Last Call

“Brainwave / a real close shave / got punched in the alley / behind the old arcade / Brainwave / the road’s been paved / so we are the leaders / of the next crusade / Brainwave / the hero got laid / don’t need a new tomorrow / ‘cause we all got paid / in cash, cash / liquid assets / money in the pocket / for an arm with a rocket” -Brainwave, GRiZL, 3026


I always liked the feel of stiff nylon on my skin. Liked the way that when it burned it melted into a plastic scab that didn’t want to come off, making me feel like one of those shiny enhanced adults that got to pick for themselves which metal arm they wanted, what color eyes they wanted, how the plastic of their skin shifted colors when they wanted. I guess this made it easier when my dad won the Speak-Eaze(TM) sign language to audio nylon gloves for me at a crybaby contest sponsored by Bio-Technica when I was nine and mute and crawling through the crowded city like a roach with neon green hair. Growing straight out my scalp from namely, but not limited to, a toxic food dye they were messing around with in the early ‘90s that only tinged my older brother’s hair like the black green wing of an oversaturated raven. But little baby Grizzle took the full brunt of its effects, spouting my hair plasticine and neon out from tan skin my family said generations ago was Mexican. They quit putting that dye in food – started selling it as a supplement for those wanting an easier, mess free permanent hair color. The laundry list of side effects barely blinked the eyes of the 3000s kids who were so full of plastic and cancer that mention of side effects only made us ask – how quick does this kill me? And if the surgeon general said, right now kid, then only those so far gone in body-mods, chemo and nicosynth would touch it. And the rest would save it for later.

The nylon felt rougher today when I pushed my gloved flesh hand against my cheek. I guided the synth fabric up to my sharp nose, and pushed at the wet trail I realized was cold on my face. Tear drops – I'm crying again. I pinched my nose, feeling that hard stuff under the skin all crunching around, and the pain focused me up. I scratched my round nails into my scalp as I sat up on my low pleather couch. Thin strands of white hair floated with electricity and fell off into my palm. What forty years ago was my signature bright key lime was now more of a vanilla creme lime sorbet. Delicate. Wispy. Rare, even, as I found myself being looked up to as some kind of fresh air these days. The neoscreen hovering over my plexiglass coffee table crackled with the static electricity coming off my long hair.

White illuminated letters on the screen were saying some disappointing shit I hoped I’d never have to see.

TO GRIZZLE “GRiZL” LEE JONES,
We have on record the following marriage certificate alerting us of your apparent entanglement with one of our cyborg combat units. We are required to notify those on file when an asset has expired.
On the 13th of May, the RED ONI unit came into contact with an unusually high powered mine which fatally destroyed the neural cortex within the DaiMecha M8 frame.
A package will be delivered shortly with the contents of this units’ personal belongings. As it was a borg, it will be a small package.

Condolences,
[REDACTED] Unit – CYPHERTEK

With the silver robotic digits of my left hand, once state of the art tech made antique through the years, I waved away the screen and reached for the ethanol enhanced red liquor they called Buddha Street. The email felt like malware in my body, slowing everything down. The living room Cyphertek built for me stretched out and lost its permanence. The oxygenator disguised as a two foot tall tiny dancer plant sitting by the TV seemed to trail out, its long stems twisting across the carpeted room and wrapping around my body, pushing me deep into the couch. I didn’t know for certain what would be in the package they sent. But I had a pretty good idea. I found enough of my body to take a deep drink of the bitter liquid.

The security panel by the grey eastern door buzzed and flashed red. I let it buzz a while, before the plant returned to its place across the model room, and I could feel my knees again. Hefting myself up, my loose floral silk gown slides over the shoulder of my cyberarm, teasing the anchor plating where it was bolted into my collar bones. I finger the soft metal where it touches the hard scarred skin. I pull the robe back into place and slide across the room to the intercom, flicking on one-handed mode for my translator gloves.

“What?” My glove says into the intercom with a wave. I’ve had several voice boxes installed and even audio-coded a few of my own over the years. The one now sounded like a mature female smoker, though I’d never smoked. The voice made me feel more comfortable in my feigned maturity.

The intercom spoke back through clear hypertech, upkept by Cypher goons that came through every once in a while to check in on the mini-mansion they gave me as part of my contract. “It’s a Project Management rep, I told them to fuck off, it’s late, but she insisted.” I’d always appreciated the late night guard’s attempts to be thoughtful. Maybe he was secretly a fan.

I thought about telling the rep more firmly to fuck off. My representatives, my bosses, my wardens. The ones who have held an axe over my head for forty years, and said dance – dance harder – it would feel good to slight them. Momentarily at least. Like I had any kind of control over my life, my home. They’d let me feel big for a little while, before they came back. But some small thing would go wrong. Things turning off, inconvenient malfunctions with my hair dryer or air fryer, access denied to the floors of the building that served as office, studio, home. They’d just come back with more force.

Not like I was doing anything. “Send the cunt in,” I could get away with that, at least.

I pulled my emerald robe a little tighter around my tall frame, my taught waist. I slid my hand along the luxurious lining, over a chest once flat now made soft over years of changing moods and aesthetics. The robe gave my stocky frame just the right hints of androgyny, muscular carved legs, thin hips, broad shoulders. I looked strong, even as my hair lost its color and betrayed that I was older than most anybody I interacted with these days. Sixty wasn’t bad, but – Red. Who traded flesh for frame, should have lived a lot, lot longer. I lost my breath just before the eastern door depressurized and the suit walked in.

She had flat pink hair, they all had that flat hair, lifeless, but allowed some color as if they had any personality. I wave her over through a hallway to a smaller room with my casual desk I usually use for chatting with new artists, and motion for her to sit. I turn on the windows behind us, and the distant lights of the city at night illuminate the room in cold white. Leaning back against the desk, I watch the suit set a small black bag on the floor, boxy angles inside poking at the thin plastic. She sits and neatly folds her hands on her lap, and crosses her ankles, posture oh so straight like they fused her spine on uptight mode.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mx. Jones,” her voice was filled with cold familiarity, “My name is Cara McKlere and I am a Project Manager with Cyphertek’s Personal Industries eXperience. I’ve heard a lot about you.” She’d probably read through dozens of files, biographies about me available at the tip of their fingers. Or just seen me on TV enough. I just watched as her mouth kept moving, “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me so early, you’ve probably been anxiously awaiting the delivery of Red’s, or should I say, Mr. Frank Tsunami’s, personal belongings. I’ve brought them with me,” she reached for the bagged box and held it in her lap, “but there was another matter that we wanted to urgently address as well.”

I hated hearing Red’s given name. I never knew him that way. With two hands, I signed, “So, what do you want?”

Cara uncrossed her ankles and leaned towards me, “I’ll be frank with you, Mx. Jones, because you deserve that, and you mean a lot to us.” She moved her hands meaninglessly as she spoke, “We know you have made a record of the events from the years 3020 to 3021. This obviously breaks the NDA you signed at the end of your engagement with our parent company. Cyphertek is willing to be very agreeable with you, as we understand that job became sensitive and deeply personal. However, of course, these records must be turned over for immediate destruction.”

I had to look unphased, though my muscles clenched and rippled, nanites tightening against titanium bones under skin that wasn’t as thick as it once was. “What records?”

The suit nodded, and said politely but firmly, “A diary, or journal perhaps? Can you think of any written record you may have taken up? I know your therapist has been very supportive of you, did they maybe recommend taking up writing?” Cara’s yellow cyber eyes scanned me, and I realized her words were like hot pokers getting me to dance, dance harder. “But you couldn’t have written about what actually happened right? So what did you write about?” Without any passion in her voice, “Where are your journals?” She stood then, and approached me, placing the box down on the slick green resin desk topper.

I pushed air through my tight throat, in what felt like a scoff. “Writing,” I signed finally, “You think I wrote some fucking odyssey?” I stood off the desk, and paced to the window, her gaze raising goosebumps on my flesh, “Some feelings on paper?” I grit my teeth, my heart racing, “You should know better than that.” Turning to look at her, the city lights on my back, my face dark, “I never even wrote my own music, let alone a shit-fucking journal that would jeopardize everything I worked for. I’d like to die comfortably, as was agreed on in my contracts.” My hands flicked angrily, and my voice box picked up on the rapid movement, inflecting vitriol in its programming, “But thanks for the threats and lies you’re bringing into my home at the crack of day.” She stood calmly while the floor fell out from under my feet. All those years ago they had armed guard waiting outside if I had ‘chosen’ to not sign the contract. I only saw them after my signature was on the page. “What makes you people think I wrote anything down?”

She smiled at me as they had then. “We understand you are not immediately interested in sharing potentially incriminating information with us. However, it would good to keep in mind that you can no longer hide behind a DaiMecha M8.”

My body was moving with the full force of world class cybernetics as I took her thin neck in my left hand. A rush of euphoria hit as all the times I’d crushed someone for less flooded through my memories. The arm whirred softly as it activated, and Cara gasped and choked, face now illuminated with true neon that glowed and pulsed between the metal plating. I put my right hand on her supple cheek, and brushed it back to tuck her hair behind her ear, where I signed, “I never hid behind him.”

I let her go, shoving her back, and moved to sit behind my desk. “Get out of my house.”

Cara held up a hand to cover where a cable running through her neck had popped through sculpted synth-skin. Her face was red hot from my insult, and she coughed and cracked out the scripted response, “Thank you for your time,” she stepped towards the door, “we’ll double click on this at our next connect.” The door slid closed, repressurizing my living room.

I flicked open the box. Random little junk sat on top that I couldn’t really make out through a fresh haze of wet eyes. Blink. A set of keys. Blink – Blink – and there it was. Hard white pressed plastic peeking out from the bottom of the box. A CD case, a brutish square thing which never seemed to help protect the data inside. My cold fingers pushed into the box, and with one sharp metal fingernail, I pulled at the edge of the case until it rose, the junk on top shifting and falling out of the box.

A picture of my young body stared back at me, accompanied by bold font yelling ROADS ON THE ROOF. I was wearing rough cut denim shorts, green cowboy boots, and running topless on the roof of tall city buildings. My producer had snapped the pic just as I jumped from one glassy building to the next. I was nineteen, and the sun was on my back. I clenched the CD to my chest, awash with memories...

☆☆☆

“Man,” the sky was tinted pink as GRiZL laid on the side of the dusty desert highway. The van was parked for a break in what everyone kept telling the rocker was decidedly not “GRiZL World Tour” despite evidence to the contrary that GRiZL was playing at every city they stopped at, and they were eventually going to go to the UK and Japan. GRiZL wasn’t convinced. She couldn’t look at the handsome, cyberized boy beside her. Since he had wildly painted total body synth-skin, he didn’t see much need for clothing, save his family’s signature biker jacket. He lay close enough to GRiZL that she could feel the movement of his breath. GRiZL continued, “Nobody likes that album. My producer threw out most of the copies in the dispose-all crunching them up right in front of me just to prove how worthless it was.”

Red liked the album – no – loved the album – and he loved – no – liked the green haired popstar laying next to him. He liked the way she used her hands to speak, liked the crunchy electronic voice box that gave the strong person next to him a different way to communicate. When Red spoke, his voice came out of an armor plated mask, horned, red, great toothed, permanently fearsome and appropriate for his normal lifestyle as, well. Assassin. Motorcycle stunt driver. He said, “That’s bullshit!” His voice was tight and rough, damaged from screaming. “Roads rocks seriously!” He said everything like he was trying to prove an ultimate, righteous point.

GRiZL smiled, and put their hands up to the sky to feel the sun warm their palms. “I always liked it.”

“I told you how I got it didn’t I?” Red sat up, suddenly energetic, hovering over GRiZL on his elbows. The pop star had to look at his heavily cyberized, deliciously efficient body. “It was in a Kiati Gateway I jacked at the edge of Hog’s Hollow! It was the perfect soundtrack as I fucked off down the 407. I popped it out the radio and got one of those porto players, and the next time I took my bike up the back of a trailer and jumped to the roofs, I remembered I had to put those headphones on! I’m going like 150 up there, steering with my feet as I get your CD in the thing and I hit play – right as I snag the edge of a pipe and my bike goes flying across this divide, and I’m screaming! And your music starts blasting! All fucked up techno with those voices cut together! Singing, Goo to the edge!!! And I’m feeling that edge! And I twist my handles and hit the nitro and me and my bike are on those roof roads and I love it like I’ve never heard music before, never need music again, cause this GRiZL’s got it, fuck, they’ve got it like nobody else!”

GRiZL is flattened against the sand by Red’s narrative. The skin of the rocker’s right arm is tickled by the grains filtering past their sleeveless kevlar battle jacket. Red watches GRiZL with his brown eyes, dark in the shade of the armor plating bolted and fused with his skin. Getting shot in the face once was enough to earn the armor, but an itch at the back of Red’s skull sometimes wished to be able to let others see him more clearly. He shook it off.

“It’s totally fate or some shit.” Red said, softer, “’Cause now we’re working together, and you can sign my copy.”

“You think so?” GRiZL’s hands said, sand dripping out of the gloves.

Red tensed, nodding, “Well, why do you like it?”

“Well, I,” GRiZL hadn’t been asked that before. “I made it right after,” The rocker paused, wondering how much she could tell Red about the truth behind their career, “my first album. Everybody really liked the first mix, so, I wanted to see if they would like... what I could really do.” Red nodded encouragement, hard plastic and metal face unreadable, but body engaged with the pop star’s narrative, “I’d always kind of liked country music. My older brother, Clock, introduced me. Those old singers, the way their voices warble. They make a noise so lonesome and angry. It’s something I can never produce myself. Anybody can hit a beat pad and tap their foot to the groove. But to sing so sweetly that people cry... It’s something I could never do.”

“You couldn’t ever talk?” Red asked.

GRiZL nodded, “Yeah, my ears are fine, it’s something about my voice box. Easy surgery, but more expensive than free cyberwear.” GRiZL threw up their gloved hands and the Speak-EazeTM made a sound like trying to read all the alphabet at once. “So, for me, it’s all in my hands.” GRiZL ran her hands down her cropped top and toned abs, “In my body.” They continued. “If I want to tell someone something, I have to show them.” GRiZL looked through the shadowy lens of Red’s eyes, and thought she could see his the movement of his pupils looking back at her. “I have to make them see me.”

“I see it,” Red was hypnotized by the sculpting of the shiny cyberarm as it moved, and the muscles that rippled in the body of his new friend, “I see you.”

☆☆☆

Four nights and seven power outages later, and I’m standing in front of my bedroom door slamming the same four number key code into the lock pad until the soft plastic cubes burn the pads of my fingers. The light flashes red and buzzes rudely once more. My hand drops to my side, and my intercom system comes alive with a hushed voice. Work with us and thrive. I slept on the couch that day.

When Click finally pulled up to my place, I waited for him in the basement studio lounge. A harshly lit impersonal room with black couches, scenery photos from before the nukes poisoned the burning land, and a wide glass table with a record bowl of old yellow candies all stuck together. I heard the garage door closing in the next room, and the heavy heeled footsteps, before the clean silver door to my lounge depressurized, and Click stepped in. He looked like an accident at an oil slick. Black fabrics, warped metal accents sewed into patches, and shockingly red hair that fell over his ashy skin and brown eyes the same way Red’s did when he leaned forward to kiss me. I pulled my eyes away as Click unlatched the elastic of his houndstooth gas mask. Click set his bag down by the door, keychains and decorum clanging as he relieved the weight. He then clapped and popped out the wheels at his ankles, and said, “Hey, Grizz!” While quickly rolling around the glass table at the centre of the room.

When Click passed my chair at the head of the table, faster than he was ready for, my left arm snatched one of his loose belts, sending him flying on his face against the cool smooth tiled floor. He impacted with a crunch that would have made a good sound bite. While he cursed and moaned about a broken nose, I stood, and put my feet on either side of him. I looked at him hard as he curled up between my legs, looking at me with those fearful eyes of someone on the wrong side of cybernetics.

I signed, “Of the three mouths I told...” My fists clenched before I could say anything else, disappointment coursing through my muscles, I lunged at him and grabbed his shirt collar. Seeing the blood pour from his crooked nose, all the fight went out of me. I breathed hard and threw him back, and didn’t revel as I once might have at the sound of his skull hitting the floor. “Why?” My hands flicked out.

“Wha-” Click mumbles while he pulls himself up, “What are you talking about?” He flops against the sliding doors that opened up to the recording studio, sitting up and pinching his face now, “You got a virus or something? Take that shit out on Auto, he’s on a maso kick I heard.” Denial. Deflection. A tremor in the voice. I could let him keep talking, he would probably figure out what I wanted from him eventually. It was sickeningly obvious that of my three closest companions, Click was the only one with something to gain from selling me out. Click was my apprentice, hardly the most promising of the artists I’d worked with over the years. But he listened to the things I said, and at least pretended to care about me, to come out of his way and visit me in his free time. As he grumbled on the floor, the thought crossed my mind, that if Red and I ever could have had a kid, they might have looked a bit like Click.

“Who did you even tell anyway?” I sat back at the tall chair by the table. “Did you email somebody? GChat them? Did you ring up an L7 at the musicore and ask for a quick sync Re: Grizzle’s NDA?” I wished my Speak-Eaze could shout. I wished I didn’t have to watch Click’s eyes fall from pain to horror as he realized I’d pinned him down.

He darted across the floor towards his bag, reaching for his gas mask dangling on the edge of the chair he’d set it down on. I pushed off the table and with the wheels on my chair moved faster than his scrambles. The spiked electric blue filter was light in my silver hand, as Click flung himself on me and tried to pry the mask away. When Red was shot and his mask cracked, it bled like a split dry scab. But the hard plastic in my hand just crumbled, and fell away around all the soft white filter and elastic. Click watched the pieces fall, knowing he was stuck in the house with me until we found him a new mask to leave with.

After a few moments of silence, the electric voice in my hands said, “Admit it.”

“It’s not really that bad, is it?” He sniffed, rubbing at the blood in his mouth, and looked up at me with wet eyes.

I let him think through the possibilities for a second, and watched his face move through guesses. “I really thought you got it. I thought I saw you doing the same stupid shit I did. Stealing lyrics.” He feigned shock as I continued, “Doing glitter and playing shows and thinking you’re a god. When Woe-Punk started bringing in bills, I got so high at shows that one time I didn’t even plug in, I just danced and signed and nobody but me heard anything. I got lucky that people thought it was art.” I kicked out a chair and motioned for him to sit at the table with me, “But luck isn’t easy anymore. I thought you understood that.”

Click was wide eyed, and shook his head slightly, “What the fuck does any of that shit mean?”

I stood, grabbed his shoulder and shoved him into the chair. I got close to his face, “Idiot, they’re going to kill me. They would have killed me forty years ago if I hadn’t signed on.” I dropped back into my chair, wheeling it next to him, “Now, I know you Click, you are just as comfortable lying with the crinkle wrap in the gutters as you are drinking ethanol in my guest room. You want more, though, I get it. You see the reflection of the bright walls in the wet pavement, and you wish the oil puddles were portals to a world where people like you and me are on top. Moving hungry you clawed at the closest thing. But you fucked up!” My hair was whipping wildly as my hands flew in communication, “You don’t bite people like me. You got greedy.”

My cyberarm whirred to life, lime green washing the space between me and Click. The sculpted muscle rippled, and the bass riff of a song I used to love sleepily raised in volume as static crackled in the room and my thin hair raised and curled at the ends. I came to my feet as I pressed my fingers into a glowing line between the silver plating, and a panel slid away revealing a rainbow keyed keyboard. The frosted tiles glowed softly, as I played a code which set the arm beeping. I could feel the arm groaning internally, as it reluctantly fizzled and spit out the hard light shield that made it so unique for its age.

Click scrambled, kicking the chair out from under him, as he lunged for his bag and I wasn’t fast enough to stop him this time. His bag rattled loudly and fell to the ground, electronics spilling across the slick floor as he pulled out a little blue pistol, and screamed, “Wait, wait!” he threw his arm out to point it at me, but was shaking badly.

I couldn’t talk with the shield up. I ran at him, the idiot that brought everything I’d built crashing down, and he popped off two rounds at me. His aim was bad, and I laughed when the spinning shield ate the liquid bullets in a display of firework illumination. Bad gun, bad bullets, bad aim, idiot kid - he was going to get every beating I’d ever earned.

He slapped the door key panel, leaving greasy finger streaks on the horrible white walls. He put his back to the door as it eeked open, and took another shot in my direction. I got his shirt as he began to fall out the door, and reared my cyberarm back to knock him in the jaw. He took the hit, spitting more blood, and let his body hang dead so that his thin mesh shirt unraveled in my hand and sent him down hard. I threw the shirt away, and grabbed at him, but only scratched his back as he was up and on his wheels before I could get to him. He was down the hall before I could blink. I had no range. He just might weasel his way out of this – a thought which pissed me off even more as my own memories of escaping fights I’d started pierced my vision. A cracked, raw sound ripped through my chest and mouth as my feet smacked the cold floor and I hounded after him.

Left from the lounge, I went through the long hallway which only had its orange low-power lights on the line of baseboards. I marched up the narrow stairs when I heard a crash and a string of curses from the third floor. I slipped past the countertops in the kitchen that illuminated softly when their detectors sensed me. There was an elevator that went from the kitchen on the first floor to what I called the research hall on the third floor where I would entertain Cypher suits and artists for larger projects. It was only big enough for two people holding trays of food and drink, so the elevator was tight for me, but it was quick to get me to the third floor without Click knowing where I was.

When the door opened and the panels in the wall slid apart with hydraulic whoosh, I saw the crash site. Seems Click had turned a corner too hard, and some of the five foot mock ups of the bright wall posters of me when I was touring were shattered in the carpeted walkway. Sharp shapes of my green face crunched under my feet as I followed the trail of disaster past the window wall looking into the big room with the records and data screens. Click made a frustrated noise in the distance, and I rushed towards the sound.

He was trying to get into the computer room. When he saw the flashing lights of my shield and the heard the frantic dance music playing from my arm, he screamed again, “Wait! Grizzle just wait I can fix it!” I marched to him at the dead end, and crushed his chest against the door. He wheezed and scratched against the door, “I can fix it, I can fix it!” He repeated. I took his stiff red hair in my flesh hand and knocked his forehead into the wall, “I’ll erase the files,” he groaned, his cheeks smushed against the plastic alloy door, “they’ll forget what I told them if they don’t have the data!” I pushed harder, feeling the outline of his spine just under my metal hand, and my grip tightened in his hair. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. It was already over for me. It had been over for me for a long time. “Please, Grizzle,” Click whined once more before I dropped my arms and let the shield power down.

Click fell to the ground and gasped, clutching at his chest, “Listen, just let me into the server room.” The pistol clattered to the ground as he gestured to the door, “We can fix this,” then, softer, “we can fix this...”

Red’s voice echoed in my head, those same words, when he was given shore leave and granted to stay with me one summer when the company was under heat, and I needed a body guard anyway. It was the longest time we’d been allowed to stay together since we signed the NDA. I told him I felt trapped in this house, every waking moment a weight in my body kept me on alert for the company. While I lived here, I had to be ready, and couldn’t venture too far from my phones, couldn’t escape too far into a brain dance VR, couldn’t have someone over, couldn’t leave for too long. For fear that the messages would come in. Are you available for a quick sync? Hi, let’s chat. Where are you, Grizzle? We’ve been trying to reach you. When they decided they didn’t need my face on their bright walls anymore, my job became to sit in this house and wait to be needed. A few meetings a week. A company dinner once a quarter. If I was lucky they’d invite me to their global All-Hands where all their billions of employees would watch me wave and smile and introduce the newest artist and their seven piece band all dressed in sharp synth weave for the half time show between hours of financial graphs and internal propaganda. And my ears would bleed and some part of me knew the frequencies under the music were making the viewers supple and compliant and overwhelmed. And that summer, there Red was, a brain and a heart inside a hulking white steel frame, paneled with round, aerodynamic metals painted with bright red company logos. They didn’t even have the decency to loan him a smaller model for his vacation, a Gravi9 or another human sized mech with soft plastic skin that could hold me when I fell apart in front of him. He was saner in the Dai-Mecha than he ever was in his flesh, which made it all the worse when he knew now how to be soft, but couldn’t move the stiff metal in the right ways. It was all he could do to whisper through his wires, “I’m sorry... We can fix this.” But he was gone the next day.

I rubbed my wet face in the dark hallway, pushed my hair back, streaks of tears and snot glueing the hair into diva angles at my temples. I leaned over Click and hit the entry code for the office where my computers and servers lived. Thankfully, it lit green.

Click pulled himself up, accessories jingling, and he coughed hard and phlemy as he leaned on the door frame and slipped into the square room. He threw himself into the chair by the desktop, “Let’s just start here.” He pulled his shiny black gloves back and slid a panel on his wrist to the side. A long wire unraveled in his hand and he plugged into the server. The thin hard light screens illuminated his dark torso, keloid scars rippling across his stomach and shoulders from too many accidents in the city. His skin was blossoming into red bruises from where I’d held him too hard. I stepped into the room and watched him work. He cleared his throat, “That’s what I thought, you’re linked into Cyphertek’s VPN. One of my friends told me Cypher just released six hundred new satellites to improve their net architecture and give more people access for cheaper.”

“Get to the point,” my hands couldn’t betray the wet clump in my throat.

Click sighed and glanced back at me, “Companies don’t do stuff without documenting it somewhere. Tell me what you know, and I’ll dig around their systems.”

I told Click about Cara McKlere and Cyphertek’s Personal Industries eXperience team while he dug through screen after screen of meta data, until suddenly he exclaimed, “Shit, they found me, I can’t continue on this level, I have to actually go in.”

I’d seen people younger than Click have their brain melted from the system shock of going all the way in. “Be careful,” I signed slowly as Click unhooked from the desktop and moved over to the laid back leather chair I usually only used for VR gaming.

Watching people netrun was an anxious process. Their body went still while their mind connected to the web. I watched blood pool at Click’s right nostril, until it slowly overflowed and dripped down his lips, wetting them fresh where they were already bruised and crusted. I blinked and rubbed my eyes until I saw stars in the darkness, and felt exhaustion creeping into my body. When I opened my eyes, Click was sitting up, disconnected. I shook my head in confusion.

“Cara has two virtual machines.” Click said thickly. He cleared his throat and tried to swing his legs over the chair, but swayed heavily. I moved to catch him, and he leaned into my arms while he held his head. “I cleared the first one, but I can’t get into the second one at all.” My flesh hand went to his head, and I gently put my fingers through his hair. “It’s cruising on a really old OpSys. My tech can’t handshake it...” He looked up at me, and I stepped back as he said, “You never updated your interface did you?”

“I don’t use it, really,” I signed. “I’m not a runner.”

“But you do have smart plugs,” Click insisted.

I threw my hands out, “What do you want me to say?”

“I can’t go any further,” he stood up and pointed at the padded chair with its yellow wires and pink plugs slotted at the head and wrists. “Your ass needs to check her virtual. The red ice weren’t too hard to knock back on the first level, but there’s no files about you there.”

I breathed hard and crawled into the chair. “I only use this thing for games and dances,” I protested, “How do you know this is even going to work?”

“Anybody with plugs can run, Grizz.”

He helped me jack into the set of plugs on the chair I’d never touched, and when the last twist clicked into place, my vision went dark.

Words flashed before me: SELECT YOUR ICON. But there was no choice list. Confused, I thought about one of the first times I’d been called an icon, how my hair was styled into those long thick bangs falling down on either side of my face. The hairstyle was a pain to maintain, requiring loads of gel and spray and time. In the net then, I became aware of a little chibi version of my face, winking and smiling, with that obnoxious anime hairstyle I was so fond of. Words again: WHERE TO? Was there no save on this thing? Click didn’t explain how to get to Cara’s... whatever machine. I pushed through the words, my icon hovering through this disorienting empty space that stretched forever around me.

Blue lines began to form below and to the sides of me as I moved and thought about the pink haired suit leading the charge against me. What I could recognize as walls and floors stretched out, and I picked up speed in that place. To my left and right I could see sharp scatters of electric data glitching bright red as it stretched out on the floor. Was this the level Click had already cleared? I saw vertical lines in a pattern off from the rest of the walls in the distance, and moved towards them. Lightly bouncing there was a file with a red circled x over it. I double clicked on it, and it asked me for a password. You’ve gotta be kidding me... I took a shot and input my name. It beeped a warning at me. I input Cara’s name, and it beeped that black sound again. I wanted to break the stupid thing, and before I knew what was happening, my icon grew strong silver arms and dug its claws into the password input bar. I snarled and ripped into it, and found myself in a new room.

It was weirdly homey for a digital environment. Like something I’d see in a brain dance ripped from somebody who lived a hundred years ago. I moved to a set of wooden shelves with books on it that I had to assume were files. I pulled one labeled AA_Machie_notesfromcall off the shelf, and saw a string of text documenting some conversation Cara had with an exec from another company. I let it go and it bounced back to its place on the wall.

I hunted around for anything about the Personal Industries eXperience org, but nothing was immediately jumping out at me. It seemed like everything on this server was Cara documenting her own networking with third parties. This was a stupid plan, and I thought about logging off before I realized I hadn’t looked behind me. There was a stereo system, a black rectangle with slick round knobs, it flicked a blue light on and text on its little screen read playlist 4. I clicked play and heard the opening treble of one of the songs I’d produced towards the end of my career. I moved to the stereo, and tried to open the playlist.

There were files inside, song files, and some documents. I opened the first one – it was my company profile, an old photo of me against a white wall, jaw set in a half smile. The next document was my public bio, the next seemed to be a copy of a paper from the meat-space that was heavily redacted and dated 40 years ago. I went through file after file, until the last one was dated just last week.

It was a project mandate, with a three week deadline, to ‘confirm the existence of documents in my possession that would harmfully expose privileged and confidential data.’ It went on to describe a number of if/then scenarios which all included a ‘consequences’ section. The very last page was a long paragraph so full of jargon, familiar words mangled into some corporate code, that I couldn’t fathom its meaning. Claws emerged from my icon again, and I ripped into the stereo system, shredding the files and playlists into digital dust, until I came to that last file. When I ripped it open, and the letters dispersed in the net around me, a hole opened up with words next to it – Referenced in [link]. I put my claws into that hole and it stretched around me, and sucked me through the architecture.

Lights flashed by me as I was pulled through layers of net architecture. I saw red ice demons briefly, hovering and watching me pass as they stood guard over their data. Finally, the back door dropped me at a file cabinet, and it pulled out a drawer, where a string of letters – GROJ - named the file in code hovered and pointed at a section of digital paperwork. I didn’t know where I was or how much time I would have before a Cyphertek nettie would notice me here. I ripped the file out of the cabinet and shredded the data into sparks in my silver hands. A yellow alert popped up in front of me, Confirm deletion? I pushed into the warning, yes, and the drawer emptied before me.

When I opened my eyes, back in my computer room, Click was gone, though I could hear his motorbike revving outside. I sat up. My plugs had unlocked themselves when I logged out. It was over.

☆☆☆

I watched the sunrise from the second floor’s wrap around glass balcony. Red hues danced behind the city skyline down the cliffside from me, until the sky broke and turned toxic green. Every morning the fumes from the poisoned ground water reacted with the ultra violet sunlight, and turned our cool nights into hotter and hotter days that melted structures and sent chemicals into the air. Cranes dotted the skyline, from the never ending work to counter environmental disasters and build over and above the flood zone. I breathed heavily into my mask, a plain white loaner one, as it seemed Click nabbed my signature green and yellow one that usually hung by the garage keypad.

A black shape moved on the ground in a break in the tree line. My hands fell away from the glass siding and my legs felt weak for the first time in days. The shape was on the private road to my house. A heat grew from my spine to my face, and I reached for the low deck chair at my side. The taxi approached the guarded fence, and easily slid past the gates as they opened. It blinked, pale blue lights pulsing as the side doors slid open. Pointed white heels followed by dollish skin stepped out, and hopped neatly down past the taxi’s hover wheels. Cara took a few steps towards my house, and four uniform suits followed her, genderless and clean in their varied corporate bulk. Cara waved them towards my door, and I heard them unlock and step heavily inside. I was glued to her, and as she glanced up to the balcony, our eyes met over our bulky masks. Her eyes narrowed, and she stepped out of my sight.

I waited for them on the balcony, my eyes kept firmly on the white sun streaking above the city. They were moving through my house, heavy foot falls and the moving of furniture sending vibrations through the foundations. Eventually, the glass door slid open behind me.

“Good morning, Mx. Jones,” Cara said, her voice calm and even, “there’s something you don’t hear every day.” I waved over my shoulder. On a normal day I’d be three hours asleep by now. It felt like I was watching this unfold from far away. Cara stepped into my view, and leaned against the balcony rail, her arms crossed, the sun on her back and her face dark to me. “I love seeing the moon set. And there’s always something to be done before work the next day,” she sighed, “and I’m salaried anyway, so, who really cares what my hours are?” She chuckled. “So I go to put on my favorite album, Motion Room, don’t you love that one?” A crash came from inside the house, the sound of things shattering. Her hair fell to the side as she tilted her head, “You were in your Grizzley Bear era. The costumes they made for you, those big, stupid paws.” She hummed, hiding a laugh, “All to declaw you from your little nickname...” She whispered, static hushing through her electronic gas mask as it struggled to pick up the sound, “...the Bomb. I always was curious if it really was you who blew up Los Angeles that day. Was it even your team? Those five redacted names I can only read around.” She turned and leaned off the railing, “And what would blowing up that much of an American city even do to accomplish a fucking Canadian merger?”

“I didn’t,” I signed. “I don’t know why they hired me. I wasn’t helpful at all.”

“No,” her voice stretched the word out in a hush, then looked over her shoulder at me and continued, “a fourteen month international project and you didn’t help at all?”

“I just wanted to make music, make money. In the end I only made two albums.”

“Grizzle!” She exclaimed, “You have twelve albums to your name, and even more since we took you off the stage.” I went quiet, and looked at the buildings clawing at the sky in the distance. “Is it about which albums you have pride in?” She asked delicately.

I felt more tremors in the house, and I signed, “If they break Red’s CD I’ll kill you all.”

“I don’t doubt you’ll try.” She stepped towards the chair to my right, past the little square faux wicker table. “Obviously Roads on the Roof has some significance to you, beyond your relationship with Tsunami. But what’s the other one? You insisted we not reprint Woe Punk, what’s the story there?”

I glared at her over my mask, “Not a story for you.”

She leaned towards me, putting her elbows on the table and her skinny hands under her chin, “Was it an album we never published?” She asked playfully. I looked away. Her voice went serious, “Are my people looking not for journals in your house right now, but for mp3 files?”

I ran my hands through my hair, felt my temples and the gentle ridges on my skull and sighed heavily. Then I put my hands on the edge of the table, and flipped it towards Cara. I followed through the motion until I was on top of the table, and the table was on top of her. The legs of the table came up like a cage around me, and I put all my weight into it, as Cara squirmed and gasped, her neat baby pink hair falling wildly around her. She tried to reach over the edge of the table to grab at my mask, but I wormed my arms over and pinned her shoulders, digging my thumbs into her armpits.

Then an acidic smell hit strongly in my nose, and my eyes watered. Cara cackled below me, and spit, “There’s other ways to relieve this company the burden of your retirement!”

I blinked and looked towards the house, where I saw dark grey smoke billowing along the ceiling. Cara shoved the table, and I was thrown off balance. I toppled to the side painfully, and she kicked the table away and got up. She stepped away from me quickly, regaining her balance after a few paces. She turned to me, hands on her hips like she was going to say something, when a chime of her phone ringing stopped her. My ribs were bruised from falling with the table, so I was content to let her take her call while I pulled myself up against the railing and tried to close my eyes against the burning smoke.

“It’s my boss,” Cara said delighted, “you’re going to want to hear this.” She answered the phone, and held it out by her mask, on speaker she said, “Good day, Ms. Srinivasan.”

“Cara,” the voice said. “Thanks for meeting with me on short notice. How are you?”

“I’m well, and project GROJ is in the green to be completed prior to tomorrow’s review.”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk with you about. GROJ has been pushed below the line for this MBR.”

Cara snapped the phone to her ear, “What? GROJ is done, respectfully, this doesn’t make any sense. ... I understand that. ... Yes. ... We can rebuild-... Yes. ... ... Sorry, could you repeat that? ... Yes, I’d be happy to help in any way. ... ... As of tomorrow? ... I understand. ... No questions coming to mind. ... Thank you. ... Yes, take care. ... Yes, good bye, thank you.”

I squinted at Cara, watching her in confusion. She looked at me, and slid her phone back into the pocket on her pencil skirt. We just watched each other for a moment as the smoke grew in intensity around us. Until she finally said, “They promoted me onto another project for this business review.” She spoke slowly, “Someone was fired and, they needed someone, and ... and there was a problem with the GROJ files they needed to settle before completion of the project.”

I took in what she was saying, and moved painfully to sign, “No kidding.”

Cara took a step, and crossed her ankles awkwardly. She looked at me, nodded once, and then pulled out her phone and clicked a few buttons. The black taxi came to life below, engines whirring in a rush of energy as it hovered up to the balcony. Stairs fell out of its open door, and Cara stepped into the blue lights of the driverless car. The stairs curled back up, and the taxi went out of my sight.

I pulled myself up, and rushed to my bedroom as the house melted around me. I tried the pin, but again, angry red beeps told me I wasn’t allowed into my own room. I roared in frustration, and grabbed the keypad with my metal paws and ripped the box out of the wall. Long multicolored wires came with it, and they ripped lines into the drywall around the box, I took a step back, pulling the firmly bolted electronics apart, and with a last burst of energy fell back, and they all came loose. I crawled to the door, and dug my fingers into the seam in the frame, and pulled, pulled hard. The electronics screamed against me, firm pressure making this impossible for anyone without the cybernetics to back it up. Finally, it released, and I pulled myself into the room.

The suits had torn it apart, the keypad had been no issue for them. I pushed clothes off the floor and once again dug my talon nails into a seam in the floorboards. I ripped it back, and saw my postcard, my CD, Red’s little bomb shaped keychain, and my mp3 player with its white wired earbuds. Gingerly, I pulled the things out. A yellowed postcard with the union jack and a vista from some UK city on the front. I flipped it, and read the simple ink script, the bad handwriting: Congrats on your wedding! And five neat signatures, not at all redacted. I clutched the only wedding gift Red and I received to my chest, and doubled over in fresh grief as the fire intensified around me. I staggered to my feet, my hands clutched around my bundle, and dashed out of the bedroom. My feet burned with every step, until I made it down the main stairs and to the front door.

I turned and watched the flames engulf the building I had spent every day in for decades. Tears streaking down my face – I'm crying again. They’re flowing freely, my body was light, tingly. Fresh out of surgery, like the organs I’d grown to survive this company were excised today. I could be dead to the world, dead to the company. I could be free.