Living in a neon future of ever-changing fashion and rapidly updating body modification, Larn struggles to fit in. She struggles to keep up with the trends. She struggles to find herself in a world increasingly saturated with different ways to be. But what if finding herself was simply just one more app away?
Animo News: Big Central. Breaking: Vagus, Police–citizen altercation. One officer and six Organics injured. Want mods? Can’t afford extortionate prices? Old Doc’s modifications.
Teddy Mullen’s arms ached. How long had it been now? Ten, fifteen minutes? It was hard to be certain. But then who could be these days? With so much data coursing through your head, images of the past, present and an imagined future – time dissolved into obscurity. You remembered things, sure, but could you ever be sure it was you remembering or if they were just data memories? Data memories fed to you by an algorithm hungry for information. Hungry to grow, to expand, to learn.
Ted narrowed his eyes helping his ocular implants fight the acid rain haze and neon glare meddling with his sight. Evenings in Big Central had always been rather jarring. Harsh primary-coloured shards of light like shattered stained glass slicing your vision.
The handgun – the one staring him down with its lethal glare – was local enforcer issue, compact, black and sleek and rather nice to handle. Just like the one in his grasp.
How much longer are you gonna do this? Come on, put the gun down, kid.
How she had managed to acquire that sidearm was embarrassing. He’d not witnessed the altercation himself, however, it was clear that his partner, Velázquez, who was now writhing around on the rain slickened street, had misinterpreted the situation.
It was obvious, now, to his partner and the Organics scattered around the street, that this delicate girl wasn’t all that delicate.
Velázquez though … come off it. Should’ve known better.
Mullen thought about how death always lingered a few steps behind when you walked the beat. He thought about his rabbit hutch apartment. He thought about the roof he risked his life to keep over his head. Over Nancy’s head, and soon, his daughter’s.
Will I even see my child born? Yes. He damn well would. Of that, he was adamant.
He kept his eyes narrowed.
His retinal implants worked hard to sharpen the shimmering silhouette of the girl. Fixed, his eyes not faltering. A direct line to the wet glint of hers reflecting back the fractured light of nightclubs, bars and biohacker joints.
Never look down the barrel. Never. Only one thing that’s down there, Ted.
No, never look down it.
The quiver in her eyes, even at this distance, betrayed the girl’s mental state; the battle inside her head. The weapon, that dark steel emptiness at the edge of sight, wavering ever so slightly in porcelain white hands.
How old are you? Seventeen? Older? Come on … put it down. Do it. Come on. Please.
Commercial gene editing and biohacking was making it increasingly trickier to determine such arbitrary things as age and ethnic origin these days. Not that it mattered. A gun was a gun.
This clinched it. That desk he’d shied away from in favour of what he’d so naïvely viewed as pure police work looked damn appealing right now. He loathed working Vagus.
There was always something.
‘Citizen!’ he blasted over the whoop-whoop of his police pod’s sirens. The girl’s head jerked upward, the motion tugging at Mullen’s gut feeling in a disagreeable way.
He primed himself, releasing his breath, allowing it to mingle with the tainted city air.
No. Don’t do it. He was pleading with the girl now. Put the gun down. Was he even on the girl’s nexting feed? He wasn’t sure, but he’d try anyhow.
Nexts were better than speech in such cases. Almost like thoughts. You could get into people’s heads. But here, something seemed wrong. Something rang odd about her. Was it her mannequin attitude? The hinged gesture of her limbs when she had moved, maybe?
‘We got a name?’ he spoke from the corner of his mouth to any one of the officers that had coalesced about the unfolding drama.
A reply came, not his partner, but someone else. Mullen dared not move to see who. To flinch now could be catastrophic.
‘Larn.’
Definitely not another cop.
He’d been on the Vagus beat long enough. He had file upon file warehoused in the annals of his digitally enhanced mind. Each and every one cross referenced and verified in a split-second. Before he could speak, to reason with this Larn, the stand-off ended.
A feather light twitch in the girl’s index finger, imperceptible to the naked, unmodified, eye.
Not such a long night then.
Continue reading this fantastic cyber punk story and others in MF Alfrey’s Symbionts, a collection of speculative science fiction short stories by M F Alfrey
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M F ALFREY 