Cyber City - 1
Lunch deals - Denizens of the Justice Annex - Interactions with a hologram - Chased through the plaza - The smell of freedom
Even by the standards of the food trucks in front of the Cyber City Community Justice Annex – Lows Division, Station 4, Chen’s Chinese was a small and ramshackle affair. So small that it got lost among the larger options set up in the crowded plaza, like some kind of secondary kitchen that was there just to help “Billy Bug Burgers” and “Tacos and Tikka” keep pace with demand. So ramshackle that it was impossible to tell which, if any, of the various metal and plastic panels that made up its exterior were original to the truck and which were part of a cleverly improvised repair job. It didn’t inspire confidence in the quality of the food, but Ratboy wasn’t here for quality; he was here for the lunch special.
150 bits for three courses: an entree, a side of rice, and a drink. Sure, realistically, it was probably going to be three portions of protein paste with different flavor packets, diluted to different consistencies, and cooked to different textures. But Ratboy wasn’t picky, neither by nature nor by nurture. The slogan emblazoned across the front of the truck in faded, hand-painted letters promised “Reasonable food at reasonable prices!” and that sounded just fine to Ratboy. After five years spent locked away in the Q, all he had in his bank account was the 250 bits that had been sitting there when he went in, and most of the vendors’ prices started at 300.
Ratboy scanned the crowded plaza as he stepped up to the food truck’s order window. Head on a swivel, Eight-Ball had taught him. Trust no one and nothing. Head on a swivel, everywhere, all the time, forever. As advice, it hadn’t been conducive to forming healthy relationships, but it had kept him alive.
It hadn’t kept him out of prison, but hey, alive was still pretty good.
The smell in the air of the Justice Annex was a riot of different cuisine types, most of them fried, of exhaust from the Cyber City Police Department vehicles and patrol drones coming and going from the Annex, of stinking mud and chemical runoff from the Bay, of a pandemonium of body odors. There was a battalion of Cyber City police officers, of course, in their matte black uniforms with their bludgeons and guns. There were even more patrol drones, simple bipedal and quadrupedal robots designed to brandish weapons, to batter down doors, to pounce on and subdue criminals. There were the criminal defendants entering the Justice Annex at the barrels of CCPD guns and being escorted back out again to serve out their sentences in the Q. There were some small groups of out-of-place corpo types in suits, slumming it amongst the plebes for their own amusement. There were even a few squads of jackbooted, great coat-bedecked System goons moving to and fro, doubtless part of some joint law enforcement agreement between the governments of Cyber City and the Independent States of America. They had their own drones, too, every bit as capable as the CCPD ones but styled in a bulkier fashion.
And then there were the people like Ratboy, those dozens of lucky stiffs whose time in the Q had ended and who had been transported back to the Justice Annex nearest to their last known address. They’d been given nothing more than a hearty handshake and the promise of unrelenting violence if they reoffended. Some of them even had family or friends waiting for them to welcome them back into society; most of them just stood there blinking in confusion, wondering what the Hell they were supposed to do with themselves now that they weren’t under armed guard.
Ratboy sniffed as he finished his survey of the plaza. No one here’s giving me a second look, Ratboy thought. Not even the System goons. Well, that suited him just fine. He’d spent his entire life cultivating an aura of unremarkable averageness, an essential adaptation for thriving in the Lows’s criminal underworld. With the last years of his 20s lost to the Q, his body going soft and his hair going thin, he looked like every other middle-aged Lows man running around the plaza; a few tattoos, a few obvious bodymods, dark hair, dark eyes. Why would the CCPD or the System goons give him a second look? He was practically human wallpaper.
There was no one working the window of the food truck, so Ratboy poked his head inside. It was just as cramped as he’d expected, with a cooktop big enough for one and a half people at most. It was currently manned by an older lady muttering to herself in Mandarin. Ratboy assumed she was the titular Chen of Chen’s Chinese. “’Scuse me?” Ratboy called out. “Ma’am? I’d like to order some lunch.” Each sentence was a bit louder than the one before it, but Mrs. Chen paid him no mind, her focus entirely on cooking away for all of her zero customers.
Ratboy frowned. Naturally, he thought to himself. First hour as a free man, and I get to spend it hungry and ignored.
Ratboy put his hands on the counter and stuck his entire head through the window. “Hi? Hello? I want to order some food,” Ratboy said, his voice trending louder without quite rising to the level of a shout. Mrs. Chen turned to look at him, her expression more irritated than afraid. She muttered something in Mandarin that Ratboy didn’t catch and tapped a few times at a tablet on the wall.
A holo projector at the truck’s window whirred into life, its bright light blinding Ratboy for a moment as a digital assistant flickered into existence. “Son of a bitch!” Ratboy shouted, pulling back and blinking furiously, trying to reset his overstimulated retinas.
“Good afternoon, Sir!” came the chipper voice of the digital assistant. “Welcome to Chen’s Chinese! How can I help you today, Mr…” The digital assistant squinted and looked over Ratboy, a pantomime to make it seem like it was recognizing him instead of tapping into a wide network of facial recognition technology to instantly pull up his identity. “Ramon Menendez?”
“Yeah, hi,” Ratboy grumbled. He blinked a few more times and looked at the assistant. It was generically pretty in that unnatural way these things always were, an artificial amalgamation of countless faces and bodies. The projection had a cute little nametag shaped like a cat’s head that read, “M-31”. “Can I get the lunch special, please, Mei?”
“Absolutely, Mr. Menendez! Chicken, asterisk, or beef, asterisk?”
“Beef.”
“What would you like to drink?”
“You have water?”
“We have leachate.”
Ratboy frowned, his nose crinkling in distaste. “Give me a diet soda.”
“Of course, Sir! That’ll be 150 bits.”
Mei pointed at the chip scanner, and Ratboy put his hand on it, feeling the warmth and the tingling sensation as it pulsed energy into the chip embedded in his palm. It’d been years since he’d paid for anything instead of bartering and threatening and begging, and there was something oddly familiar and comforting in the simple transaction. He was back in real society, such as it was, like he’d never left.
A small smile played at the corner of Ratboy’s mouth. He could do this. He’d been born into nothing, and he’d done alright for himself. So what if he had to start over? He had 30 years of experience surviving and making it in this city. He’d figure it out. This time next month, he’d be a mover and shaker in the Lows, bigger and more important than before, and it was all starting here, with reasonable food at a reasonable price.
The scanner buzzed and glowed red. Mei frowned. She looked at him and gave him that studious look again, her algorithms diving more deeply into his identity. Ratboy lifted his hand off the biometric scanner and placed it back down. “Weird. That never happens,” he offered with a weak smile. Mei said nothing. The machine rejected his chip again.
“Mr. Menendez,” Mei said slowly. “I’m having some difficulty processing your payment.”
Ratboy’s mouth went dry, his hunger suddenly forgotten. “Oh, yeah? Weird.” He didn’t feel panic. He’d been in this situation too many times before to panic. Instead, he began looking around, trying to maintain a calm and casual air while taking note of who was looking his way, who looked armed, where the obvious exits were.
“Yes. It seems you’re a wanted felon, which means your Uroyo Co Bank account has been frozen.”
“That’s a mistake,” Ratboy said calmly. “I just got out of the Q this morning. Probably the cops are just slow updating their records and notifying Uroyo Co, you know?” Ratboy glanced over his shoulder. The System goons were still ignoring him. Whatever was going on with him was beneath their interest, probably, and they wouldn’t intervene unless the local police couldn’t handle it. But the Cyber City cops were definitely looking his way.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Menendez,” Mei said, her voice tinged with a digital approximation of sadness. “Our fine men, women, and others in the Cyber City Police Department don’t make mistakes.”
Ratboy’s attention snapped back to the digital assistant. She was looking at him with something between caution and pity, as if he were a stray animal having some kind of seizure on the sidewalk, pathetic but possibly dangerous. “Excuse me?” Ratboy asked, trying and failing to keep his voice even. “The cops fuck up all the time. I saw little kids in the Q. Little kids! You’re telling me the cops don’t make mistakes when there’s fucking five year olds in prison, huh?”
From the food truck’s cooktop, Mrs. Chen called out in Mandarin, just now turning her attention towards the drama unfolding at the checkout window. She was asking a question, Ratboy knew. Probably something like, “What’s going on?” In response, the digital assistant split into two at the waist, one Mei projection wordlessly holding Ratboy’s gaze and the other replying to Mrs. Chen in Mandarin. They spoke back and forth, short sharp sentences. Mrs. Chen grew increasingly agitated. Mei remained inhumanly calm.
His Chinese had never been good, but after five years in the Q, there were a few words he’d heard often enough that his brain didn’t even have to translate them. They were saying one of those words now, over and over: zuìfàn.
Criminal.
The Mei projection talking to Mrs. Chen blinked out of existence, and the one that had been staring at Ratboy blinked and smiled at him. “Sorry about that, Mr. Menendez. Anyway! I’m going to alert the authorities to your current location. Please remain nearby to facilitate your swift and painless apprehension.”
Ratboy didn’t say another word, just spun on his heels and began walking away, pushing through the crowd, using his smaller stature and a constant stream of apologies to move quickly without provoking any interactions beyond the occasional, “Watch where you’re going, dick.” Mei called out after him, saying something about how it was his duty as a good citizen to cooperate with the authorities, but he ignored her. She couldn’t do anything to him anyway, other than shine at him threateningly.
But the bystanders could. The CCPD could. Their drones could. The System could.
Mrs. Chen could, and now Ratboy heard her calling out after him in Mandarin. Just keep walking, Ratboy thought. Push through the crowd. You haven’t done anything other than not get lunch, and that’s not a crime. But if you get into it with her, one of the cops that’s behind on their quotas could pick you up for disturbing the peace or something stupid. So don’t do anything stupid.
Over the din of the Justice Annex plaza crowd, the shouts of “Order up,” the whine of servos and motors, the inane conversations about who was going to do what now that they were free, Ratboy swore he could hear the sound of flip-flops slapping against pavement. Lady, come on, Ratboy thought. Just let it go. Don’t do this. She called out after him in Mandarin, her voice loud enough to be heard over the crowd, but not loud enough to invite an immediate response from any bystanders. Ratboy could pick out some of what she was saying (stop, hold on, wait,) but he had no intention of heeding her. He just kept walking, his gaze locked ahead, his feet moving automatically. He was just going to go in a straight line until there were no cops around and he’d figure out his next move after that. There were plenty of places in this city to get a cheap lunch, and he’d been a fool for trying to get one from the Justice Annex plaza.
The sound of flip-flops grew faster and louder, and Ratboy cursed under his breath. Despite himself, he looked back, and he saw that Mrs. Chen was already on top of him, panting from her brief sprint to catch up, speaking faster than he could follow, and waving a plastic bag full of something shapeless at him. Ratboy snapped his head forward, but Mrs. Chen circled around in front of him, walking backwards, almost tripping, and pushing the bag towards him, her voice growing louder and more insistent.
“Lady, please,“ Ratboy said, his voice wavering between begging and threatening. “I’m leaving, okay? You don’t got to tell everyone I’m a criminal. I’m leaving.”
Mrs. Chen stopped abruptly, planting herself, and Ratboy crashed into her. She stumbled backwards a few steps, but didn’t fall, and she stared him down as he glared at her in disbelief. “Are you fucking crazy?” he hissed. He looked around. The nearest patrol drones regarded him with glowing yellow eyes, their rudimentary AIs running their “Observe” routines. A few CCPD officers had their fingers pressed to their temples, mouths moving as they coordinated with each other. But they weren’t moving in on him, not yet.
“Názhe ba, bèndàn!” Mrs. Chen said, and Ratboy felt her shove something against his chest. He looked down at the bag and back at Mrs. Chen’s face, finding it set with determination and annoyance. With a frustrated grunt, Ratboy accepted the bag. Mrs. Chen gave him a firm nod.
“Okay. Sure,” Ratboy grumbled. “Thank. Thanks for this. Have a great day. Maybe see if you can’t program Mei to be less of a narc.”
Plastic bag in hand, Ratboy stepped around Mrs. Chen and kept walking in a straight line, fully expecting to hear the sirens of a CCPD vehicle, or a shouted order to put his hands in the air, or the digitized bark of “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me, citizen!”
But they never came.
Instead, Ratboy just kept moving forward step by ceaseless step until he found himself at the water’s edge.
Ratboy looked around. He was alone. Save for the mutated seagulls and some mangy stray dogs fighting over scraps, there wasn’t another living thing within a couple hundred feet of him. That was rare in Cyber City and totally unheard of in the Q. He could hear himself think. He could take in his surroundings and actually experience them, instead of just trying to tune out the world around him. So he did.
Off across the bay, the hills of the Facts vibrated with activity, automated trucks moving raw materials into the manufacturing plants and finished goods off to distribution centers. If you closed your eyes, the traffic crossing the bay created a sound not unlike waves lapping against the shore. The air was rank with the sulfurous stink of mud exposed by low tide. It smelled like raw sewage.
It smelled like eating reconstituted protein paste while watching the smiling families on TV say grace over real meat and real vegetables.
It smelled like getting drunk with Sammie and Eight-Ball on the front steps of the dilapidated hab block that counted as the “good” apartments, passing a bottle of whatever they could steal from a corner store back and forth.
It smelled like home.
A tear came to Ratboy’s eye, and he wiped it away, muttering to himself, “Smells so bad, it makes your eyes water,” to no one but himself. He stood there for a few moments taking it in, and then he remembered the plastic bag he clutched in his hands like it was the only thing he owned in the world. He opened it and gasped.
Noodles. Who knew what they were made of, but they were noodles, and some strips of meat with the texture of real muscle fibers, and a few chunks of unidentifiable, anemic veggies. All of it dumped straight in the plastic bag, the heat probably leaching endocrine disruptors into the food, but it was an honest-to-God hot meal in his hand. A plastic fork and a generic can of soda had been thrown in, too, and they were sticky and greasy from the food, but it was such a beautiful sight, Ratboy could feel the stink of the Bay making his eyes water all over again.
“Xièxiè, Mrs. Chen,” he whispered, and he grabbed the fork and dug in.
Ratboy finished the noodles and turned his back to the muddy waters of the bay. To the north, he could see the gleaming skyscrapers of Cyber City proper. Private VTOLcles zipped between them, carrying corpo scum and billionaire brats and an army of personal assistants as they did whatever the fuck it was rich people do. He watched as one of them wobbled through the sky, the sloppy path a sure sign that the thing was piloted by some overprivileged asshole that decided he wanted to fly it himself instead of just letting the autopilot do its thing. Ratboy could see another VTOL, saw the likely collision playing out in his head like a private fireworks show to celebrate his return, and grinned as he cracked open the soda.
It was a miss. A narrow miss, but a miss. “Ah, well,” Ratboy said, raising the can in a mock toast. “Better luck next time,” He took a heavy gulp. It was warm from the food, flat from age, flavorless from being cheap.
It was perfect.
Ratboy drained the can, belched, crumpled up the plastic bag, and threw it over his shoulder into the muck of the bay. He stood up, dusted the crumbs off his dirty shirt, and stretched his hands above his head, his back and his neck popping like a series of gunshots.
“Okay” he said, loud enough to announce his return to the city, loud enough for the stray dogs to look his way for a moment. “Time to figure out how to get some fucking bits.”