“Have you been having bad dreams lately?” it asked.
Celeste said nothing.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” her electric self said. “How long?”
“I’m five past the thirty-five, so you work it out,” Celeste snapped, bitterly.
“You’ve seen, thought, felt, and touched more of human consciousness than most people in all the secs, you know that, right?”
“I’m good at my job, that’s all.”
“Everyone has a universe of possibilities inside them, Celeste Walker. Most never know it, never see it, come close to feeling it because of the way the Crawl is, how life and work here grinds everyone down until we can’t even see what we’re achieving day-by-day.”
“I defuse traces, that’s all. It’s routine maintenance, like rep-droids and tidy-bots. We have to defuse them, otherwise the whole system would come crashing down.”
“Would it? Are you sure?”
I’m having an argument with myself. This is crazy.
“The Flood has to be regulated.”
“That’s what they say, but think… what do we really know? All we have are OpinionEd, FakeNews, SpeakPeace and a hundred-thousand other streams to choose from. We can’t work out shit for ourselves. The Crawl’s old is all we know, but how old? Have we been up here for a century, two, three, ten, twenty? How many generations have lived and died without knowing truth from lie, reality from dream?”
“So? That’s the way it is.”
“If that’s true, then what am I? Am I you? Who does that make you?”
“You’re trace-crud. Some residual shit from the wipe-clinic festering in my head.”
“The man in the moon is watching. You’ve become unregulated. Whatever they put in your head, that seed, has burned out. That doesn’t happen often with their tech. He knows what you are. Remember, the play’s the thing; wherein you’ll catch the conscience of the king. Be careful.”
The television set went dead.
Celeste put her hand on it again. This time, the screen was cold and her hand came away thick with dust. She looked around and saw a rathole dead ahead.
Good, she thought, I need a fucking drink.
Ratholes were something the CIs allowed to exist, although they were not approved; most were indicated by the sight of those who’d had too much to drink, slumping along the platforms. A typical rathole could occupy as many as four or five modules on a strip. This one was about that, Celeste guessed, as she went inside. Night-screens bolted to the walls were tuned to degraded porno-feeds with discordant old-time music playing in the background.
A fem-droid twisted and ground itself around a stained pole in one module, its synthetic skin long since rotted away, leaving the dulled metal of its chassis behind. It was missing its head, and one arm below the elbow. That didn’t bother the punters though. The droid had curves and feminine shape, that was all they needed. They watched, chewing mechanically on blacks and pinks, fingering the nodules underneath their earlobes, adjusting reality to their own particular fantasies about the droid grinding its cracked, leaking abdomen against the pole.
Celeste found her way to the bar and ordered a shot of bitterclear.
The barman was human up to the base of his neck. His head was a plas-steel skull with living eyes and real teeth embedded in it. Artificial lids flickered, lizard-like, over his eyes, keeping them moist.
Plasma storm victim, Celeste guessed. Head burned away by a surge. Bought this as a housing for the brain, the eyes and the teeth. Poor bastard.
Teeth endured. Somehow, they survived. Why else would so many bodies be identified by their dental records? With so little left, you’d want them if nothing else was salvageable.
The barman looked like he was smiling, but that was just the way his skull had been engineered. The eyes told another story: pain, no doubt dulled by as much bitterclear as he could imbibe. Best reason to work in a rathole was the constant, ready supply of painkiller.
Celeste swallowed the shot and coughed as it punched her hard in the stomach. She asked for another. Comp-couches were designed to clean and sober up individuals, among their many programs, but Celeste had no intention of returning to her module to sleep. She needed to decide what to do. Life in the mid-secs was so regulated she didn’t know what happened next.
She was well outside parameters, boundary-less. There was a word for the way she was feeling, but she couldn’t think of it – and a third shot of bitterclear didn’t bring it to mind. There was nowhere to run. Her share would be stopped, wouldn’t it? There would be no shelter for her in any module. She’d been involved in a manager’s death, by accident, and another death at the wipe-clinic, or a droid’s termination, at least. The blood she’d tasted in her mouth back at the Compound; it’d been theirs.
Gusts of stratospheric wind blustered by outside. Patrons sprawled over the neon-lit surface of the bar, which hadn’t been wiped down in a long time. On the screens behind the bar, the latest Deathball game was in progress. Electric motorcycles tore around the spherical uni-wall of the motordrome, better known as the murdersphere, chasing the studded, lead-cored deathball guided by the lead player. The lead player started the game in possession, but rarely kept it to the end of the thirty-minute period. To be player one was a death sentence, which was why all competitors were criminals.
After five minutes, the first screams ingrained themselves into your consciousness. After fifteen minutes, the murdersphere would be slick with blood. Booby-traps, such as fire-pits and spike-snares, were everywhere. Every player was armed with long-handled, stainless steel scoops that resembled lacrosse sticks. The scoops were for ferrying the deathball once acquired, and for murderizing competing players. After thirty minutes, there would be a winner – or not. Sometimes, the only survivor was the deathball, rolling itself slowly around the gore-spattered murdersphere. It was the most entertaining means of executing the unwanted, and every channel fought viciously for coverage rights.
Celeste had never been much of a fan. She ordered another shot of bitterclear, downing it, shakily, in one and closing her eyes against the carnage being whoop-whoop-whooped by the onstream audience. Those seated around her in the rathole were no better as they cheered on the unlucky sods fighting for their lives.
‘Yeah, do it. Go on. Slicer-dice that sumbitch!’
‘Fair dinkum, fuck ’em up, boys! Holla-holla! Mur-der-rize! Mur-der-rize!’
‘Blood on the ice, man. Check-it-out! Shit-ton of hot blood already all over the mutha-fuckin iiiiiice!’
Some poor fucker’s head erupted across one of the screens. Strike one. Another player down. Number five. Red ran down the screen, greeted by whistles and whoops from the bar’s crowd. Celeste had to get away. She left her seat and the bloodied screens behind.
Beyond the bar were cubicles with locked doors – private rooms for those that wanted them. Some had clear plexi-glass walls so the wares inside could be advertised – men and women for your good shares. One of the women looked appealing; long blonde hair, not quite platinum, and a thin red dress that’d seen better days. She went up to the glass and placed her hand against it. The woman inside matched the gesture. She could see the studded implant-lines around the woman’s eyes, tightening the skin to make her appear younger. Stardust glistened on her cheekbones to heighten the effect.
She would do.
Celeste held her wrist up to the scanner-pad by the door. It chirped and flashed green. Seemed like her shares were still good, for the time being. The door cycled open. She went inside. There were plastic-cushioned couches and a circular platform in the centre with a stripper pole rising out of it. The light under the platform was broken. The woman was waiting for her; cross-legged and tired-eyed. “What d’you want then?”