NEON & CONCRETE — Story #13
Terra Incognita
On the job, blood pumping, heart elevated but nothing I can’t handle. Riding the edge with a few crystals of T>O<X and taking a moment to look over the neon colossus that is Major Prime.
Breathing it in before hitting the lines again and getting back out there, in there, deep into it. Fast Eddy’s given me a job. Been biting at his heels for a while now, working my way up the ranks, kicking the tires and lighting the fires as the old saying goes.
“Hey Chance, what’s got you like this?” he says to me one night, out of nowhere. Been hanging around his joint for the better part of a year, picking up any scraps I can get, working them as hard as I can. The stuff the other low life hoodlums think are below them.
I figure everyone’s gotta start somewhere.
Yeah, “What’s got you like this?” Like I’m supposed to know the answer? Childhood in a broken home? T>O<X addicted from birth? Out on the street at 14 and fending for myself? Powerful spirit trapped in a weak body? Paranoia, anxiety? Or always wondering where my next meal might come from? Checking my shoulder for the next asshole that wants a piece of me? Major Prime itself? The big, black city of the night and all the wonders it holds, ready to peel and strip me for the little I’m worth at any god damn moment.
Maybe that’s got something to do with it.
I pulled myself away from the Betty I’d been laying down a full charm offensive on and saw Fast Eddie sat in the corner the way he always was.
It was dark in there, the bar named after him, Fast Eddy’s. Big reputation, he’s had it for longer than I’ve been alive, and it’s seen some serious action pass through its broken, old doors in that time.
“Dunno,” I said, holding the thump in my heart back, not letting the excitement break out across my face. First time he’d talked to me, had to play it cool. “Guess I got an itch.”
“And how about scratching that itch?” he said, big smile coming across this face, silver teeth with a little glint against the flickering neon of the old, dive bar.
So here I am, ready to scratch that itch.
Sent me out on a Rip-N-Dip. Simple enough of a ride, a data-grab. In and out. Get on the line, head to the mark, hit it, rip the data, get back on the line. Then keep my head low, real low, find the drop off point and dip that data.
Out of one system and into another. I don’t ask what it is, why it needs doing, no details, nothing.
Thing is, sometimes you can’t send certain intel through the air. I guess there’s some data people have they don’t want running through the Major Prime Cores, and hell, who am I to ask questions?
It’s a simple enough run, but a job that someone’s gotta ask you to do. Something that involves an element of trust. You gain that trust; you get that notch on your belt, chances are you get asked to do another, and another.
The sun breaks from behind one of the corporate mega-towers, splitting the purple-pink neon haze with an intense morning white of a clear sky. No rain today, weather inhibitors must be working again, makes my life easier.
Fast Eddy’s given me an old line-link. It’s the thing he must have started out on and still better than half the shit out there you’d get off the shelf. There’s a reason he’s called Fast Eddy.
I couple it up to one of the thousands and thousands of high-tensile steel zip-lines that run through the lower levels of Major Prime. These things used by rip-boys and girls to get around at 100–200mph, delivering all sorts of shit to all sorts of people. Need a licence to couple-on, not like I have one, but the old line-link from Eddy’s got me covered.
A breath, one more look at the sky before heading down and boom, I’m away.
Jump and scream, the line-link holds, does its job, and within seconds I’m tearing through the dark, damp world of the lower levels. I got a basic HUD that flickers my speed in the corner of my right eye, 70mph-80–90. Ripping and dipping, sweat on my palms, heat running through me, eyes wide, pupils dilated but the T>O<X handling things enough so there’s no panic.
Another flash in my HUD and the rip point is coming up fast, the lower levels screaming past me as I jack the breaks. Swinging through and along the steel wires, some old ape-like instinct carrying me through this blackened metal forest. Old concrete, jutting rebar, gigantic foundations of the corporate mega-towers that reach up into the sky to worlds I’ll never know.
Other liners delivering their goods and wears screaming around the system, dodging in and out of each other. Nods and smiles between some, gunshots and sword swipes between others. That’s why the drone system failed. Too much looting. Then they put people on the drones, didn’t work out the way they wanted it either, too many getting hacked and too many drone rider deaths. Then they thought this up, the line system. Old school, analogue, but it works. Lining can be a lucrative gig if you’ve got the edge. A little punk like me? I get the black-market stuff and try to stay alive.
I hammer the breaks, smoke and sparks screaming out of the line-link as I rock to a halt, uncouple, and jump off onto the concrete overhang. Time to rip as I reach around the back of my neck, pulling my download tether from the little flap of fake skin. Ready to plug in, get what I’ve been told to get, and jump back on the line to finish the job.
“Chance,” a voice says. “We need to talk.”
“What-the-fuck-man!” I pull my switchblade from my ankle holder, flick the knife as my eyes dart and my tether zips back into my neck. Not meant to be like this, not meant to be anyone here.
“Take a breath, kid, I’m not here to hurt you,” they say from the overhang’s shadow, the line of a face there, familiar shape to it in the low light. “I’m here to help.”
“Right, help? What the hell? You think I’m going to believe that?” I say but they’re quiet, standing still there in the shadows, not a movement, not a word. “What the fuck, man? You going to speak?”
I see a slight shake of their head; they take a long breath. “Let me say what I will say and once you’ve heard me, you must remember it. You must do what I say, you must, it’s imperative that you do this.”
I’m pointing the knife at them, at him, a guy by the sound of the voice, but he’s not making any moves. Standing still, that silhouette in the dark, something about it, about him, it’s eerie as fuck and
I’m panicking. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Let’s say we have a mutual concern in your ongoing survival.”
“Right, well, what you got to tell me? I’m on the job and you either get talking or I get stabbing.”
“I think we both know you’ll do nothing with that knife.”
“Fucking-try-me-man!” I take a step forward, but it’s hard to hide the fact they’re right.
“Calm the down, Chance, and listen. There will be a time in the future — ”
“ — Oh, the fucking future, right?” I pull the tether out of my neck and jack into the rip-port in the console embedded in the concrete wall. This is some out of his goddamn T>O<X addict that’s ended up stranded here somehow. I heard stories about this sort of thing.
I keep the knife pointed at him, but I ain’t got time for this. “Mind if I get on with things while you have your little moment talking about the future?”
“Shit, you really were one cocky little bastard.”
“What — ?”
“ — Listen, shut the fuck up for two minutes, I don’t have long. In the future, there will be a moment, you gotta decide, right? Life or death. What I’m saying is, you shouldn’t go with your gut on this one, the way you always do. What I’m telling you is this; forget Monroe, save yourself to save her. Remember that?”
“Right, Monroe. Got it. What the fuck? Are you out of your mind?” I’ve got the knife pointed at him but he’s not making any moves, standing there in the shadows, hands in pockets.
“NO. Asshole! Forget Monroe. Don’t go for him. Whatever you think, whatever you believe you know in that stupid little heart of yours, don’t do it.”
“Right? Right.” I take a second, breathe, he’s mad, insane on T>O<X but something keeps me focused on him. “And who exactly are you to be telling me this shit?” I say, pulling my tether out of the Rip-N-Dip port. It whips back into my neck, data got, and I need to get on the line.
They step out of the shadow, they big, real big, proper mean looking, that silhouette lifting and there’s a face. A face with bottomless eyes. It’s always in the eyes.
Standing here in the low light they could be anyone, but you always know the eyes.
Something in them runs deep, and it’s like when you see that Betty across the bar, or that thug over the street, you catch the eye and it’s love or hate.
Right here, it’s neither, but there’s a weird itch, like I know them on some intrinsic level. “You…” I pause, raising my finger. “You are fucked in the head.” I jump back on the line and scream back into the neon world.
“Don’t do it, don’t go baby, not today. Chance, come on, skip a day or something?” Selena says, curling her body on the bed, re-wrapping herself in the thin sheets that hold on to her curves.
“Monroe’s going to have my kneecaps if I miss another day,” I say, knowing how much I’d love to skip out, to crawl back in with her for the rest of the day.
“He’s going to take a few licks out of you anyway by the sounds of things,” she says, whines a little, then smiles that smile.
“Don’t worry about that, babe. I got that guy wrapped around my little finger.”
“Not what I heard,” she says with a wink, lifting the sheets and exposing her lines. “Much safer in here.”
“Damn,” I whisper, shake my head, suck my teeth. “Stop!” Got to get going, but she’s not wrong. Safer in there is an understatement. I’ve pulled one too many sick days because of a few too many late nights recently and it’s beginning to catch up with me. Not to mention the money I owe around town.
I pull on my jeans, spin into the tiny kitchen area we’ve got in the container home we’re about holding onto for the moment and tear a powered food sachet open. The tap gives a trickle of water, filling the bottle enough to stop it being a thick paste. I shake it and chug down the porridge like substance with only a slight wince.
The curve of Selena’s ass catches my eyes in the low light that pours through the little porthole of a widow we’ve got above the bed. A second enough to distract from the flavour of the powdered food, the world that I’m about to head into out there. She’s the best thing that’s happened to me since I got stuck up here. The best thing that’s happened to me in this thing I call a life, period.
“Strong day, okay honey? I love you,” she says as I rinse the container and throw on my top, thinned leather jacket and cap, make for the door.
“See you later, I love you too,” I say and see her raise her two fingers in a peace sign as I turn and push out into the icy wind of the harbour.
Clear skies under the thin atmosphere, a world of stars shining down over Terra Incognita. This old-new planet we’ve been terraforming for what feels like a lifetime now…This place, ‘Where the Titans roam,’ the gigantic mech suits they sent down with us on the first wave that stomp about the planet, half doing the job they’re meant to, half keeping law and order.
Yeah, that first wave of terra formers. Seemed like a good alternative. Got myself into a downward spiral of trouble and grief back on Earth. Making noise with the types you don’t want to be making any noise with. It came down to this; either pay with my skin or take a chance with the unknown world, Terra Incognita, up here in the stars, riding it out with the terraforming crews and keeping my head down.
The steel walkways of the crumbling, old worker’s apartment blocks floating on the harbour creak and judder as I make my way out. The sound of Titans outside shifting containers and constructing luxury apartments rumbles through the thin walls, meeting the weird, half muted sounds of those still waking in their shitty little container homes.
Here. Terra Incognita. Getting up here, that was the simple part. They were looking for anyone and everyone, your background or criminal record or anything, didn’t matter. Reckoned they’d slap you in a stasis pod with all this behavioural correction, mind-modding technology they had, and by the time we all got let loose on the new planet, they’d have a wonderful bunch of subordinate workers.
Didn’t work out that way.
The modding didn’t take or stick. In most cases it even made people worse, a lot worse. So yeah, getting up here didn’t take too much effort, keeping my head down and trying to get on with some form of life? That’s been more of a challenge.
I spy Monroe with a few of his thugs across an old walkway bridge. More of that rusted steel, dented and battered after two decades of neglect, same as everything else in the place. Including me.
I make a beeline for the opposite direction, trying to keep out of his way. Monroe’s the Titan yard boss and one of those terra formers that got screwed up bad in the modding. By the time they decanted everyone, about 50,000 of us on the various ships they sent, they’d produced a workforce of around 50% crazy bastards, 30% psychopaths and 20% complete maniacs. Monroe here, he’s not elegant or smart enough to have made it out of the yard, but he’s in the high-end psychopath league and he’s tough as nails, so he runs the yard, and that’s that.
“Chance, you little fucker,” he shouts, two of his thugs peeling away from him, stalking over to me. No point offering any resistance as they grab me under my arms and lift me clean a few feet off the grated steel walkway and over to him.
He’s about as corrupt as you can get, small beady little eyes, but big pockets full of kick-back money from the corps back on Earth and all over TI. It’s a nasty place here, built by nasty people for a new rich from Major Prime that might escape to out here someday, if we ever finish what we they sent us out here for. I can’t see it happening. This fresh hell is ours now, but they keep sending money and we keep growing and building. Those high-class maniacs of ours at the top of the food chain keep convincing the ones back on Earth we’re getting on with things.
“Look, I’ll get you the money,” I say, not telling the truth.
“No, enough of that, Chance,” he comes in close, fat face, scars and breath like chewed cigars and bad scotch. “You fucked this one, little buddy. You pull the time, hard worker, sure-sure, but you spend more than you earn. Problem there, straight economics, you get it? Nights in the casino blocks, T>O<X crystals, hell, I’ve even got people saying to me you owe them money down at the ballistics ranges. None of this sounds like good news to me. I got a certain way of running the Yard, and you’re falling out of line. We got the Titans, so we got the muscle and we need it to stay that way, right? No favours owed. So, when one of my workers gets this reputation, builds up this debt, you know how that reflects on me? You know the position that puts me in?”
“Not a good one, I’d imagine?” I squeeze out the words as the two hulking thugs hold me down now, one’s massive hand on my jaw pulling my head straight and up to face Monroe.
“Yeah, not a fucking good one at all,” Monroe says. “Lesson time, I’d say.”
“No-no-no!” I shout as the thugs hold me down and laugh. “Look, look! I’ll pay it all back, I swear, I’ve got some stashed away. 24 hours, that’s all I need.” I’m begging but with only half my heart, enough to make sure I get the beating and make him think I’m back onside but don’t have to pay. I can take the beatings, the money —
He shakes his head, stands back, straightening out.
Something’s different.
Poking at the implant in his forearm, a blue-green cube of light from his holo-feed fizzes into place.
“Wait!” I scream as the resolution of the image increases and I see Selena lying there on the floor in our little apartment unconscious.
“Pushed too many people the wrong way,” Monroe says.
The wind on the old bridge whips up off the harbour and across us, salt-water and pollution all mixing and settling over us from the spray. The taste catches the edges of my mouth, eyes stinging, heart racing and her blurred image there, Selena.
“Come on, leave her alone, man. What’s she got to do with any of this?”
“Pretty thing ain’t she?” he says, the projection focusing and refocusing. It’s a live-feed coming off a body cam, another one of his thugs in my apartment. Salena’s out on the floor in front of him and he’s holding up a pair of bolt-cutters, opening and closing them with intent in front of the camera.
“Monroe, take it out on me, man, come on?!” I’m begging and struggling, but the two big bastards are down on me, forcing me to watch.
“I’ve tried taking it out of you before, Chance, and look where that’s got us? From now on, I take a finger of hers every time you fuck up. You got that? How much use is she going to be dealing cards in the casino-block with two stumps for hands?”
I’m screaming, pushing myself out of the grip of the thugs as one of them brings an elbow down between my shoulder blades and the other’s thick fingers hold my head in place.
Monroe leans back into me laughing, the wind screaming around us, the open night sky with its million-million stars shining down. He’s laughing, the sadistic bastard, getting off on this as he gives the order. “Do it.”
A strength rises in me fuelled by my love for her, from fear, hate, rage, all of it. The past I had on Earth, the present I’ve got here now, the future with her they’re going to wipe out in front of my eyes for a few bets gone wrong.
Something snaps, it’s been a long time coming.
Fear of these bastards, and their psychotic natures. Holding down the hate, escaping from the haunted nights with T>O<X and gambling and trying to keep it together with Selena.
“Yeah, you get to watch,” Monroe says, more laughing, wiping the salt spray of the harbour from his fat face.
I grit my teeth, ready to act and it flashes across my mind, a long-forgotten moment from a longescaped place, that crazy old bastard with those eyes…“What I’m telling you is this, forget Monroe, save yourself to save her. Remember that?” Yeah, I remember now.
And I don’t give a fuck.
I let go of myself, loose muscles, and the thugs aren’t expecting it. I fall through them and to the ground, giving me a split second, enough to grab the old switchblade from my ankle.
Still there after all these years. Still unused. Until now.
I pull it fast, slicing right and left, catching the heavy legs of the thugs who jump back a foot or two, enough space for me to leap forward and plunge the thing deep into Monroe’s eye socket.
It’s a blur. I’m up and swinging, pulling the blade out and spinning around and slicing. For all the threat these guys have imposed on me across all the years I’ve been up here, they’re fucking useless.
The knife slices through thin fabric and skin, blood spills and they’re bolting in a matter of seconds.
Monroe’s dead and face down on the grated steel of the walkway in front of me, blood pouring out of his eye socket and down into the harbour far below. Some chunks of flesh from the two thugs hang in the gaps. I look down at my hands, blood and shakes, bad shakes. Adrenaline hammering through me I never knew I had.
The stars above me shine bright, beautiful and as wide as the cosmos itself. I calm my breath, visible in the cold, jets of steam pushing their way out of my flaring nostrils and fold the knife back and put it in my pocket.
“Selena,” I whisper, as I dial her up on my phone-implant.
It rings for a long time as I look out over the harbour. There’s no answer, so I run. I run as fast as I can to find her, hoping it’s not too late.
The sands of time are a peculiar thing, and you’d think I’d be the last person in the universe that would end up being able to play with them, but here we are.
I look out over Major Prime of old, the neon hue, that sky settling down over the corporate megatowers, disappearing into the dark depths of their roots that sink further still into this world. The one where grew up, the one where it all started, but not quite the one that formed me. Not the place where you might say, I found myself.
That was back on Terra Incognita, where the Titans roam. What happened there, I don’t think anyone could have seen that, understood things would have gone in such a way. The fateful day, hour, minute, second, moment, where everything that had been building up to it aligned, and I buried that old switchblade deep into Monroe’s eye.
I flick the thing in my palm, swing it around, a memento of that time when it all changed. Monroe murdered by my hands. Selena murdered by his thugs.
Things got dark for a while then. Losing the only person you’ve ever felt any love for will do that to you. I went after them, pulled in some favours people owed me, stripped myself down to the minimum levels of emotion I could with whatever modding software and T>O<X I could get my hands on, and really started after them.
Lots of killing and when there’d been enough of that, something unexpected happened. They took me in. Never thought of myself as leader material but when you’re on a planet being terraformed by psychotics in colossal mech suits, and what would normally account for the ‘criminal underworld’ is the usual state of business, then killing people gets you far.
I dial up my HUD and check the time, nearly there, nearly, there. Patient, Chance, he’ll be setting off soon.
So I’m this leader, and things really take off then. Titan yard harbour master, and I’m running it tight and fair, the way I always thought it should be run. One day, a report comes in, a Titan’s down.
Something’s opened up in the harbour and swallowed it whole, only, we’re still getting messages from the thing. Intermittent transmissions from the operator, crazy shit. So, we go investigate.
Along with everyone else that got sent down to Terra Incognita, along with all the fuck-ups like me who signed up for manual labour and all the other shitty jobs, there was a solid batch of scientists, engineers, economists, all the rest. Fortunately for them, they got as fucked up by the stasis modding as everyone else. I don’t think they would have survived if they hadn’t.
My HUD flashes at me, it’s time. Yeah, time.
I hook up the line-link I’ve got my hands on and wonder if it’ll come back to me after all these years. After everything that I’ve done, gone through, been through. My heart pumps, hands slick with sweat, teeth gritted. I’m surprised at how nervous I am, and I take the jump.
Down and down into these depths of Major Prime, the timing must be absolute.
Time…So, this disappeared Titan, we find it and this is where things get tricky. The terraforming we’d been doing up there, it had what we shall call adverse effects. Not only because of the shitshow of a job we were doing, but because there’d been some undiscovered element in the outer layers of this planet’s surface no one had even thought of before, let alone seen.
So, a 300ft, 2000 tonne mech gets sucked down into parts unknown and it all kicks off.
This fine unknown thing, all sorts of crazy readings coming off it. So, we mined it, of course fucking of course. We knew it had uses straight away, bare minimum it made fuel for the Titans, and seemed it might have other properties we could exploit.
The line’s holding, the wind rushing past me, the other liners with grins and grimaces all around, same as it ever was.
Yeah, we want to exploit this new element, mineral, whatever. We mine as much of it as we can, and that’s when the crazy shit starts. The scientists we’ve got on TI get real excited, experiments, lots of them, lots of resource used up but they say it’ll be worth it, so I keep feeding them what they need. All this buried deep down and away from prying eyes back on Earth.
The line-link screams and smokes as I trail down to the spot, the point where he’s coming. Darker and deeper with every second, the air thick and moist, the other liners a blur, the tension in my hands and heart.
Everything, everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve gone through down here, up there on
Terra Incognita, it all comes down to this moment.
This second right here.
It comes down to this, to coming back to kill myself.
Taking my life.
I’m here now, at this most pivotal of moments, before the dominoes fall, the chain of events takes place that will inevitably lead me back here.
I pull hard on the breaks as the concrete overhang of the Rip-N-Dip spot comes alongside me. Where that old career kicked off. Where I thought I got my first break, where things went in such a direction and at such a speed they will only ever go in one direction.
Jumping onto the concrete, I find my spot and move into the shadows, the Titan’s flashing through my mind. The memory of that world, of all the killing, of all the hatred, of all the hurt and sorrow that took place over all those years.
Once the scientists and engineers got an idea of what this new element could do, I grew my power so we could get more and more. More of the element meant more tech and more power, which went back around to more mining. I equipped the Titans with weapons and went to war with anyone that stood in my way, pulling in every resource necessary to make what they said could happen, happen.
Time travel.
I grew in madness, in power, in it all, but I never forgot one thing, one person. Even with the world that Terra Incognita came to be, I never forgot her. The one person who held the light for me, the rose in a world of horror. A flash joy. A person, beautiful and whole, and the one they killed. The one they sliced up and tortured because of what I’d done.
There’s a breath and a quick brush of air and he’s unhooked and jumping onto the overhang.
My eyes grow wide at the sight of him, of me. “Chance,” I say. “We need to talk.” “What-the-fuck-man!” he pulls my switchblade from the old ankle holder. I hold on to mine in my pocket, the same weapon to end it all, right here, to stop everything that happened so I can save her.
“Take a breath, kid, I’m not here to hurt you,” I lie as I step out of the deep shadow a touch but not revealing myself. “I’m here to help.”
“Right, help? What the hell? You think I’ll believe that?”
I’m looking at him, at me, at this figure, what was I? The figure there, myself, this young boy, an emaciated sack of bones full of fear and dread. How did I ever carry off any attitude and bravado when all I was, was this?
Is this what everyone else saw? Is this how I came across, is this what I inspired in people, the feeling, the emotion that’s running through me now, down to my very core, nothing but pity?
Pathetic, he’s pathetic, the poor kid I remember here, the past I have, what I went through, what he’s gone through.
Her vision rises in my mind.
The reason I’m here, the reason I’ve done everything I’ve done.
I edge closer and he’s standing there with the knife out and the fear on his face runs down and through him to his skinny, shaking legs. A pitiful mess. What was I? Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I shake my head, containing the fury that rumbles through me, as unexpected as the boy that’s standing in front of me.
Look what I am now, look what I’ve become.
The master of Terra Incognita, a player with the sands of time.
“What the fuck man, you not gunna speak?”
Selena, those moments we had together. Is she worth all this, was she worth all this? Was what she gave me in those fleeting moments worth taking all this away from me now? Worth killing myself in the past, to prevent what happened in the future?
I breathe in the moist air from the depths of Major Prime and shake my head.
No. I won’t do this to him. To me.
Looking at what I was, the pitiful child holding the switchblade out at me with a shaking hand to match the shaking legs.
I thumb the steel of the same blade in my pocket and release it. I’ve chosen.
Now, what did I say? What was it I said back then? I say right here, right now?
I seal fate. There was never any other way.
A one-way trip that this is, one short amount of time, one specific little slot before I’m torn apart by the fabric of the universe.
But now I know what I must do, what the sands of time dictate I do.
Say what I said, for me to forget and disregard, to find those words again in a moment and disregard them before I plunge the knife into Monroe’s eye and complete the loop.
“Let me say what I will say and once you’ve heard me, you must remember it. You must do what I say, you must, it’s imperative that you do this.”
THE END
Artist: Beeple_Crap AKA Mike Winkelmann
Artist Bio: A graphic designer from Appleton, Wisconsin, USA. His short films have screened at onedotzero, Prix Ars Electronica, the Sydney Biennale, Ann Arbor Film Festival and many others. He has also released a series of Creative Commons live visuals that have been used by electronic acts such as deadmau5, Skrillex, Avicii, Zedd, Taio Cruz, Tiësto, Amon Tobin, Wolfgang Gartner, and Flying Lotus and many others. He currently releases work on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint.
Artist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beeple_crap/
Artist website: http://beeple-crap.com
Writer: Richard Galbraith
Writer Bio: A science-fiction writer with a penchant for cyberpunk, neo-noir and existentialism, Richard hails from the UK and currently lives in Denmark working for LEGO while hammering away at short stories and his latest sci-fi manuscript.
Writer medium: https://medium.com/@ricgalbraith
