Starmonger, 3
Yes, yes, it’s been far too long since an update. I apologize. School stuff, you know.
So, for those of you keeping track, that weird Anon mentioned I should check out Wald, Inc. for my job search, right? So, despite my best Googling attempts, I’m preeeetty sure that Wald, Inc. doesn’t exist. So, thanks, Anon.
But enough of that! Onto part 3!
3
“WHAT?”
Jare tried to overpower the music. “I said that my credits have to be there!”
“WHAT?” the barkeep yelled again.
“I said, just give me a damn drink!”
“WHAT?”
Jare flung his hands in the air and stormed away from the bar. The music continued to throb through his head; he felt that if he didn’t find relief soon, his brains would dribble out his nose. He cursed the woman at the transport under his breath. This was not his idea of a good club; it came closer to the “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy” category in his book.
“Jare? Is that you?” a voice yelled in his ear.
He spun around. He couldn’t place the face, but that friz - “You! From the dungeon! What are you doing here!?” She looked different from when they met earlier. More kind. He felt a pleasant twinge work its way through his body.
She smiled at him under the flashing colored lights. “I’m here with my boyfriend!” If she noticed his face falling, she didn’t show it. “Come on over to our table! I’ll buy you a drink!” They made their way through the spasming bodies on the dance floor until they reached a table surrounded by a translucent yellow sound-shield. They shoved their way through the gelatinous energy and sat down. The music outside was reduced to a dull hum. Jare’s ears nearly wept with relief.
“Anthony! Look who I found.” Her boyfriend sat at the table, his blond hair swept into a perfect swoosh, his arms begging to be flexed. He looked at Jare with disinterest. “It’s the man from the prison, the one that doesn’t exist.”
“Hello,” Jare said, raising a hand in greeting. He glanced back and forth between the two faces, his palms beginning to sweat.
“Oh, I remember you mentioning that. So you don’t exist, then?” Anthony asked.
“Well, no, I do. I’m here, after all. But the system seems to have forgotten me.”
“Same difference, then. The system knows everyone, so it only stands to reason that if someone’s not in the system, they don’t exist.”
“And Anthony would know! He’s a top system maintainer. Without him, I bet we’d all stop existing.” She grinned at Jare, the joke making her face bright, but Anthony didn’t catch it.
“Please, stop, you’re too much. Besides, that’s only what I do to pay the bills. My real passion,” he gave his muscles the flex they’d been waiting for, “is self defense training. You ever work out, James?”
“Jare, actually,” Jare said.
“Right. Let me get you a drink.” He punched a few buttons on the table’s screen, interrupting an ad for self-cleaning janitor bots, and a tall glass of deep amber ale slid up through the table’s silver surface in front of Jare’
Jare gulped the beer down. Mass-market stuff, but at this point, he couldn’t complain. “Much obliged.”
Anthony waved a hand. “Not at all.”
The guard leaned toward Jare. “So, what do you do? I mean, what did you do, before you stopped existing?”
“I monitor power relays.”
“Oh, that sounds… Interesting?”
“Not really,” Jare said.
“I’m sure it’s just slipping my mind, but what is a power relay?” Anthony asked.
“May I?” Jare slid the table’s screen towards him. He took the knife from his table setting and pried the screen away from the table. It came free in his hands. He pulled it up, revealing a glowing blue cable connecting it to the system.
“Should you be doing that?” the guard asked.
“Sure, it’s my job. See that there? The little ball in the cable?”
“Yes. Is that the relay?”
“Exactly. Everything that’s hooked up to the system has one of these little guys. It’s my job to check all of them in a given sector, make sure there are no irregularities.” He laughed. “Sorry, that’s something of a joke to us monitors. Every relay always reads ideal, a one-point-zero-zero. Like this one,” he said, and peered into the marble-sized relay. His breath caught in his throat. The numbers blinking in the glass read point-nine-seven.
“Everything all right?” Anthony asked.
“I. Erm. Well. No. Yes? …Do either of you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Anthony said.
The guard shook her head and tried to concentrate. "That hissing sound?”
Anthony shook his head. “Just part of the music.”
"No, I think she’s right. There’s something else.” Jare could hear it, somewhere behind the music, a loud hissing noise coming from the other end of the club. He gazed out through the shimmer of the table’s sound shield. The dancing bodies looked like yellow ghosts; not that Jare had ever seen a ghost, but he imagined that if he ever did, they’d look like the beat-inclined crowd in the club that night. “Clear the shield, I want a better look.”
The guard hit a button, and the yellow sound-shield went clear. Everything still came through fuzzy, but he could see some fog the brilliant pink of cotton candy spreading across the dance floor. People yelled with surprise as they saw it gathering around their ankles.
“Do you see…?” he asked. The guard nodded.
Anthony waved a dismissive hand. “It’s nothing. Just a dance thing, that fake smoke they pump in.” At that point, the yells changed from surprise to fear, then anger.
“Jare turned his focus to the bar he'd left just minutes ago. A pair of men who had been flirting just a moment ago were now screaming into each others' faces. "I don’t think that’s a dance thing.” Jare said, pointing at the pair. As he watched, one of the men grabbed his stool and smashed it into the other man's head, sending a spray of blood across the bottles behind the bar. Jare looked away, aghast, but soon saw that what he'd just seen was one of the tamer examples of violence filling the room. The violent outbursts spread with the gas. The music still pounded out of the speakers.
Jare stepped over to the guard. “We might want to… Well, the door’s over there, isn’t it?” He pointed through the gas.
“Yeah. Not much chance of getting out here that way."
Anthony shrugged. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s just a little bar fight. I’m sure security’s going to break it up any minute." The next moment, a half-full margarita glass shot past his left ear at high speed.
“Does this club have safety chambers?” Jare asked the guard. She nodded. “Right. Everyone hang on." He brought the screen around to him in a rush and punched the red button in the upper right corner, sliding his finger in a circle to confirm. The floor opened in two circles, one under Anthony, the other under Jare and the guard. They fell into narrow silver tubes. The floor closed over them with clear plasti. At first the tube seemed suffocating, but he ventilators coughed to life, and after a few seconds of darkness lights blinked on. The light gave Jare enough to see what his body already knew – the guard pressed against him, and he had no way of pulling free. Not that parts of him wanted to.
The guard squirmed. “What do you think you’re doing? Everyone’s supposed to stand at their chair before you hit the button.” In the tight space, her voice cut. It was the voice he had heard in the dungeon.
“Ah. Well, see, I’ve never exactly used a safety chamber. I mean, I’ve worked on them at, um, work, but I’ve never used one. I didn’t know what to expect. So I, um, well, here we are."
She sighed. “Yes, I suppose we are."
“Now that we’re so, um, close, do you suppose I could finally have your name?”
She glared at him for a moment, then her face broke and she smiled.“Puhlia. But call me Lia. You’re an interesting man, Jare, especially for someone who doesn’t exist" Jare almost started in again. Then he saw that she was still smiling, and found himself smiling back. There was something about that smile that he liked, something that turned his insides to a pleasant jelly.
“Lia. Good. I don’t suppose you know what we’re supposed to do once we’re in these safety tube things?” Jare craned his neck, trying to look around without poking Lia's eye with his chin.
“Just sit tight and wait for the commotion up above to die down." Just then, a loud crash came from above them, followed by repeated banging. The confined pair looked through their glass ceiling and saw a club patron trying to bash his way in. No sanity lingered in his eyes.
"How tough do you think our lid is?” No sooner had he asked then the first crack appeared in the glass. “Ah. That won’t do, then.”
“Yeah, we might want to look into getting out of here. Sooner is better than later." Lia began feeling around the walls of their chamber for any kind of escape. She glanced above Jare’s head. “Hey! Right above your head. There’s some kind of button.”
“Some kind of button? Do we really want to go around pressing strange buttons?”The bangs above them grew louder, and the crack in the glass spread.
“Do we have a choice?”
Jare agreed they didn’t. He raised himself to his tip-toes and flung his head back against the wall, depressing the button. Three things happened then, almost simultaneously. The lights in the tube went out, the floor beneath them slid away, and the pair fell into darkness.