Seven Years Later

Colton gracefully slipped into the doorway, pressing himself against the fiber door as the UN police-troops, commonly knowns as poops, passed. The air was dry and even the shade had him sweating in the winter heat.

Colton had no pretension that he was going unseen: he knew city cameras were filming everything he did, the SolSys corp. glasses around his neck tracked his position and recorded AV (audiovisual) and even the super-resolution geosync satellites had AI monitoring each and every pedestrian. But those all fell within corporate and national jurisdiction.

Sure, the UN had their own satellites, but the only thing the UN could do with them was make a court request to process the imagery by AI for every mildly suspicious looking person in the city who happened to be avoiding the poop scans . Which would be turned down. Strict limitations on the policing process was how nations maintained sovereignty from the UN as well as how criminals maintained their distance from jail.He waited until the UN poops were at least a block over, because there was no way to know if they were cybernetic or had been packing tracking gear. Then he darted to the other end of the alley and came out into the busy street nonchalant, envelope safe in his jacket pocket. He blended in immediately, just another low level trial employee petitioning for corporate citizenship, living down here as they hoped to move into an arcology.

Chances were the Midwest Monitoring Network had already identified the holographic circuitry wedge in the envelope he was carrying as nonlethal, and yeah–maybe the Network knew there was something illicit going on, but lucky for Colton, America wasn't about to make poop life easy and give that information to them. The American philosophy was that poops could figure it out on their own or go fuck themselves. America and the UN made an uneasy alliance of powers, to say the least. Crime rates were high and the noncooperation had led to a surge of police-troops stationed all across America.

Of course, the corporation pool networks–Colton knew he was currently being surveilled by the creatively named NEM_2-1 and AXCS_F-3 networks–had no such qualms about handing over information. They just had price tags bigger then the UN put on petty, nonviolent crime.

So this was the safest job he'd done in a while, just passing along a chunk of quantum computer architecture containing some sort of specialized, AI-designed logic, totally harmless. Nothing like last night's organs or last week's weapon designs or the illicit nanotechnologies that had almost got him a few months back. Most runners didn't want to know what they ran for plausible deniability, but Colton always asked: he wanted to know if he was carrying a nuke or note, although he was fine delivering either. Perhaps it was a carryover from his cyberspace days, when you had to know everything and out. The psychonostician in the clinic had told him that anyways, years ago.

A lot of brokers would shake their head when he inevitably asked–they wanted plausible deniability themselves. Yeah, yeah, Colton would agree. Curiosity killed the cat, sure. And next time he'd ask again. What am I running here? People would get spooked, even stop working with him when he kept it up. This time though, the broker had practically begged for the chance to explain what it was. There was a special breed of street broker that relished sharing how big and interesting their deals were. They didn't last long and their stories were never interesting. Powell's organization, Arbanathum, had never dealt with this particular one before. Colton was doing this trial run as a favor.And because he needed the money. And because the brokers with long lifespans didn't like him.

Innocuous, he passed beneath rows of identical twenty-story apartments, the ground floors all leased to chain stores, and a sparkling glass arcology loomed in the distance. The scene was a textbook example of the Denver megacity planning: there were apartment buildings and arcologies and little else. As the primary legal inhabitance zone in the Colorado state, the megacity had strict boundaries on where people could live, and to accommodate the migrant population of the previous century into that limited space, thousands of apartment complexes had been built up by corporations on repossessed land under governmental contract.

The contracts, which had provided purportedly low-rent housing to Denver's migrant population, had also allowed corporations to set aside some land for their arcologies: insular superstructures with shops, houses and an entire internal ecosystem where corporate employees would live their lives. It was a dream, a kind of Eden for people down here, where bad air, burning heat and mutant viruses could make life unbearable. The bustling concrete streets ran ramrod straight into the distance. It was ugly, unpleasant and devoid of life.

The door opened with a whoosh of air so hot it made Colton think he'd melt. There were apparently temperature regulations for city buildings–he had recently learned that–and they were incredibly loose. Probably so the companies could save on AC in the winter.

A short jingle designed to be addictive played on his entry, and then a cutesy, high-pitched voice designed to appeal to his age-gender-personality profile welcomed him. Colton hated the voice on principal, but he knew if he let his guard down, just you do you'd as the commercials encouraged, just let go and enjoyed because he worked hard and deserved a break...Colton shook his head with a grimace. The tactics got to you after years.

"Welcome to the Big Bunny Bar!" The voice synthesizer giggled. "Check out our daily deals, special menu and enjoy your stay!" He walked past sparsely populated tables, a few groups talking quietly, and grabbed a seat at the dimly lit bar.

Colton didn't like it. What kind of broker sent an underage kid to a bar for a pickup? Whatever. He mentally shrugged.

"So who the fuck named this place?" Colton asked the barkeeper, thin man with a limp mustache wiping a glass. As a runner, discretion was generally the name of the game. The bartender raised an eyebrow and a few patrons gave him a glance. "Big Bunny Bar, is this a kid's stim or something?"

Man next to him, skin mottled and proportions ugly, gave him a grin. In the age of affordable beauty, his sheer natural ugliness was almost endearing. "That's what I'm asking, kid."

"The bar is owned by Fun Eats, a subsidiary of AgriCo Holdings." The barkeeper read off his glasses with a scowl. "So you gonna order anything?"

"Yeah, sure. I'm picking up a bottle. On Earl's tab, Madrid sangria." The barkeeper paused and then went into the backroom.

The ugly man next to him barked a stab of laughter. "Boy, what kind of place you think this is? You order beer, not whatever that shit was. Hey keep! Don't bother looking for that, we don't have it." He called at the curtain covering the backroom entrance and then turned back to Colton. "Listen kid, I've worked at places like this. I don't know what your friend told you, but there's nothing called 'sangria' here."

Colton shrugged.

"You're being set up, somebody's gonna report your fake ID. Better to buy stuff off the street, get a connection, you know? I can hook you up if you want..."

Colton stayed quiet. The man kept talking, Colton's silence only egging him on. Overhead a ceiling fan spun lazily, kneading the hot air in the room.

"...What's a guy like you even doing down here? You're not fooling anyone with that skin, obviously taking rejuv."

Colton did his best to stifle his surprise, not saying a word. He wasn't about to correct the man and explain that actually he had been a v-child and his body was vat grown, and it just happened that the vat skin had the same telltale cellular signs that rejuv did. And nobody should've been able to tell in the first place. Right now, anything he might say could only make things worse. Who was this guy?

Colton was getting worried when the barkeeper finally came out with a brown bag and asked him to come down to the end of the bar for an ID scan. Colton gratefully moved away from the man and grabbed the bag to peer in. The bottle inside had a roll of bills stuffed in its neck. Great, a pain to remove and impossible to count right here. He slid the envelope over the bar, obscured to other patrons by the ID scanner.

"Guess they had it." Colton hoisted the bag and flashed a smile at the ugly man as he left. The barkeeper had to stop himself from giving the runner a glare.

Colton popped back out onto the street, adrenaline rising. The run had been a shit show. Colton could handle living on the edge,but it was a bizarre location to send an underage runner, and too crowded and conspicuous a location besides. On top of that, the elephant in the room: how had the man in there noticed his skin? That took some hardcore cybernetics. This all spoke to an inept and inexperienced broker. Possibly leaky. Well, it had been a trial run. Done only as a one-off favor for Powell. And because he needed the money. And because good brokers didn't work with him.

Colton kept his cool and moved inconspicuously with the crowd under the painfully sunny sky. Then surreptitiously stepping into an alley between two lines of apartment complexes, he carefully wiggled the cash out of the bottle's neck and counted it with hands in the bag. He tossed the cheap fiber bag and bottle into the dumpster, jammed the three hundred dollars in crinkled bills into his jacket pocket, rejoined the streets once again.

Now that he didn't have to avoid the poop scans, he walked freely and quickly through the straight streets, heading for the SolSys arcology that was home. He figured he'd take another run from this new broker...just had to be more careful, more professional next time.

A few more years of this and he'd have the cash to get over to the black clinics of Canada, have them reconnect his wetware. Colton swallowed. The wetware in his cortex was permanent, still inside him, because it had been integrated into him before birth: even after years of therapy there had no way to remove it without disassembling his brain cell by cell. The rehabilitation clinic had only taken out the spinal interface and port. Nevertheless, the corto-cervical interface had been designed by military AI, which made the reconnection a real difficult, expensive procedure involving more AI. Powell said she knew people, connections that would get him fixed up. But until then he was stuck as a street jockey, a runner transporting illicit items for small cash.

Colton would've signed on to become a cybernetic enforcer in a minute, rake in cash for the danger and unhealthy modifications– he didn't care what happened to this meatbody. Or hell, maybe be an underage doll. But he needed wetwork for those, and putting in a replacement system would fry his brain with the old one still in there.

The world was floating inside him, inaccessible. But doing these runs was stupid, a waste of his skills. Powell should be paying him to get the surgery done.