He looked wild and unhealthy in the most horrible way possible for someone on the living side of the grave. His light-skinned thin face was a roadmap of scars and lesions, some old and scabbed and some fresh, moist and pink. The skin that circled his storm-gray eyes was a sickly brownish-purple color, that lent him a dark psychotic appearance. Even his hair was in bad shape, being matted in places and choppy and uneven in others. The interface sockets drilled into his temples and wrists seemed out of place; shiny buttons of chrome spit-polished to perfection. Like a beautiful new brass doorknob on an old weather-beaten door.

“Hate to say ‘I told you so’, but—” Marv flashed her a smile. Yellow, ragged teeth clenched around the cigarette butt. He adjusted the rumpled clothes that hung off his anorexic body like a tent. In his current condition, he looked more like the national poster boy for The Euthanasia Campaign, rather than one of the Eurasian Alliance’s Most Wanted.

Talitha watched his eyes take her appearance in. Her hair was cropped short, reddish-brown, curly. Her skin was a beautiful copper color. She recently lost a few pounds which brought her down to 121, which she considered to be her optimum weight.

“Are you alone?” Talitha asked, letting her eyes quickly dance around the room but always snapping back to her target, in case he decided to make his move. The only move he made was with the cigarette hand, bringing it to his lips for a quick toke.

The studio, stripped of the cheap grandeur it once laid claim to, was small. There was barely enough space to fit the little table and two stools that sat across from the stove and sink. To the right was an alcove that held a toilet, no sink, no shower, and no door. To the left, where Quinton stood, was an unrolled sleepmat. Atop the little table was an ashtray made of foil, an open can of Albanian beer, a dusty and scratched cybermodem with connecting interface wires, and some half-melted candles. Come to notice it, there were candles all over the room, on the stove, the sink, the floor.

Most importantly, on the floor, by his right foot, was a pistol. She brought her own gun to bear and targeted the spot between his eyes, her lips skinned back from her teeth. “Slowly kick the 9mike-mike my way, now!”

Marv hesitated a moment, looking at his Browning and its distance from his hand in relation to the slamtracker’s finger to her gun’s trigger. He sighed and complied, kicking his pistol across the wooden floor.

“Turn around and assume the position,” Talitha said.

He took a long last pull on the cigarette, crushed the butt in the ashtray, turned quietly and leaned against the wall, hands flat, feet spread apart. Talitha bent her knees and reached for the Browning, never taking her eyes off Quinton, and tucked it into the waistband of her slacks. She moved to her bounty and patted him down. Nimbly reaching into the largest of the advantage belt’s compartments she produced four very thin metal bracelets, two with green markings and two with red.

Talitha turned him to face her and Quinton obediently held his fists in front of him. She gently but firmly took him by one shoulder and pulled him down vertically, knees and back bent in a crouch, his hands positioned close to his ankles. With a series of clicks his wrists and ankles were cuffed. The bracelets had no chains or bars linking them. The slamtracker stepped away and triggered a device. Dim green and red lights emanated from the bands and they homed in for their counterpart. Two sharp clinks resounded when magnetized metal rings touched. She had arranged the bands so that his left wrist was shackled to his right ankle and vice versa. Unable to keep his balance in the awkward position, Quinton landed on his butt, knocking over his stool.

She did a quick scan of the toilet. Quinton was alone. In the periphery of her vision, she could see him sitting on the floor testing the magnacuffs.

“Forget it,” she said, holstering the Glock and examining the Browning. “To separate the cuffs you’d need to exert five hundred pounds of pressure in both directions.”  Marv continued testing the cuffs anyway.

“Why didn’t you shoot me when I first walked in?” she asked, holding up his gun as if to say it’s loaded and functional.

“Not my style,” he looked up from the cuffs. His eyes, although weary and bloodshot, were sharp, intent, intelligent. “When I aim that gun I don’t shoot people, I shoot obstructions. I shoot aberrated ideologies. I shoot the future that has no place for the individual, only the corporate. The things that hit the ground when I squeezed that trigger were definitely not human. Maybe at one time, but not when they came to me.”

“You can’t glamorize killing. I do enough of it to know.” Talitha sat on the stool nearest her. “There’s nothing poetic about what you did. Nothing justifiable.”

“Since when isn’t freedom justifiable? Who decides that?” There was a twitch in one of Quinton’s jaw muscles.

“The survivors of murder victims.”

“And if you murdered me right now, could my survivors claim your freedom? Your life?”

“See this face? Not impressed by your word games.”

“They’re only word games, Ms. Slamtracker, if you’re on the losing side. When you’re winning, they’re indisputable facts.”

“Secure that crap, okay?”

After a long silence, Quinton said, “Murder me. Give my people a cause.”

“Your people? You mean—what is it you call yourselves now—The Midnight Raiders?”

“That’s what you call us. The media spoon-fed you a label and you lapped it up like a good corporate doggie. I’m talking about the hapless, the wretched, the destitute, the impoverished, the indigent, and unprovided for. All the underdogs are my people. They’re the stuff of lore. The kindling that keeps the flame alive.”

Talitha stared at him through slitted eyes. “Underdogs? How can you say that with a straight face? You’re part of the largest terrorist organization on three continents!”

Quinton’s intensity seemed to spark around his shoulders like electricity. “Since when is it terroristic to fight for freedom? When the movement first began, we held anti-corporate law protests, which was our right, to have our voices heard, to demand justice and equality. The response? They passed laws against us, claiming we were a menace to the EA Nations.”

Talitha glowered at him. “There are ways of fighting that don’t violate the law.”

“These corporations you work for, whose values you uphold and defend, siphoned billions of dollars from public programs that should have been used for food and shelter, creating a homelessness problem, which they sought to solve by rounding up the homeless and turning them into unwilling human subjects. They carved up the brains of public assistance recipients to implant software, wetware, data and storage chips, at first just to test the effects and later to create nonvoluntary data couriers. They connected toxin sacks to these people’s vital organs to force their cooperation. How can they expect us not to fight back?”

“Spare me your recruitment propaganda,” Talitha said and placed Quinton’s Browning in her waistband at the small of her sweat-stained back, adjusting it for comfort.

“Did you know the very first ‘Rinthjock, the guinea pig that was fitted with prototype interface sockets, was a woman on welfare?” Marv didn’t wait for her response. “Documented fact, look it up. In order to receive benefits for herself and her four children, she had to agree to submit herself for testing. The techies who created the method of downloading data directly into the mind without having to constantly slice open a skull and install datachips, devised a way to patch the human nervous system into a direct computer link via the major nerve trunks in the wrist and base of the skull. The process placed her in a vegetative state and to get a better understanding of what happened, they vivisected this poor woman, whom they considered intellectually inferior, and then had the nerve to rename the internet after her in tribute.”

“Her name was Labyrinth?”

“No, they weren’t interested in making a martyr out of her so they hid their tribute within a longer word. Her name was Arinthia Simpson.”

“You know, I let you go on to see if I could make some sense out of what you’ve done,” Talitha said. “But this dump is a sauna and I’m not in the right frame of mind to listen to zealotry at the moment, so be quiet, while I call this in.”

Double-tapping her right temple, Talitha activated her comm implant and held her thumb to her ear while speaking into her pinky. She called in the bounty and arranged for a wagon to swing by for the pick-up. All there was to do now was wait.

They sat in silence for nearly a half-hour, each with their own thoughts, until Marv said, “I read in a news article about a torture gadget the Eurasian Alliances Science Guild makes to sell to foreign countries that are still run by military dictatorships. Our own police agencies help by selling them torture equipment like this headband I saw. It’s worn like a skull cap and clamped on tight. Tiny pins on the inside of the band pierce the forehead, through the skull and into the brain. When activated, the headband selectively fries the forebrain with a jolt of current. Most of the victim’s memory is eradicated, leaving enough to implant an easily controlled pseudo personality into the empty brain, creating a killing machine.

“Our corporations manufacture these headbands. It’s made here, mass-produced in sweatshops that employ poor people at slave wages. Most of them don’t realize they’ll be wearing that cap eventually for some minor infraction that a rich person can simply buy their way out of. Mind you, I’ve only seen photographs of the headband; not the torture, just the results.”

“What did I tell you about—”

“Not spewing propaganda. Just making conversation to pass the time,” Marv said. “That wagon sure is taking its sweet time getting here. You positive it’s on the way?”

“It’ll be here, so why don’t you just sit there and reflect on your life choices.”

“Can I just tell you about this chair I saw?” he asked but didn’t wait for an answer. “It was a picture of an ordinary wooden chair bolted to the floor in a room in Chad where people had been tortured. There were no people in the photograph, but you knew from looking at the chair, from the blood-soaked back and seat that people had been tortured there. Women and men, light-skinned and dark, rebel and scapegoat, sane and crazy. In Chad, in Nova Scotia, in Cuba. And if it’s there for foreign dissidents, you know it’s here for native ‘Rinthjocks.”

“Of course, because you’re beset on all sides by the tyranny of evil corporations, blah-blah-blah.”

“Do you know the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist?”

“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me,” Talitha rolled her eyes.

“It’s what side of the line you stand on. I’m on the freedom fighter side. How about you?”

“I’m on the side that upholds the law, the side that has to listen to your lies and whiny nonsense about being forced into a way of life not of your choosing. And when I don’t subscribe to your bullshit, then I become the enemy and that gives you the right to kill me.”

“That’s not what we—” Marv started.

“You weren’t born a rebel with interface sockets and firearms, it’s a choice,” she said. “You made a conscious choice to live outside the law and enforce your own brand of justice and you don’t even have the decency to explain yourself and own up to your crimes. Why is that, Mr. Freedom Fighter?”

Quinton squirmed a little to get comfortable in his crouched position. He was used to the heat so it didn’t bother him much but he noticed Talitha could not say the same. She had tied a rolled handkerchief around her head to keep the sweat out of her eyes, but was helpless to stop the dark crescents that grew under her armpits. “I’ll explain it to you, the way my mother did to me,” he said, keeping his tone even, gentle but not condescending. She was the one with all the weapons, after all.

To Be Continued…

Text and audio ©2002-2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Avenue B was crowded with petty consignees who made their living as best they could. DNA, RNA and organ banks. Barter firms. Boosterware outlets. Gambling holes. Hotels. Bars. Trixiepens. Bodegas. Prosthetic surgeries. Hockshops. Each animated with the cadence of people turning profits, the murmur of small enterprise, the barbed aroma of sweat and adrenaline.

Talitha Manchand inched her way out of the vendor clutter and holographic psychedelics of the avenue and jetted down a hotel-lined sidestreet. Three quarters down the block, she hooked a sharp left and spun the ’13 GeoPlymouth Cloudburst into a convenient alley. Guided by its lasertracking system, the hovercar maneuvered effortlessly through a maze of dumpsters and garbage cans, kicking up a mini-storm of grit and paper trash. The Cloudburst stopped a few feet from the back entrance to the Forgotten Realm Hotel, gently lowering itself on its flexible skirt. When she killed the engine, the skirt deflated and retracted into the car’s underbelly housing. She flicked on the dome light and slipped the Glock 19 out of the holster secured under the glove compartment and checked the load.

Flicking off the dome light, she climbed out the car, checked the alley, holstered the Glock in her advantage belt and walked over to the hotel’s back door. The sonic padlock was ancient; she picked it with a high-frequency whistle normally used to stand off attack dogs. With a soft click and a push of the door, Talitha stepped into a cluttered urine and sex-scented stairwell that used to be a service entrance and ghosted her way through the lobby.

The lobby loiterers were pretty much what she expected: snuffheads, scavoes, jonniegirls. Each in their little cliques, dialoguing. Except for a rail-thin stimfella, who was dealing stims to a skud, she might have gone unnoticed. The skud looked so hard up for a fix he probably would have snorted potassium cyanide. Behind the stimfella were two husky goons on the lookout. Definitely his billyboys.

“HEY!” the skud yelped as the stimfella pushed him to the side and walked away. “I slid you cash, so where’s my stash, man?”

Talitha knew there was no way the skud was up to going toe to toe with the stimfella but jonesing muscles sometimes made a weak man strong. And judging by the way he was listing and clutching the left side of his torso, he probably sold a lung or kidney to enjoy the uncollected stim.

“I’m talking to you, man! You deaf, or just stupid?” His answer came in the form of sledgehammer fists. The billyboys beat him to the ground and all he could do was bawl out in anger against their fury, trying to protect the recent surgery stitches.

The stimfella swaggered on an intercept course with Talitha and his billyboys, having made short work of the skud, weren’t too far behind. All three men stopped directly in front of her, blocking her path.

“Name’s Trent, jodie. Whatcha doin’ in the Paradise?” the slump-shouldered stimfella brushed blond locks out of his eyes and rubbed a blemish on the side of his aquiline nose. “Your man not servin’ you right? Lookin’ for a jock to rock your box? You found ‘im. I promise you a screamin’-and-creamin’-yabba-dabba-good-time,” he said, licking his thin dry lips.

“Fuck off,” Talitha said, before her brain could catch up to her mouth. There was no way this was going to end peacefully.

“Best put some speck on the way you talk to me, ‘fore I have to do it for you, the hard way,” The stimfella said, grabbing his crotch.

The billyboys exchanged glances and laughed. This was a game to them, Talitha realized. They were out for shits and giggles. Their laughter faded when Trent, sporting a lime green weasel-suede leisure suit, reached into his breast pocket, came out with a yellow plastic inhaler and fired a round up each nostril. He absently passed the inhaler over his shoulder for his billyboys to divvy up the dregs. Talitha studied the stimfella. A full head taller than she, confident, tough and tanked up on some stim that probably boosted his reflexes and gave him an adrenaline buzz. Someone was going to get hurt.

Talitha considered it might be her, so she tried to sidestep. Billyboy one and two flanked their boss left and right and circled her, smiling, Trent lashed out at her face with the back of his left hand, a bitch-slap, what real men used to keep their women in check. This punk regarded her the same way he did his stimmed-out trixies. Someone he could slap around one minute and get them to go down on him the next.

That was all it took.

Talitha’s body went wild. Blocking the slap with her forearm, she snagged his wrist with one hand and slammed the heel of her other palm into his elbow. The impact forced the elbow joint to bend the wrong way with a moist, popping sound. Trent’s scream trailed his collapsing body to the floor.

Billyboy One came in from behind and tried to get Talitha in a headlock but before his arm locked around her throat, she slammed the back of her head into the biliyboy’s face, smashing his nose. At the same time, she hooked her foot behind one of his knees and forced it to buckle while shifting all her weight against him suddenly. They toppled backward. When his head struck the tiled floor, his grip loosened and she rolled out of his arms and drove her elbow down into his solar plexus.

The remaining billyboy was over her suddenly, shifting his weight to his right leg so he could kick with his left. Talitha ducked inside the kick with her arms close to her chest. Then both arms shot out one after the other and her tiny rock hard fists slammed into the billyboy’s testicles like pistons from an ignited car engine. The quadruple punch doubled the man, forcing him to topple over Trent’s body and crash to the floor in a fetal position.

Talitha rolled to her feet and brushed herself off. She glanced around the lobby, her expression explicit. It said, simply: Next?

The cliques slowly scattered, loiterers making their way towards the exit. They recognized the fighting style and pegged her as slamtracker.

“Now that they know what you are,” said a voice from behind the front desk. “They’re probably planning to bum-rush you when you leave.”

“The least of my worries,” she mumbled.

The desk clerk, who’s nametag read: ADEL, was a nondescript beaker-bred hermaphrodite who looked as androgynous as they claimed Bowie did in his heyday. Adel seemed mildly amused, glancing past Talitha to the three moaning men on the floor.

The skud picked himself up unsteadily and began rummaging through the stimfella’s pockets. Trent made a weak grab attempt but the skud stomped down on Trent’s broken arm. The stimfella shrieked, eyes rolling into the back of his head, and the skud returned to his scavenger hunt, taking all the stims and money he found.

Talitha thought, maybe, if he hurried to the organ bank, the skud could get his old lung or kidney back, or even buy new ones. More likely, he would forego the organs and buy more stims. He was visibly bleeding from where his stitches popped, but he seemed rather pleased with his ill-gotten gains. He pocketed his goods and on his way out the door, he kicked both billyboys in the face, obviously the icing on his satisfaction cake.

Talitha turned her attention back to Adel, flashed her credentials and said, “You know why I’m here.”

“I’m the one who called, but don’t go thinking I’m some sort of snitch. I just needed the finder’s fee for an emergency, that’s all,” the clerk said and pushed a slip of paper toward her. “That’s his room number.”

“Not my concern how you justify it, as long as the information is accurate,” Talitha started for the elevator, spotted the OUT OF ORDER sign then made for the stairs instead.

The Forgotten Realm lived up to its name. Calling the place low-tech would’ve been high praise. Most of the mechanix here were decades old. Still, Talitha had to admit she was slightly impressed that the whole place was put together from salvaged materials. Shame no one here jerry-built an air conditioning system. She was on the nervous side to begin with, add that it was the last night in July, and it made for a woman who gave off enough sweat to cure the Delaware drought. Walking up twenty-three flights of rickety stairs didn’t help the matter any.

Talitha heard the stairwell door close behind her. Her left hand adjusted her advantage belt to put the more suitable compartments in her reach. The Glock 19 mini 9mm trembled in the grip of her tense right hand. She debated whether or not to leave the safety catch on. Her index finger rested near the trigger.

Cold fear poured down her spine as she started down the long, empty hallway. She licked her lips, trying to taste some courage. The Glock grip itched her palm. Her breath was quick. She paused outside the door number scratched on the slip of paper. Standing off to one side, she tweaked the doorbell and waited. Nothing. She put her mouth to the apartment’s intercom, ‘Marv Quinton?” Still nothing.

The locks on the door were electronic; finger-idents that were programmed to the renter’s fingerprints that could only be overridden by special 4-digit codes. Child’s play. From one of the smaller sections of her advantage belt she pulled a device roughly the size of her thumbnail. It looked like a tiny calculator. She placed it on the lock panel and it took all of fifteen seconds to tumble the locks.

As soon as the pneumatic door opened, her stomach quivered. “Mr. Quinton?” Talitha called into the doorway of the jet apartment. No answer. Not that she expected one. If he felt up to having company, he wouldn’t have made her pop all three of the finger-idents on the door.

Her weapon readied, she stepped inside. The door hissed shut behind her, the locks snapping closed. Darkness swallowed her like a hungry animal. The heat was three times as severe inside, made worse by the stale air. “Lights on.” she spoke to the ceiling, but nothing happened. Either he had disconnected the light mechanism, or this dump wasn’t fitted with voice activated halogen strip lighti—

To the left, the tip of a matchstick scraped along the warped wooden floor and burst into life. The barrel of the Glock swung left, her body following and she planted her feet firmly apart, slightly bent, thumbed the safety off and braced herself to lay into that corner of the room.

Laughter. Man’s laughter, as the match rose to light the tip of a cigarette. She couldn’t see his face clearly, the flame played eerie shadow games with his features. He sat on a stool in the corner, looking like a gargoyle on a precipice.

“You should be more careful when you violate someone’s space. If I was as mental as most make me out to be, I would’ve flatlined you at the door,” the gargoyle said. He blew out the match and was devoured by the shadows again, all except the fiery tip of his cigarette.

“Marv Quinton?” she tried becoming less of a target, stepping away from the spot he saw her at, but the floorboards creaked, giving away her movements.

“Depends on who’s asking,” the cigarette tip bobbed up and down as he spoke.

“Talitha Manchand, ‘Rinth police.”

“You mean slamtracker, don’t you? ‘Rinth cops don’t come this far out when they can hire local.”

“Fine. I’m a tracker, okay?” she swiped at the sweat on her forehead.

“Dialogue.”

“Not in the dark, Mr. Quinton-“

“I insist.”

“Not in the dark, Mr. Quinton!”

“I have my reasons.”

“NOT IN THE DARK, MR. QUINTON!”

“The years haven’t been kind to me.”

“Did I ask you all that? I just need to viz you, okay? It’s regulation.”

Quinton stood up and reached over to hit the old fashioned manual lightswitch. Two dusty fluorescent rings flickered on and Talitha squinted until her eyes adjusted to the light, and it took all the self-control she had to keep from flinching.

To Be Continued…

Text and audio ©2002-2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

In the heart of Slummer Paradise, where the pollution-to-air ratio was widely acknowledged to be the worst on the planet, Marv Quinton fitfully tossed and turned on a rented rotten wood floor.

Why he opted to lay his sleepmat there was obvious. Being hazardzone, the Paradise offered excellent cover because it was as dark, grimy and ominous as the rumor suggested. The persistent stinging smog created by makeshift power stations and chemical plants, hovered over the tiny region and cut resident life expectancy short by sixty percent with cancer, heart disease and emphysema. The drawn faces of the locals took on the grays and browns of the cityscape. Acrid smoke from rows of chimneys darkened the streets. Lignite and coal, used to fuel the mechanix of the area, was primitive, cheap and abundant. It was also high in sulfur and ash and intensely dirty.

All in all, it was a small price to pay for a rest to the endless running.

The area was originally named Alphabet City in the PreCollapse Days, but that was before the FlatFall of ’92, when the Eurasian Alliances established the Global Commodities Barter Systems which succeeded in destroying the economies of the former superpowers. All plans for the commercial and residential redevelopment of Alphabet City were scrapped in the depression that followed.

After years of neglect and decrepitude, after sewage, factory discharge and poorly stored toxic waste had contaminated most of the surrounding areas, the residents who could afford it began moving away in droves and a dome was constructed to contain the area’s pollutants. It became a scarred and battered, lost part of Manhat, rumored to be inhabited by freaks and misfits. A place where acts of depravity and violence were the social norm.

An exaggeration on the truth. The area was inhabited by travelers and squatters mostly, with a few neurobikers, ‘Rinthjocks, and down-n-outters tossed into the pot to add flavor. Even though many of the babies were born with deformities, asthma, bronchitis, and eye and skin ailments, due to the high level of toxic metals collecting in their parent’s tissues, they were not misfits. They were pioneers that saw a home in a lifeless place. It was their sweat and muscle that rebuilt the area, some were even cunning enough to devise independent air-filtration, sewage and electrical systems. And as for the acts of violence and depravity, well, they happened no more in the Paradise than anywhere else. Both factions of segregated Manhat gave the Paradise wide berth just the same.

Rising fear from the rumors eventually led to the area being legally designated Hazardzone. That was when Alphabet City’s concrete and steel skeleton became Slummer Paradise. Home to those who had nothing to lose by becoming lost in the bureaucracy. Visited by no one in the mainstream, except for slamtrackers, who came to collect either police or private bounties.

And in the center of this asphalt and tar prairie, Marv Quinton hid in a one-room coffin, equipped with the barest of essentials needed to continue his existence.

Nighttime stressed him the most. He was used to being mobile until daybreak. The hysteria, brought on by the restlessness he usually managed to beat down, was just about to bust its cap. The rathole he took refuge in suddenly began to close in on him. He yanked the interface cables from his head shunts and shoved his cybermodem violently aside. Not even being online in the Labyrinth contented him any longer. He paced the room, chain-smoked and flicked stations on the vid monitor until nothing was on the screen but the subliminal psychedelics of the non-broadcast channels that were meant to lull the viewer into a passive, consumable state, which had no effect on Marv. For inspiration, he worked on his agenda and list of priorities until they became so sophisticated and scrambled, he had to stop before he lost his mind. Funny thought, that, since he was surely crazy already.

Sleep deprivation made him this hunted animal, addicted to fear and sometimes murder. He would have done Strega blotter, mescaphine tabs, hyperpyridinium Jell-0 shots, anything to put himself under, but his metabolism had been altered to make him immune to stims. So he forced himself to stretch out on the hard, unyielding sleepmat. He was certain he understood what Hell really was; lying down, tired enough to sleep through his entire lifetime, times three , yet not able to close his burning, bloodshot eyes.

Dreaming, perchance to sleep.

That was a curse he acquired while on the run. He never had dreams anymore, the dreams had him. Clutching him in a two-fisted chokehold of rudimentary panic that was beyond the realm of his comprehension, yet so basic in structure that it was ingrained in the very foundation of his nature. The fear, or the dream, he wasn’t sure which, had turned his cramped room into a vast black canvas, stretched to opposite sides of infinity. And his childhood phobia of the dark bubbled to the surface from that place buried by years of conditioning, logic and maturity, deep within the sub-sub-sub-regions of his mind. That tiny concrete and steel room, wrapped in wrecking ball chains, with the huge reinforced padlocks that held all the real horrors of the world: the deranged and deformed Prometheus, cybervampires, hellhounds, the CribDeath Man, Geriatric Rabid Killer Teddy Bears. Somehow they were all free again. Some nosey bastard just had to find out what was in that room, just had to pick the padlocks. And now they were coming for him, to exact their revenge, to toss his into that tiny prison. But not before they had their fun. Rule Number 101 in the Horrors’ Ethics Handbook: Always Enjoy Yourself At The Expense Of Others.

Wait! What was that at his ankle? Felt like teeth. Long, sharp, metal…

Only then, when he choked down a scream that made his throat raw, was he beset with the meat of the nutshell. The dream.

Flash-card remembrances assaulted his senses, of different things and different times, but ail in order, as if they had been carefully filed in some sort of mental card catalogue and plucked out by a librarian and thrust into his face, one at a time.

MEMORY of the rough feel of his father’s hands as they brushed his own, accepting his third year birthday gift. The hand-me-down IBM keyboard, one megabyte ram, forty megabytes hard drive with a built-in VGA holoplate that weighed a ton in his tiny grip.

MEMORY of the sweat that poured down his face and stung his eyes, at age nine, when he battled the school computer’s AI for supremacy and rewrote the comp literacy program to upscale the daily lesson plans to something a bit more challenging.

MEMORY of the wonderfully dirty, used smell of the money he made changing grades after he cracked the Board of Education’s mainframe.

MEMORY of the coy smile that played at the corners of his mother’s mouth when she announced, on his twelfth birthday, that she would finance his first set of chrome interface sockets.

MEMORY of the first time he jacked into the Labyrinth, the way the computer data reached out to him, into him, and tickled his nervous system. He reached his first orgasm at that moment, and was embarrassed at the time. Now he wished he could go back and re-experience that sensation. No other orgasm had come close since.

MEMORY of his father’s chalky brown face on the day of the funeral. The facial expression wasn’t right, wasn’t natural. The person that handled the cosmetics obviously never met his father while he was alive.

MEMORY of the scratchy white tissue in his mother’s hand that wiped the tears from his swollen eyes, as she tried to explain in a hushed and frightened tone, that his father hadn’t died of a stroke as she led everyone to believe.  His father had actually been part of a rebel group named “The Midnight Raiders” who punched into the Labyrinth and attempted an illegal data raid on the Polygenom Corporation. Somewhere something went wrong and they tripped over an anti-intrusion program that wiped their brains clean and stopped their hearts cold.

MEMORY of his stomach churning savagely on the night before his fifteenth birthday, when he woke to the sound of his mother’s screams. The ‘Rinth police had violated the sanctity of their home and yanked her from bed with a gun to her head, dragging her struggling body into the street. She was still in her nightgown.

MEMORY of the mixed look of terror and anger on his mother’s bruised and bloodied face, as they shoved her into a dark nondescript van. He knew that was the last time he’d ever see her again.

MEMORY of the helplessness he felt, handcuffed in the backseat of the squad car, overhearing the conversation of the two ‘Rinth cops up front. They discussed sticking him in a foster home until further orders were received. Their casual tone of voice, like they were dropping off clothes at the cleaners, made him kick at the wire mesh partition until he wore himself out. The cops just laughed as he cried in frustration.

MEMORY of him breaking out of the foster care system two days after his arrival. If there was any justice in the world, he hoped somebody snatched the stupid ‘Rinth cops’ families out of bed at gunpoint and shoved the lot of them into a van, never to be seen again. How hard would they laugh then?

MEMORY of learning how to hustle on the streets to avoid eating out of restaurant dumpsters.

MEMORY of faces. Thirty-five screaming faces of strangers, slamtrackers, each characteristically unique and detailed. Faces burned on the insides of his eyelids forever. Thirty-five people, women and men alike, who probably had families that depended on ‘Rinth police bounties. Money that would never be collected. Families that needed to find a new provider.

So many memories, tiny shard images and hollow voices. He supposed, in its own way, it was a form of rest, a sort of OEM sleep. Open Eye Movement. His eyes darted around the bleak room, tracking the images that ran at ultraliminal speeds. The same way tonight as every other time he tried to sleep since he was fifteen. The dream made him a captive audience to a personalized home movie that he was powerless to stop when it came over him. Unable to sleep until the dream ran its course. When it was finally done, so was he.

Just as he was about to settle into that brief and fragile thing that passed for sleep, Marv Quinton woke hard, clothes clinging to his sweat-spackled body. Grabbing the Browning Hi-Power beneath his pillow, he racked the slide, chambering a 9mm shell and covered the door. The act was a smooth reflex, practiced so much, he could have done it in his sleep. Many times he had. The room was windowless and pitch to human vision, but he twisted his head back and forth anyway, scanning. His heart hammered. The remnants of the dream shrieked through his mind. An eddy of pure panic swept over him when he realized he had company.

Someone was in the hallway, just outside his room door.

To Be Continued…

Text and audio ©2002-2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

After what’s been done to us, it’d be easy to wallow in bitterness and self-pity, but both grief and insecurity have to be faced, dealt with and exorcised. There’s more, you know, there has to be more to life than simply trudging through daily hassles, waiting to die. We have a role, a purpose, far greater than self. We have to set examples, lead the way. We represent what we should be, what we dream of becoming and not the thing we’re forced to become. Yes, we as a race screwed up. That’s to be expected sometimes, it’s only human. What’s also human is the ability to learn from those mistakes. To grow. To mature. If you do that, even a little, then perhaps what we went through will have a positive meaning. Don’t let me die in vain.

-The final words of Cheyenne Willys

To Be Continued…

Author’s note: Once again, I’ve gone scrounging around in my box of old first draft/half-finished stories, which is the writer’s version of taking a walk down memory lane. This story was written on the tale end of my fascination with cyberpunk, a sub-genre I was sure was going to take over the market and launch science fiction into bold, new territories. Anyhoo, the above passage may not make loads of sense but it’s the quote I opened the novella with that ties into the backstory of the piece. Why I chose to isolate it in this post is anybody’s guess, but here it is nonetheless. Hope you enjoy it and come back for the rest.

Text and audio ©2002-2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys