The Pill and the Patsy – Part 1

I had an idea over the weekend while driving towards what turned out to be a misguided adventure with the wife.  I am very proud of my idea, and it’s one that is in a genre very much aligned with my current brand of Sci-Fantasy: Cyberpunk.

It was an amazing one two punch which lead to the abrupt shift into this new line of writing.  The ill-fated sojourn with the wife, and yesterday’s…. musings.  The knockout blow of The Bone Season was just too much on top of having such a great idea.  I love, L-O-V-E, cyberpunk as a genre.  I know, The Bone Season isn’t ‘technically’ cyberpunk, but the opening chapter fits the criteria better than almost anything else I’ve read since Neuromancer.  I can’t even begin to describe how many times I’ve gone back and re-read so many staples of the genre.  Tad Williams Otherland, everything Philip K Dick graced us with, not to mention the Blade Runner movie or the Shadowrun universe.  Just… amazingness.  Seriously, if I ever reach a point in my career where I am mentioned in the same breath as Philip K Dick, I will know that I have accomplished something truly worthwhile.

So all of this is leading up to my own shot into the cyber-dark.  More importantly I have to make sure that the story I want to tell is truly a cyberpunk entry, as opposed to a straight sci-fi story.  It will require that my story is bursting at the seams with moral dilemmas of various stripes.  For Blade Runner, the dilemma was an existential crisis.  Are the replicants alive in the same sense that we are?  Do their lives have meaning?  Are their existences just as ‘right’ as the humans who created them?  That is the primary question which the film rotates around.  For the story I have in mind, it definitely has a crisis which fits the bill.  It’s encased in a story about reliance on a drug deemed illegal, which is used to control those reliant upon it.  I have my own twist on the subject though.  The drugs themselves aren’t addictive.  They aren’t even psychotropic!  No, they are nothing more or less than a highly specialized form of anti-rejection drug.  The drug enables the user, in this case Patsy, to have her bionic implants continue functioning, instead of her body rejecting them and slowly destroy itself.  The implants can’t be removed as they are grafted into major portions of her entire body.  She has no choice but to serve the man who is both her partner and her pusher, while she searches for a more lasting cure which could free her.

Further, it will play on themes of governmental control, police states, human lifespan, and other things that classic sci-fi always delves into.  I love those themes.  I could crawl along in the back alleys with my protagonist for the rest of my life.  There’s so much that is darkly romantic about a bleak city-scape in which these stories are set.  Such extraordinary progress, glossing over such rampant misery.  The dichotomy of the scene makes my mind sing with idea after idea.  For now, I sit with fingers aquiver, heart pounding, the blood singing through my veins and mind, the very air ringing with the staccato beat of marching keystrokes.  My imagination and my will have merged, and nothing can stand before their combined might.

Without further pounding of the war drums,

The Pill and the Patsy -Part 1

Patsy stared down at the slick, orange lozenge before her.  It wasn’t overly large, barely the size of her first pinky joint.  She’d taken it a hundred times before, and she’d take it a hundred times more, for as long as she needed to.  Still, it was strange that something so small and innocuous could cause her such distress.  Her head felt too small to contain her gray matter, the pain building behind her temples, and her brain would surely become jelly under the mounting pressure.  Her joints were on fire, arcs of pain racing up and down her nerves like heat lightning.  She was hours, days, overdue for this next dose.  Yet still she had to gather her courage, even in the depths of her suffering, to once more place the hated pill on her tongue.  Hands shaking from pain or fear, she never knew which, Patsy managed to place it on her tongue.  As usual, it tasted very much like an over-ripe grape as it melted in her mouth and coated it in the numb fuzz of the fast acting drug.  It raced along her system with each desperate beat of her heart, each labored breath surging her blood to where the treacherous salvation was so heavily desired.  Five minutes, ten, an eternity, she couldn’t tell how long she stood waiting for the pill to free her from her misery, her hands planted on either side of the tiny bathroom sink.  Her fingers on the thin metal were all that kept her upright.  Finally, the pain eased.  Her skull loosened the constrictive coils it had wrapped around her brain, and her joints began to feel as though they would allow her to move without giving up unexpectedly halfway through.  She slowly released her grip on the sink, the shaking easing into the nothingness they had come from.  Patsy became still, her back straightened, and she regained the poise and bearing which had led to the only name anyone ever called her: Duchess.

“I need a shower” Patsy stated to her reflection in the mirror as she rinsed her face with blessedly cool water.  Her long silver-blue hair was matted with the sweat of her recent episode, and her face was drawn and pale.  Given that her skin was usually the tone of well polished mahogany, that was no minor concern  Each episode was worse than the last, and as she looked into her violet eyes, it was all she could do to resolve once more to work through the next one.  Stripping out of clothing soaked through with sweat, she stepped into the shower.  The mist was warm and refreshing, filled with her preferred rose scented cleansing fluid.  A few minutes later, towel secured around her hair and body, she set about cleaning up any sign of her presence from the small apartment which served as one of her many bolt-holes in case of an emergency.  After half an hour, no one would be able to tell that anyone had ever been there.  The small army of nanos that she had released from their storage container were about their usual business of destroying any trace of her DNA from the apartment, following the instructions she had sent them from her neural nexus implant.  Once all traces of her had been removed from the room, she flexed the shape and scope of the gravitational field generated by her sternum reactor, giving the nanos a clear path to ride back towards the insulated tube they called home.  “Welcome home my little vagabonds” Patsy said as she screwed shut their highly insulated capsule, preventing outside interference from anyone looking to use her own servants against her.

Stepping outside, Patsy donned the mask of Duchess.  With movements any ancient aristocratic tutor would have cried at producing, Patsy glided down the nondescript hallway as she clipped her container to the base of her back, beneath the pack she always wore when she conducted business.  She was in her work attire, a flexible black bodysuit complete with gloves.  Sleek and body hugging, the outfit would keep her warm in extreme cold, and cool in extreme heat.  It was perfectly suited for her work, and the black modular shoes she wore were what any cat burglar worth calling such would wear.  The tenants of the well kept, but obviously checker, housing tower never looked up as she walked by.  Even the men and women who actually did see her wouldn’t report anything to the authorities if asked.  This building housed checkers, men and women who made their living on their monthly government stipend guaranteed to every citizen and the cheap guaranteed housing provided to everyone who couldn’t afford better.  They worked in the building, keeping it clean, helping each other, and looked for work on the outside so they could make something of themselves in New Amsterdam.  New Amsterdam, built near the ruin that had once been western Kansas before a nuke plastered it even flatter than it had been, was owned by Monty, even if he wasn’t the Lord Govenor.  And everyone knew that The Duchess worked for Monty.  Monty was cold, calculating, demanding, and completely unforgiving to rule breakers.  But if you played by his book, and were willing to be a part of the team, Monty would look after you.  He’s who you would turn to if you wanted a job at any price.  He is the one that kept crime organized and efficient.  No one had to fear from random acts of violence or theft in Monty’s town.  He punished freelance gangers with an iron fist. No one died unless Monty signed off on it, no one lost property unless he wished them to lose it.  More than one ignorant or arrogant ganger had been visited by Monty’s displeasure.  They were always found strung up in a highly public area, clearly better off dead than he had been in their final moments of living.  Monty didn’t tolerate chaos: It was bad for business. 

Pillfully,
Justin