Countryside
The empty, dark and dirty street shifted into something slightly less dirty and empty.
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Bimahn charged down the narrow alleyway. She knocked over a young boy as she rounded the corner onto the dim street, but she didn’t stop. His stream of curses faded, overtaken by the hum of aircars zooming above, circulation units at the base of buildings so tall they disappeared into the gray sky, and the distant screeching of sirens.
She dodged a few maintenance bots and leapt over the carcass of an aircar. Just a little more. The timer displayed in her enhanced eye ticked down and updated her estimated time of arrival. It flashed red, and she pushed herself faster until it returned to green.
The empty, dark and dirty street shifted into something slightly less dirty and empty. A line flashed white around the door to her destination, the timer still green with a few seconds to spare. She kept her pace, not bothering to gawk back at the people observing her. So much for being subtle.
A pleasant tone played when she stepped into the recessed entryway and an access panel came to life just to the right of the red door. Calling up the file, she used her finger to draw the symbol her employer had given her and stepped back. Nothing happened, but she heard a whirring sound from behind the door. Don’t panic.
The next few seconds ticked down on the timer. She took a breath, even though the oxy implants along her ribcage provided all the oxygen she needed.
A click, zip and the door slid aside. Beyond it was a hallway illuminated by white lights along the base of the walls. At the end was a cyborg, its shoulders as wide as the corridor and its purple mohawk tall enough to brush against the high ceiling. Bright, laser blue eyes stared at her. Of all the—.
“Three seconds,” the cyborg’s deep voice called out.
Shit! She leapt inside, covering the distance in less than one second.
The cyborg clamped its hands onto her arms, not so tight it hurt, but tight enough she couldn’t move. She had been told there would be a security checkpoint, but she hadn’t expected an old-school cyborg with grabby hands. Its blue eyes looked her up and down, scanning her. She did the same, but all she saw was static. Jammed. Wonderful. One sided encounters always made her nervous. She couldn’t counter what she didn’t know. I’ll demand double the pay for the humiliation. And risk.
The hands released her, and she stepped back. It was impossible to tell what the result of her scan was since the cyborg’s face was entirely mechanical, a metal mask that showed no emotion. The purple mohawk was almost comical against the grey matte finish of the face. Though, she had to admit the shade went nicely with its eyes.
Behind the cyborg, a door slid open. It stepped back, then to the side. “The Farmer will see you now.”
A quick scan of the new space proved the jammer was still active. Farmers worked on a level far above where she was now, where it was said the sky was real and the mythical sun still shone. “Farmer?”
The cyborg didn’t respond.
Maybe it’s just their name? Well, no turning back now, no matter what they call themselves. She stepped through the door and past the cyborg.
Warm air smacked her face. She squinted when her enhancements didn’t adjust automatically. Holding her hand up, she shaded her eyes and looked around.
Tall, yellow-green grass, waving in a light breeze, went on and on until it touched mountains in the distance. She tried to activate her zoom lens. It wasn’t there. The lens wasn’t jammed, it was gone. No interface, no control, no power source. She pressed up against her left side, searching for the bumpy mesh of the oxys only to find a loose shirt covering skin and bone. She gasped. Dropped to her knees, then down to all fours. Her fingers dug into the warm dirt, pressure building under her nails. Real nails, not the retractable ones she relied on for her espionage trade. She stared at her hands. They looked just like the ones she’d seen in the virtual sessions where she mingled with the highbrow of society, wearing a façade that matched their presented human purity. Her breathing slowed. A virtual world. Of course. It seemed the best explanation. Though she’d never been to one so…complete. And she hadn’t been wired in either. Not that she remembered.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” A man’s voice came from behind her.
She sprung up and turned, almost falling forward without her autobalancers kicking in.
“Easy now. It takes some getting used to.”
She put a hand over her chest and felt it rise and fall. The panic subsided when she realized her body knew what to do, even though she hadn’t relied on her lungs for years. “What takes getting used to?” She tried her most diplomatic voice, but once again, her voice controller wasn’t there to help.
“Freedom.” He sat on an open platform attached to the front of what she vaguely recalled from old films and stories as a house. The chair rocked back and forth, the wood grunting with the motion. The structure was alone, save for a smaller one setback and to the side. The fields of grass went on in all directions that she could see. The creaking of the chair was the only sound besides the occasional rustling of the wind.
She stood straight, determined to finish the job and get back to the world she knew. I’ll ask triple if this doesn’t go quick. “I’m told you can tell me about the countryside.”
He chuckled. “Tell you? You’re in it.”
“No. That’s not what I meant—”
“Oh, I know what you meant. The answer is still the same.”
Why do I always get the irritating ones? She marched the short distance to the house and up three stairs before hesitating. Without scanning, she didn’t know what traps or defenses he had.
Another chuckle, this one louder, grated her.
“You really are a suspicious one, aren’t you? Take a seat,” he gestured to a second rocking chair on his right. “No one will hurt you here.”
She went up the last few steps and stared at the chair. I don’t have a choice if I’m going to finish this job. Quadruple the cost. Her butt hit the wooden seat and she flinched, expecting it to be hard and uncomfortable. When she leaned back, though, she discovered it was the most comfortable chair she’d ever sat in. Her foot pushed against the floor, and she rocked back and forth slowly, almost as if it were an automatic function, or something so natural her body knew what to do. Just like breathing.
The man next to her seemed to be old, despite a healthy amount of cropped brown hair. His skin was dark and rough, like the leather boots in the ad for the old western show they rebooted for the zillionth time last year. He continued to rock, his hands resting on the arms of the chair, and stare out at the field.
She did the same, thinking maybe he was staring at the clue, or even the answer, she needed to bring back. Sometimes contacts played games like that when they enjoyed their position of power too much, or just got off on torturing the likes of her by dragging out delivery. She slid forward to the front of the seat, scanning the area, enhancements or no.
Nothing but grass. What am I missing? She decided to go the polite route. “You have a great view here.” It was a magnificent view, though she hadn’t realized it until the words left her lips. Something about the emptiness disturbed her, though. Many levels of the city were sparsely populated, and she could go days without seeing anyone, but it never felt as empty as the landscape in front of her. The hum, the noise, the knowledge that thirty billion people lived in the planet-wide city were constant reminders she wasn’t ever alone.
Her contact didn’t respond to her pleasantry.
“It really is magnificent.”
The creak of his chair continued uninterrupted.
Games it is. She resumed her resting rocking position.
The warm breeze gusted from time to time, creating patterns in the grass. It left her with the sense she was watching the two, the grass and the wind, playing with each other, bending this way, then that, giggling, then starting all over again. Before long, she was rocking in time with the man, mesmerized by the playfulness, openness, and majestic beauty in front of her.
“There you have it.” His voice was almost a whisper, joining with the breeze and just brushing by her consciousness.
The words made sense to her, but she didn’t believe them. They nagged at her, like the answer she needed was dangled out in front of her, just out of reach. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t grasp it. Whatever it was.
“Stop trying so hard.”
Just do what he says, get the info, and get out. She took a deep breath, just like Johnny had taught her when she got her first enhancement. Even with painkillers, it was easy to freak out seeing something go into your body for the first time. There was nothing freaky about the scene in front of her. How she got here? Yes, that was freaky. They must’ve knocked me out, then connected me up to this. The thought felt wrong. Logical, but wrong. Another breath.
“That’s it. Just relax. Take it all in.”
The farmer’s voice soothed her. Her mind drifted with the waving grass, her rocking kept time to the strange movements, she became part of the orchestra creating it. At the edge of her consciousness she sensed the city, the noise from it a pulsing, living thing all its own. But there was a discordance, chaos, mechanical scraping to it. Uncertainty crept in. Which world is real? Both?
She turned to look at the farmer. He wasn’t there. In his seat was her employer, dressed in the same fancy suit and tie he’d been wearing when he’d approached her at the highbrow virtual party she’d crashed. Her mouth opened, but words didn’t come out.
He smiled, a wide, genuine smile filled with kindness and understanding.
A small part of her held on to doubt. That she’d wake up in an alley stripped of her enhancements, not remembering any of it. If she woke up at all. She was ok with never waking up from the countryside, whatever it was. “Can I stay?” The words tumbled out of her.
His shape shifted back to the farmer, but his smile, it was the same.
From the house behind her, voices emerged. Giggles. Full, deep, laughs. Footsteps and doors opening and closing.
People. Not many, but people. Happy people.
He pushed himself up and out of the chair and held out his hand. “Want to go on a tour?”
She took his hand.
“Let’s start with the house, and the family. The rest will take lifetimes.”
Author Notes:
Countryside is the title, and the prompt, I used for this story. Honestly, I don’t know what I intended to write but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t it. This character kind of took off on her own and ended up having an experience that changed her forever.
Is it real? I don’t know. Maybe she’s in a sophisticated virtual world. Maybe she was taken, her enhancements removed then placed in a real world (maybe even on the same planet) as non-enhanced human. Or maybe the cyborg did get her and this is just some hallucination she’s experiencing as she dies.
If you don’t know, I’m kind of a stickler for happy endings. Reality has too many sad ones, so take a guess at what I think really happened. I’d love to hear your thoughts too!
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