Gina folded open the bag with exaggerated care. It had decayed badly over the years, made of old-style bio-degradable plastic, and Gina didn’t want to risk breaking the contents. Truth to tell, she was amazed it had survived this long. These days shopping bags just turned to dust overnight.
“So you’re tellin’ me,” said Bomber, “you telepathed into his head through this ‘link’, and you poked around inside his memory?” She nodded. “Without a hit of Spice?” She nodded again. “But it doesn’t work that way,” he finished flatly.
“No, it doesn’t. But Gabriel’s different. He’s . . . weird.” She peeled away the last layer of bag. “Can’t really explain it, you know?”
He rubbed his chin, obviously out of his depth, and stared at the small metal cube on the table of their hotel room. It was about five centimetres on a side, smooth but for the deep grooves running down the middle of each plane, and it still had a lustre about it even under a thick coat of dust. A faint blue reflection played across it from the fake ocean vista slapped on the painted-over windows. “Well, explain that.”
“What is it?” she asked. Her hands hovered over the item, curious but too wary to touch it.
“Not sure. Some kind of nanobot container. Smells like illegal goods.” He leaned in for a closer look. “It belonged to him, so that’s reason enough to be careful.”
“Is there anyplace we can have it examined? Y’know, see if it’s safe.”
“I got a contact or two living around here,” Bomber thought aloud. “Not sure if they’re equipped for this, though . . .”
Gina gave a shrug. “It’s worth a try.”
Bomber could only agree.
They left the dingy seaside hotel and rode the subway into town. Bright light would pour over them whenever they rode through a station, or came through a stretch of tunnel that ran above the surface, and Gina couldn’t tear her eyes away from that sky whenever it showed itself. It was so blue. The clouds had nearly gone, leaving only the endless heavens to swallow her up. Had she ever seen a sky like this?
Downtown Austin surprised her. They rolled into the above-ground station in the usual bath of sunlight, filtered through UV-repelling glass, but instead of a transparent tube closing in around her Gina found herself in a massive vaulted hall, a geodesic dome of glass panes set into the steel latticework of the dome. Flashy shop windows and holographic advertisements assaulted her senses from the first step, all lusting for the money in her purse. Most of them seemed geared towards tourism into the shallow end of Radiation Alley. If the mass of happy shoppers milling around the street was any indication, they had no shortage of customers.
“Would you like to ride an armoured 4×4 into dangerous territory?” the speakers asked her. “Do you want to visit places that no one has seen for decades? Then we’ve got the trip for you! THUNDER Tours — Feel the adventure! Ask for our brochure today!”
“Did you say your friend lived around here?” she asked Bomber, dodging a holographic jet ski headed straight for her at eye level. It carried two people, impossibly-tanned and proportioned like a bad cartoon, all in skimpy swimwear. They laughed and waved behind them as they roared smack into the wall and disappeared.
“Got a shop off the main street. Follow me.” They ducked into the first alley they could find, cleaner and brighter than any alley had a right to be, leaving the noise and bustle of the main street behind. Gina breathed a sigh of relief. Crowds didn’t frighten her, but she still felt a little bit out of her element in this town of filtered sunlight and white steel.
A few more turns took them through less shiny but still impressive streets. Many of the domes and tunnels had simply gone right on top of the old streets, right after knocking down the buildings and recycling the rubble for the new build. Rows of little coloured bushes and ferns flanked every road, heavily favouring engineered varieties that absorbed radiation out of the ground and air. It looked almost natural. Almost. The lack of trees gave it away; only a few short, scraggly things had been planted to replace the great contaminated husks that had stood tall and dead after the bombs.
Bomber led them into a small, windowless shop identified only by the sign, ‘East Electronics”. The place hit Gina’s senses like an atom bomb.
An overwhelming smell of burnt plastic hung in the stagnant air. The shelves and every other exposed surface were littered with old circuit boards, wires and puddles of congealed solder. Most of the stuff looked older than Gina, and only a handful of newer systems poked out of the piles. To her surprise, she actually spotted a few customers here and there on their way through the wasteland.
“We’re closed,” said the man behind the counter as Bomber and Gina marched up. He was bent low over an old book, real paper and ink, and rubbed his three massive chins. The shiny dome of his head showed no remaining traces of hair, if there had ever been any.
Bomber scratched his nose, blinking behind his sunglasses. “Door’s open as far as I can see.”
“Not to your kind, mate.” The man looked up to better affect an elitist sneer, regarded them with his beady bespectacled eyes, and smiled without warmth. “On your way, ‘fore I have you done up for trespassing.”
A derisive snort escaped Bomber. “Now is that any way to treat an old friend?” he asked, then took off his sunglasses. The man behind the counter sat back with eyes round as dinnerplates.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
“Hey, East.” Bomber smiled. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“In the back,” said East. “Now.” He kicked open the little gate in the side of the counter and bustled them through the back door just as quickly as he could waddle.
“So how you been, East?” Bomber said with a grin, straddling a rickety wooden chair in front of a rickety wooden table. “Takin’ good care of yourself?”
“Same as you, Jacob.” East heaved his obese body into the only other chair, leaving Gina to stand. Rude bastard, she thought at him venomously, and hoped it hurt.
“Oh, East,” chuckled Bomber. “You have no idea. But that’s not why I’m here.” He let the pause draw out longer and longer to watch East squirm. The fat man squinted suspiciously at Bomber, discomfited by the silence, and scratched the black stubble around his throat. Finally Bomber resumed, “You owe me a favour.”
“Owe you? Says who?” grunted East.
“Says me,” Bomber replied. Before the other could reply, he slammed the nanocontainer on the table and withdrew his hand. East immediately stopped talking and pulled out a magnifying glass while Bomber continued, “I need to know what this is and what’s inside it. Might be trapped.”
After a careful look-over, East picked up the box and turned it over in his hands. The sharp edges left white scratch marks on his calloused hands. “Interesting.” He speared Bomber with a look. “I could look at it. What’s in it for me?”
“The knowledge that you’ll never see my face again,” Bomber said sweetly. East squinted his beady eyes, then grunted, pushed himself up and disappeared through a narrow doorway. Gina had to wonder how he fit through it without getting stuck. Bomber followed behind, and motioned for Gina to come along.
They went up a tired set of stairs where every step elicited an ominous groan, and the wood gave way slightly as Gina put her weight on it, giving the impression of constantly falling forward. Gina clung to the handrail all the way up to the top, and was glad to have something solid under her feet again.
By the time she arrived, the boys were huddled together in a small, badly-lit room full of computers and other electronic machinery. Much of it looked like it belonged in a hospital and might well have been stolen from one. East popped the box into what to Gina looked exactly like a microwave oven. A few keystrokes on East’s notebook computer, and the device sprang to life with a weird light show.
“Nothing hidden that I can see,” he muttered. “No springs, no wires, just a radio receiver for a wireless code lock.”
“Can you crack the lock?” asked Gina, affecting a confident stance against the big central table. East looked up as if to call her an idiot, but seemed to lose his train of thought when he looked at her. His eyes lingered on her body for slightly too long before he closed his mouth and nodded.
“The hardware on this is all between ten and twenty years old, the lock can’t be much newer,” he muttered to himself. “That narrows down the search.” He tapped in a few more variables and the light show intensified. “Okay, it’s a simple Heilmann lock, 2064. Cheap but not bad. Unbreakable encryption, back in the 2060s. Not so much now. Especially since they all came with sequential default codes that a lot of people never bothered to change.” He punched in a few numbers and grinned. “There you go, open.”
Bomber glanced at Gina, smiling from the corner of his mouth. “Looks like he does screw up every now and again.”
“So what’s inside it?” asked Gina.
“Nanobots,” said East. “Ask the obvious. Not responding to wireless, I’ll just scan them.” The view on East’s screen changed to a wireframe close-up of a nanobot. “Interesting. They’re fairly old, but advanced. No maker’s mark. Looks like builder bots of some type, or something construction-related. The weird thing is,” he frowned and scratched his head, “I can’t get them to respond at all. It’s like they’re . . .” He fell silent.
Bomber took him by the shoulder and squeezed. “What? What’s wrong?”
“They’re dead,” he said, confused.
“What do you mean, dead?”
“I mean dead. Slagged, powered-down, unrepairable.” He pointed at the screen where a full resolution scan finished displaying. “There’s nothing there except carbon and metal paste.”
Bomber swore under his breath and said, “Did something go wrong with the container?”
“Must have done. Who keeps dead bots?” East shrugged. “I’ll have to scan the shell for fractures and tampering. It’ll take a while. Come back later.” He waved Bomber and Gina away and ignored any attempt at protest. “In fact, don’t come back later. I’ll call you. Out, and leave the box.”
Outside in the fresh filtered air, they found a bench in front of some greenery. Gina sat down frowning and clenched her fists in her lap. The faint noise of the main street echoed in the background, but between the two of them there was only silence. At the moment she was too busy resenting everything to speak.
What’s the point? she asked herself. All of it. Any of it. A sudden wave of homesickness struck her. The sun here was too bright, the people too loud, the air too crisp. And she was alone. So many strange things happening to her, stuff she couldn’t explain, didn’t want to look at too closely for fear of what she might be turning into. She’d actually started missing the City, the smoky flavour of every breath like there was a permanent kerosene-fired barbeque going on somewhere. She missed the feeling of comfortable anonymity. Over there, nobody would ever know or care who or what she was. She could be anyone she liked, she could live on the Street and waste away and nobody would care. No one to talk down to her or tell her about things she couldn’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t. That was what she left home for.
And worst of all, sitting right next to her was someone who was coming dangerously close to knowing her. Someone who would never ask her tough questions, never push her about anything she wasn’t happy to reveal, but could read her like an open book. And he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything she’d done or used to be. Only what she was now. But–
He wrapped his fingers around her hand and tilted her head up to look him in the eye. “You okay?” he asked in a voice without expectations.
Gina took a deep breath and said shakily, “On the train, you told me that bloody life story . . . You told me something you didn’t really want to drag up again just ’cause I asked you.” He nodded slowly, not quite sure where she was headed. At length she took another breath and forced out, “I think I owe you the same, if you wanna hear it.”
“Yeah, I do,” he answered. “But first we deserve a break.” Smiling, he squeezed her hand and pulled her gently to her feet. “Come on, I know a place. It ain’t far.”
The next moment they were off, and if Gina put up any protest, it was staunchly ignored.
“Stop twitchin’,” he told her from across the table, smiling gently. “Nothing’s gonna catch us, and there ain’t much we can do until East finishes with that cube.”
She sighed, “Sorry.” She’d had trouble relaxing ever since their escape. Correction — ever since she set eyes on that damned building and the horrors inside it. Not even the warmth of this little bistro could put her at ease. “I know you’re right, and I don’t mean to spoil it. Food’s good.” She held up a long string of spaghetti carbonara, which the menu boasted to be made of real dough and meat instead of cheap moulded protein, and put it in her mouth. Honestly she preferred the moulded protein. This stuff was just too rich for her palate, and the fat strands of spaghetti looked like dead maggots in the candlelight. Still, she ate as much as she could. She couldn’t bear to be impolite to Bomber over something so expensive.
“Haven’t been here in years, but I still know the spots,” he said. Meanwhile he busily devoured a plate of Italian meatballs and sausages, relishing every bite. He certainly ought to at 50,000 per serving.
“So, um, what’s the deal with you and East? If you don’t mind my asking.” She daubed at her lips with the complimentary napkin. “I can tell you aren’t exactly the best of friends.”
Nodding slowly, Bomber looked up and pushed away his food. The memory seemed to spoil his appetite. “I don’t wanna bore you with another anecdote. Suffice it to say, we were Army buddies, but we lost contact when the Feds took over. When the Feds came askin’, East sold me out without so much as a blink, gave ’em my name and everything. So I sold him out to the leftover Army guys about all the equipment he stole while he was in the service. Fair play.”
Stunned, Gina blurted out, “So your name is Jacob?” She hadn’t expected to find out like this.
Bomber laughed, but without mockery. He just patted her hand and said, “No. I joined up under a fake name.”
She sat back and crossed her arms, a sour smile on her face. “Should have known. Will I ever find out your real name?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t rule it out.” He started to lean across the table, but then the mobile phone in his pocket played its loud musical ringtone, and the moment was gone. He unfolded it and beckoned Gina closer so that she could hear. “Yeah?”
“It’s East,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “I’m finished, thought you might like to hear about it. You bring in some weird crap. Anyway, I’ve had a good long look at those dead bots, and there’s something funky about them. Can’t put my finger on it. Teased a couple bits of info out of them, though.”
“Go on,” said Bomber.
“First thing is, I’ve never seen a design quite like it. I’m not so sure it is actually a constructor, I’m starting to think it’s actually some weird kind of medical bot, but I’ve never seen medicals with so many manipulators. Expensive, very expensive to produce. Only the Federation or some really loaded independents could have these things made.”
Bomber hummed in satisfaction. “That helps narrow it down. Keep goin’.”
“Well, this is going to sound weird, but I ran some checks on the bots’ time of death . . . I can’t pinpoint it, but I can tell you that they were dead before they went in the container.”
A single grunt of surprise and confusion rumbled up Bomber’s throat. “Huh. Anything else?”
“Just one piece of info, the most curious one of all.” Gina could hear East’s laboured breathing from the phone. He was panting from excitement. “As near as I can tell, these bots died of radiation damage. They’ve all been in contact with bad amounts of radioactive elements. I think they were . . .” He stopped suddenly. Sound of a door being thrown open, wood crashing and splintering. “Hey, who the fuck are y–” Gina winced at the sound of automatic gunfire. There was a crash as the phone hit the table, and the call cut off.
Bomber’s upper lip curled unpleasantly. “Gabriel.” He looked at Gina for a long moment. Then, “Can’t go back for the cube. We need to get the hell out of here.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, and they were out into the street at a run. A waiter ran out after them saying that they forgot dessert, but Bomber just threw him a credit slip without looking back.
“What are you doing?” she yelled at him. “Where are we going?!”
“Adventuring,” he growled back.
“Hi, welcome to Thunder Tours!” the smiling salesman had said when they walked in the door. “How can I help you today?”
The next thing Gina knew, she was on a train for Jericho, Louisiana, the furthest living settlement inside Radiation Alley. By all accounts it was a pretty desolate place. Blasted radioactive wasteland, forests of dead trees, the whole shebang. Gina spent the trip looking out her window at the big plastic tunnel they rode through. At one point the tunnel would have been transparent, but years of acid rain and dust storms had scored and pitted the plastic outside until no human eye could see through it.
Bomber seemed happy just as long as they were out of Austin. He didn’t talk much, and after a few attempts she stopped trying to engage him. Too busy constructing battle plans and considering escape routes or whatever the fuck he did.
The neon glow of travel company logos washed over them as they neared the station. There were dozens of different ones, if not hundreds, all advertising their exciting trips into Radiation Alley. Definitely a booming industry around here, Gina noted with a spark of black humour.
Jericho was like a shining beacon in the starlit desert. It was new, white, full of light and glittery things. Everything inside it smelled of lemons. The train station was no exception, blinding Gina as she stepped onto the platform, even brighter and more sterile than Austin main street. Other passengers from all walks of life swarmed past her, rushing to the exit on their way to excitement.
A small automatic buggy waited for Gina and Bomber at the doors. It sat in one of the station’s charging bays and welcomed them as they came closer. Bomber started it up via the touchscreen, fed their boarding passes into the slot, then took a seat. Once their seatbelts were in place, it drove them at a relaxed pace through the covered streets of Jericho.
“You ever been here before?” she asked Bomber.
“Nope,” he replied. That was all she could get out of him for the entire trip. Out of boredom she watched the various ad holograms, which exhibited a distinct tendency towards comically large 4x4s, the spattering of mud and the leaping of ditches. A few of them added mutant monsters or zombies to the mix in an attempt to spice things up. Gina had to wonder who would shell out the cash for that when you could play these scenarios in a VR arcade for a fraction of the price.
She had to admit she was impressed when they rolled up to the TruFuture pyramid on the far side of town. Easily the biggest single building in Jericho, it sprawled under its own dome surrounded by elegant sculpted gardens and a fountain. Large hologram generators poked out of the corners to create colourful banners and logos, as well as more subtle touches, wisps of cloud and the silhouettes of nonexistent birds near the top of the pyramid.
Thunder Tours rented only a tiny part of the whole pyramid. Likewise, TruFuture — the megacorp that owned it — only occupied the top few floors. Gina wouldn’t have minded a look inside. The buggy had other ideas, though, and dropped them off at one of the outbuildings, a small company showroom and customer information centre.
The man who greeted them as they dismounted wanted to give them a tour of the premises and their display vehicle, after which they’d scheduled an information session for today’s customers before their trip. Bomber tried to explain that they just wanted a fuelled-up 4×4 and a set of keys. The salesman would have none of it. Unfortunately for him, Bomber had the determination of a pit-bull. They argued until one of the managers showed up to see what was keeping them.
“I see,” said the manager after Bomber explained the situation, scratching her head. “But what you booked is an ordinary trip, sir. To be completely honest with you, our company does travel and entertainment, not vehicle rentals. We usually put about six people to a rover, you see, to maximise–“
Bomber interrupted her. “How much would it cost to get just a car with no questions asked?”
She studied his face for a long moment. Then she smiled, wide and bright. “Why, I’m sure we can arrange something, sir,” she answered. “We have to insist on a company driver, though, for insurance reasons, if that’s all right?”
“It’ll do,” he said, pulling a credit slip out of his pocket. “Take what you think is fair, and show us to the garage.”
“Right away, sir!” The manager quickly summoned someone to guide them, then ran off with the credit slip and a gleeful expression on her face. Gina had once thought only children at Christmas looked like that.
“Again, would you mind telling me exactly what the hell it is you’re doing?” she whispered to Bomber.
“Improvising,” he said. “Trust me.”
Oh yeah, thought Gina. No problem.
Their massive 4×4 rolled past the Memorial on the way out of Jericho. The massive sculpture was built dead in front of the vehicle garage, a position where anyone leaving the town was forced to pay attention. It consisted of twisted metal and rubble recovered from the smoking hole that used to be New Orleans, steel girders jutting into the ground all around it to keep the drooping mess upright. Large parts of the sculpture were marked with the names of the dead, scratched deep into the steel by the survivors. About thirty metres up the nightmarish body, two gnarled arms thrust out of it in opposite directions, completing the form of a gigantic crucifix.
It loomed higher as they approached, a darker blotch against the grey morning sky. Dew sparkled wherever a ray of sunlight filtered through the clouds. The fat droplets looked like tears rolling down the burnt, radioactive hulk.
Bomber sat transfixed. His eyes were glued to the sculpture, and even though his expression never changed Gina could feel the power of his emotions. Tentatively she placed a hand on his arm. He didn’t object.
“It must be weird for you to be back here,” she whispered. He only swallowed, so she squeezed his arm to bring him out of his trance. “Wake up.”
“Wh–” he started hoarsely, then cleared his throat. “What?”
“You were going all funny.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He shrugged. “Just payin’ my respects, I guess. I knew people . . .”
She nodded, sensing his need for privacy, then turned her attention to the computer terminal embedded in the seat in front. It had games, books, magazines, even a lasered TV uplink as long as they stayed within line of sight of Jericho. After a little browsing she decided that it offered nothing she cared to waste time on. Instead she turned her seat around and lowered the back rest, turning it into a not-wholly-uncomfortable bed substitute. A stain-proof plastic blanket rolled partway out the side of the chair but Gina left it there. She just wanted to rest her eyes for a few hours. The past few days of near-constant travelling hadn’t done her body any good, and they’d be driving for a while.
It wasn’t long before she drifted off. Every now and again she started awake at the jarring of the car on the cracked and potholed roads. She looked around at the overcast swampland around them. Tumbledown buildings stood abandoned in the wake of the bombs, now half-sunk into the marshy ground. Husks of dead trees crumbling in the wind. It all seemed more and more eerily familiar. Sometimes she was convinced she could hear voices, shreds of conversation. She started to shiver. Soon her teeth chattered so loudly that she couldn’t go back to sleep.
The sound of her teeth clicking dragged Bomber back from whatever personal tragedy had swallowed him up. He sat down next to her with a worried expression on his face. “Hey, hey,” he whispered. “You okay? What’s wrong, girl?”
“It’s this p-place,” she stammered back. “D-d-dead. All dead. It’s like . . . Like . . .”
“Your vision?” he asked, and she nodded. His brow furrowed in deep thought. “Maybe you’re seein’ here what’s gonna happen somewhere else. Christ, if he’s got nuk–” He stopped himself and pounded his fist against the bulletproof plastic screen between them and the driver. “Hey, a little privacy?”
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered and flicked a switch. The back of the 4×4 went quiet. Even the roaring engine was deadened by a set of anti-noise generators. A complimentary bug scanner rested in a holster at the front, but Bomber didn’t bother. Anything left active would be too well-hidden for a scanner to find anyway.
Gina’s shaking calmed a little. Bomber wrapped his warm hands around hers, which felt like numb clumps of ice. She said haltingly, “I’m getting worse, aren’t I?”
“You’ll be fine, Gina. You’re tough.” He smiled. “‘Sides, you’re not gettin’ away from me that easy. Still owe me a story.”
“I’ll tell it to you sometime. Promise.” She took a deep breath and, with some difficulty, pushed herself up on her elbows just high enough to look out the window. Jericho was out of sight by now, and the 4×4 made steady progress over the cracked and ancient asphalt. “We going anywhere specific or was this just to get us out of Austin?”
“Little bit of both,” he sighed, sinking into the chair next to her. “You’ve probably guessed by now what I guessed at the end of that phone call. They shot East just as he was about to tell us those bots came from inside Radiation Alley.”
“So, like . . . Gabriel came here to steal some kind of special robot from the no-entry zone after the blast? That kind of thing?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Security was pretty heavy around here until a few years ago, could be why he was so squirrelly.”
“And you want to try and track down where those bots came from,” she stated flatly.
“Basically, yeah.”
“Where do we start, though?” she asked, turning onto her back to look him in the eye. “We don’t even know what they’re for, much less who made them. I mean, what the hell are we supposed to look for?”
“I ain’t got the answers, Gina,” said Bomber. “But they’re out there somewhere.”
She bobbed a nod and sat back, then asked almost casually, “So where are we headed?”
“New Orleans,” he answered. “I did some checkin’ before we left, seems like the logical choice. Only lab in the area that had the equipment to make nanobots before the bombs. There’s just two other possible sites inside Radiation Alley, and they’re way the hell over in Fredericksburg and New York.”
“So we just go through each one until we find something.”
“That’s the plan,” Bomber said, sitting back in his chair. “It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one we’ve got at the moment. Unless you pull another magic trick out your hat.”
She worked up a smile and fluffed up her complimentary pillow. “Wake me up when we get there, okay?” she murmured and nodded right off.
“Sure thing, little lady,” he whispered. He leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, then left her to rest.
