ACT I - BRIGHTWOOD

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve heard moving contraband in the 21st century was tough, or at least doing it without the inconvenience of being caught and prosecuted. But nowadays if you get caught you just disappear, maybe a bit of interrogation, but certainly no trial. I’ve also been bored by stories of the former FBI and NSA, who apparently heavily monitored personal information to try to curtail violence and stop the flow of contraband back then. Ha! Today, you’d be lucky to take a shit in any public place without the NextGen Secure KO drones inspecting your bowel movement. In some ways, this has just moved illegal trafficking deeper underground, making it rougher and more lawless. As the population exploded in the mid-2100s with age-related health breakthroughs, technological and genetic advances in food production, the ban of contraception by fanatic religious types, and a whole lot of other “progress”, demand for contraband and illegal services grew: drugs, weapons, brothels, hit men, animal fighting, slavery, cyborg body modification…anything. Most criminals and suppliers of this material realized the dangers of distributing their products and service once the private security conglomerates really clamped down. Eventually they started to go through well-established illegal networks, like the one I run. When a client comes to me asking for my specialized transportation services in the 55-million-resident megatropolis of steel and concrete where I’ve made my living, I do the job and I do it damn well. I don’t ask questions, I don’t get involved. Usually.

It was a drizzly morning, one of those days where it seems the sky is just spitting on you. That doesn’t really narrow down the date, since the cloud condensation nuclei hit critical concentration in the ‘tropolis a few years back and rain is near constant, but it sets the scene. I scanned in my U-link to buy booze and a brick of the least out-of-date MetaSoy Entrée I could find at the superette counter. I shuffled past a few bums in the entryway and sprayed a small cloud of ultra-hydrophobic aerosol in front of me and stepped through it. Some bastards made their fortune on this Repello agent once people realized that the “rain” wasn’t going to let up and that you don’t want to get much of it on your exposed skin. And it’s no coincidence that Klaymore, the largest manufacturer on the planet, now owns the patent, considering they started developing it once they realized their own pollution would lead to the unavoidable CCN spike.

Anyway, I stepped out into the street to the tinks and pops of water on steel and started walking north back toward my high-rise. I stared up at the large screens circling the square where the superette was located, though there wasn’t much to look at besides some advertisements and public propaganda about water quality improvement. Admittedly, I lived in a pretty rough district. I wouldn’t call it a slum - there were surely much worse places in the 'tropolis - but it certainly helped me fly under the radar. I waded through the crowd for a few hundred meters and ducked down a side street. As I passed a few small shops and the entrance to a cheap subterranean apartment district, I felt someone come up from behind and fall into step with me. We walked side-by-side for nearly a dozen paces before the figure said something.

“Mr. Manor?” His voice wasn’t unfriendly, though his tone told me that he already knew who I was even though he had asked. He was wearing an all black polyvinyl coat to keep the rain off and I could only see his eyes shining out from underneath a hood - they were strikingly white with large, brown irises. Out-of-towner, eh? I thought. No one in this smog could retain the whites of their eyes like that.

“Sure,” I said, “and who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?” I kept my eyes on the crumbling concrete ahead of me and continued walking.

“I am called Brightwood.” His accent sounded like he probably spoke one of those Slavic languages that still hung around Eastern-Euro, though the English he spoke to me seemed quite fluent. “I am interested in your services, which have been praised by an anonymous friend. I also have the ability to pay in mostly whatever form you wish. However, I would very much like to discuss this business in a private place.”

Straight to the point, very nice. I discretely shifted my eyes up and down each side of the street. If this was a professional set-up, a cursory glance at a busy sidewalk wasn’t going to save me, but it had before. It was hard to be trustworthy in my line of work but I figured I was all right in this district. I slowed my pace a bit and wordlessly turned left down an alley that contained my favorite pub. Brightwood followed and showed no sign of nervousness or hostility.

“Let’s grab a drink.” I said after a few steps, and hefted my backpack a bit. We rounded a corner and walked straight into the squat, crumbling structure of the Kathmandu Pub, which looked as though it were the youngest sibling on the bottom of a slum-dwelling family dogpile. The interior was dimly lit but well patroned. No heads turned as we strolled in. We took a seat in a rear booth and a scantily dressed automaton waitress emerged from the kitchen and moved toward us. The grind of the ceiling tracks indicated that the pub was badly in need of an upgraded system.

“Two kegged ales and some privacy, please.” I articulated to the machine before it could speak. It registered the information and poured the drinks from a hose that stretched into the darkness of the ceiling toward the bar.

“Enjoy.” It murmured in a smooth, female voice.

I took a long drink and wiped my face with the back of a flannel sleeve. Kathmandu was just one of the many notoriously outlaw pubs on the north side of the megatropolis, but just to be safe I pulled a jam out of my backpack and plugged in into my U-link. The driver boot-up menu began to scroll across the terminal and my wrist hummed. The terminal indicated that the U-link recognized a civilian data storage device. The jam would kill transmissions in a tight three-meter radius, while any agency bot scanning the activity of my link would register nothing more than a run-of-the-mill storage platform. It’s bad practice to use them more than once or twice before incinerating them, but luckily I had a brand new ziplock full of 'em in my bag. I had purchased them yesterday a few tables over, in fact.

“So let me hear your request, Mr. Brightwood”.

ACT II - THE REQUEST

“I have some items which may seem unorthodox for your 'delivery service’.” He paused to gulp down half the beer in front of him. I had heard a similar line several times before, usually while sitting across from a fidgety small-time drug lord right before he asked me to transport a dead body or a couple hundred tanks of nitrous oxide - hardly uncommon requests. I nodded for him to go on. “The items are already in the city,” Brightwood continued, “across the river near a NextGen drone hangar. The building they are housed in is a sort of makeshift laboratory in Dense Zone 4, which I have set up with a few colleagues. The items will need to be transported to the docks owned by Matrex about five kilometers away. I have a team to take them from there. Do you accept the information thus far?” His gaze never left my eyes as he spoke.

I considered asking him where he was from, which could have given me a clue as to whether he was employed by a multinational corporation. If he was, though, I knew he would lie or refuse my inquiry. I’d worked with several multinat clients in my early days of smuggling, but once I had wised up a bit I began a constant, albeit underground, battle against them. The unilateral trade agreements that passed unchecked in the recessions of the 21st and first half of the 22nd centuries gave nearly complete power to corporate interests in most of the world. 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ the left-wingers had protested in return, but to no avail. The deals were introduced as a way to boost productivity and spread a higher standard of living more evenly - classic trickle down bullshit. Now, most military services, arms, food, and energy production, and especially international security had been scooped up by a handful of ever-merging yet ever-competing multinats. If Brightwood was going through me and claimed to know my reputation, I was willing to bet he was currently unknown to corporate interests.

“I accept, go on.” I had more than a few connections in Dense Zone 4 to work with, and I consented that his insistence that he had friendlies at the drop point was always a good sign.

With a professionally subtle glance at our surroundings, Brightwood reached into his poly trenchcoat pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Information on real paper, I thought, this guy takes no chances. He carefully unfolded the sheet and slid it toward me. In the dimly lit corner of Kathmandu I squinted at what appeared to be a digital photograph as it was slowly pushed toward me. I set a bit of artificial red lighting from my link and took a closer look at the photo. Judging by the makeshift flood lighting and industrial-sized tanks in the background, it must have been taken in the warehouse-turned-shop in Dense 4 that Brightwood mentioned. In the center of the photo, tucked between a few men that could have been my client’s twins, was something I did not expect - a small hoop greenhouse.

Drugs. I thought immediately. But the front door to the small structure hung open, and inside I could see bright colors and deep greens contrasted against the dim grays and browns of the warehouse. I kept staring at the photo, making sure I did not look surprised or intrigued. Like all successful smugglers, I don’t ask questions; questions get you involved; questions get you caught. I had dealt with and transported some pretty wild shit, to put it lightly… but flowers? There was no doubt that’s what I was looking at, though I didn’t have much experience with them. There were certainly no plants living outside in the 'tropolis on the constant supply of sulfuric acid and benzene derivatives falling from the sky. Sure, there were people underground growing pot, coca, ayahuasca, 'shrooms, peyote, you name it, but the plants in the photo in front of me were bona fide flowers, with large, bright bursts jumping out from the green foliage.

Then I noticed that a couple men in the photo looked like they were eating some of the red ones. Oh, god. Vegetables too? I didn’t think moving flowers would be too difficult, I’d heard a couple stories of competitors running them - after all, they were only considered contraband because they fell into Schedule 3 along with heroin and condensed propellants. But off the top of my head I could think of at least half a dozen ways vegetables were outlawed. First off, by the turn of the century luxury goods had been banned to promote equality, and vegetables fell smack in the middle of that category. And even if they didn’t, as far as I knew MetaSoy and C'Genta had patented and (aggressively) controlled all food sources a couple decades ago. I’d had a few former clients get caught smuggling bricks of salt - never saw them again. But there was something about the joy on the faces in the photo, and maybe a little bit of my desire to take my corporate rebellion a step farther, that set me thinking. There looked to be maybe 30 or 40 plants inside the little greenhouse, but it was hard to tell. I flipped the photo so it was upside down from my perspective and looked up at Brightwood.

“Eighty thousand BC-equivalents, transferred to an encrypted account that I keep on a private server.” I said, and watched him nod in agreement. Without blinking, I lifted my arm and tapped the center of photo, right on top of the clear plastic structure. “And one of them.”

A grin slowly crept across my client’s face. “I was hoping you might ask.”

ACT III - THE SMUGGLE

I spent the next six days contacting and meeting with a network of my most reliable contacts that spanned the distance between the abandoned warehouse and the docks. I preferred physical meetings in bars like Kathmandu to hash out details, but a few conferences were made over an old-school communication network I’d installed over the years between safe houses. It was just a tangle of fiber optic cables, transmitters, and receivers I’d dug out of the plentiful electronic dumping grounds found in my district, but it was second-to-none in long distance private connection. Over the course of the week I found quite a few had been removed, presumably by some lowly security personnel team that had accidently stumbled upon them, but the most important ones were still intact.

The greenhouse itself, I had learned back at Kathmandu during the first meeting, did not necessarily need to be moved, which would make the process much less costly on my end. There were 40 plants in total, all of which were potted individually and of various heights and widths. The transport system I compiled would split the 40 plants into four groups of eight, one group of seven, and my plant in a group of its own. Three nodes of contact were arranged for each group from beginning to end: one at the Dense Zone 4 warehouse, one somewhere along the way with my middle-men, and the final at the Matrex docks with Brightwood’s people. I would be handling my cut personally. Brightwood confirmed that eight pots could fit in a standard beer crate - I liked it simple, and I was satisfied with this setup. We arranged one more meeting to discuss the smuggle and agreed on the various terms in the plan.

On the morning of the operation, Brightwood met me in Dense 4 at a digital identity counterfeiting business with a bicycle shop front. After a final conference, we left the shop with a backpack full of beams and walked through a few alleyways to where the crowded slum butted up against the abandoned industrial park. The beams wouldn’t be much good in an open fight with the 'tropolis security if we were exposed, but firepower could still come in handy. We entered from the west through a natural collapse in the high chain-linked fence guarding the industrial zone. Brightwood and his team had re-built a series of existing, but badly damaged, underground passages that snaked in between warehouses.

After navigating the passages to the correct warehouse, we conferred with Brightwood’s men and distributed the beam generators. The lights, lab equipment, and greenhouse had already been dismantled and piled into a cooling tank along the back wall. I was offered several samples of strange looking vegetables and fruits and told to decide which plant I would take as payment. They all looked much bigger than they had back in Kathmandu, but I figured it must have been an old photo. In the end, I chose something called a strawberry. Goddamn that’s good. I thought as my mouth puckered. Sweet and sour like GlucoMeal, but with less of a dry, metallic taste. As I walked around brushing my hand along the other plants, I could hear the familiar sound of my heart beats thumping as I mentally prepared for the job. But after a few seconds I realized that this wasn’t the familiar beat - it was too frequent, and it didn’t seem to be coming from my chest. A hand to my pulse confirmed that the sound wasn’t in sync with my body. The other 10 or so people in the room looked up in the air right as I did. Fucking choppers.

Did something get leaked already? I thought furiously. I looked around to make sure I wasn’t the only one that was surprised by the noise. Everyone in the room turned to Brightwood, and Brightwood looked at me, wild-eyed. Well, we’ve got a chance then at least.

I was the first to find my composure. “Get the Mylar foil over those crates and get into the tunnel!” I stowed the strawberry plant into my backpack as Brightwood’s men scrambled to obey. In less than thirty seconds we were quickly backtracking through the underground passages toward the center of Dense 4 where we had entered. We could still hear the choppers lightly beating in the air overhead. I booted up the dB-meter on my U-link and allowed it to scan frequency ranges for a few seconds. I selected the steady pulse coming from the choppers and set the program to tracking mode.

We wordlessly navigated the tunnels with maglamps for a few minutes until we were a few hundred meters from the tunnel entrance. “Hold.” I said, as loudly as I dared. The company was quick to respond and strained to hear the noise of the chopper. The tunnel was completely silent. I flipped open my link and checked out the data on my wrist. The tracking function indicated that the frequency had gradually red-shifted until it dropped below background. No sudden engine cuts; no landing in our area, I thought, and told Brightwood as much. He nodded solemnly and gave a stiff wave to the group to continue.

I had sent out eight bicycle taxis from the shop right before we left earlier that morning: six to carry the plants and people, and two as backups or decoys, whichever came first. When we returned to the tunnel entrance, I checked the visuals on a 2-hour camera I had stuck to the concrete wall near the collapsed fence before we entered that morning. Everything looked clear. I sprayed a Repello cloud and stepped into the alleyway. I moved through its 40 meters of wet trash and grime and stood on the corner that intersected the busy street corridor. Up and down either side of the street I could see my bicycles and their carts lined up outside the shops and motels, occasionally making an excuse to turn a customer away. A group of Security AIs rolled past and scanned the crowd as it flowed by. After they had moved on, I pulled out an electronic cigarette and took a drag. The smoke mingled with the smog but I glanced down the alley and saw that one of Brightwood’s men had gotten the signal. He strode carefully past me carrying the crate and headed for a bicycle on the other side of the street. I saw him confer with the driver and pretend to heckle over a price, then he got in and the cart zoomed off.

I directed the rest of the men into carts without a hitch. Only once did a drone fly overhead, but with the crowded streets and space foil to temporarily block IR coming from the crates, there was no trouble. Brightwood came out last and we hopped into the remaining taxi. As we made our way south toward my high-rise, I popped in a jam and turned to my client.

“Once we arrive in my district,” I reminded him, “I’ll get out a few blocks from my high-rise and carry my package” - I patted my backpack - “into my apartment.” I had picked the 'berry plant because of its impeccable taste, but also because it had been one of the smallest plants in the greenhouse. “You stay in here and the cab will take you up to a curry hot-house in the Straits, where package three will be waiting. From my place I’m heading straight to the docks on foot and meet you there.”

Brightwood nodded, leaned back, and tightly shut his eyes in concentration.

“Then I take package three to the docks and backtrack to pick up package four at the same restaurant.” He said after a second or two.

“Right, and make sure you use the kitchen entrance that’s marked out back.” I had packages three and four offset by about twenty minutes but running through the same place. Adharma, the guy who owned the curry house, was one of the best.

Since we weren’t using the net or links to communicate, the operation was nerve-wracking. It relied on all the pieces falling into place without real-time orchestration. But this wasn’t a new challenge for me, and I had spent nearly a week getting the nodes set up and writing down each set of plans on blackout paper to distribute to each informant - I was confident in my work.

When we arrived at the corner I got out and pretended to pay the driver. I turned and walked toward my place as the bicycle grinded in the opposite direction. Once I was in my building I took the compression elevator up to my 89th floor room and pulled the plant out of my bag. Man, this thing has grown a bit. It must have been at least 3 times the size as when I stuffed in in my bag in Dense 4. No wonder they’re able to feed 20-some billion with these things. As Brightwood had suggested, I flipped on the light connected to a rusted ventilator above the oven. I admired the plant’s complete out-of-placeness in my damp, dark apartment - in the damp, dark world, for that matter. I popped a 'berry into my mouth and chewed slowly. I can definitely get used to this thing, I thought, and went out the door with my mouth watering.

When I got to the dock warehouse 20 minutes later it was mid-afternoon. I learned that the networks for packages one, two and five had run smoothly and that they had already been loaded on a waiting barge. Brightwood’s workers also told me that their boss had been to the docks with package three before I even got there. Four down, one to go. I thought, and allowed myself a small sense of satisfaction. It was always nice when smuggles ran smoothly - good on the blood pressure.

Just then, Brightwood burst through a side door of the warehouse looking exasperated, beam in hand.

“Package four has been compromised.” He panted, yet still retained a surprisingly professional tone. He quickly explained that when he had arrived back at Adharma’s restaurant, it looked like a missile had hit the place. “I even heard an explosion as I was making my way back,” he said grimly, “but I was too far off to think anything of it.” I got up quickly and started to say something. He interjected: “As far as I know, I wasn’t followed by anyone, plus I took few detours getting down here just to make sure.”

Damn. I thought to myself, trying not to be superstitious of my good mood before Brightwood had shown up. Nextgen must have heard something in the data stream about the curry house and linked it with illicit activity…or maybe it was just a coincidence. Unexplained security-related bombings weren’t an everyday thing in the safer districts like the Straits, but they certainly weren’t unheard of. And Adharma’s place wasn’t particularly known for its cooperation with authorities. At least Adharma won’t be talking, I thought darkly. I’d have a couple loose ends to tie up with that, but I’d been careful enough to completely unlink each delivery so they couldn’t be tied to one another.

“At any rate, all the other packages arrived without complication and are loaded.” I told him, pointing over my shoulder to the bobbing barge in the loading area. It was a small commercial ship bound for some Matrex-controlled zone across Lake Michigan. The ship help mostly cheap electronics produced in some of manufacturing plants in the 'tropolis, but Brightwood must have paid off the Matrex dock workers to stuff some private items below deck.

“Very good.” He said, extending his hand. I met him halfway and we each gave the one firm squeeze to indicate good business. I felt him slip something into my pocket and pat my side. “A little extra something for a job well done, although I dare say I should have given it to you earlier. No matter. And about package four, I am certain that I wasn’t followed, plus none of my men were present to provide any evidence in case they search for bodies. Your BC-equivalents are presently secured on your server. I trust your…other payment is secured?”

I nodded.

“Very good”. He said again. “Be careful on your way home, Mr. Manor.” He smiled a broad wolfish grin and gave me a subtle wink.

He turned and stepped on board the ship, just in time to miss my involuntary shiver. If this smuggle wasn’t already over, I thought to myself, I’d be concerned I was getting myself into trouble with that grin.

ACT IV - THE BEGINNING

I walked through the Repello cloud and cautiously exited the warehouse through a hole I had made in the back wall. It was evening and the rain was coming down a bit harder than usual, but I felt accomplished. Like most smuggles, I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until it was over. Man, I haven’t been this tired after a one-day operation in a long time, I thought. I’d been in this business for 18-plus years, yet it still amazed me how much each operation takes out of you. I slipped through a few side streets behind the warehouse and into the throngs on the district’s busiest street. Once I was far enough away from the docks, I stopped by a street vendor and bought myself a soybar and a beer to celebrate with a bit of my newly acquired 80k.

As I worked my way through the streets toward my apartment, I began to notice odd stories on the viewing boards in the crowded squares. Passing conversations, usually dull, began to catch my attention. I kept hearing the name of my district and noticed that many people in the main squares were craning their necks upward. In fact, I noticed as I bolted down the rest of the soybar, the stories on the tickers were warning of some quarantine in my district…

'Dangerous materials confirmed in a Drichov District high-rise, no entry admitted. You will be turned back at the gates. You will be notified when the situation has been resolved.’ The words crawled across the screens and I wondered what could be going on now. Turned back at the gates, ha! I rerouted my course toward the backstreets.

As I sidled through a small trinket shop, I nodded to the woman at the counter and made my way through the back rooms. I popped out in an alley and walked onto my street. As long as I had my U-link to prove my information and address, I’d be fine now that I was in my district. I walked toward my building, in the opposite direction of the flow of bodies hurriedly moving away toward the district exits. Then I saw it.

My building was covered in enormous, sinuous vines. In fact, so was the next building to the west - and the south. And they were visibly spreading like green, leafy fire. Breaking windows, alarms, NextGen choppers, and the rising noise of the crowds filled my head. Jutting out from all over the monstrous plants were red splotches. Strawberries. The tickers in my square were also running stories about the quarantine, but I noticed that some of these were warning of outbreaks in nearby parts of the 'tropolis. A map displayed the prohibited zones - they were all up and down the southwest coastline, including the Matrex docks. I hurriedly reached into my pocket and pulled out the item Brightwood had slipped into my pocket at the docks.

'Brightwood Plant Care: Place under a light source for at least two hours prior to food anarchy. They feed on the concrete.’

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BY LORDOFCATAN