skonen_blades

He said "Oh my God are you actually a poet?"
I said "Well, yeah."
"Fucking why?" he responded, incredulous and mocking
"Well let me answer your question with a question. Why do you make money?" I responded.
He stood there, a little stunned.
Like no one in his circle had actually asked him this directly.
Like they all had an unspoken understanding in his part of the world.
He arrived in time at a conclusion.
To his credit.
"Security" he said.
I liked that answer. I liked his honesty.
I said to him "The next fifteen years of your life is my answer."



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You get a month.
You get a day.
Handing out holidays like crumbs to pigeons.
Insisting that we adapt to them.
They hold the reins, the money, the power,
and the clueless ignorance.
It’s a deadly combination.
If you see the populace of the world
As merely copies of you
And you are successful
And you can’t see your privilege
Your head start
Then you think that anyone not as
Successful
As you is lazy
If you think that any idiot can get a job and a place to live
And that homelessness is a choice
Then you are wrong
There are so many working homeless right now
There are so many mentally ill that cannot hold a job
There are so many damaged people
And when you’re blind to your own prejudices
When your self-image is tragically unaligned with your actions
It’s insanity
And we all suffer from it
But we need to cure it and look at it for what it is
And stop
But power is a cancer
That reanimates dead flesh
And maybe head shots are the way to go
If taxes don’t work


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another sprucing of an old piece

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It was a way of life down here to prove how far you were willing to go.

The stew of Oddtown. The people that lived here knew that they’d never work in a place that required a dress code let alone a mannered way of behaving. The modifications they had done to themselves were extreme.

There was work that a person could get done that was reversible. Horns, smaller tattoos, piercings, subdermal implants, that sort of thing.

Judge’s kids got those to show that they were rebelling against a society that they didn’t create. All tasteful and done in places that could be covered up by business suits and hairstyles in later life when they realized that their destiny was to be a benefit to society rather than a burden.

They took their little rebellious walk in the wilderness on Oddside. If they were lucky, they made it back out with a few ‘hardcore’ stories and some street cred with the other kids from rich families. Learned a few staring tricks for negotiations in the boardroom when they finally accepted Daddy or Mommy’s tuition and went to law school. Memories to make them think that they had a soul or had experienced ‘real life’ for at least a little bit.

If they were unlucky, they met up with the people that didn’t give a fuck about their parents or futures. A few shots of crackoin later, a few hours of video later, and few ransom demands later, a few brain burns later, and the little girls and boys from the rich side of town ended up in pieces amongst the garbage bags in the alleys. Either that or just stumbling around dead-eyed until they starved to death.

But the smart inhabitants of Oddside realized that these kids had money and would soon be running things. Becoming friends with these kids could be good down the road. Ever since the inheritance act was passed, the poor became poor forever and the rich angled with each other for more money. The gulf between the two societies became an uncrossable trench littered with the Icarus skeletons of people who tried.

It’s all about appearance.

Take Mannycentric, for instance. He had robotic, cherry-red fists the size of oil drums. His shoulders and biceps were grafted to take the weight. If he relaxed, his knuckles dragged on the ground. Those fists could knock chunks out of buildings when they were fully charged. They weren’t gloves. The birth-meat of his forearms and hands was long gone.

Killie had antlers and four hearts. Her scars and tattoos ran the gamut from tribal to baroque. Not much of her original skin still showed. Hundreds of small, scalloped shark fins inserted from her tailbone up to her shoulder blades turned her entire back into a cheese grater.

Flail had extra joints installed in his legs. He ran like a deer and leapt like a flea. He had the buttonhole pupils of a goat.

They were currently letting a blonde rich girl buy them drinks and impressing her with violent stories, watching her eyes grow wide, feeling her excitement growing. She obviously thought she had a wild streak and was ready for whatever the night threw at her. She was wrong. Manny, Flail and Killie had been promised a hundred credits to deliver her to the Skinner. They were just waiting for the roofies to take effect. If they didn’t need the money, they might have tried to make her a friend.

It was a way of life down here to prove how far you were willing to go.




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My body is weakened. The last eight months have been a blast. There are scars all over my body, my liver is shot, I’m blind in one eye and I’ve lived through six overdoses. I’ve made some great friends. I broke my foot. I killed a guy on the way here with my bare hands. Someone off the grid so there’ll be no charges. I haven’t slept.

I’m staggering into the rejuve clinic for my hibernation. Four months in a nutrient bath with some tektites working overtime to remove the last thirty-two weeks of extremist living. To sleep, perchance to dream.

I’ve done this eighteen times now and I plan to do it until the money runs out and the money will never run out, if you see what I’m saying. My father left me a very huge estate. Wealth that no amount of overspending could damage.

I’m aging a little bit but this process slows it to a crawl. Me and the fellow graduates live like this. They call us bears.

8 months up, four months down. We leave all of the damages that we cause to be dealt with by our lawyers and their lawsuits.

I climb into the nutrient bath. It’s warm and thick. The oxygen mask is fitted over my head.

It’s time to go to sleep.


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The rich are chipped. The poor are not.

Gerald Malted sometimes mused on how his life would look to someone from a past century. For instance, right now, he felt like going shopping. It was five in the morning but that didn’t matter in today’s world for those who could afford it.

He walked out to the store. His chip broadcast his position. His wealth and status were sent into the ether, both of them in the upper blues. Police immediately scrambled to tail him at a discreet distance to make sure that no one attacked him.

When he got to the store, the doors opened automatically for him after sensing his chip. For people without chips, the doors would remain closed and locked, impossible to break through.

He helped himself to some groceries, put them in a bag, and walked out of the store. His account was automatically debited the moment he crossed the threshold to the outside night air.

The walk home was uneventful. His personal radio had six suggestions for songs that he might like. He said yes to all of them. His account was debited. His head swam with figures related to his investments, letters in progress, and other matters of wealth. They even operated while he slept.

Both his hands were full of groceries but it didn’t matter. The door to his building swung wide for him. The doors of the elevator parted like the red sea. The elevator quietly selected his floor and rose. His apartment lit up like a Christmas tree when he entered the already open door.

Gerald thought about the poor people who weren’t chipped. Their entire existence was one of paper money, keys for locks, and hands-on living. They had no voices in their heads other than the ones that were born with.

They were called ‘logs. After analogue. Their existence was low tech.

Gerald mused on the damage that a well constructed EMP would do to the rich. The poor would barely notice a difference. Building a fire hasn’t changed since the stone age. Neither has killing and cooking.

The rich, however, would be locked in their suddenly dark homes, prisoners behind blind doors without knobs.

Chilling thought but totally impossible thanks to the level of insulation in all the buildings, though Gerald.

He would have seemed like a magician to someone from a hundred years ago, having inanimate objects open for him and get out of his way.

He got started on making breakfast with his own hands; an eccentricity he liked to indulge.



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Click

-and I’m standing on a transporter pad but I’m not where I’m supposed to be.

I was standing in the five star hotel’s transporter half a second ago. Destination: Corroway 6. Pleasure moon.

I am now standing in a cold, dark cellar in what looks like a home-made transporter alcove. One dying fluorescent light stutters the room with camera flashes.

From what I can see, the room was a storage room of some sort. Maybe not medical but definitely clinical. Utilitarian. Possibly military. No ornamentation.

Not my destination, in other words.

Everything in the room has been overturned and smashed a long time ago.

It’s now that I realize with a shiver that I am naked. I look at my hands and I can see that the fingernails are bleeding. I don’t know what kind of accident could separate me from my clothing and my luggage.

I look down at the transporter pad I’m standing on.

It looks like a hot plate that hasn’t been used for years. It’s damp and not much bigger than a floor tile. The field circle definer is naked to the elements around the base like a hula hoop. Wires snake out from the base like streets from a European city. It’s with a cold pit of terror in my stomach I notice that one of assembler spikes is missing.

I’m trying very, very hard not to imagine what else might have gone wrong inside me.

I am rich. I am not fit. I crouch and step off of the transporter into the dank concrete room. Wiring hangs down from the ceiling. There is a moldy pile of fabric in the corner. Condensation is already gathering on my thick moustache. It’s wet here. The floor and walls are slippery.

The stuttering light is hurting my eyes and doing exactly zero for my mental health right now.

Breathing quickly and rubbing my arms, I walk through the fog of my own breath towards where I guess the door would be.

It opens just before I get there.

About six people a year disappear when using transporters. There’s a quantum collision, a little interference, a random energy wave and poof! No more traveler. Since there are about eleven million transports of both people and materials a day, this is considered acceptable.

I wonder if I am currently standing where they all go.

It would be a heartening thing to think of, all those people alive and well somewhere, if it wasn’t for what I’m seeing before me silhouetted in the doorway.

It looks like it may have been human at one point. Its head is long and its eyes glow in the shadows. It’s bipedal but the feet look too large.

With a wet click, its eyes change colour and I can feel myself being scanned.

I feel like I’ve been collected and it’s an entirely unpleasant feeling.

I’m picturing a big dish pointed out towards space just collecting what it can and occasionally snagging a human or a cargo load.

I’m thinking that whatever would do something like that would probably value a cargo load more than a witness.

I have no way to prove how rich I am unless I can get it to take me to a terminal. I have no way to get it to take me to a terminal unless I can talk to it.

I smile harder than I've ever smiled.

"Dirk Jensen. Head of offworld accounts." I say, and put my hand forward.



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