[Permanent Midnight] Chapter 5 - Long Way Home

Reice heads home from Zamira after the attack, thinking more about the world she lives in than she has in a long time. She finds a friend. And maybe an enemy?

This is more of a slice-of-life chapter than I've done so far, and I'm curious how it works for you as readers. Does this break the flow of the action or work to expand the world Reice lives in?

Chapter 5 - Long Way Home

Walking home, the weight of city above pushes down on me in a way that I've never felt before.

Those of us who live in the Unders are the rabble, the exploited. To the guilds based in the Mids and Eschelons, everyone here is expendable, less-than. Something to be exploited. Human, elf, orc, dwarf, whatever—we aren't people to them. We're a workforce to be used, a herd to be corralled. And culled.

Thing is, there are so many more of us in the Unders than there are in the upper Tiers. I'd be surprised if more than 2% of Bester's population were in the Eschelons, and I'll eat my good hat if the Mids even approaches a quarter.

To be fair, I don't have a good hat, but that's beside the point. The point is that we outnumber them by millions. But can't do anything about it.

Because despite being an actual sprawling metropolis of slums that's been blocked from the sun for centuries, the people here are content enough to let the guilds literally bury them in exchange for a steady flow of dopamine and subsistence-level-at-best quality of life.

Those thoughts lead me to stare at the packed lanes of traffic as I walk. As usual, bumber-to-bumper vehicles head in both directions. Every lane is packed with various bikes and personal transport devices weaving between cybercars and autocabs. Half the traffic is almost certainly made up of people who are heading home from their shifts at whatever Araketh Industries subsidiary they work at, and the other half are the people heading to their next shift at the very same places.

Most people who live in the Bester, regardless of tier, work in or adjacent to two industries: agriculture or manufacturing. Before it was turned into one sprawling megalopolis cityscape, that's what our island had been known for. When the megaguilds gained full control, they took what the people were already good at and perfected it.

Guild employees, which means most of Bester's residents, work 13-hour shifts and get a rest day on Sunday. On Sundays, they only work 8. Profits have never been higher.

Not that any of the workers will ever see them. That's how the guilds manage to keep profits up.

I used to do that, too. I was one of those poor fuckers with the commute for a decade. From the time I was 12—the age I could "legally" begin working—until I was 22. After that, I made the decision to become a freelancer, just like my uncle Marv had done. Just following family tradition.

Life hasn't been easy since I left the Araketh Industries workforce, though. Freelancing is tough, and more often than not, people who try to make a living on contract work here are either hungry, homeless, or both. The Araketh work schedule and napping in a cybercar don't look half as bad when you haven't eaten in weeks or slept more than 20 minutes at a stretch in days.

Watching the cybercars autonomously chauffeur exhausted commuters back and forth between factories, fields, and flats reinforces—as it always does—that I made the right decision to leave the world of the megaguilds behind.

On the sidewalks, the only real difference is that jam-packed cars and bikes have been replaced with jam-packed bodies.

I have to fight for every step, as I move through the crowd to get back to the Shit Show and my apartment. The closer I get to the commercial markets, the thicker the crowds I have to deal with.

I also have to deal with more and more advertisements and holograms floating in the air, popping into existence as I get in range of their transmitters.

In addition to worse crowds, the closer in proximity to the Shit Show I get, the worse the ads are are. Screens embedded in Duracrete™ walls and hanging from cable strung between buildings dance with flashing animations. Speakers play unbearably catchy jingles for products and services that I nor the people around me can afford.

Death and taxes aren't the the only constants in life anymore. For my generation—and so many before me—advertising has been added to that list. People in Bester can't turn our heads without seeing an ad. That is very much by guild design.

It's so bad that some people install discounted mods that will project "special deals" on the inside of their lids when they close their eyes. Seeing ads plastered across every surface and projected into sky is one thing.

After all, I can always (try to) avert my attention away from the neon nightmare all around me. Or simply close my eyes, right?

A supremely discounted price—or even being entirely free—in no way outweighs the inability to escape that level of invasiveness. The guilds don't publicize the high rates people with those kinds of mods off themselves. That would be terrible for their bottom line.

Until today, the one and only piece of cyberware that I had was a cranial jack/dataport combo unit. I got it when I started freelancing, and it cost me more than I wanted to spend. Technically, more than I was able to spend. Zamira had come through for me like she always did, though.

With it, I can jack in using any access point that has a cable port. Which is essentially all of them. Next to the port where the cables plug in, I have a single high-speed info slot that can read and write data chips and crystals. While it can make a wireless connection, its range and speed are piss poor, which is why the 0gr3 was able to get me.

I have no idea if or how the KnightVisions will integrate or interact with it, much less improve it.

Even though, I do my best to ignore the holograms, the fluorescent fakery still floats everywhere around me. I walk through most of them, but every once in a while, I misjudge and bump into someone who's a living, breathing, flesh-and-chrome-and-blood person.

Like the very large troll I run into, thinking that he's an ad for some sort of bodybuilding supplement that’s filled with unicorn sperm or some shit like that.

"Who th'fuck're you?" the tusked giant asks. His words both drawl and slur. He's got an accent I don't recognize. Huh. Interesting. His neck is as thick Marv's bicep, and that's saying something. Marv's built like a brick shithouse.

"Wouldn't you like to know." I step to the left to skirt around him and be on my way. The troll's reach is longer than my strides, though, and his enormous hand touches my shoulder.

That's when the weird shit starts again. An outline appears around the troll, red. Huh. This one didn't start out yellow like the orc's.

I still have no idea what I'm looking at. These KnightVisions probably came with a manual or training for the guild merc who had them first. Unfortunately, I got nothing of the sort when Zamira popped them in my head.

"Get your fucking hand off me." I look down at his hand, and I can see his bones glowing through the thick skin that covers it. Except they're not bones. Looks like the giant asshole's had them replaced with cyberware. Because of course he has.

"We gonna have a problem here?" a voice says from my right. Both the troll and I turn our attention toward it. An elf with a web of wires traversing his face stands in the entranceway of a netcafe a few meters to my right. Jande.

Jande's a nice guy. We aren't close friends or anything, but we live on the same floor above the Shit Show, so we see each other now and then. Even hung out a time or two. He works at Matrices, the netcafe we're standing in front of.

His sudden appearance and interest in the situation deflates the angry troll, who tries to push me out of the way as he merges in with the other pedestrians. I duck beneath the lumbering swipe and move toward Matrices and Jande—and within range of the cafe's holo-ad trigger.

I immediately recognize the holographic orc that materializes in my path. The spokesperson shimmers and glitches like its power source is on the fritz. It very well might be. Probably is.

The androgynous orc wears a thin visor over their eyes and very little else. Their shirt—if you can call it that—is just a V that comes over their shoulders and converges at their crotch, disappearing into form-fitting black pants. This is Briar, kind of a mascot for Matrices.

Gesturing into the building, Briar says in a stuttering voice, “Cybersp-sp-space is calling y-you. J-jack in now and get sixty f-f-free seconds in the m-m-matrix!"

Sixty free seconds is laughable. That minute would be up by the time my avatar materialized, and the cafe would then start charging its connection fee. I don’t like jacking in from public spots, anyway. It’s a lot harder to secure my connection so that other runners didn't intercept it.

Despite the loud and brash welcome from Briar, once I'm inside the cafe, the whole vibe is much more subdued. The glare, obtrusive holograms, ads diminish, and the lights immediately dim into a cool blue light. For people with auditory implants, low-fidelity music starts playing whenever they walk over the threshold. It doesn’t for me.

The place is packed tonight. Matrices has a few different setups to choose from. Some folks use basic decks that don’t do full immersion or require actual jacking in. They can only interact with the online world using the screen embedded into their tabletops.

Of course there are as well as rental headsets, too. Those are the most popular for people who use places like this. Matrices also has haptic accessories and peripherals as add-ons.

The entire back room of the cafe, though, is free of all that hardware. Instead, it’s set up for people like me, people who want a moderately comfortable chair with a datajack that we can use with our own mods. They're also set up for more powerful cyberdecks that enable matrix immersion, rather than the limited 2D access most of us in the Unders only can afford.

Again, that's by design. The fewer of us in the immersive areas of the matrix, the easier it is for the rich up top to pretend like we don't exist. If it weren't prohibitively expensive to enter that shared digital space, then that would undermine the whole ecosystem they have set up with us hidden away down here.

There are even small cubes people rent when they need to jack in more privately. Nothing in a public access cafe like this is truly "private." But for most normal people it's good enough. It won't withstand SecWatch or guild scrutiny, but Little Jimmy Hackerpants won't be intercepting the data from those cubes, either.In the back corner are a couple of young orcs holding hands, wires from their dataports plugged into adjacent chairs. Their eyes are closed, and they're smiling. Must be on a date. Sweet.

A dwarf shadow boxes, almost pulling out his cable with every jab. Humans and elves, more than anything, sit silent and still, doing whatever gets them out of their piss poor existences for even just a few minutes.

"Thank you, Jande. I appreciate you cutting the tension out there."

The elf walks pointedly back to his spot behind the counter and leans forward. "What kind of job are you running tonight, Reice?"

"Nothing, actually. Bumped into that piece of work on my way back home from Zamira's shop."

"Oooh, you get sliced and diced up?" It's a rhetorical question. Jande knows my stance on obtrusive cyber. A green outline surrounds him now. I have no idea what this means or why it appears when it does. I have got to figure these KnightVisions out. "Z finally get her tools in ya?"

"Nah," I lie. I pan my gaze from him and look around the room. "She keeps trying, I keep refusing. You know how it goes."

"One day, we'll get you," he said. His fingers trace some of the webbing embedded in his face. The metal glows under his touch, though I think that's from my KnightVisions. Kind of what it did for the troll outside.

"Ya never know," I say.

"Oh, I think I do," he says, his voice all sultry. Does he know something? Can he tell my eyes are new? No, that's impossible. There's no way. Zamira said they could fools scanners, especially anything Jande has. "Anyway, you jacking in with us tonight, Reice?"

"Doubt it," I say. "Just hanging out, having a look around, saying thank you. You mind?"

"I don't mind at all, but I bet Araketh'll have something to say before long. They don't like people taking up space in here without spending credits, you know? Feel free to jack in, get your free minute, and check your messages, though."

I scowl. Not at Jande, but at Araketh. He's just doing his job. "What's the guild charging today?"

"200 credits for 10 minutes."

"Robbery."

"True, but this is legal."

In response, I make air quotes with my hands.

200 credits for 10 minutes. Fuck that. Bet half these people won't be able to buy enough to eat for at least a few days. Just for a few minutes of…what?

It doesn't matter. Not my problem.

We both know I have no intention of paying for access at a public cybercafe. Not at those rates, and especially not since my dataport dataport doesn't have the processing power to handle full immersion in the matrix.

My deck does. And it's locked away safely in my apartment. Exactly as I should be.

"See you around, Jande," I say as I throw a hand in the air in some sort of wave.

"Sure hope so."