Descended from Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol I Page 13

  An echo rings down the hallway outside. That fat little shit is faster that I thought.

  "Down here! You'll tell them, right, mister? You'll tell them that I told you?"

  I keep tapping away like crazy at the last terminal. Erl sticks his head in the doorway. The skinny old guard in the blue suit is right behind him.

  * * * *

  It's funny the shit the Delta will make you do. Sometimes you hurt yourself so other people can't. Sometimes you just hurt them first. I don't blame Erl. I know he's just a kid, a baby. He shouldn't be out there queuing up every night, nothing to anyone but a slab of cold cut. Some kids ain't made for that. Erl ain't. Imi wasn't.

  I am.

  I take the old guard's bullet in the armpit just as a last rush of juice gushes from my handheld and into the terminal. Steam jets out of it, scalding me. I slump to the floor.

  The guard's head turns into a puff of red mist as I pull a one-shooter out of my back pocket and fire it at his eyes.

  I yell at Erl. Stuff comes up in my puke. My lungs make a sucking noise, like this: foko foko, foko foko. Erl is crying, a dry cry, and he starts to pull me out of the hissing machinery.

  "No!" I yell. "Leave me here!" Erl won't listen, which is good, 'cause I don't know what I'm saying. I catch one last look at the control room's vids, but it's all steam. Steamsteamsteam.

  When I wake up I'm outside in the bushes, flat on my back. Alarms are going off. Erl is blubbering and saying sorry. The cool night air is pouring in through my ribs.

  I look up.

  The moon is orange, swirly, like a drop of blood in a glass of water. Huge. A hole punched into the night.

  In the middle of that hole is the billboard. But there aren't any commercials for vaccines projected on it tonight. No ads for tooth creams in letters a hundred miles high and visible from the deepest alleys of the Delta, from all the other alleys of all the other Deltas, from sea to shitty sea.

  Instead it's a tag. Bright like a peacock, crazy like a spider web.

  I grip Erl. "It's okay," I say. "Take me to the Datra," I say.

  * * * *

  Like I told you already: I'm a thunderbolt in heat, a fucking rocket manned by a panther astronaut. Ancient. My mission started the day I was born, and it ends the day I die. But Skowt ain't nowhere close to being dead yet. All the world knows is my name, my tag, hanging there in the night sky like a black eye all purple and yellow on the ugly blue face of the moon.

  That's a lot. But it's just a start. Skowt's still got plenty to learn you bitches. Plenty.

  Behold, motherfuckers. Behold.

  Shaded Streams Run Clearest

  Geoffrey W. Cole

  Your wife will keep cheating on you, at least until the world ends," Calais said. The young husband seemed resigned to his fate. Calais led him to the door, and flipped the sign to 'Closed'.

  Calais ordered a pizza from the Italian place at the other end of the mall while he shut down the temponeural coils of the amplification array. The machine powered off, but he remained in the un-amplified future that always hummed at the edge of his perception. So many intertwining streams. There was a chance the cheated husband would leave his wife, a chance she would reform her ways, but these days no one had any impetus to change, not when every licensed precog saw the same mushroom-clouded future.

  A knock on the door drew Calais out of the trance. The pizza boy? It would be a first if he were early. Calais unlocked the door.

  "If you're closed, I can come back tomorrow," the Independent Senator said. She hid behind oversized sunglasses, a copper wig, and a Seattle Aquarium T-shirt.

  "Of course not," Calais said. "Please take a seat."

  He switched the amplification array back on.

  "I've never used your profession's services before," she said.

  "Then you're unique. A wise politician. Most are foolish enough to keep precogs on their payroll. The process is simple. Ask what you'd like to know, and I'll trace the flow for probable answers."

  She placed her sunglasses on the desk between them. "The Presidential candidates have both asked for my endorsement. I've heard the rumours on the street, what your colleagues see coming. I try not to believe them, but in that I might also be unique. I want to know what our country will look like under both candidates."

  Calais sighed. He didn't need the array for this, but the Senator would require more than just his word. He dove into that part of his mind that never stopped muttering, the intertwining streams that led to the future.

  "Nothing is fixed," he said. "But some futures are more likely than others. The election is a close thing and could go either way, but it doesn't really matter."

  On the screens, images drawn from his mind were distilled to a meaningful sequence. He turned the screens so the Senator could see them.

  "If the Democrats win, war will arrive seven months after the President is sworn in." On the screens, ships and airplanes loaded with troops steam for distant borders. America and her allies engage in a pitched battle in the ruins of an ancient city. Then a blinding flash. "The bombs fall, overseas first, on our soil hours later."

  "And the Republicans?"

  "Little better," he said. "The war will start later, a year and a half after the election. The bombs another year after that, though in some streams they'll arrive a few months earlier.

  "There must be some futures where we avoid this madness," she said.

  That dark place beyond the bombs was not a place Calais strayed often. Only a few silver threads of possibility flowed past the nuclear winter, and those were less likely than the Mariners winning the World Series. Then, as he watched, a new stream trickled into the future, a stream he'd never seen before, but it was overwhelmed by the tsunami of war and destruction following behind it.

  "Those futures are rarer than a wise politician," Calais said. He stood. "This foretelling is on the house, Senator. I can't charge you for such bad news."

  She remained seated.

  "What if I run against the other candidates?" she said.

  The silver trickle thickened into a creek. A new future, born here in his mini-mall office. Calais sat and followed the flow, tweaked the amplification array, and turned the screens to the Senator.

  "You could win," he said. "The chances are slim, but not insurmountable."

  The stream widened as if swollen by a flash flood. Images filled the screens: the Senator at a music festival, the stage filled with musicians singing her praise; an abandoned air force base, the runway packed with supporters; the Senator, no longer Senator, in front of the White House, answering questions for the press.

  "What about the war?" she said.

  He turned the screens back to face him.

  The creek was a river now, and the war and the mushroom clouds washed ahead of the clear current of hope. "There are eddies, forks, where the war and the megadeaths find us but, for the most part, the stream runs clear. You can prevent the war."

  Then he found it. A flash at first: the Senator, now President, in an interview at her lake home, then a small explosion and the home disappears. But assassinations were in every President's future. Then Calais found another: she's shot, as she throws the first pitch at a Mariners game. And another: her motorcade is destroyed by explosive-filled laundry trucks.

  "What is it? What do you see?"

  Calais kept the screens turned to him. The College of Professional Precognitives prohibited showing a client their own death, but the Senator would learn of it from someone else if not from him. She offered the only hope he'd foreseen in years. Would he dam that hope by showing her? It wasn't for him to decide. He turned the screens that showed her probable deaths.

  "Do I survive anywhere?"

  "Nothing is fixed."

  "But some futures are more likely than others," she said. "I see why wise politicians don't use your services."

  She unfolded the glasses and put them back on. She walked to the door. The stream they'd set flowing, although bese
t on all sides by darkness and war, still rushed toward a future unmarred by nuclear winter.

  "What's your name?" she said.

  "Calais. After the town in which I was conceived."

  "Can I count on your vote, Calais?"

  He waited for the pizza to arrive after she left, but he knew he wouldn't be able to eat. Something else filled his belly, part awe, part dread, and neither left room for hunger.

  Plebiscite AV3X

  Jason Fischer

  1. Cast your primary party-preferred vote for the next President of the United Australasian Republic:

  A) Sharon Nicholson, National Party, Australia

  B) Kade Suharto, Muhammadiyah, Indonesia

  C) Gavin Pollard, Labour Party, New Zealand

  D) Ghera Wanganeen, Indigenous Forum, Australia

  2. Do you support the proposed amendment to the Lunar Settlement Act?

  A) Yes

  B) No

  C) Amendment to be re-read in the Senate

  3. What is your most frequent online purchase?

  A) Medicine

  B) Weapons

  C) Sex/Cybersex

  D) Regulated Criminal Services

  4. Do you support the joint invasion of Antarctica?

  A) Declaration of War by UAR

  B) Cessation of Hostilities

  C) Await final reports from U.N. Xenotech Inspectors

  Civic duties giving you a burning thirst?

  Enjoy Cannie,

  the drink of Olympic athletes!

  5. How do you find the defendant in State vs Becker?

  A) Guilty---Death

  B) Guilty---Custodial sentence (please specify):

  C) Not Guilty

  D) Mistrial

  E) Trial by combat

  6. What is your preferred datacom?

  A) Telstra

  B) GapComm

  C) Jakarta Kreatif

  D) None of the above (Neo-Luddites Only)

  7. How happy are you? (please indicate %):

  8. Who do you want to vote out of "Starvation Cage!"

  A) Jerry the plumber

  B) Brenda the model

  C) Bradley and Trevor, the platonic life-mates

  D) Hank the sensitive trucker

  Depressed? Can't carry on?

  Why not call Euthentikit

  and we'll take care of everything

  9. How much money should be allocated to Education this financial year?

  A) $UAR 5 billion

  B) $UAR 7.5 billion

  C) $UAR 1.3 billion (user-pays model)

  10. Should aid be continued to the Pederast colony on Titan?

  A) Yes

  B) No--- Bring the sex offenders back to Earth for custodial resettlement.

  C) No -- Grant the Pederast colony unconditional autonomy

  D) No -- Detonate the embedded warhead

  11. Do you support Defence-UAR's proposal to cleanse all Class 5 suburbs? (lower socio-economic, high crime, high fertility)

  A) Yes (complete destruction of life)

  B) No (continue aid and relief work)

  C) Yes ---Senator Walker's proposed selective cull

  12. Nominate a suspicious character, as defined by the Good Neighbours Act. (Note: a failure to complete this section will result in your automatic nomination, under the above Act)

  Submit this week's Plebiscite here. Your Will be Done!

  A Splash of Color

  William T. Vandemark

  The average human body holds six liters of blood.

  I should have known Travis would need more. He always needed more.

  Twenty years old, Anna arrived at his studio unannounced, chin upraised, eyes of cornflower blue. Assorted piercings bellied her innocence, as did the holographic tattoo in the small of her back. Each registered as she stepped through the doorway. The studio's security system provided audio to my cochlear implants; chips in my contacts cast readouts to my retinas. As I processed the data, the scan hiccupped. Her tat, a Celtic knot, had discharged a fractal trap, jacking security into a worthless whorl of minutiae. I bit my tongue and forced a re-task. Then, despite indications that this girl had plated her wares, I directed security to run an iris tickle.

  Protocol warnings tinted my vision amber. Anna Chenko, daughter of Alexander Chenko.

  Shit. I reset with a hard blink, my eyes watering from the effort. T-minus one hour till one mother of a migraine would lay me out.

  Travis turned to his canvas. He loaded up a painting knife and spread a daub of ultramarine along an arc.

  Don't be an ass, I thought. Acknowledge her at least. His implants had received the same info as mine. Instead, he made her wait, setting the ground rules.

  Anna folded her arms and surveyed the studio. Her gaze swept over the furnishings, which amounted to a few folding chairs, a stainless steel table, and an old church pew, where rags, jars of pigments, and crumpled tubes of oil paints lay strewn. Then she turned her attention to Travis's floor-to-ceiling canvases, which canted against the brick walls. The works included abstracts painted with handmade pigments, cellular mosaics tiled with scales from butterfly wings, and etched aerogels, the scrim lines lit by plasma. All resided in varying states of completion.

  My work was on display in the raftered ceiling, five meters above, where a magnetic bore hung from a spaghetti of conduits, ductwork, and cables. Brow raised, Anna took it in. She glanced at me and nodded once, in what I took to be tacit acknowledgment of my role here.

  "We weren't expecting visitors," I said. I knocked over a canister of brushes, as I stood to greet her.

  "My father would like Mr. Bonsanti to paint a portrait of my family. A surprise for my mother on their anniversary."

  Travis stabbed his canvas and turned. The painting knife dangled from the rent. "I don't take commissions," he said.

  Anna's eyes widened, but she spoke with a measured calm. "You answer as if I made a request. Access your data snatch. I gave you a two-second deep search."

  "We don't snatch," I said. "That'd be illegal." By the time I'd finished my denial, her dossier was back in my brainpan or, more precisely, in a wedge of qRAM splined to my occipital lobe. As I initiated a wet-sync, Travis jigged the juice and left me a sludge of public records. Not a day went by when I didn't regret giving him access to Ops.

  "Six million," Travis said. "Euro." The price was exorbitant; he was trying to send her packing.

  "Done." She pointed at me, her fingernail tipped in iridium. "You the piggy?"

  Bitch. I wiped my hand on my pants and held out my palm. She drew her fingernail along my lifeline and zipped the terms, payment, and assurances into a New Delhi bitfold.

  "It's going to be a pleasure working with you," she said. Then she glanced at my pants and smiled. "I see you feel the same way."

  Goddamn. A bio-script, woven into the transfer, had burrowed past my security and was giving me a hard-on. Cute. Real cute. Everyone was setting ground rules but me.

  "Combs and hairbrushes," I said. "Get them to us within a week. One from each member of the family. Label them, and don't mix them up. Underwear works too. Dirty of course."

  "You want mine now?" she asked.

  She was not being helpful. I turned for a modicum of privacy, reached into my pants, and made adjustments.

  Bio-scripted worms aside, something about her piqued my curiosity. Clearly, she wasn't just some nouveau riche walk-in looking to snag a Bonsanti for the guesthouse. Perhaps it was her air of assurance. Perhaps her damned fine glam-tech. Still, I couldn't pinpoint my interest. She was cute in an off-the-shelf kind of way, but not close to the body-modded beauties Travis employed for nudes. I made eye contact with a sensor across the room and scratched my nose.

  Ops ran a syn-pheromone check. Nominal.

  "Mr. Bonsanti, your studio boy has nice manners. Not a single attempt at body mapping. But he likes to sniff me."

  "Don't get your panties in a bunch," I said. I fished a vial from my satchel, snapped plasti
c, and slid out a swab. I took her by the chin. "Open up, Sunshine." Angling her mouth, I worked the swab around the inside of her cheek, resisting the urge to flick her uvula.

  * * * *

  Head shaved, coiled filaments drooping from his scalp like silver dreadlocks, Travis finished a figure study. He was at the end of a ten-minute creativity boost, transcranial magnetism manipulating his brain activity.

  He had rendered an abstract of Anna. The piece captured her form, spirit, and yes, with a smudge of red, arcing from her mons pubis to the negative space of the canvas, he'd captured the tension of her presence. I'd exhaled a short, sharp breath the first time I saw the work.

  Travis stared at his canvas, repeatedly pressing his thumb against the tip of his painting knife.

  I shifted into conductor mode and mimed his stim settings to OFF, shutting down the magnetic bore in the ceiling. Then, eyes closed, I examined a skein of his neural activity. Hotspots were already cooling, blue regions warming. When I opened my eyes, Travis was still thumbing his knife.

  "Looking to shiv someone?" I asked.

  "I bet she'd donate to the cause."