Snippets From The Spiralverse
Genre: cyberpunk, snippet from a story, neo-noir, short story
Theseus Types
by C.S. Humble
Part I
The Mother Fucker
“I don’t get it,” Mackie said over the roar of music and howling voices. “Who the hell is Rickshaw Tatterdemalion?”
Mackie was a nice guy. Sweetheart with a premium avatar build that costs more marks than he’s got sense. The kind of guy who drifts the Funnel. Never delves into the Spiral though. He was like most people–subsisting when he should be living. Blissfully happy to plod his feet along the ground where his ear should be. Cute and aloof. We had a thing. I snipped those strings pretty quick though. Sometimes he bought me drinks, hoping.
“Runs the E-district,” I said.
“The gaming area?”
I shake my head, rolling my eyes so that the flashing laser-lights cutting through the smoke caught their color. It’s hard for people to keep Mackie’s attention most of the time.
Other people. Not me.
I plucked a cigarette out of the pearl and silver case Mackie bought me after our first date out of a sum total of three, slid it between my smiling teeth, and waited.
He almost knocked our drinks over, quick as he was to light me up.
I took a deep pull, leaned back, cause it’s a whole saga when it comes to Rickshaw Tatterdemalion.
“There are thousands of people operating within the Spiral who consider themselves the most dangerous being alive. These people have built their entire concept of self-actualization, since before they were old enough to have a library card, on a foundation of countless hours of hand-to-hand combat simulations and projectile weapons training. They are masters of urban anti-personnel tactics, psychological warfare, and don’t even blink when committing atrocities that would make a fascist dictator stand up and nervously admit, ‘This feels like overkill.’”
Mackie laughed. “Shit. Spiral is no joke, babe.”
I smoke, ignoring. Kept going.
“They are, many of them, leaders of street gangs commonly known as packs or crews, sometimes tribes. To be the leader of such a band is to exude the ultimate confidence. Take zero shit. Display the arrow-straight willingness to lay it all on the line for nothing more than the sake of looking like the chosen messiah conqueror of a forgotten war god.
“Every crew has a different motif, a personal aesthetic you might say, doll,” I said, chumming the waters just enough to encourage want. Set the hook in his wallet. “They have their own colors, attitudes, and crew specific titles. Walk down any glowing sidewalk inside the Spiral and you’ll run the whole spectrum of nicknames for the leaders of street hounds, twincycler gangs, and aero-pirates. Among them are names that send a chill down the spine of other, lesser war chieftains:
Sky Master Phosphorus.
Little Ganymede.
And we cannot exclude Crucifix Diadem with her roaring, twincycler-riding dog knights. A bone breaking crew that, only three nights ago, put a bloody thrashing on some second-rate cats trying to claw their way up the ladder. These names are known across the Spiral, achieving a kind of infamy reserved for fictional comic book supervillains or famous mobsters of elder days. Names that when spoken are uttered with fear or toe-curling ecstasy, respect or red-eyed hate. No matter the verbal inflection one uses, the truth remains the same--one does well to avoid the ire of these captains of annihilation populating cyberspace.”
I thumb the ash off my cigarette. Flick my eyes up to him.
“Though they do not know it, from the Rat King on his chthonic throne to Doctor Mechanic Feelgood, M.D., Ph.D., of the vicious Body Chop Shop.”
“Wait, he has a medical and academic degree?” Mackie asked.
“She has both. Hell, maybe neither. She’s eclectic. Anyway. Every single Spiral haunting warchief builds an orally accounted resume of badassery. They hope one day that their reputation will grant them the ultimate position respectively known as the mother fucker.
“Applications for that position are always accepted and kept on file. No interviews are held however, because everyone knows that the position of the mother fucker is currently filled.”
I took a long, final pull off of my cigarette and smashed its smoking crown into a coaster I refused to use. It’s all digital, so, fuck it.
“Rickshaw Tatterdemalion, otherwise known as Rick the Brick, is the mother fucker.
And every soul jacked in from balls to brains of the Spiral goddamn well knows it.”
“So, it’s an official title?”
“Damn right, sweetie. Rick the Brick runs the Construction Crew–the hardest and meanest collection of street hounds roaming the nursery pink neon strip of the entertainment district. Rick’s turf could consist of anywhere he damn well chooses, but for this simple man of simple, yet refined tastes, he has elected himself Lord Magistrate over the central hub of gaming in the Spiral.”
“Why?” asks Mackie, leaning forward.
“As current the mother fucker, Rick the Brick is looking to build a clutch of nest eggs with that golden goose quality. Marks are the blood of the Spiral and gaming is the throbbing heart that makes the marks move. Rick runs the E-district. Rick profits from the E-district, and Rick makes sure no one starts any shit in his E-district. This is an innate requirement of being– well – you-know-who.”
“See that’s what I hear about the Spiral,” said Mackie, looking very self-important. “The funnel is enough for me. Plenty up here to enjoy.”
“Sure,” I said, “The Spiral can be rough. Districts can look like hellscapes or demilitarized warzones with the fierce competitions between crews, gangs, or tribes. Find yourself in the wrong district at the wrong time and it’s sayonara to your premium avatar for a month; you’re back in the Real crunching numbers for Xerxes Tech or MagnaComm, BlowHard Inc., or whatever soul-eating corporate sponsor covers your connection costs and living situation. The E-District, though,” I let out a cool sigh. “It is as the cool kids say, ‘dulcet.’ People feel safe, taken care of. They drop their marks into the gaming emporiums strung along for miles and miles and miles forming a river of cash that deltas into three separate pools:
Nations that have citizens in the Spiral.
Corporations that fund employees in the Spiral.
And Rick the mother fucking Brick.”
“Sounds like a big deal. Hard guy?”
“You know it. Reputation is everything when it comes to being the mother fucker. Rick has a style all his own, a modus operandi that speaks to his hard-as-hell nom de plume. A way of dealing with infractions within his little slice of digital utopia that makes Attila the Hun’s desolation of the Asian continent look like a girl scout troop going door to door selling fucking thin mints.”
Similes weren’t Mackie’s strong suit. And that avatar of his, with the Leo DiCaprio eyes and Gene Kelly smile and Hugh Jackman shoulders, can’t hide the doubt swirling in his brain. So I decided to help him.
“Catch this,” I said, drawing closer, lowering my voice. “About two years ago, the story goes, a crew of low-end spiral divers, those suit wearing asshole hackers who do smash and grab jobs on crypto vaults, broke into one of Rick’s personal accounts. They boosted a paltry sum of ten-thousand marks, just enough for a little weekend vacation of all-nighter debauchery. Just divers doing diver things. For Rick the Brick, ten-thousand marks is an eyedropper worth of water pulled from an ocean. The divers, believing their heist has gone off without a hitch, head over to the entertainment district to game their brains out. And they do. They run up a tab. Hit all the games. Live the best life someone else can afford.”
“Rick send some guys to straighten them out?”
“You don’t become the mother fucker by just ‘sending some guys’, Mack. Word is that his accountant lets him know about the small, almost insubstantial amount of marks taken from an account Rick didn’t even know existed; because, well, he’s fucking diversified. He makes a call, and then hits the pavement his own damn self. He finds the divers at the Cosmo Black, jacked into Galaxy Hero. And–
“Lemme guess, smashes their avatars in front of everyone to make an example?”
“You’re interrupting,” I said.
Mackie tries to recover. “You want another drink?”
I sigh. “This evening isn’t going the way you think, Hon.”
His shoulders sank, maybe a little hurt that I’ve treated his hopeful lust the same way I treated the cigarette. That was on him though. He knew the rules.
“Anyway. Rick plays it cool. Tells the unsuspecting crypto thieves that the house has decided to give them the royal treatment for spending so many marks inside the establishment. They’re high rollers afterall. Opens a tab for the diver crew and invites them over to a personal VIP booth where the thieves are provided every pleasure the Cosmo Black has on-hand. Drinks. Entertainment. The whole deal. All on the house, sure, but all the while, Rick makes a phone call out to his people in the Real. A whole team of data miners find the location of where the divers are broadcasting their signal into the Spiral. So, Rick, he tells his accountant to buy the place their broadcasting from and not just the complex. But buy the complex, the land its on, and the goddamn mineral rights beneath, even the air-space rights going all the way up to the fucking moon. Has the accountant find the cops who run that beat, buys them too. Them and the crooked Judge who those cops go to when they want a search warrant. Buys the whole space and society surrounding the divers, which for the mother fucker is no big deal. The transaction for all these things is nothing. Takes less than an hour. Then, Rick’s real world crew go in and they needle those fuckers while they’re still jacked in.”
Mackie’s Gene Kelly smile dropped into a death mask. His digital skin goes to ash, and I’d put a sizeable wager that his balls crawled up into his stomach. “No fucking way.”
“Rick the Brick” I said. “So now, when you go into the Cosmo Black, you’ll see three, motionless avatars, stiff as the fucking drinks the Cosmo bar serves, still smiling in that VIP booth. Only heartbeats and delta waves inside them. And Rick, he has his crew set those bastards up with nutritional IVs in the Real. Hired a crew of nurses to keep them alive and comatose.”
“Mother fucker,” said Mackie.
“No. The mother fucker.”
“So,” Mackie said his voice aimed at me, but his eyes drifting to our cocktail waitress. He lifted his finger for another drink. The waitress ignored him. And I considered taking her unspoken advice on life when it came to Mackie as he continued, “What’s got you all-in on knowing Rick’s situation?”
I took a long drink, then, spoke over the lip of my glass. “Got a call yesterday. Call from a client. Needs me to blood-hound a guy who went missing in the E-District. And you don’t go into the E-District without knowing who the mother fucker is and you don’t go there without knowing their standard operating procedure.”
“Who you looking for?”
“Can’t say. Wouldn’t even if I could. Rick will know, though.”
Mackie’s eyes went wide. “Wait. You’re going to question Rick the Brick?”
I smiled, shaking my head. This was exactly what made men like Mackie, well, men like Mackie. Funnel guppies that throw marks around like they’re whales. “Of course,” I said. “Nothing happens in the E that Rick won’t know about. Why go anywhere but the source?”
“But that’s dangerous,” said Mackie. He placed his hand on mine. Caring the way he cares. A care comes from a limp dick hoping to get hard. Fear of losing what he hopes to win.. “You could get hurt!” he says.
“You’re sweet,” I say, lying and pulling my hand away from him. “Rick the Brick is a scary guy. Powerful. The mother fucker,” I said, standing up to let him know I was all done drinking the drinks he’ll pay for. All done with his company. “I’m Sophie Montrose, honey. No mother fucker been born that can keep me from getting what I want.”
I leaned over the table, getting close. So close our eyelashes might kiss. I slap him lightly on the cheek a few times. “Thanks for the drink, Mackie. Gotta get to work.”
I sauntered away, slowly, letting the dress do all the heavy lifting. Let him see everything he’s going to miss until the next time I call him.
If I ever call him again. I probably would, a girl gets thirsty.
Outside the club, I shouldered on the silk, pearl shawl matching the little-white-dress. I popped another cig and smoked. The Funnel shop signs glowed in neon spectrum, flashing premium digital wares. The air hummed with luxury transport cycler engines flying overhead, their hulls shining candy-wrappers slick in the neon light. The funnel was all fine and good if you’re looking for good fun, simple and clean. A place where suburbanites in the Real come to drop marks on more and more digital shit they’ll get bored of in a month, maybe two.
But I wasn’t looking for fun. I had been looking for a drink, so I called Mackie. And now, I was looking for Sid Law. Sid was an important guy. A guy who played Lancer for the Zealand Roarers in the League. He’d last been seen in the E-district with an ensemble of escorts and an entourage of hanger-ons that he called friends. The call I got was from a friend of mine who worked Public Relations for the Roarers. Said she needed me to find Sid because when someone goes missing in the E, you don’t call the police. The last thing any team in the League wants is for the police to get involved in team business. So, my phone rang. A price was negotiated. And seeing as I never plunge into the Spiral without first being well-lubricated with alcohol, I called Mackie. But now, with a sufficient buzz, it was time to take the spill, over the lip of the Funnel, and down into the Spiral to talk to Rick the Brick.
PART II - SPIRAL DIVE