SF in The City Anthology (8 page)

Stepping over the prone body, the boys entered the shop, immediately assaulted by the chemical smell within it. Astor Piazzolla’s
Libertango
played over Umwelt’s antique, surround sound speakers. The owner of the shop sat back in his famous rocking chair, a glazed expression on his face. Charlisle knew that without fail, this man would be blasted on KSD when they arrived.

“What are you up to?” Norn asked and gave the man a friendly kick in the leg.

“Just…uh…chillin’…and…yeah,” the man pulled his gaze away from the framed depiction of a phosphene that hung on his wall. “I could really use some, some, some, water.”

“Sure thing,” Vox picked up the dirty glass that always sat on Umwelt’s front desk.

“Your shipment brought a nice selection today,” Probably eyed the drugs eagerly.

“Serotonin Sushi, Origami Unicorn, Ragweed, Selfie, Clack, and Certain Death,” Charlisle said aloud. “They worry about pot dispensaries when you have a place like this?”

“Who do you think manufactures this stuff, stuff, stu…,” Umwelt’s dose of KSD was wearing off. 

Vox returned with a glass of water for the shop’s owner, while Norn pulled the gang’s new uniforms out of a nearby drawer. Charlisle left Nettles and Probably to leer at the drugs, finding the new uniforms a more interesting topic.

“What a badge!” Norn stared at their pale gray uniforms in disgust. “It’s just a picture of a corn stalk that says, ‘Ostanes Foods,’ right under it.”

“They aren’t the largest business,” Umwelt said, rubbing his head groggily.

“We only have eight sponsors,” Norn tossed the uniforms to Charlisle, “the Bunyips have ten. The freakin’ Bunyips!”  

“Sponsors pay for high visability,” Umwelt said after taking a swig of water. “You boys aren’t out and about enough. The Bunyips, Minotaurs and Cherufes aren’t afraid to walk around in another’s territory.”

“We’re boxed in between the Manticores and the Kongamatos,” Charlisle spoke up. “We do our best to avoid fights these days. Why take unnecessary risks?”

“You weren’t afraid to put the Ya-te-veos in the ground a year ago,” Umwelt was standing on his own feet and walking over to his antique book shelf.

“Well that was a year ago,” Norn sulked. “Vox is graduating from school in a few months, and we felt that he deserved to stay out of danger until then.”

“Tell you what,” Umwelt said as he pulled a bottle of Scotch out from behind an unlabeled book. “The Minhocãos were in here earlier for some Cloaking Advice. Now they only have four members, and best of all…no guns. I’ll tell you where they will be tomorrow night. If a…unfortunate ambush were to take place…you would pop up on sponsors’ radar again.”

“We appreciate your help Humberto. You’ve always been a good friend!” Norn shook the man’s hand.

“Don’t worry about it, just buy some of my product,” Umwelt laughed.

“Well, you know that I’ve been clean these last few months,” Vox said. “I would rather not break that streak.”

“Same here,” Norn said regretfully.

“Well, I’ll buy enough for the both of them,” Probably set a half dozen bottles of Wag on the counter, “even if it kills me.”

“Please use some self-restraint when using this,” Umwelt swiped the boy’s cred card. “I never like to lose paying customers. Speaking of which, I might know of a job for you Charlisle – a legit job.”

              “Well that would be a first,” the youth sat back in one of the shop’s padded seats.

“Some CA goons were in here the other night to buy up my entire Clack supply. One of them said that if I knew any hackers, their division was looking for a consultant. Apparently someone has been breaking into gray boxes all over the Gorse.”

“Really?” Charlisle shook his head. Gray boxes were routing points for mental calls. If someone could actually hack into them, which he had never heard of in this part of The City, they could access the data passing between callers’ minds. The possibilities for such a hack were endless!

“Next time you see those men, tell them that I would be glad to work with them,” Charlisle said.

***

After the boys had bought their goods, they decided to visit the Culture Center and catch the day’s performance. If he did Wag beforehand, Probably’s tail bone would vibrate like crazy during a musical presentation. The Culture Center did not serve its own refreshments, so the Dingoneks stopped by a vending machine on the way there.

Charlisle laughed and shook his head as they approached the drink dispensing apparatus. It used holograms to indicate its choices rather than using glass. The manufacturers had lost enough products to baseball bat wielding “Gorsers.” Of course, their computerized system could be easily fooled by a fake cred card. Charlisle swiped a counterfeit card, marked with a red marker so he wouldn’t forget, and purchased five drinks with a Trojan bank account, giving the machine the appearance of uploaded ECUs.

Norn and Charlisle each “bought” a can of Semtex, while Probably had a Fioravanti, and Vox chose Sinalco Orange. Nettles had a history of bladder problems, so he asked for a bottle of “Quenchify.” For someone who didn’t believe they could sit through a two hour program without a restroom break, this drink filled the niche. With a specially designed “smart liquid,” 100% of Quenchify would exit the body as sweat after consumption, so drinkers of this product could enjoy the taste of a soft drink, without being restrained by their bladders. Of course, that didn’t stop the rest of the gang from giving Nettles a hard time about his
problem
.

They also made a last minute decision to go out of their way to pick up some food before attending the show. A woman named Grace Sequelae lived close by, and she put out a bag of chocolate chip cookies on her ground floor apartment’s windowsill every day. Charlisle and his friends never understood this idiosyncrasy, even when she explained to them that it made her feel better helping those less fortunate than her.

Was she out of her mind? She lived in abject poverty. Who did she consider less well off? Grace had told them that she followed a man named Christ, who apparently died but wasn’t dead. She tried to explain her religious beliefs to them, but they had only laughed at her. Charlisle himself had told this aging woman that he believed in the trinity: drugs, sex and entertainment (he would be the first to admit his lack of experience with the second of these). Of course he felt badly about treating Grace this way. Even if she was a little disturbed, he had to admit that no one in the Gorse, or The City as a whole for that matter, had ever treated him so well. She would probably be excited to hear that he was considering a future as a white hat
[15]
.

Unfortunately, somebody else had snatched up the free cookies before the boys got there.

“Probably a hobo,” Nettles said dejectedly.

“We could drop by Brell’s
and grab some Pagoto Kaimaki
[16]
,” Vox suggested.

“The show starts in fifteen minutes,” Norn said after pulling up a clock inside of his mind. “We’ll get a snack later.”

“Shouldn’t we focus on making ECUs, rather than spending them anyway?” Probably said quietly.

Charlisle chuckled with the rest of the boys. His friends hadn’t struggled with money to the same degree he had. Of course his father left him with more debts to pay. Now that he had a prospective job on the horizon, the rush to make all those ECUs before the day ended no longer mattered. Screw Kim! He could move to a nicer apartment with a CA job. If he started saving, he might even get out of the Gorse in less than a decade. Another gang’s hacker could try for the job, but everyone knew Charlisle had the best record in the neighborhood. If anyone could solve the gray box hack, it would be him.

Arriving at the Culture Center, its flickering holographic sign emitting “Cultur Center,” the youth immediately spotted the most interesting aspect of the show out front – girls. The Dingoneks’ favorite all-girl gang to hang with, the Harpies, stood in line for the show, eating mochi ice cream and whispering to each other as the boys arrived.

Araña Ragnatela had led the Harpies for the last two years. With a bright orange Mohawk, steely green eyes and an Akdal Ghost always holstered at her side, Araña had caught Norn’s interest before, and the two had shared an on and off relationship ever since. A complete airhead, the Harpie’s hacker, Prep Teixeira, was the most sexually aggressive among their gang. Perhaps that explained the Dingoneks’ lack of interest in her.

While he never brought it up, Charlisle could tell that Nettles had a crush on the Harpie’s strongest and tallest member, Yagmur Sandoval. Always stark naked, except for a pair of protocell sneakers, Yagmur had cut off both her breasts in an attempt to outdo the Amazons. With a tactical hatchet on hand, this girl threatened to castrate any male who looked at her lustfully. Nettles would die for her.

The real sight Charlisle couldn’t wait to see was Elegance Pang, the fourth and most beautiful member of the Harpies. With almond colored eyes and dark black hair cut at sharp angles, she exhibited an inherent fierceness like no other gangstress he had ever met. “There’s something Princess Mononoke about her,” he had told Umwelt before. Even her compatriots referred to her as “the feral,” since they found her abandoned in a garbage heap as a child. Charlisle suspected they called her this mostly out of jealousy, since she had the most brains and beauty of the group. Then again, he was also biased.

After a few brief insults were shared jokingly, the groups finally entered the theater and reclined in its broken down seats, facing the graffiti covered stage. Uploading the performance’s program telepathically, Charlisle saw that they had a ballet set for this time slot, starting with
The Kingdom of the Shades
from
La Bayadère
, Act II. He sighed in exasperation. Dancing automatons had cheaper programming and designs than the signing ones, meaning the audience would have to listen to the heavy steps of uncoordinated “ballerinatons” for the next two hours.

When the plastic theater curtains rose, and the machines started to attempt dancing, Charlisle couldn’t help but gaze at Elegance. She wasn’t stupid, that much he knew. However, she looked at the stage differently than he did, with more optimism. It was like she could see what could be rather than what was. Charlisle had kept his crush on her a secret for years. Truthfully, he feared what she would do to him if he asked her out.

Elegance didn’t have a great history with men. She had only ever dated two boys, and both turned out to be abusive hotheads. Within months of courting them, Elegance had killed them both. Sitting the row behind her, Charlisle noticed something he had not spotted earlier – a bruise on the back of her neck.

Now the Harpies had a history for brutally beating anyone who approached their territory. There used to be an all-boy vigilante group, the Griffins, who believed they could rid the Gorse of gangs, like they were superheroes. After these boys came to the Harpie’s turf looking for a fight, they found it. They never bothered any of the gangs ever again. Needless to say, Charlisle would normally not be surprised at visible injuries on the girls, but that day his imagination ran wild.

If he could demonstrate to Elegance that he wasn’t a loser, that his possible job with the CA demonstrated his inherent worth, maybe she would consider a relationship with him. Feeling a desire so long denied him drawing rapidly closer, the idea of possible competition also floated around in his mind. What if she had found a new date, and he abused her? Charlisle wasn’t the strongest gangster, or the most violent, yet he felt like killing anyone who would mistreat Elegance.

That’s when it hit him. There was a way he could solve the problem of the gray box hack and discover the truth behind Elegance’s relationship status. He would perform the hack himself, on the gray box in this girl’s neighborhood! He could sift through her transmitted thoughts directly. If she sent mental messages to another guy, he could see the content of those communiques and experience the emotions she felt when sending them. She would cut his head off if she ever found out about his snooping, but to an infatuated teenager, that seemed like a risk worth taking.

***

Once the poor rendition of the ballet came to a close, the Dingoneks and Harpies parted with few words exchanged between them. Charlisle and Elegance did not talk to each other once during the whole get together. Meeting up with the girls had given the youth a stronger desire to find a fight. How impressed they would be if the boys brought some severed fingers next time they met.

Vox mentally accessed the “geoflagging” app for the Gorse. It had originally been designed by people wishing to avoid gang activity, but the program could be used for nefarious purposes, as well. An older man posted his thought that an imminent attack was about to begin on Springer Street, the work of the Leyaks no doubt. Attacking civilians with this app was like drawing blood in the ocean – it attracted sharks.

Springer Street was not a far walk from the Culture Center, so the Dingoneks arrived before the mugging even concluded. The elderly man was laid out on the sidewalk, tending to a huge bloody gash on his head.

“Tsk, tsk, you’ve got to be more careful in the future,” Norn said as the Dingoneks faced their enemies across the street. “You can’t mug a man tomorrow, if you put him in the hospital today.”