SF in The City Anthology (35 page)

             
After failing to connect with a girl wearing a ROD (Reality Optimizing Device), I managed to get in a good discussion about fiction with an aspiring film director named Bufón Dillettante (at least I believe that was his name). He appreciated arak
[53]
as much as I did, and he had a really interesting premise for an upcoming project of his.

             
“The name of the movie is
Gurney
,” he leaned close to me in his excitement. “I’ll have the entire film shot from a first person point of view. Our protagonist is a cop who suffers a paralyzing injury during a firefight with some brain hackers. For the entire length of the movie, the audience stares at the ceiling of the hospital where the protagonist is kept. Dialogue, not action, drives the plot. In today’s climate, I think we could use a film like this.”

             
“So what happens to him, the cop I mean?” I took another sip of my drink.

             
“Well he suffers from depression for the better part of the movie, but in the end he develops a new found appreciation for his life because of the conversations he overhears his nurses having when they think he’s asleep. He realizes that he could have it off a lot worse than he does.”

             
“It all sounds a bit artsy,” I conceded. The arak had started to take its toll on me, and something on the news was distracting me a bit too much from my acquaintance.

             
“This just in, traffic on Buitre Street will be held up for a little while,” the unenthusiastic “female” autonomous newscaster said. “Apparently an employee by the name of Junko Jalloh threw herself from Onofrio Prevodorant Incorporated’s highest floor. The police are still examining her remains to be sure that suicide was the cause.”

             
“Authorities would like to encourage anyone considering self-termination to do so at home rather than jumping from public buildings and impeding vehicular and pedestrian traffic,” the “male” autonomous co-host said. “In other news, Central Authority has been accused by author and climatologist Haruto Danticat of using a weaponized climate engineering device classified as Project Teshub to force the current heatwave on The City into effect, as well as the powerful storms in Prefecture 56. The CA intends to take him to trial for libel, yet he recently escaped with the help of political agitators. If you have information on his whereabouts, please call a CA representative at…”

             
“I’ve got to go,” I told Bufón as I stumbled towards the bar’s door.

             
“The Charleston dancing contest is coming up,” he called after me, “there’ll be some sultry chicks in here.”

             
“Some business has come up that I need to attend to,” I replied.

***

              Junko Jalloh wasn’t just another one of the faceless employees at Onofrio Prevodorant Incorporated. She had slept her way to the top of the food chain, landing a job as Nechtan Onofrio’s personal secretary/mistress. Nechtan always had one concubine or another hanging on his arm, yet there was a special place in his life for Junko. I couldn’t blame him. She had skills that would put a geisha to shame.

If Ms. Jalloh had killed herself, it really wouldn’t have surprised me. Who could choose to sleep with that dirty old man willingly? It was the fact that she “jumped” that had caught my attention. I had spent enough time around her in Onofrio’s office to know that she had a crippling fear of heights. Being stationed on such a high floor in the building caused her great pain. She wouldn’t go near the windows in her boss’s office. Her fear was that great.

Heights never bothered me. “It’s not falling, but rather the sudden stop that scares me,” I used to joke with a friend who had a penchant for skydiving. The fear of jumping off a building nearly made me void myself at the Malhotra Dining Tower. If I couldn’t do it, then it was a cinch that pretty little Junko couldn’t have done it either.
She must have found out information that would have damaged Nechtan
, I thought to myself,
and he made sure no one would ever find out
.

In my inebriated state, my next course of action seemed prudent at the time. I stumbled up to a police officer and asked him if he would be willing to sell me some guns. While the CA never admits that many of its patrolmen sell confiscated weapons back to the populace at steep prices, it’s just common knowledge that the practice takes place often. Fortunately the squirrely looking fellow that I addressed happened to be an officer who used this racket as an extra form of income from time to time. His partner didn’t approve of this late night transaction, but like many cops he refused to speak up against the system for the sake of protecting his own hide.

“What’ll it be?” he threw open the storage compartment on his patrol VTOL. “I’ve got everything from single shot pen guns to grenade launchers.”

“Something…” my head was feeling foggy, “something with a low profile would be preferable.”

“I’ve got a QSZ-92 pistol that I’ll sell on the cheap. It’s in a pretty bad condition, seen too much battle if you ask me. When it comes to ammunition, the most that I have is for the Type 54, given its popularity. Tell you what; I’ll sell you a pair of Type 54 pistols, 500 rounds of ammo and three grenades for 1200 ECUs. What do you say?”

Swiping my currency card through his ECU transferring device, which had a special transaction history deleting attachment common amongst drug dealers (that’s probably where he found it), he handed me the weapons in a briefcase and let me go my way.

“Just don’t get caught using them,” he told me, “or I’ll have to bust you and take them back. Not that I would mind.” He laughed.

***

When I finally sobered up and realized that I had illegal weapons in my possession, I hid them behind a dumpster The City cleanup crews would never visit (the neighborhood was too poor).
As if I would actually kill Nechtan Onofrio
, I laughed inwardly. Then it occurred to me:
why not
?

After all, the twisted ijamba
[54]
had me not only fired, but publicly disgraced with my unnecessary forced removal from the workplace. He had done everything in his power to insure that I never worked an honest job again in my life.
Most importantly, he’s probably guilty of murder
, I thought to myself.
If I kill him now, it may prevent him from doing something so dastardly in the future. In the Jātakas
[55]
, did not the Buddha take life in order to save life? I’ll have a Karmic price to pay, but it’ll be worth it.

Having just narrowly avoided suicide, I did not want to die at the hands of Onofrio or that brute of a body guard, so an attack on the CEO’s home sounded more and more reasonable all the time. The workplace had too much security around it, plus I knew that the men and women guarding the housing complex where he lived – Neo Ys – would not put up as much of a fight. They were rent-a-cops from Sigurnost Armed Sentries Service. If I hadn’t spent so much money preparing for this assassination, I probably could have bought them off without violence.

Finally the night of reckoning arrived, and I walked into the lobby of Neo Ys, weapons hiding beneath my baggy clothes. As in most upper-class establishments, a series of scanners were in place to be sure visitors weren’t bringing in nuclear, biological or traditional kinetic weapons into the establishment. One of the grenades the patrolman sold to me contained CS gas. Since I did not wish to kill anyone save Onofrio, I used the gas on the lobby’s rent-a-cops and made it inside the building’s elevator. The Muzak that plays over the lift’s speakers calmed me, as if my plan was meant to be, like I had seen this scenario play out time and time again.

When I exited the lift, Changpu Beyer stood there waiting with a smile on his bestial face. You probably have never seen an anthropomorphic bison make fists, so let me tell you, it’s an unnerving sight. I unloaded my pistols on his chest, and he merely shrugged it off, laying a powerful right hook on my nose, breaking it. He then threw me into the hallway near Onofrio’s front door, sending my head spinning as I slammed into the brilliantly dyed wall.

Getting to my feet, I tried to stumble away from the brute, only to hear him start laughing menacingly. I turned to look back at him and see what amused him, and then I saw it. He had a Longxu hook in his meaty hand, the rope to which the two pronged hook attached had been wrapped around his body.

Sliding a new magazine into one of my Type 54s (I had dropped the other one), I prepared to take aim, but he had me wrapped up with his weapon before I could pull the trigger. The pain in my right shoulder made me grimace, as the hook cut into my muscles. Raising the gun again, I fired shots until one snapped the cord he dragged me with.

Beyer charged me, and in that moment, the first thought that came to my mind was using the concussion grenade the cop had sold me. I barely took it into my hands before the bodyguard ripped his hook out of me and picked me up in a crushing hold. Sliding the grenade between the cord that wrapped around his furry waist, I pushed my thumbs into his dark bison eyes as forcefully as possible. With a yelp, he dropped me, and the grenade went off. Taking advantage of his stunned condition, I ran up and tackled him into the door of Nechtan’s home, the bodyguard’s massive weight knocking the wooden frame off of its hinges.

Individuals with bod mods often had health tradeoffs to some degree. Changpu’s problem involved rapid overheating. I swear he drank a gallon of water every hour. Being shot several times and suffering a concussion blast to the side, he collapsed to the floor, his chest heaving steadily. Shooting the bodyguard while he sat there wounded and unarmed didn’t seem appropriate. Instead I turned my attention to Mr. Onofrio and the cowering man next to him, who I recognized as his accountant Ulric Näkki.

“Tell me Mr. Näkki,” I pointed my remaining Type 54 at him, “would you happen to know what happened to Ms. Jalloh, Mr. Onofrio’s secretary, as of late?”

“He had that bull of his throw her from his office window,” the trembling assistant pointed at his boss. “I’m not with him. Just let me go, and you can do whatever you want with him.”

“Moron,” Onofrio sighed as his eyes twitched, indicating that he was sending a complex mental command. 

“Hey,” the gun shook in my hand, “if you’re sending a message, stop before I blow your head off!”

Something suddenly changed in Näkki’s demeanor, and he bolted for the other end of his employer’
s
home, throwing himself off of the balcony. I told him to stop, but he had refused, like a sleepwalker oblivious to his surroundings.              

“I already sent my message,” Onofrio grinned at me. “Ever hear of the work done by José Delgado in the 20th century?”

“No,” I walked closer to my ex-boss, prepared to finish what I had started.

“He did research that paved the way for the nanotube matrices of our era. Of course, the tools he used were rather primitive. Delgado understood the implications for his ‘stimoceiver’ technology far more than those who would carry on his legacy.

“It took decades for the Central Authority to approve an app that would allow high ups in their intelligence division to control subordinates through stimoceiver manipulation in their nanotube matrices. Those fools were so afraid that this technology could be turned back on them that they pursued other avenues of mind control, while the most efficient system rested in their laps.

“Yes, I made my assistant just throw himself from the building with technology I illegally appropriated from my brothers and sisters in Central Authority. Under Griffin Southway, the CA had stimoceiver via nanotube matrix tech just lying around, so I put it to use on my employees. Changpu had to do in Junko for me. I didn’t have the strength necessary to do the job, even if it meant sending nothing more than a mental message. That won’t be a problem with you.”

Within a brief moment, Mr. Onofrio’s confident expression suddenly left his face and was replaced by a look of fear. I had no clue that the nanotube matrix that had rested in my brain had such a terrifying secret behind it. Fortunately, a back alley surgeon had removed my matrix a few days before my assault because I feared the reports of CA surveillance on “dangerous thoughts” had some validity to them.

“I should have killed you instead of firing you,” Onofrio sulked. “That’s what an employer gets for being a softy.”

“You won’t be for much longer,” I walked closer to him. “What happened to Junko will never happen again.”

“Honestly?” Onofrio laughed. “One day the CA will realize that the nanotube matrices are the best route for controlling the populace. It’ll be an age when the average Joe can’t scratch his balls without permission, and you’ll be one of their slaves with or without brain implants. Killing me won’t matter one bit!”

At that moment, I heard Changpu heaving behind me. Turning just as he raised his meaty paws to take hold of me, I shot him in the heart twice. He collapsed with a loud thud, as I returned my gaze back to my ex-employer.

“You were saying?” I gripped the Type 54, sweat dripping down my face.

“Even now you won’t kill me,” he boasted. “Don’t you feel guilt at the thought of murdering someone in cold blood?”