MINDLYFT (COMPLETE)

CHAPTER 15

"Nash, I'm going to take the job," I said. I'd waited until the CoffeeBot had rolled away. I didn't want it listening in. His jaw dropped and his eyes flooded into red pools of hurt.

"You're leaving?"

"The job is with MoonCorp. They didn't say where but I'm guessing Hollywood or Vegas or some other big city."

"You just got here."

"Maybe that's why I feel the need to leave. I'm not used to it. Not sure I'd ever be use to it. The whole place smells like piss, BO, and dog shit. Those are the good days. The rest of the time it smells like human shit and vomit. And dead bodies. It's miserable here. My father's place is a nice refuge if you don't go outside but your hanger is like the sewer inside the gutter. I'm sorry Nash." I felt like a snob saying all that. I'd been living the Cush life so long maybe it had weakened me or made me vain, but this place was a hellhole. GutterVille was a name too kind.

"I thought you wanted to fight the system and now you're going to join it," he said, not even trying to conceal his disgust.

"Think of it as fighting the system from the inside," I said, to soften the blow. I didn't really believe it. "They're not going to make me wear a cap. Said they wanted my creative thinking. I'll have access to one of their most important projects. I could help you from there."

"So they've promoted you to house slave and you forget about all the field slaves toiling in the heat while you eat from the master's kitchen. Is that it?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way. They asked for me. They think I have a special talent. They could have gotten anyone. They must think I'm important."

"I wanted you too," said Nash. "I said you were important too. They're using you. I respected you."

It hurt to walk away from him. I knew MoonCorp was using me but they were paying big for the privilege and it was an easier life. Without all the chains and obligations to go with it, I had to admit I cared a lot less for all the masses, still bound to their caps. 

After all, they hadn't even tried to free themselves. Maybe they deserved to wear them. How could I feel empathy for people who didn't even think the same way I did. Only, I had to feel empathy for Nash, because I knew he did think like me. I even told myself I'd come back for him once I was established in that corporate office. I'd get him a job too. Just like mine and then we'd be together. But another part of me knew he'd never accept an offer like that even if I could make it happen. Another reason why I was so drawn to him and it was hard to walk away.

I walked slowly out of the hanger, feeling all the eyes on my back, reading thoughts that were probably inside their heads but I knew were my own creation too. That I was a traitor. A Leash, a Collar, and trained mule.

I found an old silver coin laying on the street. They were all over the place now. Ever since the CyboDollar Act of 2058 declared all paper and metal currency void and worthless. Most of the paper bills had been shipped to the Equatorial zones where frigid temperatures demanded constant heat. People burned them in their fireplaces for warmth. The coins had less use. Occasionally they were melted for material in manufacturing printers but the need to melt them made that process less efficient than just scraping up minerals and dust.

The coins still had use for the one purpose I had in front of me that day though which was to call Hinka HellsPath from a TeleBooth. I scooped up three or four of them, unsure how many it would take, and then I walked to TrampTown, one of the more vile neighborhoods of GutterVille, where drugged spacers laid on the streets zoned out on the latest form of synthetic mind erasers.

I found the booth next to an old crumbling wall, covered with graffiti, and a line of littered bottles, scrap metal and old bricks stacked up against its base. I had to step over a druggy to get into the booth which used to have glass walls but was just a metal frame now. The box on one of the frame walls still appeared to be intact. There were wires running from it into a hole in the ground just below. I took a glance and ran my fingers down them. They were a bit chewed in places, probably by rats, but otherwise seemed solid and still bound together.

I picked up the command paddle, which looked like an old-school gaming console with two small cups attached at the ends, and looked at it. There were covers on the cups with tiny little holes in them. My Dad told me that one cup was for listening and the other for talking, so I held them up to my mouth and ear.

I could hear a soft tone that sounded like a small DroneFly so it seemed to be working. Next I put one of the coins into a tiny slot at the top of the silver and black box mounted on the wall. The tone stopped a second later. I wasn't sure if this was the way it was supposed to go but I looked at the number on the slip of paper Hinka gave me and then at the numbers on the box, which appeared from zero to nine in a clockwise circle on the face of it. I pressed the first number, '3' and waited. Nothing happened so I pressed the remainder of the numbers in the series. Still nothing. After awhile I heard a clink and the tone went back on. My coin appeared in the slot below. Something was wrong.

I put the coin in again, and again the tone stopped. I pressed the three and then realized that the brace overlaying the numbers actually moved. I thought it was broken at first but then understood it moved clockwise and would return to its original position when I took my finger off it. I could hear the tone in my ear change when I turned it as far clockwise as it would go. In this way I learned that I needed to turn the wheel for each number. It was like a puzzle. A hundred years ago people had to be smart, creative problem solvers, for the simplest things in life. Even for a simple ComLink. Now we only needed those skills for saving the world.

"Hinka HellsPath," I heard the brusk and serious greeting. It was like she was yelling from the other end of a tunnel. Her voice had been clearer the prior day through the wind and across the street.

"It's me, JennaBerry June," I said. I yelled actually because I could barely hear my own voice through the receiver cup. "I've decided to accept your offer. When do I start?"

"I'm sending a drone for you now," she said. "It'll be five minutes. Wait where you are."

"How do you know where I am?" I was puzzled. The booths were supposed to be untraceable. "It's a TeleBooth. You can't possibly know." I was indignant. The thing was mechanical, made with tubes, wires, and hard metal materials that must have been shaped by a braun-man slamming a hammer. It would be like tracing a tree or a rock. It was an OffGrid machine of old.

"Authorities have been listening in and tracking calls from those booths since they built them," she said. "See you soon."