Chapter One

The crowded public bus, operated by Express Trans Inc., hit another pothole and I bounced in my seat. Every inch of my body was sore after a 12 hour graveyard janitorial shift. I shifted uncomfortably on the hard plastic and tried to focus on the episode of Doctor Who playing on the cracked screen of my widget. Wearing the vision obstructing widg-glasses in public was a great way to get robbed or stabbed, so I had the battered outdated device strapped to my wrist instead. 

It had been a long night at work, and the morning sun was already well over the horizon. My eyes burned around the edges, and each blink felt like fine sandpaper skritching across my eyeballs. The combination of sweat and vapor from my breath made the filter mask over my mouth and nose chafe uncomfortably. More than anything, I just wanted to get home and pass out. As usual, it seemed like this bus ride would never end. 

Over my wireless earbuds, the musical score swelled with excitement as the Tenth Doctor, as portrayed by David Tennant, sprinted through the Library, clutching his sonic screwdriver and the voice over by River Song filled my ears. The two parter Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, had aired over 40 years ago - well before I’d been born - but they were two of my favorites. A private smile tugged at my lips, despite my exhaustion. I loved this part.

“Everybody knows that everybody dies, but not every day. Not today.” 

The Doctor shoved the modified sonic screwdriver into the massive computer and energy crackled. The Doctor grinned wide eyed and gleeful at once again having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. The scene dissolved to white. The white faded to a new scene to reveal River uploaded into an idyllic virtual reality garden and reunited with her friends, all slain previously in the story. 

The episode paused and the picture blinked away as my virtual digital assistant, skinned to look like Dean Stockwell when he played Admiral Albert “Al” Calavicci on Quantum Leap, filled the screen. 

“This is your stop Zee.” Al’s image chewed on a cigar as he spoke. 

I glanced out the window to see the battered bus was crawling along my street. Another commute smothered to death thanks to classic TV. 

“Thanks Al,” I said.

I heaved myself up and shuffled towards the doors. Over my earbuds the remainder of River’s voice over played out, even though I wasn’t watching my widget anymore. 

“...Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives.” I found myself mouthing the lines along with River Song.

As the episode ended, Al automatically switched over to my widge-cast feed, streaming the morning’s episode of Wake the Fuck Up America by the independent Dread Pirate Robert’s Network. The host, who’s on air alias was Markey Moron, was angrily railing against the tattered remnants of the US government and the sheeple that had sold off their voting franchise to Mega-Corporations. Markey was an angry and paranoid old nut, but he operated outside the censorship of mass media, and every now and then he stumbled across real news. 

The bus finally ground to a halt and the doors creaked open. 

“Take it easy Ned,” I said to the driver as I climbed down the stairs. 

Detecting Ned’s response, Al paused Markey’s tirade so I could hear. 

“You’ll tell your pops about that new investment opportunity right Zack? I swear, it’s a sure thing!” 

With my back still turned to Ned, he couldn’t see me roll my eyes. Ned, who was a cousin to one degree or another, was always pitching some half baked get rich quick “investment opportunity” to anyone that would listen, and even some, like me, that wouldn’t. I’d figured out most of Ned’s ideas were just reskinned pyramid schemes when I was 8, and I’d never risk actually telling my dad about anything Ned cooked up. Without turning I gave Ned a wave goodbye as the doors squealed shut, and let him draw his own conclusions. 

The Colorado October morning air was warm, sticky with humidity, and heavy with the rotting smell of garbage and pollution that not even my mask could filter out. The Denver city government had stopped even issuing air quality warnings, it would be breaking news if breather masks weren’t advised for once. And even if the air wasn’t choked with pollution, the mask protected by the increasingly virulent strains of viruses and bacteria constantly evolving to try and kill us. 

There were four hundred twenty-one steps from the bus stop to my apartment building. Along the way, I had to step around the huddled forms of the still slumbering homeless along the sidewalk. I did so with a palpable sense of dread that I could easily join them. Thanks to PrimaTech, the monopolistic Mega-Corporation that owned my hospital, and the entire American healthcare system, my family and I lived barely one paycheck away from eviction. 

Overhead, I heard the motorized buzz of several aerial drones. Most were probably delivering online orders, but there were guaranteed to be a few OzCo “Public Safety” drones mixed into the bunch. Denver and the outlying suburbs had disbanded their police departments before I was born, but not because of the Police Abolition Movement of the twenties. The decision was economical, not ethical, so instead they had contracted out all law enforcement operations to the Mega-Corp OzCo, just like the Feds and most every other municipality. As far as I knew, I wasn’t on any watch lists, but kept my head down all the same. 

Stomach rumbling, I hesitated outside the Vend-o-Mart Express franchise for a heartbeat, contemplating popping in for a breakfast burrito. Then the synthetic intelligence running the ad-screens outside the store scanned my face, despite my breather mask, and lit up with advertisements selected just for Zachary Jones. 

The ads included a new online streaming service, widget parts for DIY repairs, Wild Lords 5 Hollywood’s latest rehashed piece of crap, the latest OVR World home immersion pods, and of course the very breakfast burrito I’d just been considering. It was the ad for the immersion pod that kicked me into moving on. After my paycheck cleared tomorrow, I’d have just enough crypts set aside to rent some pod time for a night of virtual clubbing. 

At the door to my building, I placed my thumb on the scanner pad just above the door handle. Then looked directly into the security camera lense over the door. The building’s synthetic intelligence, SI, security software matched my face and thumbprint to our lease, then the heavy door unlocked with a series of metallic clicks a second later. This relatively minimal level of building security gave us the illusion of safety, however, I knew of six different ways to enter the building undetected. The thriving drug trade being done by Skeet in apartment 2B told me that I wasn’t alone in that knowledge either. 

The building’s elevator had been out of service since before we moved in, so I began the familiar climb up the stairs to the tenth floor apartment I shared with my parents. Graffiti covered the walls of the staircase, and drifts of garbage cluttered each landing. Half the lights were burned out, and of the surviving fixtures most strobed out a morse code message of impending death. 

When I finally reached the tenth floor, my chest was heaving and my skin was sticky with sweat beneath my smothering synthetic janitor’s overalls. Bone weary, I shuffled down the hall to my door, 10E, and thumbed the security pad above the knob while digging in my pocket for the key. After our apartment’s thumb scanner had been hacked and our place ransacked for the third time, I’d caved and installed the illegal deadbolt myself. It was my crowning achievement in DIY home improvement. When the apartment's security system finally beeped its approval of my identity, I already had my key in the lock and diligently jiggled it until the pins caught and I could twist it open. Then using my shoulder and full body weight, I shoved at the humidity warped door. It reluctantly gave way and swung up.

Stepping inside the apartment, I gratefully tugged off my mask as an unsurprising auditory assault crashed over me. I slammed the door shut with more force than was strictly called for. Dad, wearing a faded black t-shirt with big ACAB lettering and tattered sweatpants, was sprawled out on our stained sagging sofa watching an OVR Worlds game replay. The World Series was about a month away, and all eyes were on Dackon Darkblade and Bennette Ogresbane duking it out again for the top rank on Gygax. 

“Morning Zack to the Future. How was the night?” Dad’s eyes only flicked away from the TV screen for a heartbeat before latching back onto the sword dueling avatars on the screen. 

“Same shit, different night. You should try it some time.” Not that any legitimate employers would look twice at Dad, a self declared and officially blacklisted Democratic Socialist. I yanked open the fridge to find the filtered water pitcher empty. Annoyed, I yanked the pitcher out and stuck it under the tap to refill. “How’d Mom do last night?”

Dad’s eyes were fixated on the screen. After repeating my question and only getting silence back, I chucked an empty beer can at him over the kitchen island. The can bounced off his ample gut. 

“Fuck’n hell Zack!” He sat upright and glared at me. 

“How was Mom last night?” My tone was heavy with exasperation.  

“Wouldn’t eat again.” Dad bent over to retrieve the fallen beer can, he shook it to see if there was any left. “So I had to order a nutrient boost from that fuckin box.”

“Damn it. Another one? That shit isn’t cheap.” I mentally rolled an hour off my planned pod rental. 

“That reminds me, you get paid tomorrow, right? Make sure the entire check gets in the account this time. Those Mega-fuckers want their cut again for rent.”

“Yeah…” I scowled at my dad with obvious trepidation. 

“Well, the power bill is past due again. And we can’t have the power going out on Mom again.”

“I gave you the crypts to catch us up two weeks ago! Where’d it go?” If I didn’t manage his cash flow, we wouldn’t hurt for beer and pizza, but continued electricity and rent were questionable. 

Dad just shrugged in seeming bewilderment. Teeth grinding, I struggled to choke down a flood of possible enraged responses. While tomorrow was payday, the majority of that check was destined for KushNet Investments, the Mega that owned and managed every building in our neighborhood. The handful of crypts I’d set aside for my weekend plans had just been gobbled up yet again by my dad’s careless disregard of reality. 

I stewed silently in the kitchen as the water filtered. Then poured myself a cup and tried to focus on breathing away my rage. The fridge rattled after I returned the filter and slammed the door shut. It seemed to be enough to drag Dad’s attention away from the glittering delights on the screen. 

“You know, this wouldn’t be a problem if you and the others at that Mega-fuck owned hospital you slave away at would just get together and unionize. Then you could demand fair wages and health care and - ”

“More like we’d all get our knees shattered for suggesting it.” 

Knowing that Dad was about to climb up on his rickety old soap box, yet again, I grabbed my water, snagged a bag of chips and retreated down the short narrow hall to the back bedroom to check on Mom myself. Once upon a time, Dad had been a passionate social justice activist and labor leader. 

When I’d been much younger, he’d taken me to protests with him. Mom had put an end to that after I got tear gassed at the tender age of 9 and had been almost trampled by the protestors turned fleeing mob. Dad had lost hold of me in the chaos and we’d been separated for over an hour. I still had nightmares about that day.

In the face of an unending global economic crisis, the erosion of our democratic institutions, and a dying ecosystem, there weren’t a lot of Dad’s type left. Society at large hadn’t just abandoned Dad’s ideals. He’d been beaten and broken repeatedly until all he had left was spouting nonsense from the safety of our sofa. 

Slipping through the bedroom door, I expected Mom to be asleep. To my surprise, she was awake and sitting up in bed. Mom had her decrypted tablet in hand and her glasses perched on her nose. I guessed she was either picking through blacknet message boards or scanning code. Once a hacker, always a hacker she liked to say. Not that she had the energy or coherence to do much of anything these days. She gave me a mock glare of consternation over the top of her tablet as I came in.

“You didn’t get him going again did you?” Her voice was just above a whisper, but her gaze was focused and alert. A Red Alert klaxon started going off in my head. 

“Like he needed any help.” I rolled my eyes at her and she flashed me a wan smile. I moved over to check the readouts on the bulky PrimaTech Auto-Nurse 6500x beside her bed. 

“You seem to be feeling pretty good.” I didn’t hide the foreboding edge in my tone. 

“I was thinking I might get up and do a jig later.”

“Yeah, that’s cause Dad let you pain meds run out again.” I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt. “You’ll be feeling a lot worse in an hour or two.”

“He didn’t forget,” Mom said. “I asked him not to dose me.”

“Mom...what the fu - “

“Language Zack!” she scolded me. Though, I’d heard far worse come out of her mouth. 

We’d walked this road before. The various drugs that the Auto-Nurse pumped into my mom’s cancer riddled body, kept her in a state that she called “acceptable misery”. Mostly they just knocked her out to the point of being barely conscious. But for my bright and quick witted mom that was the real torture. Coming off the drugs created a narrow window of pain free lucidity. However, when the window inevitably closed, the agony would come on quicker than we could get the meds back into her. 

“I just wanted to see you this morning and not through a haze,” she said softly. Mom set aside her tablet and reached out to grasp my arm. For the moment, her grip was strong and steady. She pulled my hands away from the Auto-Nurse’s control panel and guided me to sit beside her on the bed. “I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to do that Zee.”

“Stop it,” I said, my voice cracking around the words. “You’ve got -”

“Shhhhhhh Honey.” Mom smiled at me weakly, but her words were laced with resignation. “Why don’t you put on Buffy? And we can both get some rest.”

I had to choke down the lump in my throat before I could reply. “Fine, but at least let me get the meds flowing again. So that it doesn’t get too bad.”

“Alright.” Mom rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. 

Opening up the Auto-Nurse’s hard plastic case, I replaced the drained pain medicine and saline packs, checked that all the hoses were good, then locked it back up. Satisfied that a fresh stream of meds were flowing, I flopped down in the battered recliner beside Mom’s hospital bed. Using my widget, I selected the next episode in our endless cycle of Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatching. We were in the front half of season 5, The Replacement. With a flick of a fingertip across the widget screen I cast it up to the small TV mounted on the bedroom wall. 

“I love this one,” Mom said as the episode began. 

“Me too.” 

With an exhausted sigh, I put up the foot rest of the recliner and pushed back. Before Nerf Herder had guitar shred to the end of the opening credits, I heard gentle snores from the bed. Looking over, I saw that Mom had passed out. Hopefully she’d sleep through the worst of the broken drug cycle. Getting up from my recliner, I pulled the blanket up higher over my slumbering mother. 

Plopping back down in my recliner, I turned the volume down a couple notches and tried to settle in myself. Technically, I had a bedroom of my own, but it was still crammed with a mountain of cheap pseudo-science dietary supplements from the multi-level marketing scheme Ned had sold Dad on last year. Most days I ended up passing out right there in the recliner. 

“Zee! It’s 8:15 PM! You’ve got to wake up now! Ziggy says there’s an 87.3% chance that you’ll be late for work again and you’ll never leap out of here!” Al shouted over my earbuds.  

Groaning, I sat up trying to clear my head of sleep, the recliner squeaked in protest from the movement. I ripped out my earbuds, silencing Al’s continuing shouts. Yawning, I checked the display on Mom’s Auto-Nurse to make sure she was still supplied. It looked like Dad had actually handled the midday resupply while I slept, a nice change of pace. 

On my widget, Al was still ranting at me to get moving. I’d snoozed him four times already and he was going nuclear. I couldn’t really blame Al. After all, I’d programmed his escalating tantrum myself.  

Even after six months, my body and the graveyard shift did not get along. Sleep came in the form of several short naps spread through the day. When I tried to dismiss the alarm from my widget’s screen, Al prompted me to solve a calculus problem before he’d return to normal function. Just to make sure I was really awake.  

“Al, play my news feed,” I said after shoving my earbuds back in. 

While the news played, I stumbled up from the recliner and hauled myself into the bathroom. Al hadn’t been wrong. I was really going to have to bust a move if I had any hope of getting to work on time. I hoped there was some hot water today. 

The latest Top Player standings from the OVR Worlds, Omega Virtual Reality Worlds, (or just The Game, as it was almost universally referred to) popped up on the widget screen first and Al recited the standings and relative changes. Being the biggest and most immersive VR system in the world the game now filtered up to the top of everyone’s news feed, whether you played or not. 

On Gygax, Bennett Ogresbane had bested Dackon Darkblade for the top rank. That had been the duel Dad had been watching when I got home. All the Sci-Fi nerds had gotten together in Zeta Quadrant for a massive battle, to determine “once and for all” which universe had the best ships, Star Trek or Star Wars. On Fleming's World the annual Tournament of Assassins had kicked off, with a surprising upset. The team from Brazil was off to an early lead. Russia was still the hands down favorite this year, if they didn’t get busted for another hacking attempt. And the annual Middle-Earth race from the Shire to Mount Doom was in full swing with an unfortunately named Dildo_Draggins_69 somehow in the lead. 

In real world news, Las Vegas, Chicago and Omaha were still under martial law after the coordinated attacks of the so-called Free Nation Alliance had killed thousands. The Senate, serving at the pleasure of their Mega-Corp electors, had passed more taxes on non-game generated income. I’d be seeing that come out of my next check. And there was another massive hurricane about to smack into what was left of the drowned Gulf states. 

Mom and Dad were both in the bedroom when I got out of the shower. There hadn’t been any hot water left, so even if I hadn’t been in a hurry, it would’ve been quick. Dad had a bowl of some ultra processed protein mush in one hand and was trying to coax Mom into eating. With her drugs flowing from the Auto-Nurse she was barely coherent, but when her glassy eyes spotted me her slack face lit up with a dreamy grin. 

“Hi Honey,” she slurred. 

“Overslept.” I leaned over and gave Mom a quick kiss on the forehead. “Gotta run. Try to eat. OK?”

Mom nodded her head but looked dubiously at the beige slurry on the offered spoon. 

“Got your mask?” Dad asked. 

I rolled my eyes and held up the breathing mask for him to see. Not that I’d ever seen Dad wear his outside. But I tried to wear mine diligently, because I knew it made Mom happy. I was halfway down the hall when Dad shouted after me. 

“Left you some pizza in the fridge! And make sure those assholes don’t fuck up your check again!” 

With a frustrated sigh, I ripped open the fridge door, grabbed a can of coffee and a slice of beyond-meat-lovers pizza. I tried, with mild success, not to slam the door behind me as I bolted out of the apartment. 

“Al, play my Going to Work playlist,” My widget detected the command and Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust thumped through my earbuds as I ripped off a bite of the cold pizza.

Breakfast of champions, I thought distastefully. 

Feet moving along with the staccato beat, I took the stairs down two or three at a time while I choked down the pizza. When I got outside, I tugged my mask into place and broke into a brisk jog as I chewed the last bite of pizza. My Mega-Corp overlords at PrimaTech didn’t look kindly on tardiness, and there were thirty or more suckers waiting for me to screw up mopping floors and scrubbing toilets. 

Reaching the bus stop I was breathing hard under my mask and smothering janitor’s uniform was damp with sweat. I checked my widget, knowing Al would have already tracked the bus for me. Of course, the bus wasn’t on time either, so my rush had been wasted. Leaning against the bus stop pole I closed my eyes and caught my breath. Somehow, I must have dozed off leaning against the pole, because the next thing I knew the silent electric bus was stopped in front of me. 

“You coming or what, Zee?” shouted the bus driver. 

“Yeah,” I grunted and heaved myself into motion. “Sorry, Luke.” 

I climbed aboard, tapped my widget against the reader to pay the fare, and slumped onto the first open seat. The bus’s electric motor whined as we rolled into motion. It would take at least an hour and a half and forty or so stops to get to the hospital. 

“Based on the traffic report, it doesn’t look good Zee!” Al reported over my earbuds, ironically interrupting Don’t Stop Believing by Journey. 

Despite the hour, the bus was crowded, and as usual, the AC was out of commission. I found myself jammed between two Augmented Reality dopes, reality warping display glasses firmly in place over their eyes. They gasped and their bodies jerked seemingly at random as an overlay of augmented reality beamed in on their glasses to entertain them and blot out the ugly parts of our world. They were probably high too, as most auggers were. 

I did my best to ignore them. I opted to check mail on my widget, mostly spam that had slipped past Al. Then I switched to the Pipeline app to stream some OVR World highlights from the day that Al had queued up for me. I’d never have enough crypts to be a player. That would have required at least a personal pod at home, a dedicated fiber optic connection, and the crypts to kit myself out for adventure in one of the various competitive worlds. I was lucky to rent a rig and be an occasional tourist to the virtual world, dancing the night away on a zero-G dance floor, sipping simulated cocktails and possibly a virtual hookup. 

However, I still stayed up on OVR World events. It was damn near impossible to have a conversation with anyone if you didn’t. In most every way, the virtual reality of the OVR Worlds was the only reality anyone actually cared about these days.