5

"Good morning, Bob the Bold! It's another beautiful day in Cyber City! The weather is [WEATHER MODULE NOT FOUND]! Time to eat your breakfast-flavored protein paste, drink your caffeinated hydration ration, and get ready to crush it today!"

8am. 8am in the fucking morning, and Ratboy's habcube was running a custom wake-up alarm that he could not figure out how to disable. A cute little video of a cartoon sun rising over the city played on the screen, and the speakers blasted upbeat narration right into his ears, and no attempt to cancel it or reprogram it or even bargain with the damn thing's rudimentary programming had borne any fruit. After two weeks, all Ratboy could think to do was bust up the habcube's screen.

Maybe if the alarm were nature sounds or a pleasant little chime or even just some standard beeps and buzzes, it wouldn't have been so bad. But it wasn't. It was that weird goddamn custom job that Ratboy hadn't even known the habcubes supported. And it looped, over and over, literally forever, until he manually deactivated it every morning, a task that required just enough brainpower that it was hard to fall back asleep afterwards.

"Good morning, Bob the Bold! It's another beautiful day in Cyber City! The weather is–"

Ratboy groaned and slapped at the screen, his fingers clumsily entering in his PIN for the habcube until he'd deactivated the alarm for the next 24 hours.

He rolled over and squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, but sleep didn't come. Instead, he began thinking, his mind consumed by thoughts about finding real work, about how long he'd been in the Q and how many of his contacts were dead now, or had moved out of the City, or had simply ignored him when he reached out, about Sammie, and–

He took a deep breath and let it out. "Fuck you, Bob. You and your stupid goddamn name. I hope you never crushed it. I hope you handled it with soft little baby hands. I hope it crushed you."

***

Ratboy crawled out of the habcube a little bit before noon, foregoing the footholds that were molded into the exterior of the stack and dropping straight to the ground. Inside his habcube, the sounds of the outside world had been muted. The sounds of the dozens of other tenants on his floor snoring, eating, watching vids, living their lives in their discrete little boxes had been just part of the background. Here in the hallway, he was getting the whole sordid story from everyone. People argued on their handhelds with their significant others. Someone's sleep apnea made them sound like a dying chainsaw. There was the rich, oily scent of frying food, which made no fucking sense to him, because how was anyone even cooking in the tight confines of a habcube?

Ratboy stood up to his full height and stretched his hands over his head. He rolled his shoulders back, cracked his neck, and padded naked over to the showers to use his daily five minute allotment of water. Normally he preferred to shower at night, washing away the accumulated dust and grime of a day spent living in Cyber City in a less crowded environment, but he had shit to do today. Eight-Ball had told him that he had a paying gig and would only discuss it in person. Ratboy suggested hitting a bar, a caff shop, anything, but no, Eight-Ball insisted on the annual block party back in the old neighborhood.

"It'll be good for you, Rats!" he'd said. "Let the gente know you're back and full of piss and vinegar, ready to take on the City!"

"Let 'em know I'm back, broke as a joke, and living in a fucking habcube stack, you mean," Ratboy had replied. But Eight-Ball wouldn't budge, and so Ratboy at least wanted to make a good impression his first time back around everyone. That meant showing up looking sharp and smelling like money, and that meant braving the midday shower rush, the PlayPal with his waterproofed headset and his belly full of antiemetics, the drunk lady singing karaoke, the kid that didn't seem to be anybody's child but that everyone watched out for to make sure they weren't getting snatched away. Ratboy stood waiting his turn, then stepped under an open showerhead and put his palm chip against it. Cold water poured out.

Every habcube shower was stocked with soap, but hot water was extra, and Ratboy wasn't about to drop the hard-earned bits he got from his monthly BASIC on comfort. Still, as a morning shower, it kind of worked. The cold certainly woke him the fuck up, and that in turn kept him from spending 50 bits on something caffeinated.

The five minute chime went off, the water stopped, and the floor-to-ceiling air jets blasted Ratboy dry. Nice and clean, he headed over to his assigned locker to dig out his clothes and shoes. He slipped on tattered jeans, an old smashball jersey for a team that no longer existed (Go Kroener Killers!), and a pair of black work boots that had been scuffed and scratched into a faded grey.

In the locker room mirror, he saw he needed a shave; his beard had reached the point where it stopped being thin stubble and started being patchy whiskers. His dark hair was messy from sleep, with tufts pointing in wild directions. When he flexed his muscles, his arms looked simultaneously thin and flabby, a consequence of the shit food and lack of workout equipment in the Q. He'd never been particularly muscular, but being too proud, then depressed, then angry to do push-ups in the mud did him no favors.

All things considered, not the most dashing he'd ever looked. But you gotta give yourself some grace, he thought. He was only two weeks out of prison, after all, and if he was being honest, it wasn't like he was on top of the world when he'd gone in. Once he found some work, legitimate or otherwise, he'd get some better clothes, a proper apartment, decent food.

He bared his teeth. Gums looked good, at least. The BASIC vitamin pills were keeping the scurvy at bay.

He smiled. It felt forced. It was, but fuck it, he wasn't giving his mouth a choice. He smiled again. He grinned. He pointed at his reflection in the mirror. "Hey, how's it going! Long time no see! Me? Ah, shit, you know how it is."

The smile faltered. His mouth twisted up in annoyance. Five years in the fucking Q, and now the fucking block party with the same fucking people doing the same fucking thing. Including him.

"Fuckin' Sammie," he muttered, and he turned away from the mirror.

***

The exterior of the habcube block was all bare, towering concrete, save for the first two stories. Those were covered in a riot of graffiti: gang signs. Political slogans. Invectives against the City, the ISA, the CCPD, the System, God. Reminders that defacement of public property would not be tolerated. But aside from power-washing the notices clean whenever they became completely illegible, the City had long ago given up on trying to control the graffiti. Instead, the City's unofficial position had become attempting to put a positive spin on things and declaring the walls to be a forum for outsider art and community engagement and radical self-expression.

Which, fair. There really were some quite artistically rendered depictions of genitalia and some pretty innovative slurs to be found on the habcube walls.

But that wasn't what Ratboy was looking at as he stepped outside and into the midday sun. Instead, he found himself face-to-face with the Real and the constant dull roar of the traffic that flowed north and south atop it.

Ratboy's lip twisted in disgust, a tiny ball of anger settling into his stomach the way it always did when he had to look at it. And he'd spent his whole life having to look at the goddamn thing. 45 miles of "traffic innovations," the City Council called it. A de facto boundary between the Highs and the Lows, 50 feet tall, with plenty of space for advertisements on one side and digital projections of the city's splendor on the other. Guess which side got which.

Access checkpoints every couple miles along its length; automated toll booths with plenty of lanes in the nicer neighborhoods, and reinforced concrete walls with armed guards and dogs in the ones like Ratboy's. Just glancing up and down the street, he counted three guard towers waiting to rain down hell on anyone that got the idea to try to sneak into the Highs for a little self-directed experiment in wealth redistribution. Shit, the private security company manning the things was likely to shoot you if you tagged one of the vid screens blasting advertisements into the Lows. He'd seen it happen.

Well. He could at least spit in the general direction of the thing, so he did. Then he turned to make his way to meet Eight-Ball and head to the party.

***

It was about a half-mile walk from the habcube stack to the Flea Line bus stop. The Flea Line wasn't one of the "good" buses that ran through the Lows. Probably it'd never been intended to be. Why else would they have actually named the damn thing the Flea Line? It conjured up mental images of sticky, smelly seats, and it delivered in spades. But even by the standards of his admittedly pessimistic recollection, being on the Flea Line was miserable.

It was crowded past the point of being standing room only; passengers who hadn't been able to get inside clung to its exterior, hanging off of the iron bars that shielded its windows, talking to each other and to passers-by in the road in a dozen different languages. Some gorilla had even come up to him growling, "You're in my seat." At least the goon had left Ratboy alone when he said, "Pretty sure I'm not," and revved up the augmentations in his own hands, a heavily damaged, repaired, and modified Globokhem Geschickte Glove. Electricity arced between his fingers and blades extended from his fingertips. Thank God, the creep hadn't been spoiling for a fight; the Geschickte was meant for frying electronics and picking locks, not for combat.

Hell, even the driver looked a little rough and a little dangerous in her bulletproof cabin and her worn and faded Uroyo Move! uniform. She was an older woman with an outdated bionic eye that rotated and panned to follow passengers as they got on and off the bus and a cybernetic arm without any synthetic dermis to keep it from looking skeletal. She sat with her back to the windshield, heedless of the movement of the steering wheel and the pedals as the bus traveled its appointed route.

Still, taking the Flea Line was a hell of a lot better than having to walk through the neighborhoods that surrounded it. The streets were crowded, dirty, and, this close to the bay, perpetually wet. The gente with regular work that took them out of the Lows hadn't returned yet, and everyone who remained was busy with their own things: errands, odd jobs, illicit activities, just socializing. Ratboy watched the world go about its business through the greasy window of the bus and sniffed. Christ, forget the Highs, he thought. Old Town's gotta be better than this. Or, fuck, even the Harbor District.

Suddenly the Flea Line came to a screeching halt, Ratboy pitching forward in his seat and nearly slamming his face onto the hard plastic headrest in front of him. "End of the line!" the driver called out. "Everyone off the bus!"

Ratboy blinked in surprise. He looked through the bus's windshield and saw the road ahead of them disappearing into the bay. Cars sat half-submerged in the water. Buildings sank into the muck, and people waded between them in protective overalls, or even paddled clumsily assembled rafts to and fro. The street signs said they were on Weak Street, a block before the bus should have turned on Bay towards Universidad. "What the fuck is this?" Ratboy hissed.

The rando in the seat next to him squeezed past Ratboy, the rough dirty denim covering his ass swabbing Ratboy's face as he went. "Seawall broke," he muttered. "Road's closed."

"Are you kidding me?" Ratboy asked, but the man was already gone. No one else was protesting, so this must have been expected, and wasn't that the Lows all over? Always accepting the unacceptable? Ratboy stood and made his way towards the front of the bus. "Closed since when?"

"Since four years ago, Sir," the driver said. Her face was shifting from casual indifference to visible annoyance. Ratboy knew he should let it be, shouldn't risk any stupid encounters with public authority figures (no matter how minor). She had a uniform. She had a badge. She had the standard-issue bus driver sidearm, even, but he couldn't help himself. He'd never been able to.

"Are you fucking serious? The seawall breaks and for four fucking years, there's no bus service past Bay Road? I'm trying to get out to Costano Park! What am I supposed to do?"

"Walk? Swim? Pay a trajinero to paddle you over there? Not my problem, Sir."

Deep breath. Don't get into it. Don't become the kind of person some asshole records and throws onto PlayLand, and then the CCPD comes to pick you up for harassing a bus driver. "Don't you care," Ratboy said slowly, forcing himself to be calm, forcing himself not to let his voice rise or his fists ball up or his body do anything that could be even remotely construed as a threat, "that the neighborhood's flooded and underfunded and a nightmare to get around?"

"I don't get paid to care, Sir," the driver said simply. "I get paid to see my passengers safely from one end of the Flea Line to the other. I've done that. Now, are you going to get off, or do I need to remove you?"

Ratboy got off.

***

It was late afternoon by the time Ratboy made it to the block party. He'd heard the laughter and the pounding music, smelled the cooking food and the vaporized drugs long before he'd seen anyone he knew. He checked his look in the busted sideview mirror of an abandoned car, and sighed. His clothes were soaked through with sweat and bay water and who knew what else. His hair was flat against his head. He was pretty sure he smelled like some combination of sulfurous mud, dead fish, and body odor. "Fuck'd I even shower for?" he muttered to himself.

As Ratboy passed through the old neighborhood, he found the houses just as he'd remembered them, a haphazard product of different periods of construction and failed attempts at revitalization. Most of the smaller and newer homes were built nearly on top of each other, the original walls knocked down and new walls erected to create shared living spaces. A few older homes with wood frames were covered in moss and lichen and reinforced with scrap plastic and metal, slouching and moldering into the bay. Everywhere improvised walkways and ladders connected the buildings like the strands of silk composing a spider's web.

The sprawling intersection where Paul Avenue met Henry Street and John Street was crowded. Gente milled around in yards where the water was only shoe deep, stood on porches where it was deeper, rowed around on improvised paddleboards, played games, cooked, smoked, drank.

Ratboy let his mind wander, thinking about who was likely to be at the block party. Neon Jimmy, probably, and his two buddies, U-diss and… the one whose name Ratboy could never remember, the forgettable one. Jojo. Kitty. The Shav. All the tíos and tías that had taught Ratboy and his friends how to lie, cheat, and steal to survive. The kids of that generation, all teens by now, or even older. The kids of his own generation, old enough to be running around and getting into mischief.

Sammie, maybe.

Ratboy frowned, sighed. That was a stupid thing to worry about. The odds of Sammie showing up in Cyber City ever again were so fucking low, he might as well be worrying about getting struck by a meteor. She was supposed to be out in Ciudad Sal (at least, that had been the plan five years ago) and what, she'd just randomly be back in Cyber City this one weekend for this one party? What a stupid thing to spend all day worrying about. C'mon, he thought. Let it go. Think about food, and booze, and if any of the girls from the day are still single and down to fool around.

And if she's there, I'll be… civil. Yeah. Civil. I'll say hi, ask how she's doing, and just move on. I won't mention the plan to rob her sugar daddy. The CCPD blasting on their loudspeakers that they have the apartment surrounded and would I like to take a survey about my satisfaction with my arrest today. The trial. The five years spent in the Q on a three-month sentence because the fucking CCPD lost my paperwork.

Huh. I could be civil, or I could strangle her. Either way.

Up ahead, someone noticed him and raised a single hand in greeting. "Rats!" they called out. Eight-Ball's voice. Ratboy's heart did something complicated in his chest. It was his first time seeing his best friend in five years since the Q didn't permit visitors, and Eight-Ball looked… different. He had new tattoos. He'd shaved his head to hide his thinning hair. He'd evidently saved up the money to get some cool fucking knucks with his name on them.

Eight-Ball never looked different. He wasn't supposed to. He was always Eight-Ball.

"Heads up!" Eight-Ball called out, and Ratboy jumped. Something was sailing through the air, a cylinder tumbling end over end. Ratboy caught it with one hand. Metal, a beer can, now guaranteed to explode when he opened it.

Ratboy felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. How many times had he done this, caught and chugged a bottle or a can someone had lobbed at him? He'd lived for these summer block parties as a kid, and something in his chest unclenched at being present for one again.

Ratboy turned the can over in his hand for a moment, shrugged, popped the top, and held it away from his face as half the contents sprayed out. Eight-Ball and the others with him cheered, and Ratboy raised the can in salutations, and took a deep drink.

"What's good, mi gente?" Ratboy asked, and a chorus responded.

"Hey! Ramón's back! You made it! Hijole, who invited you! Weren't you in the Q? You out-out, or just on parole?"

***

The afternoon bled into the evening, and the dim light of the evening became the perpetual twilight of life in the periphery of Cyber City. Street lights. City lights reflected off the clouds above. The cold sterile light of the moon, the only thing that shone brightly enough to exert itself over the City. The heat of the day had given way to a cool breeze coming off the bay, and thanks to the high tide, the mud was covered by the water and the overall stink was far less oppressive. Ratboy almost felt at ease. He might have even felt comfortable, if only he had some fresh clothes.

One drink became two, became half a dozen, became more than could be counted. Ratboy told whoever would listen the story of getting to the party by walking, wading, paying a trajinero for a ride, and finally swimming when he fell off the damn thing. Out in the waters of the bay, the kids played some game that Ratboy couldn't quite follow along with, a confusing aquatic variant of smashball. Ratboy briefly considered telling them to get out of the damn diseased bay water, but the admonition died on his tongue. Who was he to tell the kids what to do? And hell, what was BASIC for if not chem treatments, antiparasitics, and rad remover?

Sometime around 10pm, Ratboy was sitting on the porch of a house, smoking a cigarette he couldn't remember bumming off of someone and taking sips from a bottle of tequila-flavored re-natured solvent. Eight-Ball sat next to him, recounting the details of the job. Ratboy did his best to follow along, but Becci was out here, too, and it had been five years since Ratboy had really been around a woman his own age that wasn't actively fighting off malnutrition, disease, and roving marauders all at once. Ratboy tried not to stare as a matter of principle. If you were too focused on any one thing, no matter what it was, you missed out on other opportunities. And you were blind to other threats. Tan skin, high-waisted shorts, and a crop top weren't usually a threat.

Becci bent at the waist to adjust her shoe. Ratboy breathed deep and Eight-Ball guffawed. "Man, have you heard one word I've said?" he asked.

"Not a damn thing," Ratboy said without looking at his friend.

Eight-Ball chuckled. "You're a dog, you know that?"

"Woof woof," Ratboy said, taking a pull from the bottle. He turned to face Eight-Ball and took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm sorry. I'm listening. I'm paying attention. One more time?"

Eight-Ball gave him the truncated version of the job, how he worked at a robotics shop now, how he was even head of the pit crew for a smashball team, how he had a contact in the System and he was moving up in the world. That was how he was able to afford the arm augs with the cool knucks, he said.

"I don't know what's more unbelievable," Ratboy said with a smirk. "That you're a professional amateur smashballer, or that you're working with the System. You know you've got to be being set up as a fall guy, right? Take it from someone with experience."

Eight-Ball shoved Ratboy and Ratboy laughed. "Yeah, yeah. So anyway, put it all together, and that's the job. Bennie's making the cyber core, you and I are delivering it to RoboCorp, and we're pocketing 10,000 bits each."

Ratboy blinked. He was good and buzzed and logic and reasoning were hard, but even so, this didn't add up. "How is this a two man job?"

"It's not, but Derrig's paying like it is, so I thought I'd bring you in. I know you could use the bits."

Ratboy winced. That stung. It was incredibly generous and thoughtful, and it cut right to the bone. "Alright, well. Shit. Thanks, man. I really owe you one."

Eight-Ball shook his head and smiled. "We watch out for each other. I know you'd do the same for me if you could." The smile melted away into something serious. "How you doing, Rats?"

Ratboy turned to look at his friend, the honesty in the man's voice cutting through his distractions. "How am I doing?"

"Yeah. How are you doing?" Eight-Ball said, nodding emphatically. "It's been two weeks. How's life back in the Lows?"

Ratboy looked into Eight-Ball's eyes, then down into the mouth of the liquor bottle. "I've been better. It's funny; the hood's nothing like I remember it, but everything like I remember it, you know?"

Eight-Ball considered this. "Fuck you talking about? A place is what it is, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but… I thought it wouldn't be. Or that I wouldn't be. Something." Ratboy considered his thoughts, tried to order them. "Like, I'm not supposed to be here, you know? That job with Sammie, that was supposed to be me and her's ticket out of here. And it went sideways."

"She fucked you," Eight-Ball said humorlessly.

"Fucked me sideways. And now I'm back, and fine, whatever, I can start over. I've still got the skills, still got the connections. But I don't have the connections, 'cause nobody but you responds when I reach out. And I'm not sure I do have the skills, 'cause nobody wants to work with a hustler fresh off a five year vacation in the Q."

"Yeah, but–" "And, like, being here has been great. It's been so good to see Neon Jimmy, Uncle Tío–"

"Becci?" Eight-Ball asked with a smirk.

"Becci," Ratboy said, nodding, "but all that is at war with the voice in my head telling me I'm supposed to be somewhere else. But I'm not. I'm here. But I don't want to be here. But why don't I? And I just go back and forth, you know?"

Eight-Ball nodded slowly and rubbed at his chin with his hand. "Okay, I think I get it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Eight-Ball said, his voice flat. "You're drunk."

"Man, fuck you," Ratboy said, bent over with laughter. Eight-Ball laughed, too, and clapped him on the back.

"See, man, this is you all over. Always in your fucking head. So you're here and it's not where you want to be. Who cares? Make the most of it while you figure out your next move."

"What's my next move? I can't get work, everyone I know is gone, and I've got no money."

Eight-Ball groaned and rolled his eyes. "I'm helping you fix that!"

"Yeah, but I shouldn't need your help! I should be able to–" Eight-Ball threw an arm around Ratboy's shoulder and pulled him close, dug his knuckles into Ratboy's scalp. Ratboy cursed and punched Eight-Ball in the ribs, firing the Geschickte Glove and making them both jump from the shock.

"Stop thinking and start planning," Eight-Ball said once the two men reset themselves. "This time next week, you'll be 10,000 bits richer. What are you going to do with that money?"

Ratboy rubbed the ache in the top of his head and considered it. "Get out of the habcubes and get a room over where the action is. Old Town. Something."

"Harbor District's cheaper," Eight-Ball offered.

Ratboy snorted. "Yeah, 'cause it's a fucking warzone. I'm not trying to get iced by a Kulak."

Eight-Ball laughed. "Okay, so you get a gun and a cheap apartment. Then what?"

"Then… then I get some more gigs. Maybe stuff for your boy Derrig, if you introduce us. Maybe I lean harder on some of my old contacts. Maybe go back to knocking over houses in the Highs."

Eight-Ball nodded along. "Okay, okay. I like it. Let me tell you what your first step needs to be."

"What's that?"

"We're going to go out back and see if River's holding."

Ratboy choked as he took a pull from the bottle, spitting out the alcohol in his laughter.

"Then," Eight-Ball said, throwing an arm around Ratboy and leaning in close, "you're going to go reintroduce yourself to Becci, because you've been too fucking mopey to notice, but she's been looking your way all night, and if you don't go say hi, I will."

Ratboy perked his head up and glanced at where she stood with her friends. "Really?"

"Don't fucking stare! Come on, don't you know nothing?"

Ratboy stared. Sure enough, Becci glanced his way, smiled, and returned to chatting with her friends. Ratboy felt his cheeks go warm with embarrassment. He thought about getting up and getting another drink, something to eat, anything to buy time and think of something clever to say, a cool way to approach her, a reason not to even bother.

But all of that was exactly what Eight-Ball was talking about, wasn't it?

Instead, Ratboy pushed himself to his feet, swayed, dusted himself off, and took a deep breath.

"Where are you going?" Eight-Ball asked from his seat on the porch, and Ratboy could hear the grin in his voice.

"I'm following your advice," Ratboy said, spinning on his heel and pointing both index fingers at Eight-Ball, a wide grin on his face. "I ate my protein paste, I drank my hydration ration, and now I'm gonna go crush it!"

"...what?"