammed into the cars like they did to th
e passengers in Prefecture 74.

Her trip to Prefecture 56 had little in the way of excitement. A gang of rowdy teenagers Grace didn’t recognize held a sparring match between two of its members as a means to settling a dispute. They weren’t using lethal weapons, so Grace’s instinctual fear for their safety passed, and she decided to listen to Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major rather than pay heed to the resounding shouts of the boys in her car. Of course they shot her a look of disbelief when she put in old fashioned ear buds. Few people used such devices now that micro-liners were inserted in even the poor peoples’ ear canals.

The metro moved rapidly beneath The City, and Grace was happy to catch even just a glimpse of the water around their car’s transport tube, when they zipped under Pellucid Lake. She had not listened to much of her music before they arrived at the station in Prefecture 56. She had remembered the ride taking longer in the past; at least she thought she did.

A wealthier area of The City than Grace’s home ghetto, Prefecture 56 had more people with nanotube insertions in their brains. It wasn’t hard to find someone willing to mentally pull up directions to Copy Rites for her. The new business was not far from the station, so Grace did not even have to take a bicycle taxi.

With a fresh coat of paint and well-polished windows, Copy Rites’s appearance gave away its recent opening. Only three stories tall, it was not the most imposing of buildings. Nestled between a Trun’s Synthetic Pet Store and a SDS: Surveillance Device Store, Copy Rites had the makings of an obscure establishment. Grace did not find it hard to believe that discussions of religious import took place here. After all her church group was small. When she had entered, Grace tried not to buckle over with shock at the sight of a long line leading up to the main desk. Partial visibility of the floor above revealed that it too had a sizable wait for a desk.

“Excuse me,” Grace said to a nearby employee who was transporting a sizable armload of documents. She could tell his official status by the rainbow colored vest he and the man behind the main desk both wore “Can you tell me which line I should get in?”

“Are you inquiring about a new or past religion?” the lanky young man asked, his head just showing above the palisade of paper.

“Oh very old,” Grace replied.

“You’ll want to head upstairs then,” the friendly boy said with a smile.

“
Thank you very much.”

Grace had rather hoped that she could visit the desk on the ground floor, as her trip had already worn her out more or less. As she climbed the imposing staircase, she wondered just what the rainbow colored vests of the employees represented. Given her religious affiliation, she first thought of Joseph’s multi-colored coat as a point of reference. The employee with whom Grace had just conversed had indicated that more than one religion had been discussed here. In all likelihood, the vests were supposed to represent religious plurality in some fashion. Grace hoped that this inquiry at the desk would go well. She really had no idea what the purpose of Copy Rites really was, though its name gave her a bad feeling.

It took Grace over an hour to finally get up to the desk, causing her to wonder what exactly the people in front of her had to inquire about. She noticed that the man who had been in front of her in line had a translation of the Quran when he approached the desk. As she stood before a seemingly bored employee with a name tag that said Alice in a bold script, Grace waited for the middle-aged woman to say something first.

“What documentation have you brought with you today?” Alice asked as she quickly t
hrew up a hand to hide a yawn.

“None,” Grace said nervously. “I just wanted to see what this business is all about. So
meone said I should visit it.”

“You should have just visited our site and saved yourself the trouble,” Alice pointed at a data mark, a small silicon chip, on the desk. “Go ahead and download this brochure. Then you can come back when you have a religion to patent.”

“Wait, you’re patenting people’s faiths here?” Grace felt nauseated by the very thought, though she tried to keep her composure.

“Yep, you can patent either a specific ritual or a religion as a whole. It is more common for our clients to create their own doctrines and observances and patent them at our desk downstairs. Please bear in mind that there is a $600 dollar fee for patenting through our service, a real steal when you consider how much other inventions cost to patent. Those with new religions must provide documentation detailing the practices involved, and those patenting older faiths need to bring in any holy book involved with your denomination or a video file of a performed ritual.”

I’m going to be sick
, Grace thought to herself. She suddenly felt light headed, the terrible news she had just heard made her metro trip and wait in line seem even more taxing somehow.

“
Please download our brochure and come back when you are ready,” Alice said with a forced smile. “Have a nice day.”

Grace felt like scolding the young woman in front of her and screaming at the owner of such an establishment, but she knew that this sort of reaction wouldn’t help anybody. She walked back down the stairs, an oppressive cloud of depression hanging over her. Hopefully an unscrupulous individual hadn’t patented Christianity yet. The image of Jesus overthrowing the money
changers’ tables in the temple
[22]
popped up in Grace’s mind. How could people in their right minds treat their faith as a way to make money?
Then again
, she thought,
people have been doing it for centuries including Christians.

The fact that people would create their own creeds for money did not shock Grace so much as the thought of adherents to a preexisting faith patenting it. Did they value their beliefs little enough to put a price on them? How could one person reap all the financial benefits from
teachings Buddha created? How could a single individual patent Mormonism when Joseph Smith had clearly founded the movement?

As she rode the metro back to the Gorse, Grace pondered what she had just seen and heard. Central Authority had to have given Copy Rites a legal license to operate in Prefecture 56, as it was a wealthy and therefore securer district. No 56er would tolerate an illegitimate business, though other prefectures’ citizens cared little about legality. Grace considered petitioning the CA and getting her fellow church members to do so, not just for the sake of her faith, but also for the benefit of all religions. Despite the modern mindset, theology was not meant to be a money making scheme.

A ride on the metro always helped Grace clear her head and the trip back to the Gorse gave her time to calm down. She wished to respond to Copy Rites in the right way, which meant exercising prudence. While Copy Rites had indeed disgraced millennia old religions with its policies, Grace and her compatriots needed to be “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves
[23]
.” They would need to discuss a course of action at that evening’s meeting, as the more levelheaded would offset the incautious in the group. More importantly, they would pray to God and ask him for direction.