if anything should happen
Backdated entry for the sake of coherence, w007! Organization, whoda thunk it? So that chapter 1 of Cyberpunk will precede chapter 2!
Cyberpunk
Chapter 1: Welcome Home
The smoggy clouds of the city hung low over the slums, reflecting the sickly orange-red of the running lights. It was never truly dark in that section of the city, and the litter-choked streets trapped the residual heat from the outdated house webs that still crawled sluggishly under the concrete and permaform shells of the crumbling tenements. They threaded the grimy windows with spidery black lines, ancient history compared to the current standard for building systems. The carcasses of long-dead vehicles rotted on the sides of the roads, their bodies eaten away by rust and corrosion. The hover grids in the slums were long since defunct, and any vehicle that attempted to navigate the hazardous streets had to do so on its own power. The street lights, too, were mainly out, the LEADs blinking in eerie, irregular patterns-- easy and cheap to fix if anyone had an interest in doing so. But the slums were the exclusive realm of the deadheads and squatters and the yaka meta-gangs; the city government liked to pretend they didn't exist, and corp presence of any kind was practically nil.
Only deadheads and the insane walked the streets of the slums alone after the lights went down; even the cockiest of the yaka went in twos and threes. It wasn't clear which of the two categories the man coming down the street fell into. His steps were too steady for the first, his carriage too erect and easy for the second. He was trim for a man, but the breadth of his shoulders under the smooth monofabric of his hooded, concealing coat was unmistakable, and a subtle warning. Much more telling was the way his heavy boots were completely silent over the broken glass and loose rubble of the street, and he never missed a step even when he passed through the deep black shadows thrown by the buildings. It was enough to warn off the slum residents, who either developed an instinctive and finely-tuned sense for danger or didn't survive for long.
He seemed to know exactly where he was going, barely glancing at the abandoned apartment houses that hulked along the sides of the street like jagged, broken teeth. Even when he passed the threatening maws of the alleyways, with their dark promise of unseen dangers, he didn't hesitate at all. His steps finally slowed in front of one derelict building even more run-down than its neighbors. It was ancient by city standards, with old gothic cornices over the tall windows, and the walls were of actual stone that was worn and pitted with age. What little glass remained in the windows bore a black tracery in an ornate, repeating pattern-- old symbols of luck and blessing that hadn't been in vogue for at least a century. The ancient remnants of care and craftsmanship gave the building a tragic and ghostly appearance, so at odds with the permaform projects that surrounded it that it was physically unsettling.
The man stared at it for a moment, then turned away and walked over to the carcass of an old Xinkai490 that crouched on its splintered hubs half on the curb of the broken grid. Its taped-over windows betrayed it as a slummer's squat, and the litter of used tabs that spilled over the concrete around it in profusion spoke precisely of the nature of the squatter. The man gripped the peeled-back edging of one door and firmly yanked it up and open. He did so effortlessly, but the metal shrieked a rusty protest that echoed even over the continuous hum of outdated house webs.
The deadhead inside shrieked too, and cowered among the tatted sensors and expired memory-foam of the seat inside. Hands scabbed and burn-scarred from bad tabs clapped over where ears might be under matted, dirty dreadlocks, feet scrambled back and forth through the stinking litter that carpeted the floor. "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me me me don't hurt me!"
The man crouched down, his features lost in the shadows of his hood. "If you answer my questions," he said, and his voice was smooth, clipped and practically machine-cold.
"I don't know anything, I don't know, I don't know no know know--" the deadhead rocked himself back and forth, clutching at the rags of what had been a coat and was now a webwork of holes held together with frayed pieces of hub fabric and burnt-out web filaments. He started singing, tuneless and incoherent and broken, his voice wavering and skipping oddly between notes. Words came through the static slowly, a few at a time. "Need a tab, don't know, tab, a tab atabatab a-- tab, a tab, need a needaneeda--"
The man held up a double-pronged tab, milky white against dark gloves. The deadhead's washed-out eyes caught on it unerringly, and he snatched at it clumsily but with desperate, clawing speed. He fumbled it under the dirty hair at the base of his skull, inserting it into the plug there. Abruptly the frenetic movements of his wasted body ceased, and his eyes rolled up as the drug started to take effect, the electric charge of the tab reaching his brain to supplement the erratic, damaged firing of the synapses there. He sank bonelessly into the ruined seat of the Xinkai, and his voice became half hum and half hoarse, sobbing moan.
"My questions," the dark man said.
"Anything you want, thing thing any want," the deadhead's tone was euphoric, his white eyes half-hidden by ragged, bleached lashes.
"How long have you been here?"
"Dunno. Day day month month month month month year year. Maybe year."
"Almost three and a half years, then," the man said, keeping pace with the deadhead's rambling effortlessly. "That building over there, the old one. During the time you've been here, has anyone lived there?"
"Not alive, no living, no squat squat nil nobody. Nil, nihilist, emempty. No living."
"Has anyone been in or out?"
"Nilnilnestno. Hanhandhaun. Haunhan. Haun."
"Haunted?"
"Thassed. That. That yat yie. YoungYaka try. Youngtimes. Nilno. Don't go. Han haunted."
"How far in do they go?" the question was a dangerous one, though the man's tone never changed. He shifted where he crouched, and the flickering light of a nearby LEAD caught and flashed off green, reflective eyes in the shadows of his hood.
"No know no! Dunno dunno. I don't know anything, don't know-- not long no, can't. Can't go. Doororororar. Can't dooooooor." The deadhead began rocking back and forth again. "Don't hurt me don't hurt me memememeee. . ."
"One last thing," the man said. "Who was the last to live there?"
"Don't don't know nonilno. Han haun hear. Hurd. Heard. Har said head heard hide. Hilde. Ren. Hilde Ren. Chai. Child Ren children. Oooh. One. Two. One two one two. Long lung long long year year year year year year long year. Nonilno don't don't--" the deadhead's white eyes flickered back and forth at a frantic rate, his words losing all coherence as the tab worked on his brain.
The man turned away in disgust, rising from his crouch to look up at the building again. The unlit, broken windows under their corroded stonework looked like eyes, and a dark stain descended from one of the upper windows like the track of a tear-- as if the building itself was weeping. Carefully he picked his way up the worn steps to the door, avoiding the garbage that choked them. The antique swinging door of the building was barred with a pipe that had long since rusted into place. The man wrapped his fingers around it, his shoulders bunching with the effort. The wire that ran down the back of each finger within his glove whispered faintly with force as he pulled. Abruptly the pipe gave, the metal twisting and breaking where the rust had weakened it. The man put his shoulder to the door, and it moved with groaning slowness under the pressure, granting reluctant access to the interior.
The lobby beyond echoed the exhausted elegance of the facade, with an abnormally high ceiling and sculpted walls. The pattern from the house web in the windows repeated itself in the grimy mosaic tiles that covered the floor, although many were missing or broken, and dark holes interrupted the design where various unknown fixtures had once been. There were no lights; pockets of illumination seeped through the broken windows, leaving much of the room in thick shadow. Dust particles hung suspended, drifting. Towards the ground they swirled and eddied as thickly as a mist, and a strange electric charge prickled the air, interrupting the senses and creating a profound sense of unease.
The man walked forward soundlessly. The curving stairs to the upper floors he navigated carefully, as if unsure of their soundness. He skipped stairs seemingly at random as he went, but the dust drifting in his wake revealed low, barely visible wires that stretched across the stairs. A faint voice seemed to hover on the edge of hearing, weaving in and out of the hum of the old house web but never quite emerging into audible words. It had no discernible source-- it was like the echo of a child's voice, resounding eerily in the dark corners.
Midway up the stairs the man paused, his progress interrupted by a faint releasing click from above. He dropped down to the floor in an outward billow of dust as something unseen whistled through the air where his chest had been, then swung back again when it reached the apex of its arc. A winch mechanism somewhere in the darkness above whirred to life, hoisting the blunt scrap-metal pendulum to reset the primitive trap, but it caught in the process and the motor choked, wheezed, and then gave up.
If there were other traps, either the man avoided them or they didn't activate. The stairs gave way to a dark, narrow hallway on the top floor, but his steps never hesitated despite the lack of light. He stopped at a scarred, twisted door forced shut in a frame it no longer fit. The metal had buckled around the ancient jam, and heavy dents scored its surface. A primitive knob was fixed to it, but twisted by some unknown force, and it broke off in the man's hand. He set his shoulder to the door without success, then stepped back and kicked viciously at the ragged crack along its edge with the hollow boom of metal on metal. The door shuddered and gave way with a final outraged protest on the third kick, swinging inwards on bent but somehow still functional hinges.
As the sound of the resulting crash died away a faint melody played from a tiny hidden speaker, tinkling a gentle song in the air. The entrance way was empty and dark, thick with drifts of dust, but dim light fell into the room beyond. A small motor whirred there, and a tinny mechanical voice said, "Welcome home, Aniue! Johnny Five alive! Welcome home, Aniue! Johnny Five alive!"
The man stood frozen in the doorway for a moment, then freed himself from whatever paralysis gripped him to toss a rounded Daruma sensor into the next room. The Daruma's eye snapped open, the wide sensor beam skimming the room in a full circle and then snapping itself off again with an affirming beep. The edges of the man's coat stirred up a faint powder of dust as he stepped beyond the entrance-way, and the soft music clicked off again as he picked up the Daruma from the ground. He pushed his hood back and glanced over the room.
The faint light from the LEADs outside caught on pale hair with a silvery sheen that, coupled with the pale, youthful face, seemed too much of a contrast to be natural. Even freed from the shadow of his hood his eyes reflected the available light oddly, although now that they were fully visible they were more blue-green then anything else. They tracked slowly over the dim, faded paint that covered the walls of the room in a forest of strange creatures and designs, most done in broad, childish strokes but a few evidencing greater motor skill and maturity. One section of wall was covered in overlapping hand prints, all of them child-sized. Shards of mismatched furniture, broken glass, and scattered computer parts were strewn all over the floor, but the completeness of the destruction spoke of a methodical, concentrated effort. Even the kitchen fixtures had been ripped out, their wires sprouting crazily from the holes in the walls. The broken window in the far wall still had shards of glass clinging to its frame, and scraps of what might once have been a curtain stirred in the faint, ozone-heavy breeze that drafted through it.
"Welcome home, Aniue! Johnny Five alive! Welcome home, Aniue!"
The tinny, repetitious voice came from a busted-down speaker on an outdated SHOUgakou computer core. The core itself was mounted on a crude robot body which lay upended on the floor. Frayed wires and salvaged connectors ran across the joint between the cabinet and the caterpillar wheels formed of cheap, stripped monofiber carpet, helplessly spinning in the air. An old niivee camera was taped to a pivot on top of the box, and the lens whirred and clicked as it zoomed in and out. A broad red '5' was painted on the access panel, with another small hand print in the loop like a signature. Most of the wires were torn, and the body pivot and crude claw-arms were snapped. It looked as if the home-made bot had been the victim of a violent collision.
When the man picked it up, one of the arms fell off entirely as the bare copper conductors that connected it snapped. The ancient camera continued its futile attempts to focus. "Johnny Five alive! Welcome home, Aniue! Johnny Five alive! Welcome hoooome--" the mechanical voice distorted and died as man disconnected the old power source crudely soldered to the back of the cabinet. His gloved fingers brushed the gritty dust from the small hand print, then he gently set the cobbled-together teaching bot down on a battered foam cushion.
The destruction continued in the next room. Here the formerly bright painting was scarred, the surface one wall twisted and deformed by a long, erratic scorch that ran up to and across the ceiling like the frozen afterimage of lightning. The apparent cause lay carelessly abandoned by one wall; a Mod10 taser rifle, its long barrel folded back on itself, the double-pronged charge burnt out. In one corner was a twisted metal desk, crushed in the center by some kind of violent impact. Across from it was an upended workbench, with tools that had long since seen better days lying strewn among half-assembled bots and broken down computer cores. Even the satellite feed dangling from a metal rod near one window hadn't escaped the destruction: a hole was ripped through the delicate cobweb receiver fabric. Against the far wall lay what was left of a mattress, a skeletal box-and-spring arrangement with any hint of memory foam melted away from the frame by the passage of time.
There was something terrible in the man's expression as he surveyed the wreckage of what had once obviously been a home, and he made a faint noise like a snarl when his eyes tracked over the electric burn on the wall and the bent table. He went to the corner with the upended work bench and began to search through the scattered tools and machine parts methodically, his eyes checking over the ground with a thoroughness too precise to be natural. He lifted aside a corroded cabinet panel and then paused, scanning the floor below. One hand hovered over the spot for a moment. Then he flexed his fingers and the wires from inside his glove extended, poking through the fabric like pricked copper claws. He used them with astounding delicacy and precision, scraping them slowly over the floor and lifting up a monofilament net that had been buried by dust beneath the panel. He retrieved a container matrix from under his coat and dropped the faint glimmer of the material into it, then carefully stashed it again and retracted the wire claws.
He nodded in satisfaction as he stood, but paused before he exited the room. Something seemed to pull him around again, and he crossed with slow steps to the mattress and leaned over almost reluctantly to pick something else up off the floor. A grimed pair of antique veed goggles lay across his open palm, with their prima-leather settings still whole and supple despite the dust that clung to them, the rims catching the faint LEAD lights from the street below. Their strap, dangling below the pale-haired man's fingers, was too short to be fitted over an adult head. The lenses were smoky with age, and a spiderweb of cracks splintered one of them into irregular fragments.
The man looked at the goggles for a long time, silent. When he moved it was sudden, almost furtive; he tucked the goggles into the breast of his monofabric coat and quickly pulled up the hood again, hiding his face. He went out with rapid, silent steps, and the reflective green glimmer of his shadowed eyes never turned back to the ruin he left behind.
Cyberpunk
Chapter 1: Welcome Home
The smoggy clouds of the city hung low over the slums, reflecting the sickly orange-red of the running lights. It was never truly dark in that section of the city, and the litter-choked streets trapped the residual heat from the outdated house webs that still crawled sluggishly under the concrete and permaform shells of the crumbling tenements. They threaded the grimy windows with spidery black lines, ancient history compared to the current standard for building systems. The carcasses of long-dead vehicles rotted on the sides of the roads, their bodies eaten away by rust and corrosion. The hover grids in the slums were long since defunct, and any vehicle that attempted to navigate the hazardous streets had to do so on its own power. The street lights, too, were mainly out, the LEADs blinking in eerie, irregular patterns-- easy and cheap to fix if anyone had an interest in doing so. But the slums were the exclusive realm of the deadheads and squatters and the yaka meta-gangs; the city government liked to pretend they didn't exist, and corp presence of any kind was practically nil.
Only deadheads and the insane walked the streets of the slums alone after the lights went down; even the cockiest of the yaka went in twos and threes. It wasn't clear which of the two categories the man coming down the street fell into. His steps were too steady for the first, his carriage too erect and easy for the second. He was trim for a man, but the breadth of his shoulders under the smooth monofabric of his hooded, concealing coat was unmistakable, and a subtle warning. Much more telling was the way his heavy boots were completely silent over the broken glass and loose rubble of the street, and he never missed a step even when he passed through the deep black shadows thrown by the buildings. It was enough to warn off the slum residents, who either developed an instinctive and finely-tuned sense for danger or didn't survive for long.
He seemed to know exactly where he was going, barely glancing at the abandoned apartment houses that hulked along the sides of the street like jagged, broken teeth. Even when he passed the threatening maws of the alleyways, with their dark promise of unseen dangers, he didn't hesitate at all. His steps finally slowed in front of one derelict building even more run-down than its neighbors. It was ancient by city standards, with old gothic cornices over the tall windows, and the walls were of actual stone that was worn and pitted with age. What little glass remained in the windows bore a black tracery in an ornate, repeating pattern-- old symbols of luck and blessing that hadn't been in vogue for at least a century. The ancient remnants of care and craftsmanship gave the building a tragic and ghostly appearance, so at odds with the permaform projects that surrounded it that it was physically unsettling.
The man stared at it for a moment, then turned away and walked over to the carcass of an old Xinkai490 that crouched on its splintered hubs half on the curb of the broken grid. Its taped-over windows betrayed it as a slummer's squat, and the litter of used tabs that spilled over the concrete around it in profusion spoke precisely of the nature of the squatter. The man gripped the peeled-back edging of one door and firmly yanked it up and open. He did so effortlessly, but the metal shrieked a rusty protest that echoed even over the continuous hum of outdated house webs.
The deadhead inside shrieked too, and cowered among the tatted sensors and expired memory-foam of the seat inside. Hands scabbed and burn-scarred from bad tabs clapped over where ears might be under matted, dirty dreadlocks, feet scrambled back and forth through the stinking litter that carpeted the floor. "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me me me don't hurt me!"
The man crouched down, his features lost in the shadows of his hood. "If you answer my questions," he said, and his voice was smooth, clipped and practically machine-cold.
"I don't know anything, I don't know, I don't know no know know--" the deadhead rocked himself back and forth, clutching at the rags of what had been a coat and was now a webwork of holes held together with frayed pieces of hub fabric and burnt-out web filaments. He started singing, tuneless and incoherent and broken, his voice wavering and skipping oddly between notes. Words came through the static slowly, a few at a time. "Need a tab, don't know, tab, a tab atabatab a-- tab, a tab, need a needaneeda--"
The man held up a double-pronged tab, milky white against dark gloves. The deadhead's washed-out eyes caught on it unerringly, and he snatched at it clumsily but with desperate, clawing speed. He fumbled it under the dirty hair at the base of his skull, inserting it into the plug there. Abruptly the frenetic movements of his wasted body ceased, and his eyes rolled up as the drug started to take effect, the electric charge of the tab reaching his brain to supplement the erratic, damaged firing of the synapses there. He sank bonelessly into the ruined seat of the Xinkai, and his voice became half hum and half hoarse, sobbing moan.
"My questions," the dark man said.
"Anything you want, thing thing any want," the deadhead's tone was euphoric, his white eyes half-hidden by ragged, bleached lashes.
"How long have you been here?"
"Dunno. Day day month month month month month year year. Maybe year."
"Almost three and a half years, then," the man said, keeping pace with the deadhead's rambling effortlessly. "That building over there, the old one. During the time you've been here, has anyone lived there?"
"Not alive, no living, no squat squat nil nobody. Nil, nihilist, emempty. No living."
"Has anyone been in or out?"
"Nilnilnestno. Hanhandhaun. Haunhan. Haun."
"Haunted?"
"Thassed. That. That yat yie. YoungYaka try. Youngtimes. Nilno. Don't go. Han haunted."
"How far in do they go?" the question was a dangerous one, though the man's tone never changed. He shifted where he crouched, and the flickering light of a nearby LEAD caught and flashed off green, reflective eyes in the shadows of his hood.
"No know no! Dunno dunno. I don't know anything, don't know-- not long no, can't. Can't go. Doororororar. Can't dooooooor." The deadhead began rocking back and forth again. "Don't hurt me don't hurt me memememeee. . ."
"One last thing," the man said. "Who was the last to live there?"
"Don't don't know nonilno. Han haun hear. Hurd. Heard. Har said head heard hide. Hilde. Ren. Hilde Ren. Chai. Child Ren children. Oooh. One. Two. One two one two. Long lung long long year year year year year year long year. Nonilno don't don't--" the deadhead's white eyes flickered back and forth at a frantic rate, his words losing all coherence as the tab worked on his brain.
The man turned away in disgust, rising from his crouch to look up at the building again. The unlit, broken windows under their corroded stonework looked like eyes, and a dark stain descended from one of the upper windows like the track of a tear-- as if the building itself was weeping. Carefully he picked his way up the worn steps to the door, avoiding the garbage that choked them. The antique swinging door of the building was barred with a pipe that had long since rusted into place. The man wrapped his fingers around it, his shoulders bunching with the effort. The wire that ran down the back of each finger within his glove whispered faintly with force as he pulled. Abruptly the pipe gave, the metal twisting and breaking where the rust had weakened it. The man put his shoulder to the door, and it moved with groaning slowness under the pressure, granting reluctant access to the interior.
The lobby beyond echoed the exhausted elegance of the facade, with an abnormally high ceiling and sculpted walls. The pattern from the house web in the windows repeated itself in the grimy mosaic tiles that covered the floor, although many were missing or broken, and dark holes interrupted the design where various unknown fixtures had once been. There were no lights; pockets of illumination seeped through the broken windows, leaving much of the room in thick shadow. Dust particles hung suspended, drifting. Towards the ground they swirled and eddied as thickly as a mist, and a strange electric charge prickled the air, interrupting the senses and creating a profound sense of unease.
The man walked forward soundlessly. The curving stairs to the upper floors he navigated carefully, as if unsure of their soundness. He skipped stairs seemingly at random as he went, but the dust drifting in his wake revealed low, barely visible wires that stretched across the stairs. A faint voice seemed to hover on the edge of hearing, weaving in and out of the hum of the old house web but never quite emerging into audible words. It had no discernible source-- it was like the echo of a child's voice, resounding eerily in the dark corners.
Midway up the stairs the man paused, his progress interrupted by a faint releasing click from above. He dropped down to the floor in an outward billow of dust as something unseen whistled through the air where his chest had been, then swung back again when it reached the apex of its arc. A winch mechanism somewhere in the darkness above whirred to life, hoisting the blunt scrap-metal pendulum to reset the primitive trap, but it caught in the process and the motor choked, wheezed, and then gave up.
If there were other traps, either the man avoided them or they didn't activate. The stairs gave way to a dark, narrow hallway on the top floor, but his steps never hesitated despite the lack of light. He stopped at a scarred, twisted door forced shut in a frame it no longer fit. The metal had buckled around the ancient jam, and heavy dents scored its surface. A primitive knob was fixed to it, but twisted by some unknown force, and it broke off in the man's hand. He set his shoulder to the door without success, then stepped back and kicked viciously at the ragged crack along its edge with the hollow boom of metal on metal. The door shuddered and gave way with a final outraged protest on the third kick, swinging inwards on bent but somehow still functional hinges.
As the sound of the resulting crash died away a faint melody played from a tiny hidden speaker, tinkling a gentle song in the air. The entrance way was empty and dark, thick with drifts of dust, but dim light fell into the room beyond. A small motor whirred there, and a tinny mechanical voice said, "Welcome home, Aniue! Johnny Five alive! Welcome home, Aniue! Johnny Five alive!"
The man stood frozen in the doorway for a moment, then freed himself from whatever paralysis gripped him to toss a rounded Daruma sensor into the next room. The Daruma's eye snapped open, the wide sensor beam skimming the room in a full circle and then snapping itself off again with an affirming beep. The edges of the man's coat stirred up a faint powder of dust as he stepped beyond the entrance-way, and the soft music clicked off again as he picked up the Daruma from the ground. He pushed his hood back and glanced over the room.
The faint light from the LEADs outside caught on pale hair with a silvery sheen that, coupled with the pale, youthful face, seemed too much of a contrast to be natural. Even freed from the shadow of his hood his eyes reflected the available light oddly, although now that they were fully visible they were more blue-green then anything else. They tracked slowly over the dim, faded paint that covered the walls of the room in a forest of strange creatures and designs, most done in broad, childish strokes but a few evidencing greater motor skill and maturity. One section of wall was covered in overlapping hand prints, all of them child-sized. Shards of mismatched furniture, broken glass, and scattered computer parts were strewn all over the floor, but the completeness of the destruction spoke of a methodical, concentrated effort. Even the kitchen fixtures had been ripped out, their wires sprouting crazily from the holes in the walls. The broken window in the far wall still had shards of glass clinging to its frame, and scraps of what might once have been a curtain stirred in the faint, ozone-heavy breeze that drafted through it.
"Welcome home, Aniue! Johnny Five alive! Welcome home, Aniue!"
The tinny, repetitious voice came from a busted-down speaker on an outdated SHOUgakou computer core. The core itself was mounted on a crude robot body which lay upended on the floor. Frayed wires and salvaged connectors ran across the joint between the cabinet and the caterpillar wheels formed of cheap, stripped monofiber carpet, helplessly spinning in the air. An old niivee camera was taped to a pivot on top of the box, and the lens whirred and clicked as it zoomed in and out. A broad red '5' was painted on the access panel, with another small hand print in the loop like a signature. Most of the wires were torn, and the body pivot and crude claw-arms were snapped. It looked as if the home-made bot had been the victim of a violent collision.
When the man picked it up, one of the arms fell off entirely as the bare copper conductors that connected it snapped. The ancient camera continued its futile attempts to focus. "Johnny Five alive! Welcome home, Aniue! Johnny Five alive! Welcome hoooome--" the mechanical voice distorted and died as man disconnected the old power source crudely soldered to the back of the cabinet. His gloved fingers brushed the gritty dust from the small hand print, then he gently set the cobbled-together teaching bot down on a battered foam cushion.
The destruction continued in the next room. Here the formerly bright painting was scarred, the surface one wall twisted and deformed by a long, erratic scorch that ran up to and across the ceiling like the frozen afterimage of lightning. The apparent cause lay carelessly abandoned by one wall; a Mod10 taser rifle, its long barrel folded back on itself, the double-pronged charge burnt out. In one corner was a twisted metal desk, crushed in the center by some kind of violent impact. Across from it was an upended workbench, with tools that had long since seen better days lying strewn among half-assembled bots and broken down computer cores. Even the satellite feed dangling from a metal rod near one window hadn't escaped the destruction: a hole was ripped through the delicate cobweb receiver fabric. Against the far wall lay what was left of a mattress, a skeletal box-and-spring arrangement with any hint of memory foam melted away from the frame by the passage of time.
There was something terrible in the man's expression as he surveyed the wreckage of what had once obviously been a home, and he made a faint noise like a snarl when his eyes tracked over the electric burn on the wall and the bent table. He went to the corner with the upended work bench and began to search through the scattered tools and machine parts methodically, his eyes checking over the ground with a thoroughness too precise to be natural. He lifted aside a corroded cabinet panel and then paused, scanning the floor below. One hand hovered over the spot for a moment. Then he flexed his fingers and the wires from inside his glove extended, poking through the fabric like pricked copper claws. He used them with astounding delicacy and precision, scraping them slowly over the floor and lifting up a monofilament net that had been buried by dust beneath the panel. He retrieved a container matrix from under his coat and dropped the faint glimmer of the material into it, then carefully stashed it again and retracted the wire claws.
He nodded in satisfaction as he stood, but paused before he exited the room. Something seemed to pull him around again, and he crossed with slow steps to the mattress and leaned over almost reluctantly to pick something else up off the floor. A grimed pair of antique veed goggles lay across his open palm, with their prima-leather settings still whole and supple despite the dust that clung to them, the rims catching the faint LEAD lights from the street below. Their strap, dangling below the pale-haired man's fingers, was too short to be fitted over an adult head. The lenses were smoky with age, and a spiderweb of cracks splintered one of them into irregular fragments.
The man looked at the goggles for a long time, silent. When he moved it was sudden, almost furtive; he tucked the goggles into the breast of his monofabric coat and quickly pulled up the hood again, hiding his face. He went out with rapid, silent steps, and the reflective green glimmer of his shadowed eyes never turned back to the ruin he left behind.