Neon City: A Cyberpunk Trilogy Read online

  Neon City

  A Trilogy

  By

  Adam J Smith

  Part of the Neon Series

  Neon City trilogy 1/3

  Neon series 4/9

  Copyright © 2019 Adam J Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author.

  Chapters

  The first day of the end of Neon

  The city

  Xi

  Daylight

  The detectives

  Slay

  Deke

  Home

  Cell

  Blimp

  Stim

  The ring

  Okay

  Paradise

  Uldous

  Homeroom

  Starlight

  Escape

  Chase

  Death

  The first day of the end of Neon

  The city

  Overpopulated and overstretched, Neon’s dome was splintering; district after district within withstanding the worst of an over-stimulated citizenry too eager and too bored to do anything but reproduce. It was in their genes. It wasn’t their fault. There was space – the authority evicted whole families from topside districts and relocated them to empty apartments beneath, to the sub-districts of pale lights and ever-night. It was a lottery. One day Joe and Jane Citizen were happily raising their family in the relative sunshine filtering through the dome’s skin, administering insurance accounts for the rich or wealthy or famous, or all three – and the next it was goodbye sun, goodbye rooftop barbecues, goodbye friends and family – unless they chose to move south too – and hello Negative Zero’s immigration barrier. Hello new home. Sure, the apartment might be twice the size as topside, but damn; the air was dank and sweaty and breathing it in made you feel as though you were filling your lungs with soup, all while looking out of tall, wide windows into blinking darkness and neon-punctuated misery.

  It wasn’t really space that was the issue. With the population approaching ten million, it was becoming increasingly difficult to feed everyone. The Agridome circumventing Neon’s dome took up as much square-footage as its inner counterpart, every inch of it a mixture of hydroponic water fields, mulch, bog and arable soil, all manned by automated farming machinery to produce everything from hemp to strawberries, beef to fish. Insect and fungi farms, and pigsty factories, resided near the tower bases, alongside the tower generators and waste management systems.

  There weren’t enough crickets and locusts on the planet to sustain the population growth any longer.

  The dome cracks may have been metaphorical, but the splintering society; the graffiti-daubed concrete fascias and crumbling brick walls, smashed glass and crime-darkened alleys, were the real deal. A man will do anything for money. A teen will lash out if there’s no future and no food in his belly. A mother will bleed for her children. It was a thousand stories played out in exactly the same way by actors who didn’t realise that just a generation or two earlier, this wouldn’t have mattered to them.

  They would have been content.

  But everything was about to change.

  Xi

  Xi Chen tried to open his eyes but could only manage the one. He tentatively touched the puffy skin around his left eye; soft and fluid yet firm. It may be a few hours before he could see out of that one again. What did he have in the freezer? he wondered. A hammer came down on his head – pain splintered across his brow and exploded down his neck.

  So thinking hurt, apparently.

  He rubbed his temples, urging the headache to ease. Hoping the hammer wouldn’t hit so hard next time.

  This was nothing new. Migraines came and went, but they usually weren’t accompanied by a black eye. Given the night he’d had though, it was hardly a surprise.

  How often had someone said, “That was the worst night of my life?” And how often had that been true? Must’ve been true for each of them at least once in their life, right? Xi calculated. Well last night was his. Last night was the worst night of his life.

  A thousand hands pressing down kept him from rising. He couldn’t even reach the glass of water on his bedside. Nails dug into his brain and thankfully, eventually, the little death drew him back into its dark embrace.

  ***

  He drifted between worlds of eucalyptus-drenched chrome lighting glinting yellows and whites, pure and beautiful and scattered with violet purples and blues – the dancefloor, he knew – and a puddle of shadows, splashing as curtains of darkness rained across his vision. Twin experiences, twin existences; running side by side on two tracks at the same time. As he wiped dancesweat from his eyes and drank water from a biodegradable bottle, splashing most of it down his neck, he also felt the patter of rain on his cheek, his other cheek rough against the concrete ground.

  Marlin was among the heads ducking and exulting, his long black hair swatting the air, droplets of whatever sweeping across the lights. Xi watched his friend and wondered what enhancements were active; whether Marlin was seeing stars in the thumping base, or climaxing as the mood influencer shot him with sparks of ecstasy. Lightning discharging through his veins.

  At the same time, Marlin was in pieces on the ground beside him. There was his face; that was unmistakable, attached to the dissociated head, and strangely serene. Cheeks white. But there was also the tattered yellow-check texture of his shirt, torn and stained with blood and burned at the edges. Arms and legs dribbled from exposed, de-limbed flesh. Metallic enhancement tattoos protruded like spikes, unbent.

  He looked up. Club Seige’s ceiling was an ocean of turbulent waves of multi-coloured light and the occasional flash of brilliance; and at the same time, it wasn’t there, instead an open wound exposing the higher floors of the club, ribs of pipework somehow still intact and bleeding in the gaping holes. Sprinklers showering him with rain.

  The ceiling disappeared and all the dream left him with was a rising tidal lake, dyed red, lapping at his lips. With each breath, he drank the blood of his friends.

  ***

  A loud, smashing bang resounded through the apartment with enough force to break open Xi’s drug-induced sleep. Nothing crazy, just some aspirin and EZ-Naps (over-the-counter sleeping pills he kept in the medicine cabinet for emergencies). His eye popped open with a little strain. Across his cheek brushed a draught and he heard mumbled shouting from down the hall, through the crack of the bedroom door. He was going to call out, but he barely had time to throw the blanket off his body before the bedroom door flew open, crashing into the wall and pummelling a hole where the door-handle struck. The boot of a soldier in black Kevlar armour came through behind it, followed by the soldier and his friends. A black-visored helmet swung left and right, as did the soldier’s rifle, checking for threats and ready to fire if one was found. They filed in, a swarm of insect-like duty-men and -women doing just as they were trained, just as they were told.

  To Xi’s sleep- and pain-addled brain they really were like flies, buzzing in, barking orders in that DO YOU UNDERSTAND? kind of voice reserved especially for the Armed Guard; he’d seen the Specials on AGTV – Living with the Guards and Pain, Gain and Fame – and now here they were, inside his apartment. He half-expected a camera crew to emerge, the VR camera hovering steadily over the scene.

  And what scene was that, exactly? He tried to speak but his mouth was dry. Even if it wasn’t, what would h
e say? Eight gun barrels pointed his way, forming a half-circumference around his bed, and it felt no less scary without depth perception. His eye, his head, his whole body, throbbed. He pissed himself but felt no shame – Is this not the done thing? Everyone pisses themselves.

  “STAY DOWN. DON’T MOVE!”

  I’m not going anywhere.

  The whole room fell into a kind of stasis, with the soldiers just standing, just pointing those death-bringers at his head. He had shuffled back against the headboard at this point, and noticed all too clearly that yes, each barrel sat squarely aimed at this face

  – Marlin’s serene face –

  and one wrong move and never mind his friend’s decapitated head, he wouldn’t even have a head to decapitate. The nameless soldiers just watched as he struggled to breathe, each breath a short release and escape, release and escape. Warmth emanated from the sodden thighs of his pyjama bottoms. Give it time, everyone would be able to smell it, even over the unaired odour of his unwashed body and clothes draped over chair-backs and piled on the floor. So much time seemed to roll out, his thoughts even trailed into wandering territory: They’re standing on my jeans. Will they find my contraband plug-ins? How many Armed Guards does it take to change a lightbulb? As many as instructed.

  Finally, he got his voice back. “What–”

  “QUIET!” The lead soldier dropped his rifle, slightly, and said “Target secure.”

  From the bedroom doorway – the door now hung off one hinge – came two people wearing LDPD uniform jackets. The Low District Police Department’s colours were dark-blue with light-blue accents on the cuffs and collars. Generally red in the face. The lead soldier took a step back to allow room for them: one a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair and stubble, around forty, and a woman, not much shorter, with long blonde hair in a ponytail, around thirty. They flashed their LDPD badges at him.

  “Inspectors Deke Allinson and Catherine Slay,” said the man, presumably Allinson. “Xi Chen, you are to be placed under arrest in the jurisdiction of the Low District PD, subject to the jurisprudence of Neon’s overarching judiciary. Your charges, subject to discretionary adjustment in revelation of all true facts, are as follows: murder in the first degree; conspiracy to create and dispense incendiary devices; the activation of incendiary devices with the intent of causing harm to human life; the activation of incendiary devices with the intent of causing destruction to property; disrupting public harmony; possession of illegal substances both narcotic and cybernetic; and dispensing propagandistic material.”

  Inspector Slay glanced at her partner. “You forgot failure to withhold urine until an appropriate dispensation time.”

  “Take him in, and get him cleaned up before questioning,” said Allinson as they turned and left the room.

  ***

  The day before his arrest, Xi Chen’s day was like any other. He woke at six in the morning, giving him just enough time to wash and get dressed and devour the overnight oats he soaked in water and pumpkin seeds, or oat milk if he was feeling particularly flush, before heading out to work. The start of another twenty-four-and-a-half hour day. That particular morning, he neglected to shave – which wasn’t a big deal as it took days for anything of significance to bristle through. He combed his short black hair and brushed his teeth and closed the door that would soon be hanging on one hinge, and left his apartment.

  Fellow commuters shambled by in the semi-comatose walk of the weary, dressed sharply and heading for the tall towers just a few blocks over. This was the Low District, the only part of Neon where the buildings weren’t three-hundred stories high or three-hundred stories below ground. Here, the expanse of dome curved high above their heads, unimaginably high, seeming to meet with the rooftops of the towers; those who had been near the top of the towers knowing that this was an illusion. For others, it was a delusion they accepted – for they could see it with their own eyes.

  Low-D, the locals called it. The sound of the commuter trains and autorail cars hummed and coruscated the length and breadth of the streets as the locals stepped on and off, sipping from coffee cups or injecting Joost into their augmented arm sockets. Not everyone had enhancements. Xi’s consisted of an arm socket and an adapted plug-in that could be inserted into his link socket at the base of his skull. This morning, coffee was sufficient.

  He got on his usual railcar, crammed between another Asian man and a tall, dark-haired woman, and held tight to the handrail. He looked for a friendly face, perhaps Fei or Yu, but instead found only the faces of the uncanny – faces he both knew and didn’t. Faces he saw every day but had no idea of their names.

  Which was fine by him. He swayed as the railcar levitated away on an electric hum, heading for Neon’s heart, at which point it would circle around to the opposite track and return to Low-D. As it entered into the territory of the towers, Xi felt the encroaching darkness from the overbearing walls as a heavy metal robe, both hooded and draped across his shoulders, pressing down from above. This day was no different. The day outside the window would at once be new and bright and promising, only for grey to press against the glass, with the inhabitants around him suddenly in sharp relief from the overhead lights.

  He heard jostling behind and turned just as Fei’s hand settled on his shoulder and gave him a squeeze. “Back down the hole,” said Fei.

  That was what they called it. “Hey, didn’t see you back there.”

  Fei reached up and grabbed a handrail. The railcar slowed to a stop, descending slightly, and picked up more passengers. No one departed.

  “No Yu this morning?”

  “She probably caught the early car,” answered Xi.

  “She was complaining again last night.”

  “What’s new?” He faced the window and the faint outline of their reflections like underwater creatures in a tank. No air. He watched Fei’s fish-like lips move, at once gasping and speaking.

  “If you’d turn up she wouldn’t have anything to complain about.”

  There was no intonation of malice, or emotion in general, as they spoke. Brothers passing yet another morning, talking through the mirror.

  “She says the same thing when you don’t turn up.”

  “Well she’s twigged that we’re never there at the same time.”

  “What we going to do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It won’t be forever.”

  “Do you ever feel bad?”

  The railcar slowed to another stop and more stepped on. Shoulders compressed shoulders and strangers became acquainted, particularly with those who had not showered that morning. Xi let the question hang. He didn’t like looking at it. Preferred it in his peripheral.

  Before long, the question just faded as though never there; a couple of blinks and gone. Fellow commuters tottered and steadied themselves as the journey down the hole continued. There were a handful younger than Xi, though not many – the vast majority were older and were split between two factions: those who did and those who did not. Wear their glasses, that was. Those who were smiling or at least looked rapt in something wore AR glasses, viewing anything from the latest news to the hottest TV show. It tended to be the older commuters, on their ten-thousandth journey perhaps, who neglected the AR glasses.

  And the youngest, too. Those with ample wrinkles and grey eye-whites barely even looked outside, preferring instead their feet. The smoother-skinned either talked or watched the outside go by, devoid of AR distractions.

  Feel bad?

  Xi could look around all he wanted but those words kept resurfacing. There was talk on the scene’s grapevine of an epidemic, though it was probably all hearsay and rumour. There would be reports out there, in the news, if those rumours were true.

  Yeah, right.

  Either way, his father was one of the suffering. Fei’s father. Yu’s father. Some kind of disease. What was the point of visiting if his father didn’t even recognise him? Didn’t even know he was there?

  The problem was
that Yu expected them to visit every day. Every evening; sitting with him, in either silence or listening to his incoherent babble about people that didn’t exist doing things that never happened. He was now almost immobile, needing assistance to reach his favourite armchair. Soon he would need help to gesture with those long arms of his. Arms that had once held him aloft; that had once embraced his mother. It was a twin kind of sadness; watching both his parents die – his mother all over again.

  So he did feel bad – for Yu. For her restricted freedoms and for having to do so much of the heavy lifting when it came to caring for their father. (The care workers disappeared in the evening.) Fei and Xi took turns, switching out the evenings; Yu knew what they were doing, for it was obvious by now. And she was right. She always was. Their father deserved them all, together, at the same time, even if they were nothing more than faded photographs. Perhaps when he looked at them he saw their faces as they were when they were five years old, and their unity was a catalyst. For there were occasional flashes, glimpses; sentences that may have related to something real. Yu clung to this hope more than either Xi or Fei.

  “I’m busy tonight,” he said.

  “What? I went last night – it’s your turn.”

  “I actually am, though. Got this… thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “A meeting.”

  Fei nodded – Xi saw it in the reflection, and the accompanying expression of disapproval. He waited for a reply and when none came, he sighed and twisted his head to look at his brother.

  “How’s Michelle?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Any more doctor’s appointments?”

  Fei rolled his eyes. “As if you suddenly care.”

  He lowered his voice, speaking almost in a whisper. This was family business, and while his grandparents, parents and now seemingly his brother wanted nothing more than to keep their cards close to their chests – This doesn’t concern you – Xi and Yu were different. “I do care. I want you to be happy. Both of you.”