Dark Blue Monstropolis

“Anything new?”

The Node, which in this case was a young red-headed man whose face was punctuated by equal portions of pimples and freckles, flipped up the shades on his round glasses. “Hmm?” he asked, making the sound through his nose.

Argo was not amused. “I said, Dwayne: anything new?”

The Node brought the shades down again with a disgusted click. “Don’t call me Dwayne when I’m on duty, Argo. That’s uncool, man.” He flipped a page of the smart book and with an audible click the pages rewrote themselves. A short, obviously. Argo could probably fix it. Mayster could probably thump it and fix it. No offer of services here, though, since Dwayne was pissing him off. Argo was five years older than the kid and two heads taller.

They get a job working the Node and suddenly they feel much more important than they actually are.

“Answer my question first go and I won’t have to wonder whether or not I have your attention.”

Mayster was coming down the alley now. Mayster was as tall as Argo, yes, but sleek and black like a hunting cat. He was impossible to miss unless he wanted you to, and besides, katana blades as nice as the one Mayster wore in a scabbard on his back were rare.

Mayster reached the Nodebooth and grinned at Argo, ignoring Dwayne the Node. “Are we doing business?”

Before Argo could respond, Dwayne the Node was moving. He reached behind him and pushed something large to one side of the booth: a metal storage container, long since decommissioned from some military owner, now containing–

Mayster’s hand darted in and pulled out one of the rectangles contained within. The last models produced had been metallic silver–and these were sturdier than the older 5000 series. Their pearl exteriors always looked yellow and jaundiced from bleaching in the sun. “iPods. 6000 series.” Mayster shook the rectangle slightly and heard very little moving around inside that wasn’t supposed to be. “Sounds decent. We are doing business.”

“The guys said they wanted something back,” Dwayne the Node was saying. “Find some blanks and send them something back.”

Argo slipped his earpieces from the pocket of his dungarees. Mayster’s were already in. They went through the iPods, sampling. Two out of three were damaged beyond caring. Oh sure, you could go in and try and reconstruct the drives, but you hardly ever found anything that made it worth the doing.

Mayster spoke up, “This is good. Do you know this?” And Argo jabbed his own earpieces into the device Mayster was holding.

“‘We can’t evolve alone without you?’” Argo asked.

“I know,” Mayster grinned. “Shit has potential.”

“Who the hell is it?” Argo asked. “This is choice.”

“File name’s botched. No idea. But it’s good, right?”

“Yeah, we can work with this.”

And so it went. They managed to pull five songs from the box and threw back into the mix three originals that Argo had created for just such an occasion. Nothing special, but good enough–if you skimped on Sneakernet, then Sneakernet skimped back.

“Any other messages?” Mayster asked Dwayne the Node.

“Nothing in this packet,” the redhead replied. “I’ll let you know.” Another page turn brought another click.

The noise made Mayster’s eyebrows go up. He leaned over the Nodebooth’s counter and Dwayne shrank backwards from him in return. Mayster paid no mind. Being a man who dressed and acted like a ninja out of an old film reel, and further being a man who smiled almost perpetually, he was used to people trying to give him a wide berth.

He looked over the boy’s book–it was a shitcobble, that was for sure. Maybe five pages worked tops, and it was so sad the kid only had the one copy of a men’s zine to jerk off to–the kid got points for putting up educational zine covers to at least give the illusion he was studying, but everybody knows.

Mayster looked the book up and down and then thumped it. Twice. On the spine. “Try it now,” he commanded.

Dwayne the Node flipped a page and there was no click. The pages did not needlessly refresh themselves. In fact, a sixth page sprang to life and started to produce content: a topless woman wearing only a thong bottom. The boy scrabbled to cover it.

“Good,” Mayster intoned meaningfully, the boy’s face reflected in the red impenetrable lens of Mayster’s sunglasses. “Very good.”

Mayster turned and walked down the alley, still grinning, and Argo followed. Mayster loved to mess with people’s shit. It’s what he lived for.

As they stepped from the alleyway into the street, the wind picked up, and dust began to billow at them down the length of the drag.

Argo pulled down his goggles, “This shit is terrible.” He was grateful for the seals in his pack. Nothing fucked with smart vinyl quite like the sharp particles that came invading from the Bowl. He pulled up a scarf over his face and switched to his headmic. Mayster had already done the same. Their earpieces still in, their voices crackled at each other.

“I feel a distinct urge for coffee,” Mayster said in Argo’s ears.

“I feel a distinct urge to get out of this town,” Argo responded, making his way towards a nameless café, whose pink naon sign flickered “OPEN” into the darkening daylight.

The first door’s seals opened and they stepped into the airlock. After the first door settled into place, they heard the whoosh of the turbines as they and their clothes were blown clean of dust. It was a pain in the ass and it could knock you over if you weren’t expecting it, but it beat tasting more grit in your coffee than was absolutely necessary.

This completed, the second door opened and the air conditioning hum welcomed them in.

Argo tasted dust on his tongue and thought again how much he wanted to leave. Without an invite, though, it was impossible to move further east. He had a fear that ate at his guts: that he would never see anything of the world, that he would never spin anywhere east, and that he would wind up dying there on the outskirts of the desert. But such was life in Indianapolis.