Project A:

The following is the first 5 pages of my current WIP which I thought I would post on the chance that someone will read it and one of you might be moved to comment.


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Bleh, it’s Wednesday, 6:14 Sauer city standard time and I’ve woken up exactly thirty seconds before my alarm again, fucking thing. I’d turn it off but the first time I do it’s guaranteed I will sleep in. Tardiness doesn’t fly in today’s job market, not one bit, plus I’m a designed human, I only get two sick days a year.

Sitting up I survey the guest room of the apartment the money from my long lost highlife bought my sister as a wedding present. It’s a big fucking room, which is something, but there’s lurid shit all over the walls, apparently they’re calming arcs and mood patterns or some bullshit like that, done in old style oil paints, Debbie’s bloody husband’s work. Myself I’ve never really bothered moving in, all my crap is clustered around the bed or neatly put away in the walk in robe, not that I have much at all, my collection of movies, books and music is all digital, doesn’t take up any space.

Debbie and Frank Pinscher, my sister and her art fag other half. Gave her so much shit about that name in the lead up to the wedding, said it made her sound like a dog, the Doberman, started calling her “Doebie”. She stopped talking to me for about two years, took me till I was in the work camp to learn the lesson, IQ of 175 and I was still a dumb shit, family can put up with a lot but not having their dreams shat on. Debbie’s husband is an “artist”, not a corporate artist, a fucking “new revisionist” or some garbage. She loves him, but he’s useless, he thinks he’s back in the fucking 1970’s in France or something, part of the cultural revolution, bitching about the status quo in cafes and never doing a damn thing. She makes more money than he does, as a shift nurse. If I wasn’t here, they wouldn’t be able to pay the rates to keep this place. That was the only reason he let me move in, he hates me, I hate him. Simple.

I lever myself up out of bed and all the automatic shit kicks in, ambient lights snap on and the windows deglaze to reveal the city in all its sky clawing money grubbing glory. The far wall snaps on to a sports channel highlight reel, Boeing Freefall won in the Iron League last night, I didn’t get time to watch it because of work, again, closed the case though. They’re playing replays of Eddie Redda smashing another player into the ground in an offensive pre-tackle that apparently took their Aceman out of the game, hospital, might not live. Fucking figures that four years into my sentence they decide that bodily harm and risk of death is an acceptable part of the game that the audience wants. So now it’s legal, everyone signs waivers, teams are insured, contracts have a posthumous clause. Fuckers didn’t commute my sentence, still served the last two years. I deserved it for killing that guy, don’t feel good about it, but fuck me, that work camp was hell, natural born humans don’t live two years in it let alone six.

I amble across to my bathroom and step into the shower, this is the bit about this place that made every penny worthwhile, real showers. Most of the population has to deal with scrub units, a stand up sanitiser based on the same technology for the airlocks in clean rooms, gets you clean sure, convenient and quick maybe. But it’s just not the same as high pressure jets of hot water, particularly if you fell down a five flight fire escape last night, which I did. Half an hour in the shower is fucking awesome, wastes a bit of time sure, but I’ll grab something to eat on the way.

Come out of the shower and I can hear it echoing under the door, a screaming match again, fucking asshole. He’s going on about my time of arrival this morning interfering with his sleep and his work. Sure I could have been quiet, but fuck him, try chasing some little sprinter through the middle of peoples fucking homes in a D class district fifteen meters off the ground and see what state he rolls home in. Dead, that’s what state.

She’s countering about how I’m her brother blah blah blah, he doesn’t care and she knows it. Argument will end in a few minutes when she hits him in the balls with her trump card, they can’t afford this place without me because his art won’t sell. Heh. A fucker that really, you can own a place like this outright, free and clear, the corps will charge you rates and maintenance that amounts to so much it may as well be rent. Fucking free market.

I stare at my mug in the mirror, there’s a momentary flash and slight sting as the shaving laser system defoliates my face. Heavy, solid face, still youthfully handsome despite me being thirty seven, frankly I look twenty five, but I’m such a bad tempered bastard women won’t come near me most times. Probably a good thing really.

Heading into the walk in robe I shrug my way into my gear, black cargo pants, old fashion but suits my purposes, T-shirt over an impact vest, then attach the rig. Into the rig I slide my .72 Magnum Mossberg high impact pistol, slightly old tech but more reliable than a lot of modern shit and frankly, will go through the armour I’m wearing and the wall behind me. Most people can’t handle the kick on a .60, let alone this damn thing. Spare clips, Taser, Nauseator and stun tabs in their other various spots on the rig. Haul on the resistance fabric bomber jacket and I’m done bar boots.

Out of the robe and back into the guestroom, I walk over to my chair and stare out the windows as I haul on the Prada-Colorado combat boots. Blue sky. I don’t think I will ever get over seeing a blue sky every time I look up. It’s a bright clear morning in Sauer City, so named for the arms company that bought the rights to the place back in the late twenty first, just like naming a fucking building. Sauer city occupies the north end of Virgin Island, an eighty kilometre stretch of man-made island off the coast of Angola, our sister city New Johannesburg occupies the southern end. Angola is basically one big farming and resource state, pretty much everything is run from here, which of course means the only vaguely nice place to live is here.

For the first ten years of my life the sky was brown, smog ridden, orange, yellow, looks like pictures I’ve seen of the atmosphere of Venus. We fucked it up so badly, but as the slack jawed faithful had hoped, science came through. Ten years after I was born BACs was introduced to the atmosphere, a pollution, carbon and CFC eating bacteria that latched specifically to the molecular makeup of the top eighty percent of airborne pollutants. Six months and the bacteria had cleaned up all our shit, a modern miracle, everyone cheers, seven of the ten scientists from the team achieve sainthood from what’s left of the church, the other three are murdered by freaked out extremists.

BACs though, with nothing left to eat was supposed to recede to a sustainable level, just eat what we kept putting in the atmosphere, apparently it still does that. Problem is, a strain evolved, to well, eat us. The new Ebola the news called it. Most people were resistant to it, it was apparently a fluke, attacked ten percent of the population worldwide regardless of socioeconomic factors or geography. It sickens, makes them weak, listless, useless. Doesn’t set in till the very early twenties and there’s no way to test for it, so you won’t know you’re susceptible until you’re screwed. Some people have family to support them, but society with all its other problems couldn’t deal with a tenth of the planets population spontaneously infirmed over three years as it took hold, so they ignored the problem, shunned it. The infirmed are this centuries lepers, they live like them and are treated like them. You see them everywhere in the poorest areas, down at street level and below, shuffling around unable to do much to anyone and ignored or preyed on by everyone else. Poor fuckers, it’s the one uniting malady of humanity, anyone can get it, it can’t be cured and you never know until your coughing up blood, then you take twenty years to die of it.

So yeah, blue sky, modern day miracle. Hah.

I stand up and stomp my feet, settling everything into place, bruises across the back are fading. The shower did a lot of good but it’s mostly the built in quick healing, my father truly spared no expense on me, I think it was a loan equivalent to twenty years of his excessive wages. Debbie by contrast was a natural birth, the child my mother always really wanted. Mum is in North Korea these days, ironically it’s one of the few places you can own your own property free and clear and the government doesn’t shit all over you, she bought it with the last of dad’s fortune after he died. Compensation money never came through, we were taking a holiday on one of the shitty hotels on the moon that some year 2000 billionaire idiot thought would be a brilliant idea. Airlock failure killed my father and 12 other people right in front of us when he sent us through the cycle before him, went back for a bag we forgot. He said he was gonna catch up to us, never did.

Space travel is a croc if you ask me. The moon is a second rate tourist attraction, Venus has a single monitoring station and mars is a science experiment. Apparently mining in the asteroid belt pays astronomically well, but seriously, fuck that, thirty percent mortality rate amongst the miners.

The door to the guestroom swishes open automatically before I get to it, a luxury I could do without, auto doors are no good for slamming. Debbie is standing in the kitchen looking worn, she’s just back from shift, still in her scrubs. Evidently she just pulled out the finance card, I can hear Frank throwing a tantrum in his studio. I go and stare at the coffee maker, detecting my RCP in range it pumps out a large cup of boring black coffee, fucking hot, how I like it.

“Well?” She says

I just look sidelong at her.

“Why were you in so late and loud last night? Frank needs to work.”

I continue to look at her, poor woman, got to remind myself not to treat her like I do everyone else, she doesn’t deserve it. I take the coffee and drink it.

“Sorry, though he could tell me himself.” She tenses to launch a tirade. “Again,” I sigh, taking another gulp of the scalding liquid. “Sorry, was a case last night, at about half eleven I was chasing a boosted crim through peoples domes on the 6th story the Manhattan Park complex on BHP point. He ran straight off a roof while I tried to apprehend. I fell off it.”

“Jesus,” She says, turning to the fridge “Good thing you’re...” She stops and glances back at me.

“I know,” I say, “A test tube baby, and a fucking expensive one, least playing god paid off eh?”

“Look, I know you feel bad,” She blurts, I know where this is going. “You’re still as human as anyone, I know you hate the designed and I know you hate being one, but mum and dad still loved you...”

“Whoa, whoa!” I nearly drop the coffee, damn she’s feeling emotional today, wonder what happened at work, the argument with Frank isn’t enough to start this trip. “You know I don’t give a shit Deb, it’s my bottom line, it doesn’t matter how you grew, it’s what you’re made out of.”

I stare at her a while longer, she looks like she’s going to cry.

“Look, I have to fuck off to work or I’ll be late, but when I come home, we’ll talk, k?”

“Nah we won’t,” she says, clearly I’ve forgotten something, she sighs, apparently she’s fought off the tears, just looks tired and resigned. “I’m flying out to mum’s in five hours remember, you’re stuck here alone with Frank for a week.”

Ah Christ.

“Try to just stay away from him will you?” she asks me.

“I should have bought the fucking penthouse.” I snort, setting down the empty mug and heading out the door. Least it’s a secure door. Turns translucent to me know there’s no-one on the other side instead of just whizzing open.

I turn back to Debbie. “Say Hi to mum for me.”