Ruined Cities Read online

  He stopped, noticing Keliel’s eyes gleaming with interest behind those brown bangs. “Go on,” she urged.

  Barlin sighed. “Okay, weird part number one: When I play back the video feed, he’s not there. Gone. Kaput. How the hell can the initial feed show something that doesn’t appear in playback? And, weird part number two: I think he’s trying to tell me something. The last two times he was pointing to his left. But he always disappears before Carlyle or Tando show up. And I can’t produce him in playback, so they think I’ve been guzzling inhalomint.” He leaned back, watching a line of yaks climb a nearby slope. “But I have to find him. Handerfeld’s been riding my ass.”

  Keliel stared at him intensely. “The eggheads are the most interesting biomod in a long time. I think the one in your video feeds is Sanny, their leader.”

  “You’ve heard of these guys?”

  “Of course. I get around various TrueNews sites, and the buzz is everywhere. You know, the eggheads are all super-geniuses. The five percent who live through the egghead synth-stem turn into these brilliant masterminds so far above the rest of us, they’ll be leading us around on leashes some day.”

  Barlin scowled. “That’s crap.”

  “Is your egghead wearing a hat in the videos?”

  Barlin blinked. “Well, yeah…”

  “It’s because his brain has grown so big, they had to open his skull to let some out. If you take off that hat, you’ll see grey matter. Of course, they only live a few years — their brains keep mushrooming until they all get aneurisms.”

  “So they get a few more loops in their noodle. Doesn’t mean they’re smarter than your average freak.”

  Keliel’s expression grew wistful. “Oh, but they are,” she whispered. “I’ve seen their paintings, and they’ll suck you in like nothing you’ve seen. I’ve heard rumors the eggheads have started a colony on Orcas Island high ground, where they found a way to grow food outdoors, even on the worst Particul-Ash days.”

  Barlin narrowed his eyes. “Somehow, I don’t think you’re getting all this from the TrueNews sites.”

  She watched him coolly. “Yes, I get around ‘Freaktown’ as you put it. Yes I talk to them, try to understand. And I hear things. And yes, sometimes I donate a few vircredits so they can enjoy their lives a little.”

  Barlin didn’t want to start another fight, he really didn’t. But he couldn’t let that slide. “Our vircredits, Keliel. To a bunch of ‘people’ who do nothing but mutilate each other, watch each other kill themselves, and shoot up synth-stem. They’re becoming another species, a parasite cluster who do nothing but breed and cut themselves.”

  Her jaw hardened. “And if the shoe was on the other foot? Imagine you’d grown up in the streets with no job and zero prospects. Imagine that every day all you got to eat was tasteless starchtubes and veggie puree from a robot servitor, with no simulator to spice it up. Imagine you slept in a tent, surrounded by a million others like some ant colony. You wouldn’t go desperately begging for vircredits to touch a distant memory of what real food used to taste like? Tell me you’d be different, Fred.”

  Barlin stared. That was not to be examined. He looked away from his beautiful, angry girlfriend, focusing on the clouds rolling across the adjacent mountaintop.

  “Well, I guess that’s why I keep you around. You make me want to be a better person.” Barlin winced; what was he going around saying things like that for? Next thing he knew, he’d be wearing a dress.

  But Keliel’s face brightened, and he saw shiny wetness in one eye. “Really, Fred? You’ve… you’ve never said that to me before.” She looked like she’d start tearing up, and Barlin cursed himself. Sure, this was the good crying, but he never dealt with emotional women very well.

  “Get over it,” he said. “I’m just flapping.”

  But nothing else he could say that night would provoke a fight.

  ***

  “Go, go, go… no, there!” Tando yelled, pointing at the top left vidsquare. Barlin gave the mental command to swing a thousand Junebugs and Hummingbirds to the left, trying to home in on the center of the roiling storm below. His brain hurt from the constant change in directions, and he felt like his senso-ring was going to melt. But he didn’t have much choice — the Corporament had decreed Clustercides illegal, and if his brain exploded in the process of preventing freaks from doing the world some good by removing themselves from it, then it was all part of the job.

  Below, the street was in chaos. Freaks of every variety ran around in circles like some tentacled tornado, with the eye of the storm shifting constantly. Barlin swung the drone swarm wildly from right to left, trying to anticipate the cluster’s heart, while Tando and Carlyle yelled excitedly and made bets behind him. A thousand head-shapes and costumes shifted and parted, sometimes forming a swirling pattern, then disintegrating just as Barlin was getting ready to dart. Finally, he saw it: A circle of freaks that had held together for the past few seconds, and which had started to create concentric circles that were spreading throughout the crowd.

  Barlin bore down, watching the crowd get closer as the Junebugs and Hummingbirds raced for the center of the Clustercide. When he got close enough to resolve scale ridges and tentacles, he released a rain of tranquidarts from the Hummingbirds. The entire center of the circle collapsed, just as the explosion came from somewhere off-camera.

  Damn.

  He yanked the drones upward, and for a moment saw only smoke and dust. But within seconds, they’d risen high enough above the crowd to see the explosion’s center, as the smoke hung motionless in the hot, windless day. Barlin cursed as he realized he’d been nowhere close. Tando laughed, and Carlyle mumbled something incomprehensible as they touched fingers to transfer vircredits from Carlyle’s account to Tando’s.

  “The freaks outsmart you every time Barlin,” came Tando’s smug, gravelly voice. “They never give you warning like that. Wait… focus in over there!”

  Barlin scowled, then followed Tando’s pointing finger to the fourth vidsquare. Body parts lay strewn across the street, left without ceremony by the surviving freaks, who’d started to return to normal business. Barlin swung several Junebugs downward to investigate, and several fleshy dots resolved into a pile of body parts, inches deep in a pool of blood. In the center of the red puddle, a disembodied horn had flown into a shredded torso and stuck out of the right buttock like some ivory flagpole.

  Tando and Carlyle burst into laughter, and the office soon filled with excited chatter. “Gives a new meaning to the word ‘shafted’, eh, Barlin?” Tando wheezed, pounding Barlin’s shoulder. Barlin smiled weakly and leaned back in his chair.

  Tell me you’d be different Fred.

  A month ago, he’d have laughed along with them. But these days, his thoughts went to strange places. Barlin wondered what went through the freaks’ heads when they committed mass suicide like that. Did they plan it? Someone had to get the C4. But it looked so spontaneous, as if they were strolling along, saw a Clustercide forming, and decided to join the hilarity. Barlin did his best to understand, to crawl into the minds of these alien creatures — supposedly just people with superficial biomods.

  And as he pulled back the drones, a certain oval-headed freak came into focus. Barlin stared, stunned, then twisted around wildly. But Tando and Carlyle had returned to their stations.

  Of course.

  He turned back around and surrounded the egghead with a dozen Hummingbirds. He kept them motionless just three meters above the street, studying the freak’s impassive face.

  Sanny. Their leader. Barlin knew it to be true, because his boss Handerfeld had shown him pictures. This guy was number one on the Corporament’s shitlist, and here he was, standing in the middle of a drone-swarm like it was about to spray chocolate on him. As with all the eggheads, his skull was way too big for his neck, making his eyes and mouth look like finger-holes on an old-style bowling ball. He wore a twentieth-century baseball cap which seemed to levitate an inch above his head. Barlin
grimaced as he imagined a wet mass of brain tissue underneath, pushing the hat up.

  Barlin readied the mental command to dart the guy down, but held off for no reason he could name. Nabbing Sanny would earn him a back-pat from Handerfeld and a thousand vircredit bonus… but something about this guy’s impassive face fascinated Barlin, and kept him from pulling the mental trigger.

  He was still debating when Sanny looked straight into the camera and pointed to the side. Barlin turned to the next vidsquare and saw an old crumbling warehouse with the faded letters ‘Anderson Meats’. Why the hell was this walking fetus pointing at an abandoned warehouse?

  When Barlin looked back, Sanny was gone. Cursing, he issued rapid-fire playback commands, but wasn’t surprised when the replay showed no hint Sanny had ever existed. Barlin shook his head — he got that these guys were super-geniuses, but this was nothing short of magic. He yanked off the senso-ring, threw it on the chair, then stomped for the door.

  “Hey Barlin,” Tando called. “If you’re off parts collecting, get me one of those ivory horns, and clean off the blood — I’ve got a place for it on the wall above my bed.”

  “Screw you, Tando.”

  He raced home to see Keliel wrapped in one of the electro-cocoons. Without missing a beat, he threw himself into the second electro-cocoon and slipped his finger into the reader. The electric mesh wrapped around him, and within an instant, he was standing in a gray haze.

  “What do you want to do?” Came the disembodied voice.

  “Search: Keliel Robinson.”

  There was a brief silence before the voice came back. “Vesuvius Sim. Eighteen credits per hour. Would you like to join?”

  Barlin swallowed his irritation. Eighteen vircredits just for some stupid ancient Rome sim? Might as well print their money on toilet paper so Keliel could flush it straight down. He sighed. “Confirm, eighteen credits.”

  He bypassed the avatar wall and winked into existence as himself on a carved balcony somewhere in ancient Rome. Keliel’s avatar was a blonde goddess in a long stola and a wool mantle, hair pinned back to leave yellow wisps falling about her ears. She was talking to another stunning woman that Barlin guessed was her friend Ennie’s avatar.

  “Fred!” She exclaimed. “Did you take the day off?”

  He looked down at the cobbled street, where two horses pulled a fruit-laden cart past their building. “Really, Keliel? You pay eighteen credits for an ancient Rome sim just to stand around gossiping like housewives? Don’t you at least go to the Coliseum?”

  She scowled. “Some of us have no desire to watch computer simulacra die just to spice up the afternoon. Did you pay eighteen credits just to harass me virtually?”

  Barlin sighed. Focus. “Listen Keliel. I need you to lead me through Freaktown. I’m going to some old warehouse in Beacon Hill.”

  “Excuse me,” said Ennie. “We were talking.”

  Barlin ignored her. “I have to go now. Come with me?”

  Keliel stared. “You’re finally willing to experience what the lower classes are going through?

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Her eyes softened. “Okay, I don’t know what real reasons are going through that Cro-Magnon forehead, but yes. Yes, I’ll take you.”

  ***

  An hour later they were walking amongst a throng of sweaty aliens, weaving through tents and firepits as they stepped gingerly over the chunks of asphalt strewn about the crumbling street. Barlin had never been this close to freaks without a stormsuit, and he forced down a low grade, continual panic. Keliel, on the other hand, was happy as a damn bumblebee in fruitsludge, stopping to exchange words here and there. Barlin understood only half of it; the freaks were developing a new language to go with their new body parts. The only fleck of gold in the crap-pile was the fact that they were not completely alone — there were other ‘normals’ in the crowd. Barlin guessed some couldn’t afford even the cheapest biomods.

  She pointed things out as they walked: A mob waiting outside the Corporament-sponsored simulator to spend meager vircredit allotments on twenty seconds of virtual food flavor. Four freaks with antlers locking horns in a bizarre quadruple dance that Keliel said was some religious rite. Children with lizard eyes droning an atonal song meant to attract their parents.

  Barlin stared at this last one. “So much for not passing biomods down to the next gen.”

  Keliel nodded. “The Corporament lost that battle long ago.” She pointed to several freaks lying on standard-issue blankets, spread out over what used to be a sidewalk. “Those are the egghead synth-stem casualties. The ninety-five percent who don’t make it.”

  Barlin narrowed his eyes, watching a fanged, scaly-headed woman moan in pain. She had huge red marks behind her ears. “That’s how it starts, huh?” Barlin said, rubbing behind his ears.

  “Yes,” Keliel said, leading him away quickly.

  They stopped next to the warehouse, and Keliel pointed. “Is that it?”

  Barlin nodded, trying not to care that he stood near today’s Clustercide. The body parts were gone, but patches of dried blood still stained the street. He wondered if the rumors that freaks ate their dead were true.

  Keliel moved slowly toward the warehouse, and Barlin’s dread grew. If she was uncomfortable, this wasn’t going to be good.

  They walked into Barlin’s idea of hell. A high pitched tone slammed them backward as they entered the windowless, angrily-lit nightclub, and Barlin desperately tried to adjust his eyes to the red light. Creatures of every size, shape and odor jumped in unison to a warbling shriek, which sounded to Barlin like a psychopathic fire alarm. Red silhouettes of horns and antlers rose and fell as one, casting monstrous shadows on the far wall and sending shafts of crimson playing across their faces. To their right, several freaks lay on the floor while others sliced them with razor blades, sucking blood as it welled from their stomachs.

  “Recirc,” Keliel whispered. “After inhaling virosmell, they sell their blood while it still carries some of the drug. Then they buy more.”

  Barlin stared at the collection of blood-soaked freaks, scrabbling about on the floor and lapping blood from a moaning man whose eyestalks flailed in pain. They’d probably overdone it; Barlin doubted snail-guy would survive.

  “Keliel,” Barlin said softly. “We have entered the very lowest layer of the abyss.”

  She said nothing, and Barlin noted with small satisfaction that the ‘freaks-are-our-friends’ wankorama seemed unusually muted. She was as horrified as he was.

  Barlin looked away, and froze at the sight of an egg-headed man, watching him. He pulled Keliel’s sleeve, unwilling to turn away even a moment.

  “Keliel.”

  She looked, and for a long minute, they stared at each other across a red-tinged bouncing mass of scales, horns, and wings. It wasn’t Sanny, but Barlin was sure this freak was here to see him. He stepped forward, but the egghead stopped him with a quick gesture Barlin had never seen, yet which he understood completely. He got the distinct feeling he was a dog being told to stay. The egghead looked up, and Barlin did too, catching the red metallic glint of Junebugs flitting about the room. He exhaled loudly, thanking whatever monstrous god ruled this place. If he’d come within a meter of the freak, he’d have been marked as a wanted man.

  After a moment, the egghead pointed towards the far wall. He and Keliel followed that bony finger to gaze into the most beautiful painting Barlin had ever seen, its details stunning even in the low crimson light. A picture of the roiling ocean… not today’s placid lake with desal plants hugging the coast and red tides smothering everything underneath. No, this was the sea as it used to be: a place of crashing waves, giant creatures, and cold water. The painting sucked them in without mercy, a chest-grabbing, cheek-slapping splash of ice water that filled Barlin with indescribable longing.

  Barlin tore his gaze away to see that the egghead had disappeared. He breathed deeply, trying to recover his wits as the fire alarm shrieked into his ears, and the
jumping mass of horns and tentacles threw reddish shadows across the ceiling. They both turned to the gory scene on their left, where a pile of reptilian freaks splashed around in pools of blood, their scales glowing in the winking light.

  “Charming bistro, but might be more romantic if they added candles, or checkered tablecloths,” Barlin said. “Shall we find a place with better ambience?”

  But Keliel was already racing for the door, and Barlin scrambled to catch up with her.

  ***

  In the next few weeks, Barlin saw the eggheads dozens of times. Their bald domes flashed into his vision here and there, though never in Tando’s or Carlyle’s vidsquares. Whenever he saw them, they were talking to the masses, or staring into giant sheets of paper surrounded by crowds. Sometimes they carried metallic boxes with dangling wires, though at those times they popped in and out of his vision like gopher heads in a kid’s sim. They no longer tried to communicate, but they knew he was there. Sometimes, Barlin caught them looking straight into a Junebug’s camera with that maddeningly neutral expression, as if wondering whether they were about to get darted.

  And the answer to that question was always yes… almost. Several times Barlin buzzed them with Hummingbirds, a hair’s breadth away from pumping them full of needles. He knew he should; he got paid by the Corporament, not some mutant, bubble-headed Einstein. His bosses rated these guys at the top of the freaky felon list, and they wanted the eggheads brought to heel. Who was he to question that?

  Still Barlin held off. He’d never really believed in hunches, but now he had a gut hunch so big it had settled in his bones, become part of his DNA:

  The eggheads were about to do something miraculous.

  He couldn’t say why, but he knew it was true. They were going to clean things up, align the world with how things used to be. In the giant crapbowl that was the planet, the eggheads were growing a lillypad. Barlin knew he’d been badly shaken by the picture in the freak nightclub, the painting that had wrenched his organs into a knot of yearning for a cool, forest-covered planet. But it went beyond that. He was sure the eggheads were going to be humanity’s salvation, and he didn’t want to go down as the Bozo who blew everything.