[Original Novel] Metal Fever, Part 10

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While scrolling through the listings, I opened the cafe’s beverage menu. The flavors were all utterly alien. Snow pear? Is there really a species of pear that grows in snowy climates? For that matter, what the fuck flavor is “swallow’s nest”? Does it taste like twigs and egg?

I recognized the bubble milk tea, so that’s what I bought. With grass jelly instead of those little tapioca balls though, as I could never stand their texture. Apparently beggars can be choosers after all.

I then went searching for info about the security boxes I saw on the ebikes. However the internet in China is heavily censored, so perhaps unsurprisingly I could find no clues on how to compromise them. Probably there are US sites with the info, but access to US domains is similarly crippled here.

I searched the darknet next. There were some gadgets for sale, designed to defeat the “point cloud imagers” as they’re evidently called...but well out of my price range. Sites offering info on how to defeat their security manually were behind D-Coin paywalls.

I could tell I needed to consult someone with more expertise in this area, so I sought out a dedicated chat lobby set up by local criddlers. Someplace they could warn each other about upcoming police sweeps so they could move their tents in advance, sell meth to one another, that sort of thing. These days, even the homeless need to network.

As expected, they were planning a mass ebike heist. I mentioned offhand that I was currently sitting in a net cafe with upwards of twenty ebikes parked just outside, though for obvious reasons I didn’t specify which one just yet.

“I’m new to the area. I don’t know shit about ebike security, but Panopticon is my bitch. I can have all forms of surveillance in the parking lot offline for at least five minutes, maybe more. If you’ve got the manpower to steal that many bikes in such a narrow window-”

There was a flurry of confused posts about just who the fuck I was and how I got in here without being invited. “I’m just that good. So, any takers?” Silence after that, until one of them asked for a demonstration.

It was easy enough to set up, hampered only by my paranoia that Panopticon security might’ve meaningfully improved in the last six years. But as a government operated surveillance network, of course it hadn’t.

I knocked out Panopticon for an entire city block, hijacked a nearby autocab and had it do donuts in an intersection for ninety seconds before the transit authority remotely shut it down, locking me out. The criddlers then spent the following hour double checking my work to ensure I’d competently covered my tracks before resuming negotiations with me.

I waited another hour after that for the criddlers to consult whoever it is that gives such people orders. I suppose even rats have kings. I had no prior relationship with them, and as such was unable to negotiate any sort of partial upfront payment.

Instead, once the time we agreed upon arrived, I double checked that I had my ducks in a row...then pulled the trigger. Conceptually, very much like an invisible electronic Rube Goldberg machine. Fragile, elaborate workarounds to each security barrier executing one after the next.

The overhead lighting flickered. I heard the screech of rubber on asphalt, a few honks, and angry Chinese shouting. That wasn’t me, was it? I only meant to attack surveillance. I then heard a low pitched electrical whine as the truck pulled up.

All exterior feeds were dead by this point. Shame, as I’d like to have watched them work. More confusing shouting, probably coming from people who don’t often see criddlers pour out the back of a truck and start jacking ebikes.

I dared not go to the front in order to watch for obvious reasons. Just sat patiently until I heard the electrical whine return, signifying that the truck was pulling away. More confused shouting, this time at least a dozen different voices.

Over the din outside, I could just barely make out the manager on the phone with the cops. I could also hear lookey-lous emerging from their cubicles to find out what the noise was about. That’s when I allowed myself to join them.

Six years ago I might’ve been careless enough to go on ahead, drawing attention to myself. That was the old me. The new me moves in groups. The new me blends into the crowd. I hung back, not wanting to appear in any photographs as the police drones showed up.

They didn’t even bother to unplug the damn bikes. The sparking, sheared-off ends of the charging cables were still dangling from the sockets, snipped-out GPS trackers and PCI security boxes littering the empty parking spaces. Sloppy. But then, these are the fleas you get when you sleep with dogs. I headed back to my cubicle, noting that the exterior feeds were all coming back online little by little.

It proved even tougher than expected to collect my earnings. The thing about criddlers is, when they say they don’t remember making any deal with you, they’re often telling the truth. Either way, a little roughhousing typically loosens up the ‘ol neurons.

“I can take you to him!” the pitiful figure sputters, bubbles of blood forming on his lips. I’d knocked all three of his teeth out, not one of my proudest moments. “He lives on the bay! We can take my boat!”

Far be it from me to understand how somebody living on the edge of starvation affords a boat. Stolen, surely? But then how do they get away with it when they float ‘em right out there in the bay, smack dab in front of God, the cops and everybody?

The answer arrived less than an hour later. The wretch I laid out still nursed his bruises, mumbling spitefully as he heaved the little rusty dinghy’s steering lever this way and that. The batteries were bare, unshielded terminals just chilling in the open.

How does he never electrocute himself? What does he do about rain? These fuckers are halfway clever about some things. But only whatever they absolutely have to stay on top of in order to keep the meth coming.

We sailed lazily down a waste water channel, at the bottom of a massive concrete trough with sloped sides. For flood waters, I assume. As we emerged into the bay, the modest wake left behind us beautifully distorted the reflection of Shenzen’s skyline, now rippling hypnotically in the water.

The last pair of buildings we passed between had a multi-story skyway connecting them. At that point, can you even really call it a skyway? I’ve seen whole restaurants and clubs tucked away in those things. Seemingly endless rows of windows cascading upwards, some of them lit up from within. Lives stacked upon lives, stacked upon lives.

A sudden glimpse of a beautiful pale face framed by short black curls captured my attention. The lowest floor of the skyway, now looming overhead...had skylights in it. I boggled. It was...the ceiling to them. Somehow? She stood upside down, looking “up” at me through the skylight. Down, really. What the fresh hell is this baboozery?

I noticed other party goers milling about all around her. All of them upside down relative to me. She waved half-heartedly, then resumed socializing. As we pulled away from the skyway, I could tell from the silhouettes that every damned person inside that thing was inverted.

Some sort of high tech gravity gimmick. Six years can really do all that? Must be. How do they get turned the other way up when they want to leave? Does blood pool in their heads or is it attracted to the floor plating as well? Assuming it’s the floor plating that does it, anyway.

The boat man noticed my confusion and snickered to himself. Probably thinking “Get a load of this asshole, never even seen an upside down party before.” In fact it would prove to be the least astonishing sight of the day.

All the rich people watercraft were docked in cloistered marinas by the shore. The rest of the bay was given over to floating trash piles I’ve occasionally heard the media refer to as “hoboats”. I wonder if they ever hold hoboat regattas.

The motor whine died down as we approached what looked to be a massive trash barge. “Hey, hang on. This isn’t what we agreed to.” He gestured for me to hold my horses. I was about to swim for it, figuring he meant to have a buddy shoot me, then hide my body in the trash heap.

Instead, somebody shouted at us. Muffled shouting, from an unseen source. It almost seemed to come from...but that can’t be, surely? It seemed to be coming from...inside the trash heap. That’s when I noticed for the first time that it didn’t even stink of garbage.

I awkwardly stepped off the dinghy and onto the barge, running my hands along what I now realized was just a thin fiberglass shell with trash glued to the outside. Newspapers, candy wrappers, soda cans. Very little of it could decompose. It mostly just smelled of glue, and a trace of something else. Burning chemicals?

“Hey, where’s the doorbell on this sumbitch?” The boat man made a swooping motion with his hand that seemed to mean I could expect there to be an opening on the bottom to surface through, should I dive underneath it.

I called out more questions, but he swore at me and shoved off. Before I could jump back onto the boat, he’d pulled away and was headed back to shore. Still better service than an autocab! I didn’t come all this way to twiddle my thumbs on a fake mountain of garbage, so even as I pre-emptively regretted it, I dove in.

The water was a soupy mixture of fuck knows what all. I took care to wipe as much of it as possible from my face and hair after climbing up through a hatch in the floor. Unseen hands offered me a clump of rags.

Once I got as much of that shit outta my eyes as I felt I was able to, I opened them. To my astonishment, the fellow who’d offered me the rags was a white man. Frazzled grey hair with a few visibly burnt ends. A face full of mangy stubble. Decked out in oil stained swim trunks and most of a T-shirt. The tattoo on his arm read “Crazy Dave”.

“You must be the glorious motherfucker what arranged for that Panopticon blackout. I guess I owe you one, don’t I.” He didn’t yet say what he owed me one of. I reminded him the specific amount we agreed upon beforehand.

“Oh, I don’t know about all that. Look where you are.” I glanced around. The hollow interior of the faux trash heap was populated by a dozen other twitchy, snaggletoothed criddlers busy with welding torches. They all focused intently on the task before them, bodies trembling as they worked. One paced frantically back and forth, animatedly arguing with himself in whispers.

The burning chemical smell was much stronger in here. My eyes once again began to water, the skin around them swelling slightly. I briefly considered the cost/benefit analysis of having nictitating membrane implants put in under my eyelids. How could he stand it in here without a mask on? They all seemed totally unbothered.

“So you’re fucking me over. Is that it?” Dave said that was unnecessarily strong language. “You’re new. I couldn’t find anything about you except that you’re a body hopper, everything we turned up was about the conshelfer who used that body before you.

The way I see it, that probably means you’re running from somebody. You already got enemies you can’t handle. Can you afford to cross me?” I grimaced, but didn’t dispute his analysis. He smiled slightly, rotten brown teeth showing through the gap between his lips.

“That’s what I thought. You also beat up one of my guys, or did you forget? After that, you think I should roll out the red carpet for you? On the other hand, that was some impressive work you did. I might could use you again in the future, so I tell ya what. I’ll let you go with one of the bikes. Your pick.” The filthy fucker. That load of bikes was worth at least three D-coin.

Wishes aren’t horses though, nor are they bikes. If this beggar means to ride, a deal will have to be struck. “It’s funny” I chuckle. “The first ex-pat I see in China, and he immediately fucks me over.” Dave looked bewildered. “We’re in China??”

At the far end of the enclosure, I found a row of freshly rebuilt ebikes. Frankensteinian combinations of mismatched parts, though at least a token effort had been made to spray paint the plastic body panels and fairings to match.

What a sorry looking stable to choose from. Behind the bikes was a stack of sleep capsules and a gas shelter they must’ve jacked. The hoses, normally hooked into city air utilities, were instead fastened to industrial sized compressed oxygen cylinders.

I understood where he got the sleep capsules. There was a glut of them even six years ago, manufacturing overproduction due to the intensifying exodus of climate refugees from parts of the globe no longer fit for people. Now bums lug them out of the landfill, run them off a jacked solar panel or splice discreetly into city power. The modern shanty.

I also understood where he got the gas shelter, and why. But how did he get his hands on those O2 cylinders? How did he manage to build this fake trash barge? How fucked do your priorities have to be, when you can accomplish feats of criminal brilliance like the one I’m standing in now...but you can’t hold down a job, or an apartment?

When you’re that far gone, all your brainpower goes to taking whatever steps are necessary to keep the meth flowing...no matter how elaborate. Intelligent stupidity. The limitless energy and fanaticism imparted by a brain full of crank, misdirected into the construction of this floating fiberglass absurdity.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 11!}