Chris Pourteau - Tails of the Apocalypse

“Nah.”

“Maybe if you were going out near the hangers or anywhere by a refusenik camp.”

“I’m not.”

“But…”

“I don’t use Q,” I said. “I’m still off-line and got no thought of logging on anytime soon.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know,” Marty said. “I remember that. But… you move around a lot, you know. Doing whatever it is you do. And you meet people. Know people.”

I looked outside, and from up near the counter, I could see Kristy as she sniffed a passerby. I knew if she smelled TRACE or Transport she’d let me know. The real reason she chose to stay outside.

“Yeah,” I nodded at Marty. “I know people. I move around. But I don’t know the kind of people you’re talking about.”

Marty’s head rocked back a little and his lips pulled into a smirk. “I’m stuck here, man. I don’t get around. I have to make contacts when I can. Limited clientele and all that.”

“I don’t deal contraband Q, Marty.”

“Hey… Woah!” Marty said. His hands went out flat and he pushed them up and down slowly. They, the hands, said, “shut up, man. Keep it down!” He fidgeted with some protein packets on the counter. “I’m just saying, if you know anyone.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay, then. Just thought I’d, you know, keep you up on what’s down, you know? I gotta communicate to make a living.”

“No need for Q,” I said.

Marty nodded and shrugged.

“Got any Brighton boxes?” I asked. I made eye contact with the man, gauging his reaction. Looking for any information he might be hiding behind his words.

Marty’s eyes widened. “Woah again, my friend.” A smile touched his face. “Now we’re talking. Yeah, in fact I… Why? You moving some stuff? Anything good? Anything I… might want to know about?”

Brighton boxes are ultra-heavy-duty transport boxes of all sizes, from egg-carton size up to shipping containers, designed with some high-tech liner material that could obscure the contents from prying eyes, scanning, x-ray, infrared, or just about any other invasive technology, including all signal transfers. Transport uses them in moving ammunition and war materiel to hide the contents from TRACE rebels. Likewise, TRACE uses contraband or commandeered Brighton boxes to hide their own war goods from TRACER drones and crowd scanners. It’s the way of war. When a war lasts long enough and enough money is involved, both sides end up with most of the same technologies at some point.

Brighton boxes are also used widely by noncombatants. Bootleggers, forgers, and dealers in any kind of illegal contraband love the boxes… when they can get them .

I reached in my pocket and pulled out three small, solid-gold buttons and held them for a moment while Marty’s eyes focused on them. Then I let them slide from my palm onto the counter.

“What the f—”

“Easy, Marty,” I said, “I’m dealing in real money today.”

“Holy mother of many sons!” Marty said as one of his hands scooped the gold off the counter and into the other hand. “I… I have some boxes, but not that many!” He brought one of the buttons to his mouth and bit down.

“Wow,” Marty said. “I don’t think I’ve had a customer pay in gold in… hell, I don’t even remember how long it’s been.”

“The boxes?” I said.

“What size you need?”

“Shoe-box size.”

“I have five that size,” Marty said as he shuffled through a curtain of hanging beads to retrieve the boxes. When he returned, he set five of them on the counter. One at a time, he opened the boxes to show me they were empty and that the special liners were intact. When he got to the fifth box, he slowed down, caught my eye, and smiled.

“I don’t have change for that much gold, partner,” Marty said, “and I know you said you don’t need Q. But Q is what I have.”

He opened the fifth box, and I saw it was filled with the little white pills of Quadrille, the drug used by almost 100 percent of the population to minimize the negative effect the direct-Internet BICE chips can have on brain function. Basically, Q exists to keep people passive and mind-surfing so they don’t go crazy from too much information assaulting them all the time.

“I don’t need the Q, man,” I said again.

“Take it,” Marty said and threw up his hands. “Like I said, I don’t have change and you already paid for it.”

I frowned and sucked in a deep breath.

“Listen,” Marty said, “I already told you this’s pure, off-grid stuff and untraceable. No tagents. But it’s in the box, so it can’t be tracked even if I’m lying, which I’m not. So just do me a favor and take it. Dump it off on a Q dealer or something. I know you run into a lot of people I can never get to. It’s good stuff, and when they come back to you for more because it’s that damn good, just point ’em my way. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

“I don’t like the stuff,” I said. “It’s off my radar, and it’s dangerous to deal in. They put you under the retraining camp if they catch you moving this stuff in quantity.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Kristy alert. No one else would have noticed it because she was an old master at this, but I saw her slide backward, pushing herself with her paws like she was stretching; then her hind end stood up so I could see her through the door.

In two steps I was at the door and had kicked it open before spinning on my heels and heading back to the counter in a hurry. Kristy calmly entered the store before the door slammed shut behind her, and in a single bound she was on my heel.

“Back door?” I said to Marty.

“What? What is it?”

“Back door! Now!”

Marty popped to attention and pushed the beads back with one hand while indicating with the other. “Through here, man.”

I snatched up the boxes, including the box with the Q, and rushed around the counter with Kristy hard on my heels. Through the back door and left down the alley. We picked up speed without running, and in ten steps we were turning right down a darkened narrow street, staying in the shadows.

“I need a hide,” I told Kristy, who immediately bolted ahead of me.

We were fast-walking along a frontage of New Detroit’s endless blocks of mostly empty condos and apartments. The streets were deliberately narrow, designed to make sure there would never be ground transport traffic on them. The city was made to be walker friendly. Designed to avoid the mistakes of the old world. What resulted was a maze of dark roads walled by uninhabited buildings, like cliffs stretching up to the sky.

Two, three, four entryways and then Kristy bolted into one of the alcoves and bounced her front paws off the door.

“Good girl,” I said as I set the boxes down and pulled a code card and thin scramble box from my pocket. I slid the card into the reader, then clipped two small alligator clips from the scramble to the metallic leads and pressed my thumb to the reader on the box. The door buzz-clicked and popped open half an inch. I snatched up the boxes before propping the door with my foot just as Kristy jumped ahead of me and cleared the first flight of stairs before waiting for me on the landing.

There was a maintenance bin near the bottom of the stairs and as I approached it, I snapped open the fifth box, the one with the Q in it, and dumped the contents into the container before kicking the bin back into the shadows.

Thousands of Unis worth of Q, but I didn’t need it, and no way was I going to get pinched moving contraband Q loaded with tagents that could lead Transport directly to me.

That’s if Marty was trying to screw me.

I couldn’t know if he was or not, and I wasn’t going to gamble and find out.