Boot Up 1.2

When the first Awakened showed up some thirty years ago most people thought it was one big practical joke. It didn’t help that the words floating above an Awakened’s head can’t be captured on camera.

The first reported Awakened in North America was a twelve year old girl who got the unfortunate Nutritionist class. Rather lame, all things said and done. Still, she grew to be quite famous, even more so when they finally let her actually cook something.

Bread that could restore a person’s health, meatloaf that buffed stats and food that otherwise tasted (reportedly, I was never rich enough to buy anything Awakened-made) pretty damned good. It wasn’t so much that the girl was a talented chef that was impressive, no, it was that she could literally make cancer-curing toast.

Her stuff sold like hotcakes, pardon the pun.

Of course, it took all of a minute before the authorities jumped on that, but by then the news was out and more and more Awakened were popping up across the world. There was some fuss over protecting the Awakened who were all pretty much between the ages of ten and twenty. There was more fuss when, maybe a month after the little Nutritionist girl became famous, some paparazzi got a little too handsy with her and she reacted by using one of her Skills on national television.

Seeing a twelve year old be grabbed by a man only for him to literally Bake to a nice brown crisp was something of a shock. I mostly thought it was funny the way his face slackened before he caught fire.

That’s when the lobbyists and politicians finally got the leeway they needed in North America to start an association called the NAAA, or the North American Awakened Association.

They were the ruling body, supporters, and trainers of anyone that awakened. Part social services, part policing force, part scientific research group, they did as any governmental association would and muddled in things best left unmuddled. The bigger corps got their slice of pie too, but they were generally pretty fair to Awakened. They didn’t want to alienate the new one percent.

The trek back home was pretty long. Usually I’d have boarded a tram over to Residential Block Oh-Oh-Four, the super building where I lived, but the damned things were always packed to the gills. The words floating above my head would make me stand out like a whore in one of those hyper-Christian enclaves. I’d probably get jumped just as quickly too.

So when I snuck out of the alleyway those three assholes had left me in, I pulled out my phone and Uber’d a self-driving car to the nearest intersection. It was going to cost me, but at least I made it to my block in relative peace.

Residential Block Oh-Oh-Four was nothing to write home about. Twenty flours of housing units stretched over nearly a square kilometer. An optimised nest of corridors, living spaces, mini-shopping centres and even a small park, all surrounded by a few thousand shoe-box apartments.

It was the kind of shithole no one wanted to live in, but it was affordable on a student’s budget and relatively clean. The corp that ran the place had this whole spiel about safety and security, which meant that drug pushers were pretty discrete and the block had its own security force that patrolled at all hours.

I slid into one of the side entrances, nodding a greeting to one of the girls smoking by the entrance. I probably looked like shit with my bruised nose and the slouched way I was walking to keep the pressure off of my ribs. Inside, it smelled like sweat, antibacterial spray and pot smoke, basically the smell I’d started to associate with home.

There were elevator wells at each corner of the block where restaurants and shops tried to grab your attention before you made your way back up to your apartment. It was possible, easy even, to live your entire life in a single block. That was, if you were willing to stomach junk food every day.

I paused right next to the elevator that would bring me closest to home and walked up to the unoccupied counter of a small Burger King. A screen flipped out of the counter, brilliant advertisements for daily specials flashing by before a soothing recorded voice asked me what I wanted to order.

Ignoring the display, I leaned up against the counter and dragged myself into the store. “Hey, Dip?” I called over the thrum of ovens and the clickety-clack of the machines preparing themselves for rush hour.

“Rich!” a deep baritone replied. Ten seconds later a man that had more in common with a whale than homosapians waddled his way around to the counter. “You still on for tonight’s shift?” he asked before tossing a towel onto one uniformed shoulder. “Tania’s preggers again and I need someone to cover real bad tonight. Chirst, you look like you got into a fist fight with a wall. What happened to your face?”

“Nah, fuck that,” I said. The job was about what you’d expect for minimum wage at a fast food joint. It was hours of boredom with the occasional panic when something broke down and you had to call corporate to send tech support over to make every better. But shit, it was cash, literally a floor down from home, and the hours were alright for a student. If I was sneaky I could even get some homework done between shifts. “Just here to tell you that I quit.” I couldn’t keep the smile from my face, and really, there was no reason to.

“What? Shit, those assholes at that thai place upstairs poach you? I knew I shouldn’t have fucked the owner’s daughter, but but that’s no reason to shit on me like that, you know? They the ones that screwed your nose up?” Dip said.

“Nah man,” I said then pointed up to somewhere above my head. My grin grew to shit-eating proportions. “I’m heading for the big leagues.”

Dip followed the direction my finger was pointing in, then his eyes went comically wide as he took in the name and role floating there. “Jesus H. Christ on a toaster strudel.” Dip looked at me, then back at the words floating there. With clumsy fingers he reached into a pocket and pulled out a smartphone that he waved before his face, the camera pointed my way. “Holy shit, they’re not showing on pics.”

“Yeah, no shit, it’s the real deal, Dip,” I said. Dip was an okay guy, but it I never saw him again I wasn’t about to shed tears over it. “I’m off to my room, bro. See you never!” With that said I pushed away from the counter and started making my way to the elevator.

“Wait, who’s gonna cover your shift?” he asked.

“I could honestly not care any less,” I called back.

“Hey, Rich, remember me when you’re all famous and loaded alright!” he called after me. “And if you see Tania, send her pregnant ass down here.”

“Will do!” I said as I slipped into the elevator and tapped the panel for the second floor. Seconds later the lift jerked up and I was on my floor. I had to sidestep around some teens lounging on the floor with their phones plugged into a walljack but otherwise the path home was quiet.

After unlocking my door with a press of my thumb to a pad, I pushed into my own little slice of heaven. 300 square feet of cheap linoleum, a bed tucked into one corner of my living room/kitchen/bedroom. “Welcome home, Richard,” the house’s virtual intelligence said. I locked the door behind me then just stood there.

I didn’t really know where to go from there. Sure, I was Awakened. I could probably do all sorts of cool shit now, but that didn’t mean I knew what any of those things were. It didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual and what I knew about the Awakened, what I really knew, could probably fit in a pamphlet.

I would probably continue going to school, which sounded about right, but you didn’t see too many Awakened just taking normal jobs. Most of them were hired out by the government or some corporation or another. They were supposed to be the only ones able to fight off the Insanity, and they, no we, were supposed to have powers just a bit beyond human .

My hand flexed by my side, opening and closing. I didn’t feel powerful. In fact, I felt like shit. My bathroom was pretty pathetic, but I stepped over tohe dirty towels pressed up against my shower and leaned against the sink to stare at myself in the mirror.

One cheek was redder than the other, my nose had a nice bluish-purple tint to it, and there was still a fair bit of blood on the collar of my shirt. I started to undress, unceremoniously tossing my clothes aside before hopping into the shower.

I leaned back while lukewarm recycled water ran down my body. “Home, do I have messages?” I called out over the sound of the shower.

“You have... thirty-three, new messages,” The VI said.

I blinked at that. “What?”

“You have... thirty-three, new messages,” the simplistic computer repeated.

“Holy shit,” I muttered. I was used to maybe one or two messages a week. Mostly shit about my rent almost being late or my phone bill being unpaid. “Start at the first one,” I said.

“Message one: ‘Hello Mr. Reid, this is Timothy Muisk of the North American United Banking Clan, I’m your new financial advisor. I just wanted to be the first to congratulate you on you Awakening and to inform you that your bank account has been upgraded from standard bronze to premium platinum. We also added any interest you would have made retroactively to your account. We’ll be sending you your new chip by express mail, you should receive it within the day. Please, if you have any questions, feel free to call me. We hope you continue to employ us for all your banking needs. Goodbye.’”

I stepped out of the shower, more confused than when I went in. “Home, delete that one.”

“Message Deleted. Message two: Hey, this is Geonavi, for Slice and Slice Pizza, we wanted to invite you to our fami--”

“Delete that one too,” I said while pulling on a fresh-ish pair of pants. “Stop replay.” So, thirty-odd messages and it hadn’t been more than two hours or so. Either they knew something I didn’t, or as many corps as possible wanted to stake a claim before their competitor’s could. I could recall pictures of some Awakened with logos on their gear, was it all just a sort of sponsorship thing? And what if I started fighting in an arena or something, would they pay me more if I was wearing something with a Slice and Slice logo on it?

Probably. Most corps weren’t exactly moral at the best of times.

I was just slipping on my shoes when there was a knock at my door.

“Home, who is it?” If it was another corp rep I was going to not-so-politely tell them to piss off.

“You have... five... armed guests waiting for your permission to enter.”

I froze mid-step. “Armed? Home any affiliation markers? Tags, badges, something?” That couldn’t be from the fight in the alley. At worse they’d send a detective to ask questions. My mind went to some pretty dark places after that. Kidnappers, terrorists, mobsters who would insist on staking a claim on the newest Awakened?

The knock came again.

“IFF reads five markers for the NAAA.”

Shit, it was worse than what I’d feared; the government. “Home: hard lock the door.”

A hard lock would, in theory, stop them from being able to hack through the door. At least, that’s what I was telling myself a half-second before the door was slammed open with enough force that the handle embedded itself into the wall.

Three men in SWAT uniforms with bullpup rifles in hand ran into the room, two of them immediately turning their guns to point at me. “Richard Reid!” One of them screamed through the distortion of a mask. “You’re coming with us.”