Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

When he opened his eyes, Schorr was in front of him. She breathed a long slink of steam into the chilled air and across his face. His nostrils twitched.

“Feel sick yet?” she asked, then chatted, “It’s a no-pay, by the way. Thank me later.”

“Not yet.”

“It takes a little time,” the Plagueman said. “But you won’t need a bioscan to know when it hits.”

Schorr was tracing the pustules with admiring fingers, and Default had to admit it looked potent. It was like her skin was strewn with tiny craters, like some ancient moon, and they glistened raw and wet in the bright light.

“Nova,” Schorr said. “So nova. Thanks for the dish, I know he’s going to love it.”

Default nodded. “Yeah, thanks for the freebie, Plagueman.”

“No issue,” he said, pulling his cowl back up. “When people ask, just remember who bug-synched you. I haven’t worked in a signature yet.”

“Come with us?” Default offered, hoping for a negative. He didn’t want to have to compete with a skinless unit who cooked amazing viruses.

“I’m working on a new bacterial,” the Plagueman said, muffled again. “Have fun. Get shattered.”

“You’re not supposed to work in the nocturns,” Schorr teased, but she didn’t look too upset as she turned back to Default. “Time to party,” she said with a grin. “See if we can’t wobble that steady fucking satellite of yours.”

They partied. Schorr introduced him to a slew of units, some of whom he recognized by tag, and then the whole pack of them speedtapped an amphetamine cocktail and took the freebus to an amphitheatre. Schorr was projecting her bioscan all over the inside of the bus, showing the spiky virus taking root in her body, and with a little prompting Default threw his up beside hers. Everyone cheered when he found the first lump on his neck.

“She always finds the best shit,” said a fem beside him, adjusting the static clip in her hair.

“He does,” Default agreed, remembering about a hundred orbits worth of Schorr’s misadventures, unlicensed hull-walks and clonefucking and all sorts of funtime. If they hadn’t come out of the same birthing tank, Default was sure he never would have snagged Schorr as a friend. Default was not vogue the way Schorr was vogue.

“Want to share?” the fem asked, running a finger over his lips.

Not usually, anyway.

The amphitheatre was wall-to-wall like they’d all been poured in through the ceiling. More whalesong, but Default didn’t mind that now, not with his head shredded by amphetamine. The crowd was roiling around them, a raspy skin-sea, and every touch felt electric. Schorr was the center of the hurricane, but Default was still soaking up more hits than he ever had in his life. Probes for his tag, probes about Schorr’s old sex, and always probes about the virus. They were clamoring.

He found himself with the fem from the freebus, recognized her tag and her bright green eyes and the camber of her bare back. It was too loud for airtalk, but she chatted him: “I want your bug, handsome.” The message came with a fleshflash of exactly how she wanted to contract it, and Default only thought of Memmi for a split second before they docked right there on heated floor.

When the party was about to burst, they went to the next one. Schorr chatted him; they wormed their way around the back through naked bodies, sweeping limbs, and they stumbled down the street to a fresh scene. Motion artists were doing a recreation of the Five, widecasting a link to the bird’s eye view, and with the drug singing in Default’s veins it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Things blurred. They stopped at a dream machine, downloaded a hallucination that had them sprinting through alleyways to escape a swarm of blue-and-red tetragons.

They ate sticky vatmeat until their unprepped stomachs revolted, then vomited in a purging booth and staggered back for more. The AI vendor offered to grow them a cannibal special if they provided a bit of helix; Schorr pretended to gnaw at Default’s arm.

Sitting on a curb, counting each others’ pox.

Trying to make two follow-cams collide.

Another party, this time underwater. Sleek monitor AIs swam in lazy ribbons and when Schorr caught one by the tail it bubbled emergency oxygen in beautiful wobbling streams.

The nocturns had no light cycles, but by the time they rented a bunk just off the mainstreet Default’s internal clock told him it had been days. Schorr was still bouncing from foot to foot, still party-synched. Default was exhausted.

“Wick, wick run,” Schorr said, because she was saying wick now instead of raw. The latest of their companions were stumbling off into the dark. Default rubbed his eyes.

“Same pod?” he asked.

“Don’t we always?” Schorr’s lopsided frown returned. “Oh. Would it remind you?”

“It’s fine,” Default chatted, too tired to speak, and slipped inside the sleep pod. The gel rippled a moment later as Schorr climbed in after him. It made Default remember a trip to the nocturns orbits and orbits ago for a Five festival, collapsing spent in a pod with Schorr beside him. There was only one difference.

“Why’d you change sex again?” he chatted.

“Still trying to find something different,” Schorr replied. Her shrug sent vibrations.

“Is it?”

Schorr shifted in the dark. “Not so different, no. Still bored.”

Default slept.

When he woke up, Default had a mass of updates sitting in his skull. Sleeping for a few days could easily take you out of the know, but it looked like Schorr had charitably cut him into her own feed. There was no way he’d already made that many new friends.

“Ready to go?” Schorr asked. Default glanced over and realized that the pockmarks on her skin were slowly healing. He wondered what his own looked like. He combed through the updates and found an invitation from the Plagueman.

“Back to the basement?”

“You scan my mind. He’s been chatting me about something new.”

The pod gave them a send-off in the form of exfoliation and amphetamine injections, and then they were back in the street. It was dark and loud and wild and as if they hadn’t left it. Bands of revelers passed and Default saw runny noses, puffy eyes, but more than anything he saw shiny pink blisters. Schorr was right. It was going nova.

“How long have we been alive, Default?” Schorr asked as they stepped onto a freebus. She had traded her now-unvogue-flutterdroids for swirling fabric and spray-on, but her eyes were still ringed dark and seemed suddenly serious.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, from the instant we were genemixed…” Schorr moved her finger in a slow arc. “… to this moment here on the freebus. How many orbits have elapsed between?”

“I’ve never calculated that,” Default admitted.

“I did,” Schorr said. “692.3487 orbits. We’re old.”

“ Stars are old.”

“We’re old,” Schorr said firmly. Then her face broke into a grin as the freebus passed a familiar vendor. “Vatmeat? I’ll buy.”

“I’ll vomit,” Default said, glad the mood had passed.

“Deal,” Schorr said.

Pox was over, bacterial was in. Preferably, in both lungs. Default and Schorr lay side by side while the Plagueman, who was now called Epi, injected them. They clasped clammy hands.

“You’re going to feel this one,” Epi promised. “Really feel this one. It’s like nothing else.”

And Epi was right. Before they even hit the next party, Default and Schorr were coughing at each other and wheezing laughs between alcohol eyedrops, suddenly short of breath. Default’s ear canals felt permanently plugged and the world was surreal, almost soundless. They chatted instead of airtalk for the whole duration. Default had never felt so curiously detached, so… floating. It was intoxicating. They stumbled through the streets in their own personal world, a soundless world where fever crept across their foreheads and every breath was dredged.