SF in The City Anthology (30 page)

Breaking away for an eternity’s worth of contemplation, he suddenly realized that if his senses were heightened, music would be much more enjoyable in that state. It was around the peak of his hallucinations that he activated the micro-liners in his ears and listened to the first song on his playlist – Takashi Yoshimatsu’s “Threnody for Toki.” A serialist work might not have made for the best song choice during a hallucinogenic trip. Fortunately, Mael swam through the covers on his bed like he was at sea, rather than being affected by more dangerous notions, like false co
nfidence in the ability to fly.

By the time he started coming down from Mixx, Mael had Calicanto’s “Foresto Vecio” playing in his ears. The world gradually stopped looking like a rippling mass, and Mael went to the kitchen to drink a glass of water, hoping to clear the drug out of his system faster. Not that the school’s biweekly substance test would give him much trouble, since Mixx was a new enough hall
ucinogen to avoid their exams.

Mael had an ambivalent attitude towards the drug, when it had finally worn off. It provided him with euphoria the likes he had never experienced before. Not even the date during which he made out with Thrashtown’s soccer captain, Nakako Amsel, had seemed as pleasing as the hours he spent on Mixx. Of course, he also worried about the affect the substance cou
ld have on his life.

It was impossible to overdose on Mixx, but unbeknownst to Mael, the substance was one of the most addictive vices, next to virtual entertainment, to be released in The City for a long time. All he could think about was getting more Mixx and spending the rest of his life feeling the same degree of jollity that his first dose had provided. He knew that he was hooked, and the depression that took hold of him for developing an addiction nearly outweighed his psychological need for Mixx –
nearly.

Luckily, he didn’t have a tough night of homework ahead of him. It would take him only four hours to get it all wrapped up, if he got started right away. As the fog in his brain started to clear away, he sadly remembered that
Mech Mod 3017
had its pilot episode premiering that evening. Rather than choosing to put off the show till the weekend, he fit it in with his homework schedule, leading to a very long night.

Arriving at school the next day in a state of exhaustion, he wasn’t in the mood to be called to the principal’s office, but he soon found himself sitting across from Ms. Afroze Rahotep, the school’s overbearing dictator. Everyone who had ever entered this witch’s office had little hope of leniency, so Mael’s paranoia skyrocketed to an all-time high as he reclined in a chair uncomfortable enough to have
been used in the Inquisition.

             
“We have surveillance footage of you purchasing a new drug in the locker room yesterday,” Ms. Rahotep’s mouth was covered by her crossed hands, yet Mael got the strange impression that she was smiling. “Your associate referred to it as ‘Mixx,’ am I right?”

             
“What are security cameras doing in the locker room?” I retorted. “You can’t use illegal footage as evidence.”

             
“Good thing it’s not illegal then,” the principal’s eyes narrowed. “Central Authority passed a law recently allowing cameras to be placed in
any
school room. We haven’t told parents yet, since we didn’t want a riot on our hands.”

“Look I just slipped up once,” Mael said defensively, aware that his chances of walking away from this untouched were next to none. “I promise I’m reformed.
I just needed a way to relax.”

             
“Oh you’ll relax alright,” Rahotep sneered. “You’ll relax in Prefecture 28’s prison for five years, and believe me, they’ll reform you.”

             
“Listen I’ll see a psychiatrist. I’ll work community service. Whatever you want, just don’t send me to prison! You know as well as I do that I’ll never be hired at a respectable workplace if I’ve done time.”

             
Principal Rahotep reclined farther in her chair, as if she couldn’t look smugger than she already did. “If you were a lowerworlder, I would have no pity on you. Since you came from a nice family, I’m going to be
even
harder
on you, for the sake of preventing drug use amongst the middle class. The lowerworlders are already lost in my book, but I can make good students of the upperworlders yet. You will illustrate what happens when any substance other than Minervite enters their bodies.”

             
Pulling up a computer monitor, Principal Rahotep sent a mental message to Prefecture 28’s Judicial Center. The computer screen suddenly flashed to life, and five computing towers were visible. With a small camera recording on the top of the monitor, Mael would also be visible to the computing system.

             
“I’m sure you’ve never seen them in the flesh, oh pardon the expression,” the principal turned and apologized to the computing network. “This is our prefecture’s JCN (Judiciary Computational Network). As a whole, they will work together to sift through the data
I’m
feeding them and determine your sentence.”

             
“Let’s see here,” each of the towers had a large, brightly glowing bulb, and Mael could tell that the one with the green eye was speaking, since it lit up when it spoke. “The surveillance footage clearly demonstrates that he is guilty of using the new drug called ‘Mixx’.”

             
“Given the mentally provided testimony of Principal Rahotep,” the blue eyed one spoke up, “we can safely say that he is guilty.”

             
“What about my testimony!” Mael shouted furiously.

             
“We don’t need it,” the orange eyed tower spoke. “The facial scans we’ve been taking for the last few seconds demonstrate your guilt as clearly as if you had pleaded guilty.”

             
“But I haven’t pleaded guilty!”

             
“I suggest doing so immediately,” the red eyed member of the JCN replied. “We’ve already determined our verdict.”

             
“Aren’t I supposed to plead one way or the other
before
the verdict is read?” Mael’s face and armpits were sweating profusely.

             
“Oh yes, we had forgotten about that,” the fifth and purple eyed computing tower spoke up. “We had better make a note of this for future trials.”

             
“As for the sentence,” the red eyed one paused for just a moment, “five years in Prefecture 28’s prison should do the trick.”

             
“With 200 hours of community service and a 10,000 ECU fine as well,” Orange Eye added. “The roads have been looking a little shabby in the Coulee District.”

             
“We’ll sign off now,” Blue Eye said. “We’ve been judging an alleged robbery and the man accused of murdering Tony Case.”

             
“I never even got a lawyer,” Mael protested.

             
“In special cases, a student may be judged without representation,” Purple Eye asserted. “It’s written as fine print in your student handbook. Check it out for yourself if you don’t believe us. We have devoted to much computing space to your trial as it is. Good day.”

             
“And a good day to you as well!” Principal Rahotep turned off the monitor with a satisfied air about her.

             
Mael would have loved nothing more than to wipe that arrogant grin off of his principal’s face, but that wasn’t the way he handled matters like these. He knew that by now, Ms. Rahotep had to have sent a mental message to the school’s head of security, Artyom Richter, asking him to watch Mael until the police arrived to escort him to his new living quarters. As the only human security officer in the school, Richter was allegedly the only person who a delinquent could be trusted with. Everyone knew that he had abused students in detention before. Given his wide waistline, he probably released his frustration with himself and his life that way. Mael didn’t intend to wait around and find out if the rumors about Richter were true.

             
Jumping up from his seat and sprinting for the door, Mael suddenly felt Principal Rahotep’s claw like fingernails digging into his arm, as she tried to hold him in the room. He shoved her over her desk and hoped that the fall hadn’t hurt her as badly as it looked.
My life’s already ruined by a poor excuse for a judicial system
, he thought to himself as he jogged through the school’s long corridors, past hundreds of students sitting in their classrooms, strung out on Minervite.
How badly is an assault going to hurt my record now
?

             
Sliding into the cafeteria on its newly waxed floor, he caught sight of Richter heading his direction, an evil glint in his eye and an electrified truncheon in his grasp. Mael had been through enough lockdown drills to know that he couldn’t break into a classroom if he wanted, and the doors out of the building would be sealed tight. There was only one way to escape, and that was to use a security keycard to unlock an exit. Only one person in the school was allowed to leave the building during a lockdown – the head of security.

             
Mael knew that he only had a few minutes before the cops arrived. Deciding to make a gamble, he ran to the kitchen’s entrance and grabbed a dry mop that he spotted there. Before Richter knew what was happening, he was hit in the face with the mop’s handle. Mael had a great deal more reach with his weapon than the security guard’s. After “mopping up the floor” with his opponent, the youth thanked the skills he had learned in Kendo Club and apologized to the unconscious, portly figure sprawled out on the floor.

             
With Richter’s keycard in hand, Mael didn’t have trouble escaping the school and finding his Karadag. Unfortunately five police VTOLs had arrived on the scene by the time he got his vehicle in the air. That
Ms. Rahotep had to have told them she had a world ending crisis on her hands
, Mael thought to himself. Five police cars were just a little overkill.

             
Completely aware that two charges of assault would be pressed against him on top of the drug use and possession charge, Mael decided running from the police couldn’t hurt him any more than his previous stupid decisions had done so.

             
“How did it all escalate into
this
?” he groaned as he flew amidst Prefecture 28’s buildings with a convoy of troopers in pursuit.

             
Swooping down to street level, he knew that the bulkier transports would have a harder time flying after him, but it also provided a host of obstacles for him to avoid. Entering a fruit market, he accidentally knocked over a fruit seller’s booth and saw with his peripheral vision some water melons burst. Normally he would have found that entertaining to witness, but he had more problems on his hands.

Attempting to avoid running down a passerby, he accidentally flew through the window of a low lying banquet hall. Crashing into a glass statue of a seven headed beast, he was thrown off his bike, and he sent the large figure shattering across the floor. Jumping up to his feet, he remounted his Karadag and looked at the distraught, well-dressed
crowd that surrounded him.

             
“Sorry about your, um,” he looked at the remains of his handiwork, “breaking your freakin’ creepy statue.”

             
Once again he heard the drone of the police VTOLs behind him, and he took off out of the dimly lit hall and burst out the other side of that building, more than a little confused by his experience. He dove into a high traffic area with the hope of losing the cops, but they still trailed behind. Then he saw it.

             
All that week, Prefecture 28 held its annual “Circus of Nostalgia” – a popular event amongst old timers but of little interest to Mael’s generation. Despite this fact, the crowd at the circus was enormous, and Mael knew that he could disappear within the ranks of the happy, sightseeing mass. Just managing to dodge a sizable circus tent, one of his pursuers was not so lucky; he ditched his bike behind a stage where a midget juggled pins atop a rolling globe. Mael disappeared into the crowd, while the agitated police circled overhead, disappointed to say the least.

***

              Mael had sat down in a schmaltzy café located on one of Prefecture 35’s shadier streets.
The joint has the Populuxe aesthetic down well
, he mused to himself as a shiny red and silver, automated waitress brought him a cup of black coffee. He noticed for the first time just how much his hands were shaking, the blue spot on his finger tip still noticeable. A youth sat himself down next to Mael, his jacket’s collar pulled up to hide his face, just as the convicted Mixx user had a scarf obscuring his own identity. 

             
“Can you tell me what song is playing at the moment?” the newcomer pointed at the establishment’s speaker system.

             
“That would be ‘Earth Angel’ by, you know, The Penguins,” the glossy waitress replied. “What can I get ya?”