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GROVELING OUT A HASTY, profuse and shambolic apology I quickly de-scrubbed and bolted back to The Rabbit’s Warren. My travel chits were on the bedside dresser, bleating quietly. By the time I was packed they were bleating a lot louder. I grabbed them up.
“When’s my very latest check in?” I asked them.
“Twelve thirty-five,” replied the ticket via my implant.
“Right!” I grabbed my bag and rushed to the elevator. Emerging at ground level I flipped my breather ring over my head as I ran the air-lock. Ran all the way to the entertainment district (not recommended in an osmotic breather – they just can’t keep up) and plunged into the building that housed that nightclub. It was open! Hallelujah! I thundered in. The only person I saw was a cleaner; one of those tentacle species; a Hoo-Buoy I think; mopping the floor. I rushed straight up to her. (How did I know it was a female? Well the males of her species are roughly the size of a jellyfish, and you don’t want to know where they keep ‘em. You really don’t.)
“Hi, ah, I’m looking for Sharp. You know, the pianist?” I mimed piano-playing with my fingers. She flurried her central ring of pseudo pods in the same way, a peculiar hint of interest dawning in her disturbingly human eyes. I started getting flustered. “You know, ah, she was here last night, playing right there:” Once again I mimed with my fingers.
The Hoo-Buoy shimmied closer.
“Can I help you, buddy?” called a human voice from beyond the bar. I spun around with relief. It was the manager, the guy who had been giving Sharp the evil eye last night. I hurried over and dumped my suitcase on the same stool she'd used last night.
“Could you tell me where Sharp is staying, please. Uh, kind’a urgent.”
He raised one eyebrow (an eyebrow I noticed with professional interest could really do with some servicing), and said, “I thought you got lucky last night?”
“Ahhh, yeah I did, but, ah, she left early.”
“Sure, buddy, sure.” For some reason he got out a tall glass and started fixing a drink. Mostly water, I noticed. “So you wanna track her down, huh?” he said as he worked.
“Yes. Exactly.”
He didn’t answer for a moment, intent on carefully pouring a particularly flamboyant liquid into the mix. It swirled like a gas giant on fast-forward. Pink smoke bubbled off the fizzing surface. Finally he stuck a miniature umbrella to the rim and slid it to me.
“There ya go, best GaRRRgle in town.”
A GaRRRgle? The most expensive (human) drink in the galaxy? WTF?
“Uh, I’m not drinking.” I was still not getting it.
He ignored me, “Soon as you’re paid up for that I think I might just be able to remember her address.” He was dabbling on the bar-top, obviously working within his own implant’s Projected Private Interface. Suddenly my own implant lit up with those familiar fluorescent words and numbers in front of my eyes: Item/Price/Tax: 1x Std gGL @ $C118! I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it again. He so totally had me.
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PURCHASE?
YES NO
My eyes flicked down/left.
He smiled warmly and got out a cheap cardboard coaster and some sort of stick. He began to write on the coaster. I was so intrigued that I momentarily forgot how mad I was. I had never seen anyone actually doing handwriting before.
“Here you go.”
I took it, but I was so boiled I couldn’t stay shut.
“Listen, dude, I really dislike this sort of thing! It’s ... it’s, it’s corruption, that’s what it is! It’s not ethical! Nothing good ever comes of it!”
He just laughed, “I disagree, buddy. You got what you came for and I got to sell another drink. So hey: Everyone’s a Winner!”
I stood there for a few more seconds, stewing. Then, since I was actually desperately thirsty, I drank it down, grabbed my bag and turned to leave. The Hoo-Buoy was right behind me. I bounced off. She waggled her tentacles at me hopefully with those big soulful eyes, simultaneously making the pan-galactic sign for ‘money’ and that 'finger-through-hole' one.
“I’m finished in ten minutes,” she bubbled in passable Human.
I just fled.
Ordering a taxi via implant (‘Ka-ching!’) I rushed out to the street and waited until it arrived. Two more minutes down the toilet. If I screwed this up, Panther would be pissed!
Fortunately that was the end of the spending for me, at least for a while. One of my travel tags paid for the cab. The second one got me through the airport and onto the plane. With about one minute to spare I sprinted down the last connector and into the aircraft cabin.
It was almost empty.
Take-off was delayed for ten minutes.
I sat gibbering in my seat, feeling absolutely blown from my night on the tiles, the lack of sleep, and my crappy start to the day, not to mention all that running. First I agonised over the state of my bank account, then I agonised over my failure with Sharp. Oh what a lady! She was deep. She was sharp. She could say some very cutting things!
I was so in love.
And anyway, everyone needs to be challenged. Even my philosophy needed challenging. But it was strong; it was solid. I knew I still had absolute control of my destiny.
(It was about then I realised I'd even forgotten the name of the town I was going to. My travel chit was just a standardised square of plastic with my name on it. Bloody hell.)
So I triggered my implant and asked, “Where am I going?” I expected to just be patched through to the aircraft computer. No such luck. – Blam; Harriet!
This time she was dressed like an old-fashioned explorer (with the notable exception of any pants). She had arranged herself to appear in the little 3DO screen in the back of the seat in front of me, sitting on a safari chair. She deliberately re-crossed her legs and purred in a curiously down-country voice, “Why, stranger, you’re on the stagecoach to Edgetown, six hun’red k’s into the Wild Wild West. Say; what say I sit on your laps an' we can watch the promo together? Oh, an’ I’ve gotta ask ya, cowboy: do you want me to book you a cosy room at the saloon? You’re still single, aren’t you?”
“Thank you, but no,” I growled at her, “now please, Go Away!” She went away.
Huh! ‘Still single.’ Bitch! I slumped back in my seat, feeling even crappier. Finally they shut the doors and the plane started moving. Five minutes later I was winging west over the rumpled surface of The Crush, wondering just what I had done. Was this my own perfect Enhanced Destiny at play, or had I just managed to screw it right up the arse?
Exhausted, I gazed blankly down at Crush.
#
IMAGINE A PLANET. ITS surface is a jigsaw puzzle of tectonic plates, jostling together at snail speed, shoving up mountains, irritating volcanoes into life, subducting billions of tonnes of surface crust into the seething magma below. You know all this stuff. You learnt it when you were six. Now imagine that one of those plates is actually alive. It lies like a huge scab between two other plates. No, better still, put yourself in the picture. Imagine an immense ship getting blown against a wharf and you are stuck right in there between them. Either you hold them apart forever, or you relax for a millisecond and get totally crushed. That’s exactly the situation on Crush, except it’s all magnified about a billion times. At least.
As mentioned, ‘The Crush’ was the largest single planet-based life-form in the entire known galaxy, but exactly how and why it ever began to evolve in such a situation is still one of those big mysteries. It’s been baffling scientists for fifty years. Which was why I was there.
Remember I mentioned tectonic plates moving at snail-speed? Well I wasn’t just being fancy with words. I was telling the truth. On Earth our tectonic plates usually move at about one centimetre a year, tops. But on Crush they move at more like one centimetre a minute, at the terrifying speed of a snail! Continents mill around like people at a theme-park. Mountains pop up one month and are gone the next. Volcanoes come and go like pimples on a teenager. Yet there's one place that's always (relatively) stable: The Crush – a gigantic, 1100 kilometre-wide muscle which inhales filth and exhales sweetness (comparatively speaking), thrives on rock dissolving at 1400 degrees, and withstands an edge pressure of 9,000 tonnes PSM. Thousands of people live on her skin like so many microbes, and she ignores them all, me included. We didn’t even rate as skin ticks.
But flying over it you’d think you were flying over an Earth-type planet. There were trees down there, (okay, so the word ‘tree’ is only an approximation), and rivers that looked stunning with the light of the sky reflecting off them, and hills and little mountain ranges and all that natural-looking stuff. Bizarre really, because it was all just skin and pubic hair.
#
FOR A LITTLE WHILE I forgot where I was and let the plane lull me half to sleep. Then something nudged me awake. “Excuse me, sir.”
I sat up. It was the air hostess. Her face was in the screen and her robotic drinks trolley was in the isle. That was what had nudged me.
“Care for a drink?” asked the ludicrously perfect hostess, who of course was Harriet.
“Yes. Water.” The trolley handed me bottled water.
“I must remind you, sir,” said Harriet as if she were reading from a script, “that due to technical difficulties at your destination, all implant transactions are severely limited. If you have any banking, business, entertainment or personal transactions planned, please complete them before disembarking.”
“Why, what’s the problem?” I foolishly asked.
“Technical difficulties, sir.”
“Right...” I could see one of those fun loops developing, “I’ll take your advice, then.”
“And if you wish to participate in the local economy, I recommend you convert some of your galactic credits into cash.”
“What the hell is cash?”
A panel popped open in the trolley and a tray shot out. Upon it were eight metallic disks of various sizes and colours. “Each coin represents a different denomination of credit. Any purchase can be negotiated by combining different coins. Unused coins are redeemable upon your return to the airport. These are authorised for use in areas of ‘technical difficulty’. If you have difficulty understanding transactions, please consult the brochure.” A colourful rectangle of plazper shot out and landed in my lap. I picked it up gingerly.
“You mean I have to actually read this?”
“Due to technical difficulties at your destination, no implant transponders are currently working beyond the precincts of the terminal airport.”
The trolley waited expectantly. I tried to pick up one of the sample coins. It was glued down. I sank back in my seat, pondered my savaged bank account for a few seconds, then decided to order the whole lot converted into coins. After all, I’d soon get paid again.
The trolley whirred, metallic items cascaded somewhere inside it, then it ejected a fat fabric bag precisely onto my testicles. I made the involuntary noise that mankind has been making ever since he smacked his lolly-bag on a tree branch, adding a popular expletive for good luck as I snatched my new-found wealth off my tortured manhood (last night, now this!) and glanced at Harriet. Had she deliberately done that or was it just crappy engineering?
<Innocence>
(Why was I even suspicious? It was technically impossible; First Law of I-botics.)
She continued her scripted spiel. “If you wish to access additional information from beyond your personal bio-morph during your stay, Interplanetary Air are pleased to present you with this complementary Personal Data Retrieval System.”
Flop. Something else landed in my lap, a thin block of blank plazper with some sort of stylus pegged across the top edge. As I stared at it in disbelief Harriet said, “Have a nice day!” and vanished from the screen (which, I finally noticed, was just made of dark blue fabric). I laughed. It all just seemed so totally absurd.
Moments later the plane dipped forwards, the motors losing half an octave. A few minutes later it banked steeply to line up with a runway. I peered down and got my first glimpse of Edgetown. It was the most peculiar town I’d ever seen. Every building, every road, and even the airport, was built on tall telescopic legs. I didn’t know why.
Once we were down and taxiing I could see it all a little closer. Off the edge of the runway, on the actual skin surface of The Crush, I could see a Kirrikibat work team replacing one of the legs under a building. Their chitin looked bad, even from a distance.
I knew I had work to do.
The plane stopped. All eight of us on board disembarked and heading into the terminal. And what a dump it was! Just a big pressure hanger with everything – service counters, vending machines, information terminals – scattered randomly around the edges.
My attention was immediately drawn to a minor altercation at one of these counters. Some low-life was leaning over and shouting something X-rated at the poor receptionist, something about a freight consignment that had gone astray. A human (at least I think he was, despite the distinctive notch in his skull) interrupted the abuser, pointing out that a plane had just come in and could everyone please focus on processing what was there instead of what wasn’t. (Well, that was the essence of his speech had he not inserted 23 choice expletives plus an interesting suggestion as to where the recipient should insert his head.)
I scuttled past these unpleasantries and, since I already had my suitcase in hand I headed directly for the taxi stand, which was at least signposted, slipped my breather collar over my head and settled it nicely, then pushed through the force field. Holy crap: I was outside! My breather field triggered after about two seconds (seemed like 22!), and I caught a brief whiff of the real atmosphere. Yes, I'd caught it a few times in Central by here, just a few dozen klix from The Actual Edge, it smelt exactly like flyspray and brimstone.
Luckily my 'breather' was already scrubbing my air. I owed my life to it, true fact.
Away from the chaos in the airport everything seemed strangely quiet. I looked to the west. Towering stacks of filthy smoke, lit by a constant orange glow from below. Was that THE Edge? The very very Edge? A place that matched almost every description ever written of Hell? Shit: I'd gone far enough! No more!
Finally a robotic taxi slid to a stop beside me; a ridiculously flimsy bubble, barely big enough for two. It ran along a slot in the roadway, much like a toy I had once seen in a museum. Beyond the covered boarding zone where I stood, the deck was open lattice, allowing the steady rain to fall right through. Sensible, I thought. My taxi had an actual door of curved plazglaze. Somehow I trusted that idea better than a force-field.
Hey, look at me! Already adapting to the wilderness!
I got in, had to close it manually because the mechanism was either buggered or non-existent, then I tried to talk to the A.I. Nothing. No automated response to my travel chit; nothing. WTF? I started looking around. Ah: an actual scanner. FFS – how primitive!
I flagging my chit at the scanner. It bleeped and the taxi began to move. “Medical Centre” said a voice synthesiser badly in need of an upgrade. Barely comprehensible.
Then I braced myself for the inevitable, but she didn’t arrive. No Harriet the Spruiker. No Harriet the Spunk. Nothing. Was this the start of the ‘technical difficulties’?
We sped up, following a small truck-like thing onto the main road towards Edgetown. About a minute later, the road seemed to dip suddenly in a place I was sure was level, then we surged back up again. My stomach caught up a few seconds later. I put this momentary aberration down to my previous night of drinking, but was sadly mistaken. Before I’d even finished the idea, it started all over again. The trackway ahead of me twisted left, then right, simultaneously undulating up and down like a wave. My vehicle jammed on its brakes and promptly dived down a steep slope that hadn’t been there seconds before. I freaked.
Understandable, really, as I was at that point spread painfully on the inside of its curved plazglaze front-screen, facing the ugly rocky skin of The Crush which was coming up at me as fast as I was diving into it. Yeah, okay: I might have made a slight involuntary noise ... alright I admit it: I shrieked like a burnt baby. You would’ve too: violent deceleration, the scream of emergency brakes, a shuddering vibration, terror, then silence.
But not stillness. My predicament was not over. Clamped to the end of a broken span of taxi-way, I was waggling around like a naked gymnast’s dick.
What this 'IT'?
#
AS THINGS SETTLED I clambered upwards and clung to the seat, gibbering. My implant had already figured this was an emergency. In front of my eyes I could see my options:
Please select: FIRE. AMBULANCE. POLICE. RESCUE. SEX WORKER.
“Rescue!”
NO NETWORK DETECTED
“Shit!”
‘SHIT’ IS NOT AN EMERGENCY OPTION
It damn-well was so! That, or pissing myself in terror. I deactivated and glanced around frantically. Surely this piece of crap had some sort of emergency channel?
“Hey! Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
Nothing. I pushed on. “Look you’re gotta help me! I’m in taxi number - hang on, uh, 23! It’s sort of crashed or something, midway to Edgetown from Edgetown Airport. Request back-up, or like rescue or something? Anyone? Please?”
Nothing. I clung there, still waggling sickeningly. (Mind you, I was severely hung over.) Briefly, outside, I glimpsed the nearest pylon that held me up. It looked drunk. Everything did. But slowly the swaying diminished. My crisis had become ever so slightly less crisis-y. Alright; focus. Deep Calming Breaths, Deep Calming Breaths ...
Panic!! I started shouting once again. “I’m in a taxi, ex-Edgetown Airport, destination Edgetown. The track has collapsed, I repeat, the trackway is down! My vehicle is dangling, I’m trapped inside, situation dangerous, please organize rescue! Over.”
Still nothing. Not even static.
Screw this! Screw this whole stupid town! “Hello! Do you copy?”
It was time to pull rank, “Please give this priority. I’m a member of a critical medical team bound for vital duties in Edgetown. Oh – and I’m fully insured!”
All that time I’d been looking around for any kind of switch, or one of those device thingies they used to have before implants ... ‘TeeVee’? ‘T- ... T- ...’? You know what I mean ... Anyway I totally missed what came next. There was a hell of a thud, I stopped swinging, lost my grip, fell once again into the smooth comforting concavity of the front-screen (this time landing on my suitcase instead of having it hit me in the kidney like the first time around) and began freaking out all over again because something else was happening! There was something new out there. I twisted to look. Gah! It looked like a gargantuan spider. Holy fuck; it was a gargantuan spider; right alongside!
It had a grip on the taxi! I was under attack!
Guess I must have truly panicked right about then. As I scrambled for purchase on a surface where there was almost none to be had, gripping my suitcase ready to ram it into the monster’s giant dripping maw, I realized that there was something else moving out there, but my tormented mind couldn’t even figure out what it was. Whatever it was – it was just outside the door!
A bang. The door shuddered.
Another bang, this time accompanied by a sort of horrid sonic explosion that rattled my entire skull. The plazglaze exploded in a shower of pretty diamonds, my breather auto-triggered, and I braced myself for a final defense.
But instead of lunging swiftly for my face, my attacker put away her screwdriver and looked straight at me. “How’re ya doing, cobber? Need a lift?”