Cyber Dreams 4.20 - Messes to Clean

Hi everyone! Lots of discussion around Juliet's use of the lattice lately. I kind of addressed this already at the start of the last post, but after reading what people had to say, I've come away with a bit clearer picture of what I should do going forward. In the past, Juliet has expressed her concerns about reading people's minds for ethical reasons, but she's getting over that, at least where critical information is concerned. Now, I've been trying to hint at the difficulty she's having with receiving other people's memories and emotions along with their thoughts. I don't think I'm being clear enough, though. Some of you are understanding, but it seems you're having to work a little too hard for that understanding, so the next time Juliet is using the lattice, I'll try to make this a little more clear. (Next chapter, probably.)

Thanks all,

Plum

The street and sidewalk leading up to the Raptor Haus looked a lot different in the bright lights of the dome’s day cycle. The stains on the plasteel and concrete stood out among bits of litter, discarded drink containers, and dozens of spent vape cartridges. It didn’t look like much cleaning got done between opening hours, but Juliet didn’t really know. It could be that the mess was all from the weekend, and someone would be along to spruce things up before the next busy night.

She approached the awning and the closed doors beneath it, squinting to try to see through the tinted glass. Of course, she couldn’t make anything out, not until she got right up to the glass and cupped her hands to it. Then Angel did an excellent job of enhancing her view, exposing the empty, litter-strewn foyer of the club and the security station where she and Nick had spoken to the bouncer, Sam. It looked deserted. “She said she’d meet us here, right?”

“Yes. Shall I message her?” Angel replied.

“Yeah. Let her know we’re outside.” Juliet turned and leaned her back against the plastiglass panels next to the door, staring out at the sparse foot traffic. Not a lot of people were out and about in this part of town during the daytime, it seemed. She’d finished breakfast with Nick and then taken a cab straight to the club, but only after securing his promise that he’d contact her about his meeting with Larry. Juliet was mildly interested in the job, more because she wanted to make sure Nick wasn’t getting into something meltdown crazy than because she might be able to pick up another very nice payday. What did they say? If the money seems too good, it probably means the job . . .

Her thoughts trailed off as she heard the latch rattle in the door, and she turned to see Sam, the bouncer, pushing it open. “Hey.”

“Hey, thanks for meeting me—I know you guys don’t open for hours.”

“Nah, I was here early, anyway. We’re training a new floor manager.” She stood in the doorway, the metal and plastiglass door held open by her shoulder as she offered Juliet her jacket, neatly folded.

“Awesome! I’ve grown really attached to this thing and was afraid it was lost.” Juliet held the vintage garment to her nose and sniffed it out of reflex. It smelled like her but also lots of other things—lingering spices, colognes, and even smoke. It sounded gross when she thought about it like that, but all together, the scents added up to give the jacket a third dimension, a kind of personality, and she recognized it immediately.

“Hey, glad to reunite you. Don’t mention it.” Sam cleared her throat and started to say something but closed her mouth with a slight shake of the head.

“Something else?”

“Yeah, I think so. I didn’t realize it at first ‘cause I see a lot of people and listen to a million stories every week, but I’m pretty sure a lady was here looking for you a while back.”

“Uh, I doubt it. I don’t know anyone out here other than Nick. Well, Nick and his friends.”

“No, I’m pretty sure. She showed me a picture of you but dressed a lot differently—nice outfit, sitting in a kind of swanky bar. Pretty sure she used your name, too. It sounded familiar to me last night, and I had my PAI search my recent convos, but I don’t have the audio anymore. Took me a minute, but my PAI found a couple of still images; sorry, but, like I said, the vid of our conversation has already been written over. You know, freeing up memory.” Juliet knew exactly what she meant. People with ocular implants and PAIs could record everything they saw. However, most data ports had limited memory, and few people opted to upload their entire lives to the net. Her PAI probably culled old memories and uploaded still images in order to remember people’s faces and names. Sam had her real memories, the ones in her flesh-and-blood brain, but, like any person, she only remembered so much.

“Can you send me the images? Do you remember why she wanted to find me?”

“Didn’t say.” She shrugged. “I think she said she was looking for a friend or something like that. She left me with some contact info, though. I’ll send it your way, too.”

Juliet tucked her jacket under her arm and nodded. “Thanks a lot, Sam. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t reach out to her. I’ll try to figure it out myself.”

“Yeah, no worries. That’s my general policy. People ask me when I last saw so and so, and my answer is always, ‘Who’s that?’”

“Ha! I like it.”

“Okay, catch you later.” Sam waved and backed up, pulling the door closed.

“Bye.” Juliet waved as she turned, but her mind was already occupied. Angel had displayed two still images on her AUI. The first showed her sitting at the table in the bar on the Sunset Star Runner. From the photo’s perspective, it was captured by someone sitting across from her, and she knew exactly who that was—Eve. The other image was labeled “Frida” and pictured a young woman with bright orange hair, very freckled pale skin, and light green eyes. Juliet didn’t recognize her. “Who the heck is this?”

“I’m not finding any matches on the Jovian public net.”

“So, this woman, Frida, came here looking for me with an image of me taken by Eve?”

“It seems that way. In hindsight, it would make sense that Eve and probably Kirby would have saved images of you.”

“God, I’m such an idiot!” Juliet groaned, walking to the corner where Angel indicated a cab was waiting. “Of course, those guys wouldn’t want to let things go. They’re probably in deep trouble with that other guy . . . Zappo?”

“Zapho.”

“Right. Zapho. You think that’s who sent this woman?”

“It’s a good guess. Do you think we should do anything about it?” Angel only sounded mildly concerned, which made Juliet wonder if her own mounting stress was uncalled for.

“Don’t you? It seems like a pretty big problem to me!”

“I don’t know, Juliet,” Angel replied as Juliet stepped into the back of the waiting cab. Callisto cabs were small, electric things that could fit in the trunk of a cab back on Earth. Some were a little wider and could hold two modestly-sized people, but most were just a little larger than an enclosed bicycle, and they used bicycle lanes. Of course, this meant they traveled slowly compared to a larger vehicle traversing traffic lanes designed for them, but when you had a city built around pedestrian traffic, you made sacrifices.

“Can you elaborate? What do you mean by ‘I don’t know?’ I guess I mean, what makes you think it’s not a problem?” Juliet shifted, trying to locate the safety belt and coming up with only one working end. “Cab, you’re missing half of the passenger safety restraint.”

“Apologies,” the oddly accented AI responded, “This vehicle is due for service in negative forty-seven days.”

“Negative . . .” Juliet trailed off as the cab started forward, the wide rear wheel, located beneath her seat, grinding and thumping against the plasteel.

“I think you are an operator who has crossed paths with many people and will continue to do so. I think, so long as it’s ‘Lucky’ the woman is looking for, we might not be in too much trouble. In any case, it might be wise to reach out and get ahead of things.”

“We’ll definitely do that—an anonymous meeting and a careful observation before we let her set eyes on us.” Juliet fidgeted, jerking her arm out between herself and the curved plastic side of the cab. “I hate these stupid little cabs.”

“I’m terribly sorry for your discomfort, ma’am.” The cab didn’t sound apologetic. Juliet ignored it and looked at the map on her AUI—she only had ten more minutes before the tiny vehicle dropped her in front of the week-to-week hotel she’d been using between jobs with Nick.

“Cab, drop me at Felicita’s Coffee.” The coffee shop was a bit closer, cutting the ride down to seven minutes, and Juliet could walk to her place from there.

“Your route has been updated.”

“More caffeine?”

“Angel, I’m surprised I’m up and about after last night. Yeah, I want more coffee.”

“Well, your nanites have gotten well ahead of the toxins you ingested last night. You should be feeling better by now.”

“Yeah, I am, but I’m still not a hundred percent. It’s hard to explain, but my physical . . . I don’t know, sense of well-being, I guess, is more than the number of toxins and electrolytes you can detect. You know? I mean, I don’t think my drunken stupor was exactly good sleep.”

“That makes a lot of sense, actually. I’ve read some interesting memoirs by talented artists who were addicted to alcohol and other self-destructive behaviors, and your current demeanor wouldn’t be out of place in one of them.”

“What? Why are you reading those?” Juliet feared she knew the answer.

“Well, I grew worried after your behavior last night, but most of the documentation I looked into said that a ‘binge’ once in a while isn’t anything to be too worried about. There is some consensus that you might have been acting out on some pent-up emotions or in an attempt to mask other . . .”

“Angel, please. Please don’t psychoanalyze my overdoing it last night. You know me—I don’t do that very often, and, yeah, there were a few underlying reasons. I was ‘celebrating’ killing a couple of people. I was trying to make Ray more tolerable. I was reliving fun times from my past; I think the dancing made me feel like I used to when I was out with Fee. I was . . . oh, come on! Let’s drop it, all right?”

Angel made a sighing sound, then, in a brighter tone, said, “I won’t bring it up again. To change the subject, would you like to discuss how you will approach this Frida character?”

“Yeah.” Juliet rubbed at her temple. Angel was right; she felt pretty good and didn’t have a headache, but something in her made her think she should have one, and she was acting like she did. “What do you think? Should we send her a message, anonymously, that we know she’s looking for someone and have information for her?”

“And then observe her from a distance?”

“Does that sound good?”

“I think so. Your hair is a different length and style than in that photo. Shall we change your eyes and hair color, as well? I think attire like you’re currently wearing would be good; it’s quite different from what you wore in that photo.”

As the cab pulled to a stop next to the sidewalk, Juliet clambered out of the low seat and slammed the canopy closed, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. “You know, I don’t want to have this hanging over my head. I need to figure out what’s going on so I can sleep. Otherwise, my mind’s going to be making up all sorts of nightmare scenarios. Can you try to set something up for that woman to meet us today?”

“Of course . . .”

Juliet nodded to a couple sitting together at one of the café’s outdoor tables and stepped through the door. “And, yeah, let’s try something new with my hair color: red, maybe. Hmm, and my eyes, I dunno, chrome.” When she approached the barista, Juliet said, “Small, flat white, please.” Juliet was still very much appreciating the good coffee that was easily found in Callisto. She’d learned that one of the agridomes was dedicated to the product, one of the major exports to other settlements in the Jovian System and even other “nearby” stations and planets.

Juliet appreciated that cafés like this one had baristas who made coffee drinks with old-school espresso machines. In this city, they’d go out of business if they installed one of the automated coffee machines that sat in nearly every breakfast restaurant or “café” in Tucson. She wondered if that made her a coffee snob. Was it possible she’d developed such an attitude after just a year or so of leaving home? She’d certainly not been picky about coffee back when she’d worked at the scrapyard.

While she waited for her drink, she sat near the window and watched the people walking by. It was busier here than near the club, and she enjoyed wondering what everyone was up to. Was that woman with the sad eyes on her way to break up with a boyfriend? Was that man in the too-tight suit wearing the perpetual frown on his way to a sales job? Were those kids splashing in the puddle near the corner going to have a big adventure before the weekend was over? Did they even go to school? Juliet had no idea what the corpo-school schedules were like on Callisto.

“Here you go.” The barista, a young woman with a thick accent Juliet couldn’t place, set her coffee on the table. “That was fast!”

“What?” Juliet looked up, confused—had she forgotten an earlier conversation?

“Your hair’s different from when you walked in. Either that, or I’m losing it. Wasn’t it darker? Like, black?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot I was changing it.”

“Looks really nice.” She smiled and returned to her counter, and Juliet softly blew on the top of her coffee, taking a sip of the rich drink.

“How does this sound,” Angel asked, “Hello. It’s come to my attention that you’re looking for someone. I may have some information. Can you meet today?”

“Pretty vague.” Juliet sipped again at her drink. “I like it.” She sat quietly, slowly nursing her coffee, staring out the window, but her thoughts went elsewhere, and she stopped noticing the people. She began to think about Eve and Kirby, analyzing the many ways she’d been stupid. If she’d wanted to get involved in Eve’s problems, she should have really committed. She should have recognized that she was exposing herself and that she’d need to be more proactive about protecting her identity. When Kirby had ambushed her, he and Eve had escalated things, and Juliet should have seen to it that they couldn’t identify her or come looking for her. “We could have broken into the ship’s brig or whatever. We could have found a way to hack their data ports. I mean, there wasn’t time before security showed up to my room, but later . . .”

“I should have encouraged you to cover your tracks better.”

“No. Stop it, Angel. I’m not on your case; this is my bad. I’m the busybody who had to try to ‘help’ Eve.”

“We’re a team, Juliet. You can’t shoulder the whole burden of every failure. We both learned a good lesson, but now we need to clean up our mess.”

“All right. Deal.” Juliet felt better having voiced her frustration to Angel, and it felt good to know Angel was acknowledging the mistake and not trying to sugarcoat things. For the millionth time, she felt grateful that she had Angel in her head. How would she cope if she couldn’t talk to her about her issues? She tried to imagine someone else who might be willing to listen to and share in all of her problems, but she couldn’t. She knew some of the Kowashi crew would listen and try to help, but she’d never feel good about dropping these problems on them. Honey? Juliet snorted. She couldn’t even get Honey to meet her for lunch.

“You have a new message from Bennet.”

“Speak of the devil . . .” Juliet chuckled. “Well? Play it, sis.”

A vid window resolved in her AUI, and as it began to play, Juliet heard Bennet’s voice as footage of the gunship filled the window. “Making progress, Lucky! Port VTOL drive is all green lights! Even got it through a full ignition sequence—no leaks, nada! Guess what? Remember those jokers I dropped the rail gun barrels off to? They actually did it! I’ve got three straight, beautiful Takamoto barrels ready to install!” Juliet felt her pulse quicken as the camera shifted to show the long, shiny, straight barrels laid out on a tarp under the nose of the ship. “You haven’t been sending as many messages lately, and I figured it might be ‘cause I never respond. Aya called me a jerk, so I figured I better make more of an effort on my end.”

The feed panned to the left, then up, and she could hear Bennet walking over the hangar's concrete floor toward the ship’s aft end. He panned the camera up and said, “Check that out. We’ve almost fully disassembled the main drive. Had to pull all the plasteel panels off, even the ones leading up toward the nose—tons of lines and conduits leading up there from the drive that we’ll have to change out. I don’t think there’s all that much wrong with the drive; to me, it just looks like they took a few direct hits to the power couplings, and it flared out, melting all these connections. Nothing really expensive, but it’s labor-intensive as hell; I can see why this baby never got fixed.”

Juliet could see what he meant; the top fourth of the ship’s hull was completely disassembled. It looked like a plasteel skeleton. Bennet continued, “Yeah. I think they just replaced the hull plates, buttoned it up, and called it a lost cause. Pirates! What do you expect?”

Bennet turned the camera to face his grease-smeared face. He’d cut his hair recently, shaving the sides and trimming the top down to just a blond-brown stubble. When he smiled, Juliet smiled too; it was good to see his friendly eyes. “Well, that’s all the good news from me. Uh, about your last message, yeah, um, Lavonne broke up with me—said I spend too much time working. Can you imagine? Anyway, that’s the update from me. Let us know how you’re doing, all right? Alice says her friend told her you’re doing fine, but it’d be cool to hear more from you.” The camera panned out, and he waved. “Bennet out.”

Juliet was startled to find moisture in her eyes as the video closed. She chuckled, took a deep breath, and wiped them with her napkin. “It was nice to hear from him, Angel.”

“I think it was just what we needed, hmm?”

“Exactly. Any word from that woman?”

“Not yet.”

“Right. Well, let’s get back to the hotel and get ready. We’ve got a mess to clean up, I guess.”

“There’s also the matter with Nick and his job offer . . .”

“All right. Make that two messes to clean up.”