SF in The City Anthology (3 page)

             
Little of note occurred the next few minutes. Hartmut tried to turn the fight into a boxing match, and Jon approached it like a wrestling competition. Of course, the decagon was an arena designed to entertain. Eventually the referee decided to activate the “unsteady combat” function, which passed a harmless electrical current through the floor of the decagon and changed the nature of its material.

             
Jon hated this application of the arena. The material in the floor relaxed to the point that it acted like a giant trampoline. Keeping one’s footing became so difficult that Jon kept Ayan close to a wall and hoped he could avoid Sethon until the normal decagon settings could be restored. However, Hartmut saw an opportunity. Through Ayan’s eyes, Jon watched in horror as Sethon leapt straight up into the air and came crashing down on the trampoline surface, hurtling Ayan into the air like a doll. On the way down, the giant simulatar thrust his fist into his enemy’s face.

             
If it had been a dramatic action movie, the massive power of this blow would have been recorded in slow motion, the tattoo of a mouse on Sethon’s hand wrinkling with the impact. Ayan’s spit would be captured mid-flight, as he was knocked out from the attack.

             
With the exception of his terrible headache, the first sensation Jon felt upon awaking was fear. Being ejected from a simulatar’s body by knockout hurt a flesh jockey by sensation, without the permanent damage. Iwao immediately assuaged Jon’s fears that Ayan had suffered a serious injury from the fight. The referee carried a portable brain scanner to determine such potential problems. Of course, Ayan would probably have a worse headache when he came to than Jon had at the moment. Then again, Jon Desai would not be feeling this pain for long. With characteristic efficiency, Iwao had two thugs drag Jon out right then and there. There was an example that needed to be made.

             
Jon couldn’t help but cast an envious look in Hartmut’s direction, as his opponent drank down the cyberpint, Sethon grinning at his side. He wondered if they would have boasted of their success and rubbed it in his face, if he wasn’t about to be killed. At least he didn’t recognize the short backer who celebrated with them. If it had been Aldo, Jon would have regretted his loss even more.

***

              The men assigned to execute Jon demonstrated little charisma. Unlike the killers in movies, they talked little as they threw him in the back of an aerodeslizador
[5]
. Naturally he tried to get the doors of the vehicle open, but the locks were sealed tight. A divider made of bullet proof plastic separated him from the men in the front seat. While he could hear little of what they said, he gathered that the driver’s name was Esarhaddon, and his partner’s was Pentacles. At least he would know who put an end to his existence.

As the three men flew over the rooftops, Jon tried to take in as much as possible before the end. He didn’t know if an afterlife of some sort awaited him. Most people who held such views didn’t seem to make it in this world anymore. They were either denied jobs or abused by those who perceived them as weak. Then again, Jon hadn’t turned out successful.

              Looking down on the streets, he could see a convoy of ANTs (Autonomous Nuclear Transports) plodding along beneath them. Of course to be cute, this name had been given to walkers with six legs. After much study, the engineers who had developed them got their top speeds up to 700 km/h. They could also lift 200 times their own weight before overloading. Like much of technology, nature provided the perfect designs for imitation.

             
Rooftop gardens and pools, brightly lit towers and spiral parking garages all passed by. Jon could not understand why they didn’t just kill him and get it over with. Then he saw it. Naarmalcha River was an artificial system created to connect Lake Toxic and the Sanguinoso Canal. Various rumors suggested that mobs had thrown so many people into this river system over the years that transportation barges secretly had dredges under them for collecting bodies.

             
When the aerodeslizador touched down atop the Gratte-ciel de Soie, the fifth largest skyscraper in this prefecture, Jon felt certain that he would puke. He tried to run when Pentacles opened the door to grab him, but Esarhaddon drove a stun lathi into his side. Paralyzed, Jon looked about in horror, as his captors drug him towards the edge of the roof. Setting him on the ledge, Esarhaddon pulled a Desert Eagle out of his synthetic leather jacket. Guns were illegal for citizens in The City, but these men didn’t seem too concerned with the legality of their actions.

             
Jon prayed. Well he didn’t really know what he believed in, but he hoped a deity of some sort would come and rescue him. Neither of the thugs bothered to blindfold him, so he got to see the handgun aimed at his skull. At least it would be a quick death. It seemed unlikely that he could survive a shot to the head, followed by a dramatic fall into the river. Not much of him would remain for the CA’s investigation. The gang would get off clean.

             
…And that’s when Jon received yet another chance at life. Suddenly Esarhaddon’s head exploded like a dropped vase, then Pentacles followed suit. Moments after the thugs’ heads liquefied, a Central Authority drone appeared on the horizon. Jon had never heard the sniper shots fired. With current technology, the shooter could have been five miles away for all he knew.

             
A soothing but artificial female voice told Jon to enter the drone’s body. Not that he had a choice. Multiple Taser pods pointed in his direction. Once aboard, a door slid shut behind him, and the female voice informed him that he would be taken to the Central Authority’s headquarters for this prefecture. He would be placed in the witness protection program. An easy life didn’t lie ahead of him, but at least Jon would still live. For a resident of The City, he couldn’t ask for much more than that.

Episode 2: “
Gynerator”

As he landed his hybrid hover-RV just outside of Lobster Launji
[6]
, Ángel Ehrlichmann could already see the women he wanted to speak with. Three years had passed since he had last met Ananya Leclerc. In the space of that time, he had developed into a successful entrepreneur with a start-up bottled air company called Briith. With the horrible smog conditions in The City, Ángel’s product was “a breath of fresh,
clean
air” (he personally loved this slogan) for people the world over. He separated himself from the competition by making his air scented as well. Who wouldn’t prefer a bottle of rose tinted oxygen when the smell of fecal matter penetrated the very air in some prefectures?

             
    With a mere thought, he turned off the music, Ichi Valens version of “The Clarinet Polka” as a matter of fact, which had been playing in the micro liners of his ear canals. A sensor in the landing zone knew that his vehicle had shut down, “instigating parking,” and it sent his mind a memo with the hourly rate for the spot. In the “blink” of a thought, Ángel transferred the number of ECUs to the parking meter service to cover two hours. He had a lot of catching up to do.  

             
As he approached Ananya’s table, the entrepreneur couldn’t help but notice how thin she looked. His successes led to an extended waistline. Hopefully her current state didn’t indicate the opposite fate. Though he loved to say “I told you so” as much as the next person, he wished that his friend’s choice to pursue a career as a traditional author did not ruin her.

             
“How’s it going?” Ángel asked when he arrived at Ananya’s high table. As he stepped up and sat down in the chair facing her, his long legs just dangling barely above the ground, he could see that she had been writing on a pad of paper. He shook his head and smiled at her, amused by her archaic interests. For someone who wrote science fiction, this young woman looked more to the past than was good for her. 

             
“Ángel, it’s been such a long time!” Ananya always had such a thin smile. “Where to start? Have you met someone yet?”

             
“Oh no,” Ángel laughed nervously, “I’ve been far too busy traveling.”

             
“Yes, I saw that your bottled air company took off well!”

             
“Well, it was just good timing.” Ángel didn’t want to pry, but he needed to catch up on everything. “How is your writing coming along? I uploaded a copy of
Politicosis
. You must have put a lot of work into that novel.”

             
“Did you
read
it?” Ananya asked as her waiter arrived with an azure salver, four lobster tails resting on its shimmering surface.

             
“Well I uploaded and processed it mentally,” Ángel confessed.  

             
“That’s alright,” Ananya said in obvious disappointment, “no one uses their eyes anymore.”

             
While he refilled her glass of almond milk, the waiter nodded in agreement, as if his customer’s comment was the most important matter in the world to him. Ángel saw the man’s holographic name tag shift as he moved. It would say “Chuck” one moment and “I’m here for you” the next. He’d have to remember that aesthetic for his products.             

             
“I thought I might give you an omiyage
[7]
,” Ángel drew a package from the front left pocket of his polyflex pants. “A shop in Prefecture 44 carried vanilla halva. It’s sesame-based. I thought you might like it.”

             
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Ananya said as he handed the gift to her.

             
“Have you ever been to Prefecture 44?” Ángel asked as Chuck returned with a menu coin. Pushing the small blue button in the middle of the little silver device, he glanced over the drink selections quickly. “I’ll have some cherry Yakult,” he said. The need to improve his health had reached the top of the priority list as of late.

             
“A man named Jon Desai used to go out with me,” Ananya sighed after the waiter had left. “Last time I saw him, he was a flesh jockey in Prefecture 44.”

             
“You dated a flesh jockey?” Ángel chuckled.

              “Oh, he had a certain visceral charm about him,” Ananya said.

             
“So how about your writing? Is it going well?”

             
“You’re the business minded one,” the writer said with a shrug. “We both always knew that attempting to publish through traditional channels wouldn’t make me the most money. Sure, after dad died and all his money went towards paying off gambling debts, I wasn’t positive that I would make it. Truth be told, my books are just keeping me out of poverty.”

             
“With formulators it’s no surprise,” Ángel shook his head. “Human authors can’t keep up with their output. If a book can be processed by my mind’s nanotubes in ten seconds or less, and I read thousands of books a day, how will someone writing two novels a year keep up with data farmers who produce hundreds of thousands?”

             
“Believe me, I’m perfectly aware,” Ananya said in annoyance.

“I’m not trying to discourage you, but most human authors aren’t Gael Carneys, making
The
City Time’s
best seller list every year.”

             
“Did you see who made it to the number one position this week?”

             
“Let me guess,” Ángel said warily, “Gynerator.”

             
“Yes, Gynerator! It’s nothing more than a glorified formulator. Chumway hasn’t proven that his new toy is actually an artificial intelligence.”

             
“You have to admit, it writes darn good books.”

             
“Even if Gynerator can adapt to parameters in ways other formulators can’t, he… I mean it, cannot write like a human.” Ananya was getting more aggressive, and Ángel would rather not have everyone at the outdoor tables looking at them. Fortunately Chuck returned to ask for his order.

             
“I’m goin’ to have the six tail meal, with the Szechwan shrimp add on, and for sides, I’ll have applesauce and Lampreado.”

             
“And for your soup?” Chuck asked.

             
“Oh yes! Ummm, I’ll have the pira caldo please.”

             
“All right, I’ll get your order back here in a jiffy.”

             
With the waiter gone, Ananya was more than happy to complain about her affairs again. For the next five minutes, she ranted about the cruelty of The City and the dangers of giving creativity over to machines. “What is there left to us” she asked at one point, “when computer technology can even replace authors?”

             
  Ángel had not even spent that much time catching up with his old friend, and he already wanted to get out of there. Successful people didn’t get to their stations in life by hanging out with negative vibe people. At least that’s what the self-help books he uploaded had to say. His mind began to wander to the horse race later that day. Llameante Rayo
[8]
was the most popular cyber-equine race in this prefecture, and it started at 6:30 PM. Once he finished up lunch with Ananya, Ángel had a mental conference with the CEO of Sui Genesis Manufacturing Incorporated, Deandre Phan. This part of The City was notorious for poor mind-to-mind reception, so…