signal three

Old Man Gum and I slushed through briny water. We followed the hump of a rusted maglev rail between us that twisted out like a huge dead snake. Posters for old tech and merch hung in yellowed plastic frames. Faded graffiti and glitchy screens lined the walls.

Midjourney recreated Gum’s and my flavorful walk for your guys.

I kicked the rail with my boot, half expecting it to move. “Never actually been down here. Did you ever take the train?”

Gum snorted. “I’m not that old, damn. These are pre-coalition, your abuelitos used them, maybe? Not positive they lived here then, though.”

“Heard it was the diamond of the post-war unification bill.”

“People sure wanted it to be. Fast as hell, too. Could get from Chicago to New Orleans in a couple hours.”

“Before they flooded.”

“Yeah.”

I tried to imagine what it must’ve been like to sit on a bullet train and watch the country zip by, but felt like I couldn’t get it right somehow. I’d never even been on a plane before.

“People mostly just looked at their phones,” Gum said a little while later, in shallower water. “I remember that pretty clearly.”

“So nothing’s changed,” I said.

Gum shrugged. “Now’s better, I think. In a lot of ways.”

We stood in silence for a moments at the bottom of a long stairwell. I debated asking him what was better about now, but seconds ticked by and it just sort of felt too long after that.

Wooden boards were nailed over the entranceways, meant to keep people out, but that obviously hadn’t worked over the years and now sunlight streamed through the large cracks and highlighted the dust floating around us.

Gum took off his NV frames and tucked them away. He slapped a Velcro patch on his arm for the UZPB. “When do you meet Lunchbox?”

“I dunno.” I pulled a pair of sunglasses and my respirator from my pack. “Wants me to buzz him when I’m back.”

Gum slipped on his own respirator. An electronic click sounded before he spoke, amplifying his voice a little, “Keep me looped in.”

“That’s a tender.”

“It’s ‘ten-four’. How do you not know that, yet?”

“Yeah, well, I’m hungry. Taking the old noodle a little while to warm up.” We walked up the steps and into the daylight, the heat already blistering. I held out a fist for him and he knocked it. “I’ll be at Selene’s later.”

Gum’s respirator clicked. “You gotta ride?”

“Van is a couple blocks down.”

“Talk later,” he said, then gestured to the building tops, “Be careful around here. Not a lot of privacy.”

A bus slowed across the street. Gum jogged over to it and vanished behind the black out windows.

I watched the bus leave and stood alone in that mostly forgotten part of UZ, some weird corner in an old business district that led to a subway station. At some point it had to have been busy; and even back then the old world had already died. That place, it seemed, had died twice. I was surprised there was even bus to pick up Gum.

Down the road a bell rung. An old woman stood in a small food stand. She waved at me and called out in Mandarin, “Breakfast!”

My stomach growled. “Oh, jianbing!”

I hurried across the street and pointed at my order from the pictures on the counter. The old lady nodded, talking to Mandarin, and poured batter from a plastic pitcher onto the large hot plate. She scrambled an egg and vegetables in a separate burner.

I’m always impressed by how smoothly some people worked: their movements and their ticks, the mise en place dance of familiarity.

The old woman smashed a cracker, folded the jianbing, slipped it on a paper plate and handed it over. I transferred some dollar-bucks.

I ate in the shadow of some faceless megabuilding and enjoyed the unusually quiet morning in UZ. Even out there in the borderlands, people were dedicated to making the concrete and metal bearable: potted plants grew on almost every balcony, small trees or hanging ferns. Some residents seemed to have big plastic boxes and grew their own vegetables. I was always mildly surprised no one had stolen them, but I guess that’s just part of UZ; people are pretty generous in spite of the rest of the continent. Or world for that matter.   

A couple kids kicked a ball around a courtyard. A security camera rotated above them. It stopped, the lens focused in my direction. I waited for it to continue, but it didn’t. I looked around, the sensation of paranoia creeping into my chest, until I noticed another security camera, frozen, lens facing me.

Not paranoia then. Reality.

Not a lot of privacy, like Gum said.

I grabbed my backpack and continued on, dumped my plate in an overfilled trashcan. The cameras turned with me, cascading in a digital waterfall until I rounded a corner where the cameras seemed not to care as much. Or were at least a little more discreet.

Down the street on the left was the parking garage. I hoofed up and around the stairwell until the floor where my van, my beauty, looked as good as I had left her. I set my palm on the reader panel and the sliding door popped open.

I made a quick glance around the back: bed and tech all seemed good, still a nice little home away from home when I need to let some heat cool. I kicked off my boots, peeled off my socks, and checked my phone.

Lunchbox had already texted asking about the job. Abundant iron work did not give him patience apparently. I texted him the job was done, I had the thing they wanted, he could come get it whenever.

He responded immediately: Coming.

Shit.

I stepped out of my pants (because home is not a place for pants), and made sure everything with the lunchbox for Lunchbox was in order. Gum’s distaste for the big metal idiot was not lost on me, like at all, but I still felt like there were some things the old man didn’t get, the least of which being me, in that place, in that time, doing what I do, trying to the live the life I was living.

And that moment, sitting on my van bed in my underwear, was the first time I think I ever really thought about it: What life am I really living anyway?