Part 1: An End to Communal Life

Two decades into the future, things changed in the city. With an influx of population, the city spread well past its borders. As governments changed, so did technology. The NeuralNet integrates the entire populace, in a sense makes them one organized, dynamic system. When a new agent is introduced into the system, things will never be the same. The security forces, known among the citizens as Nannies, do everything in their power to keep the status quo alive, but they might not be enough to stop the most massive threat the city has faced since the War.

He drove down from the mountains in a prewar Ford, gas-powered, stripped of everything not needed to move, save the rearview that held his rosary; both windows down, while he chained smoked post-embargo Cubans, and ate Colombian coffee beans by the handful, cleansing his mouth with rotgut that tasted like heaven.

If his implant wasn’t completely jacked, wasn’t merely broadcasting, he would have known exactly how fast his heart was going. Must have been damn near twice the average, not from the speed he took through the turns or that pumped through his analogue veins, but from the burning in his brain he couldn’t wait to spread, like a delicious new venereal disease. How many days this would cut from his natural life, he could only guess, but he hoped more than the doctors could restore.

Twenty kilometers outside the city, he started counting the cameras, knowing his destination was getting close, by their increasing frequency. It wasn’t paranoia that made him think they were turning to follow him. He spotted the first camera at a crossroads that divided a field, separating the cattle from their loved ones and preparing them for the inevitable trip through the slaughter house. The fact that he could spot the camera could only mean they had gotten lazy. His foot jammed the accelerator down to fuck with anyone lucky enough to be watching them on the other end, faster than the truck wanted to go, smoke and exhaust bleeding from the hood. His display of arrogance brought the nanny from the side of the road to his bumper; the nanny’s car stressing to keep up, the red and white flashes from the beacons reflecting off the crucifix, bringing the truck to the median. The nanny got out from his car, his blue uniform ill-fitting and his hand purposively on his sidearm. Still holding the bottle, he said, “Let’s consider this an experiment,” as he swallowed the lovely burn.

The nanny came up slowly, running the tag through the NeuralNet and seeing it was registered to a BMW that had been reported stolen six months back from a long-term lot near the border. The nanny walked up to the open window and looked up the driver’s identity based on the NeuralNet data his Government Issue chip was meant to grant him.

This far out from the city, it took a whole microsecond for the nanny to get the information that the driver was a fugitive, convicted in absence of anti-NeuralNet terrorism and crimes against the Community, suspected of leading a radical Neo-Primitive cult and that he should be shot on sight. By the time this came to the nanny from the NeuralNet, there was a tingling behind his eyes; when he asked the man, now identified as Stockton Davies, age 57, to step out of the vehicle, the pins had started scraping a dull buzz that drowned out the wind. As Stockton took a long pull from the bottle, the nanny put his hand to his forehead and realized the connection was broken, that there was nothing coming in from the NeuralNet. Stockton put the half-full bottle in the nanny’s other hand, telling him, “Hold my drink,” got back in the truck and drove off, his fat tires spraying dust that caked the nanny’s wet crotch.

The experiment was a success.

Once in the limits of the sprawling mess, he stopped the smoking beast in a no-parking zone, lit up another smoke, and walked towards the center of town, humming an old blues number and blowing smoke in the face of a random schmuck in an expensive, bespoken suit who looked at him funny before going back to the conversation he was having over the NeuralNet. He was halfway through a story about the girl who had sucked him off the previous night before he realized he was talking to himself. The person on the other end of the connection realized something was wrong when his dick went soft and the only thing he heard was the high pitch of silence.

It took twenty minutes to bring down the NeuralNet, the broadcast from Stockton bouncing around from one poor cog to another, on and on and on until every skull across the sprawl was filled with a fuzzy nothing. Stockton ran down the crowded streets of confused people with the joy of a god, hugging anyone he could, kissing a dreadlocked woman on her forehead and smacking a nanny’s ass, all of them, the entire city-state standing dumb in the quiet aftermath.