Jesse Sterling Harrison

Stoop So Low

By Jesse Sterling Harrison

New tech has unexpected consequences, right? The super-weapon that would win the war also spawns a monster. The vaccine that cures cancer turns everybody into vampires. What about beneficial consequences? Nobody predicts those, either. Like when self-driving cars solved climate change. Or the fact that virtual reality put an end to overpopulation, war, even human pain as we once knew it.

By the time I came around, our grandparents were already digitized, floating in the cloud. Bodies 

only go for so long, even when their owners sit around plugged into VR. When those bodies failed,

 up went the brains. For most, it was so easy to leave behind the messy world of bodies, the hazards 

and trials of outside. It was a long time since our ancestors spent their days grinding flour. Now, 

most folks can’t climb a flight of stairs. And why should they?

Then it looked like VR would wane, and modding would be the thing. Visnich himself said that humans would soon become unrecognizable. “You know aliens only exist in the future? They’re us…coming back from space after decades of mods. Maybe we’ll invade ourselves.”  But it can only go so far. If you want to look like a dinosaur, you’re either going to need a dinosaur-sized house, or you’re going to be a hell of an unimpressive dinosaur. Sure, there were a few rich weirdos who wanted to be twelve feet tall, so they had giant furniture custom-made. But for the most part, mods were indulged to their limit. Then people settled back into their humanness. Want bulletproof skin? Custom sex organs? A little extra muscle? Maybe a third eye: useful when starting cults!

Then Visnich and his people at Reverence invented Precursor, and everything changed again. That’s where I come into this—I was there from the drop!

I’m getting ahead of myself.

*

Some people always have to buck trends; we can’t help ourselves. When everyone else got Planted, and opted for a life in VR, it made a few of us into outdoor adventurers.

Some Freewalkers scavenge. Some farm. Some have even become highway robbers or cannibals, and stuff actually gets dangerous. Me, I’m pretty well modded. I’m not gonna say I’m unkillable, but it would take some work.

That night was chilly, but with an implanted powercell, I’m good in shorts and a t-shirt unless it’s snowing. I had heard there was some hinky stuff swimming around in the East River, and thought it would be dramatic to shoot by night.  The oxygen level wasn’t great, but I’d be fine as long as I didn’t dive too deep. I rigged my skin to absorb O2 from the river. Then I went live. I watched my retinal readout as my viewership shot up. There are always a few Planted following me at any given time—hell, some folks watch me sleep. But when I go live I can count on at least a million viewers.

“This is Arrabash the Adventurous,” I proclaimed. “Today’s mission is taking me into the depths of the East River to encounter sharks or worse. Send flowers to the Med if I lose an arm.”

I stepped off the dock theatrically and sank to the river floor. I could see my cloud of nanocams splashing the surface as they plunged in to follow me. As always, it took a moment for me to convince my body to stop trying to breathe through the mouth and nose. The retinal display showed my blood oxygen…I focused on that as I walked along in the sludge. Then I lit up the floodlights on my backpack.

The river was cold and full of fish. They scattered like cockroaches when those lights came on—eels, sea bass, little ocean perch, and down in the muck, a sturgeon the size of an alligator, its front fins evolved into clawed feet. Nobody lets their kids swim on the Jersey Shore anymore.

I leaned forward and began a breast stroke towards the center of the river. I live for this: fighting the current, the cold, my own urge to breathe. Loving the danger. So what if I had the benefit of enhanced strength and fortitude? The Planted loved it.

A freighter chugged down the river; I swam beneath it, stroked hard to match pace with the ship before allowing the lethal propellers to pass just above my head. My viewership was burgeoning. I could see the comment crawl in my retinas: viewers naming the weird sea creatures I saw, speculating on what would happen if those props hit me. Then a comment began repeating over and over: CREEPY ISLAND. CREEPY ISLAND!

I came to the surface and saw it: in the midst of the river was a rocky half-acre, dominated by a towering block-shaped building, with scraggly trees leaning out from it. It looked like a great hideout for pirates, or augmented manatees. It’s best to obey when a lot of viewers make a request. The Planted wanted me to explore the island and I would. I switched to a butterfly stroke and skimmed over the waves, leaping like a dolphin to give the viewers a kick. When I got close to shore, in the shadow of that sinister tower, I stood so I could walk out of the waves. You can always crawl out and then stand, but walking out looks so much more badass. But as soon as my feet hit rock, my wards started going crazy.

“Proximity alert. Unknown single individual. Medical emergency.”  All that at once! Viewership started spiking again. “Investigate!” read the crawl. They always want me charging into danger, of course. Just up the beach, on her hands and knees on the rocky expanse, was a woman. She was convulsing. As I jogged up to her, I saw that she was retching up river water. My wards scanned her body and determined that she was without major augments. She’d spanned a half-mile of rough water with a normal body! She was either a real fitness freak or somebody was chasing her. I stood there heroically, waiting for her to stop vomiting.

“Vital signs stable,” announced my wards. She looked up at me, brushed sopping curls away from her face, and sat back on the beach. Viewership spiked again: five million! She was young and, if not beautiful, certainly had a striking face. That’s all it takes for most men, even Planted men with their weenies swimming in brine. She seemed unimpressed.

“We’re on TV?” she asked.

“We are,” I announced grandly. “You’re sharing the stage with Arrabash the Relentless! Say hello to my five million fans! And say hi back, everybody.” The crawl went rich with greetings, some catcalls, and other things too lewd to repeat.

“Listen: you’d better shake ass out of here,” she hissed. “The trouble I’ve got coming, you don’t want.”

Perfect! That viewership number kept shooting up.

“Tell me more! Does the lady require assistance? Someone I can tune up for you? I’m fully modded.”

“Shit,” she said simply, pointing out over the river.

Now, I’ve seen some spooky stuff in this town, but what I saw coming over the water made me shrivel. At first they were just a spread of dark objects, like hovering seabirds. I spun my eyes up to 50-power. Jesus! There were about twenty of them, all pale and freaky-looking, with lots of obvious mods. But that wasn’t the creepy part. They were floating over the channel standing up, with their dark cloaks trailing out behind them.

“You’re on the run from Reverence?” I asked her.

Then a call came through, direct into my ears, and on every frequency!

“We come to punish Shemya the Reckless, who has stolen the property of Loran the Resurrector. Remove yourself from our sight to avoid dismemberment.”

I nodded, then shrugged.

“I’ve been dismembered before,” I said.

“So be it,” said the advancing collective, in one voice. “You will regret your rashness but briefly.”

I heard a clattering of beach stones. Turning, I saw that Shemya, who had recovered nicely, was pelting toward that giant lightless building. I caught up to her immediately.

“Not too tough to run, are you,” she noted when we were inside and bracing the door with our backs. My pack lights were still on, illuminating just a fraction of a humongous chamber that went up about seven stories. Everything was gray and hung with cobs. Near the limits of my augmented sight, modded spiders the size of beagles inched up the wall.

“I would have fought them all, but this makes for better TV. Chase scene, you know.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Shemya started piling debris against the door, and none too soon. An augmented arm smashed halfway through the metal just above the knob, shivering the walls of the building.

“Surrender may decrease your eventual torment,” suggested the voices in our heads.

“Eat me, chums!” I shouted back. My call echoed up and down in the building’s cavernous innards as I lifted a filing cabinet and tossed it against the door. Shemya was already running towards a platform with a ladder. I skipped the ladder and leaped straight to the top. There was a room up there, behind a wooden door. We slipped inside and locked this door uselessly. From outside came a roar of directed flame, and some very earnest religious chanting.

“Why are they so heated with you, chickie?”

“I turned down an arranged group marriage…with the High Priest and two robots! That, and I stole…this.”

It was a spray bottle as long as my arm, and flat gray.

“I think it’s Precursor. Their secret new product. But I didn’t have time to check the serial numbers. We’re kind of in a box here, so…”

She let fly with the spray, fanning it all around the room.

“Don’t get any on you?” she added, rather late.

Instantly the things in the room began to change. What things? Two sofas. A coffee table, bowling trophies. A bunch of empty cardboard boxes. A wooden chair. The sofas shivered and emitted a noise like a snore. One of the trophies fell over. Then the chair…stretched. And turned.

The chair took a step toward me, extending one slender leg gingerly, and I took an involuntary step back. It blinked a pair of tiny eyes at me.

“I’m Stickley,” said the chair cheerfully, “And I’m very pleased to meet you!”

I looked over at Shemya.

“What in blue hell is going on?”

“Good,” she said. “I guessed right.”

*

After some negotiation, it was determined that Stickley, the trophies and the two sofas would create a diversion by charging out the door. If they survived, they could seek their fortunes. The boxes, once transformed, had flapped around the room like bats before hanging from an overhead beam. Shemya threw the door open just as the Reverents arrived; the sofas led the way, knocking bad guys aside like charging oxen. Meanwhile, I descended from an overhead hatch like God’s vengeance, landing among our enemies ready to crush skulls. Or I would have, if my weighty modded body hadn’t crashed right through into the sub-basement. I heard a scream of rage and triumph from Shemya. There was a light from above that would have made the sun blush. Whatever she had unleashed blew half the building away. I hope Stickley made it out.

I crawled from the wreckage mid-morning, having lost most of my viewers and a number of my nanocams. Who wants to watch video from inside rubble?

I made it back to the depot to spend some of my ad revenue: food, medical supplies, new nanos, and the drugs I take to maintain my mods. “They’re talking about you,” said the Interlocutor. “Some filmic exploits, I suppose.”

“You should try it sometime,” I winked. “Leave the cubes. Have an adventure.”

“I’d never stoop so low,” he sniffed. “My place is with the Planted.” He sealed the door. To each his own, I suppose.