Wireless, p.3
Wireless, page 3
The only risk was getting caught.
It wasn’t worth it. Once I’d finished my sim later today, and my suit fit more comfortably below my belt, I’d be able to see reason and realize it wasn’t even worth considering.
Aiden’s sim ended. After he’d relaxed a bit, I opened the lid and went about removing all the equipment while he took off the goggles.
Eyes still closed, he said, “It’s not as dirty and disgusting as you’ve been led to believe.”
“What?”
“Going wireless.” He looked up at me. “It’s not what you think.”
I focused on disconnecting leads and removing electrodes. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s illegal. And there’s a reason for that.”
“You ever thought to question that reason?”
I furrowed my brow and didn’t look at him as I dropped a set of leads into the sanitation box. “I studied history just like you. I read all about the epidemics and—”
“You mean all the diseases that were eradicated?”
Meeting his eyes, I said, “Eradicated in no small part thanks to the sim movement?”
Aiden shook his head and laughed. “Keith. Don’t be naïve.”
“Naïve?” I pulled the last couple of electrodes free, resisting the urge to yank them off. “What are you talking about?”
He slowly sat up. “Look how much the government makes off every sim session.”
I eyed him as I wound the electrode leads around my hand. “The government doesn’t make money off sims.”
Aiden arched an eyebrow. “They pay for these simhouses with tax dollars and then turn around and bill people every time they use them.” Rolling his eyes, he added, “Government’s making money hand over fist.”
I pursed my lips. Anti-government talk with a surveillance camera overhead wasn’t wise, so I kept my mouth shut.
Unlike Aiden. “Do you really think all of this”—he gestured around the chamber—“is because of their altruistic desire to keep us all safe and healthy?”
I handed him his suit and a clean towel and then moved back to the console to close out the sim program. Truth was, I had questioned that a few times.
“I’m not the only one, you know.” He dabbed at the sweat on his face with the towel. “More people than you probably imagine.”
“And you’re all fucking crazy. The cops have been raiding lounges left and right.”
Aiden chuckled. “Oh yes. Their ‘raids’ where they storm into a place with five hundred people and manage to arrest three, but pick up a handful of drifters or junkies hanging around so they can say they got twenty? Yeah. Terribly impressive.”
“And is it worth it for those three who get caught?”
“They’re idiots if they get caught.” He stood and started getting dressed.
“Why would you take that risk at all?” Resting a hand on the console, I eyed him over the top of the monitor. “What could you possibly be getting out of it that’s worth jail time?”
“What do I get out of it?” He looked me in the eyes and gestured at the chamber. “Everything I don’t get from this.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
Aiden took a breath but then released it and shook his head as he zipped up his suit. “It’s impossible to explain. You’d just have to experience it.”
“No, thanks.”
Aiden regarded me silently for a long moment. He broke eye contact and finished dressing, lacing up his boots and pulling on his gloves, but when he looked at me again, it was clear the thought hadn’t left his mind. Especially when, moving his lips as little as possible just like I had earlier, he said, “I think you’d enjoy it.”
I almost choked on my breath.
Before I could speak, he continued, “You’re not like the other simtechs, Keith.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“No, I don’t.” He locked eyes with me. “But I’d like to.”
My throat tightened.
Aiden looked away again, tugging at his glove as if he needed something to do. “If you should change your mind, meet me tonight on the other side of the mech track. Zone 9, Crossing 4. Nineteen thirty.”
I glared at him, pretending a tempting prickle of forbidden excitement wasn’t working its way up my spine. “You’re insane.”
He responded with a toothy grin, some of that earlier confidence returning. “See you there?”
“What? Fuck no.”
“Well, if you change your mind”—he winked—“Zone 9, Crossing 4. Nineteen thirty.”
“Duly noted,” I growled and gestured at the door. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“Right. Two weeks.”
And then he was gone.
Chapter 3
The sun was setting behind bronze-stained clouds, dipping into the blurry horizon on the opposite side of the sparkling ocean, when the mech tracks came into view.
I’d only seen this place from a distance. A safe distance. Citizens were only grudgingly allowed to be up here, and there was law upon law on the books imposing stiff penalties for those who went past this point.
But I didn’t keep that distance tonight, and as the sun sank into the smoky horizon, I glanced warily around in case a cop happened by. There weren’t any cameras out here. San Angeles kept those in the places where its citizens frequented, reasoning that anyone foolish enough to come out here didn’t deserve the security of constant surveillance. This was no man’s land; anyone who came out this far was on his own, not to mention just as likely to be arrested as anyone who attacked him.
With every step I took, I was inching closer to breaking all kinds of laws, and all in the name of seeing people committing multiple felonies. Or maybe committing them myself if temptation got the best of me.
I stopped at the edge of the mech track. The giant band of reinforced asphalt, pitted and cracked from enduring the crushing weight of giant machinery, separated the gleaming city from the splintered remains of the Old City. Nothing out here was maintained anymore, and block by block, it was being demolished to make way for industry. Until such time as a mech came by, crushed them, and removed the rubble, the buildings stayed standing, housing rats, drifters, and wireless lounges within their crumbling skeletons.
A deep rumble reverberated through my bones. As it intensified, it reached my ears, and at my feet, tiny pebbles vibrated on the pavement.
I turned, and cresting the northern horizon was a monstrous black cloud. A second later, the steel crown of the mech appeared. It was moving slowly, as anything that big ought to, but I didn’t dare cross the track until it had passed. If the thing didn’t roll over me, its operators would see me, and one of the escorts might snatch me up and turn me in for the drifter bounty that a lot of workers out here used to supplement their incomes. They were usually occupied with watching for debris—the top-heavy mechs weren’t the most graceful machines, and even a substantial divot in the pavement could make them wobble precariously.
Still, I took no chances. I crouched behind the concrete barrier. The rumbling crescendoed, and the entire mech track groaned and shook beneath hundreds of tons of diesel-powered steel and rubber. At least it wasn’t one of the bipeds. Those clumsy things shook the whole goddamned world when they went by, and no matter how much the manufacturers improved those titanium legs, sometimes the joints broke. At least the reactor cores were properly reinforced now, and even if a mech fell, the leaks and meltdowns didn’t happen anymore. Good thing too; there was nothing quite like having an entire quadrant evacuated for two weeks after even a small walker stumbled, crashed, and sprang a core leak.
The mech rolled past, and I peeked around the concrete to steal a glance at it.
In dusty black suits and helmets, three escorts rode motorcycles ahead of the mech, and three more cruised behind it, ostensibly to clear away debris that could damage a tire and to watch for weak spots in the asphalt. Which, of course, explained the rifles slung over their shoulders and the pistols at their hips.
I pressed myself harder against the barrier and held my breath even though there was no way they’d see or hear me. Once the mech and its escorts were gone, I waited until the ground beneath me had stilled completely before I came out from behind the barrier.
The air was thick and acidic now, and my eyes watered as I coughed into my elbow. It would have been nice if the mech companies would come through with the new-generation machinery they’d been promising for five years now. Instead of working off reactor power and moving off diesel power, these new ones were supposed to be purely nuclear. Some people bitched about that idea, but I had yet to hear anyone complain about going full nuclear while they were gagging on diesel fumes.
I jogged across the track and vaulted over the barrier on the other side. The maintenance stairs were sooty and littered with debris that had probably blown off the mech track or in from the Old City, but aside from creaking beneath me, they were in good repair. Quite possibly the best maintained structure this side of the track.
And there, at the bottom of the stairwell, that cocky son of a bitch was waiting for me. He had his arms folded, legs crossed at the ankles, shoulder pressed against a post that was holding up a smashed streetlight. Naturally, he wore that smarmy grin on his face that made me want to smack him even while I suddenly remembered why I’d come here in the first place.
“Didn’t think you’d come.” That smirk said he’d known damn well I’d be here.
“I’m sure.” I raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you waited for me anyway?”
“Well.” He shrugged, still smirking. “I figured just in case you did come, I didn’t want you to be stuck out here on your own.”
“Much appreciated,” I muttered. “So where exactly are we going?”
That ever-present amusement sparkled in his eyes. “I think you know exactly where we’re going.”
He was exasperating. Seriously.
“I mean, where?” I gestured out at the row of desolate buildings stretching upward like the decaying ribs of some giant long-dead creature. “Which direction?”
“Oh, well. Why didn’t you say so?” He nodded down what must have been a road in some bygone era. “This way.”
I followed him without a word.
Didn’t seem like there’d be that many people on this side of the track, but there were obvious paths beaten into the rubble. Flat strips of tamped-down dirt, trash, and glass branched out from the crossing, winding toward and between decrepit buildings, pocked by the occasional single tire track from what I assumed was a motorcycle.
The noise of the New City thrummed in the background, but out here, it was eerily quiet. Like the difference between an empty room and a room full of people who weren’t talking. Not just silent, but dead.
Aiden stopped beside a motorbike chained to a corroded fire hydrant. He unlocked the chain, tucked it into one of the worn saddlebags, and gestured for me to get on behind him.
“Aren’t you worried about the noise?” I asked.
“The noise isn’t ideal, but I’d rather make some noise than have to outrun the patrols on foot.”
“Does that happen often?”
Aiden shrugged. “The more time you spend on this side, the more likely it is to happen.”
“That didn’t really answer my question.”
He looked at me with an expression that was half-amused, half-serious. “The longer we stand out here, the more—”
“Point taken. Let’s go.” I got on the bike behind him. As the engine roared to life beneath us, I wrapped my arms around his waist. That was a weird feeling. Thanks to the thick layers between us, we weren’t technically touching, but…we were.
Aiden pulled out onto the narrow road, and we headed deeper into the Old City.
Hard to believe there had ever been any life out here. I’d seen the images, of course. There were thousands and thousands of archived images of what this place had looked like in its heyday, back when it was still Los Angeles, before it sprawled south to San Diego and north to Oakland-Francisco, far enough in each direction to meld together and create the city-state it was today. I knew people had once dwelled and worked and walked and driven in this place, but riding through here now, it was impossible to believe.
People had claimed for decades that they’d seen ghosts out here. This empty place was supposed to be alive with the spirits of the dead. Now that I’d breathed this air myself, I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in ghosts—I had an open mind about those things—but there was nothing here. Nothing. No life, past or present. None that I could feel, anyway.
The road, such as it was, forked. Aiden steered us to the left, and the bike rumbled up a wider, straighter stretch of cracked pavement between crumbling ruins. After maybe half a kilometer, he stopped at the foot of a large building. He chained the bike out of sight behind a pile of broken concrete, and we continued on foot, walking around the building.
And that was when Aiden finally broke the silence. “You’re sure about this, right?”
I glanced at him. “Now you’re going to talk me out of it?”
“No, of course not.” He was more serious then than I’d ever seen him. “Just making sure you’re aware of what you’re getting yourself into.”
I stopped, and gravel crunched under my boot as I turned toward him. “I’m well aware of what I’m getting myself into. I’m assuming you knew that when you suggested I meet you here in the first place.”
“I did,” he said with a nod. “But we’re almost there. And most people have second thoughts right about the time they’ve gone through the front door. I’m just making sure you have all those second thoughts while we’re still out here where you can only get busted for a misdemeanor.” He gestured sharply in the direction we’d been walking. “Just going into the club is grounds for jail time. After that, it’s a question of how many offenses you commit and how severe they are. But as long as you’re out here, you can turn around and not worry about anything more than a slap on the wrist.”
I gulped. I’d known all that with every step it had taken to get here. But I’d made it this far, hadn’t I?
“Do you want to keep going?” he asked. “Or do you want to go back?”
“I want to keep going.”
Aiden searched my eyes as if to make sure I wasn’t going to change my mind. Then he continued down the path, and I followed.
“This is the place.” He indicated a broken walkway leading up to an entrance to the building we’d just come around.
This had been a skyscraper back in its day. Still stood its full height, but it was a half-constructed apartment block compared to the soaring structures piercing the clouds on the other side of the mech track. Most of its glass was gone, leaving slowly corroding beams holding up floor after gaping, empty floor.
We stopped outside a door that barely stayed up on its hinges. When Aiden pushed it, it shrieked open, and he gestured for me to go inside.
The door banged shut behind us, and a rickety set of corroded metal stairs took us down into what must have been a parking garage once. There weren’t any cars—any that remained would have been stripped and scrapped decades ago—but certainly plenty of evidence that they’d been here. The faint dust-covered remains of oval-shaped oil slicks. Badly faded arrows painted on the walls and the ground. Rusted and nearly unintelligible traffic control signs bolted to cylindrical concrete pillars.
And I wasn’t too thrilled about the long cracks in more than a few of the walls and pillars that were supposed to keep all the upper floors up off our heads.
“So, um…” My voice echoed eerily throughout the garage, and I instinctively lowered it. “What if there’s an earthquake while we’re in here?”
Aiden glanced at me over his shoulder. “These buildings have been standing since the twentieth century. If they haven’t come down yet, they’re not coming down tonight.”
“Okay, except they haven’t been maintained for, what, fifty of those years? Sixty?”
“Almost eighty, history scholar.” He glanced back again, this time with a playful smirk. “Relax. They were barely maintained when people still used them.”
“That’s not very encouraging.”
“It’ll be fine.” He stopped. “It’s just down the next set of stairs, but I should probably warn you: it’s overwhelming the first time. For everyone. You’ll understand when you get there, but trust me on this. If it freaks you out, you’re not the only one.”
I swallowed. We weren’t moving. Though he hadn’t out and said it, I suspected he was giving me one last chance for second thoughts.
I looked him in the eyes. “Why me?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah. But what made you think I’d come?”
He shrugged. “Gut feeling.”
“There had to be more than that. I could’ve turned you in just for suggesting we come here. What made you think I wouldn’t?”
Aiden moistened his lips. “I just had a feeling you were different.” His eyebrow arched. “I mean, you’re here, right? So the question is how much further are you willing to go?”
And wasn’t that a good question?
“I’m…I’m not sure. I guess I’m just curious.”
“Starts out that way for most of us.”
“Why do you keep coming back?”
“Because it’s better than sim sex. Way better.”
I bristled. “Sim sex is clean. It’s hygienic.”
“And mechanical,” he replied dryly. “Tell me, do you ever actually feel like you’re bonding with your sim partner? Like there’s something there besides, I don’t know, tripping your cerebral cortex or whatever so you produce enough dopamine and have an orgasm?”
Against my will, my mind replayed one of the images of my session with the Aiden-like sim partner, and I rolled my shoulders to keep from shivering. “There’s no need to bond with a sim partner.”
