Jim Slinger pt. 1

 It's been a while, but Jim came to mind. So here's some Blue Lights featuring Jim the Slinger. 

******

"....Thanks Mike! Tonight here in the market district of Sector Three, a lone, armed man barged into a local clothier and slaughtered more than two dozen civilians, injuring fifteen more, and finally expiring when Cherubim units were called in to end the horrific rampage. We're here at the scene with a representative from the local branch of the Blue Light mercenary corporation, commander Weiss-"

The camera pans across Susan. She is wearing a bright, some-what revealing yellow sundress, her tan skin brightly lit by the Texas sun - the storefront is a burnt husk of a building, although four more stores on either side, making up nearly half of the storefront block destroyed along with it, with the crater of building's foundation being cleaned out by local garbage men who pick across the debree, tossing polycete blocks into a nearby cement boiler. The commander is wearing an advanced mach four version of the usual Blue Light corp armor suits, fitted with built-in machine gun wrist mounted guns, shoulder cannon grenade launchers, full five digit actuator durasteel gauntlets, and standing over eleven feet tall, wide and tall enough to not quite fit his head or his left shoulder into the frame of the shot. The crowd watching the footage in Hel chuckle, half the bar quieted down and the music cut just to see what the hell had happened today. The camera pans up and back.

"Can you - can you see- am I in the shot? Shit-" Susan moves a too-heavy, sizable piece of polycrete to stand on. The Commander's military facial glow-tattoos, along with his synthfibre mohawk, are a violent green-blue, and his eyes swirl with synthetic colors pulsing at his heart rate; he grins looking down at the newswoman. She met his gaze with her usual stern, and neutral face.

"Mister Weiss, your company is claiming that the suspect was, in fact, not within the legal liability contract of your company. How can you justify the kind of carnage that occured here today, and yet your corporation expects the store owner, the mercantile, and the greater city of New Dallas to pay for what can only be described as a terrifying and bloody murder spree by one of your members?"

The commander rolls his eyes at her, a smile never leaving his lips, "Blue Light corporation takes no responsibility for an off-duty mercenary using stolen hardware to commit whatever crime, be that robbery, or murder, or destruction of property. This man was obviously a deranged psychopath, and our records indicate that he had gone off grid more than twenty-four hours prior to entering Sector Three. Anyone found with our hardware and not connected to the network is a rogue agent and therefore a threat to our hardware security, be they member or otherwise, and he was reported to the local police once our operatives realized his armor was missing from company property while he was not on duty."

"But this so-called psychopath was using equipment and training developed by your company, commander. Why wasn't his suit tracking information sent to the authorities earlier? At what point did you know that he had gone, how did you put it - off grid?"

"Every unit is seperated into core groups with a commanding officer, and the grid tech in Blue Light suits uses state of the art neuraltech networks, which function on a local basis to avoid wireless intrusion - better to lease the privacy of our off-duty members during work hours than risk misfiring weapons because of some chemhead deck-jockeys, who prefer to get a suited mercenary to do their killing for them. His commanding officer was killed by the suspect early yesterday, so the report never went through, and the police were informed only minutes before the incident about a rogue from our membership and to be on the look out, which didn't give NDPD enough time to react accordingly to the threat of a Blue Light anyway."

"So the suspect managed to bypass the neuraltech security? How often does this kind of thing happen?"

The Commander sighed. Although Susan was picking up on wireless comms access from the commanders head units through her own nueraltech implants, she logged the thought for later, and gave him a moment to 'think.'

"Blue Light Corp uses modern neuraltech to create sensory information grids between mercenary units, and we have adaptive chem-induced emotional regulators, along with the best monitering software available, made by the Corp. Commanding officers are trained to watch for irregularities to prevent just such a thing as what happened here today. Besides outright murdering his commanding officer and finding a nutjob to hack his suit, we have no information in regards to how the suspect managed to trip the neuraltech, fall off the grid, and find his way into the Sector Three mercantile. I would deduce that the deckjockey fried his neuralnetwork in the process of trying to stop the tracking software, likely causing enough brain trauma to send him spiraling into criminal insanity. So far as how often this may happen, this is the first incident in six months of a member going suited, off-duty, and so much as daring to leave the local neuralnet radius of their commanding officer, approximately one-point-one-two-five miles."

Susan knew it was a stupid question to finish with, but Circuit 61 New Dallas News demanded it. Even if her boss would be pissed later.

"There are also allegations that the Blue Light Corporation recruits unstable, criminally insane individuals as well, commander. This reporter, for one, wonders if this neuraltech software wasn't inhibiting that behavior, so when it glitched or outright failed, the member went rogue, killed their commanding officer, and tried to flee in order to be free from the corp and the suit neural tech."

The commander had stopped smiling at the word allegations, his expression slowly becoming more angry, but speaking with a calm and monotonous tone, "Our recuits go through intensive training, are constantly monitered while suited, and are tracked better than most luxary cars flying the hi-ways of these Texas skies. We are a zero-discrimination mercenary corp, ma'am, and I will not have people, like this reporter, for one, bismirching the good name of my corp as unsafe, or some subdued, criminally insane maniac. These allegations are likely from criminal elements which fear the good our corp does for companies who need to hire the best, most effecient military corp without the federal red tape of involving Cherubim, who tend to work more in ultimatums like the burning rubble behind us, rather than the quiet, clean operations the likes of which our corp is so beloved for."

The body and suit of the suspect and member had not been recovered, and Susan knew that the Church had sent three Angels - just another nearby patrol unit flying the skies of Sector 6 - to deal with the Blue Light who had begun gunning people down across a busy storefront. People knew he was insane and had begun to flee prior to his opening fire - his babbling, incoherent screaming vaguely sounded like wails of pain, begging 'not to go back,' 'not another mission.' The Cherub had missiled the area, blowing out the market, which had already been cleared of living civilians, or so says the Church's report. They had reduced the blown out storefront into a mass of molten polymer and burnt ashes.

"Thank you for your time, commander."

"Thank you for having me, Susan."

* * *

The music in Hel went back on full blast. The deep thrum of the electronic dance music thudded across the bar, quieter due the the dampening field Cerf usually had to have fixed every other week. He drank from a nearby flask, which was his handy work flask number three. Wednesday, he liked to have called it some thursdays, or even mondays. And today was definitely a Wendesday - not far enough along to hope for the weekend, and not enough corpses through the week for a Monday.

"You okay, Cerf? You drank half that bottle, man."

Cerf stared at his costumer. Jim sat at the bar, covered in blood, a bundle over his shoulder. He looked ragged, like he had been running only minutes earlier, and stank like a wet bag of greasy rags, so like he usually did. "The fuck are you doing in my bar, Jim?"

Jim held up his hands defensively, "Look, I know what it looks like-"

"You owe me like sixteen thousand for the last time Jim, I told the-"

During the broadcast, Cerf failed to notice his doorman bouncer missing. Byter number Two's vitals were out of action, be they unconscious or dead.

Byter Three walked up to the bar sheepishly, "I'm sorry Cerf, he tricked the door gun. You want I should kill him now?"

Jim stood up, but the hulking mass of Byter, whether him or his six identical android brothers, gingerely pushed Jim down without breaking his spine, shoulder, or neck with one hand. The music goes quieter, and people nearby get ready for a show of violence.

"How much have you-"

Cerf looked and saw three empty bottles, top shelf, empty at the bar in front of Jim. Jim looked positively plastered.

More impressed than angry at this point, Cerf knew Jim well enough to know he was in serious trouble.

"I'm going to do the next guy a favor, Jim. I'm not going to let B-Three tear you into small pieces and throw you in the back dumpster - instead, I'm going to let you go about your business today, in fact, here-" the barman turns and gropes drunkely at the bottles behind him for a moment.

Cerf hands Jim the cheapest bottle of alcohol above 60% he can find nearby.

"-take a handle while you're here, but do your business, get it over with, and the NEXT-" Cerf didn't mean to scream the word, but he did anyway, "time one of my bouncers SEE'S YOU, you will be DEAD, if you don't have my CREDITS!"

Jim graciously takes the bottle, and Byter slowly, although as sadly as his robotic face can look, lets his heavy hand off of him.

"How much was it Cerf? Ten thousand, right?" Jim smiles.

"Twenty four thousand, after your tab today. And another twelve for B-Four's repairs. Goodbye."

The dramatic pause in the music ceased, and Jim walked away from the bar, barely able to see straight. He shoved the bottle into his secondary pack on his back, and fished around in his synthfiber rain coat for a couple of uppers to feel less like the world was spinning. Three pills later, he felt stable enough to remember he was here to work.

The client was the usual mix of shitty and poor - but Jim had to get rid of the piece he had gotten today. It was heavy on his back, the sweat from all the liqour pouring into his already partially wet clothes only making it all the more of a burden. The crowd was a bustling mix the usuals, plus all of teens who had followed him in through after he had busted the door, before two more Byters rushed to stop some of them flooding the dance floor with underaged chemheads. The music away from the bar was all you could hear besides the laughing, giggling fits of the dancers, or the screaming patrons trying in vain to speak at the tables.

One table he knew was bad news was the Blue Lights. Just like the broadcast, they sat in armor too big for normal seats, sitting in the bench seats near the VIP tables in the back. The captain glared at Jim after he barged in at the front of the crowd covered in blood.

Jim only hoped his reputation didn't precede him today as an arms dealer, picking up bits of military grade and hawking it to whoever still bought from poor ol' Jim. Poor, poor ol' Jim who just wanted make a decent living in Zero, bouncing from sleeper hotels to blown out buildings, scrounging enough to keep his head above water. Jim never believed in implants, took his nano-vitamins, and tried to eat something besides literal trash most days. Jim had been to a real bath house this week. Self care wasn't in the vocabulary of most slummies, but Jim was looking for a change.

The cold durasteel of the Blue Light helmet on his back, carefully wrapped and padded to look differently, was heavy on his shoulder, and that damned captain was still glaring at him like he knew. How could he? Jim knew to take the nuclear power cores out - he'd hawked those for rent before breakfast. He'd woken up to a gun fight in the hotel last night, and when it had gone quiet after an explosion, he could hardly believe the helmet laying the floor surrounded by burnt corpses. 'What luck!' he had thought at the time, 'things are really looking to turn around for poor ol' Jim!' he had believed.

Jim had checked the tracking against his deck's monitering softwares, but the helmet was deactivated. No locals, no long range wireless comms, just a dead helmet.

The visor of the captain panned when he walked across the dance floor, meekly shuffling his feet in an attempt to act natural, all the while sweating enough to smear gore across his face when he went to wipe it. Nearby people smelled him and cursed, muttering about burning garbage or heaps of refuse, but Jim danced all the harder, clearing a small circle while he skimmed the crowds for his guy.

A man sat at a table opposite the dance floor. He had horns on the top of his head, fur around his neck and the backside of his hands, and a rather loud shirt showing a tuft of groomed hair from his chest. He raised his eyebrows at Jim, suddenly looking a little sick.

'Thank the fucking Church!' Jim casually danced toward the table, eventually sitting opposite of him, pulling out the bottle Cerf had given him and a stolen glass from the bar. He poured himself a drink, and offered the Chimeran a drink, who shrugged and let him pour some into his cocktail glass.

Jim drank some down, and eyed him up. "You Pofferus?"

Pofferus nodded at Jim, tasting his drink and frowning, "Church, that's awful. Jim, I take it?"

Jim nodded, his eyes never leaving the goatman as he swigged for a solid two seconds from the liqour, not bothering to drink from his full glass yet. He leaned back, lidded and then slipped the bottle back into his pack. "We can't deal here, too many eyes."

The goatman scoffed, "Bullshit. Tanaka military ops don't-"

"This isn't Tanaka corp hardware anyway." Jim said plainly, crossing his arms and his eyes.

"I'll be the judge of the that." The goatman waited, impatiently tapping one foot-hoof under the table, frowning and scrunching up his face at the taste of his drink, "That really is awful, how can you-"

Jim drank his glass. The whole glass. It was a water glass he had taken from the bar when Cerf wasn't looking, and the sudden whoosh of drunkenness washed over him like a hammer to the face. He couldn't tell which goatman he was supposed to be staring at anymore, but he glared at him with every fiber of his being, stony faced and green as he was.

The five goatmen sighed, and waved at the barmaid, "a private room, please?" She whispered something back, and he sighed deeper and more sadly, "Yes, yes, my tab, of course."

* * *

The two made their way toward the VIP tables and beyond, all the while Jim fished out his last few pills to feel something, anything besides how sick he was. He popped three more, slowly widening and closing his eyes as the world shifted above and below him. The piercing screeches of the crowd washed into focus, a sharp dancing shape laughing into his head, banging deeper into his ears than he could feel.

"Come on Jim, you fucking drunkerd chemhead-" goatman looked pretty wasted too, and he pushed Jim through the crowd toward their private room.

"Keep yer filthy hooves offa me, goddamn Chimeran bastard-"

Pofferus pushed him harder, and the two made their way off the dance floor, "This is the last time I deal with racist a piece of shit like you, Jim."

"Can't trust non' animal man, man, not a one-" Jim mumbled, half willing himself to sound more drunk than he actually was. Acting was part of bargaining with a shit head like Pofferus, wait for him to feel like he has all the bargaining power, like Jim was out of control. Little did he know, Jim had never actually controlled a thing in his life, much less himself.

And maybe the Blue Light Captain would forget, maybe stop staring at him over that visor, just like the helmet slung over his shoulder, but different. Captains had differen't helmets, more additions of tech smattered over it, thicker armor here or there - each piece of armor was unique with their corp. The shoulders bore rank, and they rarely if ever removed their helmets like the man on the TV had. They were here, but they weren't drinking.

The captains helmet panned to him and stared.

Jim let Pofferus push him into a room, acting stubborn, "No! No, I don't think you actually have the credits, man! NO!" Pofferus kicked him in, hard enough he'd probably have a hoof print on his ass, and slammed the door when they both got in.

"SHOW ME, JIM! NOW!"

Jim sighed, lugging his burded off his sore shoulder. His hand wouldn't open, still crusted from where he had been gripping the bundle tight enough that he had long since lost feeling in the digits of his left hand. He slowly managed to let go and uncover the helmet, and the goatman gasped when it was revealed - a bit singed, but still fully intact, the gentle blue hue of paint scuffed with blackened marks enough to reveal solid durasteel, and a network of complex neural interfaces lining the inside.

Pofferus covered it back up, and Jim immediately clung to it like a precious egg that could crack at any moment. "Fifty thousand."

Pofferus scoffed, "Are you insane? I can't move that. Shit, you are crazy Jim, how did you-?"

"Just my lucky day I guess. I didn't hear a no?" Jim smiled, sweat and blood still running down his face.

"I'll give you five."

Jim stared at Pofferus, his mouth agape, "I can't believe you would insult me like that. I seriously can't even believe it. Fifty for this is a STEAL-"

"What, for a death wish? Jim, I'm not sure I can even get out of here alive being SEEN with you today, let alone trying to deal with you about it." Pofferus stands up, and walks towards the door slowly. Too slowly. So slowly, Jim knows he's bluffing. The headpiece is a hundred-thousand credits in cost to the corp making the helmet, which is completely unique to each Blue Light. The helmet Jim cradled like a loving mother was worth hundreds of thousands of credits to the right buyer, and he knew it. Pofferus knew it.

But the Chimeran was at the door. He sighed, and turned, "Good luck, Jim. Die fast, not slow." Pofferus walked out the door and closed it behind him.

Jim gulped hard, wrapping up the helmet as closely as he could to his body, making it look more like a lump than the military contraband that he threw over his shoulder.

Jim slipped an earpiece into his ear. The listening device was one of the few things he'd decided to keep - discreet enough to look like an earplug, but useful enough it was better to be found dead with it still on his corpse. Radio chatter across the sector quieted down into a casual hurricane of noise as he focused, the neuraltech interfacing with his plug he'd had since he was born. He could hear the captain in the other room talking about a possible suspect, still waiting, "....the buyer wants to talk?"

Pofferus was going to sell him out. Again. Poor ol' Jim had been to risky, barging into Hel the way he did today. Pofferus wouldn't get a second chance with those Blue Lights, though. They were going to hunt him down and take back that beautiful piece of hardware - military tech was, after all, Jim's speciality. Why not sell the most expensive thing on the market? Why not steal the best of the best, and try...

Try to survive. Jim shook his head - he had to go.

Jim slid the door open, and could hear across the Captain's comms as Pofferus explained what Jim had on his back. Damned if he didn't even have a headstart - but Hel was different.

"Have confirmation - tracking target." Jim heard as a wireless outbound, "Jim... the slinger? Empty records indicate a real slummie boys, keep an eye out if we-"

The captain stopped speaking and glared at the open door, but couldn't see Jim already on the dance floor. The stupid kids barely noticed that they were stomping him, stepping on hands, feet, back, head, everything Jim had, even his soul, he felt.

"Target is missing. Comms?"

"Checking-"

Cerf was calmly trying to clean a glass. Pofferus had paid before hand to use the room for five minutes, and now it was empty again, and he felt relief wash over his body. A sigh even escaped his lips. Jim had slunk out of there like a spider, and although the strange creature was nowhere to be found, at least he wasn't in the private room, where maybe B-four or Five could throw him out easily.

A nearby security screen lit up with automated privalage. The Blue Lights drank here because they very rarely caused real trouble, and because Cerf actually let criminally insane psychos like those Blue Light freaks drink at his bar, they could take control of his security at their leisure. Cerf wasn't even sure he could stop them, anyway, be it drinking or hacking, so better to just bend over and let it happen, maybe take their credits when they decide to pay a tab. He felt his heart drop a little with the Captain in the VIP seats glaring at him from the security moniter system, mouth-to-typing the words, "Where is he?"

"Who?" Said Cerf to his own security moniter.

"Jim the Slinger."

Cerf reached for his flask as a cold sweat started in.

Jim had made it across the dancefloor, bruised and bleeding some his own blood at this point, bottle broken, a few sprains or possible cracked bones he might feel if he could feel much of anything at this point, hiding under an occupied table of three teenagers in a passionate moaning contest to see who could get who's clothes off first. Jim pulled his second-to-last medical vial out and shoved it into his leg, and although the copious mixture of alcohol and uppers began to fade, he could already feel the horrors of the last two minutes begin to subside into the usual waves of euphoria following a well deserved medical nanostim. He could feel the three shattered ribs from last week slide into their proper place, the taste of metal and salt went away, and he suddenly vomited nearly a gallon of toxins under the table, a wash of compounds the nanites simply couldn't abide. Jim could physically feel the nanites drawing moisture from the blood, sweat, and gross water drenching his clothes, actually drying him partially as they restored him to peak hydration. A fool might have needed a gallon of water, but ol' Jim just needed ten minutes outside and a lack of any semblance of hygene.

The trio had long since stopped their lovemaking to wretch and Jim and his stench. He felt a boot kick his back, sending him sprawling into his own noxious vomit. The fresh bruise brought him back to reality, eyes darting across the bar.

Byter's Two, Four, and Five were walking through the dance floor, pushing people and barking something, which he assumed was his description or stench. Both could lead them toward his table near the front door, where Byter Six stood bouncing, waiting, looking for anyone to bother him or get near the door. Another shotgun turret was mounted near the upper wall, but this one Cerf would be watching. The bartender looked busy, sweaty, and aware that somehow, for whatever deranged reason, finding and killing poor ol' Jim would be in his best interest.

B-Six looked at the rushing pool of vomit leaking from under the table, and saw the teens complaining at whatever they had just kicked.

Jim rushed the door.

B-Six came bearing foward toward him, and Jim did his practiced slide. There may not have been any rainwater here, but the vomit let him slide in a disgusting line across the floor, his steel durasteel shoes slamming into the bottom hard enough to make his teeth rattle. The shotgun bore down on him, but paused instead of firing. Jim looked up at Cerf at the bar holding the joystick, finger on the trigger, as if waiting.

B-One slammed open the doors and barged in, knocking Jim away before the shotgun fired. It nearly blasted B-One, but instead blew a hole through the door, smattering Jim was bits of plasteel and polycrete as he crawled out toward Sector Zero and out of the bar.

The drenching smell of the endless rain washed over Jim like a hug across the back from an old friendly waterfall running out of the side of a sewage plant. For all he could, he got to his feet and plowed down the sidewalk, barely dodging a lightpole playing commercial headlines about the newest neuraltech finger implants for sensory enhancement and broadcast. The crowd of overarmed and chemmed out kids rushed the bar past Jim, forming a kind of chaotic wave that tried to shove him back toward the robots, or the angry mercenaries, or the alarmed but silent shotgun pointed at him in a crowd of teenagers.

It never fired, and he got down the street, tripping and shoving who had to to get by.

* * *

Jim walked as casually, yet fast as he could manage, which looked more like a panicked sprint. It was four blocks deeper into the southern reaches of Zero to find his sleeper hotel, which he could pay for tonight. The crowded streets here were flooded with other slummies trying to get to work, trying to get north toward the Zero mercantile, or find a way to get out of the rain. Ahead, he could see an Autocop skimming the crowd for suspects, and so he was already fumbling for his credentials by the time it spotted him and flashed its overhead light.

People around Jim got out of the way, some sprawling into others or over into the streets, where hovercars rode close enough to cook passerby. They all made a circle around the person who just got caught by an Autocop. Jim walked stoically toward the machine, a rough rectangular box on large treads. It had a head like a television that displayed whatever it said in six languages quickly enough that nobody could usually read it, "HALT! Citizen, please present-"

Jim was practically rubbing the card on the faceplate, then carefully stepped back when alarms started blaring on the thing and it revved whatever nuclear engine ran the damn Autocop. Its head flashed and went dim for a moment.

A few seconds passed while Jim stared behind him, the crowd rushing away to get as far as possible from the incident. He looked back and could see huge figures moving quickly in this direction. Maybe other mercenaries, maybe Blue Lights, but Jim couldn't tell.

"...Slinger... hotel three-three six, Sleeper Heights Motel-"

The address to his primary bed at the sleeper hotel rang out across wireless comms, the very same transmission frequency the Blue Lights had used earlier.

They were coming.

Jim impatiently waited for ten full seconds for the Autocop to process his identity and confirm him as a citizen of New Dallas. He may not have credentials to make it higher than Zero, which took more money in the bank than he had left, but it would be enough just to have the ID for him not to get paved today. Somewhere else, he could hear the screaming of someone who wasn't so lucky as poor ol' Jim as they were being ground to bits, slowly mixing with the grime washing down the gutters of the nearby street.

"Welcome, Citizen! Welcome!" it chimed happily, as if in celebration. It turned and began skimming the nearby crowd immediately, and Jim started into a run down the road.

The Sleeper Heights Motel number Seventeen-B was poorly lit. Jim slipped his earpiece into his pocket, turning it off. Several gangsters eyed Jim up as he walked toward the door, and one of them held up a hand, palm up, waiting for the toll. Another nearby goon pushed his arm down, "He paid this morning. We'll collect later, when you get back out, right, Jim?"

Jim said nothing and walked in quickly, and the thug who had his hand out followed him as he swung past the front desk. The robotic teller at the desk barely seemed to notice either of them, greedily eyeing them up to see if they came for his cables in the wall. So long as nobody bothered the teller, Jim knew he'd just sit there and wait, not doing anything except charging the same battery that never quite fully charged. The teller had been that way for months here, with his jagged metallic arms sharpened to razors and held out, ready to cut anyone down that threatened his access to precious energy, like the corpses that often littered the hallway, thinking they might hawk the android for a quick cash grab before they saw too late that it was ready to tear them apart.

Jim rushed up the stairs, the dark-blue polycrete walls scrawled with enough graffiti to look like a scribbled canvas of anger, slurs, hate, and gang members. People crouched in the hallways asleep, and the security cameras followed Jim up the first four flights. He was careful not to disturb the sleepless chemheads blocking the stairwell in numerous places. The long halls of rooms had casket sleeper units lining all the walls of its rooms, six-to-ten stacked, floor to ceiling, with dozens of stacks to a room, and dozens of rooms to a floor. By the fifth floor, the cameras had been broken or ripped out of the walls, and the freaks were awake. Higher up still, they were actively shooting drugs, cackling, moaning, vomiting across the filthy floors, wretching and crying, wailing and screaming throughout the building. But Jim was dirty enough that he looked like a resident, and although they wailed at him, shook him, grabbed at him as he passed, he kept moving, kicking and shoving as he went, hardly noticed in the shrieking abuse of a dozen fights with cheering, kreening maniacs laughing as people brawled on the disgusting floors of emptied out rooms.

Floor thirty-three, room six, was more quiet. His name was on the address board across the front panel of the room, but it would be anyone's guess as to which casket was his. His only chance at this point felt like a trap. He walked across the hall toward his spare casket in a different room, the one that had a fake name he'd rented out for storage. He paused at it, trying to find the thug that followed him in the darkness, hoping he'd lost him floors below through the crowded motel halls. People were here, sure, but the dimmed lights, the noise, the smells and sounds made everything feel like a wave of human suffering, faceless and agonizing. Jim slipped into his casket as quickly as he could, cuddling his food stores and turning the temp of the foam insert up to feel less like a fridge. He split the wrapper on a mango nutri-sludge pouch and cut his earpiece back on, and carefully tuned his mind to the right frequency. He heard a grizzly voice in his head midsentence, fading in and out.

"...fifteen... fl... sixteen, by the Church... filthy motel-"

The captain's voice cut in suddenly, "Quiet, Leuitenant... a read on floor three... some kind of device-"

Jim cut his earpiece off in a panic, choking on the sludge pouch, caughing it up. The dim hum of the casket unit masked anything but the wailing down the hall outside of his sleeper casket unit. Maybe they couldn't pinpoint the earpiece from here - the walls were thick polycrete and durasteel framed, so signals tended to read poorly in a place like this. Jim waited for what felt like hours, listening to the screaming, cackling madness that haunted the outside of his prison, desperate to use his ears to hear his death approaching.

Jim more felt than heard the thud of their footsteps. Four, maybe five, maybe more of them. People went silent when they came up the stairs, the unusual quiet haunting Jim as he listened to them walk down the hallway, slowly but surely making their way closer. He listened to them in the other room walking, moving around. A loud banging, then a knocking. More banging, and then gunshots. Jim cringed and slipped deeper into the foam insert of his casket, listening as gunshots rang out methodically, the time spaced out carefully, bang, bang, bang. He tried to count the shots, but after twenty, thirty shots, each spaced only a few seconds apart, it was all he could manage to keep breathing without crying or vomiting. Occasionally, he heard multiple shots and screaming, crying voices, followed by more gunshots. But eventually, silence dominated the area again.

Jim listened and heard things being moved around. Heavy caskets banging against the floor, the wrenching sound of metal being tore open angrily, as if a machine were tearing them open.

More of a long, dead silence.

Jim felt boots walked across the floor toward his room. He heard the heavy footfalls crossing the hall and entering the doorway, partially blocked by a mass of people who screamed and cowered. Gunshots rang out in the room, and the sound of corpses hitting the floor and washing it and nearby caskets in gore was all Jim could hear under the sounds of screams and crying, then silence. The heavy footfalls echoed across the floor, the crunch of bones snapping under the weight of ten feet of metal humanoid not bothering to step over the bodies of the dead or dying. A gunshot sounded close by, followed by the wrenching sound of metal as a casket was emptied of its contents. Jim felt his heart beating out of his chest when shot rang out so close, he thought that it must have been him, that he must be dead and not even know it yet. He waited but the sound of metal twisting under inhuman strength never quite reached him, instead content to ring out nearby as a wailing person dropped to the floor just nearby. Another gunshot followed by dead silence. And then another, and another - another casket, another casualty, another gunshot, another empty casket, another gunshot.

Eventually, Jim couldn't hear anything anymore. Whether he had fallen asleep or lost his mind, or maybe died and didn't know it, he couldn't tell. Dead silence dominated everything. How long it lasted he couldn't tell. Hours, maybe days. Jim didn't dare eat, or speak, or do anything besides breathe for a long time. He found himself falling in an abyss, watching in dead silence as people wailed and cried, torn apart by metal wolves, searching for him, looking for his face, sniffing his blood, the trail of blood from his head, his ears, his mouth, a vomitous pour of gore-

Scratching on his casket woke Jim up. The normal sounds of the sleeper hotel came back in a wash, but turned up too high - wailing, crying, screaming, and screeching. He popped the lid on his casket and knocked back a scavenger chemhead, with too many implants and a rotting face, who glared at him with a starving, mad look. The man lunged, and Jim used the bundled helmet to smack him across the face, sending him sprawling into a pile of refuse behind him.

No, not refuse. Corpses. Mostly naked, picked over, cut and shot, still bleeding mounds of flesh steaming in the middle of the freezing hotel room. The man nursed his broken jaw and scattered away and out of the room, where people were crying and screaming madness still amidst the gore and torn up sleeper caskets. Half of the caskets in the room had been checked, and his had been one of the lucky few that were left mostly untouched. He saw a bullet hole in the side, not quiet close enough to have taken off his head, but he was bleeding, and stone deaf in his left ear.

Poor ol' Jim had lucked out again, he thought. Although maybe it would be better to be dead so quickly, and end to all of it. But that wasn't the change Jim wanted today. Or maybe it had been yesterday.

It wasn't the change he wanted now.

Jim hardly remembered walking through the halls of the sleeper hotel, making his way down the floors where people had made themselves scarce. There were more bullet holes, more gore splattered across the walls, and fewer people around. But it was a blur of the same thing he saw coming in. Even after death had walked in and taken dozens of lives, they still fought and screamed, wailing into the darkness. They clawed and grabbed and screamed, and he pushed and shoved his way down the floors, eventually back to the front door, where the thugs had left. More bullet holes, more broken polycrete - the teller at the desk was missing, too. Jim saw the cameras watching him, and he stared at the one near the front door of the place for a while.

Let them see me. Let them know that Jim is still here after all. The lense twisted and focused on him, and Jim turned and left, running out into the rain of Zero to find the right buyer.

Test 1232022; Part 2

Taro had been working for Tanaka for more than two years, and try as he might have, it was inevitable that their reputation would eventually prove to be a myth, or a horrible truth. As a young slummie youth growing up in a sector one schoolhouse, policing was a terrible thing. He'd seen people die in the streets when he was six, pushed under the treads of an Autocop and summarily sentenced for not having proper identification. The Yakuza didn't hand out ID; you had to pay for it. His Citcard was something Taro had held dear to himself as long as he could remember. It was the only thing standing between him and capital punishment. It was his bank now, his employee ID, and his proof that your average thug might regret cutting him down if they worked for Tanaka money.

Taro had spent two years training, learning everything he could about nanotechnology. It was a strange revolutionary science that had helped put Tanaka in every major city in the UFS. Tanaka nanites were the lifeblood of medical tech in the trade federation, keeping citizens healthy in the face of constant radiation exposure by nuclear technology, which had become essential for everything from cars and computers, to lights in homes.

Tanaka controlled everything in New Dallas. Every sector was their territory. Even the police had their pockets lined with Tanaka credits, with officers who were more often Yakuza gangsters than not.

But Taro had seen the hospitals, so clean and tolerable. People doing the work of caring for patients, giving them replacement limbs, saving their lives and letting them know everything would be fine. The people never understood what the cost was, the charges for medical procedures, cost of nanites, food and board, transport, blood tests, and everything they could manage to justify to help keep you informed about your health. Not until after the fact, at least.

Some people came back with debt they never could pay off. Tanaka medical never turned down a costumer - it was another corporate slogan, a nice catch-phrase before you saved someone's life. 

Machines wandered the streets, lost, wandering around the outside of the hospital in Zero. His mentor told Taro to ignore them, a thousand people they couldn't help because they only took organics as patients. Taro often wondered why they were always there, despite being driven off by Autopcops regularly.

It was as if there were more of them every day.

Eventually, Taro noticed he had patients that were wheeled away unconscious, taken somewhere whenever the costs were too high for them to pay. Tanaka knew their net worth, where they worked, how much they made, and their repor with the company. Sometimes, he never saw them again. He'd asked about a man he'd known from childhood, an old classmate who had never trusted Tanaka butchers. But so long as Taro worked on him, he was happy to come in and get some help.

"Don't worry, he's gone."

One of the machines stared at him in the street. It was a sad look he'd first seen in school all those years ago, the same look that lonely kid who didn't know anybody had. No friends, no family - an orphan kid, who Taro had befriended. When he approached the plastishell unit, a thin, obviously robotic humanoid that would ruin standing around in the rain as it was, it ran from him. He watched security mercilessly beat machines that got too close, breaking limbs off before they escaped and ran into the ruins of the city ghettos. 

Taro tried to find his old school friend the next day. He went to his house and found his mother, wondering where her son was. He had never come home from Tanaka's hospital.

So Taro decided that it was time to leave Tanaka. He'd told them that he was going part-time, and hoped that this new job might turn out to be less horrible, and maybe even less dangerous than working for Tanaka.

Test 1232022 - Part 1

Safehouses are generally regarded as places for gangs of mercenaries to meet up for jobs. Clubs keep too much data on hand - cameras can make for difficult times explaining why you met with certain individuals at such and such times, and the Yakuza take security very seriously, even in Zero. Most streets in the market are monitored, and they happily send in Yakuza-paid workers to wire up the security before the polycrete finishes curing on the building. But there are dark patches in ruined areas, where deadly territory wars force everyone to endure endless warfare in densely overpopulated residential blocks, homeless and company-men alike. Eventually, they become ruins, only sparsely populated by homeless machines looking for an underground wire still alive enough to stay operative on, maybe a rubble to lie under instead of drowning exposed circuits in the rain.

Somewhere in Zero was another section of ruined marketplace, close enough to the market that most homeless slummies stayed away. The inside of the back office was too clean - Mathuzala figured it was a Yakuza meeting place, kept up so they didn't have to battle the rain, the slummies, or anyone stupid enough to stick around. Meth was at the desk, her computer haphazardly laying on a stack of Plastique surgery magazines with designer faces and bodies from the last four years. She wore a plastic hoodie poncho over a red jacket, black jeans, and bright yellow sneakers. Her visor offered a muted look to her face until she smiled, and when she did the mirrored, implanted glass over her eyes gave her a sinister look.

Bones leaned against a nearby wall, checking a gun over, calibrating it, reloading it, and cleaning it out of boredom. Bonita was a Chronosian - she had a dog-like head with rows of sharp teeth and a snout, patches of short, black fur, and long black hair. Most regular humans thought of Chronosians as short tempered animals more so than being people - if Chimerans were generally disliked, Chronosians were generally feared. But Mathuzala had been Bone's good friend for a few years, and she never seemed bothered by working with someone like her. Meth was at the computer for hours, and said that today was-

"Today's the day, Bones! We've got a live one, the best pay we've had in months, and more protection than we could possibly need."

Bones laughed, "Boy, when you put it that way, it sounds even more like a trap than usual. It's been hours - who's supposed to show up first?"

"No idea. The doctor, maybe? He seemed desperate."

"What about Reaper? Rich bastard like that might show up earlier than expected, see if its even legit. Actually, how DID you manage to get a gladiator, anyway? He'd make more in the ring! Why bother with us?"

"I was very specific with his handler. Plus, when he got word about it, he sent me a private line, see-?" Meth held up a post-card marked for the inside of Caeser's.

Bones laughed when she looked at it, "You call that proof?! They send those out to the kids, Meth! What, did he send you a picture of one of his latest eviscerations too?" She laughed like only a Chronosian could.

Meth frowned, "He'll show."

Bones chuckled.

The door suddenly opened. Bones stared at the figure in the doorway, standing too-straight - rags covered them from head to foot, with only two barely-visible eyes, either fakes or machine lights with a dim blue glow amidst the pile of filthy torn clothes, ripped sheets, and plastic synthetic fibers wrapping the figure until its shape was oddly lumpy.

The figure walked in and took a seat in front of the desk, like a shy employee late for their chastising. Thr stench of months in the rain washed over the room, and Bones gagged loudly, turning away from the figure. Meth didn't seem to notice the smell.

"Who the fuck are you?" Meth leaned forward, glaring at the figures eyes, who met her gaze with a strange curiosity.

The figure held up a poster with a crude, handwritten writing, as if quickly scratched out and half finished. TEN THOUSAND CREDITS! Help wanted: Anyone with the balls to fight the good fight for the city, sign up with MATHUZALA and the DEATH SQUAD, taking ALL JOBS not titled directly at destabilizing the local government. NOT IF THE PAY AIN'T RIGHT ANYWAY-!

"Oh shit, I did put those up - you better be able to fight! You can, right?"

The figure nodded sternly, and held up an old revolver. Definitely looked like an officers gun, Bones noted. A Yakuza gun for sure.

"You got a name?" Bonita asked.

The figure looked at Bones, and spoke in a low, muffled voice, "They called me Ragman."

Bones and Meth exchanged a confused look, and Meth shrugged.

"Welcome aboard!"

Hold you as you Die

 Dunno why this song had such an impact, really like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11OMyDrf8iM

....here's a poem. Haven't done poetry in a while, and it doesn't even rhyme most of the time, because I'm rusty and being incredibly lazy about it. Enjoy~!

there she lay, dying in my arms,

 breathing as her life made its way through the spike in her head.

we both knew she was already dead,

 that this was one last chance to save her,

  to preserve her mind,

   and leave the flesh behind.

She held my gaze, script passing behind her eyes,

 endless numbers skimming her memories,

  archiving her life, second by second,

   as her body went cold.

I felt her shudder in the dark room,

 lit only by a computer screen

  dancing with her mind in plain mathematics

   half organic, half-yet digital.

I could see the pain on her face,

 tears streaming down her cheeks,

  teeth grinding until blood

   dripped down her chin.

She let go of me, and held her head,

 silently screaming, fingernails tearing her scalp

  while I cried, and I wailed

   with the sound she couldn't make.

Finally, she shook

 as if struck by lightning,

  then fell back into my arms,

   silent, still, and cold.

I heard behind me a machine, whirring to life,

 the click of chromatic feet in mock-heels,

  her voice calling my name through a box,

   beckoning me to hold her.

I saw her eyes, mock-flesh,

 perfectly colored, blinking,

  staring with the same love I remember in her eyes,

   but somehow still wrong.

A midnight lover's gown, draped over skin

 smooth as a newborn, flawless, creaseless,

  warm, supple, and inviting,

   not at all like her body in my hands.

I looked at her, still mid-scream in death,

 knowing the machine erased the pain of her last few moments

  gone for the machine, now lost to the woman I loved

   naught but a tortured corpse on the ground.

I could hear it behind me,

 could it even feel anger? Fear?

  Loss? Love? Pain?

   I felt her warm hand against my shoulder,

    the freezing metallic spike being pushed into my head,

     and the machine in front of me ready the program again.

"Your turn baby."

history entry; New Dallas, Darron Bull, and Tanaka Medical Corporation

 Darron 'Bull' Robertson is a Texan native; he became the most powerful figure within entire networks of local crime syndicates within the state, which connected him with other figures within the underworld. After the collapse and the founding of the United Federation of States as a trade union functioning under a neo-feudalistic order, trade flows under the nose of the government, and pirates raid frigate as it travels between sanctioned cities. Everyone works for credits, anyway; especially pirates.

Darron began working as a hitman in New Dallas before his nineteenth birthday. His father was an accomplished roboticist, and he was already wearing the first Minos when he began earning his name, and eventually the name of his company, Bull, out on the streets of sector Zero. The small foundry community had always been mob-run, almost a kind of prison, prior to Tanaka Medical entering into the market. The Yakuza needed new territory, and when Tanaka Proper offered the mobsters more credits than they could ever dream of, the mob sold the land and fought over the money. Tanaka began building the sectors, including the Industrial sector, and eventually digging even deeper. They built New Dallas into a truly modern city, with schools, colleges,  public transit, grocers, and especially hospitals. Recovering from the collapse of civilization had been slow going for some time, but those that fled from nuclear destruction in Asia, who landed on the shores of North America, found a new world filled with primordial landscapes and vicious, heavily armed natives. Vast hunting communities had never even really forgotten firearms, a vital resource in the apocalypse.

New Dallas had existed hundreds of years before Darron arrived. Tanaka Medical's CEO, Kenshi Tanaka, had long since buried his claws deep and built the sectors of the city before Darron was even born. Already, the hospitals were curing radiation ills, constantly at odds with the wave of Yakuza that had infiltrated New Dallas, seemingly overnight. Along with the money, Tanaka poured people into apartment complexes, and began outnumbering the foundry workers, who worked underground. Eventually, they would build a new kind of sector, one with a reputation of swallowing tourists whole, the training grounds of militants who could, theoretically, work their way up to police work, if they worked with the Yakuza instead of against it. The foundries were older than Tanaka Medical's presence, and even the Yakuza worked the foundries in the start of things. Without the foundry metals from Texas, much of the UFS would starve for metals. Base materials sails into the industrial sector on a daily basis, as it did then, and the work was always grueling, filled with a criminal underground element that erupted into violent riots within the foundries, splitting territories and training members.

Darron wasn't born in New Dallas, and his arrival was at a time when the foundry riots had become increasingly violent, stopping the wheels of commerce in the process. Citizens had taken to becoming pirates, using civilian cars to stop frigates carrying goods - stealing food that would be too expensive to buy from the store, or filling the fridge of someone too rich to work for it. Riots spread outward from the industrial sector, and spilled into the streets of every sector. The starvation riots followed the foundry riots, and went on for a month. Sometimes, between the burning and stealing, there would be a day of peace. People would walk, and peacefully protest in front of freshly stocked stores, fridges overflowing with food, although the cost of any one thing was tens of thousands of credits. Tanaka would bring cameras for the news organizations, bringing crates of food and doctors who swore that they would find a way to solve the crises.

The Yakuza had become a presence everywhere in New Dallas. Every foundry gang had Yakuza members - most of the police were Yakuza, and every single upper member of the governing body was either one of them or working for them. Orders to get things back on track were met with the horrors of cutting down civilians in the streets, and days of riots following that. A day would follow of peaceful protests, and end in a wave of violence erupting between police and starving, angry citizens. 

Eventually, Nii-Sama found a way to restore peace. The governing body began to offer nutritank installations, graciously offered for free by Tanaka Medical, and free refills for tax-paying citizens. Nutritanks were an internally implanted storage tank that held a nanogel, which could provide food and water for a person for an entire month. Tanaka had successfully solved the hunger crises by invading the bodies of its population, which would continue as a trend into the future. Already, children had cerebral interfaces installed at birth, shoving metallic spikes into their heads from early adolescence. It better served the brain if it grew around the implant, with slight changes made throughout their life to adjust it.

Tanaka was there, invading the brain from childhood. Letting them experience the wonders of virtual worlds as real as the really real one, filled with sensations and fantasies beyond imagination. Programming interfaces had grown culturally as technology returned. Programming across the UFS needed standards if things were going to begin to work together independent of which city manufactured what, and the union went with NeoNet. Wired connections were religious practice from citizens, church-goer or not. Wireless had damned us all, destroyed everything.

It was the Church, after all, that connected people. It created emotional hive-minds, intertwining the brains of locals who could brush thoughts wirelessly with one another, sharing emotional thought as casually as spoken words. Once the networks were compromised, and when it all had to be shut down, simultaneously, all at once, less than 10% of the people connected to the network survived the collapse. Modern citizens only know the consequences - wireless connections are dangerous.

Darron didn't fight with the Yakuza. He wouldn't defend the people who stopped citizens from begging outside of grocery stores for expired food, which was guarded to the dump trucks before they hauled it off to the incinerators. At the end of the starvation riots, Darron refused to cooperate, and was arrested for slaughtering entire squads of police in the streets of sector 4, sector 5, and even sector 6, high up into the wealthiest capital buildings. Darron brought the citizens storming with him, working in tandem with the foundry gangs who he had befriended at his arrival, and took the riots up into the highest reaches of the city.

*****

The long, empty hallways were misty, with a low-hanging fog covering the floors of long winding passageways. A group of twelve heavily armed mercenaries were slowly making their way under the watchful mega-pix cameras streaming live across the UFS. Their armor was full neurodeck interfaced smart armor, a thick layered metallic battlesuit that did more to enhance their dexterity than detract from it - fully automatic weapons, demolitions, heavy artillery - a regular military unit, lost in a network of maze-like passageways.

The criminals were given the opportunity to live, if only they could survive the maze, built deep under Caesar's prison block, where Darron Robertson had been imprisoned. Could they beat his zero loss record? Thousands had tried, and the rising gladiatorial star had caught the eye of influential syndicate members already, a forceful counter-piece to the Yakuza. Bull was more than a man wearing a sixteen-foot suit of armor, cutting down men with a battleaxe while they shot helplessly at armor so thick, it took digging to find anything important mechanically. The modern interfaces he had snagged from the Church, whose angels had helped bring him into prison for trial and subsequent sentencing, gave him the same grace as if the armor were a second skin.

.............

Tune in next time folks, for more. 

Hard Times, chapter 2?

   A Preface here: If you haven't read this == https://bockin2.blogspot.com/2022/01/week-2-hard-times-chapter-1-partial.html

....Which is also on this blog (Week 1: Hard Times, chapter 1 partial), this story will be missing that section. I haven't actually chaptered this project before, but going back over it, I guess this is as good as any for a second. Anyway, Enjoy--

 The elevators leading up into the industrial sector of the city were always busy around the clock, sunshafts shining down as you approach. Bull Industrial shipped containers everywhere, and around every sector in the city, which for them, meant transporting tons of metals, chemicals, and weapons, all stacked on the platforms day and night. As the largest durasteel manufacturer in much of Texas, there was an estranged, tense relationship between the city and Bull. Dozens of goons walked the streets as their enforcers, and company middlemen hired them out to run down locals, collect debts, provide protection for their interests, and kill Yakuza on anyone‘s turf. Bull was one of the few companies around that stood up and fought open corporate warfare with the Yakuza; Fuu & Shukov, the russo-triad front also did, but their presence in the UFS was largely in small pockets. The largest company in the city, Tanaka Medical, headed the Yakuza under a thinly veiled pretense as an open secret.

But Bull Industrial had one advantage: Security. All around the elevators near the far-eastern most edge of the city, machine gun toting maniacs prodded the workers to keep them moving, landed mafiosos took clients into nearby bars and hotels, and Minos units strolled about in pairs – fourteen-foot mechanical suits of armor piloted by experienced psychopaths, each with enough of a personal arsenal  to level a small building in seconds.

George, to say the least, took his job very seriously.

Moe spotted him and McKenzie, and immediately started walking toward them. He was bald, tall and big in a white suit. Here near the Elevator, the rain finally let up, so Georgie shook out his umbrella and put it up. A Minos followed close behind Moe, moving with a natural grace inconsistent with its size and weight.

"Well if it ain't the dumbest pair of fucks I ever seen - how's it hangin' there McKenzie?"

McKenzie managed a dishonest smile for Moe, "I've been worse. Listen, I can tell you two want some alone time, so I'm just gunna go hop my happy ass to work."

"Well if that ain't exactly what I wanted to hear!" Moe laughed and slapped McKenzie across the back, who visibly strained. Moe stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a blue hundred-credit stick, which he shoved into McKenzie's hand, and slapped him across the back again, "Go grab yerself a bone or somethin', eh?" McKenzie took the cash and awkwardly walked to one of the many platforms around heading up into sector one. Moe walked closer to George, lowering his voice a bit.

"So uh, Georgie – it is Georgie, right?"

George nodded quietly. He'd prefer if Moe got his name wrong once in a while. Moe very slowly smiled at him, like he was already on the hook.

"Yeah, so Georgie – we got uh, uh… a little problem upstairs,” Moe threw his arm over George, and pulled him uncomfortably close. His perfume was strong from a distance, but gag worthy up close. “Go on up and get tooled out. If you do good today, it'll be more tomorrow, so don't blow it. An' remember, if they can't pay, jus' take it outta their asses, so’s the next ones know what's comin' to ‘em."

Patting George on the back, Moe spotted another one of his employees, "Hey, I gotta tell this other fuck what's what. Don't blow it, Georgie!" Moe walked off. The Minos that had followed Moe eyed George with its huge, camera lens eyes. The pilots weren't visible when they were in the suits. Instead, it appeared as if the suits were alive, such as with Bull’s Minos machines, which resembled hulking half-bull bipedal humanoids. They didn't move like machines, with every part of its huge metallic body shimmying and sauntering as naturally as any other living thing. A low rumble came over its vocal box as it walked off, following Moe, who was already yelling at someone. It was a young kid, probably fresh from robbing his parents back up in Sector Four. He had too much money in his pocket, and he looked scared by Moe, terrified by the smelly, perfumed middleman. George watched the Minos pull out a massive handgun with a barrel as long as the kid's forearm.

George quickly walked off toward the elevators, terrified of watching the boy being retired on the spot, but intently blank faced. Moe caught his expressionless gaze before he made the platform, studying his expression.

The huge shaft leading upward into sector one had dozens of independent platforms, each filled with  Minos, thugs, shipping containers, dozens of slummies working as loaders, and hundreds of others who were waiting to go to work in the  foundries. George walked onto a platform. The lights were flashing green on the local indicator light, so more people piled on after him while workers shifted containers onto the platform. Most lifters had mechanical arms implanted at the shoulder, pneumatic exoskeletons, each section grafted to their flesh by rods running deep into their bones. Georgie watched one of them manage to move what looked like a two-ton container without breaking a sweat, his limbless torso just a fleshy core grafted to his actuators. But the exoskeleton had to be grafted to the entire skeleton. Sooner or later, the flesh would decompose, and if they couldn't pay the bills, they'd lose whatever skin they had left. Just another machine, eventually obsolete or rebuilt too many times. Once you didn't have flesh in the game, they could just erase everything you thought you were – memories, sensations, thoughts and feelings.

Everyone on the platform was trapped by corporations that would use them until they were worse than just dead, and then keep on using their broken husks after they didn't even have rights anymore. Medical bills became sold organs, because mechanical parts needed power, and radiation poisoning had expensive nanotech treatments. It would all just rot sooner or later anyway, says the doctor. Bull didn't pay most androids to work, instead offering free electricity and company housing, where the mechanics could wake you up without your memories intact. Most didn't stick around, instead preferring homelessness or the inevitable retirement by an Autocop.

The green light changed to a flashing red, and a blaring alarm sounded as the platform lifted off, groaning under the weight before it lifted off at a decent pace. Georgie took off his raincoat and blinked in the harsh synthetic sunlight of Sector One.

 

Where Zero was full of homeless vagrants, One was packed with hard workers under the an endless midday sun. But the big name in One wasn't Tanaka, it was Bull, who ran half of the sector by itself. The vast sea of industrial buildings were all tasteless polycrete grey copies under never-ending artificial daylight, supposedly meant to spur the workers on to earn the real thing, a far flung hope of being a company middleman.

George stepped off the elevator and started his way toward his new workplace. Today marked his second day on the job, after what Moe called orientation. He tried to push the details of it out of his mind.

He quickly found one of the many military barracks' nearby. Dozens of bull thugs were on the move around the place, coming and going through the front door of the dull grey building with a dozen floors.

Here, while there are even more cameras, there are also bioscanners, more Minos armed with sizable machine guns, and countless Bull goons hauling serious hardware,automatic weapons, shotguns, plastisteel bodyarmor, and belts of grenades. But there was only one door-man, who stood at the front entrance in a black trenchcoat, his mirrored glasses wrapped around his head like a visor. The building had several mounted turrets over his head, and they idly clicked through their barrels, lubricant splashing the nearby wall. The door man was stout, and George could see up close how his over-the-eye synthglass was installed directly into his face over his eye sockets. When George got close, the door man nodded at him, "Good to see you comin' in.” George still couldn’t tell if he was looking at him. “You ready for the real work?"

George nodded impassively.

The man seemed to wait for George to say something, but eventually just shrugged. "For your sake, bud, try not to take the work too personally. Professionals don't let anxiety get to them, but trust me when I tell ya, everybody's got it. So deal with it." The man took a card out of his jacket and slid it across a panel to his right, and the doorway to the building opened up from what looked like a solid durasteel wall. George walked in, and the door shut immediately behind him.

Here there were the long, dull hallways of a tasteless polycrete building, poorly lit, with dozens of featureless doors. George walked down the hallway, and he opened the door to room four-five into armory seven-seven, exactly where orientation had been yesterday. Inside, the robotic assistant stood nearby, whose obviously-mechanical appearance and human mannerisms unnerved George. As far as he knew, it didn't have a name, but the way it acted was wholly unlike a machine. It was tall and thin, practically all metal rods and rotors, with one big bright yellow eye in the center of its plastic head. It chimed a happy, masculine electric tune as George walked in, "Well, well, well, if it isn't our newest rookie! Let's get you ready for work, shall we?" The assistant indicated to a nearby chair covered in clamps and bloodstains next to a set of medical tables. The tables had motors, batteries, plugs, wires, oils, glues, knives, and a dozen sizes of saws, mechanical parts, replacement prosthetics, and organic parts floating in glass tubes on a nearby table, all carefully arranged as if by an obsessive collector.

George sat down in the chair, and the assistant brought out a prosthetic arm from under one of the tables. George held his breath at seeing it up close. It had thin finite cords made of flexible durasteel for muscle, and it was definitely fresh metal from the factory lines, like it had been freshly polished. The long mechanical spike on the end was a perfect fit to his shoulder socket, but it burned from the chill of cold metal as the doc slid it into place, and then a static shock pop zapped his shoulderblade enough to make him nearly knock over a table.“SHIT!” he yelled, feeling the part installing as it interfaced with his CI through his shoulder. He felt it come alive, the new signals in his brain brushing against the memories of his old arm in a wave of déjà vu. Yesterday, it had felt wrong watching his arm writhe from fifteen feet away inside a plastic box. But now that it was properly attached, he could see how the surface bristled with small electric sensors, giving him sensations like pressure and temperature. Getting up, he clenched his fist a couple of times experimentally.

The attendee held out its clamp-like hands, and asked in a kind tone, "Please?" George let it see his arm, which it prodded and poked, "Does the limb feel cold? There should be a slight resistance for a while, until your cerebral implant fully interfaces with the prosthetic."

"It's fine." George remained impassive.

"Excellent." The assistant went to a nearby crate, and opened it up. Inside were new clothes - a faux leather jacket, padded jeans with small plasteel plates to guard his knees, and a bullet proof vest, which hid perfectly under a new synthfiber black shirt. He was outfitted with new durasteel-clad boots and fitted gloves. The attendant installed a device into a socket behind his right ear, which instantly came to life with the local Bull radio channels, where he could suddenly listen in on hundreds of conversations, all of which were echoeing inside of his head, but as if they were heard from a great distance; tuning it was a matter of focusing on the right voice. Mostly it was a bunch of chatter and lewd jokes which he had to focus to tune out, although Bull ran the security, so he could call in whatever he needed to. The attendant gave him his new sunglasses. The glasses, he knew, were half his job, with precision scanners and a huge database of registered citizens, with camera and facial recognition software, and an auto-updating manifest.

Lastly, the attendant gave him a new standard issue Bull six-load revolver, with a high enough caliber to blow a hole in solid durasteel two inches wide. He brought enough explosive slugs for a month of work with him in a heavy pack on his back, and he took his old pocket knife and buried it in his heavy ironclad boot.

Checking over all his new gear, George felt his stomach sinking when he thought about how much debt he was taking on to pay for all of it. "You got a manifest for me?"

"Ah! Of course-" the attendant turned George around, and without a word of warning, shoved a cold electronic rod into the plug on the back of his head. He could feel ionized air moving through his nose while the whiz-pop of the spike hummed like a foriegn presence behind his eyes. “Fuck doc, at least buy me a drink first-” the static popping between his ears buzzed and zapped, and his sunglasses came on, reading the data through his Cerebral Implant and processing it.

"How long-" the whirring of his CI and more pops made him pause, whether he liked it or not, "-is this... uuugh, gunna take?!"

The attendant immediately twisted the rod hard to the right, and George felt both his ears pop. Slowly, the attendant pulled the five-inch neural spike out, and George tried not to groan as he felt it slide across the inside walls of his Cerebral Implant. Once it was out, he stumbled away, shaking his head and rubbing his plug, which was now closed with a new metal plate.

"Will there be anything else today?"

George thought for a moment, but all that came to mind was how much he already regretted his new promotion.

Chuckling, he looked up at the attendant, "Ask me again tomorrow."

*

George made his way through the crowded industrial sector. With his new clothes, people avoided him like a leaky barrel of radioactive waste. People knew a Bull thug when they saw one, and he looked every inch the part. Eventually, he found his way to one of the many apartment complexes in sector One. It was thirteen stories high with modest sized places, each larger than most multi-family housing units in sector Zero. His client was on the fourth floor, which George took the stairs up to, stopping at the top of them and looking at the door to apartment 416 in the middle of the hall. He waited a while for something to happen, listening to the other apartments for a while. Mostly just people arguing, loud kids, or the occasional television film. After an hour of waiting, he sighed, walked up to the door, and gave it a sharp knock.

A woman opened the door a crack, no older than thirty, with pretty eyes and a few prosthetic fingers peering from behind the door. When she saw George, she looked worried, "Can I help you sir?"

"I'm looking for Kaito."

She only looked more worried. "H-he's at work, I'm sorry, but-"

George knew that Kaito had been seen an hour ago coming back here on the security camera's that Bull kept everywhere around sector One, including here outside the apartments. He interrupted her, "I don't know where your husband has been going, but it hasn't been to work. He hasnt been back to the factory in three days."

The woman shook her head quietly, "I'm sorry, b-but he's at work, I don't know what else to-"

"Ma'am, I need to find Kaito, and this will all go real easy if you just tell me where he is."

George heard a muffled but distinct click from inside the apartment.

Leaping away, the woman behind ran deeper into the apartment, screaming, as a blast from the inside makes a gaping hole through the door. George lands on his back, revolver out and aimed at the door, listening to the people inside the apartments everywhere and all at once scrambling. The whole area was suddenly horribly silent, but he heard Kaito trying to calm his wife down, a mistake George intended to capitalize on.

As quietly as he could, he got up off the ground and approached the door. Slowly, he could begin to hear Kaito whispering deeper inside the apartment, "...right now, and we'll go! So go get it, and I'll get-"

Kaito's wife screamed when she saw George coming up behind her husband, but his revolver was already pressed against the back of his head. George hadn't expected her to scream, hoping that he could calm the two down, maybe get the prosthetics and handle the job properly. The last thing he wanted to do was pull the trigger. But Kaito was holding a loaded shotgun, already turning, finger on the trigger. Gore splattered everywhere, and Kaito's partially headless corpse collapsed to the ground in a heap onto his livingroom floor, his blood showering the room. The woman was still screaming, crying loud enough for the people on the streets nearby to hear her easily. George could feel the scream in every part of his body, hurting him more than he thought a sound ever could. He shot her twice in the chest, and she fell silent onto the floor.

The channel in George's ear had some chatter about the noise where he was. He brought his finger up to the dial behind his ear, tuning it partially with his brain, "Worker fifty-five-zero-seven reporting here - just a bit of rough work at the thirty-and-second apartments, but I've got it handled, we’re clear."

"Hahaha, sounds like the rookie went and made a fuckin‘ mess! Roger that Fifty-five-oh-seven, we'll send cleaners! Try and leave a wallet for a tip or something, eh?! Hahaha-" George tuned out of the channel and sat down on the nearby couch. Commercials were playing, just like the ones across the ceiling in sector zero:

"New new NEW! Old sensie-bugs got you down? Can't quite get the same oomph out of kung fu films? Or maybe you're just looking for something a bit sexier? Buy new Sensie-soft, designed for neuralnet five-point-oh! You'll really feel the flesh between your hands, taste the same tastes, and even feel the panic of the gunfight, all with new Sensie-soft Five!"

The cost of the software was just under six-thousand credits, more than George could hope to save in six months at his old job. He got up and checked the house. The closet in Kaito's bedroom had what he was looking for - Tanaka brand prosthetics still boxed up, ready for re-sale. The vendor numbers had all been scratched off, and a couple were damaged. He groaned under the heavy weight of the unmarked crate, lugging it into the livingroom with the bodies. He checked the two for citcards, which he took, as well as stealing a Coffinnail cigarette from Kaito and a lighter. George stuck around for a while, quietly crying while he smoked his heroin-laced cigerette. After a while, he lifted the crate and walked back to work. Nobody bothered or spoke with him, stealing glances at the gore that still was splattered all over him, which George still hadn't noticed. The door man eyed him cautiously when he got there, "You hit a bit of a rough spot there, Georgie?"

George shook his head, and once again said nothing.

"You uh... got a little somethin' there, on your shirt."

Looking down, George saw that he was still covered in blood and gore. He carefully put down the crate and wiped off some of the blood and bits of Kaito and his wife that still clung to his shirt, mostly just splattering blood over his hands and his clothes, not to mention outside the doorway to the facility, and looked back at the door man and nodded, who shrugged and went to scan his card to open the door. Before he could, it opened by itself, and Moe walked out. He stopped and looked at George, then to the crate on the ground. Moe frowned, then looked back up at George, "You bring back the product? I heard there was some trouble."

"Yeah... but I handled it."

Moe laughed, "Good job there, Georgie! We'll make a proper employee out of you yet!" He laughed again and slapped George across the back, careful not to step in the blood and gore as he walked, still chuckling to himself as he wandered off toward the elevator, waving to a couple of nearby Minos that followed along close behind him.

George went inside, going to the room he was told to bring product back to. Inside, three or four androids were hard at work, unpackaging and repackaging weapons, prosthetics, jars of organs suspended in preservative fluids, and numerous implants, from toes, fingers, eyes, facial plates, rotors, and motorized wheels to pistols, assault rifles, more shotguns, grenades, landmines, and even swords and motorized axes. One of them looked at George when he walked in and stopped, "What's that you got there?"

"Prosthetics."

The guy pointed to a small pile of crates on one side of the fairly large room, "Put it over there, but on the floor. It’s disgusting."

 

George sat down the crate, and left as quickly as he could. Once he was outside, he stopped and stared at the endless crowds of workers walking through sector One. He saw names appear over peoples heads, identities and any 'criminal offenses', along with their supposed stake in the company – a clean, fat rate of their assumed total net value in Credits. People pretended not to notice him watching. He sighed, trying to forget what happened, but his left hand wouldn't stop shaking. His right, with the chrome lightly tarnished from where he had tried to wipe the blood off, was still, cold, and lifeless. It felt like it was almost too sensitive, picking up textures he hadn't seemed to notice before.

"Something wrong Georgie?" The door man asked him, watching him stare at his hand.

"...do you know if I can get the feeling turned off?"

"What do you mean?"

"I can feel everything this fucking thing touches, even the air - it's too damn sensitive. I was wondering if I could get the attendant to turn that off."

The man scoffed, "How the fuck should I know?"

George mentally brought up the manifest of his clients, the neural connection between his sunglasses and his brain letting him skim it effortlessly. He could read out where his targets were last seen, and more work had already replaced his job at the apartments. During orientation, he was told that the manifest was important, a database he couldn't touch stored in one of the new brain implants they'd given him to work in tandem with his arm, free of charge. It was information his glasses could access, but not something he could access without the glasses, or at least not without possibly blowing a security circuit and dying a painful death. Or at least, that's what the attendant told him after they put it in.

 

* * * * *

 

Georgie sat at Naoki's bar in sector zero eating a bowl of noodles. McKenzie was eyeing him in the next seat over, trying to make him feel uncomfortable.

"Do you ever take off your work clothes anymore, Georgie?"

Naoki was busily serving customers, but stopped when she heard McKenzie. The older Japanese lady had four arms, two mechanical ones serving and two behind her cooking. "Hey, you gunna order something, or just talk? Seats are for customers, not free loading!"

George pulled out his citcard, which Naoki snatched from his hand, ran through an ancient looking computer panel to her right, and threw back all in the matter of a second.

"Next!"

 

The two got up and managed to find a nearby spot to stand where the rain didn't pour into George's meal. Whether it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner, George couldn't remember. The stimulants in his system kept his mind skimming his manifest idly, not even realizing he was working the whole time, scanning faces, downloading data, noting clients, checking for weapons...

"You fuckin' hearing me George?"

Annoyed, he turned to McKenzie, "Yeah, yeah - I heard you just fine, McKenzie, but I don't see your point. I'm workin'; I'm not exactly feelin‘ like idle conversation."

George had made what in his old job would have taken two years, and in the span of only three days, completely paying off all his gear, even the arm. He had never imagined the promotion could mean so much to him, but every time he found another client, he got another paycheck. He'd hardly spent anything on the chems to stay awake, but the credits kept calling his name. He turned back toward the crowd, still working.

"I don't think you hear me at all though Georgie, because you still haven't answered my question."

George shrugged.

"So no, I take it?"

Slowly, George shook his head to answer no.

McKenzie inclined his head, and stared down the street for a moment. After a minute of listening to George slurp his noodles loudly, he looked up at the hundreds of people making their way through the mercantile district, most with their heads down, trying not to start anything. Yakuza thugs were rampant, some with swords, but most with submachine guns. When a pack of gangsters spotted him and George, he felt his heart drop a little. They talked back and forth, watching the two. George waved, a gesture they returned, and then they walked off, looking back occasionally.

"You don't see many Chronosians down here," remarked McKenzie.

Chronosians weren't well liked by most people. Mostly they had a reputation for eating people and flying into terrifying rage-induced massacres. Few ever made it to the UFS, preferring to live where they were more numerous, farther south.

"Too good at your jobs I guess."

"No, I don't think it's that," McKenzie pointed out a man missing half of his torso - sparks shot out of the open cavity from the exposed parts inside, drenched as he was in the rain, but still walking slowly and steadily down the road. "See that poor soul there? You don't see Chronosian androids down here too much, either. You ever wonder about that, Georgie?"

Finally finished with his meal, George tossed his plastic bowl into a nearby trash bin and wiped his face, sighing contentedly with the feeling of a full stomach.

"First, I don’t think a Chronosian framejob would look like a Chronosian, it’d look like a junk android. You might be overthinkin' this stuff. You don't see many Chronosians because most of your, uh... people, I guess, don't live in the States."

"And why do you think that is, Georgie?"

"Maybe because they live elsewhere? The fuck is going on with you today, McKenzie? This whole time you've done nothing but nag and talk about your *people*. Since when do you give a shit about other Chronosians?"

McKenzie shrugged, "Maybe I'm just putting more thought to things. But somebody around here has to compensate for your stupid ass, walking around like a brainless chemhead whose biggest concern is how much your next paycheck is gunna be."

George felt little more than vacant about the comment. "I know my place around here. I know exactly who I am, and I'm not ashamed to be a man with a job."

McKenzie shook his head again and gave up. "Fine George, but don't expect me to stick around a thug who kills decent people for money."

McKenzie started walking down the street.

"Hey, McKenzie!"

The Chronosian stopped for a moment, listening, but not turning around.

"I know I haven't been myself lately, but... I'm just trying to survive out here, man."

McKenzie turned and smiled, "Aren't we all, Georgie?" then he left.

George went back to skimming his manifest, looking for another client.

 

The last three days had been one incident after another. George had shot and killed more people than he cared to think about, as the rough business of acquisitions for Bull Industrial wore on him, day in and day out. He hardly ever did business in sector Zero, but he rapidly came to the conclusion that it was the best place to work. Generally, if someone was going to do something illegal, they didn't do it under Bull's nose up in sectoer One. Down here, all he needed to do was watch people coming down, passing through the mercantile, and follow them through the crowd.

Buildings in both sectors were abandoned or destroyed, as open war occasionally broke out between the ruling gang, the Yakuza, and just about anyone else sorry enough to be trapped in their basement. Numerous blown out stores, abandonded warehouses, and destroyed houses were filled with squatters. Most of the viable businesses did their deals in the center of Zero, the mercantile, where George spent a great deal of his time. He had become intimately familiar with the merchents who watched him wherever he went, making sure he didn't cause trouble in the mercantile. He’d tried taking a client there once, and ended up in a shooting match with five Yakuza. It had lasted an hour – day or night, he couldn’t remember anymore. Three dead thugs later, he fled. Second day at work, and he had already ruined his reputation.

To the west, Bull Industrial ran its elevator. Around the mercantile, the Yakuza had all of its muscle, since their hospital was in the dead center of the it. Slummies who couldn't afford a place usually took up residence in one of the huge sleeper complexes that lined streets around Zero, each designed to hold as many beds as possible.

A sleeper unit looked like a casket with a soft gel insert. They functioned as protection, and would nourish their occupant as long as they stayed inside. Destroying one from the outside was a damned hard thing to do, and once someone got into a complex, finding the right sleeper was nearly impossible, being that there could be a couple dozen to a room, thirty rooms on a given floor, and twelve to twenty stories to a given complex. There wasn't a man at the door or someone behind a desk to check people in and out, but there was always security and cameras everywhere. All anyone needed was enough credits to rent it for a day, and they'd be gone.

George watched The Comfortable Inn and waited. Not many Bull thugs had the kind of patience that he did, who preferred to go after easier to find clients in sector One, but those were also generally the ones who were also better armed. Here in Zero, where George was at home, most people could hardly afford to live, let alone defend themselves.

Not that the job didn't have its drawbacks. George knew that Zero was a place for the mentally unstable. People were trapped down here, always greedy for enough money to get out. A Taxi didn’t just cost money – it cost citizenship.

George had followed a client to complex thirty-seven a few hours earlier. The guy was jittery, and worried about being seen, though luckily George managed to avoid being spotted. The guy was definitely a slummie in over his head, and without too much gear besides a spring baton he kept fiddling with at his side, playing with the button. He'd even sprang it accidentally near the door, cursing and limping inside on his now injured leg.

George waited for hours, and he didn't intend to waste the effort. Eventually, finally, the client came out, but he didn’t look the same as before. Some terrifying chemicals had calmed him down, still bleeding from the leg, but not limping.

The client, James by name, was all glassy eyed murder when George looked into his eyes. He looked like a hungry predator, searching for something or someone to kill and eat, nothing like the scared slummie before. George was glad he had stood there, leaning against a pillar he’d picked out to watch the door from, and been quiet. He watched another Bull Industrial thug approach the guy, hand already buried in his jacket, probably wrapped snug around his revolver.

Once he was close, the thug pulled out his revolver and shoved it into James' face.

"Hey Jimmy! Where'd you hide the parts, you fuck?! Moe wants-"

Before he finished, the spring-loaded baton smacked the Bull thug across his face hard enough for George to hear the bones in his face shatter. The man fell to the ground. James watched the man lay facedown in the puddle for a moment, bleeding to death if he wasn‘t already drowning. Then, he looked right back up at George, who didn't moved yet. He felt his heart drop into his stomach, with James‘ eyes being horrible and unnaturally wrong. James approached him slowly, watching him. His eyes were all silvered chrome with small red lights at their center, unlike anything George had seen. He passed several people, who he politely pushed aside, but still stared at George, who didn't break his gaze. George slowly gripped his revolver in his jacket pocket, tilting the barrel upward, toward the man.

Closer now, George could tell that Jimmy wasn’t a framejob – just a kid with a scraggily hair. "You're with bull, right?" his voice was definitely synthetic, but with the sounds of an expensive unit. It didn't pop or hum - it was just a velvety, low-pitch voice.

George shrugged, "I guess so."

James pointed at the dead thug in the street, whose body was being picked clean by a couple of slummie kids, "Aren't you going to help your friend?"

George laughed, but James just stared, unblinking, cold and empty like a polycrete wall.

"Nah... See, in my business, we appreciate a competitive market."

James smiled, then frowned, then went back to his previously stoic expression.

"The fuck was that, some kind of facial bug?"

"Sort of, actually." He smiled again, though he went back to impassive again just as fast. "When I find something amusing, I can generally only hold the expression for a couple of seconds."

"Well, glad to hear there's a guy who appreciates a good joke around here."

"Actually, you are incorrect. It was not your joke that I found amusing, it was the business practices of Bull Industrial. They hire mercenaries by the dozens for every sector, but not a single one supports his coworkers. And do you know why that is?"

"Lemme guess... because they're cowards, right?"

Leaning in close, James stared George in the eyes. Somehow, even in the rain, George still managed to feel himself begin to sweat.

"I believe you are incorrect again. You see, it is not because of cowardice that Bull Industrial associates refuse to assist one another, it is because of pay. If the first man kills the client, the second man will kill the first man, knowing he will not be punished for it, but still rewarded as if he had killed the client himself."

"...and that's funny how?"

"While it is certainly amusing to think of how quickly a man will turn to murder, thievery, and betrayal over money, it is far more amusing how much money a man will turn down out of fear. For instance, if I offered you fifty-thousand credits to kill your boss - Moe, I believe your associate said - would you take it?"

George stared at the android. The manifest said he was a chemmed-out moron with a synthetic brain - a harddrive head chasing stirs of emotion through electronic induction since the ol' synapses wouldn't do it anymore. As hard as he looked, George couldn't find psychopathic killbot anywhere on his rep sheet, and it was starting to worry him.

"Fuck no."

"And yet, it is not unreasonable for you to kill men for money?"

"That's... sort of my job. Most of the time."

"Yet you will not kill this man, who has done so much evil, even for such a large amount?"

"Look, I get your point, but there's no way of getting to Moe without going through some serious security, and even if I did manage to kill him? I'd be out of a job after that. Not to mention, you can go fuck yourself, I ain't dumb enough to kill for some random asshole."

The android smiled again, which still unnerved George a great deal, particularly when it happened only a few inches from his face.

"You see? Humans are such... intriguing creatures."

James left without another word.

George checked the manifest for James again, but only got an error:

Client not found.

George shiverred in the rain, trying not to think about James, McKenzie, or Moe.