SETH W. JAMES

The Matter of Temptation (To Walk pt 2)

November 15, 2015

By Seth W. James

Though not taken from a combat chassis, the cybernetic legs were of heavy-augmentation stock.  The toes were of the usual size and came five to a foot, but in place of toenails they had retractable claws; useful for climbing and even gaining traction while running.  Jeff could extend them with the appcon currently wired into his new legs’ diagnostics port but he hadn’t figured out how to do it mentally. Not yet.  Even walking was something of a challenge.

Recrossing the living room, Jeff raised his head and fought to ignore the sight of his metallic feet swinging into view below.  Simply rising to this height in the real world felt dizzying, more so than any space flight or jumping off of castles in Omicron Simulation.  He kept his eyes focused on the apartment’s airlock door as he made his new legs walk. Step by step, closer and closer, he then came to a halt and immediately raised his appcon to check the stability rating.  Still not all that great.

“I’m so proud of him,” Yukie whispered, hugging herself and covering her mouth.  “He’s picking it up so quickly.”  She had been in tears of one sort or another since Marcel had come home late a few days ago, burn marks down his arms and forehead, carrying two cybernetic legs wrapped in a tarp.

Marcel stood with an arm around her, fighting the urge to run over to Jeff and steady him.  He knew Jeff would learn fastest on his own; Jeff had always been that way.  “You’re doing fine,” he told his son. “Don’t look at the appcon so much, don’t worry about the ratings. Just get the feel of it.  The program will adapt to your input, learn as you learn.”

“There’s still some weird lag between when I try to move them and when they actually move,” Jeff said, trying to swing around to face his father.  The legs jerked in an attempt to comply but there is more to walking than legs: Jeff’s upper body had not had to work in concert with legs for ten years, since he was barely six-years old.  His center of gravity didn’t shift quickly enough and his new legs all but walked out from under him.  He started to fall, arms windmilling; Yukie cried out and would have leaped to catch him if not for Marcel grabbing both of her arms; Jeff’s thumb found the claw icon he’d left prominently in the corner of his appcon screen just in time: the small, actuated composite sickles drove into the plastic floor, gripping fast. In the next second, Jeff righted himself and took a few steps forward to be sure.

“Easy, easy, for goodness sake!” Yukie wailed, finally pulling free from Marcel’s grasp and running over to Jeff.  “You’ll break your neck.”

“He’s fine,” Marcel said.  “But she’s right, Jeff, take it easy.  Give yourself a chance to become accustomed to them.  Madre de Mierda! Look at the floor.  Look!” Marcel said, running over and inspecting the claw marks to see if they’d punctured through to the unit below them.  “Don’t use those things in the house, okay?”

“You’d rather he fell?” Yukie said, swatting Marcel’s shoulder.

Ignoring both of them, Jeff said, “It’s not as good as in Omicron.”

“Nothing is as good as Omicron Simulation,” Marcel grunted, standing up and scuffing a boot over the claw marks.

“I’m going to see if I can improve the locomotive software,” Jeff said, running a second hardwire from his appcon to his eye mods and bringing up a coding overlay.  “Maybe try to borrow a bit from Katiana Caprice.”

“Uh, you really want to do that?” Marcel said, arching a burned eyebrow nearly into his hairline.  “You could wind up sashaying around here like that sexy ninja woman, you know?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jeff said, smirking and blushing a little.

“Oh, well then,” Marcel said, clearing his throat, “if that’s what you’re going for, go for it.  My son will be the sexiest cyborg walking these streets!  No one will compare to his grace and appeal.”

“Come here, will you,” Yukie growled, pulling the pathologically proud father into their bedroom, looking over her shoulder to see Jeff typing at incredible speed in the invisible Omicron overlay.  With the door almost closed, she said, “With everything that’s been going on, Jeff finally walking after all these years, I haven’t asked.  Maybe I don’t want to know, or shouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway, I have to.  Marcel, where did you get those legs?”

“What does it matter?” he said, raising his chin.

“It matters,” she said.  “They’re military grade, aren’t they?  Those toe claws, you couldn’t get those at Ho Mart.”

“You’d be surprised,” Marcel said, sitting on their bed.  “Modders come up with all kinds of things.”

“Not like those,” she said.  “Something printed out here in the fab would be the size of daggers.  Those are micronized.  I saw that the manufacturer’s markings have been scraped off the chassis; the internals have obvious been rewired, probably to get around some sort of tracking device that has been removed.  If that all happened at a local mod shop, fine.  Tell me that’s where you got them.  Tell me you bought or traded or stole them.  Don’t tell me you—”

She couldn’t finish the accusation.  She knew the look of defiance on Marcel’s face, knew it all too well.  Tears flooded her eyes anew as she looked away, backing up until she rest against the far wall.

“What does it matter?” Marcel hissed, keeping his voice down so Jeff wouldn’t hear.  Coming off the bed, he rushed over to whisper into Yukie’s ear.  “He walks.  Jeff walks again.  Isn’t that the only thing that matters?”

“No, it isn’t,” she said hopelessly.  “What difference does it make if he walks for a few days and is then killed by whatever corporation you stole them from?  Did you kill SS to get them? That huge explosion, down Montgomery Street?  Is that where you got those burns, Marcel?”

“I tell you it doesn’t matter,” Marcel said.  “No one will find out. The trackers have been removed.”

“Is that why the legs don’t work so well?” Yukie asked.

“They work well enough,” he said.  “The CPUs had to be removed, they had integral trackers and transponders.  What I had to use for replacements is not designed for them.  But they work!  He will get used to them. He may not be able to outrun a VTOL or jump over a pre-fab stack but he can walk down to the bazaar with me.”

“And when the local toughs see him?  You think they won’t want to take those legs from him?” Yukie said.

“With him shuffling along as he is now?” Marcel said.  “His slow pace and awkwardness will guard him better than any ninja moves he hopes to program.  Now, enough of this.  What’s done is done.  He walks.  I need to go and find more batteries, though.  He’ll hardly sleep until he has mastered their use, or tried to.  We’ll need more batteries and a good charger; not that jury-rigged nonsense I put in the kitchen.  I’ll be back later.”

***

It wasn’t exactly easy to conceal the RG-88 railgun.  Marcel had pulled six of them out of the ruins of the exploded lube shop, disabled their trackers, and then traded two of them for the replacement CPUs for Jeff’s new legs.  He’d traded two more to a mod doc over on Monroe to do the work; a high price but the work had to be done quickly or the trackers would scream into the electromagnetic night until a VTOL full of KJI Security Soldiers dropped in to recover the expensive cybernetics—and execute whoever possessed them.  Marcel had hidden the other of the two remaining RG-88s under the stairwell of his apartment stack.  He didn’t know what he’d need it for.  He hoped he would use it as collateral or a down payment on his next bit of biz.  He hoped with a pounding heart that he would never need it for its intended purpose.

The other of the remaining two RG-88s bounced against his back inside the shell of a printed water can.  The fab took cottage industry to the next level, making everything from printed electronics to designer microbe-based pharmaceuticals.  It wasn’t an unusual sight to see someone carrying a batch of syntheth-laced ethanol or nameless hallucinogen up to Barge Bridge.  Two blocks away, at the fortified gate bunker, a similar hawker was covered in 50 ml containers of some homemade brew, all strung together by their tops and looking like an odd fashion statement.  Marcel knew the old guy wasn’t getting past the guards unless he showed a little generosity, and wondered how generous he would have to be himself when his turn came.  Until then, he moved slowly, avoiding the darkened pre-fab stairwells and keeping his Pythonide mass driver in hand in case an enterprising mugger thought to practice his trade within sight of Barge Bridge.

It took nearly an hour of pushing through the scudding drifts of people covering Barge Bridge, before Marcel could find what he needed.  The bridge connected Jersey City to Newark, constructed from old barges and boats, and was lined with shops of every conceivable type from shanty stalls to electronics boutiques.  Marcel almost had his pocket picked twice before a guy at a mod shop told him where he could find Ferrol.  Wei Tao.

Wei Tao was more of an experience than an actual shop or club.  There was music, there were products, drugs, people to fuck, available Omicron enhancement of anything else that was for sale, places to dance, places to sprawl and enjoy a trip, and lots and lots of people.  Half of Wei Tao was underwater, connected to one of the tidal power generators.  The music had originally been played over speakers instead of through voluntary mod interface to hide the incessant droning.  The rest was history.

Ferrol was holding court at the vape bar off in one corner.  Huge clouds of multi-colored vapor billowed from the small circular bar’s many tubes, to be caught by the ceiling-mounted vent and piped up and out into the already polluted night sky.  He wore his customary atmo coat over his shoulders, cape style, with the hood up to conceal his increasingly high forehead.  Rings flashed from every finger and his smile reflected the laser light refracted from the dance floors, his integral mouth filter a Cheshire Cat chrome.  Marcel approached slowly enough not to arouse Ferrol’s protection.

“There’s nothing to fear at all, my sugar,” Ferrol was telling a woman whose skin glittered from head to toe, phosphorescent tattoos transforming her flesh into a cosmos of constellations.  “PharmaRock is the ultimate experience, sexual, sensual, musical, and pharmaceutical.”

“But I won’t know anyone there,” she laughed.

“You will know them better than anyone you have every known by the time the show ends,” Ferrol assured her, stroking her hands.  “I can promise you that.  Oh now, what is this?  Listen, baby, I’ve got to talk to a wayward son who just come home.  He needs something other than excitement and pleasure.  You and your sisters enjoy another blast on me and I’ll be right back.”

Gliding down the bar, his two obviously armed heavies closing in, Ferrol motioned Marcel to a comparatively secluded shadow.  Marcel had put his Pythonide away but the heavies seemed to know it was there and kept their Shinya Scythes pointed vaguely at Marcel’s chest.

“Well, well, Marcel,” Ferrol said.  “I’d ask what brings you here but I have the feeling I already know.”

“You don’t,” Marcel said.  The contentious nature of their biz together had grown from a friendly competition to a prelude to war.  A war that Marcel knew he could never win.  There was only so much biz left between them before he became a threat to Ferrol.  And Ferrol didn’t like threats.

“Not exactly, perhaps,” Ferrol said with a sniff.  “My guess is it has to do with mod legs.  Maybe cracked CPUs, operating software, tracker removal; batteries, maybe.  Oh ho, look at his worried face,” he laughed with one of his heavies.  The heavy’s smile never reached his eyes.

“Batteries,” Marcel said, his mouth suddenly dry.  “And a charger for them.  You also know the type I want, pendejo?”

“Always a foul mouth on this one,” Ferrol said, not offended.  “A temper, too.  And temper inhibits biz, my son.  Best you unload that extravagance.  And yes, I have an idea of the type of batteries and charger you’ll need.  Expensive.”

“You have a lot of customers for that kind of product?” Marcel said.

“Enough,” Ferrol said.  “Enough that I won’t part with them for a handful of credits or a backpack filled with street meth.  What is that you carry, little son?” he laughed.

Marcel shrugged expressively.  “Could be a lot of things,” he said. “Could be it’s a murder.  Could be it’s a firefight with a couple of shitheads pointing their guns at me.  Could be a shredder to turn your culo into worm food.  Or it could be an RG-88 for trade.  You got a preference?”

“Oh this is why,” Ferrol sighed, shaking his head sadly.  “This is why I’ve moved almost entirely into PharmaRock.  The corps hate it, of course, and try to kill us for enjoying ourselves.  Takes patience and attention to detail to set up a concert.  But the people!  Little son, the people are so much more pleasant to deal with.  Do you think I enjoy talking to you? Compared to those beautiful women over there, waiting to be tempted? Don’t bore me, little son.  You’ve got a piece worth trading; I’ve got a specialty item you want.  Done.  Go up to Bernard’s, he’ll deal.  I’ll send a message.”

Marcel nodded and was about to leave when Ferrol put a hand on his shoulder.

“One more thing, though,” Ferrol said with a leer.  “I tell you this as a friend.  You’ll want to get those batteries and get moving.  I mean really moving.  Like the fuck out of Jersey City.  I have the feeling someone has whispered in the ear of KJI.”

“You, you what?” Marcel said breathlessly, the music nearly devouring his words.  “You sold me out?  You don’t know anything about it.”

“Not me, little son,” Ferrol said.  “If you had come to me for certain merchandise you’ve recently purchased, you wouldn’t be in this fix. But you went to two little shits closer to home.  They sold you a couple of things and then turned around and sold you—to KJI.”

“Hank and Murray,” Marcel said, his eyes closing as the strength in his knees faltered.  “Son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, both of them,” Ferrol said.  “But after killing a platoon of KJI SS?  KJI would be willing to wipe their slate clean, to get a hold of you. You shouldn’t have tempted Hank and Murray with what they could not possibly resist.”