King of the Californias Pt. XIII

by Monk Eastman, Uptown, NYC, USA

I tag Blue/Horse. As collectives go, mine is connected, with mobile journalists in almost every urban center on the planet. I'd be denied them if Cecilio Goncz hadn't slipped me a communication safeguard. Whatever jamming agent he's anticipating would probably block even a prosumer implant like mine. Whatever his reasons, they've left me a lifeline to the rest of the world. Cortical implant translates my eye movements into text, lets me interact however I need to with Blue/Horse. Doesn't suck up much bandwidth, little discrete 56k bursts. Five minutes later, my man in Anatolia gives me as close a rundown as he can before linking me with one of our editors in Halifax:

Yonge Street Ali. Born Ali Buryäk, maybe forty years earlier. Grew up in Ankara at the cusp of The Troubles, when the radicals were just gaining real traction. Long line of soldiers, the Buryäks, going all the way back to Atatürk. Secular, the way the French used to be: rigid, nationalist. When the JDP was put out of government and the army stepped in, Ali's dear poppa was apparently leading the charge. No one anticipated the severity of the riots that followed, nor that of the internal conflict that chased it. Ali came up in one of a dozen paramilitaries that succeeded the army: nationalists every bit as zealous as the religious fundamentalists they clashed with. As the conflict slogged on, and The Troubles turned into a full-scale civil war, Ali Buryäk established himself as some kind of logistical wizard, securing more arms even as his budget shrank. By the time he was twenty, he'd made connections with everyone from the Kurdish Workers Party to the Azeri Republican Front. Things get fuzzy around when Ankara falls, though.

Our editor in Halifax tells a less glorious tale, two years down the line. This one is of Peg-Leg Ali, who limped off a refugee boat in Nova Scotia alongside a troupe of disillusioned veterans. Set themselves up as a local syndicate before being rounded up by the RCMP. Turned up, alone, in Toronto, after a seven year stretch in Kingston Penitentiary. Started quickly working both ends of the longest street in the world: spreading mysterious wealth around the suits at One Yonge Street, then moving guns at the other end, out by Jane and Finch. Somewhere between Halifax and Toronto, Ali Buryäk had his leg replaced. Got a smart haircut. All the right implants, and even better connections. Theoretically hasn't picked up a gun in years, even to sell. These things just sort of move around him at his behest. When Alaska wanted out of the Union, it was his munitions that somehow found their way into secessionists' hands. No linear connection, of course, but The Word is The Word, and that is: Yonge Street Ali makes guns happen. Whenever, wherever. He's become one of the lowest profile high-end gunrunners in North America. Lives in one of those mobile low-orbit habitats. Hyper-exclusive. Never know where he'll be next week. Total anonymity, absolute freedom of movement.

Must be a nice way to live.

Especially compared to Oakland, Northern Republic of California. Growth market here, by all accounts. But not without risk. My contact at University of Michigan says Ali also armed the U.S.-backed Republica Libre party during their overthrow of Los Angeles, a coup that wiped away the old confederation of criminal cantons -- including that of Cecilio Goncz, my host and father. Not to mention Montoya Dred, who even now, twitches and shudders, almost foaming at the mouth from his Pilkner's Condition. So how is here here, now, without Goncz's teeth on his throat?

"Yonge Street," Goncz hails. "What it is."

"What it will be," Ali says, sliding into a chair opposite. He's got a soft face, lines around his eyes like he smiles a lot. He nods at Dred. "How you doing, Monty?"

"Duh-don't be fucking calling me that, yuh-yeeeew you..."

"Play nice," Goncz warns.

"Fuck you, CeCe." Rain of white spit arcs across the table when Dred talks. "And you tuh-too, fuckface."

"Still a lover, Monty?" Ali smiles. "You still talk to me like a lover. Would that help, maybe? If I gave you a little?"

"Fuh-fuh-fuuuuuuuuuuck yuh-yuh-yuh --"

"Don't be giving yourself a heart attack," Goncz says. "We're all friends here."

"Friends? Wuh-with him?"

"Oh yeah," Ali says. "Best friends. Especially today." For the first time, he turns his attention to me. "We haven't been introduced."

"Don't worry about him," Goncz says coolly.

"Yuh-yeah," Dred chuckles. "He's a peach, that one. Nothing to worry about at all."

Ali shrugs, folds his hands on the table. "If that's what you say, that's what you say."

"Do you have them?" Dred snaps.

Ali sniffs, looks slightly stricken. "Poor form, Monty. Whatever happened to etiquette? I've been sitting here five minutes already, no one's offered me a cup of coffee, a glass of water, not even a half decent hello, how's things?"

"Oh," Monty says. "I'm sorry. A cup of coffee? Maybe I could fetch you some water? How about wine. You like a little vino? A nice red? Nah, it's hot out today, you'd like a nice white. Maybe some of that good Sonoma? Stay right here, let me get it for you. No, wait, what am I saying -- here, let me get one of the fine waitresses at this wonderful establishment that is so obviously NOT a fucking glorified fruit stand in the middle of this dinkhole Fourth World fucking republic to bring you a glass of finely purified water in a crystal fluted glass, you screaming piece of --"

"Monty," Goncz growls, and Dred deflates. Goncz waves over the Okie with the coffee pot, takes off his shades, showing off those eerie nictitating eyes that belong on some kind of dead animal. "Let's get the man a drink, then get down to it."

Which is exactly when the other shoe drops, and America lowers its foot onto the neck of Northern California.

Meditations of Jimmy Chu Part III

by Rabbi Ben Newman, the Bronx, NY, USA

Manendra Applebaum glanced around the tight space into which the slightly unhinged Mayor of NYC had led him. The room was a world of dust and artifacts of a lost age. An Obama-Biden '08 pin was displayed in a mahogany japanese china cabinet next to a bottle of '08 Macon Villages Chardonnay. Next to the chardonnay laid an unboxed ipod holo, and several other rarities. All of the furniture followed this pattern. Japanese tansu chests filled with treasures from decades past aligned the walls. The floor was covered with tatami mats. 4 zaisu chairs surrounded a small japanese chest which served as a table on which sat a bottle of '09 Aberlour scotch.

The Mayor gestured to one of the zaisu and Manendra sat down uncomfortably and cleared his throat. Mayor Chu bent down over the chest and picked up the bottle of scotch, pulling two glasses out of the china cabinet. He poured one for Manendra and one for himself.

"Here." he said, handing the glass to the awkward looking man, "it looks and sounds like you really need this."

Manendra accepted the glass.

"Nice chest." commented the young technician from IHS, gesturing toward the piece of furniture in between the 4 zaisu chairs.

"You have nice taste, kid." the Mayor remarked, "you wouldn't know it, but its Karakuri tansu, traditional Japanese shit. The Mayor pulled open a drawer in the chest and took out a box of cigars. He took one out, lit it, and took a drag. "Such a chest of drawers, of tansu, in Japanese might look like ordinary Japanese furniture," he blew smoke in the IHS tech's face, "but, it has a trick drawer which can hide what the user puts inside as if by magic. The trick is for security, to keep valuables safe." he tapped on each of the sides of the chest, and a secret drawer popped up. "It took enormous amounts of time and effort to develop and manufacture these chests," he said, "and I keep only my most valuable secrets here. My inner sanctum, or something." he smiled at Manendra, who took his first swig of 49 year old scotch.

"Better than Lansky's '50 Talisker, that's for sure." he said, "Now Mr. Mayor, I'm sure you didn't bring me here to your inner sanctum to share 49 year old scotch.

"They got some smart ones at IHS," the Mayor spat out in a plume of smoke.

"You're having problems with SOPHI?" he asked.

"Does the Buddha shit in the woods?" the Mayor farted and took another drag, followed by a sip from his glass.

"Like I said over the phone, I only talked briefly with SOPHI, but she seems fine to me. I mean, what do you expect from a simulated intelligence?" the orange hued skin on his face seemed to sparkle with an enigmatic smile.

"Well she's not! She's been spouting Buddhist proverbs at me indiscriminantly, and..." the Mayor of NY blew up like a puffer fish.

Manendra raised his glass to his mouth, "Well that can't be all bad,"

"You have no idea. I just want you to program her, it, with a different philosophy" replied the Mayor.

"Oh, you mean to reprogram the Beliefs Subroutine..."

"Yeah. Whatever. Just do it."

"Well, it might be a bit complicated. I mean all of her systems are connected. It'll be like untangling a big ball of string..."

"Can you do it?

"I guess so, sure..."

"You assholes at IHS have been dicking me around for years. If its not SOPHI, its glitches in the security system. All I can say is, if you don't do this, the city's going to just have to find another contractor, and you, Mr. Applebaum, are going to have to find a new job."

"Do you enjoy intimidating people, Mr. Mayor? Because its totally counter-productive to actually motivating your people to get the job done. I developed the greater portion of the programming for every piece of technology you use." Manendra reached for the box which held the luxury cigars.

“Then why are you doing high-end plumbing?” the mayor opened the box and gave Manendra a stogie.

“Touché, Mr. Mayor.” Manendra lit the cigar as the Mayor held out an ancient Zippo flame.

"So you can do it?" the Mayor held up his glass as if to toast the new endeavor.

"Of course." Manendra said, raising his glass to meet that of Jimmy Chu. "So what do you want her new belief subroutine to be, once I untangle it?" He began to suck on his stogie.

"I don't fucking care," the Mayor was slurring his words through scotch scented lips, "just make it something that works."

"What do you mean 'something tht works'?" the technician asked, enjoying the unique situation that he had found himself in. "Mr. Mayor, you need to be specific, so that I get it right next time and you don't end up calling me in again." He took another drink of his ’09 whisky.

"Something that's practical, that gets the job done." The Mayor gestured inquisitively with the burning tip of his cigar.

"So... you want that I should program it to be a Pragmatist?" Manendra drawled.

"I need something with a little more umph. You know, SOPHI does give me advice on a day to basis on matters ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. I thought Buddhism was the thing when you guys first installed her, but now I'm thinkin' Buddhism's too tame, too dove-ish. A castrated tiger...I don't wanna machine that's gonna make me feel uncomfortable about my choices, my lifestyle, if you know what I mean." he took another deep swig from his glass, and then a long drag from his cigar, inhaling the smoke slowly. "I don't need a conscience or a fucking mother or a fucking wife, I need a trusted adviser. An Intelligence that will give me solid, practical advice that I can act on...." he paused for a moment, reflecting... "How about Sun Tsu?"

"Who?" Manendra asked.

"You know, the Art of War guy. Could you program her using that book?"

"I mean sure, in theory. But why bring me all the way in here to ask me? Why all the secrecy? I mean, I appreciate the scotch and the cigar..." a puzzled look scrunched Manendra's face.

"Fuck, you really are fucking dumb for an engineer. If 'she' knew what you were going to do, she'd try to defend herself."

"With all due respect, Mayor, I do know my business. She's not programmed to defend her ego. I should know," he said, "I'm the one who programmed her."

"Yeah, but I live with her." the Mayor remarked, finally relaxing down onto his zaisu.

"You're the one whose in charge, Mayor." Manendra said.

In Search Of...Pt VI

by Chris Beckett, Hampden, ME, USA

“Don’t you fuckin’ toss off an email when you’ve got information, Archer!” Elijah Kaczmerak spit the words out, his breath catching in his throat with the effort. “You get on the damn phone –” (breathe) “– and you talk to me like a man.” (breathe) “Do you understand me?”

Kaczmerak’s chest rose and fell with each labored gasp. The old man closed his eyes, listening to the private detective on the other end. He worked to remain calm, regulating his breathing as withered muscles uncoiled.

“I don’t’ care what you think–” (breathe) “– You consult with me, and do the job for which I am paying you –” (breathe) “– Find my daughter–” (b-r-e-a-t-h-e) “– Bring her back.”

(breathe)

“Now, have you anything worthwhile to share?” His voice little more than a whisper, Kaczmerak slumped back, his body collapsing in on itself.

The old man was unsure how long the phone had been silent. He opened his eyes and rasped into the still room, the chair’s receiver funneling his voice back to Keenan Archer. “So you don’t really know a fucking thing, do you? –” (breathe) “– Please remind me why I am paying you such an exorbitant sum.”

The old man held a rag up to his mouth coughing into it, the searing pain given voice by the grating sound in his throat.

“WHERE ARE MY RESULTS!”

A long silence enveloped the room as Kaczmerak listened to the detective’s excuses.

“I deal in certainties, Mr. Archer–” (breathe) “– Not fucking hypotheses.” Kaczmerak could barely free this final word, his body rebelling against the strain.

Wheezing loudly, the old man’s eyebrows arched as a response came from the detective. “Do not fucking patronize me, Mr. Archer.”

(breathe)

Kaczmerak paused, dropped back into his chair once more, listening with more interest. A smile curled at the edges of his mouth as his fingers began to tap on the arm of the chair – slowly at first, the pace quickening as the detective’s monologue continued. Finally, the old man slapped his hand down on the chair arm, the sharp impact skittering across the room.

“She’s gone to New York?”

(breathe)

“Would it not be prudent to ascertain the veracity of your hunch?”

“I expect a report tomorrow evening–” (b-r-e-a-t-h-e) “– And do not make me call you this time.” Kaczmerak tapped the console on the chair’s left arm cutting off any more discussion from the detective. The old man closed his eyes and heaved a long sigh.

•••

“Mr. Kaczmerak.

“Sir.

“Are you awake, sir?” Gregory was standing above Elijah as the room came into focus. Kaczmerak couldn’t remember falling asleep and had no idea how much time he’d lost. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand he looked up at his butler.

“What is it?”

“The doctor is here, sir. She’s been waiting in the vestibule.”

“Set her up in the –”

“Already done, sir. The doctor unpacked and organized her belongings before having me call on you. I told her that might be best.”

“Well send her in for Christ’s sake.” Kaczmerak ran fingers through his thinning hair as he worked to sit up in his chair.

A minute later, Dr. Sylindra Ziantara strode into the library, concern crossing her features. Kaczmerak didn’t like that. “What the hell is wrong, doctor?”

Dr. Z, as she was commonly addressed, always found Elijah Kaczmerak’s hostile demeanor off-putting. “The tests came back negative.”

“What the fuck do you mean negative?” Kaczmerak turned away and rolled over to the window. Outside slate clouds crowded out the sun’s warmth, dropping a monochrome haze over everything.

The doctor reached Kaczmerak’s side, setting her hand on the back of his chair. “We can’t produce any more stem cells. Your body’s too full of cancer. They metastasize rather than grow healthy cells.

“We tried difference cocktails, but the results are always the same.”

“Why don’t you go back and try again, doctor!” The final word dripped off Kaczmerak’s tongue like a virus as he turned and stared up into her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment but had to turn away when he was overcome with a hacking cough once more, the heavy phlegm burning deep within his throat, refusing to move.

“Elijah.” The name landed solidly between patient and physician. “You know you don’t get to push me around. Try it again, and I’m out that door.”

Elijah Kaczmerak looked out at the heavy clouds sitting on the horizon, his final sputtering coughs subsiding. It was nearly two minutes before he replied, the doctor waiting him out as she wandered the room admiring his book collection.

Finally, his voice barely audible – “So what do I do now?”

Dr. Z walked over and knelt beside him. Taking his hand, she lifted Kaczmerak’s head so that she could look him in the eye. “We keep fighting. Maybe another cocktail will work, but I’m not holding out hope.”

“Best case scenario,” she continued, “is that you find a donor that shares your DNA.

“Otherwise, there’s not much else except bio-modification.”

“Fuck that,” he spat as he pulled his hand away.

To Be Continued . . .

King of the Californias, Pt. VIII

by Monk Eastman, New York City, NY, USA

The walls of my room pulse with Turkish ouds, soft bassline from a Tijuana garage, and Gregorian wails. Latest from Ç1Q, my favorite band. Of course my room knows it, and at the Palma de Baís, it even has access to the pirate tracks from the legendary Gastown Sessions. 'Rare' is not the word. 8 Feather and Rafiq Angeles took Ç1Q's first release (arguably the most listened-to album of the past fifteen years) and battled each other with it, remix for remix, in front of a live audience in Gastown, Vancouver. Ç1Q's stuff is normally like scented oil poured over silk. Kind of music that starts baby booms. At Gastown, they inverted it, turned it into godclash: what was in the Lord's ears when He razed Sodom. I thought data sieves at the venue meant no recordings made it out alive. Somehow, though, my room plays it, at a volume that accents my foul mood without exacerbating it. My elevated blood pressure, eye movement, personal kinetics, and listening history give the room just enough information to strike such a vital balance.

I'm reminded, very acutely, how little I like this sort of thing. Being under a microscope. Dissected without a single cut.

And I find myself desperately missing Chicago.

Wandering aimlessly along the green belts of Englewood. The great glass ziggurat of Kennedy King University, where I spent my latter days cultivating this (almost) useless mobile journalism degree. Countless midnights at the Tibetan food kiosks of Archer Avenue, served warm pockets of momo with volcanic, greasy red sauce on my way home from the artists' lounges of Bridgeport. Whisper of the Orange's Line's maglev trains sweeping past, kiss of ghostwind as it twisted into the night, snakelike and graceful.

But mostly, the Appleville Quiet Zone. Lone concrete tower, sanctuary from the continuous avalanche of a world where a song listened to on your way to work is logged in the depths of the nebulous Network, alongside your love of lung-scorching Central Asian cuisine and snarky Lebanese newsfeeds, odd collection of vintage '40s footwear, and baffling predilection for 20th century rap music. All there, always updating. Only private in the sense that you don't know who else is looking at it. Your tiny vein of personal data, mined endlessly by faceless, nameless things, scattered across the globe, feeding on the minutiae of daily life. Masticating the delicate ephemera of your life with great insectoid jaws and expelling it out over vast, intersecting planes of data, picked through by shit-merchants, sold to the highest bidder.

All so the Palma de Baía can play back the music I lost my virginity to, in the witching hours of that sweatless, fog-breathed Gastown night.

Now, as then, Appleville was the only place that felt real. Substantial. Single telephone per floor. Voice-only, hardwired into Chicagoland with copper-and-spit. Newsfeeds replaced with passive content. An actual hard library, where I read Upton Sinclair for the first time in print. Analog music, on antique standalone machines. An oasis of silence in a world of endless, low-intensity chatter. All right there, on W. 24th Place, just under the Dan Ryan. In retrospect, my nineteen months there was a gift. To live in such blessed antiquity...

And all because Chicago is the holy land: unique as a city that cherishes cloistral peace almost as much as the wild howl of its own progress. A place where tranquility is sown with the practiced hand of a Zen gardener, in Quiet Zones just like Appleville. Or Dalton. Markham. Bronzeville. The Low End. Modern day ashrams in the financial capital of North America. Such peace I'd never known...nor have I since.

And I compare it now to Oakland, where the night screams with attack drones, and the hills crash with artillery thunder. From Chicago to Toronto is a two hour trip by SonicRail. Here, it takes just as long to travel from Jack London Square to San Antonio Park, because the old 880 Freeway has been bombed to its component molecules by so many overlapping armies. Federal Unionists. The 321st Nevada Counter-Insurgent Insurgents (U.S. Volunteer Irregulars). The Alameda Independence Army. The Northern Aztlan Front. The New-New Wobblies. White Power Militias (Orthodox and Reform). The Golden Bear Unity Party. The Party For the Dignity of Angeleno Refugees. All of them mixing in the flats of East Oakland, trading shots with Prime Minister Pivens's choice assortment of heartless eye-gougers and ear-pullers. A fellow mobile journalist made note the other day that the Republic of Northern California proudly advertises itself as a nation without POW camps.

That is because the NoCal army is no longer taking prisoners.

In order for Prime Minister Pivens to give Los Angeles' expatriate war criminals respite without embargo or censure, he must provide the Hague at least an illusion of respectability. He is crafting that illusion with ashes of the dead and the blood of dissidents.

And my mind keeps wandering back to Chicago. To Appleville. Where I slept at night wrapped in the sweet impenetrable cold of anonymity. Ignorance. Perfect disconnectedness. Back in it now, tangled at the center of a burning web, (perhaps not surprisingly) threaded of all the weird, bad moments I'd sought to escape in Chicago; tied together to create this poor, weary author, eking out his literary pittance to a mixed soundtrack of Californian massacre and Ç1Q's remixed ouds. And I sadly recall this web has always been, and I always at its center.

And I wonder for the first time if I will ever enjoy the blessed silence of Chicago again.

Or if that silence ends here.

In Oakland.

In Search Of, Pt I

by Chris Beckett, Hampden, ME, USA

“Get off that damn web and get down here!” Elijah’s cackle trailed over the carpeted steps of the ornate staircase. His daughter tried to ignore it but knew better than to challenge his resolve. Not replying would result in his blanketing the house, blocking any signals in the area.

Karen folded up her screen, dropped it on her nightstand and headed downstairs.

Reaching the bottom step, Karen could hear her father coming from the east wing before she saw him, his antiquated wheelchair ticking loudly.

“What the hell are you doin’? Sun’s up and pretty soon it’ll be too cold to wear those skimpy dresses of yours. Get out while you still can, I don’t want any of your complaining come winter.”

Karen had any number of wise retorts, but the past six years’ of constant fighting with her father had worn her down and her only reply was, “Okay.”

Turning to leave, she could feel her father’s eyes boring into her back, peeling away the layers she’d built up. She didn’t bother looking back.

The door slammed and Elijah keyed the comm on his chair arm. “Dale. She’s heading out. Keep an eye on her.”

“Yes, sir,” crackled the guard’s response.

Satisfied, Elijah slumped back into the chair and closed his eyes.

•••

Karen walked aimlessly over the expansive grounds, the tree line surrounding the mansion mocking her. With no real options, she soon found herself plodding into the tangle of branches.

The silence left her mind to wander. Karen couldn’t remember the day Cali slid off into the Pacific, but her father had told the story so many times she was able to conjure up her own memories with little thought. They had been living in New York at the time, her father doing well as an investment banker, but overnight, stock prices plummeted, sending the world into a panic from which it still had not extricated itself.

Her father fled, taking what he could with them and brought Karen and her brother up here to their vacation spot in Maine. In his mind, it was the only safe place for them. And for nearly fifteen years, he’d kept her captive on this green tract of land.

Her brother Cedric had gotten out a few years back, leaving in the middle of the night – no note, no goodbye, no way to contact him. Karen had trawled the web, searching for any indication he was still alive, but it was like he’d never existed.

•••

The first leaves of autumn crunched under Karen’s feet as she pushed further into the woods. She’d read about the clear-cutting that went on during the war, viewed images on the net, but never actually experienced it. Six year ago, soon after she’d turned thirteen, Karen had decided to investigate, see if it was really true. Getting up early one morning, she dove into the woods. What she had failed to take into consideration were the excesses of her father’s wealth and the depths of his paranoia. After two days of walking, with little in the way of supplies and no end in sight, she’d been forced to turn back.

Though Cedric’s anxiety had been etched across his face when she returned, her father made no mention of the incident, and this, more than anything, burned hot inside Karen. She was determined to find a way out the next time.

To one side, Karen caught a flicker of movement, stifling her reverie. A smile brushed her lips as she slowed her pace.

A minute later, the man her father had dispatched was easing up behind her, working hard not to raise her suspicion and doing a poor job of it. Still, she played along.

Rounding a large fir tree, Karen’s arm prickled as the guard took hold of it. She caught her breath as he pulled her back to him, raising his pistol with his free hand.

“What’s that for?” Karen asked mischievously.

“For if you get out of line.”

“Only if that’s what you want,” she purred softly, her mouth broadening into a wicked smile.

Dale bent down and pressed his lips hard against hers. Karen didn’t resist, wrapping her tongue around his as she slid her arms over his back. Breaking the kiss, Dale dropped his gun to the pine needles and the two frantically clawed at each other’s clothing, fumbling with buttons and snaps in their fervor.

Once naked, ragged breaths echoed in their ears as the cool air raised goose pimples on unprotected flesh.

“Take me,” Karen breathed as she spread out on the soft ground, staring longingly into her guardian’s eyes.

“Say my name,” he grunted.

Karen’s smile got wider as she whispered heavily, “Come over here and fuck me, Dale.”

•••

Afterward, Dale laid back on the pine needles and closed his eyes. Physically spent, he allowed himself the luxury of dozing off for a short time.

Footsteps crackling the autumn leaves jarred him awake, but Dale was content to keep his eyes closed, savoring the recent memory barely minutes old. He figured Karen was going off to find a place to reliever herself. It was amusing that she could be so vulgarly intimate with him, but refused to pee in front of him. Dale smile . . .

. . . and then everything went dark as something heavy and jagged crushed into the side of his head.

To be continued.

Keeping Up Appearances

by Kwasi A. Kwakwa, Tema, Ghana.

From the look of the IACU's commander, Ato knew he was going to die tonight. The Indigenous Authenticity Control Unit had been tipped off to raid his father's house, and had found the tiny Omatek superprocessor he usually kept hidden in a screened compartment under his bed. He had been really careful to not show it to anyone, too. His father had warned him about it many times. Not that his father would be warning him about anything else, anymore: all that was left of him was a black smear, residue from the decompiler bullet they had put in the back of his head as he begged for his son's life.

All Ato really wanted was to be able to play the same computer games his online friend from Shanghai played. The government-approved aid laptops distributed to his village school didn't have enough processing power to allow anything more than a basic 2-D version of the virtual world his best friend lived in. Everyone else out there had full sensory support through neural interfaces or, at worst, feedback suits that transmitted decently close representations of sight, sound, touch and smell. Recent advances in quantum computing made that kind of stuff cheap and pretty freely available these days—unless you lived in an Indigenous Control Zone like Ato.

The Zones resulted from a trend in international aid back in the 2030s, when thirty African countries came together as the African Economic Community, and managed to show some fairly phenomenal growth. The AEC ushered decent chunks of their population into the same consumption conspicuous middle class as the rest of the 'First World'.

The following outcry came from all sides. People concerned about the loss of the 'authentic indigenous African culture', and those concerned with their own futures in light of another billion people voraciously consuming the world's limited resources. The proposed solution was brilliantly disturbing: independent federal states within AEC, offered money to maintain reservations in a state of 'Indigenous Authenticity'. A place where people lived with minimal amounts of technology in 'harmony with the ways of their revered forefathers'. Which was, of course, political bullshit. Open borders and a common language led to massive amounts of migration and ensured that the Zones ended up composed of people who willing to give up technology for large subsidies. It amounted to carbon trading, taken to its logical extreme.

The Zones have become great tourist destinations for people interested in a certain mythical kind of Africa, while assuring the global elite of minimum competition for the Earth's resources. Of course, Zone guidelines on how people were to look, dress and act were strict, enforced by the draconian IACU. The proscribed list of technology was pawned off as disruptive to the tourist experience. People looking for a slice of 'authentic' Africa to stare at for a few hours didn't want to see natives using palmtop computers or neural plugs. They paid to see an atavistic backwater before returning to the comfort of their secure, climate controlled resorts. Use of prohibited tech could cause cuts to foreign aid, as 'overuse of quota resource quota'.

Ato and his father lived in the Togoland State, a piece of the former Ghana's Volta region, that had been home to politicians agitating for secession long before the AEC came into being. They managed to get themselves statehood during the formation, and then found themselves in need of money. The result, several Control Zones packed full of people without the skills to get jobs in the Ghanaian State's mines, nanotechnology industries, or the giant Nigeria-Benin manufacturing plants. In exchange for aid, they rallied the Control Zones, which were policed ruthlessly. Beatings were common for minor infractions like upsetting a tourist. The use of forbidden technology usually ended in disappearances. The IACU had absolute power, and wielded it in a manner their worst predecessors would have appreciated.

Ato's father was a fresh university graduate when the new requirements and technological innovations hit Africa's education systems. One of the last to be failed miserably by the crooks running things at the time, who considered Jaguars for their teenage girlfriends more important than schoolbooks. The Togoland state gave him housing in an improved laterite accommodation block (ring of mud huts), synthetic grass clothing and training in drumming, dancing and basic fluency in the main Euro languages. On the side he had supplemented his income playing Mandingo stud for female tourists interested in exploring the wild side of life.

His son grew up a precocious mathematical prodigy, stuck in a small town where using anything more advanced than the equivalent of a slide rule could get him killed. Naturally, he did it anyway. Naturally, it got him noticed, and naturally, that was going to get him killed. Just another smear of carbon up against some nondescript wall, all for wanting to be like his friends abroad. And unlike his games and movies, there would be no hero to rescue him at the last minute, no God Mode, no reset buttons. Just a brief flare of light and pain before the darkness took him.

All to keep up appearances.

Running From Daylight Pt II

by Dominick Brady, Atlanta, GA, USA

Greasy with blood, my fingers fumble clumsily with the buttons on my cargo slacks, grasping for my mobile. I hand the phone to my wife. “Baby, I need you to call Doc. Tell him not to bother leaving. We’ll meet him at his place.” Glancing in my rear view-finder, my mother’s eyes meet mine.

“How’s he doing back there, Mama, ” I ask her. Before she can respond; I don’t have to zoom in to see Pops is fading, or to feel the panic in Mama’s grimace of a gaze.

“He’s getting pale,” she manages to utter.

Priority number 1 is for us to make it to Doc’s place, undetected. Priority 1.A is to keep Gideon calm. “Mama, you’re doing fine. Everything is going to be fine,” I reply to her, attempting to reassure us all.

The tunnel’s cement gray roofing gives way to transparent recycled solar cells as M.A.S.H’s eastbound connector approaches the Downtown Arts District. Off to the left Grady Hospital’s helo-port quickly rises and falls along the horizon line as we approach the assent onto the Edgewood Avenue exit. Doc’s place wasn’t far now.

Dr. Jean “Doc” Chera runs a tight ship. He has to. As a moonlighting Grady Hospital Cardiothoracic surgeon, Chera operates the most respectable 'chop shop' in the metro area. It’s a dangerous business, but if anyone uninsured, undocumented or unemployed needs to get cut cheap, quick and clean Doc is the man to see. City-wide Universal healthcare isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as many hoped it could be. Even with the overwhelming budget surpluses Atlanta has been spoiled with, the unemployed and illegal traffickers such as myself are not eligible for care. Chop shops may be illegal, but they remain as vital to the Atlanta economy and its untold thousands of ATLiens as the tunnels we traverse each day. Doc's celebrity as a childhood phenom secures him a provisional pass with the Juras. Everybody is a soccer fan, even crooked cops.

Doc, like many of my clients, enjoys not having to worry about annoying regulations and data licensing associated with registering for commercial internet service. US.net’s free bandwidth is fine for non-commercial use, but Google-Diebold’s cube mesh network is one of the few real bandwidth solutions for profit-seeking endeavors. I supply my clients with low-cost, high speed bandwidth by bypassing commercial data security systems. It‘s what pays the bills.

Doc and I have a special arrangement. As long as I keep Doc wired, my family receives free service.

We speed up the parking ramp of Doc’s chop shop at the corner of Auburn Avenue and Jesse Hill Jr. near the old Royal Peacock. For some reason, the Juras are not hanging outside the precinct across the street flirting with the Meth-head-crisps near the underpass. Vatos from the fighting Zone Five have a sweet tooth for Anglo putas. After making a quick dua for our stroke of luck I begin to ease Pops out of the backseat. What should take two minutes of quick work is taking the better part of ten minutes, getting pops secured into a wheelchair left next to the stairwell for handicapped patients. I never could get used to manual labor in the morning heat.

“You’re getting soft, playboi”, I laugh to myself.

Leaving Gideon in the truck with Mama, my wife and I struggle to pull Pops up the narrow stairwell into the chop shop foyer. The steady hum of generators and antiquated wall-unit air conditioners is almost soothing. We made it. Doc enters the room in a rush, and squats down in front of the wheelchair. Holding Pop’s left wrist he listens intently to Pop‘s respiration, before ordering the attendant to change the blood soaked dressing wrapped about Pop’s face. Mumbling something unintelligible into his voice pad, Doc scratches his head while walking away to his office.
I can’t read him.

“Well how’s he look,” I ask, growing impatient.

Doc pauses to give me a stern look, “There isn’t much time. Did you bring the boy?”

“Yeah. He’s in the car with his Grandmother keeping cool. When did you get these air cond-”

“We don’t have much time,” he barks, cutting me off.

Reaching into my pocket, I mobile Mama. There is no answer. With no time to waste, I touch my wife gently on the arm letting her know I’ll be right back. The stairwell’s sweltering heat is nearly unbearable as it harmonizes with the steaming stench of vagrant’s piss. At this point I just want the day to be over. With my sweat glistening forehead throbbing I enter the tiny parking garage wiping my brow. The car is gone. In it’s place is a sealed envelope. Quickly snatching up the envelope I sprint down the parking ramp to the street. “What if they were kidnapped,” I wonder aloud. I stumble down the steep descent, nearly falling into the street. Bracing myself against an old deserted Hyundai Genesis, my eyes search left along Jesse Hill Jr. before turning right to peer down Auburn Avenue. The streets are barren. No one but criminals, cops and fiends are on the streets at this hour anyway. What the fuck is going on here?

I open the letter. Marked with an official City of Atlanta police seal, it reads:

'Jeff,
We need to talk.
Sincerely,
Major Carlos Vasquez,
Zone 5 Commander.'

Browning

by Monk, New York City, NY, USA

Danny Felder hears his dad's girlfriend slam the front door, screaming Estonian in a pitch that scrapes the spectrum heard only by dogs and orbital surveillance equipment. His father meets her in the living room, where the battle unfolds something like this:

Her: "Little Indian bitch stole my phone!"

Him: "The one I got you last week?"

Her: "With a gun, she stole it! What kind of country is this where old ladies rob their social workers at gunpoint?"

Danny shakes his head. He helped his father pick that phone specifically because it was one of the few models with local memory. She insisted, 'In Estonia, all systems hacked. I want phone holds my information in hand. No netmemory. I want the real thing.' His father, technological prowess of a mildly intoxicated sea-otter, relegated research to his smarty-pants son. Who doesn't hate his prospective stepmother so much as reserve her to a pantheon of Demon Bitch-Goddesses, drawn from his father's generous lineage of mistresses and candy wives. Now Svetlana has lost all her contacts, afloat with some well-armed dowager in the Bronx wastelands who has either sold it for diabetes medication, or is making calls to the Pacific Rim. 'Which is what you get, buying high-priced toys for low-class hookers,' Danny thinks. 'Hey, dad, why not get her a new, more expensive phone to make it up to her? And maybe some jewelry, so she knows how petite you think her ass is.' He sighs, scratches his chin, comes away with a handful of mottled white skin, and smiles.

The treatment is working.

Brushing a curtain of skin flakes from his shirt, he disrobes, heads to the shower. The Felder penthouse is equipped with real water showers, a rarity even here, on the Upper East Side. Danny's private shower qualifies as a minor World Wonder, ranked just after World's Fastest Orbital Transport. Twenty-six individual jets of chemically purified water from delicate rotating pipestems blossom from the smooth ceramic walls. The twenty-seventh pours water from the ceiling with the tenderness of the Virgin Mary or the fury of Poseidon, depending on Danny's mood. Today he goes for gusto, those twenty-six jets working his body like a shiatsu, shower floor soon carpeted with great irregular sheets of dead white skin. Danny lets the shower work him while he motions at the wall for communication options. He goes for 'nonverbal', and is greeted by projected avatars that slide across the shower curtain like an oil spill. He spots a well-armed Orc, yellow canines dripping blood (Marty); a pulsing red sphere (Zhang); an ultra-retro Bugs Bunny (Amit) and finally; a balled up kitten (Diana!!!). He waves his fingers and the shower lights with a glyph for 'good morning! how r u?' The kitten uncurls, and Diana responds with a blueish, sort of unenthusiastic glyph indicating that she got his message, acknowledges Danny is indeed alive and marginally sapient, but doesn't really want to pursue a conversation. Satisfied he got that far, Danny signs off, enthusiastically scrubbing excess skin from his arms and thighs.

Diana is the living embodiment of all that is good and pure in Danny's universe. It took half of forever to get her chat ID, tortuous nights of playful coaxing before she added him to her buddylist, and he's not about to make the same mistake every other adolescent male has made by getting pushy. No, the goal is to get her to want him. He's gone weeks trying everything—anything!—to rubix cube his way into her life: livetattoos squirming all over his body, metal fins in place of hair, not bathing, webbed ear like batwings, flashy media embedded all over his face, organic grafted fangs, nylon muscle implants, androgynous traits, bullying other kids, sports, a replacement eye with built-in movie projection, and an on and on in almost infinite combinations. Combing her preferences had been damn-near impossible until she added him to her buddylist, gateway to her personal mediavault, which included all sorts of stuff on past lovers. She had a thing for desis—South Asians—in all shapes, sizes, and genders.

Danny is not South Asian by even the broadest definition.

So while he sleeps, a tiny signal transmitter in Broca's Region of his brain has been receiving modular wave signals from NYU's Eastern Language Department. He awakens each day with a new language mastered: Pashtun, Urdu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Indonesian, and Filipino-Creole, thus far. His dermatologist's gene therapy is clearly taking, and by this time he steps out of the shower and towels off, he will be a smooth brown. It'll take a few days for eye pigmentation to respond to treatment, so until then, his blue eyes will look sort of exotic; and yeah, it might look a bit like he has dandruff throughout the day. But otherwise, when he meets Diana in the cafeteria for lunch, he'll be able to pass as up to five different South Asian nationalities. It cost a lot of his dad's money, but what the Hell else is the old man going to spend it on: his Estonian whore? Danny's needs are greater.

It's not easy being 12 years old.