Grey
Dialectical Hermeticist
I’ve never understood why the downsiders like neon so much. Its ubiquity from Califresco to Edgering seems engineered. None of the data I’ve seen suggests external manipulation. Perhaps, I think, slipping into the pawn shop, it’s to do with the environment. The puddles in the street, the sheeting rain, reflect the lurid pink light into a hazy corona at my back.
There are no other customers, as expected, and the woman behind the barrier watches with deep-sunken, weary eyes. I am conspicuously out of place, I know, but I am in a hurry. It is not a mistake I intend to repeat as my search continues.
“No corporate,” the owner said, hands under the counter.
I shook my head, letting the water wick off my hydrophobic longcoat and flow into the grate by the door.
“I’m not here on corp business. I’m not even corp, really,” I said.
She sniffed, “you darksec?”
“No,” I said, “I’m just looking for my brother.”
“This is a pawnshop, not a detective agency.”
“I just need to know if he’s been here.”
“Describe him if you want, but I don’t make a point of remembering faces and we don’t read chips.”
She seems more bored than threatened, now, but her finger remains on an unseen button; the manual trigger for some security mechanism. I decide not to consult my inlays.
“Similar facial features to mine, long hair, fairly masc. Might’ve had gloves and long sleeves - his left arm is custom.”
She frowns, “no bells. You think people walk around in short sleeves down here?”
I make a show of idly browsing the goods behind sheets of hard plastic rather than answer.
“Do you ever accept gems?”
I am beginning to think the scowl is her default expression as she replies.
“If you’re asking, you already know, and you can fuck yourself if you think you’ve got me,” she says, folding her arms. “I’m all paid up.”
“I want to buy,” I say, hoping I am not obviously out of my depth.
She says nothing, but now her hands are on the counter.
“If I can look them over first, at least.”
“Shut the fuck up and get out,” she says, but the barrier lights up briefly; from somewhere an image of the storefront is projected onto it with a glowing arrow over a nearby doorway.
I leave, turn left, and wait by the door. Lights from passing vehicles strobe over me; I keep my back to the road, watching my shadow cross the wall like the hand of an ancient timepiece.
The door opens and I slip inside, an indrawn breath. The interior may once have been a shop like the one I just left, but the room is bare. A man in downside streetwear leans against the wall closest to the door, chewing gum in grotesque fashion, his face mostly hidden by a salvaged police visor. A heavy gun hangs obviously on his hip, the blocky muzzle protruding from under his jacket.
I am very much out of my depth.
He’s shorter than I am, wiry, and relaxed in a way that feels to me - my body wound tight with trepidation - wholly unfathomable.
He gestures lazily toward the doorway at the back of the room; eclectic light from various sources spills from the over the doorless threshold and illuminates him poorly.
I nod, expression purposely grim, and proceed.
Inside is a man I initially believe to be ancient, before I recall that anti-agapics are likely unheard of down here - perhaps he’s a mere sixty, unhealthy and worn. He doesn’t look up as I enter; hunched over in a flaking leather office chair, lit by a riot of LEDs and bare bulbs embedded in the sprawling clutter of the workshop. Repurposed drones sit dusty on venerable terminal boxes and various armatures dangle from the ceiling, casting sinister shadows across tangles of cables and objects I cannot identify.
The downsider’s grey hair is long and braided. I cannot see his face from here, but his hands are scarred and lined; burns, abrasions, callouses. With a delicacy that seems impossible for those hands, he tinkers in the guts of a small, golden device which looks familiar but which I cannot name.
“You just come to watch a master at work, kid, or are you here to do business?”
His voice is as rough as his hands.
“I’m, I’m looking to buy.” I curse myself for hesitating. “A specific item, or pair of items if you have them.”
He merely grunts in reply.
“A redline, from a specific person.”
“Easy, if we have it. What’s the other thing?”
I swallow the creeping bile and brace myself.
“The same person’s neural spike.”
It doesn’t mean he’s dead, I told myself, and closed my eyes tight for a moment.
I open them again at a sharp little click, something that seemed too-loud in the cramped workshop.
The man holds up the device he’d been working on - a squashed sphere with delicate engraving on the surface. He pushes a miniscule button and the object opens to reveal a prehistoric chronometer. He nods to himself, satisfied, and closes the ticking thing up again, leaving it on the workbench before him.
Something whirrs overhead, and I flinch. One of the armatures, a simple two-prong claw, sliding along rails above. The others hummed into life soon after, combing the shelves of clutter as if searching - or simply tidying.
“Some work is for the hands,” he says, turning in his chair, as if I needed an explanation “and some is for them.”
I hadn’t seen a gem on his neck, but the armatures move in a way reminiscent of his handling the watch. Purposeful, but with a measure of affection. I surmise it’s clever spell-trigger inventory system based on emotion. Then again, like calls to like, as every Introduction to Thaumodynamics likes to say. Perhaps downsiders have an affinity for junk.
“Who was he, to you?” he says, jerking me from reverie.
“W-what?”
“Indulge me; why do you want these things?”
“He was - is my brother.”
“Ahh,” the old downsider spun his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “So you’re the sister.”
“Sibling,” I corrected, too surprised to be really affronted.
“My mistake,” he says, with the courtesy to sound contrite. “Keeps my conscience clear though, you know?”
I frown. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Didn’t tell you? His spike was a Lifesaver. Got a pretty solid backup of the man himself still onboard,” he drawls, “couldn’t rightly sell it on without feeling like a slaver or some such.”
“But you were happy to buy it?”
His slow revolution brings us face to face again.
“Better it lie safe in here than wind up with some un-screw-pulous types.”
Grudgingly, I had to concede the point. He seemed a kinder sort of savage; whatever echo of my brother’s ego remained in the spike would already be subject to terrible indiginities in any other hands.
The tech was leaning forward, as the armatures rattled and pivoted around him, searching and sorting.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, softly.
I almost laugh, it was so worn a platitude.
“That’s… thank you, but he’s not dead.”
He sits back again, hands on his knees.
“You understand how that generation of Lifesaver works, yeah?
“it’s pretty standard - nothing is saved unless the body dies, aside a soft-backup to ease the final process.”
“Hrm,” he replies, noncommittal.
“How complete is the backup?” I ask, struggling to keep a tremble out of my voice.
One of the armatures slides soundlessly into my vision, an off-white and scuffed medical storage crate in the claw.
“Not somethin’ I can answer for you,” the old downsider replied, turning his back to me once more. “Who you with?”
“TransPlanar,” I blurt, gently taking the crate, the image of my brother’s face looking up at me from a recycler flashing through my head with a ghastly shiver. By the time I realize what I’ve said, I’m glad to have my privacy privileges active.
“What do I owe you?”
He laughs, a sudden bitterness in his voice.
“How are you corps valuing human life these days?” he damn near spits. “Take your money and your ghost and get out of my shop.”
I left the pouch of blank redlines on a shelf anyway. Lives for a life. I like to think even now that he appreciated it.
At the apartment rented for the trip, I set the crate on the ice-white coffee table and go to change. A flurry of inlay commands close the blinds on the east-facing, wall-length windows, play easy listening music, activate the coffee machine. I lose all sense of time when I’m under the weather, and even here I’m barely above the cloud layer; the sunlight reflected from the tower opposite to cast rainbows across the room.
I re-enable the monitoring protocols on my redline and tune my spike into local news.
Five seconds into the latest on the Keymaker probe my mother’s face fills my entoptics.
“You missed a board meeting,” she says.
“Missed,” I say, “implying it did take place, implying a quorum, implying you can fuck off, mother.”
“I don’t need your vote,” she hissed, “I need you to reassure the other shareholders.”
Staring through her at the crate that might contain the last of Warren’s wordly remains, I feign my best contrite simper.
“Oh no,” I drone, “did mummy dearest lose a million because she’s an amoral monster and people are starting to notice.”
“Three million,” she practically screams. I can’t help smiling. “Where is your brother, Morgan?”
“I’m close to finding him,” I reply, “but maybe I’ll lose him again when I do, we’ll see.”
I hang up and re-enable privacy protocols. I make a note to deactivate them again in three hours, before she can have me legally declared dead.
Warren’s spike has been thoroughly cleaned, I think, but as I set it on the table - the delicate web of bioplastic interfaces trailing beyond the dense ruby stud like tendrils of a deep sea creature - I notice a near-black stain around the mount. A tiny thing, really. And yet, knowing how long it’s been drying there since the whole thing was torn from his skull-
I pad barefoot from the bathroom, wiping vomit from my chin. Try again. Unfold the reader from the briefcase, delicate silver struts and careful lead flourishes, rubies and amethyst in complex configurations, and place Warren’s spike in the enclosure.
Restlessly, I drink a pint of water waiting for the spells to run their course. The device projects a still and spectral shape of my brother, sans arm, onto the floor in front of the couch. Popular ‘casts always depict ghosts as a translucent grey, but the real thing has points of colour almost painful to look at, picking out the shape and the flavour of the person.
The cool blues of Warren’s outline are like that, like someone brought a visual glitch into the world and now it can’t sit flush with the rest of the image.
“I-I-I’m going to have a h-h-headache,” the apparition says. I smile. It smiles back.
Warren will be pissed, when I see him, because feeling like your soul is in two places at once is like the worst migraine imaginable, but I don’t care.
He’s alive out there, somewhere.
There are no other customers, as expected, and the woman behind the barrier watches with deep-sunken, weary eyes. I am conspicuously out of place, I know, but I am in a hurry. It is not a mistake I intend to repeat as my search continues.
“No corporate,” the owner said, hands under the counter.
I shook my head, letting the water wick off my hydrophobic longcoat and flow into the grate by the door.
“I’m not here on corp business. I’m not even corp, really,” I said.
She sniffed, “you darksec?”
“No,” I said, “I’m just looking for my brother.”
“This is a pawnshop, not a detective agency.”
“I just need to know if he’s been here.”
“Describe him if you want, but I don’t make a point of remembering faces and we don’t read chips.”
She seems more bored than threatened, now, but her finger remains on an unseen button; the manual trigger for some security mechanism. I decide not to consult my inlays.
“Similar facial features to mine, long hair, fairly masc. Might’ve had gloves and long sleeves - his left arm is custom.”
She frowns, “no bells. You think people walk around in short sleeves down here?”
I make a show of idly browsing the goods behind sheets of hard plastic rather than answer.
“Do you ever accept gems?”
I am beginning to think the scowl is her default expression as she replies.
“If you’re asking, you already know, and you can fuck yourself if you think you’ve got me,” she says, folding her arms. “I’m all paid up.”
“I want to buy,” I say, hoping I am not obviously out of my depth.
She says nothing, but now her hands are on the counter.
“If I can look them over first, at least.”
“Shut the fuck up and get out,” she says, but the barrier lights up briefly; from somewhere an image of the storefront is projected onto it with a glowing arrow over a nearby doorway.
I leave, turn left, and wait by the door. Lights from passing vehicles strobe over me; I keep my back to the road, watching my shadow cross the wall like the hand of an ancient timepiece.
The door opens and I slip inside, an indrawn breath. The interior may once have been a shop like the one I just left, but the room is bare. A man in downside streetwear leans against the wall closest to the door, chewing gum in grotesque fashion, his face mostly hidden by a salvaged police visor. A heavy gun hangs obviously on his hip, the blocky muzzle protruding from under his jacket.
I am very much out of my depth.
He’s shorter than I am, wiry, and relaxed in a way that feels to me - my body wound tight with trepidation - wholly unfathomable.
He gestures lazily toward the doorway at the back of the room; eclectic light from various sources spills from the over the doorless threshold and illuminates him poorly.
I nod, expression purposely grim, and proceed.
Inside is a man I initially believe to be ancient, before I recall that anti-agapics are likely unheard of down here - perhaps he’s a mere sixty, unhealthy and worn. He doesn’t look up as I enter; hunched over in a flaking leather office chair, lit by a riot of LEDs and bare bulbs embedded in the sprawling clutter of the workshop. Repurposed drones sit dusty on venerable terminal boxes and various armatures dangle from the ceiling, casting sinister shadows across tangles of cables and objects I cannot identify.
The downsider’s grey hair is long and braided. I cannot see his face from here, but his hands are scarred and lined; burns, abrasions, callouses. With a delicacy that seems impossible for those hands, he tinkers in the guts of a small, golden device which looks familiar but which I cannot name.
“You just come to watch a master at work, kid, or are you here to do business?”
His voice is as rough as his hands.
“I’m, I’m looking to buy.” I curse myself for hesitating. “A specific item, or pair of items if you have them.”
He merely grunts in reply.
“A redline, from a specific person.”
“Easy, if we have it. What’s the other thing?”
I swallow the creeping bile and brace myself.
“The same person’s neural spike.”
It doesn’t mean he’s dead, I told myself, and closed my eyes tight for a moment.
I open them again at a sharp little click, something that seemed too-loud in the cramped workshop.
The man holds up the device he’d been working on - a squashed sphere with delicate engraving on the surface. He pushes a miniscule button and the object opens to reveal a prehistoric chronometer. He nods to himself, satisfied, and closes the ticking thing up again, leaving it on the workbench before him.
Something whirrs overhead, and I flinch. One of the armatures, a simple two-prong claw, sliding along rails above. The others hummed into life soon after, combing the shelves of clutter as if searching - or simply tidying.
“Some work is for the hands,” he says, turning in his chair, as if I needed an explanation “and some is for them.”
I hadn’t seen a gem on his neck, but the armatures move in a way reminiscent of his handling the watch. Purposeful, but with a measure of affection. I surmise it’s clever spell-trigger inventory system based on emotion. Then again, like calls to like, as every Introduction to Thaumodynamics likes to say. Perhaps downsiders have an affinity for junk.
“Who was he, to you?” he says, jerking me from reverie.
“W-what?”
“Indulge me; why do you want these things?”
“He was - is my brother.”
“Ahh,” the old downsider spun his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “So you’re the sister.”
“Sibling,” I corrected, too surprised to be really affronted.
“My mistake,” he says, with the courtesy to sound contrite. “Keeps my conscience clear though, you know?”
I frown. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Didn’t tell you? His spike was a Lifesaver. Got a pretty solid backup of the man himself still onboard,” he drawls, “couldn’t rightly sell it on without feeling like a slaver or some such.”
“But you were happy to buy it?”
His slow revolution brings us face to face again.
“Better it lie safe in here than wind up with some un-screw-pulous types.”
Grudgingly, I had to concede the point. He seemed a kinder sort of savage; whatever echo of my brother’s ego remained in the spike would already be subject to terrible indiginities in any other hands.
The tech was leaning forward, as the armatures rattled and pivoted around him, searching and sorting.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, softly.
I almost laugh, it was so worn a platitude.
“That’s… thank you, but he’s not dead.”
He sits back again, hands on his knees.
“You understand how that generation of Lifesaver works, yeah?
“it’s pretty standard - nothing is saved unless the body dies, aside a soft-backup to ease the final process.”
“Hrm,” he replies, noncommittal.
“How complete is the backup?” I ask, struggling to keep a tremble out of my voice.
One of the armatures slides soundlessly into my vision, an off-white and scuffed medical storage crate in the claw.
“Not somethin’ I can answer for you,” the old downsider replied, turning his back to me once more. “Who you with?”
“TransPlanar,” I blurt, gently taking the crate, the image of my brother’s face looking up at me from a recycler flashing through my head with a ghastly shiver. By the time I realize what I’ve said, I’m glad to have my privacy privileges active.
“What do I owe you?”
He laughs, a sudden bitterness in his voice.
“How are you corps valuing human life these days?” he damn near spits. “Take your money and your ghost and get out of my shop.”
I left the pouch of blank redlines on a shelf anyway. Lives for a life. I like to think even now that he appreciated it.
At the apartment rented for the trip, I set the crate on the ice-white coffee table and go to change. A flurry of inlay commands close the blinds on the east-facing, wall-length windows, play easy listening music, activate the coffee machine. I lose all sense of time when I’m under the weather, and even here I’m barely above the cloud layer; the sunlight reflected from the tower opposite to cast rainbows across the room.
I re-enable the monitoring protocols on my redline and tune my spike into local news.
Five seconds into the latest on the Keymaker probe my mother’s face fills my entoptics.
“You missed a board meeting,” she says.
“Missed,” I say, “implying it did take place, implying a quorum, implying you can fuck off, mother.”
“I don’t need your vote,” she hissed, “I need you to reassure the other shareholders.”
Staring through her at the crate that might contain the last of Warren’s wordly remains, I feign my best contrite simper.
“Oh no,” I drone, “did mummy dearest lose a million because she’s an amoral monster and people are starting to notice.”
“Three million,” she practically screams. I can’t help smiling. “Where is your brother, Morgan?”
“I’m close to finding him,” I reply, “but maybe I’ll lose him again when I do, we’ll see.”
I hang up and re-enable privacy protocols. I make a note to deactivate them again in three hours, before she can have me legally declared dead.
Warren’s spike has been thoroughly cleaned, I think, but as I set it on the table - the delicate web of bioplastic interfaces trailing beyond the dense ruby stud like tendrils of a deep sea creature - I notice a near-black stain around the mount. A tiny thing, really. And yet, knowing how long it’s been drying there since the whole thing was torn from his skull-
I pad barefoot from the bathroom, wiping vomit from my chin. Try again. Unfold the reader from the briefcase, delicate silver struts and careful lead flourishes, rubies and amethyst in complex configurations, and place Warren’s spike in the enclosure.
Restlessly, I drink a pint of water waiting for the spells to run their course. The device projects a still and spectral shape of my brother, sans arm, onto the floor in front of the couch. Popular ‘casts always depict ghosts as a translucent grey, but the real thing has points of colour almost painful to look at, picking out the shape and the flavour of the person.
The cool blues of Warren’s outline are like that, like someone brought a visual glitch into the world and now it can’t sit flush with the rest of the image.
“I-I-I’m going to have a h-h-headache,” the apparition says. I smile. It smiles back.
Warren will be pissed, when I see him, because feeling like your soul is in two places at once is like the worst migraine imaginable, but I don’t care.
He’s alive out there, somewhere.
