Proxy

[2]

[2]

Darkness.

    Nothing but darkness.

    What could be wrong?

    Syd swiped and twisted; he dragged and dropped.

    Still nothing.

    He tried resetting the power source, rebooting the software. When that failed, he tried the oldest repair trick he knew: whacking the thing with his palm.

    Nothing.

    He couldn’t get a holo to project. There was just a void hanging midair in the hallway.

    Syd shook his head and handed the kid back the beat-up piece of plastic he used as his datastream projector. “There’s no connection between the projector and your biofeed. No input. Broken beyond repair.”

    The boy didn’t deign to take the small device back, even though it belonged to him. “So, like, what? You’re saying you can’t fix it?”

    “I’m saying no one can fix it. It’s not picking up your signal anymore. Could be the receiver, could be that you aren’t transmitting anything to receive.” Syd looked down at the kid, some snot-nosed first-year, zit pocked and sneering, trying to look tough because he figured he was being scammed. Probably not a bad assumption to make, but Syd wasn’t scamming him. Life in the Valve was hard enough without everyone trying to get one over on everybody else all the time. Even in high school.

    EduCorp scammed the teachers, the teachers scammed the students, and the students scammed one another. Maybe somebody learned something along the way, maybe not. But everybody paid.

    Syd was just trying to get his certificate and get out without owing anybody else anything.

    The kid’s lip quivered.

    Exams were coming up for the first-years, the kid whined. How was he supposed to get through them with no datastream access? He couldn’t afford a new biofeed install. He already had eighteen years of debt, he said, and he’d just started high school. Blood work cost, what, another three years at least?

    “What am I supposed to do?” he pleaded. “I’ve already been volunteered for two weeks of swamp drainage because of a stupid prank my patron pulled.”

    He went on whining. He needed new malaria meds and sunblocker patches. Probably another six months of debt right there. He couldn’t pay for new software in his blood on top of all that. He’d have to repeat the whole year at full price if he didn’t make the tests.

    “Bribe the test proctor?” Syd suggested. Half the kids did that. Some of them didn’t even show up at all, just paid for their grades. Easy to do if you didn’t mind borrowing the credit. Credit was easy. Studying was hard.

    The kid made a face like he’d been hit in the stomach. No go on the bribe.

    Syd felt for the kid. He couldn’t afford to bribe the teachers either. Not without borrowing himself into oblivion or starving himself to death.

    The floodgates broke; the kid wept, standing in the green tiled hallways of Vocation High School IV. His shoulders shook and he buried his face in his hands.

    Syd stared at the wet armpit circles on the kid’s shirt. The climate control was out again. Nothing smelled worse than three thousand sweating teenagers trapped in a concrete bunker of a building made for half that number. The Valve was at the lowest point in the Mountain City, where the wet heat lingered, unmoved by the breezes that kept the peaks of the Upper City comfortable. Breezes were for people who could afford them. All the Lower City kids got was the heat of nature’s indifference.