Chapter One: Sprocket

 

I must find the Jew-Christian called Goth Lila.

 

The thought quickly fades from his mind as a figure ambles into his line of sight. It lurches forward from the shadows. At first a tall, lanky silhouette, then fully visible—a bald humanoid robot of bright-silver construction, with glowing red digital eyes and infested with...worms. Large pink worms wiggle from every metallic pore and every crevice of its robotic body. It stops in front of him, its head swivels to face him, and it sticks out a grayish tongue at him. It smiles, and continues its walk through the bustling human crowds of the tek-city.

Sprocket watches, sitting on the bare pavement on the corner—the same spot he has barely moved from in almost four days. The hallucinations are growing more frequent. Supposedly by next week, he will be unable to distinguish between reality and dreams. The body must sleep, it must dream, and if you don't let it, it will do so without your permission, and with your eyes wide open. He has been awake for three days straight, but well within "safe" levels.

Dayton, Ohio is a tek-city like all others. Environmentally, it is never too hot, never too cold. The hidden air regulators, built into every building, keep all that "unkind" weather of the natural world away from the population. No one living here—most have never been anywhere else, other than to travel from one tek-city to another via enclosed transportation—knows what it is to feel a natural cool breeze, a winter draft, summer humidity, or a drop of a snowflake on the skin. Rain is the only element they've experienced and that is tolerated by the Grid only for urban sanitation reasons—"Let's give the tek-city a good shower." The average Jew-Christian would probably say, "That's like a muddy pig taking a bath in pool of mud." He knows about real weather because he has ventured and even lived in the territories outside the tek-cities—the retro-tek Outlands and the dangerous Trog-lands.

He pops another "zombie" into his mouth. The stimulagenic gum has been his only companion these past days. He must stay awake on what is hopefully the end of his endless stake-out. The good news is that zombies allow you to stay awake seemingly forever, if you want. The bad news is that the longer you use them, hallucinations and daymares start. Then the insanity creeps in, reversible at first, and then the irreversible psychosis stage comes. He has another week, at least, before that ever happens, but he must risk it. It's the very moment he closes his eyes that she'll turn up. That's what happened three times before. He's been tracking her up and down the coast and across the country for years now.

Sprocket is grungier than usual, dressed in black skin-jeans, a thick t-shirt, and covered by a thin, transparent leather hoodie. He doesn't like hair on his face, but he forgot his palm-shaver and, just as he hates, has a mustache and the beginnings of a beard that look like someone drew them on with a make-up marker. His long dark brown hair is disheveled, except for a casual part to keep it out of his dark brown eyes.

He hears laughter and glances up to see a surveillance globe-drone with big, red lips and big, white teeth, hovering fifteen feet up in the air. Government surveillance drones are everywhere watching the people, twenty-inch-diameter flying spheres in a muted silver color. But there are many more commercial drones—flying digital billboards, flashing people with their rapid stop-motion live-def static photos or full-fledged vids. But neither type of drone has lips and teeth. Visual and auditory hallucinations now—not good.

It's really not accurate to say, "If you've seen one; you've seen them all." Every tek-city does add some bit of uniqueness. The Northwest has more trees, the East loves its vertical construction with taller residential and commercial towers than other parts of the country; the Midwest is more into horizontal construction, sprawling the tek-city out over wider stretches of land. But to most people, they're all the same. The ever-flashing, ever-changing, noisy digital billboards on top of commercial buildings—as if the commercial drones weren't enough—with advertisements (advids) of music, movies, clothes, the latest devices, latest cars, restaurants, vacations, sex, and drugs. There is no such thing as a dimly-lit or quiet tek-city.

For tek-city dwellers, the fashion styles are endless. There are traditional business types in their office-suits, shirts, maybe vests, maybe ties, maybe not, in a variety of colors from simple blacks and whites, to earth tones, to natural rainbow colors, to synthetic, techno colors, or even the so-called futuristic shiny silver everything. Then the traditional faux-leather, plastic, cloth, or hemp dress shoes or trendy glow-boots or -shoes. On the other end of the spectrum would be the nudist or quasi-nudist, but there aren't many in major tek-cities. They stay mostly in the Outlands and Trog-land. From time to time, you see one of them, totally nude or wearing some single piece of clothing. There is even a hard-core group called Streakers who run around naked, yelling at everyone wherever they go, wearing only five-toe slip-on sandals. Though nudity is legal, most people avoid it because of sexual germs, harsh drug vapor, and all the micro-chemicals the tek-cities spray into the air for population health maintenance.

In between, you have casuals like Sprocket. The style is never an office-suit of any kind but skin-jeans, skinny jeans, straight-cut jeans, bell-bottom jeans, or bucket jeans; any solid color or assorted mix. Casual shirts, tee shirts, sleeve-less tops, half-tops; any color, any pattern, with words or symbols or not; also, a wide variety of glow clothes. Hats galore are common, from simple to outrageous. If it were sunny, there would be people with day umbrellas.

But it's not the clothes that make the "people of the future." It's the "toys." It's their ubiquitous devices: playing card sized e-pads, eight-by-eleven inch tablets (usually with a handle or case), ear-sets (combination phone, head-set and ear bud, worn in one ear or both, or attached to glasses), and even wearable tek, the merging of device and clothing. Most people also wear clear glasses, used for visual interface—text floating at the sides of your field of view: the current time, the name of a caller, the number of voice messages or emails, a dot indicating breaking news stories, etcetera—it can be programmed to display anything.

With all this chatter, it does look like everyone is talking to themselves. "Tek-chatting" is the term for the universal way of multi-tasking—talking on the phone, walking somewhere, working on your mobile devices, getting lunch, walking the robo-pet. All these people together in a crowd and not one of them talking to the person next to them, all talking to someone they're not seeing face-to-face, or more likely their own home computer assistant. Every person is a separate unit doing their own singular thing.

"Beautiful people" is what his bio-dad used to call them. A world of no poverty, no hunger, every disease and ailment genetically or surgically erased, and none of the "human refuse" of the Outlands and Trog-land—Nihilists, Anarchists, Drug Zombies, and the like. Tek World is utopia—isn't it?

A furry ball scurries across the sidewalk right under his legs. Was that a robo-mouse? He's seen them in the Outlands, created by tek-punks with too much spare time on their hands, but they would never be allowed here in a major tek-city. It must be another hallucination. All his hallucinations seem to have a mechanical component to him. He doesn't know why.

Sprocket imagines this is exactly what his bio-dad used to do—people-watching, his favorite pastime. He thinks about his bio-dad. New Atlantic City, New Jersey, 4 January 2089 was the last time he saw his "Daddio" alive—his biological father, ex-cop, famous journalist, Logan. He helped him track down a source for a story. That was four years ago—it's 2093 now, seven years from the supposed great twenty-second century. Isn't every century better the than the previous one and all of human history before? Logan had a lot of friends in law enforcement, but none of them helped. His father's case—"death by unnatural causes," was closed two years ago. But it was how they closed the case. One day his police friends were all obsessed with finding out what happened to Logan. Then, they were all "unavailable" for any direct communication. He got an official email from District HQ that the case was closed and that was that. But it was not the end for Sprocket. He has been on his own private quest ever since.

There they are! Three Goths are walking down the street, dressed in their typical all-black Goth gear. They must be Jew-Christians. It is the nuance of their dress that is the giveaway—if you know what to look for.

He remembers the conversation with his bio-dad, the last day he would ever see him.

 

"Daddio, I'm not finished. Goths wear their black clothes, black tattoos, black piercings, but not all of them are Nihilists, Hedonists, or Zombies. Did you know some of them are JCs?"

Logan is surprised. "Really?" If a Jew-Christian wanted to hide in the general population that would be a good way to do it. "Hiding in plain sight."

"And Trogs."

Trog is the common slang for those who hate tek—they avoid not only using it, but even being near it. For the average tek-dweller, it's a state of being, so alien, so deranged, so inhuman. People cannot live without the mechanization of the Tek World.

"But Trogs hate tek. That's why they're called Trogs."

"Daddio, two kinds of Trogs—those who hate tek and those who hate tek controlled by the government but are very much tek-heads. If you don't have any contacts, find a JC Goth to get you to a JC tek-head Trog, and they'll get you a JC tek-lord."

 

Sprocket is distracted again by something next to him—his bio-dad Logan is sitting on the ground, smiling at him, in exactly the same pose. Stop! Daddio is not here!

Gender-specific terms like mother and father were banned many years ago and new terms like bio-mom and bio-dad are frowned upon in the anti-religious, pan-sexual, politically-correct majority society of Tek World. "Parent" and "guardian" are the acceptable terms, but Sprocket is all about rejecting conventional wisdom. The fact that there are six genders in Tek World doesn't change the fact that his bio-dad was a male, not a she-he, he-she, hermaphrodite or neut (genetically asexual person). Like any proper young person worth any value, non-conformity is the only way to be.

Now I'm having discussions with myself! He snaps his head back to look across the street. The Goths are gone! The hallucination of his father was not real. Were the Goths fake too?

Sprocket jumps up and runs across the street. A car screeches to a halt, knocking him to the ground. The front passenger-side window lowers.

"What's wrong with you?" the passenger inside yells. "We got the whole thing on vid-cam, you dumb, stupid idiot, so don't even think of filing an insurance claim against us or trying to sue us."

"Yeah, we got you recorded dumb, stupid idiot," another man's voice says from inside the car.

Sprocket ignores them and picks himself up, but he almost falls back down. He's been sitting so long that his legs are asleep. There's that laughing again. He looks up and the man looking at him is now a translucent-skinned clown robot with fiery red hair and three, glowing digital eyes. On the top of the car, about a dozen giggling three-inch stick robots dance, each knocking their butt against another.

"Sprocket, you need to sleep," the man/clown says. "Why don't you lie down where you are and forget about Logan? Yes, that's it."

Sprocket is confused. "But I'm standing. Why did you say that?—'Yes, that's it.'" Suddenly, he's lying on the street. There is no man/clown, car, or dancing pixy robots. People are looking at him. Sprocket slowly stands. He looks at the spot across the street again.

Were the JCs real or not?

Cars drive themselves in a tek-city. You sit back, tell it where to go, and it takes you there. Auto-drive—with the driverless smart-car tek of vid-cams, collision-avoidance laser-sonar, GPS sat-link and Grid traffic management—ended vehicular fatalities forever in a nation of six hundred million people. He jaywalks across the street to the spot where he last saw them and looks around.

Is that them?

Sprocket sees one the Goths at the end of the street waiting, with his back to him. He starts walking to him through the crowded sidewalk. A man bumps into him.

"Sorry," Sprocket instinctively says.

The man says nothing, but watches him. Sprocket continues to walk, but stares back at the man. The man is a Muslim. He can tell by his left armband, which is adorned with a crescent symbol. Islam is still the only paleo-religion not scared to proudly and clearly identify their religiosity; no one else dares. Jews and Christians live beyond Trog-land or hide in the tek-cities. American Hindus and Sikhs left for CHIN (Chinese-India Alliance) territory years ago. Even neo-religions like Vampires, Vulcans, Jedis, Arthurians, Foundationalists, etc. feel more comfortable in the Outlands. Sprocket has made himself into a kind of religious expert over the last few years.

There is something off about this man. Sprocket continues to stare at him and the man angrily stares back.

"Why are you staring at me?" the man yells.

"I'm walking this way. You didn't plant some kind of bomb or something down here, did you?"

"That is outrageous slander against me! Muslims are not terrorists! You are the terrorist!"

Terrorism still happens—Trog-land Anarchists and still the occasional "rogue" Muslim.

"I just don't want anything to blow up in my face, because that will be a big, big red light in my book."

"You are the terrorist!"

"Then why were you staring at me like you did something you weren't supposed to do?"

"You were staring at me."

"No, I wasn't."

"Yes, you were."

"You were staring at me, Johnnie-o."

"I was staring at you because you were in my way and trying to walk through the wall."

Sprocket slaps himself hard in the face and forcibly shakes his head. He opens his eyes and sees a silver wall inches from his nose. He looks to the left and the man he was talking to is no longer there, only the normal crowds of people, each going about their business. He looks to the right and at the end of the street the Goth is still there with his back facing him.

"We've been followed by the best operators in the business, but you are truly the most pathetic we've seen," a voice says.

Sprocket turns around to see four large Goth surrounding him.

"It took you one hour just to cross the street," a Goth says. "And then you tried walking through a wall."

A skinny, grinning, and half-naked kid appears next to them. "Suck in those fumes," he says and points up. Plumes are four-foot high poles of various styles, weighted to the ground, that release a steady flow of psychogenic, hallucinogenic, or stimulagenic drug vapors for the public to "sample."

One of the Goths kicks the kid in the stomach.

"Oww!" the kid yells as he doubles over. He is only wearing shiny, silver briefs and slippers. "What did you do that for?"

"Were we talking to you?" a Goth asks.

"I was talking to you," the kid says.

Sprocket starts to laugh, a little at first, then uncontrollably. He looks up to notice a swarm of drones above him, watching with human eyes.

"He's dream-trancing again." Sprocket hears the voice. It is the voice of one the Goths surrounding him, but none of them are talking to him. The voice sounds like it's from someplace else. He feels funny.

"Hello," Sprocket says. "Who's talking to me?"

"You know who's talking to you."

"I'm standing on the street with four Goths around me and they're talking to this kid—"

"You're not on the street. You're not even in the tek-city anymore. You're in a van. Can't you see my face?" the voice says.

Sprocket starts to panic. "Help me. I can't tell what's real. This isn't supposed to happen for another week, before the bad side-effects start. I was going to stop days before that happened."

"Who told you that? How many of these zombies have you taken? How many days? You're in psychosis now, you Drug Zombie."

"I'm not a Drug Zombie."

"Says the man overdosing in front of us. We don't know who you are, but we're going to dump you on the side of the road. No one would be dumb enough to hire the likes of you for any surveillance and tailing job."

"No, don't dump me. I need to find someone. Her name is Goth Lila."

There is silence. Or there is silence in the world he can't see.

Sprocket's fear grows as he watches the dream-world in front of him. Hallucinations can't hurt him, no matter how strange or disturbing. But is that true?

"Are you still there?" Sprocket yells.

"How do you know her?" the voice says.

The Goths, the kid, the crowds of people are all androids with glowing eyes and start breaking apart.

"I know Goths. I know of her."

The buildings around him start to disintegrate and collapse to dust.

"How would any Pagan know that?"

He jumps, startled as the moon itself crashes to the ground with unimaginable force. The entire ground starts to burst apart in front of him.

"I got skills. I don't care religious or not. I travel in whatever circles I need to for my business. I'm a businessman. She's the one I know can help me find some people. I've been tracking her for three years, and I'm not stopping until I get those answers. The only chance I had to catch up to you this time was to do something that you wouldn't do—not sleep. I'm going to get those answers, even if it kills me."

"What day is it?"

"Why?"

"How many days have you been taking zombies?"

"I've been up for four days, but only using them for two days."

"What date did you start taking them? What day do you think it is?"

"I know what day it is." The earth starts to break up and he is floating in space. Other planets converge to crash into the sun. "It's the afternoon. It's 8 January 2093."

"Well Mr. Sprocket, you may have done just that."

"What? Did what?"

"Killed yourself. You've been taking the zombies for two weeks!"

 

Science Division, Washington DC

7:57 a.m., 3 January, 2093

 

The underground offices are spacious white rooms, spotless white like all other areas of the facilities. The scientist in his white lab coat leads the two men wearing black office-suits to the lounge area. They sit in empty bubble chairs and the scientist touches a button on the arm of his chair to activate the privacy screen—a blue light turns on above them, no external sounds in and their conversation cannot be heard.

"Sorry, but my normal office is doing some highly confidential work," the scientist says.

"We understand," says one of the men. "We did come unannounced. May I ask you something very simple?"

"Yes, please do."

"Do wormholes really exist?"

The scientist thinks how odd a question. "I'll assume you mean the ones in theoretical space physics and not the ones you find in the dirt outside made by the common earthworm. Yes, they do."

"Could someone...theoretically...travel through one?"

The scientist smiles. "Are you being serious?"

"Yes, we are."

"No, that is science fiction, sir. Everything people think they know about them is not real. You can't create a spaceship to fly through one to another point in the universe, or another dimension, or another time. The only thing science fiction has gotten right about them is that they are unstable. A wormhole could be the size of a pinhole and no one has proven that they can even exist in a planetary atmosphere."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, yes. Until some scientist comes along and proves us all wrong like Galileo came along and proved to the scientific community that the Earth was not flat at all."

"Would you be interested in being part of a special team that the President's science director is putting together?"

"For what exactly?"

"Please be advised what we're talking about now is highly classified top-secret and cannot be disclosed to anyone outside this room."

The other man in the black takes a portable privacy screen device from his jacket, sets it on the arm of his chair, and activates it.

"Sir, I've held the highest security clearances for a better part of thirty years."

The lead man continues. "Yes, we know, sir."

"This special team would be to do what exactly?"

"To determine if there is any possibility that a secret...a terrorist organization may have located a terrestrial wormhole and are planning to use it as a weapon against the United States of America or another nation."

"Sir, that's not possible. A wormhole can't be a...weapon."

"Would you join our special science team then? The science director wants to ensure that it isn't a possibility."

 

Secret Underground Location

7:52 p.m., 8 January 2093

 

The hallway of the secret headquarters is filled with armed Goths. The freight elevator opens and more exit. The arriving group greets the others with handshakes and hugs. Mikel, of the Goth Jews, is led to the main rooms.

The room looks like an oversized hotel suite, very multi-colored, in direct contrast to the singular appearance and dress of the Goths of nothing but black. Goths collectively aren't a religious Order, but are made up of separate and distinct groups—some friendly to each other, some hostile to each other, and others completely indifferent to each other. Only a small percentage of them are religious, and they are very much aligned.

There are many kinds of Goths: Hedonists, Nihilists, Anarchists, Vampires, Wiccans, Witches, and Faithers. Gothism is more than black hair, black makeup, and black leather clothes; it is an attitude. However, for the non-Goth, no one knows what that means. A Goth Christian can instantly spot a Goth Hedonist, and a Goth Anarchist could recognize a Goth Jew on sight. For those outside Gothism, all Goths look alike. Both Goth Jews and Goth Christians are the main human intelligence gatherers in Tek World for Faithers.

Mikel continues his briefing. "The Mormons have moved out their last city-ship to the Russian-Asiatic territory."

Five Goths sit at the conference table. Goth Christian Lila sits across from him; she also has three ear piercings in each ear lobe, black eyeliner, and three ring necklaces. On the ceiling, the yellow light of their privacy screen is on.

"All your people will be gone too soon," she says.

Mikel nods. "Yes. Your people will be the Continuum's last eyes and ears on the ground here."

"How is it over there?"

"The Russian Bloc and Asian Consortium are okay. We've always maintained ties there."

"You have Russian ancestry, don't you?"

"On my grandmother's side." He thinks. "We'll have to become new Goths. Black is a minority color over there, especially in the Russian Bloc. It's bright reds, yellows, blues, greens, purples, or silver-whites for hair color over there."

Goth Lila laughs. "You'll be the new Rainbow Goth Order then."

"We will. I'm a natural red-head, you know."

"Oh Mikel, why didn't you tell me all this before I got married."

They laugh.

"Where will you be based?" she asks.

"Africa." Mikel taps his palm tablet; the image of Sprocket appears on the screen. "What about him?"

"He will come in handy."

"Who is he?"

"A low-level, independent grifter. His name is Sprocket, and his father was the one who Goli was helping back in '89 on an investigation. The Continuum got a ton of intel from it."

Goli is one of the best teks in the Continuum, a giant of man, and a member of the Conservative Jewish Order. His specialty is hacking into Grids of countries (especially America) without the government's ability to track him.

"The President's contract killing of his own national campaign manager."

"A campaign manager aptly named Lucifer, but who cares. One killed the other before the other could strike first. It's always nice to see our enemies destroying each other—less work for us. We actually know this Sprocket. He's moved in some of the same circles as my people for many years. They killed his father too. His name was Logan. Goli flagged the case because the death was unusual and undetermined."

"You know full well that this Sprocket has been undoubtedly tagged by the government."

Lila smiles and says, "He wouldn't be any use to us if he weren't."