About a year ago, we made the announcement of an assistant editor for the first time for Diabolical Plots when Ziv Wities joined the team. Don’t worry, Ziv Wities isn’t going anywhere! We are welcoming a a second assistant editor–Kel Coleman, who you might recognize from their story “A Study of Sage” that was published in Diabolical Plots this year.
Kel started as a first reader for the January submission window and has been helping out with line edits for the stories after the final selections, and we are looking forward with working with them more in the future!
I needed a break. I needed silence. I needed to hear the sound of my own thoughts. Not the endless monologue of shuttle systems status, mixed with memories and declarations, all emitting from Father’s broken mind and body.
In our little space cruiser, it is still but not quiet. Father’s labored breathing, punctuated by coughs and chokes, surrounds me as he struggles to stay alive without the cruiser’s medical emergency program helping him. My heart pounds in my chest, shakes me with every beat. My breathing is quiet and slow, a whisper in the cold thin air.
Reaching out to Father, I place my hand on his chest. Even through his spacesuit I can feel his heart, fluttering but persistent. Still alive. Still working.
Our helmets are off. Our breath collects in fog in the space between us.
Just go on like this, I think. Go on until his heart stops. Without him running the shuttle, I will succumb to the cold and lack of oxygen and surrender to the star-filled void around us.
I consider it, again. I have considered it every time I have disconnected Father. And I reach the answer I have reached every time I have considered it.
No. Not yet. Keep hoping for a rescue. Keep living.
I switch the medical system back on. Alarms sound as it realizes Father’s condition and injects drugs through the dermal patches.
Father gasps, audibly, as his body is slammed back to stability.
After I reattach the careful tangle of wires connecting the shuttle’s control system to the interface cap fitted to his head, his voice echoes through the shuttle’s speakers.
“Son. Son. You should not disconnect me. I have told you this before.” He is scolding me, but he is also afraid.
“Yes, Father. I know. I am sorry.”
“Checking system status.”
The litany begins, his voice droning like prayers.
“Internal temperature 4.17 degrees. Rerouting ambient reactor heat to cabin.
“Oxygen concentration 11.64 percent. Scrubbers operational, 37.94 percent efficiency. Estimate normal mix in 8.05 hours.
“Eight point zero five.
“Five.”
He slowly sighs. His mind has found an unexpected road and is running down it in pursuit of a memory.
“You were five. We still lived on Earth, but had decided to leave for a mining homestead in the asteroid belt. There was nothing left for us on Earth, in our cardboard shack in the South San Francisco favela.
“We wanted to have one special moment. We splurged and took you to the little Golden Star Amusement Park in the Sunset. You always wanted to go there. You were enchanted by the Dragon rollercoaster. You rode it over and over, until you were sick to your stomach. Even then, you cried when we left for home.
“Home.
“Home is mining asteroid (142823) 2026-MC13. Estimate distance to home 1.8598 million kilometers. Estimate distance to Ceres 1.8528 million kilometers. Estimate velocity normal to solar system 24.931 thousand kilometers per hour. Time since accident 42.190 hours. Estimate probability of distress signal reaching Ceres Station 3.14 percent.”
Father’s monologue of shuttle status and random memory continues, but the summary is always the same. Our shuttle is damaged. My father is damaged. My father, through the interface cap and the rewiring to the shuttle components that still work, keeps life support barely running. The emergency medical system keeps my father barely alive. We are above the plane of the solar system, on a constant vector away from both home and from Ceres, with no way to change that fact.
We are adrift in the void, with my father’s voice as a constant reminder of the darkness of our situation.
#
A simple trip. A shuttle run back to Ceres headquarters. Printer stocks, hydroponics supplies, reactor fuel, necessary in-person meetings with the corporation.
When I was young, I loved the Ceres trips. Not just because I could see, in person, friends who I only knew through my virtual classrooms. Not just because at Ceres in the open habitat we could walk and run and play without pressure suits constraining our movement.
I loved the trips because they were joyous times with my family, together, without my parents working hard at the mining operations or me buried fourteen hours a day in schoolwork and lessons and mandatory exercise. On the shuttle, we sang songs, listened to music, played games, laughed. Mother told me stories about the stars, myths and legends from her childhood. I listened in wonder and joy. We were a real family, like the ones I read about on the chat boards or saw on the video streams.
Mother died in an accident when I was fourteen.
Life was never the same. Quiet melancholy replaced chaotic joy. Father and I buried ourselves in our work. I took on mining responsibilities along with my schoolwork. Father and I communicated only in data points – status, machines, daily production, shipments, coursework. On the Ceres trips, we traveled in silence. Prayer music played non-stop on the journey. Father controlled the shuttle with the interface headset, eyes gazing into a virtual display of shuttle information, status and control that I could not see.
On these trips, our only conversations were arguments.
“Father, you should add me to the shuttle control interface so I can learn to fly the shuttle and manage the systems. I can help with the burden.”
“You are too young.” His voice, which he routed through the speakers while controlling the shuttle, was always too loud.
My anger came easily. “I’m seventeen! I have top marks in my coursework. I maintain the mining robots. I can run a shuttle.”
“You are not ready.”
“Then let me go to university on Ceres, in person, so I can get my next degrees.”
“You can not leave for university on Ceres!” His anger took longer than mine, but it always arrived, in an explosion that blew static through the speakers.
After that, silence again, staring out the small portholes at the stars until we arrived at Ceres and went our separate ways.
We had already done our arguing when the first meteorite swarm hit. Small enough it didn’t register on the long range sensors, but still large enough to badly damage the shuttle. It didn’t help that our shuttle was old, second-hand, and in need of more repair than we could afford. Mining life is perching on the perpetual edge of disaster, grinding out as much profit as possible for the corporation to which we were indebted.
Father was outside assessing the damage when the second, larger, swarm hit. His screams echoed through the communications link, followed by gasps and whimpering mixed with the pattering of meteorites on the hull.
Somehow, I dragged him through the airlock and inside.
Somehow, I hooked him up to the emergency medical system, followed the prompts and gave him drugs to keep his heart beating and his lungs moving.
Somehow, he survived.
“Son. Are you?” His voice was soft, and weak.
“I’m alive, Father. You are too.”
“Barely. Ship?”
“Still intact, obviously. But there was a power overload. It burned out the main computers, stellar navigation, the engines, everything. We’re on minimal backup on all systems.” I had checked everything I could check, without command access. It was all ruined.
“Saw communications array. Ruined.”
“We are doomed, Father.”
“No.” The force in his voice surprised me. “We can live. We can rewire the shuttle. I can control basic life support systems. I will give you instructions. You will do the work.”
That was the first day. Father giving instructions or suggestions, me breaking and making connections throughout the shuttle. By the end of the day we had the headset interface wired into basic life support: heat, oxygen, water reclamation. We had enough to keep us alive for perhaps a week. We had a chance.
But we were also adrift. Based on the last sensor readings, and celestial sightings, I calculated we were now pointing away from the plane of the solar system. The final burst of the dying engines had sent us off course. We were moving away from anyone that could save us, farther and farther every minute.
Father, injured physically and mentally, monitored all the critical systems. By the end of the first day he was already reciting shuttle status and making connections with whatever memories were welling in his fractured mind.
“Oxygen scrubbing at 61.34 percent efficiency.
“Estimate 1.1838 million kilometers from Ceres, based on position of reference stars.
“Stars.
“Stars in the sky, above home.
“The first day we arrived at the asteroid, you were angry because we had left Ceres. We took you outside to the surface and showed you the stars. We told you their names, traced their constellations, recited their myths. For hours we did that. You loved it.”
“Yes, Father. I still do.” When I was angry, or frustrated, I would go stand on the surface of our asteroid and get lost in the stars and the stories.
Now they were a threat. They scared me.
“I’m sorry, Son. I’m sorry we are in this situation. I’m sorry I kept you at home. I’m sorry for everything.”
#
“Three days, fourteen hours, fifteen minutes since the accident,” my father recites.
“Estimate 3.1983 million kilometers from Ceres.
“Water purity 78.11 percent. Supply tank 7.32 percent.
“Water. Flowing in a river.
“When your mother and I were young and courting, we took a camping trip to the Red River to see the Silver Falls. From high above us, glistening water fell over a cliff, through the sky, pounded into the earth below, and flowed away into the river. So much power in water. On the asteroid I dream of that much water, cascading across our small rock.
“We don’t have enough water, Son. We will not survive.”
Father is sad. Depressed. Each hour he seems to sink further and faster into a vast dark place, like the vast dark void around us.
“Hold on, Father.” I try to say this with hope. “There is still a chance someone will find us.”
“There is no chance. We are dying. You are dying. It is my fault. All my fault.” He cries. Tears pool against his face, sobs echo from the speakers. Not even when Mother died was he this emotional. This despondent. This lost.
I am anxious, jittery. I don’t know how to comfort him. I don’t want to turn him off any more. But I can’t sit here. I need to move.
“Father, I am going outside. I will walk the shuttle.”
No answer, just more tears and sobs that batter at me as I make my way through the airlock and to the outside.
Outside I turn off my communications link, engage the magnetics in my shoes, and stand on the shuttle’s skin. The stars are infinite in their numbers all around me. I pick out the constellations. The Hunter. The Judge. The Wanderer. They stand, silent. I ask for answers but get none.
I walk the shuttle’s hull. My breathing falls in time with the force of my steps, echoing inside my suit. Sol burns before me as I round the shuttle. Beckoning. Taunting. Smaller and smaller with every second.
We are doomed. We have no thrust towards Ceres. We have no communications. We are running out of clean atmosphere and clean water. Our food is gone. The magnetic couplings on my boots are the only thing keeping me from floating away.
I could release the couplings, disconnect from the umbilical, push off from the shuttle, and drift away. Become one with the stars and the myths.
Push hard enough from the correct location and the shuttle might be directed, so very slightly, towards the solar system. Father might be found. He might even stay alive.
I could do it.
But in those moments, before the end came, Father would be alone. I can’t leave him alone. I am all he has. He is all I have.
I must find a solution.
Walking brings me to the communications array. A tangled nest of wires and equipment, shot through with holes from the meteorites, burned in places from the power overload. Could something useful be left? There was so much work to keep Father alive, to reorganize the shuttle to keep us alive, I hadn’t thought of the possibility.
I poke and sort through the tangle, find enough of the transmission antenna to send a signal. We would need a way to direct and focus the signal, to push it towards Ceres. A reflector. But the meteors tore off the reflector.
Panels from the shuttle’s hull could make a reflector. Without the need to heat and oxygenate the shuttle’s interior, just our suits, we’d have more power to boost the strength of the signal. Vent the atmosphere before removing the panels and we could even get a slight push towards Ceres.
This is a dangerous idea. We would be exposed to the frigid dark of open space. We could die.
If we do nothing, we will die anyway.
I turn on my communications link, to the sound of Father, panicked, crying.
“You are not alone, Father. I am here.” I make sure to sound confident, raise his spirits somehow. “Father, I have an idea.”
#
Father’s space suit is too far damaged to provide any resistance against outer space. Over his objections, he will take my suit and I will wear the backup suit. Carefully, I trade suits. Bruises, dried blood and sweat coat his body so I take some time to clean him off. I try not to hurt him any further as I dress him in my suit.
Briefly, I must disconnect him from the shuttle controls. During this time I work as fast as possible to keep him from getting too cold.
When I get him fully in his suit and the interface headset reconnected, his voice nearly bursts from the speakers.
“Son! It was so dark. Are you ready?”
“Yes, Father.” The backup suit is a tight fit but it will work for our purposes.
“Preparing systems for the signal burst. Diverting ambient reactor heat to the suit umbilicals. Cutting air recycling to only the suit umbilicals. Atmosphere mix at 10.11 percent oxygen. Begin reconstruction of the communications reflector using shuttle panels.”
Outside, our last air hisses out as I drill holes in the hull on the opposite side of where we think Ceres is. I hope it helps.
The work to build a signal reflector is slow and tedious. I only have two charged batteries, and a handful of tools. I use them as little as possible, and do anything I can by hand. It is difficult work. Sweat gathers inside my suit faster than the dehumidifier can pull it out. Pools of water collect on my face and I have to shake my head to try to move them away. My muscles ache and I am tired.
Father talks to me throughout. Status, memories, an endless loop.
In the last four days, he has said more to me than in the preceding three years. Even though it is a monologue more than a conversation, I somehow find it comforting. A connection.
Finally, we have a crude antenna and a signal reflector. The reflector is pointed in the direction of Ceres, our last hope against the vast void of space.
Back inside, I strap into my seat. Father is a small man in a small spacesuit. The moisture in the shuttle air has frozen onto everything including his face panel. I brush ice and dust off the face panel. I’m not sure if he can see me, but I smile.
“Father, we are ready.”
“Beginning power diversion to transmitter. Transmitting distress signal burst. Cycle one.
“Transmitting distress signal burst, cycle two.”
Now that I am not working, the cold invades my suit and I am chilled. I am tired, and ache from the effort of the work. The suits will keep us warm. How long, we don’t know.
“Transmitting distress signal burst, cycle eleven.”
Pieces of a constellation of stars appear in the gaps in the shuttle’s hull. The Dragon, twisting, flying, burning those that threaten its home.
“Transmitting distress signal burst, cycle twenty-seven.”
I am so tired. It is so cold.
The void calls me with stories and dreams, and I go to it.
#
A light in my face. The dull sensation of someone poking my chest.
A woman’s voice. “Hey, hey. Wake up now.”
Breathing deep, my lungs burn and I cough. There are tubes in my nose, gusts of warm air tickle my throat. I smell antiseptic, sterilizer, and behind it the hint of rusted metal, dirty oil, people.
I’m on a spaceship. In a medical bay.
I am covered in metallic blankets. My arms and legs are stiff and barely move.
“Stay still there,” the woman says. “I’m still running a warming cycle on you. We just got you back.”
Cracking my eyes open, I see a small black woman with short grey hair.
“Where,” I say in a croaking voice. My lips and throat are dry and rough.
“Naval cargo cruiser Morning Glory. Your distress signal was received and we were closest.”
“Father?”
“Your father is dead. The meteorite damage. The cold. He didn’t make it.” She lays a soft hand on my forehead. “I’m sorry.”
I shake as the reality of his death washes over me. I knew it was likely. It still hurts. The empty place that was my father’s presence in my life joins inside with the hole my mother left. I try to cry, but I am so tired and sore I am reduced to slow, simple, whimpering.
I want to know where he is. “Shuttle?”
“Your shuttle is in a cargo hold. Your father is there, too. The crew made a coffin for him, from a cold storage container.”
“See him.”
“Later. Right now, you need to rest. We’re mid-run right now, but we’ll be at Ceres in two days.”
Warm liquid crawls up my arm. By the time it reaches my chest I am very sleepy. The medical bay is quiet. The click of machines, the doctor humming a tune I don’t know. There is no voice, no status, no constant presentation of statistics and danger and possibilities and concern.
I miss it.
#
When I awaken I am stronger and can move. I demand to be taken to our shuttle. Officers take my statement as they guide me to the cargo hold. They confirm what was stored in the shuttle’s logs and compliment our ingenuity, our bravery, and my father’s sacrifice.
They leave me at the shuttle. Broken and tattered by the meteorites and by our disassembly, it looks small and helpless in the large hold of the cruiser. It is a wonder we survived.
Next to the shuttle is a small metal box, military logos on both sides. My father’s coffin.
I want to see him.
I crack open the coffin. Cold gas escapes and condenses in a fog.
I wave it away until I can see Father. His expression is peaceful, even serene.
I place my hand on his chest. It is frigid. I don’t care.
“I am alive, Father. The signal was received.”
I don’t know what to say. I know he will not respond, but I keep waiting for him to talk, to tell me the atmosphere status, the water recycler status, an ancient memory. Anything.
Nothing. Because he is gone, isn’t he?
Tears come freely and I sink into a hard calm place that is sadness.
Like a bell in my mind, his words about the stars, his first memory after the accident, call to me. I close my eyes and my own memory comes back, crisp and clear.
“I remember that night, Father, the first time you showed me the stars from the surface of the asteroid. Space was so big. The stars were infinite and uncountable. I was so small. But I knew that as long as you held my shoulders I would be safe.”
More memories come, a cascade of moments with him and with Mother.
“The first Ceres run, after Mother died, we rode in silence. I stared out the window at the stars, remembering Mother’s stories. We both grieved, in our way. Our only conversation was when you offered me the rest of your meal and I took it. I remember that moment, that one connection. I treasure that memory.”
I talk to my father for hours, in the large hold of a large cargo cruiser. I tell my father stories of him and Mother and me and our life, during the entire journey back to Ceres Station.
Author’s Note: I was doing some free writing to a prompt of “ghosts on drugs”, and when I typed “I’m trapped with the ghost of my dying father on a dying spaceship whose drugs are the only thing keeping him alive” the story just took off from there. I “hit a pocket”, as I like to say, and ended up with a story that had special meaning to me.
When Jeff Soesbe isn’t writing stories, he writes software and simulations for subsea robots in Northern California. Jeff’s stories have appeared in Abyss & Apex (upcoming), Factor Four, Andromeda Spaceways, and Flash Fiction Online. Jeff is a graduate of the Viable Paradise Writing Workshop (Elevensies!). This is Jeff’s first professional sale (woohoo!)
Haphazard clusters of empty cubicles and potted ferns served as strategic cover. The grey carpet was now a canvas— streaked, splattered, and sprinkled with dirt, blood, and broken glass, it rendered in impressionist strokes the market crash and concomitant sniper threat.
Kondo barked his orders. “Rocco, cover
the east window. Valiant, you’re on ammo detail. Pepsi, keep an eye on market
changes. Luna, get me a full asset list.”
They had the high ground advantage,
twenty-eight stories up in the commerce district. Kondo scoped a straggler
through the reticle on street level. The HUD indicated a bounty of 1200 creds.
He squeezed the trigger, and with a flourish of blood on the street came the
satisfying ding of a credit transfer,
like a percussionist’s triangle. With inflation increasing exponentially, his
team would need all the credits they could get.
“Got that asset list,” Luna said,
and handed Kondo the ePad.
The roster cross-linked with commodities and
valuations. Most of the team had taken his advice to hold their rights to a
fair trial and security of their person.
“Hendricks,” he shouted, “Why
the fuck haven’t you sold your goddamn media rights?”
“They’re classic tunes, boss.”
“Fuck your tunes. We need the ammo. And
that goes for the rest of you, too. Copyright licenses aren’t worth a goddamn
if you’re dead.”
Kondo fancied himself a decent manager, but
somehow he’d failed to impress on his traders the folly of investing in
cultural access permissions. CAPs were a hot commodity for the subsistence
class, but investors should know that after IBM and Google cracked aesthetic
automation, those products were doomed to perpetual depreciation. Owning a
piece of the AI or the media conglomerates was the only way to win at the art
game.
“I want those media assets gone,”
Kondo shouted. “That means everyone.”
Bleeps and hums of market transactions turned
the office into a discordant electronic aria with Kondo voicing orders over the
din. “Dump all your CAPs. We’re working with media-free portfolios from
now.”
Hendricks sat idly at his ePad. “I can’t
sell at this price. It’s a crime against music.”
“It’s only going down from here,”
Kondo said.
“You’re wrong about the CAPs, boss.”
“Bullshit I’m wrong. Once the machines
can make something, the commodity value drops. It works the same for
everything.”
“Not music,” Hendricks said.
“Not art. Sure, people only care about efficient production when it comes
to functional goods, but for aesthetics they want the genuine article. That’s
why there’s a premium for hand-made, right? And that means automation actually
boosts the value of art.”
“That’s not what the market trends
say.”
“It’s hard to sell art in a recession.
But I know wealthy buyers. Collectors.”
“We can’t afford to speculate right now,
especially on CAPs. If you don’t sell the damn media, you’re about one stray
shot from me releasing your work contract.”
“That’s your call, boss. But they’re my
nest egg, and I gotta hold them—at least wait out the crash.”
“Stubborn shit,” Kondo said, then
shouted his commands. “Everyone renew your bounty license. Head values are
gonna keep rising. Keep a buffer of ten-k and use the rest for ammo and
expendables.”
Within minutes came the ballet of Amazon
delivery drones, hovering through rectangles of glass-edged sky to drop
ammunition boxes. The fabbers spit out rifle parts and the team assembled them,
locked and loaded, spread themselves around the windows.
“Shit! I got a price on me!” Che
Monet shouted.
Sure enough, Che’s bounty hovered
holographically over his head, a cool 4k offered jointly by TK Pharma and The
6ix Econocrimes Enforcement division.
“I told you not to sell your right to a
trial!”
Che was about to say something when his head
exploded in a flourish of blood and brains. Above his body, little stalactites
hung in sinewy bone-tipped strands from the ceiling tiles. Someone on the
street or maybe a nearby ‘scraper was a little bit richer.
It wasn’t a complete write-off. Kondo at least
got Che’s assets because of the work contract—getting iced on the job was a
strict violation. But he was down a team-member, and needed the manpower for
today’s trading. He’d have to reinvest in labor.
Kondo posted the opening, and applications
started coming in faster than stray bullets through the office. Rocco got a
price on his head, too, and retreated quick, like Che should have, while sniper
fire whizzed through the office, punching holes through flimsy cubicles. In the
settling snow of drywall flakes and pulverized IKEA products, Kondo ducked
behind a cubicle to assess résumés. The salary expectations were shockingly
low, but it made sense given the crash.
“We’re getting some new team
members,” Kondo said, tapping through LinkedIn’s HireMe app.
“How many?” Valiant said.
“Three,” Kondo said.
“Labor that low, huh?”
Kondo walked to the fire escape and unlocked
the east stairwell emergency door. A few minutes later the first recruit came
through, sweating and panting.
“Welcome aboard. I’m Kondo Kevlar. You
Calvin?”
“That’s me. Calvin Kholstomer. Happy to
meet you, sir, and thanks for the opportunity to join your team.”
“I’d give you the tour, but we got a situation
on our hands. You got a gun?”
Calvin patted his briefcase.
“When you get a chance, check your
portfolio against my specs. By the way, we dress more casual here.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.” Calvin hung
his suit on the rack. “So where to?”
“You can set up with Valiant there.”
Calvin strolled over to Valiant, popped open
his briefcase on the floor by her side, and assembled his rifle.
Over the next few minutes, the other two hires
came through. Karl Angel-Owens and Pavel Dredd. They weren’t A-listers, but
Kondo only needed short-term traders to weather the crash, and at these rates
signing them wasn’t a hard call.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Valiant
said.
“Corporate takeover.” Kondo cocked
his shotgun. “You all ready?”
They looked ready, rifles across their chests,
helmet visors snapped down, and each one of them holding the right to life and
the right to a fair trial. That would buy them some time from the killdrones.
“Move out!”
They took the lift to the ground floor,
advanced across the block in tactical formation, and reached their target,
BioPharmaSoft HQ. Valiant placed the C4 and blew the gate. With ears still
ringing, they charged in through the smoke and over the rubble.
The poor saps inside had all flipped negative,
and bounties sparkled in the HUD overlay all across the lobby. Someone had
mismanaged BioPharmaSoft big time. Kondo’s team took out the security, the desk
jockeys, a couple of suits by the elevator. Someone shot back, winged Pepsi,
and Kondo watched BioPharmaSoft get their fine in real-time.
The takeover was going great, right until they
hit the third floor.
“Shit!” Karl said. “Our share
value is dropping!”
Kondo’s ePad confirmed they were running out
of funds. Ammo low. Resupplies off the table. And if they flipped negative,
they’d be on the radar of any bounty hunters in the area, not to mention
killdrones.
“Hendricks,” Kondo shouted. “If
you were planning on selling those CAPs, now’s the time.”
“Sorry, boss. Can’t do it.”
“Then you’re out.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t want to do it, Hendricks, but we
need the liquidity. So you sell the CAPs, or I release the contract.”
“You gotta do what you gotta do, then.
I’m not selling.”
“Then take care of yourself, Hendricks.”
Kondo let Hendricks go and accepted the credit
boost for the released work contract. It wasn’t much, but it would buy them
some time in supplies. Hendricks dipped into the stairwell, and just like that
he was off the team.
“Sweep the fourth floor,” Kondo
ordered. “We’ll move up from there, collect creds as we go.”
The elevator stopped at the fourth floor. In
the widening slit of the doorway, Kondo saw the suits on this floor were all
barricaded behind a wall of cubicles. Worse, their HUD values weren’t all
negative. Most still had their fundamental rights, and a few of them had bounty
licenses.
Kondo ducked behind the elevator wall, and the
team followed. A few shots rang through, punching holes in the far side of the
elevator.
“Are we outgunned here?” Pavel said.
“Worse than that,” Kondo said.
“They might try to buy us out.”
Kondo checked the market. Some patent
investments had paid off, and BioPharmaSoft didn’t seem so soft anymore. They
had enough cash for a hostile takeover of Kevlar Inc. Kondo watched helplessly
as his team values dipped, dipped, and flipped.
“Retreat,” Kondo said, frantically
hitting the elevator’s ‘close’ button. “Back to HQ! We need to
regroup!”
A hail of gunfire turned the elevator door
into a cheese grater.
Then they were back on the street running for
their lives. Rocco took a bullet in his spine and collapsed into the gutter.
“Killdrones!” Kondo shouted.
“Don’t jaywalk!” With their net worth sub-zero, they couldn’t afford
any infractions.
Pepsi took a shot in the shoulder a few paces
from HQ, then one in the thigh. He left a bloody streak on the glass door where
he slid down to crumple at the bottom.
“We got bounty hunters coming in!”
Valiant said.
They were coming, alright. Not just the
corporates from the commerce district, but the freelancers, too. Across the
street: ripped jeans, a flak jacket, and a machine gun. On the other side: full
motorcycle gear, rifle strapped across his back, grenade in one hand. More down
the other way, all streaming towards them.
Kondo was last in. While rounds pinged off
bulletproof glass, he slammed the door and slapped the red lockdown button. A
grenade exploded outside, and when the smoke cleared, water sprayed across the
street from a busted hydrant.
“We need to get positive,” Valiant
said.
“We don’t have any assets,” Karl
said.
“We gotta make a stand here,” Pavel
said. “Maybe we get lucky. Snag a straggler or two, climb our way
back.”
It was hopeless. Every second Kondo’s team sat
on the bottom of the ladder was another second they fell further from the top.
The gap between the subsistence class and the investment class grows
exponentially. It’s simple math. Without something to invest, without assets to
sell, they weren’t just dead in the water. They were sinking.
Security monitors framed the carnage at Kevlar
Inc. A siege of bounty hunters forced their way through the windows and
exchanged fire with lingering squads of temps and middle management, and the
geometry of the gunfight unfolded in sprays of red across marble tiles. The trading floor was a tapestry of browns
and reds and glittering bits of glass.
Furniture and human bodies were deconstructed by bullets and shrapnel.
Incendiaries added singed black stars.
Kondo breathed, lowered his weapon, and felt
the last of his will depleting along with the value of his corporate account.
In the haze of defeat, through blurred eyes, the wall of security monitors were
a gallery of abstract art, each stroke and splatter imbued with the life of his
dying corporation.
That was it.
Kondo put Hendricks on comm. Gunfire rang out
on the other end.
“How’s it going over there?” Kondo
said.
“Got my hands full. Could use some
backup.”
“I think I can help you. But you gotta do
something for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Those art dealers you were talking
about…”
“Whatchu selling?”
“Something unique,” Kondo said.
“One of a kind. Really captures the spirit of the crash.”
“Be more specific.”
“Abstract impressionism,” Kondo
said. “Mixed media: blood and dirt on carpet.”
Hendricks laughed. “Maybe I can make it
work. Send me the images.”
“Sending now.”
“My cut is fifty.”
“You kidding?”
“Let’s make it sixty.”
“Fifty will do.”
Kondo transferred the last of his corporate
creds for the gambit. Just enough to get the bounty hunters off of Hendricks,
enough to let him work. Meanwhile, Karl ate a bullet, and a swarm of killdrones
descended on the glass with whirring drills.
“Got a potential buyer,” Hendricks
said. “Billionaire by the name of Cash.”
“That’s fitting.”
“Mister Cash Rexall. He wants to meet you
on the trading floor,” Hendricks said. “Right now!”
Kondo sprinted to the trading floor and flung
himself through the door, rolling under a spray of gunfire. He crawled from
cover to cover, firing intermittently to scare off hunters. If he was going to
be someone’s bounty, he would at least make them work for it.
The holocomm lit up and projected a blue-green
billionaire on the trading floor. Bullets whizzed harmlessly through the avatar
of Cash Rexall, while Kondo crawled to his holographic feet.
“Mister Kevlar!” Cash said. “It
is absolutely magnificent!” With his arms outstretched, Cash spun in
place, waltzing holographically around the chaos of the carpet through a hail
of gunfire. “This is the art I’ve been searching for! A piece that truly
captures the spirit of the times, in form and content! Something truly new, a
contemporary art that shocks and surprises without sacrificing substance! This
is where the jagged red lines of the market tear from their confines of the
stock index and reach into the physical space of the trading floor. Truly
wonderful! I’ll take it! I’ll take all of them! The whole collection! Send me
all of your carpets!”
Cash Rexall’s credits rolled in, a
tremendously generous price that brought Kondo and his entire team back into
the green… and made Hendricks a damn millionaire! The gunfire outside slowed
to a trickle, then stopped, and before long, the crash was over.
Kondo had wine delivered to celebrate the
survival of the company, and of the remaining employees who didn’t break
contract.
“A toast,” Kondo said. “Thank
god for Cash Rexall, and all the other billionaire investors. If it weren’t for
people like him, an economy like this wouldn’t be possible.”
They clinked glasses, and drank, and smiled at
their good fortune. Kevlar Inc survived the bust, thanks to the investment of
Cash Rexall. And they were in a boom now.
Kondo probably could have come up with a more creative title for his collection of carpets than Boom & Bust, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that Cash Rexall bought it for the price it deserved. With a renewed appreciation for the art world, Kondo brought the wine to his lips, slowly, and thought about his masterpiece, now on display in the collection of someone who truly understood it, who could truly connect with its message.
Author’s Note: This absurdist story about gun-toting salarymen waging corporate war in the commerce district was inspired by the destructive and circular logic of late stage capitalism. A word of thanks is owed to the members of the Toronto Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers who helped develop the piece.
David F. Shultz writes speculative fiction and poetry from Toronto, ON, where he is lead editor at tdotSpec. His over fifty published works can be found through publishers such as Abyss & Apex, Third Flatiron, and Dreams & Nightmares. Website: davidfshultz.com
