Kaleb's Critters

They knew us before we knew them. Machines from the heavens watched us—all of us—for months. The hunter knew everything: our townships, our conflicts, our pain and our power. The knowledge was passed between them during their long journey, and soon all knew. To protect the perverse interests of their society. To protect themselves. To enjoy themselves.

They knew because they watched—listened.

Robin knew us, and they were coming.

Chapter 8

“Fuckin’ horses, can you believe it?”

“No Dexton, I can’t.”

“I mean I’ve seen some weird shit in my day, but this is just s’rreal, y’know?”

“Yeah…”

“I jus’… dude, y’know?”

“Yeah… I know.”

It was midnight, but the sun never set on the New Metro Skyline. Gaseous spheres of energy orbited the towering spires of the outer city, weaving around each other in intricate patterns of red and yellow and green. Neon magboards traveled the skyways, advertising contest on several of the smaller stations, “hard” drinks, and aphrodisiacs from across the solar system. The city shone with the light of progress, and, right then, Robin didn’t really care.

It was his third time in New Metro at night, and the novelty had worn off.

“I am shoooo ready to get out there!” Dexton slurred from his stool, swigging on a mug of BluBalls’, “Aren’t you?”

Robin looked out the glare-streaked picture window of the Sky Tumbler, an 82nd floor bar in the Ministry of Private Entertainment, searching past the bleeding lights and ads for the great black void of Old Metro. It wasn’t hard to find it: an enormous, lightless hole in the world running from District Twenty to the Central Waste Station. The mountain of garbage, pesticides, radiation, and rotting flesh disappeared into the thick smog of the Inner City—a cloud that never rained on the richer, outer districts—and Robin imagined briefly that he could see its peak before scanning the dark districts radiating from the mountain’s reeking, compacted base.

Somewhere in the darkness, Jenna slept.

“Robby? Bud, you list’nin’?”

“Yeah, Dex. I’m listening.”

“Well are ya ready ‘r what?”

“Yes. Yes I think I want to get as far away from here as I can, if just for a little while.”

A magboard floated past the Tumbler’s window—“BluBalls’: like a kick to the scrotum!”—briefly blocking out the sprawling panorama below.

“Tha’s what I’m talking about!” Dexton gurgled, rubbing his crotch with a pained expression. “Gonna be fucking sweet, man.”

“Sweet,” Robin echoed, smiling softly. “Sweet…”

The bartender swung by, cleaning a glass. “You boys had enough?”

“Nah, nah keep it—cum-heh—coming.”

“Dex, it’s late. We should get back to the Exxy,” Fairweather urged in an absent-minded sort of way, still looking out the window. They did have an early day tomorrow.

“C’mon Robby! Jus’ one more!”

Robin snorted. Seven hours with Dex and he’d graduated from “Fairweather” to “Robby.” That had to be some sort of record. The cameraman smiled wider, recalling how he’d spent his day since the science briefing.

After Dexton met him in the hangar he insisted they both go to New Metro Clinic—the one on the fashionable side of the outer city—because it “gave him the chills” when he went by himself. Robin, still trying to figure out what to do with his small fortune, agreed to accompany him.

Soon, he was waiting in the cleanest room he’d ever seen. White, plastic walls glowed with fluorescent light, bathing the entire clinic in soft glow. No posters adorned the walls; no protruding furniture clumped together past the reception area. The halls were blank, white tunnels—soothing pathways into the healthy womb of the building. He sat, naked except for a hospital gown, on a Ray-bed, waiting for a medical technician to give him his Radiad injection. Dexton had been placed in the room adjacent. Robin remembered hearing him complain about the temperature.

The doctor entered—nameplate: Errikson—and there was a pinch in his stomach. The needle was long, but Robin had had a back-alley radiation treatment before. Needles couldn’t ever scare him again after having a glorified medical rapier stuck in his belly-button. A short sting and a rush of warm nausea later, Robin was handed a pack of Radien suppositories and booted into the machine-swept streets of East New Metro.

Once again, Dexton had been waiting.

He knew about the sack of rotobucks.

“C’mon man, how much?”

“Uh… like ninety stackers?”

“Ninety? You have ninety stackers and you’re wearing that?! Fuck, Robin, I need to get you rollin’ for a strollin’!”

And so it came to pass that Duwain Dexton III, a man with inhibitions of a drunken ferret, took Robin clothes shopping. He called himself straight as an arrow, but as the smaller man led him around "Metropolis Nights" in search of satin pajamas, Robin couldn’t help but wonder if sexual preference was hereditary.

Seven bags of assorted clothing—for ALL seasons—sat clumped round Robin’s barstool, and he still had around sixty stackers in his new, obsidian roto-wallet. His riches nearly halved, Faiweather felt very little remorse at spending so much on simple clothing. It wasn’t like he was getting any of his stuff back from Jenna’s flat before the big send-off, anyway.

Taking another sip of his water—“Dex is drinking enough for the both of us…”—Robin traveled back to that afternoon: walking the NMU holo-boardwalk, catching a scratch baseball game in Shulemkeh Park, and finally making their way to the Tumbler to drink the night away. He felt… peaceful. He enjoyed himself, not thinking about Jenna, the flat, his new job—it was nice. Dex was a cool guy, if a bit impulsive, and, after a day of mindless wandering and talking with him, Robin considered the excitable mechanic a friend.

Regardless of any new-formed kinship, however, Robin had one more thing to do that night. Dex would have to skip his last round of drinks if he wanted to make it back to Sheila before daybreak.

“Up an’ at ‘em, Dex. You’ve had enough. Besides, there’s one more thing I have to do tonight.”

“S’that girl, huh? You haf’ta see her right?”

That girl… yeah. Robin wanted—needed—to see her again. Just for a minute. One more time before he left…

He had something to give her.

“Y’know th’r’s a satCOM on the ship, right?” Dex gurgled, trying to coax the bartender back over with head gestures.

“Do you have the number?”

“Y-Ye… I think so.”

“Okay, Dex. One more drink, eh?” The copilot of the Satan’s Grandma slurred something in response before falling from his stool, clutching his crotch. Robin turned back to the window, gazing out into the colorful night. “Yeah… One more drink.”

A stacker to pay Dexton’s tab and two more into the pocket of the mag-cab pilot left Robin with fifty-seven of the black rotobucks left in his wallet. He’d never had a wallet before, and the heavy, stone tube felt unnatural—almost weapon-like—as it hung from his belt. It was one of the more expensive models, shiny black obsidian laced with streaks of white marble. The pressure plate for the coin depositor on the bottom face of the heavy cylinder was a polished brass, and Robin was loathe to press it, lest he leave a thumbprint and ruin it’s pristine shine. Dexton had even made him get it engraved:

Property of
Robin Sudesquet Fairweather
333679 East District 9, Apt. 229, Old St. Metropolis
“Black Mamba”

Robin wasn’t proud of that last part…

The black rotowallet found its way back to Robin’s belt as he briskly trotted away from his waiting taxi toward the address engraved in the “Black Mamba’s” weighty, shining side. The waster had neglected their street again, and the cameraman had to weave amongst several overflowing garbage receptacles that crowded the narrow entrance to his old—just Jenna’s, now—tenement complex. Graffiti marred the doors to the lower-level rooms, lit up by the dim, flickering lights of the building’s lanterns: gang symbols, penises, and comparisons of one tenant’s mother to a “piece of skunt-licking overseer bait.”

Down the hall, left, left again, then up the narrow, dirty stairwell to the third floor he went, pausing at the sight of a familiar crumpled obstacle in his way. Irritated, Robin carefully leapt over a corpse cooling in a puddle on the third landing, hoping to avoid getting blood on his new boots.

“Dumbass new tenants,” Fairweather grumbled, scraping his soles on the ragged, wet carpeting of the next flight of steps before moving on. It was late, he was tired, and all he wanted to do was see the woman he was—used to be?—in love with. He’d dealt with enough bodies on compactor duty over the years, and he had no patience with people who couldn’t dispose of their waste properly. “Learn how to use the damned disposal chute…”

Whether dead of an altercation, an accident, or natural causes, it didn’t matter: the body was a damned nuisance, and would eventually make someone else’s job much harder. Robin felt sorry for the poor compacter who would have to come up and get it.

He peaked the fourth flight in a few seconds, quickly spotting his door despite the blackness. The hall lights in this part of the building had burnt out, but, luckily, there were no more obstacles to contend with as Robin was lead by muscle memory to Jenna’s apartment—#229.

Three steps and he was there… and he couldn’t help but smile despite the late hour.

The door was still turquoise.

He’d painted it himself… the day after they’d had a fight—not the fight: an old one that was easily resolved. He got the color off an old man traveling the understreets, selling odds and ends. Robin hadn’t expected the door to change in the three days he’d been absent, but the patch of oceanic hue was a welcome sight.

Robin raised his arm to knock, but quickly staid his hand. It was almost two AM. He couldn’t wake—shouldn’t wake—her, could he? But he had to see her… even if he wasn’t sure he loved her anymore. He needed some sort of goodbye, or something.

He could just leave the money in the mail-tube…

Fuck…

Fairweather fidgeted in front of his old home, caught between fantasy and reality in an endless whirlpool of self doubt, desire, and resignation. He knew that if he knocked she wouldn’t answer, no matter how much he wished she would… but at least it would wake her up and… and she might hear him out. Robin reached into his jacket lining for the note he wrote her—“This should cover my rent. *997*0004868.”—and brushed up against something smooth and metallic: the old coin.

He fingered the quarter in his pocket, remembering how he found it—how he had felt. It had been only three days since then, and he was ready; he was ready to leave whether Jenna acknowledged him or not. Pulling the small, metal disk into the open air, Robin traced the ancient Latin embossed in shining silver surface with his thumb.

He’d flip for it. Yeah, that was it: chance would determine Jenna’s fate that night.

Heads—he would ring the buzzer and hope to God she opened the door.

Tails—he would drop the note and the money through the mail tube and leave. If she wanted to talk she could call him.

Ceremoniously, Robin craned his neck to the ceiling and flicked his thumb. The coin sailed upward, a small, dark lump in the blackened hallway, and Robin went for the catch. He missed, and the coin clattered to the stained linoleum of apartment 229’s closed threshold. Stooping and squinting, Fairweather could just barely make out the image of an eagle, and he sighed—whether in disappointment or relief he didn’t quite know.

The coin safely replaced in his pocket, “Black Mamba” was removed from Robin’s belt, and he emptied the obsidian tube into Jenna’s mail slot along with the note he’d written on the cocktail napkin he neglected to use at the Tumbler. Honestly, the rotobucks he’d just given away were worth almost five year’s rent in that shit-hole, but Robin wouldn’t need the money where he was going…

Besides… he was feeling great; lighter on his feet, even.

Irrationally, he imagined that having the money—George Washington hung heavy, hard and silver in his pocket—would just weigh him down.

Fairweather felt lucky.

Damned lucky...

... and tomorrow he was going to get a chance to test it.