Up The Tower (5 page)

The next period would have been everything from college up until he had met Ana in his second year. And now...now...now, he was firmly in the period of Ana.

And his mother was dying.

It wasn’t that big of a deal, he told himself, rapping his knuckles against the border of the window glass and the hospital wall. It wasn’t that big of a deal at all. He had hardly known this woman. Why would it matter if she left?

She had helped him, of course. She had sent him money regularly, every month. Between her income and his father’s, Gary had led a rather privileged life. They lived in a thousand square-foot apartment with a view of the river. He didn’t go hungry, and he had all the games and films he wanted on his screen.

His father’s death—now that was something to be sad about, for sure. Gary was no real stranger to murder or violence. You couldn’t live as close to Junktown as he did and not see it spill over sometimes, especially during the nights and festivals. With his baton, he had even broken a few bones—a skull, an arm, a rib. Fights broke out over small things in the bars he frequented when he was feeling too lonely to think about Ana. Sometimes it was better to float into a bar and let the multicolored lights and the wide range of sports overwhelm him. Rocket racing; break boxing; wrestling. They were all good ways to escape.

In the bars, sometimes girls or even boys approached him. They liked his jazzkid look. He tried to ape the jazzkid aura, the buzzwords. Corporate hegemonic something. The terrible class warfare of the anti-Marxist blah blah. The insufferable cruelty of the debtor's prison system, in which the private corporations were doing whatever-and-such. Usually, if the other person was a jazzkid, all Gary had to do was start a sentence and they could finish it for him. It was easy enough to get by, to just pretend like he pretended he was actually good at science, like real people were good. Gary could fake it well enough with drunks or with people who knew nothing, but that was about as far as it went.

Being a jazzkid was perfect for Gary. Even the people who were good at it seemed like fakes. He could fake it and seem competent or make it seem like he was pretending to be faking at being competent, which the jazzkids loved. All that meta crap. They ate it up.

Ana would cure him of it. He would abandon the jazzkid stuff for her. She would see how much he cared when he changed everything for her—even though that was all he had ever wanted to do.

She understood him. She knew what it was like to be a Gary.

The first day he met her, in Professor Reinstein’s class, he had been lost. The auditorium held seven thousand students—an introductory course like that, it was expected for there to be a lot of students. Advanced classes were more intimate, down to just a few hundred or so. Among so many faces, it was impossible to find a seat. The professor cleared his throat at the podium, tapping his microphone, expecting everyone to take a seat. Gary shuffled and stuttered up the steps, looking for any respite from the embarrassment of being the only one standing.

And then a young woman had raised her hand. “There,” she called. “There’s a spot.”

Gary squeezed through the thick mass of bodies to make it. The young woman on the row above him smiled. He thanked her. She was pretty enough. He could talk to her after class, maybe—hey, thanks for the help, I was really getting worried, and you were just such a sport—and then he saw who was sitting next to him.

Her name all over her notebook, “Ana.” The most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. All thoughts of the other girl melted away.

“Close one,” said Ana. “You almost didn’t make it.”

“Yeah,” said Gary. “I think they were about to turn on the lasers.”

“Lasers?”

“You know. To fry me. For standing.” He smiled.

After a beat, Ana let out a little laugh. She didn’t say anything else to him for the rest of the class. It didn’t matter. They had said enough. They belonged to one another. She got him. She laughed at the joke. That was all he needed to know.

Fueled by his righteous love, it wasn’t long before he had set up a study group with her and a few others. Ana only came to three of the dozen sessions they had arranged. Gary understood. She was busy. Her fetching outfits had given him plenty to consider while he waited to see her again.

Pressing his hand against his mother’s window, Gary tried to smile reassuringly once more. He mouthed, very obviously, “I love you.”

He didn’t. But hell, why not pretend? At least for her. Poor girl was dying. She mouthed something back, but he was leaving. He wouldn’t stick around for her to try and have some weird pantomimed conversation.

Twenty minutes later, after a thorough decontamination process at the exit, Gary was out on the street. Get ready world, here comes a Gary.

Trash swept through the street in front of him, a long gust dancing papers and bags along. The place where Ana’s boyfriend worked wasn’t too far from here. A block, maybe two. Gary had his holowrist ready, with emergency numbers only a few screen presses away. He had made his deposit already on police rescue for the month—a necessary expense, as trying to track down Ana always landed him in so many strange places. Until the police arrived, if he ended up needing them, he had the baton on his leg.

An eyebot swooped by, circling and scanning, flanked by a pair of guardian waspbots. Gary frowned and waited for them to pass. He watched as they stopped and twisted their trajectory, staying in perfect formation, and accelerated hard upwards. Maybe returning to home base for a refuel.

He crossed the street, not waiting for the signal. He was surprised the stoplight even worked this deep into Junktown. Once again he reflected on the police, hoping that he would not have to call them at all. That would cost so much money. Besides, he’d much rather find Ana under duress and save her somehow, maybe with the baton. Maybe with his skills, however limited they were. Maybe just by some wonderful, intrinsic part about himself that he didn't even know about yet.

Wouldn’t that be something? To have her thank him, and know his name.

* * * * *

“H
ello! Citizen-out-of-Peril!”

Samson rolled awake. Smoke filled the area around him, but the fire had mostly burnt itself out. Cheap warehouse manufacturing.

Above him was the copbot, eyes blinking green. It rested on its accordion arms, accordion legs, joints in its tech skin flattening and folding up.

“Citizen-out-of-Peril! Do you need medical assistance? I cannot call for it. There is
malfunction.
But we can attempt to move to a hospital. There is one seventeen blocks in that direction.” The copbot pointed, stopped, and then pointed again in a different direction.

“No,” said Samson, getting up on his knees. “No, it’s fine.”

“Fine! Good. Fine is
good
. Safety Protocol Two-Four-Five-Seven worked! It is experimental. There were many discussions in research as to whether a copbot’s
exterior
could be made to withstand the fireburst from the self-destructing copbot’s
interior
. Headquarters will be glad to know this experimental feature worked.”

“Yeah,” said Samson. “Okay. Good.”

Around him, the warehouse smoldered. The heat pushed down into his lungs. Anything left of the Crowboys was long gone. All five of those copbots, exploding at once...

And why hadn’t this one gone up too? Why was Samson alive?

“Citizen-in-nebulous-Peril! We must exit this area.” The copbot waved its arms like it was directing traffic. “The heat may eventually cause you to perspire in some hours. Safety is a priority.”

“Yeah.” On the ground near him was a heated piece of stone. Samson kicked it and it fell apart. “Probably so. Okay.”

They walked outside of the blast zone of the warehouse ruins. The robot picked Samson up at one point to cart him over a smoking barricade. When they were back on the street, the asphalt melted down and still cooling, the copbot looked down at him, expectant.

Did it want a thank-you? Did a copbot want anything?

“Look,” said Samson. “I’ve got to get back to The Tower.”

“The Gateway Tower! Home of nefarious business. A great many gangsters. Also, poor people.” It paused, one eyeflap winking at Samson. “Those are the future gangsters.”

“...right.”

Samson began walking back to the Tower. It was a four block stretch to get there.

“You must stop! Citizen-approaching-peril! The Tower! The gangsters! The poor! That is not the place to go.”

“You’re in Junktown, partner. That’s the only place to go.”

The copbot took this all very seriously. He followed close to the side and behind of Samson, like a dog or a lost child. Samson realized that probably he should have been taking precautions to make sure this was what happened—he would want to bring the copbot to Crash, after all. But the explosion had rocked him, and his thoughts were still dazed. He did not notice the homeless scattering out of his way, or the stoop-crawling gangsters not saying a word as he passed. Before, he would have been grateful for this behavior. In the wake of the explosion, of the death of all the Crowboys, Samson only processed that the day felt like it was getting cooler.

The way into the Tower from the ground floor was through the parking complex. All the other entrances—the entire first couple of floors of the Tower—had been overfilled with junk and debris to block anyone coming up that way. One of Petrov’s ideas.

Inside the parking complex was the Storey Corporation and her blockade. It was wet and dank, nowhere for the water run-off from the Dam to sink down into. The sewers were blocked up most of the time, and only one grate in five blocks even worked. Fixing that was an ongoing pipe dream of Petrov, who lived for efficiency, and Wallop, who wanted to spread the jobs around.

At the top of the ramp leading into the stairway that led into the Tower was a line of scrap metal and sandbags, a few spare handguns rigged up and attached to the metal with pipes and wires. Ornamental more than functional, hard to reload. Behind the blockade, all crossed arms, were mean folks who Samson had little patience for. The copbot at Samson’s side filled the dark and shadows with scanning holograms, looking for threats or innocent people to kill or whatever it was copbots did.

The leader of the blockade into the Tower was Tasha Storey, the CEO of Storey Corp. She was a large woman, her body a meat locker, swinging cow carcasses for arms. Around her were the Storey Boys—some her younger brothers, some her children all raised up to serve, and others just strays she had taken in. Twelve of them in all. They all carried thick metal pipes in their waist bands and belts. Each pipe was covered in chain. A trademark of theirs.

Samson, once upon a time, had been scared of Storey. Her face was the stuff of scary folktales, all teeth and not enough nose. But Jackson Crash had set him straight.

“Come on baby,” Crash said to him. He called everyone “baby,” or “sweetie” or “honey,” except for women, whom he universally referred to as “doll.”

“You gotta know, baby, that a racket like that looks more than what it is. She gotta let the folks in who gotta be let in—they can’t pay rent ‘less they’re inside. So that doll, she get to act real big and wield that big stick and whatnot, but she only do what she told to do, like any other dog. There ain’t no skill to a wall. Ain’t no meanness. Wall just a wall.”

And like any wall, there was a way around and there was a way through. Samson did not feel like going around today.

Storey stood up over the sandbags. “Is that a copbot you brought into my place of business, Samson?”

“I suppose so.”

“Yes!” shouted the copbot. “P-L-Eight-Four-Five. Fresh off the line. This one’s name is
Samson
.” He clapped Samson on the back. “He and I are
partners
.”

Storey gave Samson a surprised look.

Samson shrugged. “You heard the bot. Partners.”

“You two cause that racket out there? I heard an explosion.”

The copbot clapped its hands. “Yes! There was fire and a
bigger
fire and I saved
Samson
’
s
life. It was
exciting
. We won against the fire. We beat it. It was, respectfully, an episode worthy of the database.”

“Good for you.” She looked at the copbot for a moment more, and then at Samson. “It ain’t gonna blow up, is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t let it in if it’s gonna blow up.”

Samson sighed. He wanted to lie down. He wanted to slide into his space on the floor and curl into a ball for a few hours.

“Crash is going to want to see it,” he said.

This was a big deal for Samson, to be able to use Crash’s name. He knew it, Storey knew it, and all of Storey’s boys knew it.

“He can come down here, then.”

“You want to tell Crash that?”

Storey shifted, uncomfortable. “I could. If I wanted.”

“Well, how about you don’t want to, today?”

“You wanna get in here, I’m gonna wanna look at that thing. Make sure it’s safe. How about that? Like I said, I can’t have nothing blowing up in my Tower, now.”

More like, she wanted to look through all the parts and see what she could salvage for her own tech. Because of her rudeness, Samson had never agreed to work on Storey or any of her boys, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get work done. There were lots of cutmen in Junktown—surgeons with passing knowledge of how to graft tech to people’s bodies. Two of the boys had teched-up arms—hydraulic strength enhancers, looked like. Another had night-vision goggles screwed into his skull, and still another had his metal pipe attached to his forearm in a sort of rolling mechanical holster. Samson could do better work than anything they had. Storey had no tech of her own—she didn’t believe in it, she said—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t see the value in selling off good parts.

Samson wanted to show the copbot to Crash. It made good sense. That should have been the plan all along, ever since Samson made it out from the warehouse alive. An operational copbot, and one with some definite peculiarities. This would be valuable to Crash, that was for sure.