Turning Point Chapter 5

5

Thumper preceded me out into the hall as I swept her to the left, fully expecting what I was half-hoping to not find.  And there they were, Sashe’s Close Security, pistols aimed and barking.  I didn’t have to think about firing Thumper.  By that point in life it was automatic.  Too bad there were slugs hammering me in the chest and ribs as I pulled the trigger.

My shot went wild, burying itself somewhere in the wall or ceiling as I was staggered back by the impacts against my armored jacket.  Oh yeah, didn’t I mention that?  The heavy jacket and pants I’d changed into while talking to Mhik and Ahni were armored.  That’s why they were in the bag with the spare clips for Thumper, comp-shades, my illegal splice card and four concussion grenades.  And you have no idea how glad I was at that moment that I’d decided to bring the damn bag with me.  I was still staggering as I heard their pistols bark again.

I turned and ran for all I was I was worth.

The pistols barked a few more times as I tore ass down the carpeted hallway, adrenaline and a happy snarl singing in my veins.  Like I said, I’d only been half hoping not to see them there.  The other half of me had been swimming in my new hate-pool and very much looking forward to it.

It only took me a few seconds to get to where I was furiously sprinting – the door leading into the stairwell.  I heard one of them yell “Shit!” as I barreled through the door.  I didn’t slow down for the stairs and made it to the next floor before hearing them thunder into the stairwell.

“Which way,” one of them started before I let them know where I was.

“Fuck!” I yelled before tearing the door to my right open and jumping into the hall.  I kept the door open a sliver as I holstered Thumper.  I listened to Sashe’s team’s progress and reached into the bag.  I pulled out a grenade, popped the safety and started the short-count.  They’d be close enough when it was time.

Four, three, two, I counted as my pursuers pounded down the stairs, and, I yanked the door open and tossed the primed grenade towards them in a short arc.  Then I threw myself back around the corner and sprinted the hell away from that door.  I wasn’t worried about catching much of the blast myself.  The comparatively vast open space of the stairwell would allow the concussive force to dissipate too quickly to do any real damage to anyone on the other side of a wall.   But you do not fuck about when it comes to explosives.  People who do that tend to not have the full inventory of parts for long.  So I moved.

When I heard the crump of the grenade going off I looped back to the stairwell.  I didn’t have to worry about getting the door open as the grenade had taken it off the hinges.  Didn’t disperse as much as I thought it would, I mused as I stepped over to the bodies of my former pursuers.  Shrugging, I bent down and started stripping them of their gear.  I didn’t bother going through their pockets, just stripped them of their equipment belts and the serious gear.  The pistols I found a few feet away.  One went into the bag.

I zipped up the bag and slung it over my shoulder and across my back.  Then I methodically dropped the clip from the pistol I had kept in my hand, weight-checking it for ammo.  The pistol’s ex-owner had changed mags before tearing down the stairs.  Good.  I nodded, slapped the clip back in and checked the chamber.  I chuckled as I jacked the slide, seating a round in the chamber.

Time to let ‘em all know just what I think of this shit.  I turned to glare up into the corners where the walls and ceiling met.  That was where the cameras were.  Not where they would be, but where they were.  Every stairwell and hallway under the dome was plugged for sight and sound.  You learn that sort of thing in my line of work.

I glared at the cameras.  “Not much of a psych retrieval, fuckers.  Your bitches were packing slugs, not tranqs.”  Then I turned to the still forms on the floor and put two of those slugs into each of their already bleeding skulls.

Turning Point 1.4

4

I was in that odd world of half‑sleep.  Some part of you knows that you're not awake, but you keep responding to your dream as if it were real.  In my dream, someone was calling my name.  In the waking world I was used to people calling my name all the time.  Whispers over the com during a hit, sudden shouts full of rage in the middle of fire-fights and sometimes Marce would cry it out during a bout of passion.

This voice was different.  It was soft and distant with an edge like broken glass.  Somehow loving and hostile at the same time.  Dangerous.  In the logic of dreams, some part of me recognized it and remembered being able to ignore it when awake.  But here in the world of dreams and half‑memory I had to answer.

Gritting my teeth, I answered.  There was silence for a second, then I was called again.  This time there were either a lot of voices or a skittering sound, I wasn't sure which.  That's the way it is with dreams sometimes.  I realized at that point that the sound/voice wanted me to turn around.  I didn't want to, but it insisted.  Knowing there was no real choice, I turned.

I was surrounded by a dark gray blur, and as I finished turning I could make out a yellow tinge to it.  Suddenly, I was looking into a bright blue‑white sun shining over yellow hills.  There was a smell like burnt coffee.  A sense of something important began to rise up in me when I heard a com-deck buzz.

I jumped and moaned in my sleep.  The com buzzed again and I rolled towards it.  I was rewarded with a flash of pain in my skull and a nearly overpowering urge to use the latrine.  Hangover.  Big one.

The com deck buzzed yet again, bringing another flash in my head.  When I hit the answer button all the com gave me was a mess of static on the screen and an extremely irritating hiss on the speaker.  I reached to shut the damned thing off.

Stupid data terminal, I thought.  Must’ve told someone this was a mainframe.

Just before I punched the disconnect button, I paused.  Something in my dark and confused memory was trying to get my attention.  I prepared to take a deep breath and it hit me.  There was a security override that Mhik had taught us all a long time ago.  It disguised a com call as a bank transaction.  I dredged my mind for the right code and punched it in.  As the white lines faded and the static vanished, Ahni's worried face appeared on the screen.

“Alec, my friend,”  She sighed.  “You have gotten yourself into a world of shit.”  She looked to her left.  “We've got him.”

Mhik stepped into view.  He looked tired but relieved.  “You know, Alec, its a damned good thing that we got to you before they did.”

I made a sound.  It was meant to be a word, but the ethanol poisoning had convinced my tongue that it was dead.  I cleared my throat and spat on the rug.  Shaking my head, I tried again.  “Who?”  I finally managed.  “What time is it?”

Ahni bored into me with her bright green eyes.  “You have been the subject of an involuntary contract revision.”

Fear and adrenaline shoved the hangover far enough back for me to ignore it.  “What!?”  I couldn't believe it.  “They're terminating my contract?  What the hell for?”

Mhik chuckled.  “No, no.  They're not terminating your contract, they're revising it.  It seems that Security Division no longer deems you worthy of the position of Contract Specialist.  You have officially been declared mentally unstable.”  He grinned.  “Like that's something everyone on our team didn't already know.”  Mhik seemed a little too amused at the news he and Ahni were giving me.  I however, was not amused at all.  Free wheeling psychotics are hunted more desperately than Demos.  Only instead of quick, clean deaths they were given lifetimes spent in the hell of the psych wards.

I knew exactly how very fucked I was.

“Shit!  How long do I have?”  I started gathering the few things I had brought with me.  Unfortunately, I had passed out in my clothes.  I was kicking my boots off when Mhik responded.

“I found out about an hour ago.  I hacked the system to find out what was going on, and did some checking.  They were gearing up right before we called you, so between getting there and setting up you've got about twenty minutes before they jump up your ass.”

I glanced at the clock and saw that I had only slept for three hours.  Then I glared at the com screen.  My ball of hate jumped about eighteen degrees and started hopping.  “So why the hell are they doing this to me, Mhik?  Is it 'cause of the Su‑Fin?” I had my pants off and balled up in one hand.  I shoved them into the bag I’d grabbed just before leaving the con-apt and pulled out a pair of heavier black pants.  I was shoving myself into them as I turned back to Mhik.  “They decide to psyche me just ‘cause I pumped some rounds into a fuckin’ dead guy?  What the hell is this?”  My last question came out as little more than a snarl.

Mhik snorted and turned away from the screen.  Ahni gave him a little glare and answered my question.

“No, Alec.  According to the records it goes back a lot further that that.  Mhik downloaded your files while he was checking on the sitch.  Even the secure files.  There's a lot of shit in here, Alec.  Stuff that goes all the way back to when you were a kid.”

I was in my boots and shrugging into a zip-up jacket that matched the pants in color and weight when I looked up at the screen.  “Like what?”

Ahni’s eyes bored into me.  “Like the fact that at the age of 9 you burned through 10 milligrams of Glycon in less than two hours.”

“I what?”  I froze for a second before reaching for my bag of toys.  Glycon was a heavy-duty sedative.  Operatives use it to tranq helpful neighbors who get in the way during a hit.  Six milligrams of Glycon would normally put an adult to sleep for three hours.

“Yeah,” Mhik said, coming back on-screen.  “It was while they were head-shrinking you after your mom’s death.  The file says you got violent with a counselor.  Jumped over his desk and started biting his face.  When the nurses charged in they tranqued you.  As they thought you were going under one of the nurses mentioned your mother.”  He gave Ahni a grim look.  “She lost her ear in the struggle.”  Mhik looked back to me with the most serious expression I had ever seen him wear.  “According to the files, you had several incidents like this, Alec.  All of them disproportionately violent.  When you were twelve, Security tried to have you committed.”

I froze in shock.   “What?”

“A gentleman named Conrad Arthur intervened on your behalf.  He had you assigned to Security Division instead.”  At this point, Mhik started to look amused again.  “Guess he figured you were a natural.”

I gave Mhik a glare of my own.  “I don’t recognize the name and I sure as hell don’t remember going psycho on any nurses as a kid.  Who’s this Conrad guy?”  God, my head hurt.

Mhik and Ahni glanced at each other.  Mhik shrugged his shoulders and Ahni spoke up.  “We don’t know who he is Alec.  We couldn’t find anything that pinned down his title or division.  Just that he kept you out of the psych wards.”

“Alec!”  Mhik’s “command voice” snapped me back and I continued to gear up.  “The point of all this is that Mr. Arthur covered your ass at a critical time.”  He paused.  “And that he isn’t now.”

None of it made sense.  Yeah, I’d gotten into trouble as a kid, but nothing serious.  Nothing like what the files were telling Mhik and Ahni.  And I’d never heard of any Arthur Conrad.  “So what burned me?”

“This.”  Mhik pulled out his mini-comp and pushed a button.  The mini-comp played back several seconds of the tirade I had launched at the computer in the Sub-Tram terminal.  “Security Division pulled your contract before anyone had a chance to find out.”

I finished getting my gear together and did a quick pre-combat inspection.  While I made sure that I had everything and that everything was in its place, I struggled to sort things out.  “Those files aren’t right.  Somebody had to have rigged them.  Mhik, I still don’t-”

 “Look,” Ahni said, interrupting me, "this is all fascinating  but you need to get the fuck out of there.  Now.”

“Ahni, I can handle it.  They’ll start off with a routine retrieval op.  I can deal.”

Ahni’s eyes blazed.  “Alec, you don’t seem to get it.  You’ve been classified as a Case 9 Hazard.  They’ve invoked the Sierra Protocol, sent Sashe’s and Bernerd’s teams after you.  Do you really think you can take them all?”

I whistled through my teeth.  There are only ten Hazard levels. Lethal force is authorized for anything over Case 7, and Sashe’s team was good.  Almost as good as us.  Shit.  Maybe I wasn’t going to get the option of a rubber room after all.

“Thanks, guys.”  Something clicked in my head and I felt a sudden surge of guilt.  “Ahni, will you tell Marce that I had to go?”  There was a sick moment of vertigo as I set my mind on the current problem.  I stared into Ahni’s deep green eyes.  “Will you tell her that I’m sorry?”  She nodded.

“I’ll tell her.”  She dropped her gaze to the floor.  “Hey, Alec.”  She looked back up and gave me a feral grin.  “Kill one for me.”

My smile was hard.  “I’ll kill ‘em all and we’ll have a party.”  Then I broke the com connection and was alone in the dark.

Fortunately I knew a lot about how level 9 teams worked.  Up until then I’d been a member of one.  They’d hit balcony first, tossing a tranq or concussion grenade into the room.  After that the shooter would come in and mop up.  If this was a psych retrieval they’d use tranq gas.  I cursed at the thought, regretting that I’d never had the chance to get my hands on a protective mask.  Gas masks aren’t for sale to employees and hellishly expensive in the Diggs.

But in spite of what Ahni had told me, I suspected that Sashe and Bernerd were going to be tempted to skip the whole “capture” bit.  They wouldn’t be thrilled with the idea of using non-lethal ordinance with a Case 9 hazard.  I sure as hell wouldn’t be.

At that moment my internal clock was off by a factor of seven and I desperately needed to not be in a small room.  I glanced at my watch.  Damn!  When had Mhik and Ahni’s call come in?  How long had we actually talked?  I couldn’t remember.  Suddenly my gut contracted and my icy rock was back.  I was used to being the hunter, not the hunted.  Then something inside of me screamed a warning and I dove for the latrine.

I had barely cleared the latrine doorway when I heard the window shatter. So much for Ahni’s twenty-minute deadline.  Damnit all, why had I gotten a window room?  Marce was right, I had been acting weird lately.  I slammed the latrine door shut and bunched myself against the wall, covering my ears and clamping my eyes shut.  Right on cue the grenade went off, knocking the latrine door off its hinges and onto the floor beside me.  It hurt like hell, but I didn’t have time to pay attention to pain.

The concussion grenade confirmed my suspicions.  Psych retrieval indeed.

I had two things going for me, both courtesy of the concussion grenade.  First, the sleeping room was filled with a debris cloud.  That would keep the sniper blind for a good minute.  Second, the shooter on the balcony was going to be just as deaf as I was.  That still had the numbers coming up short and I needed to cheat.  Contract Termination teams were used to taking out Demos filled with passion and lacking in brains.  As far as Sashe’s team was concerned the knowledge I had would be as good as loaded dice.

I barged out of the latrine and ran across the shattered sleeping room.  I came on to the balcony trailing streamers of dust-cloud just as the shooter was climbing in.  My momentum fueled the kick I planted in the shooter’s chest.  His jumper absorbed most of the impact, but it was enough to spin him in a tight circle and back out over the sidewalk. 

Dumbass, I thought as he tumbled through the initial arc of his descent, should’ve kept the grippers on and stayed put.  Shot me from over the balcony edge.

Cursing, I drew Thumper and bolted away from the crack of bullets that were now gnawing their way across the balcony toward me.  Sashe’s Delta was obviously on top of things, having already swapped from the sonic to the rifle it was attached to.  They were taking my Case 9 status seriously.

Half blind and choking on plaster dust I stumbled through the sleeping room and out the suite’s door, grabbing my bag on the way out.  It was time to see if Sashe’s Close Security was as good as her sniper.

Turning Point 1.3

3

The sub‑tram is a very fast form of travel.  Within a few minutes of leaving the terminal, the tram is moving at something near three‑hundred klicks a minute.  The trip to Markett and then Sol Plaza gave me enough time to get worked back up, but not enough to get any kind of an idea of what to do about it.

When I came out into the Sol Plaza terminal I was greeted by a large room with a domed ceiling.  On the north wall above the bank of escalators leading into the Plaza proper was a giant tile mosaic of a bright yellow sun.

The sun that Roach orbits, DR 212, is old and red.  Seen through Roach's yellow, sulfur‑rich atmosphere, it looks like a giant blob of bloody gel.  This didn't seem to matter much to the jokers who had made the mosaic though.  So what if Sol was yellow and on Earth the sky looked blue?  None of us had ever been there, and looking at that sort of thing in a vid didn't really give you much of a feel for it.  I gazed at the mosaic in disgust for a moment and moved to the escalators.

Coming up into the Plaza itself was just like I remembered.  The escalators let you off on the center edge of the plaza.  Fourteen‑hundred feet overhead was the Plaza's own treated enviro-dome.  The dome here was treated to look blue, and there was a monstrous faux sun at the dome's apex.  The fake sun was so bright that it actually hurt to look directly at it.  This discouraged people from looking at the dome closely enough to notice that the “clear blue sky” that it was supposed to represent was actually full of darker swirls and inconsistencies.  It's kind of difficult to simulate a clear atmosphere with a polymer dome and holographic projections.

What never failed to impress and secretly please me about Sol Plaza was the plants.  Plants were scattered all throughout the Plaza.  Trees, ferns, bushes and patches of grass were everywhere.  There were even real birds that flew about and nested in them.  The most visceral thing though was the smell.  It was a kind of hot, wet smell.  The smell of live things in a live place, full of rot and promise.

I just stood there for a moment with my eyes closed and soaked it in.  For the first time since the hit, I felt a loosening of my gut and back muscles.  The burning ball of hate cooled by just a few degrees as I felt the life around me.  I was even able to remember the one time that I had actually felt happy, a long time ago.  No, let me change that.  I was able to remember a little boy who was happy there once.  Things had been different then.

I couldn’t remember how long it had been, but I’d been very young.  My mother had brought me down to the Sol Plaza to see the plants and birds.  I remember telling her that the company was going to get that kind of air for the rest of the colony.  The corporation damn near seemed like God to me then.  The company gives, and the company takes away.  It was the one thing that could seem larger and more powerful than your parents.  And the corporation was everywhere.  You couldn't see it directly, but you could feel it.  It wasn't until later that I realized that on Roach there really wasn't much of anything else to believe in.

Sometime during my little reverie, my feet started moving without really asking for permission.  I was daydreaming, reliving my favorite childhood memory;  running down some path in the Plaza shrieking at the birds.  It's one of the few places in the colony that parents relax enough to allow their children that sort of indulgence.  The childhood memories were coming to me with surprising clarity and before I realized it I had walked to India Ocean Point.

About fifteen feet below me, eight or ten acres of simulated ocean boiled and tossed.  It was only seven or eight meters deep, but the sight of that much open water in one place was still staggering.  If you stood still long enough you could feel the slight vibration caused by the wave generators beneath the “ocean.”  When I was a child I would stand in that spot, thinking that it was the weight of the water and the pounding of the waves that were causing the vibrations.  It was just one of the illusions that I would have to give up later.

I stood there watching the water and looking at the beach.  About a kilometer away, the beach, ocean and wall meet in what appeared to be a far-off horizon.  We could thank the holograph projectors for that particular illusion.  I had to wonder just how good the illusion was though.  I had never seen a real ocean before, or even so much as a real lake or pond either.  Behind me, Sol City was abuzz with my fellow vacationers.  The shops, cafes and hotels were always busy.  I thought of the zoo and amusement park that were on the opposite side of Sol City.

“Fun for the whole family,” I muttered to myself.  “Come see a bunch of animals that live in cages.  They're just like you and the neighbors.  Come play on the scary rides and in the VirtCades or the Tri‑Shows.”  I frowned.  “Come forget about the fact that you’re just company property.”

The frown deepened.  What was my deal?  Why was I so pissed at the company?  More and more my anger was directing itself at the system I’d been born into.  Why?

I glowered at the people bobbing in the waves and lolling on the beach.  I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the happy shrieks of running children.  I took in a deep breath to smell the air.  In addition to the rich smell of the plants and birds, salt mist was added to the air at the beach. The aliveness of it was almost frightening.  Head‑shrinkers claim that Terra resides in the genetic memory of every human, no matter where they are born.  That every human remembers and secretly longs for the embrace of their ancestral planet, with it's natural cycles.  I could never decide whether or not I would want to live there, but I would definitely like to go into a forest and just smell  it.

Two hours later I was drinking rice wine in a bar called the Little Tokyo.  The decor is supposed to resemble that which is traditionally used in the capitol of Old Japan.  They have a lot of paper walls and gongs and that sort of thing.  The balcony that I was occupying overlooked Golden Gate Park.  I was watching a young mother playing some sort of game with her son on her mini-comp.  Once again I began to slip into memories I had thought long buried.

My mother's name was Chalise Vonner, and she had been a level 5 driver.  I had never known my father.  He had been some big deal in the corporation.  They’d had a fling and I was the result.  He accused her of trying to trap him in a marriage contract when all that had really happened was the one percentile – the contraceptives hadn't worked.  He didn't want the responsibility of raising a child himself, so he bought me a full sponsorship.  Legally he didn't have to worry about me after that point.  He’d paid for my needs until I reached the legal age of maturity.  I would have above-average schooling and full medical insurance.  A stipend would be allotted for other needs as well.  Like I said, he’d been some sort of big shot.  He could afford it.

Mom hated him for what she’d seen as him running out on us, but she did her best not to show it around me.  In spite of her intense feelings toward my father, I've always remembered her best as a tired looking woman with a sadly loving smile.  In all honesty, I think that my childhood went pretty well up to the point that she died.

The school shrink came and pulled me out of class that day.  He started talking to me about how low the accident rates really were on the colony, and about how the Corporation was going to be taking care of me now.  I sat there staring at him just swallowing it up.  I had no idea at that point that my mother was dead, just that this guy was repeating some of the stuff that they told us in school every other damn day.  I didn’t start to feel confused and anxious until he started repeating himself.

By the time the idiot finally got around to telling me that my mother had been killed in an accident, I was edgy as all hell.  He must have spent twenty minutes trying not to tell me, probably hoping that I'd just get the hint.

I got it that night when instead of getting to go home I had to go to the orphan’s dormitory.

After a few weeks of therapy and observation, the doctors finally sent me back to school.  But I’d changed.  Mom’s death had torn my world apart and I was determined to take it out on everyone around me.  I started hanging out with other “bad” kids and getting into fights.  I paid the discipline and therapy lip-service and marked my time in school with no thought for what I might do after.  By the time that I had turned thirteen I had been transferred to the Security Academy.  A lot of us “bad” kids were.  And I finally found something that felt “normal” again.

By the time that I came out of my jaunt down memory lane, the young woman and her son had left the park.  I sighed.  Thinking about my mother and my childhood made me want to get very, very drunk.  I decided that I should sample other forms of alcohol, and stalked off to try another bar.

I had completed a full circuit of the drinking establishments in the Sol Plaza by the time that I finally managed to stagger back to my suite.  I'd left the Little Tokyo for the sweet temptations of Indonesian wine, Egyptian date beer, and Kentucky bourbon.  After the first few drinks it didn't even bother me that I'd never see the places that the beverages had been named for or that I’d never know whether or not the drinks I was buying were anything like the Earth originals.  My goal was the false Nirvana that fermentation taunts you with just before the ethanol poisoning makes you purge.  Needless to say, all I got that night was taunted.  Nirvana remained just out of reach.

Turning Point 1.2

2

It's weird when you realize that you hate everything.  I'm not talking in the abstract, I mean it literally.  You hate everything.  You want to smash and destroy every single damned thing that you can think of and would just as soon puke as to have to deal with any of it again, ever.  I hated it all – the job, the apartment, the team, the company and even the planet itself.  I just wanted to strike out at something, someone.  Everything and everyone.  Just attack and destroy and kill until the violence forced everything to be sane again.

But of course, I couldn't do that.  So I went on vacation.

Since the leave had come unexpectedly, Marce didn't have the chance to arrange any down‑time for herself.  I spent the first two days just kicking around the apartment with that ball of hate spinning around inside of me.  Marce would come home to me doing push‑ups or practicing my hand‑to‑hand routines.  She pretty much had the bed to herself those nights, because I couldn't sleep either.  I would sit there in the dark, staring at the walls or the cracked paint on the ceiling.  Hating.

My leave started on a Tuesday, and by the time Marce left for work Thursday morning, I was twitching like a junkie.  What was happening to me?  Admittedly, my job was  violent, but I couldn't remember ever wanting the violence so much.  I mean, yeah, I was an adrenaline junkie and usually got a kick out of pulling a sweet op, but I’d never felt this dark roil of emotion.  I felt like an angry, wounded animal wanting nothing more than to lash out and share my pain.  And I hated that too.

By 09:30 I just couldn't stick around any more.  I wanted to let Marce know what was up, but I didn't bother calling on her personal line.  Her current project had her swapping out the big magnets on the rail launchers at the space port.  Because of that, she didn’t have her mini‑comp with her.  The magnets would have wrecked it.  Even if that hadn’t been the case, the noise level at that work site would’ve kept her from hearing it anyway.

The vid‑com in the on‑site office was a little grainy, and Marce's supervisor already looked like the bad end of a hard road.

God , I thought, they must be breaking their backs out there.

It took a while to get Marce on the line and I caught myself tapping my knuckles against my leg and made myself stop.  Keep it cool, bud, I thought to myself.  This doesn’t do you any good.  Keep it cool.  When Marce did finally get to the on-site office and on the line, she looked worse than her boss.  For a moment or two all I could do was stare at her on the screen.

“Marce,” I finally said, “I'm buggin' out for a couple of days.  I've been a little restless lately, and I thought I'd get out for a bit.  Spend a few days at the Plaza, get my mind right.”

She didn't look surprised.  She didn’t look much of anything.  “Sure, Alec.  Thanks for filling me in.”

There was an uncomfortable pause after that.  I hadn’t calmed down and wanted off the line so that I could go.  But I felt like I needed to say something else.  Something more.  Maybe I thought that I had to justify my trip to her.  “Look, Marce, I just think...”

“Are you coming back?”

Her question stunned me.  I stared at her stupidly for a few seconds and said the most intelligent thing that came to mind.

“What?!”

“Alec,” she started, looking even more tired than before.  “Look, I know that we've never had much of a, well, you know.  But I would like to know now whether or not you're coming back.”

“Well,” I started, trying to pick my jaw back up.  It hadn't even occurred to me that I might be running out on her.  “I just, well...”

“You're a good guy, Alec, but I think you're getting strung out.  Lately you're acting like you're about to flip out or something.”  She glanced at something off‑screen, looking like she might feel guilty.  I started getting that feeling again.  The one where I felt like I'd been caught doing something dirty.

“Marce,” I sighed.  “I just thought I'd go out to the Sol Plaza and lay on the beach for a while.”  I hadn't put much thought into just what I’d be doing, but it sounded like a good idea.

Marce gave me a thoughtful look.  “Okay, Alec.  Yeah, I guess that'd be good for you.  Get out of the apartment for awhile.  Get some space.”

“Thanks, Marce.”  I stared her in the eye, trying to figure out what was bouncing around in her head.  Then there was another one of those silences.

“Alec.”

“Yeah?”

“Alec, I ...”  She glanced off screen again.  “I...uh, I gotta go.”  Then she killed the link.  I had the odd thought that she had been about to cry.  Weird.  Marce was like me, she didn't do the vulnerable emotions much.  At least not out where you could see them.

I grabbed my long coat and started to head out.  I stopped myself two steps from the door.  Normally I didn't worry about grabbing a weapon.  From the moment I woke up until the moment I crashed, Thumper was never far from my side.  Like the cops, I was licensed to carry a gun.  Every Contract Specialist above level 7 was.  Sometimes the Demos got their mitts on personnel rosters.  When that happened, they tended to go after us “corporate stormtroopers.”  Hence my license.

It wasn’t Thumper I was thinking about as I stood there, two steps from my con-apt door.  I was thinking of contraband runners.  Of the few times that Demos had gotten ahold of body armor.  Of Su-Finites.  Of the fact that in spite of Syrch feeding everyone bullshit about how peaceful a place Roach is, the security reports told a different story.  That in spite of being “a shining example of yet another peaceful and law‑abiding Corporate colony,” Roach turned up a lot of clubbed, stabbed and mashed bodies.

I was going out into the open for a few days and would be out of touch of Ahni and the team.  Feeling closed in, angry and oh so hateful, I turned to my stash closet to grab some more toys.

Because it was only about three hours into the day‑shift, the streets were almost empty.  The folks who worked on the night‑shift were all asleep, the kids were all in school and there were very few people who made enough money to be able to support their significant others.

I kicked off towards the sub‑tram with my head all wrapped up in itself.  What the hell was wrong with me?  I couldn't remember a single time in my adult life that I had felt this intensely about anything.  The problem was, I couldn't really pin down what it was that I was feeling so intensely about.

In the time that it took me to reach the entrance to the sub‑tram I had managed to get myself worked up even worse than I'd been when I called Marce.  Damnit!  I just had to get out of this place.  The problem was, there was no where I could think of that I really wanted to be.  Even though I could take the sub‑tram to any part of the colony, there was no place I could go to hide from myself.

I walked up to the bank of toll‑machines in the terminal, my footsteps echoing in the nearly deserted tunnels along with the whooshing of the trams passing through.  After pulling up the left sleeve on my  jacket, I put my hand on the scan‑plate. The computer compared the pattern of blood vessels in my hand to those on file with my identity.  Whoever had booked passage before me had been holding onto something sticky and ripe.  The scanner of course read right through the residue.

“Good morning, Mr. Vonner.”  The machine said in its pleasantly modulated, and utterly soulless tones.  “How may I assist you?”

“I'm going to Sol Plaza. One way trip.”

“Very well, Mr. Vonner.  You will need to take sub‑tram Twelve‑Alpha to Marketts Run, and then sub‑tram One‑Eleven to Sol Plaza.  Have a nice day.”

I started to stomp away when the machine called my name, and politely (oh, so politely) reminded me that I had forgotten to pay for my passage.  Damn, Marce was right.  If I wasn't capable of remembering to pay for the Tram, I must really have been close to the edge.  I fed the machine my credit authorization and started to walk off when the damned thing called to me again.

“Mr. Vonner?” the machine said, its pleasantly modulated tones digging into my ears like jagged flint.

“Yes?”

“I apologize for the inconvenience, Mr. Vonner, but I've noticed that you do not have a hotel reservation at Sol Plaza.  Will you be needing one?”

Damn.  I hadn't thought that far ahead.  “Yes,” I said, irritated that the machine had had to remind me.  “Thanks.  How much?”

The machine computed for a nano-second.  “That would be one hundred and twenty credits per night.”

I computed for about six seconds.  “Have the hotel put five nights on my account.”  What the hell, I thought.  I probably won't live long enough to see retirement anyway.  Fuck it.  “Make it a suite.”

There was another micro-pause while the gratingly polite machine made the arrangements.  “Very well, Mr. Vonner,” it said almost immediately.  “Your reservations have been made.  And Mr. Vonner, thank you for using Syrch Systems to make your life better.”

All the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up while my peripheral vision shut off.  “What did you just say?”  I growled.

The machine repeated it's last statement for me.  “Very well, Mr. Vonner.  Your reservations have been made.  And Mr. Vonner, thank you for using Syrch Systems to make your life better.”

I started seeing red.  “Just who the fuck's system did you think I was going to use?”

There was a moment or two of silence before it answered me.  “I'm sorry, Mr. Vonner.  I don't understand.  Could you rephrase the question please?”

A surge of angry joy pulsed through my head.  “Yeah, I'd be fuckin’ glad to!”  My voice sounded like grinding gears as I plunged on.  “Tell me something, fucker,” I shouted, my stiffened finger stabbing through the air at the machine.  “Tell me where the nearest non‑Syrch terminal is!  Ya see, I don't think that Syrch is making my life better.  I think that Syrch sucks!  I think that the best fucking thing that could happen to this planet, would be for it to be hit by a mile‑wide asteroid!”  I was in full mindless bellow by this point.  “Yeah, fuck Syrch, and fuck you!  You tell them that I quit!  You tell those ass‑sucking bastards that I'm gonna go work for...”

And at that moment I realized that I couldn't consciously recall the name of a single other corporation.  I started to stammer, “I’m going to work for...”  I thought furiously and finally gave in, kicking the front of the machine as hard as I could.  “You tell those bastards that I'm going into business for my own goddamned self!”

And as quickly as it had hit, the fit passed.  I guess I had just needed to let out some of the aggression I’d had building up in my gut.  To be honest, lashing out had felt good.  I was a little calmer and as far as I could tell the machine was none the worse from having been kicked and screamed at.  It may have decided to alert customer service, but by the time a face would have appeared on the tiny vid‑screen, I was off looking for sub‑tram Twelve‑Alpha.

Fuck it.  I was on vacation.