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One
Introduced
Lyric
HI-CRIME ZONE: CAUTION!
ALTERNATE PATH RECOMMENDED!
The warning flashes in bright green lettering across my augs as I approach a narrow path between two buildings. I don’t need the warning. Even through the lenses of augmented reality, I can see the scum lining the path ahead. Elite don’t usually travel this way. We take the high road, a gleaming path that runs above all this.
I don’t have time for the high road. I’m late for work, and at Gettem, late is about the worst thing you can be. I’ve seen my coworkers show up drunk, wasted, actually comatose, and none of that was as much of a problem as that one time Derrick from compliance was two minutes late. He was terminated on the spot. Some say you can still see the stain on the wall where his brain landed. That’s impossible, of course.
Life is cheap in Megaris, mostly because life is so expensive none of us are really sure it is worth it. There are three things that separate me from the feral scum I am about to encounter. I have my corporate apartment. I have access to Tier 3 privileges, including supermarkets, gyms, and clothing stores. Finally, I have my job. Assuming I can make it from here to there in the next four minutes.
That is why I’m about to walk down a stretch of street which has claimed thirteen lives in the past three days, according to the statistics flashing on the inside of my augs. The device looks like a pair of old-fashioned spectacles, but it is so much more than that. Augs augment reality in real-time, displaying data overlays and keeping me connected to the RMN, the Royal Megaris Network. The scum ahead are shifting about, mumbling to one another. Making plans. It’s a bad idea to walk down this gauntlet of desperate, lost souls, but it’s an even worse idea to be late for work.
“Lite bitch.”
I somehow hear something one of the scum says. My augs must be bugging out. They should be automatically filtering everything I hear via the earpieces, which pair to the small implants just beneath the skin of my head. Every crass, cruel word this asshole says should be transformed into a polite greeting or the trill of a bird. Things haven’t been working as well as they should lately. There have been bugs everywhere. Glitches in a lot of the systems. Some say it’s scum rebels doing the damage, but as soon as they say it, their words are erased, or they’re put on mute. Being muted means other people’s augs won’t catch a word you say. Scum should be auto-muted, but maybe they’ve found a way around it. Scum are always looking for a way around their restrictions.
I pretend I didn’t hear it. Scum words are not for me. They don’t know me. They are not really in my reality, and I am not really in theirs. We are persistent illusions to one another, a collection of incorrect impressions.
These incorrect impressions are hungry. More than that. They’re starving. That makes them dangerous.
I don’t get more than a dozen steps down the alley before one of the scum tries to mug me. I shouldn’t be surprised.
Scum are the lowest tier of humanity. I don’t understand why they aren’t simply rounded up for recycling, but the korabi must have some kind of reason for wanting to keep a perpetually violent underclass wandering the streets.
“Give me your fuzkin’ bux!”
The odds of an elite like myself carrying any physical currency are near zero. I don’t think he really wants bux. I think he’s giving himself a pretext to stab a hated elite.
He is skinny. Dangerously so. His hand shakes as though he’s not equal to the task of having the heavy knife in his hand, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. It doesn’t take a great deal of strength to stab a person. I’m not worried about being killed by him, though. I’m worried about the timer counting down in the upper right-hand corner of my field of vision. It was green, but it just turned red. There is only one minute, fifty-nine seconds before I am late for work.
I have something most elites don’t have. I work for Gettem, and that comes with additional perks. Like the badge in my left hip pocket. It’s more than a symbol; it’s a handheld enforcement tool. The mugger’s face goes pale as soon as he sees the badge. Part of that is his natural pallor and cowardice. The other part is the light reflected from the badge as it scans his dumb mug and loads him into the system for removal. One of the hunters will have his hide nailed to a wall by lunchtime if a drone doesn’t flame him first. Realizing he’s been scanned, the scum screams and runs, but he may as well not bother. Death is coming for him as surely as my time is running out.
