SF in The City Anthology (16 page)

As she took a motorcycle taxi home, she wanted to reach the comfort of her household as quickly as possible; Grace tried not to notice the blue skinned driver’s terrible body odor. She couldn’t think clearly until the man, whose name was Polyamide, dropped her off in front of her apartment. Given recent events, that space of time without deep reflection was actually a
blessing. Now that she had the time to dwell on Copy Rites, Grace felt less and less anxiety about the situation.

Of course that business was in the wrong, but then again, it certainly wasn’t the first amid the millennia of human history. Just because a manmade law or a policy deemed something permissible did not make it moral or accepted by God. Prayer and reflection would reveal what Grace already knew subconsciously – reaching the men and women at Copy Rites would demand love and acceptance rather than protests and angry debates.

There wasn’t proof to suggest that anyone had even attempted patenting Christianity yet. With a few words from small churches around The City, Copy Rites would probably back off. Of course, this meant rallying Christians of different sects and denominations, a task even the unwavering Grace dreaded. Why people couldn’t understand the simple idea that “that there be no divisions among you,
[24]
” escaped Grace’s understanding.  

As she set her petite hand bag on the dining table, the Christian woman was startled to hear a loud knock at her door. Her evening meeting was only an hour away, so she understandably hoped that her trying day wouldn’t become more complicated by her visitor. Her desire was dashed, in a good way, as she opened the door and was greeted by Elegance and Charlisle. They both looked fatigued, and a few bruises and cuts could be seen on their bodies. Grace asked them to come in, and she ran over to her nearly bare cupboards to make the last of h
er pu’erh tea
[25]
for her guests.

“Where have you two been as of late?” Grace asked with unhidden relief. “I worried that some psychopath had g
otten ahold of you, or worse.”

“The CA is after us,” Elegance replied angrily. “We discovered that they were spying on people’s telepathic calls in the Gorse, and some troopers caught us around a gray box, just as Charlisle was hacking into it.”

“We’ve been on the run for some time now,” Charlisle spoke up, “and I realize that it’s my fault for getting Elegance into this mess.”

He looked at the girl sitting next to him, but she did not seem happy with him at the moment. As a matter of fact, she kept her hand on the gravity knife attached to her belt, possibly fantasizing about cutting down an annoying companion.
So much for the elopement theory
, Grace thought to herself.  

“There have been some…causalities along the way,” Elegance didn’t look Grace i
n the eyes when she said this.

“
In other words, she kicks
butt
,” Charlisle knew to watch his diction while visiting the Christian woman’s home.

“So, you will have a
murder
charge as well?” Grace knew as well as any Gorser the kinds of violence gangsters and gangstresses were capable of, yet she still felt shocked whenever one of these youth flatly told her that they had killed someone.

“Multiple murder charges,” Charlisle scratched his head
and looked away from his host.

“Where are you kids st
aying?” Grace asked anxiously.

“We’ve been staying on the move, until Elegance suggested returning to the Gorse. It seemed unlikely that
the CA would look for us here.”

“I don’t want to impose,” Elegance said quietly, “but could we stay in your apartment for a few days? You know as well as I that there is a secret space beneath this very room. The last tenant was a spaq. dealer, and you just happened to inherit a locale with the perfect hiding place.”

“To be honest dear,” Grace put the kettle on the kitchen’s calefaction coil, “the CA, as a whole, probably deserved whatever was coming to them, but that doesn’t justify murder. The troopers I assume you killed could have had families. Even if they didn’t, that still makes your crimes no better. Maybe the world would be an improved place if you could expose the unethical surveillance our government has approved, but I’ve found that love can conquer evil in ways violence cannot.”

“We would only stay
a few days,” Charlisle pleaded.

“Yes, but I would be harboring murderers,” Grace said with a downcast expression.

“You do every day anyway,” Elegance said acrimoniously. “Don’t pretend that you don’t know what gangs do to each other and their victims.”

“I…I don’t know what to do,” Grace felt suddenly very nauseous. “I only gave cookies and tea to criminals because I felt sorry for them. My decisions never interfered with the police system exacting justice. Everyone knew who gangsters were in the Gorse. You all wear uniforms for goodness s
akes!”

“You know the justice system in The City,” Charlisle cracked his knuckles nervously. “If they catch us and prove us guilty of murder, which will certainly happen since we have dirt on the CA, then we will be put to death.”

A sudden knock on the door made them all jump suddenly. Grace felt herself sweating, worried that the situation would force her to give up her guests to the police.

“Stay out of sight,” she hesitantly told the two criminals. “It may not be the police anyway.

As Grace debated what to do with the two gangsters, she opened the door and stared at the two men on her porch in surprise. She recognized neither of them, and they didn’t have uniforms suggesting loyalty to the CA. So just what did they want?

“My name is Delvon Traxson,” the taller of the two spoke. “We work for Trever Addanc.”

“I don’t know anybody
by that name,” Grace replied.

The two men looked at each other knowingly, and the second said
“you don’t now, but you will.”

“You see,” Delvon moved closer to the doorway, “Mr. Addanc has just recently patented Christianity. Copy Rites contacted us today and showed us surveillance footage of you complaining about their policies. We’d been looking for Christians, so seeing you there was a, if I may use the phrase, godsend. After some digging, we discovered your connection with a local Christian group. Could you please tell your fellow members that Mr. Addanc will now collect royalties from you all for practicing Christianity?
” He handed her his business card with his sweaty fist.

Grace inhaled deeply, suppressing her desire to use choice words with the men on her porch. Looking back into her apartment, she could see that Elegance and Charlisle had disappeared. If they had gone down the trap door into the hidden room, no one would be able to tell. She turned her gaze back the smug visitors in front of her. There was still plenty of time to host these fiends before her church met for the evening. Grace could get rid of the gangsters and serve the impos
ing men in less than an hour. 

“Would you like some tea?” she asked them as politely as possible. 

Episode 8: “Solicitin”

On a particularly arid July evening, Leon Loth found himself riding a company owned moped in Prefecture 82 of The City. As a travelling salesperson, this 6’2” muscle bound man looked rather awkward on his Kurōrā 4500 two wheeler. Leon had been a zero gravity swimming college champion for two years running. Then a speeding car hit him one night as he wandered the streets in a drunken stupor. Though he had sold Pharaoh-Sol for the last six months for Milieu Crew, Leon still hadn’t fully adjusted to the life of door to door sales.

“Get a respectable job that pays good wages,” Leon’s parents had told him. Having celebrated his 25th birthday only a month ago, he felt saddled with more responsibility than in years previously. College loans still hung over his head and the young salesman had to admit that he now wished he had fully paid off his tuition at Kleine Philosophen University rather than opening up so many bar tabs. Fortunately, the university gave him a swimmer’s scholarship, but that only paid for half of his tuition, since the real money was being given to players in the more popular sports. Leon had planned on going on to join a professional swimming team. The celebrity endorsements at health food restaurants and stores would have kept his virtual wallet filled, but he had failed to take a debil
itating accident into account.

Now he found himself selling a dull product to equally boring customers. Leon’s father had worked as a copywriter for over forty years, so the job at Milieu Crew had more to do with family connections than a sales record. Still, he had the luck of running into an award winning saleswoman named Ylva Yen and discovering her foolproof secret to successfully closing deals – drugs.   Leon certainly didn’t object to Machiavellian measures if he could keep a steady job.
He had the highest number of sales that previous month; beating out the smug faced Wily Moreau, and he seemed on track to do so again that July.

When Ylva had first brought Leon to Hēi yù Park after nightfall, he had serious misgivings about her intentions, but relief flooded over him when she revealed her secret weapon free of charge. He assumed to this day that his attractive build and features were what motivated Ylva to share her knowledge, but she may have just wished to help out a friendly young man who was down on his luck. After she had introduced Vincent Drugdar as a
solicitin
supplier, the usually introverted Leon suddenly found a confidence in his own abilities he never imagined possible. Ironically, he wasn’t even the one taking the drugs.

In the satchel that hung off the side of Leon’s moped, cigars, bottles of cologne and even chewing gum lied alongside cans of Pharaoh-Sol. All of these extra “selling aids,” contained drops of solicitin. A large bottle full of the pale orange liquid rested on the artificial wood desk in Leon’s small apartment. No one asked about the unlabeled fluid, usually since they assumed it was part of the underground, label less aroma industry. Solicitin had not even popped up on the CA’s radar yet, since so few people even used it.

Like scopolamine, also commonly referred to as “The Devil’s Breath,” solicitin increased suggestibility amongst its victims. A quick whiff or oral consumption of single drop caused a person to be as impressionable as a shopaholic during a clearance event. Unlike scopolamine, solicitin did not have adverse effects on memory, and victims could not overdose on it. The drug also caused suggestibility in only one area of human decision making – buying and selling transactions. Even a bungling salesperson like Leon could score success after success once he had gotten this substance inside his prospects.

Olivia Lark had demonstrated an interest in ambience enhancing scents in the past. Of course she had done so by filling out a random survey for the chance to win 100 ECUs. The opportunity to make money had always motivated people to show interest in a survey, even if they could care less about the products.  Leon had been told over and over by his boss, “Play on your customers’ interests. They don’t want to hear the story of your life, but rather how the two of you have a connection and why the product would matter to them as much as it does to you.” Leon personally found Pharaoh-Sol repulsive, so he only used it when his parents or a friend to whom he had sold the product came to visit. Good thing he had plenty of solicitin laced p
roducts with him that evening.

As Leon pushed the doorbell to Olivia’s small apartment, sending out not only auditory stimuli to her ears but also a “Visitor at the door” message to her telepathically, he contemplated just how he would close the deal with a woman he had never met. The background information he had on her suggested that she didn’t prefer products in vogue, so how would he appeal to her? While solicitin would help him make the actual sale, he still had to engender enough trust in his prospective buyer to get her to allow him to offer her some chewing gum (he had already ruled out giving her a cigar, as a single mother of three probably didn’t have this habit). She was 27 and still suffering from college debt. He would play up that angle, since he truthfully had his own debts to pay off. If someone as “poor” as he was could afford to use Pharaoh-Sol as a “piquant aroma, that lends a degree of regality to the ho
me,” then Olivia could manage.

“Who is it?” Olivia’s voice came over the miniscule speaker just above the doorbell’
s button.

“My name is Leon Loth. I represent Milieu Crew. You recently filled out a survey expressing interest in our products. Would you mind if I come in and t
alk to you about Pharaoh-Sol?”

             
The door to the apartment creaked on rusty hinges, as Olivia peaked her head out from behind it and stared at Leon, her beryl blue eyes holding such innocence that the salesman felt guilt at once. “Come on in,” she said with a sweet voice.

             
“It will only take a few minutes of your time,” Leon said gratefully, as he lugged the satchel into cramped living room, dodging children’s play things as he went.