Synthwave

Syn stepped out of the portal of swirling, multicolored energy, like breaking the surface of a churning oil slick. Armed guards automatically moved in to disarm and inspect her. After a brief ID check, it was the decontamination crew’s turn to make sure that there was no threat present.

The After Action Report was dull and pointless. She rushed through the paperwork, eager to get away. The cyborg practically ran to the hot lab’s parking lot. Her motorcycle was a strange hybrid between a cruiser and a racer. The driver sat low to the ground inside of a half-enclosed cockpit.

The glow of the city dominated the entire western skyline. Even at full speed it was a long ride back and an even longer trip through the winding highways that would take her to the sector that she lived in. After a long, lonely hour the skyline and its landmarks became visible. A series of columns with platforms jutting out to the sides, with towers and antennas lining them. The black, glossy pyramid that housed one of the larger corporations. The city was massive, it was impossible to fully memorize its layout or even comprehend its dimensions, and it was only one of many.

Her building housed ten thousand people, many of them clones. Interestingly, the people that did the most advocating for clones lived in much less crowded buildings. She parked in the complex’s colossal parking garage, the weight of her sidearm comforting her during the long walk to the elevator.

Her room was dark, the only illumination came from the indicators on a few control panels, and from where the blinds didn’t quite reach the bottom of the window. A thin line of multicolored light came in through this gap. It sat there on the wall, constantly changing color, fragments of images and patterns were visible in it.

She was wired, her mind restless, squirming. She popped a pill, a little something to help her relax, and then she told the computer to play some soothing music. She slipped out of her boots and peeled off her jumpsuit. After a mission like that, a long hot shower was in order. Unfortunately, it gave her time to think.

Her world was so ugly, and what was beautiful was fake, artificial. Maybe that was why she had agreed to work on the project. She had always been an explorer and a voyeur at heart. She wanted to go out there and find something different, something that was real. Maybe she was just sick of her own universe’s madness, maybe she just wanted to get a taste of the insanity of the other dimensions.

Syn turned the shower off, stepped over to the drying units and flipped them on. Heat radiated out for a few seconds before, as if on cue, the power died. She stood there in darkness for several minutes, soaking wet and starting to get cold.

The frustrated woman wondered over to the window, using the backup hand crank to raise the blinds. It looked like the whole city had gone out again. It was surreal, seeing the buildings as vague shapes. She looked up at the sky, without the overwhelming light, the cosmos was visible. She spotted an interesting cluster of stars, from this angle it looked like someone was pouring out a glass of sparkling liquid. Then the sight of flashlight beams drew her eyes back down to the blackened streets. If it stayed dark long enough, there would be riots and looting.

It was like the universe was telling her to stay with the project. The other stars were too far away, the planet was overcrowded and always hungry for more energy. All other generation methods had come up short. Taking power from other dimensions was the only viable option.

The lights came back on, the music started up again. She went into the bathroom and got dry. Opening up her closet, Syn saw a variety of clothes. The streets were dangerous, best to stick with something functional. She put on a black jumpsuit, the soft inner lining felt good against her skin. Before heading out she grabbed the shoulder holster that was hanging from a peg on the wall. The big old brick semi-auto would keep people from screwing with her.

The sky was now starless, just empty darkness, the cosmos drowned out by the light. Everywhere she looked there was a discharge of neon colors. Every empty space had some kind of advertisement. The ads ranged from gaudy to profane to something that approached sensible. The city was soaked in light and saturated by noise. And everywhere there were people. Many had referred to the multitude as an infestation. Syn wasn’t that hateful, at least not yet.

So many lonely faces as she walked the streets. So many people, packed together so tightly, and yet so many of them were lonely. How had it come to this?

She moved up onto a higher level, which was a walkway suspended between buildings. Trash was everywhere, both piled up in heaps and scattered around; refuse of all kinds was stacked on top of things, food wrappers blew around in the breeze. A monorail moved passed her, through the windows she could see the dead, lethargic faces of its passengers.

This section of the city was seemingly locked into a permanent state of debauchery. Cybernetic enhancements were used as fashion statements and ways to appeal to people that were looking for new thrills. Every eye was locked open in the frenzy of a drug binge.

They sold it all here, synthetic substances, all-natural plant extracts, whatever suited your fancy. Junk to shoot, pills to pop, stuff to smoke, they sold it all here. Her kind were built to be immune to any and all intoxicants. That wasn’t a problem, certain enterprising individuals had simply developed new substances to sell to the tank born. This was the place where she had gone to activate her sexuality, which had been cut out of her DNA. This is where she would go to get a womb, if she ever found a man that she wanted to have a child with.

A sign red, “Companion bot, buy one get one free,” a sign next to it said, “Cheap! Custom made love droid. Bio-synth, real flesh upgrades.”

Syn passed a store that sold V.R. sex experiences, and then one that specialized in exotic modifications to male genitals, and then one that replaced skin with other materials. She saw women that were exaggerated parodies of the female form, with oversized lips and hips and inflated breasts, asses that seemed more liquid than solid. And she saw grotesque, over muscled men with bulges that looked like they would be more painful than pleasing. There were people that had extensive robotic upgrades, and that was a turn on for some. One of them had a bright purple mohawk and several piercings, one side of his face completely metallic.

There was this group of people, to call them a subculture would be wrong because they weren’t organized. These people had become disenchanted with life; they no longer had a sense of purpose. The only thing that kept them going was some primordial drive and maybe a healthy dose of mindless pleasure seeking, something to dull the crippling feeling of pointlessness. Maybe it was some symptom of the modern age, people no longer struggled; no longer fought as they once did, no longer had to worry about old age and sickness. It was a problem that society had been grappling with for some time.

A charming little café/automat offered refuge from the seething mass of people and the endless ads. Syn ordered an iced coffee and settled into a booth. The data from the trans-dimensional scanners moved into her awareness as the computer that was grafted to her brain checked the data.

The world wasn’t getting any bigger and people weren’t dying like they used to. The space program was going well, but it could only get them so far. Other solar systems were too far away to be colonized. At least with the propulsion systems that were currently available. They would eventually have to deal with the problem of interstellar travel, and that was a hurdle that they might never be able to jump. That was why the program was so important.

There were places that had an abundance of energy. Those areas also seem to always have hostile native populations with advanced tech. Every time they explored a new dimension, they rolled the dice, because they had no clue what was there and how much pain it could cause them.

What they needed to do was find a place that had power and lacked people. There were places that lacked life. But they were always dead and barren. There were so many other universes, thousands of them had been detected, one of them had to be the sweet spot that their civilization so desperately needed.

Buried deep in the data she spotted it. A strange signature, one which was always out of place. It had appeared in multiple dimensions. The reading would appear and vanish, it never appeared in the same place twice.

Was this an extradimensional traveler?

The company isn’t going to be happy to hear that they don’t have a monopoly on extradimensional travel, she thought with delight. If this being moved around the multiverse than it might know more than ASTC did. They could know the location of some untapped energy source, or at least tell them how to find one.

It was a long shot. Even as she began to dismiss the idea, news reports about the murders that had been committed during the evening’s blackout played on the café’s television screens. Things were starting to get desperate, what choice did they have?

Fuck it.

She stood up, heading out the door. She would go over the data some more during the ride back to the hot lab, have a starting destination picked by the time she arrived.