CD & EA 1.13 - Northbound

Have a good Saturday!

-Plum

Juliet shook Tyler’s hand as they stood next to the driver-side door of the baby blue Houston Zephyr. It was a lovely little car, if a bit dated—sixteen years old, to be exact. Still, it had a relatively new battery bank, tinted windows, and a sporty, compact look that pleased Juliet’s aesthetics. Best of all, she’d gotten it for only twenty-two hundred bits.

“Thanks, Tyler. It’s nice to know who to come to for wheels. I feel like you cut me a nice deal.”

“Oh, for sure, Juliet. Look at the tread on those tires! You’ll get another thirty thousand miles out of 'em, easy!”

“Relax,” Juliet said with a chuckle, tapping her fingers on the car's roof with a hollow, staccato sound. “You already sold it.” She hefted her duffle bag, a cheap one-zipper red nylon affair she’d gotten at a drugstore before ditching the van. Its only contents were the shotgun and Vikker’s data cube.

The car only had two doors, so she had to fold the driver’s seat forward to toss the bag onto the rear cushion. “Full charge?” she asked.

“Naturally. You’re good for three hundred and fifty miles.” He reached up and stroked his pencil-thin mustache as though imagining driving cross-country. He really did have a perfect demeanor for selling things; Juliet found it difficult not to like him.

“Hey . . .” Juliet almost asked him if he had a contact in Phoenix in case she wanted to sell or trade in the Zephyr, but she bit her tongue—she didn’t want people to know where she was going. “Um,” she covered, as he raised an eyebrow, “I have a cousin in the market for a car. You mind if I send him your way?”

“Oh, that’d be great, Juliet. He an operator, too?”

“No, corpo drone,” she laughed. “His bits are good, though.”

“Great, great. Word of mouth is our best source of new business. Thanks, Juliet.”

“You got it,” she said, sliding into the driver’s seat. The vehicle's lights and gauges lit up, and she knew Angel had started the car for her. “See you, Tyler!” she said out of the window, then began to back up the little car. It hummed, valiantly pretending it had a sports car engine, and she smiled as it purred toward the lot’s exit. “Not a bad little ride for two k, eh, Angel?”

“It seems quite adequate, Juliet. What destination should I set?”

Juliet pressed on the brake pedal and sat there, glancing back in the rearview screen, and saw Tyler watching the car, fiddling with his hat, probably hoping it wouldn’t break down before she got off the lot. “I think I’m out of options in this town, Angel. I can’t go to my cousin's. I can’t go to work. I can’t even go home. I’m dead tired, too—the only rest I’ve had in days was after my surgery. Set me a course for a mid-range hotel on the southern edge of Phoenix.”

As the map, much more detailed and discreet in her new high-resolution, multi-colored AUI, appeared in her upper-right view, she eased into the street and started on her way. She said, “Can you call Fee Fee for me?”

A moment later, Angel said, “Connection established.”

“Juliet?” Felix said, his adorable, sweet face appearing in her AUI, off to the left, so it didn’t obscure her view. He looked tired, and his hair was a mess, but he was dressed, and it looked like he was riding in public transport.

“Hey, Fee. What’s going on?”

“I’m tramming back to Tucson. Paulo didn’t wanna leave yet, but I’ve got work tomorrow, Jules. Ugh, fucking riding the water line.” The “water line” referred to the public transit tramline that followed the old Central Arizona Project route from Tucson to Phoenix and beyond. The CAP was essentially a man-made river that pulled water out of some northern states all the way down to the Sonoran Desert. Helios and a few corps out of Las Vegas and Phoenix had paid to expand the project, stretching the line up to the Seattle protectorate, but that was long before Juliet’s time.

“Well, gotta make that grind, huh, buddy?”

“You driving, Jules?”

“Yeah,” Juliet paused, wondering how honest to be, but then she decided that the less Fee Fee knew, the safer he’d be. “Neighbor paid me to run their kids to a, uh, a kind of group homeschool thing up by Flagstaff.”

“Oh, cool, cool. They giving you per diem? Get something good to eat, Jules!” He laughed and then quickly turned to his right and scowled, “Don’t listen if it’s bothering you!” Turning back to Juliet, he added, “Who sleeps on the tramline?”

“Hey, Fee, I was just checking in, but I want you to know I’m gonna be outta touch for a while. I’m not sure about the connection up there, and I’ve had a creep from work kinda stalking me. I wanna turn shit off for a while. You feel?”

“What? Seriously? Did you talk to corpo-sec? There’s a station in your building, Juliet!”

“Let me handle it myself, for now, Fee. I don’t wanna blow things up more than I need to. I’m fine, okay? I promise.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, absolutely. I gotta run, though, Fee. I love you, okay?”

“Shit! You’re expressing your love? Now I know shit’s gone wrong. Juliet, let me . . .”

“Bye, Fee. Stay good,” Juliet said, and then she cut the line. “There was no easy way to end that, Angel.”

“It seemed like he didn’t want to accept your explanation, Juliet; he’s trying to open a connection.”

“Reject it, Angel. Um, let’s revoke my connection link with him. I don’t want WBD to use him against me.”

“Done.”

Juliet followed Angel’s directions toward the freeway for a while, losing herself in her thoughts. Was she really cutting ties with Tucson? Saying goodbye to her job, her family, and her friends? Should she call her mom for advice? “Yeah, right,” she snorted. When her sister had been arrested, and Juliet was getting evicted from their old apartment, she’d tried to get help from her mom. She’d called her, stress riding her like a jockey, and broken into tears. Her mom’s response was to blame her for letting Emma get into trouble.

“Like I had anything to do with Emma hanging around with those bangers . . .” Juliet clapped her mouth shut. In just one night, she’d gone from a respectable citizen, someone who worked all day and often all night, paid her taxes, and followed the corpo rules, to a criminal on the run. Maybe Emma had more to say for herself than Juliet had ever given her a chance to do. “Maybe instead of blaming her, I should’ve tried to help her.”

Briefly, she considered trying to visit Emma in prison while she was in Phoenix, but she decided that would be stupid. Surely WBD was watching her mom and sister. They seemed very eager to get this tech back, and a few surveillance operations probably didn’t impact their budget much. “Angel, message my sister.”

“What would you like it to say?”

Juliet blinked her eyes, annoyed that she was getting emotional and angry with herself for succumbing to guilt so easily. Still, she cleared her throat and said, “Em, I’m sorry I was so hard on you. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your side. I have to be out of touch for a while, but I promise I’m thinking about you, and I hope we can talk soon.”

“Done, Juliet.”

“Angel, increase the tint on the windows and take control. You can do that, right?” Juliet knew many high-end PAIs could autodrive, and she couldn’t imagine there was a commercial PAI that could do something Angel couldn’t.

“Yes, I can. I can spoof a permit, too, if the vehicle is scanned and your hands aren’t on the wheel.”

“Great,” Juliet said, yawning, then she reclined her seat and leaned back. “I’m going to sleep for an hour or so; wake me if something happens.” She closed her eyes and, despite her mind’s attempts to keep her awake with thoughts of shotgun blasts, bloody bodies, lost friends and family, and a deep, overwhelming sense of loss for her place and identity, Juliet slipped into a fitful sleep.

“Juliet,” Angel said into her ear, and Juliet blinked away the remnants of a weird dream involving freeze-dried fruit being lost between the cushions of a car’s seat. Groggily she saw that she was still in her car, still driving down the freeway, though the sun was nearly gone and the yellow-white headlights were illuminating slowed traffic ahead.

“Yeah,” she grunted, still not wholly awake.

“There are corpo-police vehicles ahead. They’re slowing traffic while a military-grade drone scans each vehicle.”

“Fuck. Are we screwed?”

“I don’t think so, Juliet. With your new gear, I believe my spoofed ID for you will hold up to scrutiny. I grabbed some public record pings on the way out of town. I’m matching you with a woman who was checking out of Foothills Medical Center as we drove north.”

“All right,” Juliet said, sitting up straight, both hands on the wheel and waiting for the cars to creep forward. She drummed her fingers on the wheel nervously, and to help her mind from drifting into panic, she said, “Play me something upbeat. Something like La Luna Entienda—their latest electro synth.”

The upbeat, haunting melodies of the local band started to reverb in her head, her implants using her skull for the bass, and she breathed out a deep breath, imagining she was pushing out all her stress, all her problems. By the third song, she was driving between the corpo-sec cruisers, and the huge, hovering drone was scanning her vehicle in a hundred different ways. “Oh shit,” she said, then switched to subvocalize the rest, “The shotgun, Angel!”

“Not to worry, Juliet. I’ve gained access to the drone’s scanners. I’m ensuring they return nothing of note.”

“You fucking hacked a military-grade drone?”

“Only its sensor array, though I think I could gain full control with a bit more time. Your new wireless data jack is quite robust, by the way; I had a strong connection from nearly a quarter mile out.”

Juliet wanted to comment on the PAI’s decision to hack the drone without consulting her, but she didn’t. She figured it fit within the guidelines she’d given of keeping her identity hidden, and also, she didn’t want to hurt Angel’s “feelings” again. “Nice work, Angel,” she said instead. “Don’t push your hack further than you have to.”

“Understood,” she replied in her clear, perfectly calm, soprano voice. Juliet suddenly remembered how Angel had gotten her moving and convinced her to fight for her life when Vikker and Don had left the garage. Had she been calm then? In her foggy memory, it seemed to her that Angel had screamed at her.

The portable traffic light at the side of the road blinked from yellow to green, and Juliet punched it, leaving the crawling line of cars in the dust. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief, then looked at her map and the route Angel had programmed for her—fifty-two minutes left. She sank back into the seat and relaxed her grip on the wheel, her thoughts of Vikker and Don bringing her mind around to Ghoul. “Angel, send a message to Ghoul. Use the SOA network.”

“Ready,” Angel replied.

“Ghoul, I hope you’re recovering well. I won’t be available for jobs in Tucson, but I hope you keep in touch—maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

“Sent.”

Juliet watched the scenery go by, loosely holding the wheel, trusting that Angel had the vehicle under control. She was in a section between Tucson and Phoenix that was often referred to as “the badlands” or “the ABZ,” standing for the abandoned zone.

Before the megatowers, before the arcologies, Tucson and Phoenix had been on track to grow into each other. That was something like forty or fifty years ago, though, and Angel had never known that reality. When the massive cities within cities began to go up in the fifties and sixties, they drew a lot of the population from the outskirts of the towns, and no new populous ever came to take their places.

It was eerie, especially in the twilight, seeing the apartment complexes, box stores, and track homes standing dark and empty. Occasionally, Juliet would see lights in the distance, and she knew there were people that lived out there. “Like Mark living outside Tucson,” she said, finishing her musings aloud.

After a while, they rounded a long bend in the freeway, and the megacity came into full view. Phoenix made Tucson look like an old-timey village. There were twenty or more buildings the size of the Helios Arcology in Phoenix, and they were all bedecked with enough lights to be seen from space. Thinking of space, Juliet looked to the left toward the western edge of Phoenix’s skyline, toward the spaceport. She’d seen shuttles and interceptors launch before, but it was always kind of thrilling to catch one by accident.

Juliet let her eyes travel from the tall megatowers to the shorter skyscrapers, to the still shorter, more clustered buildings, out over the lights of the suburbs and then through the dark ABZ, and there, past that abandoned area, sat the spaceport. Huge antennae, long, light-bedecked buildings, and surrounding it all, hundreds of enormous floodlights. Juliet had never seen so many details before, and she knew she had her new implants to thank for the zoomed-in view.

She saw clouds of white smoke or steam, she really didn’t know which, billowing off one of the pads, and she held her breath, watching, but the launch never came. “Oh, who knows how long the pre-flight is for something like that,” she sighed as she began to lose sight of the port amidst the taller buildings of Phoenix proper.

The car started to veer to the right, and Juliet glanced at her map. The little amber line showing her route indicated that the hotel was just off the next exit—Sol Vista Suites. She drove through the heavy traffic to the exit ramp, went through a few lights, and then pulled into the parking lot.

Juliet grabbed her duffle bag and approached the hotel lobby. The building was modern in design, with two-story, rounded, stucco walls, security shutters on the suite windows, and everything painted in shades of yellow. The big sign, visible from the freeway, stood in the parking lot, depicting a sun and the word “Vista!”

When she stepped into the lobby, she found it was small and not meant to linger in, sporting just a few vending machines and a counter, behind which sat a retail model synth with a full plastic build. It was yellow and red, and its backlit, blue eyes lit up at her approach. “Good Evening. Will you be checking into the inn tonight?” Even its voice was mechanical, reminding her eerily of her old PAI, Tig. Juliet knew retail synths like this were designed to be obviously synthetic, so she reasoned the strange voice was also purposeful.

“Yes. Room for one.”

“Will you be using the room to conduct any business?”

“What a strange question. No, I will not.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s on my pre-check-in checklist.” The synth said, gesturing widely with one arm.

“Carry on,” Juliet said.

“Will you be storing any explosives, firearms, or illegal substances in the room tonight?”

“Angel, can he tell?” she subvocalized.

“No, Juliet, there aren’t any advanced scanner arrays in here.”

“No,” she said aloud.

“Would you like a queen, two twins, or a king-sized bed?”

“Just a queen. How much is it?”

“Do you have any coupons or club discounts I should be aware of? Would you like to forward me your credentials so I can verify our best rate for you?”

“A moment,” Juliet said, then she subvocalized, “Angel can you handle this? Get me checked in and the best rate.”

“Yes, I’ll connect with the synth directly.”

Juliet saw the synth’s blue, LED eyes flash several times, and then it said, in its strange robotic voice, “Room one-twelve. Out the door and to your left. Thank you for staying at Sol Vista!” Juliet hefted her duffle and then walked out into the warm night air. As she turned toward her room, her stomach rumbled.

“Angel, order me a pizza. How much was the room, by the way?”

“The room is sixty-three bits per night.”

“No problem with Helios bits up here, right?”

“No, they’re accepted on a one-to-one ratio with the Phoenix corpo bits. What sort of pizza? I’m displaying a list of local restaurants that deliver. I’ve filtered out low-rated companies.” Juliet scanned through the list, had no idea what to pick, and settled on one because of the name.

“Tornado Brothers. Order the . . . hmm, order the garlic pesto and sausage. Does it say if it’s real sausage? No, I don't see anything. Oh well, order it anyway—a medium and also two pints of General Ahane rice beer.”

She was just reaching for her room’s door when a low rumble came to her through her implants, and Juliet looked off to the west, over the parking lot. There, igniting the night sky like only a rocket engine could, she saw some kind of shuttle blasting into the sky, leaving behind thick plumes of hydrogen exhaust—mostly water vapor.

As she watched the fiery fountain climb ever higher, Juliet’s heart sang a little, and she yearned to go where it was going, see what those people would see. She wanted to feel the force of that engine in her bones, pulling her back into her seat. “Angel, how much are shuttle tickets off-world?” she asked as she stared at the rocket until it was just a flickering ember fading away as the pollution in the sky above Phoenix obscured it.

“The cheapest one-way passenger ticket I could find is in four months and costs eight thousand bits. It’s a trip to Luna Station Beta.”

“How much to go to one of the moons around Saturn or Jupiter? Look for something leaving sometime this month.”

“There’s a cruiseliner departing for Ganymede in eleven days. The shuttle to orbit is twelve thousand bits, and the cruise, with departure options, costs a minimum of fifty-seven thousand bits.”

“Sheesh. Still, that’s just as a passenger. Angel, do some searches for employment on spacecraft.” Juliet turned and touched her door, which clicked open, presumably because the hotel’s synth unit had given Angel the passkey. The hotel room reminded her, almost eerily, of her Helios Arcology apartment. The bed was larger than hers, but the kitchen and built-ins were practically identical.

She threw her duffel onto the kitchen counter with a clunk and then kicked off her shoes. “At least my clothes are fairly clean,” she said, sniffing her armpits. “I’m taking a spray, Angel. If the pizza guy comes, tip him and tell his PAI to put the pizza on the counter.” Thinking about a teenager wandering into her room, Juliet picked up the duffel and carried it into the bathroom. She shut the door and smiled, seeing that the toilet was next to the shower rather than in it.

“What’s my balance?” she asked, looking at the various shower options.

“Eight thousand and ninety Helios-bits.”

“Okay, nice,” Juliet breathed, reading through the list. “Oh hell, for twenty bits, I can have a real shower for fifteen minutes, Angel!” She pressed the button, and a timer started counting down above the keypad. “Shit, shit,” she said, ripping her clothes off and throwing them next to the sink. She slipped into the shower and, just as she closed the plasti-glass door, hot water started to stream out of the faucet. “Oh, God. That’s where it’s at. How did I go so long with fucking sani spray?”

Juliet used every second of the shower timer, sampling the various soaps and shampoos in the dispenser—each one cost her a bit—and when she exited the bathroom to find a still-warm pizza and two frosty cans of beer on the counter, her life suddenly felt a hell of a lot better. “The door’s locked, right?” she asked Angel.

“Yes, of course.”

“Good,” Juliet said, sitting on the bed with her food, stuffing two large pillows behind her. “I’m going to eat this food, and then I’m going to sleep for a good long while. Angel, I want you to scour for news about me, about WBD, about Vikker or Don, and then I want you to look for good operator jobs in the area. More than that, though, look for jobs on ships leaving the planet. Don’t wake me up unless it’s an emergency—we’ll go over everything in the morning.”

“Understood, Juliet. Enjoy your meal and sweet dreams.”