Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

The timing goes first, like, whoa. Some bru starts talking at the same time as three other people, then they stop, then they all go at the same time again. Nobody’s dancing anymore because we’re all desynched from the party playlist, and then the quiet goes viral with everyone kind of just standing there, even Ash, who looks like she might need the Barf Bathroom soon. I turn back to Wendee and we look at each other with zero shit to say.

“Retroparty,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, but kind of smiling.

“Yeah.”

“Yo, all you hellacious hedonists!” Hamza yells from the banister, raising one of his Jäger flutes. Everyone looks up. “Got an announcement for all my gorgeous guests. My new mix, HoodF3els, just dropped. Synch up, motherfuckers!”

Suddenly bad blip-hop is a life preserver in a big old ocean of awkward. The Socialights come back on in a wave, blinking calm blue, illuminating people’s faces, which are no longer creased and hard worried about what to say. Hamza gives me a look from the stairway, not a meanmug, just sort of a “wick effort, little bru, but maybe don’t try to retroparty until you have the ending down.”

Then I notice Wendee’s looking at the stairway, too, Socialight pulsing bright again, Flirty engaged, and from the color of her cheeks someone just pinged her one wick, wick fleshflash. She grins that white-ass grin. “Hey, Shad, I’ll be right back, okay?”

I think Maestro might tell me to grab her, maybe tell me the only thing to try is a last ditch kiss, but I end up just watching her slither up the stairs. Hamza hands her one of the flutes. He smiles, she smiles. I don’t wait for the toast.

I tune into the VR, and since none of the tracking ribbons say Suicide Cliff, I have to settle for the Porch.

It’s only halfway snowing when I go outside, the little flakes that don’t stick on the ground, but I’m still wishing I brought a jacket along for the sulk-fest. Some people are peacing out early, stumbling back down the long row of cars. A couple brus are pissing on the nearest Glowtree and telling it to grow. I plant my bony ass on the steps and look out at the burbs, all the big cubic houses and manicured lawns, and want them all to catch fire at the same fucking time.

The front door heaves open. “Hey, sad Shad.”

“Hey, Dildo.”

I listen to Dyl hip-check the door shut behind him. He comes over and sits in my periphs, clinking down a couple cans of Molson between us.

“I’m still freestyling,” he says. “So I don’t really know what to say.”

I tap my switched-off Socialight. “Same. Didn’t feel like getting apology-pinged.”

“Bru, she’s just running Flirty. So what if they dock up?” He tap-tap-taps the top of his first beer and pops it open. “Sometimes a girl just wants some, you know, general genital proximity. Flirty goes for the sure thing. Don’t mean she don’t like you.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s just, you know, it’s fucking shitty.” I grab the other beer and dig my thumb under the tab. It’s cold enough that the aluminum stings. “How the fuck can I compete, Dyl? We run UnderTheRadar for a reason, you know?”

“Not tonight we didn’t.” Dyl clanks his Molson down for emphasis. “Tonight we ran shit, Shad. You almost turned Hamza Hamidi’s big fest into a fucking retroparty. And I don’t know about you, but I met heaps girls.”

“Heaps,” I admit.

For a while we just slug from our beers and watch the smokers stamp and shiver in a little circle on the sidewalk, sending little white tunnels up into the air. Some of them point down to the end of the block, where red-and-blue lights are flashing out of the gloom. All good parties end in cops. I wonder if someone inside pinged 911, just to make sure it happened.

“You wish you’d cut me loose when the glitch hit back there?” Dyl asks, quiet-like.

“Yeah,” I say, but it’s a lie and we both know it.

“Nah nah nah.” Dyl swishes the last bit of beer around in the bottom of his can. “You know, now that I got some experience, I think I could get used to freestyling at parties. Could be kind of wick. Not UnderTheRadar, not Buttafly, not Maestro two-point-fucking-oh. Just. Freestyle, you know? Like when we were kids.”

I hard think about it for a bit as the police cars ease up, whooping little bursts of siren to scatter the gun-shy bru still trying to piss on the Glowtree.

“That’d be fucking awful, Dyl.”

Dyl does his stupid hyena laugh that always kind of gets me, and slings his arm over my shoulder. I sling one back.

A cop gets out of her car and stomps up the walkway, no doubt running VoiceOfAuthority or some shit like that. “Is that open alcohol I see?” she asks all weary-like, strobing us with her shoulder-light. I blink. My face and hands and feet are just finally starting to feel warm from the cold beer.

“Here’s our first chance, bru,” I say. “Let’s talk our way out of it.”

Dyl nods thoughtfully. Then we both hurtle off the side of the porch, busting toward the fence and the dark empty lot on the other side, and the night feels pretty wick. Pretty wild.

“Do you have to wear the Fawkes in here?” Girasol asked, sliding into the orthochair. Its worn wings crinkled, leaking silicon, as it adjusted to her shape. The plastic stuck cold to her shoulder blades and she shivered.

“No.” Pierce made no move to pull off the smirking mask. “It makes you nervous,” he explained, groping around in the guts of his open Adidas track-bag, his tattooed hand emerging with the hypnotic. “That’s a good enough reason to wear it.”

Girasol didn’t argue, just tipped her dark head back, positioning herself over the circular hole they’d punched through the headrest. Beneath it, a bird’s nest of circuitry, mismatched wiring, blinking blue nodes. And in the center of the nest: the neural jack, gleaming wet with disinfectant jelly.

She let the slick white port at the top of her spine snick open.

“No cheap sleep this time,” Pierce said, flicking his nail against the inky vial. “Get ready for a deep slice, Sleeping Beauty. Prince Charming’s got your shit. Highest-grade Dozr a man can steal.” He plugged it into a battered needler, motioned for her arm. “I get a kiss or what?”

Girasol proffered her bruised wrist. Let him hunt around collapsed veins while she said, coldly, “Don’t even think about touching me when I’m under.”

Pierce chuckled, slapping her flesh, coaxing a pale blue worm to stand out in her white skin. “Or what?”

Girasol’s head burst as the hypnotic went in, flooding her capillaries, working over her neurotransmitters. “Or I’ll cut your fucking balls off.”

The Fawkes’s grin loomed silent over her; a brief fear stabbed through the descending drug. Then he laughed again, barking and sharp, and Girasol knew she had not forgotten how to speak to men like Pierce. She tasted copper in her mouth as the Dozr settled.

“Just remember who got you out of Correctional,” Pierce said. “And that if you screw this up, you’d be better off back in the freeze. Sweet dreams.”

The mask receded, and Girasol’s eyes drifted up the wall, following the cabling that crept like vines from the equipment under her skull, all the way through a crack gouged in the ceiling, and from there to whatever line Pierce’s cronies had managed to splice. The smartpaint splashed across the grimy stucco displayed months of preparation: shifting sat-maps, decrypted dossiers, and a thousand flickering image loops of one beautiful young man with silver hair.

Girasol lowered the chair. Her toes spasmed, kinking against each other as the thrumming neural jack touched the edge of her port. The Dozr kept her breathing even. A bone-deep rasp, a meaty click, and she was synched, simulated REM brain-wave flowing through a current of code, flying through wire, up and out of the shantytown apartment, flitting like a shade into Chicago’s dark cityscape.