Weekend Warrior

by | May 12, 2006 | Story

By federal law, I am required to inform you that by stepping outside of these doors, you are releasing the federal government from liability for your safety. Although I have never lost a person on one of my guided tours of the Outside, I have seen people maimed and kidnapped. People have died when taking these kinds of trips, and it’s important for all of you to be educated about the dangers that exist Outside.

I see many young new faces today, so I think it would benefit us to review some of the safety standards for an Outside Tour.

For the first time since the Great War radiation and air pollution levels are within acceptable limits for human tolerance. However, we still recommend that you keep your air filters on your face and your suit zipped over your head. Experienced Outside travelers enjoy removing their protection for limited periods of time, but until you know your own limits, I don’t recommend doing this. I have had individuals who were unprepared for unfiltered air become very ill. Many of you may have medical conditions that you are unaware of because you have been breathing filtered medicated air since birth and the adjustment from this air to the Outside air may be uncomfortable.

Remember, even with the filter, you will not be getting the regular medications that the government provides indoors. Unless you have purchased daily pills to compensate, which are openly available over the Net, you may experience symptoms of withdrawal. Some people report feeling very tired, some people report high energy and anxiety. Most people experience feelings of nausea, which pass after a day or so. Please be aware of your own needs. If you begin to feel ill, please report to a group leader.

The buddy system is imperative to this trip. Keep your buddy in sight and touching distance in all times. Watch your buddy carefully for signs of physical or mental illness. You are responsible for each other. Team leaders on my tour are highly trained professionals with hundreds of tours under their belts. They can protect you and keep you safe, but only if you follow the simple rules that I will set out for you.

Rule one, don’t touch anyone. There are no real people on the Outside, only monsters and people so far deformed it ain’t worth calling them people anymore. Although most of these individuals are quite harmless, some of them are tricksters in the worst way, and will try to get you close so that they may inflict violence upon you.

Rule two, don’t eat anything you find Outside.
Remember that what we consume here on the inside and what is grown on the Outside are very different. We cannot anticipate your body’s reaction to anything you consume on the Outside. Fruit of the Outside may be the greatest taste that you have ever had, but there have been cases where people have been driven mad, or died, from consuming the food out here. Do so only at your own peril.

Rule three, do not give handouts.
At select points during the tour you may see group leaders trading with individuals on the Outside. Do not attempt to do this yourself, as individuals Outside can be highly unstable, and may be able to use even the simplest of tools or food to fashion weapons. You may see some terrible things on the Outside, but leave your sympathy here in this room.

Obey these rules and your group leaders and you will see some of the most magnificent sights of your life, and you will be challenged beyond anything you’ve done before. Everyone have their packs ready? Are your suits zipped? Check your filters?

Alright. Open the door, we are going Outside.

Liberty

by | May 10, 2006 | Story

Liberty ate her lunch alone. It wasn’t that she was shy; back at home in the national park where she grew up, she had been very outgoing. In the city, under the press of glistening buildings and cars speeding through the sky, advertisements wailing and the press of people, sensation zappers shooting through you from ads, spreading the taste of chocolate or burger or the scent of perfumes Liberty needed time to recoup. Liberty took quiet lunches to collect her thoughts before going back out into the crowing sensations.

The little Martian restaurant close to campus always seemed crowded but somehow there always seemed to be a table when she came in. Then Liberty realized that the Martians were seating her before other people, preferential treatment for a regular. They always smiled at her when she came in, and she always left them a big tip on her credit line.

Once, on a slow day, she asked for a dish they didn’t have on the menu. Most Earth people didn’t like it; it was a pickled root that was engineered on Mars, and cooked in a spicy curry.

Liberty had been to Mars once, after the war. She was only ten years old then, but she had family on Mars. Her grandmother had gone through the genetic treatment before the war to become fully Martian. When her father and her mother had stepped off the ship onto the alien world, six Martians were waiting for them. They were the tallest people that Liberty had ever seen, they looked like they had all been stretched by giant hands. Their skin was red and orange in swirls that bled into each other, and each one of them had giant eyes with a thin clear eyelid that slid over quick, and a thick outer eyelid that looked tough and callused, even on the children. Back then, all the Martians looked alike to her, but her mom had known her grandmother right away, and they touched each other’s faces and embraced, and all the weirdness of standing in front of people they didn’t know seemed to disappear. In those few months Liberty was free from school, and spent all her time running around the red Martian caves with her grandmothers children, and eating the Martian curried root. Her father had said that the war happened because the Martians didn’t want to be human anymore, and by being there, Liberty was showing them what they were missing. When Liberty was older, she learned more about the war, and a lot of what her father told her was shattered.

Once, when she was eating her lunch, a couple at the table beside her started to argue with their waiter.

“Bring me the tab in Chinese!” demanded the purple haired woman. “ I can’t read it in Martian, I want it in Chinese.” she said, her voice like a car horn. The man with her, with matching puffy purple hair muttered something about Martians, and how they aught to learn the three basic languages if they wanted to live here.

“The menu is in Chinese.” said their waiter helplessly holding out the menu pad to them. “You can read the price there if you think we are cheating you.”

“I need to enter the data values of calorie consumption and fiscal consumption into my data bank.” She exposed her left breast, which had a counter of calories and her exposed credit line in moving ink on her flesh. The waiter looked away. Tattoos of any kind were forbidden in Martian culture.

“Can’t any of you write in Chinese? Or can you only write in your make-believe language?” screeched the woman.

Liberty stood up and grabbed the data pad out of the waiter’s hands. “I can translate Martian.” she said, and she wrote the words into Chinese on the tab and threw it on the table. “There. Now I think you should pay the man.” The woman with the purple hair paid the bill and left in a hurry. They did not leave a tip.

“How did you learn to read Martian?” asked the waiter.

Liberty picked up her bags. “When I was a child, I used to be a Martian too.”

Happy Trails

by | May 8, 2006 | Story

The neon sign outside the dingy brown building said “Roxie’s Travel Agency” and featured a woman in a fedora holding a white machine gun. Few people but Roxie, the owner, are old enough to get the reference. She’s had a good deal in front of her that night, a couple of newlyweds right out of the chapel, coded together forever. The door displayed them as legally married when they passed under, a fact that made the woman squeal with delight. They were holding hands so tight that she could see their tattoos shift over between them, the designs and the viral skin ads all mixing together. Roxie smiled. Newlyweds were always a sweet deal.

“How can I help you folks?” she said reaching out and shaking their hands, shaking the mechanical ad dust off the membrane on her gloves. Roxie was plump and just old enough to start reminding people of their grandmothers.

“We want to go to the Moon!” said the woman, one of the high-rise women, manufactured celebrity feature. She leaned into the man. “It’s our honey-moon!”

The man laughed. Roxie pulled her tight plastic pants down on her legs; crazy fabric was always riding up. “That’s mighty expensive folks, are you sure you might not want to take a few weeks and go to New Slavia?” She pulled out an animated brochure. “Best service in the world in New Slavia. For what you would pay to go to the moon you could stay in your own palace apartments and be treated like a King and Queen!” She winked. “Awfully romantic.”

“My baby wants to go to the moon,” said the man “What she wants, she’ll get.”

Roxie could never understand trips to the moon. Sure, there was a bit of romance behind it, but there were much better, cheaper and more comfortable trips here on earth. “Well alright, but you know lots of people get nauseous up there and have to take pills – you two have any objections to pills?” The couple looked and each other knowingly and roared with laughter. Roxie shook her head, aware she was being made fun of “Well, it don’t hurt to ask. I never do like to assume anything.” She removed one of her gloves and palmed her computer.

“Luna-Vista travels” she said, and the booking site popped up. “When you folks want to leave? They got a shuttle going in two weeks, you want to be on it?”

The man looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Nothing sooner?”

Roxie produced another brochure, but the couple didn’t even glance at it. “Luna-Vista is the only real reliable tour and it only departs once a month. I wouldn’t be responsible if I told you to go on the Wen-Kuo or Verba lines.”

The man shrugged. “We don’t care. We want to go now. You don’t book us for tomorrow, and we’ll take our business elsewhere.”

Roxie shook her head. “Now I’m going to be honest here kids. The Wen-Kuo line departs tomorrow, but they’re not going to treat you right, no amenities, lots of turbulence and you can barely see anything from those little portholes on the ship. Folks, for what you are paying, you should really book something nicer, even if you’ve got to wait.”

“We don’t want to wait.” The mans smile was stiff.

Roxie folded her hands. “Well it just don’t feel professionally right to do it, so if you want to take Wen-Kuo, you can book it yourself.”

The woman’s face fell, the ditzy, happy expression vanishing. “We need to get off this planet, as soon as possible.” Her voice had fallen about an octave, was now husky and dark. “Just book the goddamned flight.”

Roxie wouldn’t have noticed it if she wasn’t looking, but her Buddy had been a member of the Central Enforcement before she lost him in 52’ to that horrible infection scandal. Both of these folks had clothes that covered up places just big enough to hide a holster right in the places where Buddy used to carry his. She relented. If this was Central Enforcement, she didn’t want to block their way.

“Fine, whatever you want.” She said. The man handed her a credit disc, and she fed it into her wall unit. She reserved the flight, her first ever booking with Wen-Kuo. The wall spit out two plastic discs. She handed them over cautiously.

“Your flight leaves tomorrow at 5AM. You can use your discs to take any kind of public transport you want to the shuttle.” The couple examined the silver discs and tucked them away.

“Thanks.” The man cracked a smile. “Take it easy.” He sounded earnest and sad, like he really meant for Roxie to take the rest of the day easy. The couple turned to leave. Roxie called after them.

“Hey!” The couple turned and Roxie gathered up her courage. “Is there any reason why you two want to leave Earth so quickly?”

“Yeah.” Said the man “Remember the expression; live each day?”

“Like the last.” Roxie completed the phrase. The man nodded.

“Nothing truer.” He said, and left with the woman, into the florescent night.

Mrs. Lansing and the School of Humans

by | May 3, 2006 | Story

Mrs. Lansing slapped the back of Edward’s head. “What is this?” she asked, pointing at his computer pad.

“It’s the site I built!” whined Edward, rubbing the back of his head.

His teacher tapped her foot and folded her arms tightly to her chest. “That site looks like it was built by a program. Did you use a program to build that site?”

“Well, yeah, but I-“

She slapped the back of his head again. “You don’t listen to me, do you?”

“I listen to you!” cried Edward.

“No you don’t. If you listened to me, you wouldn’t build shitty sites using a program. But since you aren’t going to listen to me when I tell you how to build a site, maybe you will listen to me if I tell you a little story. Do you think you could listen to a story Edward?”

Edward winced, looking at her upraised hand. “Yeah, yeah, I can listen to a story.” he said, shrinking in his chair.

“This is about one of my former students. Her name was Melody. When she was born, the doctors said that she was a retarded autistic that would never walk. Her dad was raising her by himself, and he was always working or fucking his secretary, which was something he called working.

She had to go to school in one of those robotic suits, and all the other kids made fun of her and called her a cyborg and stole her computer and fucked with her robot suit, putting sand in her tank or glue in her metal knees. She had to go to special classes after school with the rest of the retarded autistics, and all the teachers treated them like they were big problems and a hassle and like they chose to be screwed up.

When it came available, she had to get gene therapy to replace the cells in her brain that were screwed up and the muscles in her body that wouldn’t grow. And people say gene therapy is great, and it’s a cure all, and it’s a miracle, and sure it is if you’ve been born with everything working, but even people who need to get a single finger replaced know that it hurts, it hurts worse then hell because you are supposed to be grateful, and if they are messing with your brain you see visions of things, things you don’t get, half made memories and fake shit, dreams like horror movies, and all the while you are changing and in pain.

That’s what she went through, and while that was going on she put her nose in her screen and learned to code, and not code like you do playing with your little pictures in those nice little games that help you make those standard little webpage’s that look so pretty, just fucking like everybody else’s. She learned real code, hard code, the languages that make things go, right down to the root, those words that make things light up and become something wild, something to make people shake, those langagues that bridge the gap between men and the machines that run them, and that makes her a master, and that makes her in control of the machines, which makes her human. More human than you will be, because the machines run you now, and unless you learn what makes them work, unless you work them, you are their slave. You want to be a slave to the machines Edward ?”

“No.”

“Do you want to be human?”

“Yes.”

“Then get to work.” Mrs. Lansing slapped him again, for good measure.

The Whole Night Sky

by | May 1, 2006 | Story

Muddy came over to Chris’s studio apartment on Saturday afternoon. He came with his old guitar wearing his mismatched black thrift store clothes. Chris plugged his ears directly into his music system, and they both played, but since they couldn’t hear each other, it wasn’t much different from being alone. Muddy seemed to be in a meditative state, while Chris was in a state of artistic agitation, more so since the sale of his music files were slipping.

“The problem with music.” said Chris, disconnecting his cranial implant from his music system. “Is that there aren’t any big stars anymore.”

“How do you mean?” asked Muddy, rubbing his guitar pick between his fingers.

Chris scratched the blond stubble on his face. “Video killed the radio star man. Internet killed the video star. There aren’t any big music celebrities, haven’t been since the big record companies folded.”

Muddy shrugged, leaning over his acoustic guitar. “Oh, I don’t know, Visual Purple is doing pretty well.”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Visual Purple? Muddy, they’re not doing any better than you are!”

“I’m doing pretty well.”

Muddy was selling enough music to buy food and pay rent on his tiny apartment. He played an antique acoustic guitar, which was so old that part of the box had rotted off giving the instrument a sour sound. Muddy had an appeal among a certain kind of intellectual who enjoyed the unique sounds of his bitter guitar.

“That’s not what I mean.” said Chris, avoiding the topic of his friends modest success. “Sure, Visual Purple is selling music, and it’s selling well, but if you went out on the street right now, do you think that if you asked any random person that would know who Visual Purple is?”

“Probably not.” admitted Muddy.

“Back in the day, we had big stars like Elvis and Aretha Franklin and Jonathan Coulton, people who made big money, who were worshipped by their fans. Now we’ve got all these little players, barely making it by.”

Muddy looked up from his bitter guitar. “Well, we may not have big stars anymore, but now we’ve got thousands of them, constellations. Now we’ve got the whole night sky.”