Weary Traveler

“This here’s Benny’s office,” Patrick said, pointing at a set of rusted prison bars covering an iron door.

“Don’t look like much.”

“Technicians have to operate in secret these days. Lots of busts going down searching for all of the organ vultures kidnapping people and stealing their body parts. Benny lays low to keep the cops from snooping around,” Patrick said.

He stepped away from the window and jabbed his chubby index finger into a round, black button on the right side of the vault. A piercing screech echoed through the room inside, followed by a voice from a speaker above the door.

“What do you want?”

“Helllllooooo, Benny! It’s me, Patrick.”

“Patrick, who?”

“Patrick, your cousin. We just talked on the phone. Remember? Brought my good ol’ neighbor with me, the Mighty Mitch! Needs some work done.”

“He got the credits?”

Patrick looked over his shoulder. Mitch nodded, tapped his pant pocket with his credit wallet safe inside.

“Yup, he’s got the credits.”

“Good,” Benny said, “be right there.”

Patrick placed his hands on his hips, turned around and stared at Mitch.

“Benny doesn’t got the best memory. Too many body augmentations gone wrong.”

Mitch shrugged.

A series of metallic locks rattled, slid from the other side of the door like a cascade of pebbles rolled down a metal ramp. And then, the door crept open, just a crack.

Stale air and a musty stink wafted through the opening, squirming out from the darkness on the other side. A single, silver eyeball appeared in the shadow, glared at Mitch and Patrick, scanned them up and down as if to process their bodies for threats.

“Helllllooooo, Benny!” Patrick yelled. “Don’t you worry. No cops in sight.”

“You a cop?” Benny asked Mitch.

“No,” Mitch said, peering down the length of his body at his ragged, nomad attire. “Do I look like a fucking cop?”

“That’s exactly what a cop would say,” Benny said. “What kind of work you need?”

“Need to fix my sinuses and my rotten teeth,” Mitch said, revealing his moldy, synthetic-mustard-colored nubs. “Maybe do something about my balding head. Skin could use a transplant.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Making changes,” Mitch said. “Tired of being a bum.”

“Good… good… alright,” Benny said, opening the door halfway. “Come in, quick.”

Patrick turned sideways, bulbous belly rubbing against the door, shuffled inside, while Mitch’s skeletal body walked right through the opening. Benny stuck his head out of the door, checked left, right, then slammed and locked it.

Mitch stopped near the entrance, looked around. The room was dark, bare. A single, white bulb dangled from a cord hanging from the ceiling, swaying over an operating table at the center of the room. The entire left wall was covered with shelves filled with makeshift medical tools and pieces of outdated tech. Mostly low-level body modifications and implants and a few high-tech neural interfaces. A small desk on the right carried four computer monitors that displayed different operating procedures and biological data.

“Alright, guy, what kinda teeth you looking for?” Benny asked, marching over to the long table beneath the wall on the left. He darted around like a schizophrenic synth-rat that munched on too much radioactive runoff from CorpoMax. A sickly, skinny creature with spindly limbs like his muscles had been removed and left with just the skin and bone. Pale flesh that almost looked translucent. He sifted through a clear, plastic bucket, removed his collection of dentures and placed them on the table one at a time. “I can do some metal slicers like a wild mech-beast. Or something that changes color every time you open your mouth. This one’s got various attachments like one of them old pocket knifes. I just got these bad boys in,” he said, hoisting a pair of metal chompers into the air that looked like a set of nothing but molars. “I call this, Molar Mouth. Each one of these molars can be broken off from the gums and spit. After five seconds, the little tooth will explode! Vaporizes everything within about a two foot radius.”

“You got any regular teeth?” Mitch asked.

Benny’s chin inched upwards. He looked down his big, long nose, and analyzed Mitch.

“Sure, I got regular teeth,” Benny said, holding up a set of white dentures. “But it’s only got basic function. No super-strength bite or flesh-shredding power.”

“Don’t need none’a that,” Mitch said. “And just regular skin. Don’t need anything that makes me invisible or gives me wings. What kinda hairdos you got?”

“Any kind you can think of. But for a little extra credit…” Benny said, slithering over to a contraption a few feet to his right. He grabbed the metal device and held it out in front of Mitch, “you can have this.”

It looked like a clear sheet of plastic paper covered with small dots, wrapped around a bodiless mannequin’s bare head.

“Does it shoot flames or lasers?” Mitch asked.

“If it did, I’d keep it for myself. See here, these nodes implant into your scalp. And then this controller right here,” Benny said, shaking a remote at Mitch, “will give you any hairstyle and color you can think of. Check it out…”

In the span of a couple seconds, Benny changed the hairdo from a mohawk, to an afro, cornrows, dreadlocks, mullet; to a style that looked like a lion’s mane; to something that looked like a bolt of lightning zapped the device; a typical, greasy, black, corpo combover; and then a rapid run-through of abstract shapes and geometric patterns like a carnival of balloon animals.

Mitch pursed his lips, gave a few faint nods.

“Ain’t too shabby,” he said. “How much for that one?”

“Two-hundred credits. But since you came with my cousin, I’ll give it to you for one-hundred. Plus the other three procedures, brings the total to three-hundred C’s.”

Mitch pressed his tongue into his cheek, sifted through the numbers in his mind, calculated the price and held it up to his body’s need for repair.

“Alright, I can do that.”

“Good,” Benny said, clutching the dentures and hair implant as he strode across the room. He smacked the ripped mattress pad on the gurney with an open palm. “Kick your feet up and lay on your back. Gonna have to give you a mild sedative to put you out for a bit.”

“No sedative,” Mitch said.

“How about a bottle of vodka, then?”

Just the sound of the word ignited a flame in Mitch’s mind. His mouth watered, palms perspired. He licked and smacked his lips, and then rattled his head from side-to-side.

“No. No. Don’t drink anymore.”

“I strongly suggest a sedative. The sinus work and nodes won’t hurt too bad. But yanking out your decayed teeth and the skin transplant will be painful,” Benny said. “Don’t worry, guy, I ain’t like those freaks stealing organs for those fucking creeps down there at CorpoMax.”

Mitch squinted up at the bright light hanging above the operating table, pondered the ramifications of going under in front of his jovial neighbor and the paranoid skeleton of a cousin.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll take the damn sedative. How long will-”

There was a sharp sting in his right shoulder. He looked down, peered at the syringe stuck in his arm. Benny pressed the plunger, pumped the synthetic chemicals through his bloodstream. A warm haze swirled around his vision, followed by a cold, silent darkness.

*****

The loopy mind fog from the sedative started to melt away, cleaned the dust off of Mitch’s mind. His aching eyelids fluttered open, broke away the crusty tears, and gazed straight into the eyes of a brown-eyed stranger staring at him from a few inches away.

The handsome man blinked. Blinked again. Again. And then, he spread his lips to reveal a perfect set of teeth like they were chiseled from a block of marble. Molded into just the right size and shape to fit into his mouth. Not a trace of grime or plaque around a single tooth. The stranger’s hair was cut, trimmed, slicked to the side in a stiff combover that looked like it used about a bucket of hair grease.

Mitch cleared his phlegm-coated throat like he revved an engine at the beginning of a drag race.

“Who are- ah!” he said, voice ricocheting off of the mirror that was hanging over his restored face.

He tilted his chin up, turned his head left, right, peeked from the corner of his eyes at his new reflection. His irises shined a lighter brown, glimmered, sparkled in the vanity lights radiating from the mirror. His cheekbones were more defined, strong, with a muscular jawbone. His bushy eyebrows had been plucked, shaped to fit the new, lean, athletic shape of his head.

A set of wheels rolled across the concrete, smacked into Mitch’s gurney and shook the mirror so that his reflection wobbled, turned into an unrecognizable blur.

“Hellllloooo, Mitch!” Patrick shouted, yanking the mirror away and filling the void with his pudgy face. “Would you look at that… can barely even recognize you. A whole new, Mighty Mitch!”

Patrick pretended to pepper Mitch with a combination of uppercuts and hooks until he was out of breath after a few labored swings.

“How long was I out?” Mitch asked.

Patrick punched the air with his left hand, let his sleeve climb up his thick forearm.

“Just about… fifty-one minutes,” he said, reading the time off the face of his archaic, analog watch. “How dost thou feel?”

“Feel the same,” Mitch said, gazing down his torso. He flexed his arms to show the new muscle tone pushing through his vibrant skin.

“That’s good, because you sure as hell don’t look the same. It’s like you were gobbled up by some corpo player.”

“The sedatives’ll wear off in a few hours,” Benny said from the shadows. “After that, you might feel a mild tingling or burning sensation on your skin and scalp. Here’s a couple doses of jawbreakers to take the edge off later.”

Mitch turned away, shook his head.

“No, thank you,” he said. “The sedative was enough.”

“I’ll take ’em off your hands, cousin,” Patrick said, raising and waving his chubby mitten.

“No, you’re good, Patrick,” Benny said, slipping the jawbreakers into the pocket of his lab coat. “Since you already had that tech implanted in your scalp I went ahead and tossed out the remote and uploaded the software directly into your brain. All you have to do is press your right temple, think of the hairstyle and color you want, and let the nodes work their little, hairy magic.”

Benny shuffled up to the side of Mitch’s bed, shined a medical flashlight in his eyes.

“Responsiveness is good,” he said, pulling up a rolling chair and plopping onto its cushion. “Hope you don’t mind, but I gave your eyes a slight tech boost, free of charge. Nothing permanent, you can take it out if you want.”

“What is it?” Mitch asked, feeling around his eye sockets.

“I’ve got a corpo whistleblower that sends me prototypes of unreleased tech. This one’s called, Iris Enhancer. It gives your eyeballs a glossy shine when they reflect light.”

Mitch swung his legs over the side of the gurney, planted them on the floor. He arched his stiff back, cracked his neck, knuckles.

“Better not be some fucking virus that corrupts my memory,” Mitch said.

“Hey,” Benny said, holding up his palms, “if it messes you up then I’ll give you a refund. My whistleblower hasn’t let me down before.”

“Gee,” Mitch mumbled, “that’s reassuring.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his credit wallet, adjusted the value, and held it out towards Benny. “Here’s your three-hundred.”

Benny pressed the inside of his wrist, held his hand over Mitch’s credit wallet.

“Much appreciated,” Benny said, tipping an imaginary cap.

“Are you ready for our journey back home, neighbor?” Patrick asked, elbowing Mitch’s shoulder.

“Not going back to Shack Town, Patrick. Got somewhere to be. Benny, you have a phone I can use?”

“No phone, too traceable,” Benny said. “Got a Signal, though. Scrambles the data so the corpo satellites can’t track down the callers or hear what they’re saying.”

“Mind if I use it?”

“Go ahead, you paid the credits. It’s that black block of plastic and metal on the table over there.”

Mitch hustled to the table and grabbed the Signal. It was a hefty metal brick covered with numbers and a long antennae growing out of the top. He dug into his left pant pocket, pinched the crumbled, sweat-dried holographic card at the bottom, pulled it out like it was a piece of buried treasure. He smoothed it out on the table, punched the number into the Signal, and lifted the brick to his ear.

The dial tone rang three times, stopped.

“Zoxillian the Third,” the voice said.

“Zox, it’s Mitch Henderson. The bum that used your Memory Mod.”

Silence. Signal static.

“Weary Traveler,” Mitch added.

“Ayy, Mitch Henderson! It’s been a few months. What’ve you been up to?”

“Still trying to sort it all out. You still running the prototype at your lab?”

“Not at the downtown lab anymore. I’m back at Rotech Headquarters.”

“Conducting trials?”

“Sure am, but not for you and your measly seventy-five C’s.”

“I got one-hundred credits this time.”

“No can do. Like I said, send me your hobo friends and I’ll cut you a piece of the profit.”

“One-fifty.”

“Nope. Too risky.”

“Two-hundred.”

Zoxillian was silent. The Signal line buzzed with an electrical hum pulled straight from the universal fabric.

“You got two-hundred credits?” Zox asked.

“Sure do.”

“You’re gonna pay two-hundred C’s to use the Memory Mod?”

“Yes.”

“You fucking with me?”

“No, I got the credits right here in my hand.”

“Bullshit. Bums don’t have two-hundred C’s.”

“Fine, bye,” Mitch said, pulling the Signal away from his head, a faint chirping continued at the other end of the line. He pressed the device against his ear. “What was that?”

“I said get yourself to the Rotech Complex, testing facility, room 101. It’s on the outskirts, outside of the dome that surrounds the main headquarters, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting in. But keep your head down and don’t talk to anyone.”

“Got it.”

“And make sure you don’t look like a fucking bum or they’ll kill us both.”

“Won’t be an issue,” Mitch said. He pressed the red button on the Signal and stared at the numbers. “Either of you know the number for a Glider or Helo?”

“Why?” Benny asked.

“It’s on the wall to your left, neighbor,” Patrick said.

There was a squishy thump and grunt spewed from Patrick’s mouth after the back of Benny’s hand smacked into his chest.

“Idiot,” Benny muttered. “You want Helos swooping down on my fucking lab?”

“What’s the building across the street?” Mitch asked.

“It’s the VR Concert Hall,” Benny said.

“I’ll send it there,” he said, jogging over to a torn slip of wrinkled paper taped to the wall. He leaned in and punched the number for the Helo service on the Signal.

“We should head there some time, neighbor,” Patrick said. “Heard that they put on some pretty incredible shows.”

“Maybe another time, Patrick. Right now I need to make some moves,” Mitch said.

The ring tone from the Signal chimed in his ear, yanked his attention away from the two cousins watching from behind the operating table. A humanoid voice answered…

“Name and time of departure, please…”

“Mitch Henderson. Immediately.”

“Location and destination, please…”

“VR Concert Hall in the Twilight District. Destination is Rotech Complex, testing facility, room 101.”

“Total cost is fifty credits. Approve or deny?”

“Approve.”

“Arrival in two minutes. Please stand back from descending vehicle and, as always, thank you for choos-”

He pressed the end call button, placed the Signal on the table, and raced to the front door.

“See you around, Patrick. And thanks, Benny!” Mitch shouted over his shoulder.

He undid the locks and escaped back into the bustling streets of Rosenfell. The shriveled, porous mind of a bum wearing the external veil of a new man. A human being, reborn. The clash of opposites fighting for supremacy within one body. A class conflict struggling for position inside of society’s wicked hierarchy. A twist of two fates from a single string.

He jogged across the busy road- buzzing with automated, electric vehicles and venturous bums- and planted himself in front of the VR Concert Hall’s enormous, augmented, glass windows that sparkled beneath the nebulous lights shining through the Twilight. Moving, three-dimensional pictures shot from the glass, dancing and singing above the street. They quickly cycled from musicians and bands, to opera singers, to entire orchestras that reached into the crowds walking around the Twilight as if they were live human beings trapped within the crystal as conscious simulations.

Mitch turned around, faced the street. He squinted, tried to see past the smoke screen and track the Gliders and Helo’s zipping through the sky far above. His upturned nose inhaled the dizzying fumes, weakened his legs with wobbles. The toxic smog seemed to drop closer to the ground every second, threatening to swallow the entire city underneath a suffocating shroud of darkness.

A puff of gray exploded on the left from a Helo breaking through the polluted curtain. It dropped diagonally towards Mitch’s position. Its headlights glimmered in a bright, white illumination. Red lights flashed along the sides of the tiny hull, with a dome barely big enough to seat one person.

The vehicle sounded a piercing siren as it approached the ground. Hundreds of heads looked up, bodies scurried out of the way like magnets shot from the descending machine, pushed against the crowd with an invisible force. It had a short tail with a small propeller at the end. Two moving propellers encased in fiberglass attached to the top of a metal dome, spotted with bulletproof windows.

The Helo’s side door slid open and spewed a puff of hissing gas. Mitch stepped forward and peeked inside the empty cabin.

“Confirm name and destination, please,” an automated voice said in a feminine tone.

“Mitch Henderson. Rotech Complex, testing facility, room 101.”

The Helo was silent except for the mechanical hum of its electric engine on standby.

“Confirmed,” the voice said. “Please board and watch your step.”

Mitch stepped on and planted himself on the faux leather seat.

“Door closing, please watch your limbs.”

He tucked his feet close to his body and stared out of the front window as the propellers kicked on, churned faster, shaking the vehicle.

“Fifty credits required before departure.”

A small screen lit up on the dashboard, flashed 50C in red.

Mitch dug into his pocket, grabbed his credit disk, and held it over the scanner.

“Thank you. Liftoff in three… two… one…”

The Helo launched into the air. Mitch spread his arms out and posted them against the side windows to brace himself from falling out of his seat and onto the cabin floor.

“Would you like to listen to classical-electro during your flight?”

“You got Rebirth by Jazz Hand’z?”

“One moment while we modify the playlist…”

Mitch gazed out of the right window, forehead pressed against the glass. The crowds and lights of the Twilight shrunk and then disappeared altogether once the Helo entered the pollution, blocking out all sources of light from the luminous streets below.

The cabin glow was dull. A faint beacon in a dense ocean of gloom. Mitch leaned back in his chair, settling in as the electro-jazz kicked on from the Helo’s surround-sound speakers.

He was staring out of the front window, peering into the darkness, when a glimmer of light flickered, disappeared. He shook his head and blinked to erase the trick his mind played on his vision.

Again, a yellow light flashed, vanished behind the gray curtain. Mitch leaned forward, crept to the edge of his seat, eyes focusing on the flickering, illusory luminescence hidden within the clouds.

And then, an inferno of light burst through the cabin, ignited his eyeballs with a blazing fireball that clawed through his retinas and raced through his nervous system. He clamped his eyelids shut, covered his face with his hands, and looked away.

A strange sensation crawled across his pale skin, blessed it with a beam of warm, soothing energy. He blinked, flexed his jaw. Hazy white lights danced across his vision, shooting from left to right like he had been smacked in the head with a fire-soaked, neon sign.

The entire cabin ignited in a dazzling incandescence as rays seeped through his skin and supercharged his blood and bones like they had been injected with a thousand jellies.

He swiped the tears from his aching eyes and dropped his hands away from his face. Beyond the front window, was a vibrant, blue sky, sparsely dotted with clusters of puffy white clouds. Just above the top of the front window, an enormous, orange orb oscillated in the distance, flung rays of fire down upon the lonely, planet Earth.

“My God…” Mitch mumbled, under his breath. His jumpstarted heart pounded against his ribcage. “It’s beautiful.”

He climbed out of his seat and pressed his face against the front window panel.

“Helo computer voice, do you answer questions?”

“This Helo possesses a fully functioning A.I.”

“What is that orange ball above us?”

“Ancient Earth civilizations called it the Sun. It is one astronomical unit away from the Earth or, approximately, 92.96 million miles. The inside of the Sun burns at 27-million-degrees-Fahrenheit. It is one of approximately one-hundred billion stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.”

“There are more Suns?” Mitch asked.

“There are approximately one-hundred billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and upwards of two-trillion galaxies in the entire Universe. With each galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars like the Sun that shines upon the Earth.”

Mitch fell backwards, dropped like a dead weight onto his seat. His incredulous body dissolved into a speck of dust, mind and memories trickled inwards as if the Universe imploded.

“Please, sit back and prepare for descent.”

The words slithered through Mitch’s ears and bounced around his hollow head. The magnitude of it all. The mystical, cosmic powers at work above Rosenfell. Past the suffocating smog, far above the earth… to the infinite beyond behind that bright Sun and the mask of the pale blue sky. Unbeknownst to the ignorant minds of the imprisoned masses trapped below.

He flexed his fingers, wiped the perspiration on his pants, and then gripped the chair’s armrests. The ship jolted, stuttered as it slowed to begin its descent from the world of light. Mitch peeked out of the front window. The white clouds and blue sky shot upwards, then disappeared as the Helo dropped into the ashen mass.

The rush of air collided and slid off of the Helo. Mitch’s steady breath inhaled through his nose, exhaled out of his mouth. Pulling thoughts from the fabric of space, blowing them out. Receding deeper into himself, falling further from the natural light above.

“Brace for landing,” the A.I. said.

Mitch gazed out of the left window. The white floodlights of Rotech Headquarters illuminated the darkness as if the beams held up the murky firmament. Cold, blue lights shined within windows of towering skyscrapers. Endless fields of air hangers lined runways where jumbo jets landed and took off with an eerie, automated consistency. Each one spewing plumes of black exhaust from its engines, adding to the layer that cast the city of Rosenfell under permanent night.

The Helo halted its forward motion and hovered in the air, slowly made its vertical descent near a collection of buildings that looked like offices or some sort of corpo player apartment complex. It settled atop a patch of synth-grass, powered down its engines, and opened the right side door.

“Arrived… Rotech Complex.”

Mitch peeled himself off of his seat and ducked through the door. His feet vibrated, legs wobbled on top of the squishy patch of green.

“Thank you for flying with Helo Adventures and, as always…”

The voice faded as Mitch stepped away, marched across the grass towards Zoxillian’s lab. Synthetic blades crunched beneath his shoes, leaving no imprints as evidence of his passage. His body shivered. The icy air was colder than downtown. It lacked the abundance of fluorescent light and the hot breath of swarming crowds of nomads, churning up the energy of life in a cauldron of chaos.

The air stunk of a fiery, mechanical stench. Noxious fumes of burnt gas spewed out of the tops of factories and warehouses. Adding to the lifeless emptiness and lingering dread that surrounded Rotech.

Mitch shuffled up to a titanium door carved at the center of a one-story building. Windowless, like some kind of above ground bomb shelter.

He pressed a button on the wall.

No answer.

He tapped it several times in rapid succession until static crunched from a speaker box on the right side of the vault door.

“What do you want?” Zox said.

“It’s Mitch.”

“Were you followed?”

“I don’t know,” Mitch said, checking over his shoulders “doesn’t look like it.”

A gust of air sounded from the door. Then it slid open, leaving a small gap for Mitch to squeeze through.

“Hurry up.”

Mitch turned sideways, shuffled through the opening, emerged in a vast lab. Long fixtures of phosphorescent lights hung from the ceiling. Zoxillian’s setup was similar to the one downtown. An operating table decorated with restraints was placed at the center, next to a small table carrying several holo-monitors. Tables lined the perimeter, covered with tools and glass vials filled with colorful powders and liquids.

Zoxillian was fiddling with a piece of tech at the back table, his back turned to Mitch.

“Nice suit,” Mitch said, acknowledging the salesman’s lustrous, white suit with chrome pinstripes.

“The Zox is always looking fresh,” he said, turning around.

His eyes locked in on Mitch’s. And then, his hand shot behind his back, reached into his waistband, and whipped out a transparent handgun with blue, neon lights that ran down the chamber. Muzzle aimed at Mitch’s face.