Capital City Chronicles: The Island (6 page)

REGISTRATION

Phase 3 lists and classifies the enemy into clear groups. This is the largest and most exhaustive of the Phases, including appearance, customs, psychology, activities and sins. Listed are the most prevalent and obvious Undesirables in Capital City:

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Heretics/Non-believers. (Note that slaves who practise shamanism or paganism are not to be counted among Undesirables. Instead their owners will be given opportunity to correct and reverse this unfortunate trend among Organic Property).

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Sexual Deviants. (Homosexuals, Adulterers, Fetishists and Citizen Prostitutes and their Pimps).

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Political Dissidents (Communists, Libertarians, Anarchists, Jihadists and any other espousers of Non-State Philosophies).

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Rebels/Insurgents

Understand that this list is far from complete or universal. A committee will be formed to add to, and expound upon this list as needed.

*A note on NerveTown and the Underground:

              A special section, Digital Threats, has been dedicated to the eradication of the illegal and immoral digital terrorist group known as the Underground. For far too long, GCI and the Government has allowed these terrorists and criminals to operate completely unchecked. The Underground is our most immediate threat, and must be shut down before the Revival can even begin.

              Luckily, nearly 70% of the Underground is run by a few hundred abominations called “the Nervous,” out of a physical neighborhood inside Capital City. It is imperative that NerveTown, as this neighborhood is known, be razed and their servers shut down, as soon as possible.

There it was.

The reason behind the pay. The DPMI. Pandora. The dead men downstairs. Whitten was the mastermind, the architect behind something so monumental, so world changing, that I could only sit and stare with my mouth hanging open. The sheer magnitude of the words in front of me induced an endless loop of horrifying images through my mind.

I saw NerveTown in flames, the Mobile Nervous lying in the street with their cords and wires and chips all ripped out of their skulls, while the Wired baked alive inside their brick oven server rooms.

I saw young protesters littering the streets, shot and bleeding and crying.

I saw fighting in the streets. Rebels dressed in rags like the ones downstairs, fighting a losing battle against unstoppable ParaMilitary forces.

I saw public executions… beheadings… firing squads…

As I re-read the list of “undesirables,” a nauseous, violated feeling rose from the images. I would never see these things take place. I wouldn’t live that long.

I was an undesirable.

Pan and I both. And we were working for them, being paid massive amounts to sell out those unfortunate enough to not be employed by GCI. Would we be taken to camps, separated and tortured into swearing our conversions? Or would we be shot outright for our foreknowledge of this “Revival?”

              No.

              Not Pandora Demour. Not only could she claim no foreknowledge, she was entirely too talented, too useful to them. I was much more disposable. If simply being one of Whitten’s undesirables wasn’t enough to damn me, looking at the files was. By opening the text files I had guaranteed my own execution.

Ripping the cord from the computer, I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to destroy something. I lifted the computer from the desk, yanking at it until the cord pulled free from the wall, tearing plaster away in chunks and ribbons and ran toward the outside door. The computer slammed into the door, swinging it open. Glass rained down onto my feet and sifted down through the metal grating of the balcony. My voice broke as a strained, high pitched scream clawed its way out of my throat. A sharp, lingering pain raced through my left leg as my hip banged into the handrail and I almost toppled over. Instead, I used the momentum to lift my arms over my head and send the machine out over the water. Bent over the rail, blinking to clear the tears from my vision, I watched the computer tumble through the air, silhouetted by the horizon of lights that was downtown Capital City. After a few seconds that seemed to be minutes it landed with a deep
sploosh
, its cord snaking behind it until it too had disappeared under the dancing reflection of the city.

Destroying a computer had served no real purpose other than an attempt to purge the helpless, violated disgust that overwhelmed me. Bent over the rail, breathing in ragged gasps, I stared across the river at Capital City. Whitten was in that giant cluster of lights, noise and sin, waiting for the night to pass into what would surely be one of the best days of his life. He would probably even be celebrating soon by raping and murdering a child. And here I was, alone and doomed, waiting for an answer.

Bet you never had a test drive like this, huh bitch…

My mind echoed his voice, insistent that I listen.

I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head, trying to force the thoughts out. Without permission my mind showed me the girl’s face, smiling and giggling... the man in the jail cell lying against a bedframe… the photo of Whitten dining with Kingston and Glass…

Something touched my back, and I screamed again, this time a startled yelp. I threw my hands back and felt the door behind me. I had stumbled back against it, not noticing I had even began moving. My legs gave up hope at the same moment I did and I slid down the door. I landed with a grunt, one leg hanging off the stairs, the other curled beneath me. I leaned over onto my forearm, deciding to lay down, to give in to the hopelessness and despair. A soft, crunching pop caught my attention just as the jabbing pain shot into my forearm. The slivers and chunks of glass that were large enough to not fit through the grating littered the balcony. Now one of them hung swinging from the skin on my forearm. I plucked it off and stared at it for a long time, watching a single drop of blood crawl down its length. It was a tiny pinprick, an insignificant injury that I could easily ignore. I regularly suffered worse from just crawling through fences every other night. But it was enough to jolt me out of the slow panic of knowing one’s fate.

Again I saw the girl. I saw Whitten’s hand on her collar, yanking. Her swollen, red face. And this time, instead of fear and sickness and doom, I felt something entirely different. A comforting, warm combination of rage and validation. I also felt something I had thought I had been familiar with until now:

Hate.

I hated this man, this
thing
. The hatred was not at all unpleasant, not the destructive, stomach turning poison I assumed it would be. It was a smooth sensation, evening out all of the noise and chaos in my mind. I felt relieved. I imagined myself as that thralldoll, that disposable thing, that undesirable. I felt him pounding away inside of me, his hot, whisky stinking breath on my neck, and his smooth manicured fingers wrapping themselves around the steel collar…

And with Pandora’s bloodbath at my back, and Whitten somewhere in front of me…

I smiled.

*   *   *

Pandora’s apartment was on the river edge of downtown, in Memorial Tower. The second largest building in Capital City, it stood guarding the decadent, towering cluster of lights and noise that was downtown. Having never driven a speedboat, and tonight being what it was, I had trouble parking along the line of private sailboats and yachts that lined the waterfront. After several frustrated passes I gave up and edged alongside a small sailboat. Grabbing the railing that ran along the side, I pulled myself up and into the other boat. A fat, balding man stood staring at me, his mouth gaped in outraged shock, an oversized sangria in one hand, the leash of a Doll in the other. She seemed equally shocked, but in a grinning, eye rolling way that only a lifetime denizen of Capital City could be. I nodded at them both and climbed up onto the dock.

Inside Memorial Tower an eardrum bursting, pumping dance party raged. Sweaty, gyrating bodies shoved and tossed me across the lobby as I made my way to the elevator. Hands grabbed at me, each an invitation to dance and grind and disappear into the crowd. I had been to plenty of these dance parties in my time in Capital City, but always had avoided the dance floor, electing instead to sit along side and watch. Trying to navigate my way through the tumultuous mass only reinforced how unappealing it really was.

At last I reached the elevator, breathing heavy and thankful for a break from the overwhelming noise. I pressed the button for Memorial Parkway. Through the glass doors, the lobby dropped away, the crowd becoming a single entity that roiled like an unstable liquid across the marble floor. Above them was a gigantic diamond chandelier that reflected the multicolored party lights into a spinning galaxy of flashing pinpoints.

Then a short burst of darkness before endless rows of limousines and luxury sedans all being scooped up and shuffled into parking places by the revolving, elevating floors of the garage.

Another second of black and I was outside, watching the skyscrapers stretch upward into the Cloud and become hazy silhouettes beyond. Each were peppered with spiralling spotlights, flashing neon signs and scrolling marquees. Screens, some the size of city blocks, hung from the buildings, tilted to bombard the streets with advertising for every product and service imaginable.

High end slave boutiques,

High end vehicles,

High end financial services,

Live the life,

Smell good,

Look great.

The Cloud inched closer above me. Finally, when I was so high that the lights of the street traffic were the only details I could make out, a grey fog glided down over the elevator. The city disappeared, the only light now from the tubes in the ceiling above my head. An apparition appeared in the glass of the elevator. I leaned forward to study my own dark reflection against the light grey background. I looked half mad, like a junky three days sober. My hair was a frayed, shaggy mess, eyeshadow smeared across my cheekbones and forehead. Everything looked both sunken and puffy and starved. Despite my frightening appearance, I felt more awake, more alive than I had when I left my apartment a thousand years ago.

Just as sudden as it had enveloped me, the Cloud dropped away.

Above it the same skyscrapers were unrecognizable. Even the architecture was different; glass, steel and neon gave way to brick arches and giant statuary. The buildings were wrapped in balconies large enough to support their own transit systems, stylized little steam trains that puffed their way along the edges. SkyStreets connected buildings in a web, each with its own rows of quaint cottages and vendors. Around and above me, Memorial Tower’s own SkyStreets, like spokes of a giant wheel, hundreds of them, stretched outward to join the City Above The City.

After dozens had passed, the elevator slowed, drifting up under Memorial Parkway. As I ascended into the two sidelong canopies of vines and flowers that hung hundreds of feet from the edges of the massive street, my heart began to race again. The point of no return was now just above.

Memorial Parkway was hollow, the inside a closed shopping center, rows of hip stores and cafes. Come daylight, teenagers and families would fill the place, flittering about like feeding birds, laughing, eating and collecting stuffed shopping bags of nonsense. I imagined them all, living their aimless little lives, most of them having never been below the Cloud. They were blissful. I both despised and pitied them for everything they thought important in their lives. For some unknown reason, I thought again of the slave woman on the train.

Eat your Masters,
I thought.

I reached to pull the card from my pocket, to study it again, but I was interrupted by the sudden darkness of the outside. The elevator slowed to a stop, and a pleasant chime announced my arrival. No one noticed me as I stepped out onto the soft grass. After seeing my reflection, I was worried I would stand out, a sweaty, filthy intruder among the aristocracy. Everyone near me, however, was focused on the teenaged starlet who sauntered nearby, laughing and waving at the paparazzi that clambered and flashed around her. I recognized her, not from the films, but from meeting her at least a half dozen times with Pan. She had been friendly and charming and seemed to have genuinely liked me. As she and her entourage of slaves, assistants and admirers passed me, she looked at me. Like noticed dust on the bar of a fine restaurant, she gave me a worried little sneer, but never broke stride as she passed. I didn’t feel slighted in the least; I couldn’t remember her name or a single film of hers. By the time she reached twenty years, the rest of the world would have probably forgotten her as well.

Before I entered Memorial Tower, I took a moment to take in the beauty of the park. Memorial Parkway was lined with perfectly trimmed trees and ornate benches. It sloped gently downward into a park, the edges a garden of rare flowers, shrubs and fountains. In the center, at the lowest point, was a pristine lake filled with half naked swimmers and lovers in rowboats. Every few seconds a fireworks display filled the surface with colors.

I turned away from the utopian village and looked up at one of the balconies directly above. Pandora’s apartment overlooked the park, and I imagined her standing there, sipping her morning tea and ruminating on whatever it was that occupied her thoughts. Would she stand there and think of me when this was all over?