Peter rode the Rail, the elevated train line, north to Uptown and got off at the Wilson Avenue stop. He’d heard that the area was run-down, which he figured was the only kind of place where anyone would give him any lodging.
He stepped onto the platform and descended the stairs to street level. Although it was two in the morning and the street looked empty, he sensed the vitality of it, as if the dark, cool asphalt, the graffitied girders of the Metrorail tracks, the closed krill dog shops, the entire environment, had a life of its own. He felt as if he’d stepped into the belly of a creature—a still, sleeping, monster that might wake up at any moment.
He spotted a sign that blinked on and off irregularly with the word Hotel. It looked decrepit enough to be just the sort of place he sought.
Walking toward it, Peter realized he was not the only creature alive in the belly of the street. First he spotted the warmth of an unwashed pure human dressed in rags and huddled carefully in a doorway. Then he saw a man and a woman talking quietly to one another in the shadows under the tracks of the Rail. The woman was dressed in a halter top and torn shorts, the man in a blotch-stained leather duster. They noticed him, but paid him little attention. Or so it seemed. They made him nervous because it was the first time in his short life that he’d encountered what looked like a prostitute and a pimp, but then it occurred to him that he probably made them more nervous. He was, after all, a 2.7-meter-tall troll.
As he walked along, he noticed more people. An old woman sitting on a door stoop smoking a cigarette. Two teenage boys laughing quietly together. It wasn’t that the people he passed were hidden, but somehow he never really perceived their presence until up close. They had camouflaged themselves to move through the street, and it was almost as if the street offered them protection.
Peter thought there was a word…. What was it?
Symbiotic.
They were all smaller organisms living on the street, which gave them shadows, shelter, a place to belong. In return, the people kept the street alive, giving it a reason for being.
Reaching the hotel, he pushed open the doors covered in plastisheet boards in place of glass. Seated among the worn tables and chairs of the lobby were two old men. Their eyes glassy, they sat without speaking, staring at the yellow cracks in the wall.
Peter walked up to the desk and rang the bell, which prompted a bit of clatter from a door behind the desk. A moment later the door opened and a teenage boy, who could not have been any older than Peter, opened the door. He was dark-haired and swarthy-skinned.
The boy took one look at Peter, then his mouth dropped open in fear. With all possible speed, he was back in his room and slamming the door shut. “What you want?” the boy shouted from behind the door.
Peter looked around the lobby, unsure of what was happening. The two men had not budged from their overstuffed chairs, oblivious as ever.
“A room,” he answered.
“No. No rooms. Sorry,” came the shouted reply.
“The sign outside says you have rooms.”
“Not for you.”
Despair welled up in Peter. “Because I’m a troll?”
“You got it. Look at the sign.”
Peter glanced around. A sign above the desk said NO METAHUMANS.
Peter lowered his voice. “I have money. I can pay. I just need a place to stay tonight. I’ll leave in the morning.”
“Go away,” the boy said, his tone a mixture of menace and pleading.
“Look,” said Peter, loudly again, “I can pay. I’ve got the money. I just want a place to stay.”
The door opened, and the boy reemerged, this time with a shotgun in his hands. Terror had control of his face, and his hands shook.
Peter had never seen a gun before, not in real life, not up close. And the twin barrels of the weapon were very close. The light of the lobby glinted off their circular ends. He focused on them and imagined a spray of metal pellets rushing out…
“It’s a rule. Even if you were the greatest chummer in the world and I liked you, I couldn’t let you stay here, yes? The boss says your kind makes too much trouble.”
Afraid the boy would panic and fire, Peter raised his hands very carefully, still clutching his bag in one hand, and slowly began to back away. “All right. Yes. Thanks for your time.”
The boy kept the gun trained on Peter. A bead of sweat rolled down his right temple and along his cheek.
Peter backed up part way through the lobby, then turned, walked quickly toward the door, and rushed outside.
He stepped out and breathed heavily, leaning against the stone facade of the building.
Had he really come that close to death? Death from fear? A ridiculously stupid death?
Yup.
He walked slowly down the street, afraid of jostling anyone or anything too hard, lest the inhabitants of Wilson Avenue pull out more instruments of destruction and train them on him.
Reaching Clark Street he saw the lights in a chicken shack called the C&E Grill. According to the sign, the C&E was open twenty-four hours a day.
White tiles covered the walls, floor, and ceilings. Someone kept them spotlessly clean. The customers packed themselves loudly into the booths, tables, and counter stools. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, but their conversations had the overblown friendliness of some corporate cocktail party. It took Peter a moment to realize that most of the people were talking to no one in particular. They shmoozed with invisible friends only they could see.
He felt completely out of place, out of his league. He sensed that he’d wandered into a world with its own rules, a world where a single misstep could easily get him killed. But with nowhere else to go, he decided his best bet was to stay here and lay low as much as possible.
Rushing around taking orders was an Asian man in a white apron. He, too, seemed to know everyone, but Peter believed he really did. With the briefest of nods he acknowledged a customer’s order. He had a smile for everyone, always asked, “How are you?” waited for a reply, but then didn’t wait long enough for anyone to feel obliged to return the gesture.
Pure humans were the majority, but Peter spotted a few elves in one corner, huddled together like anarchists. Sitting alone at another table, his back purposely to the wall, was an ork. He wore heavy boots and something akin to combat fatigues, but patched together, so they didn’t really look like a uniform. Peter realized that he, too, could probably benefit from a paramilitary look. But he didn’t think he’d successfully carry off the mean-edged glare the ork had mastered.
The man, Peter guessed, was a shadowrunner, though he’d only read about such people or seen stories about them on the trideo. Shadowrunners were the invisible agents of the corps, government, and private citizens. Each had erased his or her System Identification Number, which meant they were non-existent in the eyes of the databanks.
Peter caught several people looking at him, like a sales staff scanning to see if a customer needs help. Seeing their eyes run down the length of his arm and settling on his gym bag, he tightened his fists around the handles. One wiry little fellow smiled at the action, as if he thought it were cute.
Peter glanced around for a table and chose one with a large chair, which he identified as suitable for trolls.
The Asian man came around. “Want a menu?” he asked briskly.
“Yes. Please.”
Peter looked around. An old woman stood by the window, looking out, talking to no one. Peter could not hear what she said. Then she moved away from the window and went to look through the garbage can by the door. She picked through a few of the napkins and paper plates and pushed them into a pile to one side.
Another old woman watched the first very carefully, like a security guard eyeing a tour group through a bioplant.
Sitting ahead of Peter was a woman he considered a kind of “in-between.” She wore silver earrings, which he thought would be sold soon, and a white lace blouse. Her hair was unwashed. She seemed on the cusp of once having something close to what Peter had just left—clothes, a home, possessions, maybe a family—and having nothing but her own life. Every once in a while she said something softly to herself and then turned to see if anyone was listening.
Was that how he’d end up?
A man walked briskly up to her table and sat down without asking permission. Drawing a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, he offered her one. She took it so casually that Peter thought they must know one another. But when they started to speak, leaning in and trying to be nonchalant, it was with an air of bargaining. Was she a prostitute?
Someone called out, “Rich!” and the cigarette-man turned toward the door. Peter followed his gaze, and saw the four young men who had just entered. Draped over their arms were stacks of brightly colored shirts. Saying a quick good-bye to the in-between, the cigarette-man got up and sauntered over to the young men.
The in-between also got up and left the diner.
Three tables down a man wearing a turban was working carefully at taking apart cigarette butts and dumping the remaining tobacco onto a sheet of rolling paper on his table.
Meanwhile, a man as gorgeous as any trid star came in, looking perfect in white shirt, red bow tie, and black trousers. What was he doing here? Gorgeous walked up to the counter and sat on a stool.
“Sorry,” said the Asian man, suddenly standing before Peter. He set a menu on the table. “How are you?”
Still startled, Peter said, “Fine.”
“Good. I’ll be right back.” He ran off to another table.
A terrible reek forced itself into Peter’s senses, and he glanced toward the man in the turban. He had finished making his cigarette, and was now smoking it gleefully.
Peter noticed that a woman in a green vest craned her neck continually to peer at the door. When a tall, thin gentleman entered and walked toward her, she began to smile. The man had grandfather-white hair swept back and cut flat on the top and both sides, which Peter recognized as a formerly fashionable style. Time had passed the man by, but he seemed unaware that things had changed or that he had gotten older. The Asian man suddenly appeared at the couple’s table and deposited two cups of soykaf. The man placed a brown bag on the table and the woman contributed a box of crackers. From out of the bag the man produced individually wrapped slices of cheese. Peter found the moment so simple and yet incongruous that it disturbed him.
At that moment, another man rushed in. “The kids don’t believe anymore!” he shouted as the crowd actually quieted down and took notice of him. “But on Halloween! The ghosts will come out on Halloween. They don’t believe anymore, but they’ll see! You know what’ll be funny? When they have to suck their great-great-great-grandfather. They’ll think he’s just some guy standing on a street corner, but then he’ll tell ’em they gotta suck it. They’ll have to suck up some ancient history!”
The patrons looked askance at one another, obviously distressed by this outburst. Peter saw that everyone wanted the man to stop, but no one wanted to get involved. “You know, you know, that’s funny. In England the ghosts don’t come out till nine, in Wales at midnight, in Scotland not until two in the morning. But in Chicago—” and here the man’s voice dropped almost to a whisper, “—we can have ghosts all night.”
In unison, the guys carrying the shirts shouted, “Shut up!”
A woman with too-white skin, fire-red hair, and dressed in boots and a flattering short skirt took a seat across the aisle from a dark-skinned man with perfect, chiseled features.
The Asian man reappeared before Peter, order pad in hand. “What can I do for you?”
“Uh…” began Peter, once again caught off-guard. “Cheeseburger. Fizzle Coke.”
The man tapped two keys onto his order pad and sailed off.
Peter looked back to the woman and the black man, who had by now moved to sit at her table. From snippets of their conversation, Peter could make out the woman was named Alice, the man was from Quebec. They discussed the pronunciation of the word “France,” then moved on to how prostitution operated the world over.
Watching and listening to Alice, Peter realized that she was “off-duty,” and wondered what it would be like to have someone so attractive want to talk to him, as she obviously did want to talk to the man from Quebec.
When Alice suddenly noticed Peter staring, she got up and changed seats, taking a chair that put her back to him.
Peter was ashamed for making her feel that he was intruding on her break. If he wanted her attention, money would have to change hands first.
The Asian slapped a plate of food down before Peter and was gone almost before he knew what had happened. Just as he was about to take his first bite, the small man who earlier had smiled when Peter had clutched his bag tighter came up, pulled out the other chair at Peter’s table, and sat down.
“Hoi!” he said brightly. Then an elaborate shudder ran down his body; his head twitched twice, and he said, “Hoi” two more times.
“Hello,” said Peter, unsure of how to proceed, and not certain that he wanted to.
“Eddy, Fast Eddy,” the other man said, thrusting his hand toward Peter. Eddy sounded like a disk that skipped. Peter put out his hand and took Eddy’s lightly, afraid of hurting him. Long bulges showed under Eddy’s skin—like thick veins. The bulges ran along his arms and wrists, his neck, and even up to his temples.
“Name?” he asked.
“Peter.”
“Ah, you’re straight. Straight.”
“Straight?”
“Straight. You know… Clean. Legal.”
“Well…”
“You have a job, a place to live. You’re not on the outside, scraping by.”
The woman with the silver earrings returned and took a seat next to Peter’s table. She began talking loudly and said, “Bill, remember when you were in the coffin?”
Eddy turned to glance at the woman, twitched, then shrugged his shoulders when he turned back to Peter. “Mirium.”
“I love you, Bill,” the woman was saying, the conviction in her voice astounding. She was definitely talking to somebody. “You know what happiness is, Bill? When you die, you go to the Evergreen. It’s so beautiful.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know what I hear.”
Her voice suddenly changed, and she shouted with great fear, “Shut the door! Make him go!” Then she quieted down. “We’re all dying,” she said. “Our whole family is dying. And we’re going to have a funeral. We’re all dying. I’m dying next.” Her tone changed again, and she seemed to be talking to someone else—a child. “You’re my toilet baby? You dropped out of me into the toilet? And I wrapped you in wax paper and kept you in the refrigerator for a long time?”
Peter felt cold and wanted to leave.
“Mirium’s got it bad.”
“What bad?”
“Whatever. No names. Names. Just listen to her. There it is.”
“Did she really put…a baby…?”
“What can I say? She says she did. Whether she did or not, it’s sure there, in her head.”
“How?”
“How does it happen? Why’s she talking to herself? Don’t know. Chips. Slotted wrong from birth. Loneliness…”
“Loneliness?”
“Sure. You ever been really alone?”
“Yeah,” said Peter. He spoke the single word slowly. He had the strong feeling Eddy wanted to draw him into something.
“And did you ever start talking to yourself? To yourself? Not like Mirium, like, but just speaking out loud. To hear a voice. To test your ideas. To talk?”
“Yes.”
“Speed. Now imagine that no one ever comes back to talk with you. At least you’ve got yourself. You get kind of used to talking without people around. You get better at it. Until finally, finally, you don’t even think it’s strange. It’s the way you talk. During that time you’re driving people away from you. You’re talking to yourself, they don’t want to talk to you, you’re strange. Your habit is a liability. Liability. Liability. People, all people start to ignore you. They don’t want to hear your ranting. They don’t want to see-see-see you. They don’t want to notice you’re there. They don’t know how to deal with you, so they don’t. Then what have you got left?”
Peter didn’t want to think about this line of thought anymore. “Do you know a place where I can stay?”
“Well, I’ve got a doss, a little nook in an alley—”
“No. A hotel.”
“You got cash?”
“Some,” Peter lied.
“No hotel here’s going to take you. Everyone’s afraid.”
“I know.” He glanced over at the woman. Would he end up like her? Isn’t that why he’d left home? To avoid being alone?
Should he go back to his father?
No. Not like this. Not after that bold proclamation he’d left on the telecom screen. He couldn’t run back, tail between his legs, the very same night.
Dr. Landsgate?
No. Peter had to do it himself. He didn’t want to be weak. Or, at least, he didn’t want his father or Dr. Landsgate to see him as weak.
“Listen, kid,” said Fast Eddy. “You’re new to the scene? Right? Right? You don’t know the score. Score. I do. I do. I know it. I can help you, but I need your help, see?” Eddy’s body rattled wildly for a moment, then settled down. “You’re big, you got the bod. I need someone around to handle the muscle—”
“I don’t think—”
“You may have noticed-noticed my condition. Bad wiring. Reflexes. Wired reflexes. I got one of the first sets. A black-market prototype. Back in thirty. I was twenty years old and I was red-hot. For eight years I was amazing. No one ever knew I was around. I was fast. Quiet. Someone coming? Phhtt! I was gone. Gone-gone-gone. A ghost. But last year the wiring started going bad. Neural connections wearing away or something. Hey, I’m not a lit, you know. I don’t know this stuff. I just want to use it. Use it. Actually, it was going before that. And, people would say, Eddy, what’s with the twitch? Just every once in a while, I didn’t even notice it. I’d say, Nothing, nothing. What’re you talking about, and I’d ignore it. But last-last-last year, sonny, I got slammed—slammed hard by some guards at Ares security. I just lost it, right there on the job. My body started to flop like a fish all over the floor. These guards find me like a water spirit trapped in a concrete block, you know, slamming my head against the floor trying to get out. I didn’t know what the frag was going on.
“I’m telling you all this up front so you know what you’re getting into. But-but-but I also got to tell you I think we’d make a great team.
“I don’t go bad often, and if I had someone like you around, I bet it wouldn’t happen so much. It’s my nerves, see? It’s my nerves, see? I get nervous if something’s going to go wrong, and the nerves cycle through my cyberware, and it makes me react fast, gets my adrenaline whizzing, even though there’s nothing to panic about. And since I know there’s nothing to panic about, I panic that I’m out of control. It feeds my cyberware another cycle of trouble, and there’s this adrenaline feedback that keeps looping back on itself. This ain’t a fact, by the way. It’s my own-own-own theory.” Fast Eddy smiled proudly.
“I don’t think so,” said Peter. “I’m not…looking to steal. I have some work to do.”
“Work? After the IBM Tower went down? Where?”
“It’s my own work. Research.”
Eddy eyed him curiously. “Research?”
“Yes.”
Eddy lifted his hands as if surrendering. “Whatever. Whatever. Whatever.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing. I just-just didn’t know they were taking trolls on at corps now. For scientists. I mean, that’s what I-what I-what I thought you meant.” His eyes widened and his head jerked once left and then right. “Oh! You mean they’re experimenting on you. Good biz. As long as the tech doesn’t go too deep.”
Peter placed his hands carefully on the table. “No. I’m doing my own research. Now, please, go away. I want to eat my dinner.”
Eddy looked Peter up and down. “You got it, Profezzur. I’ll get out of here. But I’m all over the place. If you think you want a partner, just look me up.”
Fast Eddy rose from the table and headed toward the door. As he opened it, he turned to give Peter one last look, then shuddered wildly. The next moment, he was gone, vanishing into the warm autumn night.
Peter didn’t sleep for fear of having his bag stolen or being killed while unconscious. He stayed in the C&E all night, and when dawn broke, he was back on the street. A flock of birds flew dark against a pale purple sky. They cried out, guiding each other and giving purpose to their flight.
He walked to the lake front, having nowhere else to go until the employment agencies opened. There he stood, watching as the top of the bloated sun was just coming over the flat horizon of Lake Michigan. The impossibly orange sun was blinding as it cut the low clouds hanging over the lake into patterns of gold and deep shadow.
Peter stayed in Uptown, walking the streets all day as he looked for work. On several street corners, he noticed groups of men and women gathered for day labor, waiting to be picked up by trucks. But large signs stated that no metahumans would be hired. Although some of the workers eyed Peter with suspicion as he passed by, many more were frightened. Anyone who got too near a troll these days risked getting a bomb thrown at him.
He passed some stores whose windows displayed yellowed help wanted signs. Metahumans weren’t being excluded from the work force when the signs had gone up, but when Peter walked through the door of such establishments, the strained expressions of the store owners clearly indicated that times had changed.
He walked and walked, and found nothing.
After two days he was exhausted enough, even though fearful, to fall asleep in any doorway. After five days the fear dissipated, and sleeping on the street felt normal.
After his long days of looking for work, Peter would go to the lakefront, find a tree to sit under, and start up his portable. He started with the basics of reading. The lessons went slowly, for it seemed that as soon as he turned to a new section of a chip, he’d forget what he’d just learned. The vocabulary just didn’t stick.
One night he had chosen a young elm for his sitting place while he doggedly reviewed the primer. The sun had traveled far to the west. Behind him the lights of the city were coming on, their glow like an oppressive, unnatural sunset.
The light of the portable’s screen was pale blue, but blurred to black because of Peter’s thermographic vision. The portable quickly radiated red over the screen, as if it were an arcane device of magic.
He knew there was magic in the world. Magic such as Thomas healing him with shamanistic methods and magicians casting balls of fire. As he sounded the letters formed of pixels on the screen, he felt that he, too, had entered into a kind of magical communion. The pixels formed letters, the letters words, the words sentences, the sentences paragraphs, the paragraphs pages. Twenty-six letters, doubled for capital and small letters, mixed with eight punctuation symbols, letting him tap into an entire universe of ideas. Sixty symbols total, and he could learn about almost anything and someday use the same symbols to write his own research, his own cure to become human, pure human, again.
Peter felt oddly content. If nothing else, he could learn. He still had enough money to survive a while longer. He had his chips. He had the night. For hours he read happily sounding out the words carefully.
Then a beam of light fell upon him. He turned around to seek the source, the light blinding him.
As Peter shielded his eyes, he made out the dark outlines of two cops in metro uniforms standing a few meters away. Each man held a small box, and one was shining the power flashlight on Peter.
“And what have we here?” one of them said in a deep, amused voice. “A lit-dip troll? What are you doing there, troggie? Playing with someone else’s toys?”