Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World (37 page)

The bachelors frequented the Blanklands, where Harold spent all of his extra money on Yasmine. Yasmine for her part was pleased by the young man's interest and spent more time with him than he paid for. So it was no surprise that she called him when she found out that she was dying.

"It came on me on Sunday night." She only transmitted her voice, and so Harold found himself looking upon a speeded-up rendition of the birthing of far-off galaxies in the void of space.

"But that was only three days ago."

"Meds say it's some kinda fast-working cancer."

"But they cured cancer, Yas," Harold said.

"Not this kind. They said that it works on a chromosomal level. Something like that. I had to quit the road show. Sex-no-more." She giggled to lighten the mood.

"Can I see you?"

"I'm not really pretty anymore," the disembodied Yas whispered. "And I can't do anything."

"I don't need you to do nuthin'."

"You don't?"

"No. Uh-uh. I don't go there for you to do stuff. I go there to see you. Shit. I'd be happy payin' for dinner or sumthin' like that."

For a long span Yasmine was silent in the depths of unfolding space. Harold forced himself to concentrate on two giant galaxies colliding in the far-off reaches.

"They're gonna take me home. My parents are gonna come on Friday to take me back to Tehran. You could come tomorrow after work if you wanted."

"All right. At six?"

"Okay."

"Just one thing."

"What?"

"Where do you live?"

__________

"You wanna come wit' me?" Harold asked Jamey at work the next morning.

"Naw, man. Hey, I don't wanna remember Yas like that," Jamey said.

"That's cold, J."

The sandy-headed cycler didn't reply. He was studying ghostnet on his wall monitor, reading an article and looking over his shoulder now and then.

Periodically a member of the Shaker Party embedded a ghostnet chip in the L&L system. Before the chip was destroyed anybody could enter the word
ghostnet
and get the weekly download, which included a banned issue of the
Daily Dump
. This chip had been working for over four days.

"They said it's five marks if they catch you ghostin', J," Harold said.

"Shit," Jamey said, not to his friend.

"What?"

"Somethin's happenin' in MacroCode Russia, man."

"I didn't see anything on the mornin' report."

"Ghost says that they're killin' Techs. They destroyed five labs and killed all the scientists. A general has formed an army. Shit. An army. An' they been killin' big time."

"How could that be?" Harold asked. "How could they raise an army and it's not on the news?"

"They lie on the vid all the time, nig, you know that."

"But not about somethin' like that, man," Harold said, ignoring the lack of respect. "They're not gonna lie about an army and a revolt against the biggest company in the world."

"They say at least four hundred and sixty-five thousand people killed. That they dropped clean nukes on Jesus City."

"That's crazy," Harold said.

"Okay, then." Jamey hit a button and the ghostnet blipped off. Then he said, "M-R-L-L-Tak," and a blank green screen appeared.

"Moscow's L&L branch is temporarily off-line," a friendly voice said. This was Leda, the computer voice that Jamey preferred.

Jamey turned to look at Harold.

"Don't mean a thing," Harold protested. "Russia's off-line more than half the time and you know it."

"I don't know a thing, man," Jamey said flatly. "And neither do you."

"Fuck you," Harold said.

__________

Even though Harold knew that Yasmine's parents were wealthy, he didn't expect a Park Avenue penthouse high above the streets of Upper Level Manhattan. The elevator opened up inside of her apartment.

"Go down the hall to your left and knock on the last door you get to," said the black elevator operator in a red uniform.

Yasmine had lost most of her body fat in the four days that she'd been sick. She resembled a humanlike rubber toy that had been deflated.

"It hurts, Harry," she said. "It hurts all the time. They gave me opium and nerve killers but it still hurts." The fading young woman had lesions down her face that looked like the clawing mark of some predatory beast. They were red, almost iridescent.

"It's okay, honey," Harold said as he cradled her in his arms.

"Hold me."

Harold tried not to squeeze the New Age courtesan too hard, fearing that her bones might snap. She clung to him with greater strength than he would have imagined. She smiled.

"Somethin' funny?" Harold asked.

"I feel safe with you, Harry. You make me feel better. That's kinda funny, don't you think?"

"How come funny?"

One of the lesions on Yasmine's face pulled open and blood trickled down. Harold pressed closer to her so that the pillow covered the bleeding.

"How come funny?" he asked again.

"Because here I am all alone and dyin' in this big place and my boyfriend is a john." She stopped talking in order to swallow twice. "It's really nice."

Harold held her for a long time after she was dead. He wasn't ready to go on for over an hour. __________

"How come they don't send a nurse up to watch her?" Harold asked the same elevator operator going down.

"Nurses, firemen, security force, everybody in city service been called up."

"Called up for what?"

"Some kinda big emergency in the outer fiefs where the white people live. Jersey and Long Island. You know white people throw a fit in a minute."

5

"Wake up, Harold! Wake up!" It was either his brother or his father, but Harold kept his eyes shut because this was a Sunday or it was a summer day. All Harold knew was that it wasn't time to sign on to school yet. And he was sure that it wasn't one of the days he was supposed to go in for sports or socialization class.

"Get your ass up outta the bed, nig!"

Harold sat up and said, "I told you that I don't want you calling me that. Now if you don't mind, I was about to sign on to class."

"You awake, Hair?" Jamey was standing in the IT curve's interior. The plastic screen had unfurled automatically when the call came in.

"No," Harold said. "But I'm waking up right now and I'll be with you in a minute."

"Hurry up, man," Jamey said. "The world is almost over and we ain't got time for you to sleep."

"Huh?"

"That general has dissolved MacroCode Russia and they're gonna drop on New York." The lower half of the screen became an image of carnage in St. Petersburg. Armed soldiers could be seen running down civilians and shooting them with rifles and ember guns.

"This came over the ghostnet. I got the cube from a gypsy hacker in Soho." The panic in Jamey's voice brought Harold to full awareness. "The feds gonna shut New York down at six A.M."

"Who says?"

"Com'on, Harold. We gotta get off the Island tonight."

The scene on the lower half of the curve turned to massacre. People were being cut down while trying to storm a fortress.

A face appeared above the carnage. It was an older man wearing a fancy military hat. He was speaking in Russian but the simultaneous ITV translator muted his voice and spoke over it.

". . . the Americans have created this plague. They have killed our people with their bio-warfare . . ." The massacre transformed into bodies being stacked onto a pyre smoldering slowly into ash.

". . . we shall be avenged."

"Okay," Harold agreed. "I'll meet you at the Port Authority. We can take a bus."

"Why not the mono?"

"Mono stops in Jersey but the bus goes on forever."

__________

They met at the West Side entrance of the Port Authority Transporation Center at 00:36. Harold had his tricycle, which broke down into a case half the size of one wheel, and a bag that held an extra andro-suit and his Flapjack, the personalized computer-book that had everything a cycler needed. Jamey jumped out of a yellow cab and needed help pulling a trunk from the back.

"Why you got that big thing, man?" Harold asked.

"This is it, Hair. This is the end. We gotta get gone. This is everything I own." The bus station was in tumult. Thousands of people stood in line in front of ticket machines. People were screaming to be heard above the din of panic. Young men and women shepherded crying children. The loudspeaker was droning on and on asking for calm and order.

"Guess we ain't the only ones been to the gypsy," Harold yelled into his friend's ear.

"They're closing down the Authority at six A.M., that's why.

"And I bet the magistrates are all already gone."

"Believe that," Jamey said. "We better get on line."

"No, uh-uh," Harold said, putting out an arresting hand. "I got first-class seats reserved on my chip after you called. We got passage to Burlington, Vermont."

"First class? How much that cost?"

"Five thousand dollars."

"Where'd you get that? I thought you spent all your credit on Yas."

"I took a FedCred card from her wallet before I left her place." Jamey looked at Harold in amazement.

"She was dead, man. She didn't need it and her family's rich. You know the parmeds woulda taken that shit in a minute."

__________

Three hastily erected clear plexiplas People Stoppers had been placed along the hall leading to the gates. At each stop Harold and Jamey had to present their ID-chips to get through. At the last stop Harold had to have an eye-scan to check his PBC against the reservation.

__________

They had to wait three hours before boarding the bus.

"They say the plague is a full-blown epidemic in Russia," a man in an old-fashioned two-piece business suit was saying to a woman in front of him. "It starts out with pains and then it causes those stripes that that flu last fall had. Then bleeding, internal and external, then death. Three or four days and you're dead."

"Please stop it!" the woman cried. "Please stop talking to me." The man then turned to Harold and hunched his shoulders as if to ask, Is she crazy?

__________

The first-class upper deck of the ElectroHound had been fitted with fourteen extra seats. Jamey's trunk was taken from him and thrown into the storage hatch on the roof. Below, in the main cabin, passengers were packed in, standing room only. All of the lower seats had been removed.

"World's comin' to an end," Jamey said to his friend. "And ElectroDog wants to get the last dollar." Harold would have nodded his agreement but he was too busy taking in his environment to waste even a motion.

__________

The bus lurched its way down the road to the bridge. The traffic of busses and official cars was moving at under ten kays.

"Probably government workers stealing the carpool vehicles," Jamey said, referring to the inordinate number of city cars on the road.

Harold thought that he was right.

The road carried an exodus but the city was more or less unaware. The DanceDome, an elevated dance field at the Sixtieth Street pier, was in full swing. Ten thousand or more were dancing to the wild music transmitted to tiny ear implants that kept noise pollution down. Big animated signs advertised L&L

products, new movies, life-extending operations. In small windows along the highway he saw lighted rooms with people in them. Some were homeworkers and others simply living: watching ITV, listening to their implants, talking on the vid.

"Oh shit!" Jamey spat. He doubled over in the seat next to Harold.

"What's wrong, Jamey?"

"Pain."

"Sit up, man. Sit up." Harold put a hand against his friend's chest and jerked him up.

"Something wrong up there?" a man from behind asked.

"Just dropped his chip," Harold said, glancing back. He saw the worried elderly man who sat behind them.

"Is he sick?" the old man asked.

"No. Dropped his chip. We got it. It's okay."

The man looked unconvinced but he still leaned back.

"You can't let 'em know you're hurting, Jamey. If you do they might kick us off." Jamey nodded, gritting his teeth against the pain.

__________

The bus rolled out of the northern borders of New York onto the Canadian Highway. Harold watched closely over his friend, who tried his best to stay still under the waves of deep pain that wracked him at irregular intervals.

"The Russians are right," someone behind said. "It's probably one of those bio-tech companies made the plague. Break the corporations and burn the dead. If we want to survive that's what we have to do too."

"Yeah," a woman agreed.

"It's terrible," someone else exclaimed.

Outside the window there was nothing but the dark outline of trees and pools of gray grasses under a quarter moon. Harold wondered how much Jamey weighed.

__________

"Oh shit!" Jamey screamed.

He had been able to sleep for a couple of hours while the bus cruised down the unusually crowded highway, but now the pain brought him up to his feet.

"He's got it!" the elderly man said to the young woman sitting next to him. "I told you, Gina. He's got it."

"Oh shit it hurts!" Jamey yelled. "Help me."

"He ain't got nuthin'," Harold hissed at the couple. "He hurt himself in soccer is all. It's a muscle."

"You said he dropped his chip before."

"Mind your own business before you get dropped," Harold warned. In his peripheral vision he saw a shadow slip down the stairs.

"Does he?" a woman asked. "Does he have it?"

"Have what? He don't have nuthin'. There isn't any plague," Harold said. Three men had gotten to their feet.

Harold wished that he had elected judo on Sports-Wednesday at high school instead of volleyball.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," Jamey chanted. He fell back down into his seat and then collapsed onto the floor.

"You better get him the fuck off'a this bus, man," one of the standing men said. His tone was threatening but he didn't advance.

Harold realized that Jamey had the invisible force field of communicability around him. Everyone standing had to grab something to stay on their feet because the bus swerved and came to an abrupt halt. Harold stole a glance at Jamey, who was sprawled in the aisle, and then at the stairwell leading down.