SF in The City Anthology (4 page)

             
“Here you go sir,” Chuck the waiter said as he set down Ángel’s meal. “Is there anything else that I can get for you at the moment, sir?”

             
“No, that’s it for now. Arigatō gozaimasu
[9]
!” 

    
              Ángel had plenty of reason to thank the waiter. He had spaced on Ananya’s monologue for the last few minutes. Hopefully he hadn’t missed anything important.

             
“So do you think that Dr. Oyinlola’s bionic flies would make for an interesting short story?” the writer asked as she finished her last piece of lobster.

             
“Yes, er, if anyone could pull it off, it would be you,” Ángel replied as confidently as possible.

             
“What do you mean pull it off? You don’t think that it’s a good idea?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Ángel cast a quick glance at Ananya’s notepad, hoping to find some information to help him out of his situation. “I just like the idea of
your…um…’Energy Men’ better.”

             
“Really? I haven’t even told you about them yet,” Ananya looked down at her notepad knowingly.

             
“Well, it has a really catchy title, you know. There’s just something really, really cool about it. So…what’s it about?”

             
“It’s not a great title, but I read Dr. Maloof’s paper on the transformation of human beings into forms of pure energy recently. I thought it made for an interesting premise, especially since there are plenty of dangers that could arise from such technology.”

             
“Is that one of Central Authority’s science projects?” Ángel asked apprehensively.

             
“Yes, it is as a matter of fact.” 

             
“Not that I want to discourage your endeavors,” the business man folded his hands on the table, “but you should be careful about the subjects you touch on.”

             
“That sounds like something my father would say,” Ananya forced a laugh as she drank down the last of her almond milk.

             
“It’s not a joke. Central Authority has been passing harsher laws as of late, and I can tell you from personal experience that they are not to be crossed. How you got by with
Politicosis
still beats me. Dystopia doesn’t really fly with the current establishment.” 

“See, that’s one more reason I hate Gynerator. Not only does this ‘author’ write science fiction, it also takes a really propagandistic approach. If you even question the CA’s experiments, you are labeled as an ‘anti-science’ nutcase. I was talking to a friend recently about the potential problems of creating human brains from scratch, you know, like Jim Seo has suggested. She said that I didn’t understand science and should quit writing ab
out it.”

             
“Well, not everyone has the same opinions about technology,” Ángel said quietly. “From what I’ve gathered, you just want to point out that fact.”

             
“Exactly! Innovation isn’t evil, when it’s not being used to oppress and kill people.”

             
“So you think that a novel that…raised awareness about the problematic technology being produced by Central Authority will sell?”

             
“Science fiction’s greatest works were metaphors for contemporary concerns,” Ananya said proudly. “If I really want to work within the genre, I cannot give in to timidity. I have to say what no one else will, even if it means no one wants to buy my work.”

             
“What would you do if Gynerator had its parameters changed?” Ángel said before putting another piece of lobster in his mouth.

             
“You mean…hack it into producing anti-establishment works?” Ananya cocked an eyebrow.

             
“I know this guy,” Ángel said then swallowed. “His name is Charlisle Bungard. Granted, he’s a relatively unstable character and, part of a gang, but he can hack anything under the sun. Bless his heart.”

             
“And where did you meet this Charlisle character?”

“In the 37th prefecture,” the entrepreneur picke
d up his Yakult and took a sip.

             
“You warn me about questioning Central Authority, yet you have a dangerous friend like that?” Ananya shook her head in mock disappointment.

             
“Well, he can’t be more threatening than an author with misgivings about the system,” the executive teased.

***

              After he had finished with his lunch, Ángel decided to grab some live lobsters from the vending machine just outside the restaurant’s entrance before he took off.

             
“I’ll be right back before you can say ‘Briith’,” Ángel asserted.

             
Only one woman stood in front of Ángel at the machine. She had an Italian Greyhound on a force field leash, which entailed a silver band on her right hand and a receiver on the dog’s collar. By mental command, she could extend or shorten the invisible field holding the canine in her proximity. Ángel had invested in the company that invented this device, and he felt glad seeing someone actually use the system.

             
Rather than wasting time waiting on her to finish up, the entrepreneur decided to see how the horses were doing at Llameante Rayo’s qualifying races. Streaming a mental picture, he could see that he had made over 1,000 ECUs on Titular Character. People called him a cheapskate for betting so little on the races, but they had to concede that he never owed anyone money. Horses in bod mod races were the best to bet on also. Ángel hadn’t become rich by taking unnecessary or uninformed risks.

Once the woman had completed her purchase, Ángel walked up to the vending machine, cred card in hand. Two lobsters seemed enough for the road. As his order was completed, two packages fell into the slot at the bottom of the machine. He pulled them out and looked at the seemingly angry crustaceans, with their appendages folded up around them in the plastic. Perhaps Ananya would like one? She had seemed crabby enough that day. As a last minute decision, Ángel pulled o
ut his cred card again.

***

              Devon Globa inserted the last cartridge into his Nukpana OWO 23 sniper rifle. The round was informally referred to as a “snot (sniper + shotgun) shot,” because it had the range of sniper ammunition and mimicked shot gun shell rounds. Each of these bad boys had a preset charge inside of them, which could be set to explode within a desired distance of a target. Central Authority loved this type of ammunition precisely because it couldn’t be linked back to agents. A sniper could sit in a window and take aim at a target five miles away, yet his round would break up into buck shot right next to the victim. Street gangs could be blamed for the whole ordeal and the real shooter would be back home in time to catch the nightly State of the City address.

             
Today, it looked as if Devon would get to shoot some crazy mujer
[10]
in front of a Lobster Launji. At least he was told that she was a little off. He never really knew who CA wanted him to kill anymore. Last week they had him bump off some short man at an amusement park, and he turned out to be nothing more than a producer of 2D films. Why somebody involved in such an outdated business threatened the security of The City, the sniper would never understand. It wasn’t his job to ask such questions, just to point and click. He loved the dramatic sound of the magazine as he shoved it into the weapon. With a thought, “The Old Pianna Rag” started to play in the micro liners of his ears. Here he was criticizing that producer for archaic pursuits.

Going into a prone position, Devon looked into the Electronically Amplified Scope or EAS on his Nukpana. Using his mind, he called up the GPS data on the thoughts this woman, Ananya Leclerc, emitted. She still sat out in front of the restaurant, as expected. From four miles away, Devon zoned in and saw the woman sitting in her seat. Given his current angle, it would be best to set the explosive charge in his shell to a twenty foot distance, so that people would think the sho
t came from across the street.

             
Something seemed oddly familiar about this woman, the strange way she kept her blond hair tied back, and the curvature of her neck. When he had nanotubes inserted into his brain as a child, Devon’s parents had put a great deal of emphasis on backing up his memories externally. Whenever he returned home from school, he would transfer copies of his daily experiences to a “memory box” in his room. At the time it had seemed that his parents worried too much, but as he got older, Devon quickly realized that his father suffered from retrograde amnesia. Bing Globa had been a security guard at a local chemical factory. While working his shift one night, a couple of thugs opened fire on his guardhouse. A stray bullet had pierced his head in just the right location, impairing his ability to recall memories for the rest of his life.

             
Understandably, Devon always wore a Kevlar lined helmet to work these days. He still couldn’t place the woman down there, but he told himself that she deserved whatever happened to her. Of course, he didn’t know what Central Authority had accused her of, but Devon really wished that he hadn’t felt a glimmer of recognition. Sometimes the sniper felt like a character in one of his daughter’s science fiction stories. Given the opportunity to make important decisions for the sake of humanity, the mad scientists she dreamed up always picked the wrong path. Honestly, Devon hated his daughter’s writing. Her stories always had depressing endings. Of course he never told her that he preferred the more upbeat science fiction of Gynerator over her dispiriting premises.

             
Life as an officer in Central Authority’s agency had never bothered Devon until he had a family. He initially joined up with the hope of one day catching his father’s assailants. Before he had even left basic training, it was clear from Devon’s marksmanship scores that he would be best suited to the sniper division. Why wouldn’t he take this opportunity? His mother had always taught him to pursue what he was good at and enjoyed. He at least had the talent required for this occupation.

Devon placed his finger on the trigger; A.I.’s responsibility for aiming did not ease his conscience. He played over and over again the image of his wife and daughter sitting around the small table in their cramped apartment. He needed this job. He needed the money it provided.

As the sniper took a deep breath, all he chose to think about was Gynerator’s newest novel –
Paradiso Code
. He exhaled and pulled the trigger, but he didn’t let the situation bother him. He was filling a niche in the social order. Nothing more and nothing less.

Episode 3: “Character”

              Patty Plattson had to make a “mentalmark” of the site she just visited, courtesy of the nanotubes in her brain. She had spent so much time browsing tattoo removal parlors that she had forgotten the image shoot she had at 2:00 PM. Sending a psychic command to the shower head in her apartment’s bathroom; she got undressed and threw her clothes into the ImmedClean hamper by the shower. She wished she didn’t need to wash so much, but rising temperatures in The City made it difficult for a girl to look kept together.

             
In two minutes              flat she had been sanitized, and the blow dryers in the floor kicked on. Her body dried quickly, yet her long, flowing black hair provided the greatest challenge. While she disliked the system, Patty had to admit that “nanodrying” was the fastest way to get her locks ready for the shoot. Once when she was a child (technically fifteen year olds counted as adults in The City, even though Patty’s mother never saw it that way) some cruel boys put some LICE (Living Intelligent Computerized Entities) in her hair. These novelty nanoids fit their description, causing an itchy scalp until she had a doctor destroy the pests.

             
Needless to say, Patty had never been comfortable with the nanosphere ever since. Sticking her head into the hair torrefying bubble, she still felt ill at ease with the idea of the tiny robots spreading all over her head and drying it. In less than a minute, she had her head out of the machine and started putting on her clothes. With a thought, she summoned the hair styling arms attached to the bathroom sink’s mirror. She had a preset style programmed into the device, so she could focus on getting dressed, while the robot did the rest.

             
It had been only an additional two minutes by the time she slung her handbag over her shoulder and walked out the door. Her automated dog feeder would take care of her pet tanuki
[11]
, and the schedule she pulled up inside her mind did not indicate that she had anything else going on that day besides the image shoot and a date with Blathasar at 7:00. So why did she get the feeling that she had forgotten something? Of course, when it came to intuition, she sometimes confused impending danger with absentmindedness.

***

              As she exited her apartment, Patty sent a mental command to her Sevterrex VTOL, deactivating its proximity alarm and electrified surface setting. Having nanotubes inserted into her brain had made life so much easier. She could do so much that used to require physical action with the power of her mind. Why some people held out and called this innovation evil, she would never know.