SF in The City Anthology (21 page)

As he expected, the current from the pipe gave him a nice push off into the rest of the lake. He would intentionally head towards the whirlpool, since the waves moved in that direction, but he would try to hit the largest swells while giving the “vortex of doom” a wide birth.

Since the lake was shaped somewhat like a giant triangle, all the waves were channeled into the corner where the maelstrom twisted menacingly. Arkady had picked the time of the year when the wind was strongest in this region. Including the mounds of physical garbage that rested on the bottom of the lake, other factors, like water churning devices below the surface, combined to give this body of water the effectiveness of a laboratory wave basin.

For the first fifteen minutes, Arkady had to adjust to the unusual wave patterns on the lake, but he eventually got the system down to a science. His arm mounted camera beamed all the footage of this adventure to his laptop at home. He wished that there wasn’t such a long wait for him to get down to editing this footage, but the surfer put this and all other thoughts out of his mind, centering himself in the p
resent moment and enjoying it.

Then he spotted the big one. For whatever reason, a massive wave was heading his direction and Arkady had noticed by the way the waves broke near the whirlpool’s corner that an opportunity to “thread the needle” of this monster was about to present itself. He pictured the bloggers seeing this through the eye of the camera, the maelstrom to his right side and a curtain of water closing over
him as he tempted fate.

So he proceeded with this plan. As he rode under the crushing weight of the wave, he couldn’t help but marvel at the power of it, even if its color was nothing to brag about. Then his obstacle detector went off, signaling that something solid was in the wall of water. Out of nowhere, an entire discarded 3D printer slammed into the side of Arkady’s body, throwing him off of his board and opening a gash on his forehead. The corner of the device that had connected with the surfer’s head had also opened up his suit, exposing his bleeding face to the sticky, chemical l
aden water for the first time.

Arkady couldn’t see anything but brown water all around him. A strong current took hold of his body, and he knew that he had been sucked into the whirlpool. Suddenly, a searing pain tore at his right leg, as if something had bitten it. He didn’t have time to think about what this meant. For a split second, his head emerged from the wall of the vortex long enough to see that he was nearly halfway down it. He pressed the button on his tow belt, and a powerful magnetic hook fired out of the abyss, taking hold on the closet metallic object – the pipe that sat directly above the whirlpool.

The surfer pushed the button to real himself in, and his body was quickly jerked from the wall of water. He looked down into the eye of the store he had just escaped. Spinning blades rested at the bottom of the funnel, chopping up the physical waste into smaller pieces, his shortboard a casualty of his recklessness.

As lucky as Arkady’s escape from death had been, the magnetic end of the tow line had stuck to the bottom of the pipe, not the top. The motors in his belt pulled him up so hard, the surfboarder had his torso and head slammed against the bottom of the metallic structure, knoc
king him unconscious.

He didn’t know how long he hung there; resting between the waking world and dreamless sleep while a painful death loomed below him. When the surfboarder finally came to, a medical drone carried him in myriadium arms to the local medical center. Arkady looked to his right leg and saw it swinging around like a pool noodle, bones sticking out where they shouldn’
t have. He passed out again.  

Awaking to the sight of Florian standing over him, the surfer could smell café cubano on his host’s breath. Looking about the room, Arkady saw that he was in a hospital bed, his right leg wrapped in a cast. Stunning, yet overworked, a thin brunette sat in the corner of the room observ
ing X-rays of his damaged limb.

“How did I get here?” the surfer
asked quietly.

“You don’t remember
any
of the details surrounding the accident?” Florian knitted his brows in concern.

“Please tell me I have an automated nurse?”

Florian scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. “Well, I know human nurses are more expensive, but I hooked you up with one anyway. It’s a more reliable source of treatment. I was worried about you.”

“My insurance company is going to be even more worried,” Arkady sighed. “We aren’t exactly on the best of terms at the moment.”

“Well, at least your nurse is a looker,” Florian whispered. “Her name is Florence. You have your v
ery own Florence nightingale!”

“Florian, how did I get here?” Arkady looked
at his friend in bewilderment.

“Well, I…just told you.”

“That’s strange. Tell me again anyway.”

***

It only took a few months for Arkady Braveza’s leg to mend, but some scars never fully healed. Suffering from anterograde amnesia, Arkady gave up his obsession with surfing and instead started up a blog explaining cheap travel arrangements and other forms of savings to those interested in his impressive knowledge base. Those memories weren’t affected. His case of amnesia prevented him from creating new memories, something of the ultimate curse among adventure seekers, or at least that was how his friends looked at it. At least he still had his long term memories. 

A Rapportoid 5000 android was assigned to help the ex-surfer around the home and on the rare occasions that he hit the town. Many free-spirited individuals throughout The City banded together to help out a man who had suffered from a “major hitch in his lifestyle,” and they purchased the Rapportoid’s service for him. It was this very machine that wrote the final post on Arkady’s blog, including a video of his near death experience with the whirlpool. That video became so popular that Arkady’s medical bills were paid off just from the money made from advertising on yourflick.com. However, this wasn’t the only legacy that the Rapportoid left behind. Machines never tired of discussing personal matters with people, unlike humans themselves.

“Say, since when did an android share my apartment?” Arkady asked one day. “I mean it’s cool if you stay here, I just don’t remember you discussing it with me beforehand.”

“I am a Rapportoid 5000 sir, appointed to help you deal with your ina
bility to create new memories.”

“What you thin
k I have amnesia? Ridiculous!”

“There’s some hope for your memories yet Mr. Braveza. A new treatment for brain disorders hit the market recently, and I believe it is the first step in the right direction. I calculate a 73.4% chance that a cure for your amnesia will be created and available for
use in the next eight years.”

“If I have amnesia, why do you hang out with me? Don’t you hav
e something better to do?”

“Well I am assigned to essentially run your life for you, until it gets back on track,” the android smiled. “Besides, I can relate to you. In order to make space for new information, since a Rapportoid’s brain is still nowhere close to having the storage capacity a human one, I have to delete past memories every two months. You can imagine how…
difficult
…it is choosing which memories to remove. I have programming in place to keep important information safe from…”

“Hey, who are you,” Arkady pointed at his mechanical caretaker. “Do you like surfing?”

While the Surfin’ Nerd may never convince his friends to let him take to the waves again, he still remains the same person. With the Rapportoid’s recordings of past conversations, Arkady has started to better understand his memory troubles, though it’s still a daily struggle. The android’s predictions regarding a cure for anterograde amnesia look more accurate every day. Whether or not this impulsive man will ever return to his life as before is uncertain, but if you ask around for the chillest man in The City, you will probably be directed to his door. 

Episode 11: “
Agitators”

              One in every thirteen citizens of The City will have the nanotubes in their minds hacked at some point during their lifetime. My sister contributed to that statistic on her 21st birthday. Being young and reckless, she decided to hit up Bendru’s Bar on Trimling Street for some schnapps with her girlfriends. This IC League creep, Assize Zavocky, got kicks out of hacking girls’ brains and using them as glorified data crunching machines for solving complex mathematical problems. I wasn’t a cop at that time, thank the gods. If I had been, that sicko would have died during the arrest. He left my sister in a vegetative state for the sake of solving the MLC conjecture and satisfying his God complex.

             
I’d like to tell you that I made Assize pay after I joined Prefecture 59’s division of The City’s police force. Brain hacking is not far behind rape and child molesting in the prison system’s code of vigilante justice. Assize Zavocky did only six months at Stonedene Prison before a fellow inmate shanked him to death. To be honest with you, his death didn’t make me feel any better about my sister’s fate.

             
Having killed another brain hacker that kidnapped twelve year old girls, I stayed in a cell for about a week before I found myself transported to an empty warehouse with a bag over my head; not your typical disciplinary procedure amongst police officers. When that rancid sack was finally lifted, I found myself standing in a line with five other officers beside me.

             
“You have been spared the rod on this day, gentlemen and lady,” a silver haired man with a sizable cigar in his mouth said as he walked out of the shadows. “My name’s Og Husher. I’m the head of Central Authority’s intelligence division.”

             
Mr. Husher gazed at each of us ambivalently, his leather jacket squeaking as he moved an arm to point at the first man in our squad, “Pierre Zhōu, a detective who tortured and killed Niamh Kask, the VP of Mikkelsen Enterprises, after learning that she had been sleeping with his wife.” 

             
The rest of us gave Mr. Zhōu a disbelieving look over. With a stature more common amongst jockeys and a build like a corporate programmer, he didn’t seem the type for violence, or even a job as a detective for that matter.

             
“Willow Blasé,” Husher hovered above the group’s only female member, “You entered a civilian’s home without a warrant and tazed both of occupants without provocation. Granted you’re not the first cop to do something so stupid and reckless, but it turned out you were taped doing so. It caused a real fiasco in Prefecture 46.”

             
“Whatever,” Willow brushed her blue bangs out of her eyes.

             
“Pox Roux, a convicted aerodeslizador  thief who ‘turned his life around’ in prison and decided to become a patrolman. You wound up beating a revolutionary to death after he questioned the legitimacy of the government’s Clean Data, Clean Streets ruling.” Husher looked at the 300 pounds of solid muscle that stood before him. “I guess he spoke up in front of the wrong sociopath.”

             
“Cian Becker,” Husher chuckled menacingly as he stood in front of the line’s only cyborg. Any fool could tell this man’s body was artificial from a mile away. He used a Vaughn Roe model – the most common cyborg body type in The City. “Why the CA’s second best hacker would choose such a simplistic look for himself, I’ll never know,” Husher looked at Mr. Becker skeptically. “You falsified data regarding a Mr. Vlahos to try to get him arrested. He was
the
best hacker in Central Authority, so I can only guess that jealousy was your motive. I can still use that.”

             
“Jihoon De Jong,” Mr. Husher addressed the youngest yet tallest member of our lineup. “You were a skilled sniper, but you recently ticked off the wrong head ups in Central Authority. If you can keep your inquisitive nature in check for me, you’ll be a big help.” 

“Finally we come to you,” the head of intelligence breathed a musty cloud of smoke into my face. “Eiran Clashtone, a man convicted of killing
one
brain hacker.” Husher paused and looked at me with a sly grin. “We both know you’re responsible for more than that.”

             
My legs started to feel numb, and a lump like a monkey’s paw formed in my gut. I had killed eight other brain hackers besides Assize Zavocky, yet I took all the proper precautions to keep my fellow officers from finding out.

             
“If you are so acutely aware of my activities,” I glowered at the silver haired man, “why am I not in prison already?”

             
“Now we come to the big unveiling,” Og Husher said with a dramatic flourish. “None of you are going to be punished for your crimes,
as long as
you do what I say.”

             
Suddenly, I felt a burning pain in the back of my right arm. I wanted to jerk it around and see what caused it, by my wrists were still handcuffed. Looking at my new
comrades
, I could see that a man in a white lab coat was sticking each of us with a foreboding needle.

             
“You have each been injected with a new type of tracking device,” Husher inhaled another deep breath of smoke. “I’ve been far too careless with my assets in the past. Recently, a woman whose memories of sensitive material were
supposed
to have been destroyed,” he glowered at his assistant in the lab coat, “recovered and hooked up with a dangerous revolutionary. A few nights ago, some assets of mine returned to base under the influence of drugs and tried to assassinate me. We had to put them down unfortunately.”