Hermit Style

Three Hours.

I’m in the backseat on this one. The two Swedish are up front. We’re sleek and black, oozing down an empty interstate. We’re absorbed by the pitch of night.

Through misted glass I can see the bright, blurred colors of billboards slinking just off the road. Their copy alternates between messages of sympathy and generic optimism.

On the left: “We Understand How Hard it is”.
On the right: “Rev it up!”

Colors and bold text, front-lit and thrown against soft, deep black. It’s abstract enough to calm my nerves.

On the left: “Let Us Do it For You”.
On the right: “Call Today to Win!”

I don’t usually have nerves, not for an MJK operation this easy. Especially when SevenTwo is the front man- he knows the procedure better than anyone else- after all, he practically invented it.

Invented… or was this more of a discovery? Hard to tell.

On the left: “Rest Assured… You’re Among Friends”.
On the right: “Take it Higher!”

The two Swedish are taking me to meet Omnyo, though none of us know exactly where this meeting will occur. With a mystic of this sort, it’s all about paths, about opportunities. He zeroes in on the perfect time and place, and we get pieces as he goes. We know it’ll be Detroit. We know it’ll be tonight. Every now and then the Swedish’ll look back- about every forty seconds- to see if I know more. They’re definitely nervous. Maybe I know something, or maybe I’m as clueless as they are. I don’t give them a window either way.

The Nokia 6800 in my jeans pocket buzzes a short, silent pattern that I recognize immediately. Against my thigh it tells me there’s a message from Omnyo. I pull it out, run SpellCheck- it’s clean- and select. The text reads:

2215
BDHA LNG 8MILE
NE CORNER
(BIG MJK on track)

Big Magic. Contemporary Occult. Technocratic Alchemy. My Bread and Butter.

On my left: “Remember How Special You Are”.
On my right: “Take Back What’s Yours!”

The two Swedish have seen me look down, so they look back. My eyes are forward now.

“Get off on 8 Mile Road, go East.” We’ll be there in twenty, and I could tell them this, but I’ll keep them on their toes.

On nights like this, cold, misty, and anxious, I wonder what it was like the first time someone recognized the modern key to magic.

It’s Okay to Hurt.

Break the Chains!

Expenditures. Big ones. The kind that you regret the next morning- but the Sim paid big.

Ika’s off with her team, I’m treating mine to the depths of debauchery that only Homeworld can accommodate. They don’t get along so well together, but she and I connect solid for moonlighting.

By now, our freelance client is halfway to Station 3 with about a square mile of stolen cargo. In its place is an Ika-perfect representation of said cargo, down to the dusty details. She’s tops, for sure… no one I know can rival her degree of specic texture or light values. Unless someone pops over there early, they won’t know their goods are missing for at least a week. The Sim will last for twice that long, thanks to our solid workmanship.

Washout’s the place… where most bars are dim, this one’s the Sun. I’d heard it was modeled after a well known spacer favorite, or maybe it’s a Station chain that decided a Home base would be lucritive. Spacers spend twenty hours a day in the pitch, they like a little sunshine once in a while.

My crew likes the place because they don’t pack ‘em in, but the scenery tends to be top notch. It’s too hot in there to wear much clothing– some people decide not to wear any at all. Crew gets a kick.

Settled around a small round off in a bleached out corner, Glasses are raised and shades are tipped to my generosity.

“Nothing’s too good for us lot,” I tell them in earnest.

Omnio, Siever, Gil, Mu, and partner Maples. Best MJKers you’ll find.

There’s loud music, as always, and louder banter. Louder drinks… the blur sets in early tonight. Gil chases girls, Mu chases anyone, and the others plant their roots by the table and bow to oblivion. A part of me thinks “Don’t go overboard, Oaks.”, but the other part knows it’s four days til the next job… even bigger than the last. A whole crew affair, from the sound ofit.

Four days… that’s a good three days of recovery.

Being squeezed through cargo alleys, a magnetic pull. The conjoining force emanates from Ika- I’m merely a tagalong.

Ika wears one of those white denim faux-shirts, a shirt with a collar but no sleeves. White skirt, and grey shoes that were probably white ten minutes ago. The only reason she’s not all grey is that she’s slender enough to avoid the filth of cargo alley walls. I’m not so fortunate, but dressed appropriately.

I’ve been spacing, following the pull and trying to ignore the scraping of unfinished concrete, tarp-netting and waist high paper refuse, but suddently she pivots and stops in her tracks. We almost collide, and in that moment I catch a hint of some aromatic vegation, some unidentifiable perfume flower.

“Closer now. Profile Silent.” She nudges square shades back to the top of her bridgeless nose, to no effect. I sightlessly key the profile. Feels like I’m going deaf.

These alleys are cold and windless, too tall to snag any sunlight, to dense and winding to carry a breeze more than twenty feet. Nothing but re-usable metal bays stacked to the sky. Cargo’s the main racket in this down, a perfect go between locale linking Home and Stations 1-6.

Ika’s racket is Simulation, mine is Connection. We’ve worked together twice before, but this job’s a little more intense than usual.

We start walking again, closer, her magnetism urging me on into the alleys. A few turns, and we stop again. Ika nudges her shades again, and pulls out her piece– Nokia 3100, white face chipped to primer gray on the edges. An archaic thing, to be sure, but with MJK your piece is almost everything. If she used anything else… well, she wouldn’t. That’s the point.

“You can still get batteries for that?” I ask, because I’m no good at silence.

“Very expensive,” she idles, keying in what I assume is a target number. Impossible speeds. While she waits for reaction, I grope for my own piece, and run Spell Check. Two deflects in the last ten minutes, which tells me we’ve hit a few automated scans, but left no tracers.

A short pulse gives Ika her results. She seems satisfied and turns to me, “Forty feet up, Oaks, there’s a clearing. Head there and give me a forty yard drop to work this sim.”

I manage to squeeze by her, trying not to grey up her whites, past unidentifiable perfume flowers and into what she called the clearing. More than anything, it’s a logistical mishap, a place where three cargo grids of different dimensions collide, leaving a large square of unstackable space. Ika’s good, this is the perfect place for me to op. I haul the matte green Sony Stalwart K46 out of my pocket, Spell Check (no new) and switch the profile to Active.

My mind tells me this job will be cake, and is already planning a night of massive expenditures. The Stalwart says it’s ready, and that Ika is in place.

Another place to write shit. Who would have thought?

I’ll figure out what to do with this space shortly… I assume I will put fiction here.