Going Upspire wasn’t all that hard, commercial lifts existed everywhere. But the mountains of the Upspires towering over the bloks below definitely gave them an inferiority complex, entirely by design. Shit flowed downhill, after all.

Still, stuff had to go up and down, beyond the normal cycle of food and waste. Plenty of people working Upspire lived Downspire, if not by choice, and the lifts were always running.

Having a Termite badge helped, even if I didn’t have a job up there. My Band pointed out the right route; I went through the scanner and my identity was duly noted, thank you for the ten credits, and then I was on the lift platform as it waited to fill.

Didn’t take too long. I and the other hundredish passengers grabbed the hooks hanging from above, while the oldest people or those with packages got the side seats, all under the watchful eye of the Lift Marshal, some of whom had been known to pop open a door and send the recalcitrant on a free trip Downspire if they got uppity mid-trip.

Government jobs were lawsuit-free. Good security that way. Of course, it could earn the Marshal a bullet in the head from the friends of the idiot making trouble, so it didn’t happen often, but it meant the average person was nice and obedient when the Lift Marshal pointed and told them to give up their place to the little old lady.

He gave me a wary eye, his scanner-lens pegged the Termite badge, and he just looked away. New Termites were lower than interns and apprentices in most people’s eyes, as they always came from Downspire, but experienced Termites were dangerous people, not to be messed with idly.

I had an additional ‘Don’t Mess With Me’ tag on mine, thanks to My Queen.

I got off about two-thirds of the way up, an ‘insulation layer’ full of shops that didn’t dare to do business Downspire, but had enough security and access to Upspire goods to draw in the mid-range workforce wanting nicer things, and so drew the vast majority of their traffic. A square mile and several floors of shops, parks, rides, eateries, and decent, clean walkspaces succeeded in drawing in the vast majority of Downspire people, preventing the rich guys Upspire from having to see or deal with them.

Going Upspire was still a treat, just from not having to deal with the smell of decay and the ever-present garbage that never got totally cleaned up... and which was in a mid-decay zone. The Upspires standing above full decay zones often disabled the lifts entirely, and their workers had to commute in from zones not shooting one another all the time down there.

I was heading to one of the more expensive restaurants, top of this Strata, and rumored to have actual vegetables, fish, and fowl, even if it was cloned.

Gak-food was really hard for someone with ki to eat, being totally reprocessed protein that had been through a million digestive systems... or was those digestive systems, as soylent was a primary protein source for Dole food. Gak also came loaded with mildly addictive suppressants which encouraged complacency and obedience, which everyone knew about, and there were entire industries based around repurposing and cleansing gak into something less tyrannical, generally by mixing it with free-grown veggies and mushrooms and the like.

So, I was looking for a high-end burger/bar joint called The Middle Ground. There was one on basically every Spire, even the Grand Spire where the true nobles and high-end bureaucrats lived, and the Imperial government ran the whole city. The food they served wasn’t natural grown, but it wasn’t pure protein, and cloned chicken and fish was better than gak. Most impressively, they used real hydroponic tomatoes, and there were cubic miles of tomato farms Downspire devoted to supplying Midspire’s demand for them.

Artificial sunlight and fed on human waste... whatever. I wanted me some real tomatoes.

The dress code wasn’t strict, and if I looked a little underdressed, I just flicked a five-credit coin at the hostess and she ignored it. She also watched me Skate in, which meant ignoring me was a no-no, and so I got a seat near the kitchen where I would be served fast and sent on my way.

That is, until I ordered.

She was kind of a fresh-faced brunette, on the short and cute side, staring at the brand on my face, but my hair was decently styled and really lush, and I didn’t have the snarling air of a ganger girl. Also, the nymphal ears helped.

“Are you ready to order, ma’am?” she asked, sticking to the script.

“This is gonna be a big order and appropriate tip, sugar,” I winked at her. “See these burgers? I want one of each, one order of fries, a bowl of each soup of the day, and there’ll be dessert when I get there. On each burger, I want all the fixings. Don’t worry about me being able to eat it all, I can, and don’t worry about me being able to pay for it, I can.” I put down a hundred-credit coin, flashed five more, and alleviated all her worries. “Get to work. The better it tastes, the more I want it.”

“Yes, ma’am!” she replied. “Uh, would you like anything to drink?”

Technically I was underage; realistically, nobody cared. “Bring me two sets of sample platters of different beers.”

“Yes, ma’am!” The hundred-cred coin would make her night. I grinned and sat back, waiting for my food.

Modern heating methods being what they were, she was back in three minutes with my various permutations of alcohol, and in seven with the first of my burgers. I began to indulge.

The food hit my guts and was slurried literally within seconds. My system went into overdrive cracking the organic energy loose, and then shuffling it along into my Reserve until my full Sustaining was ready. As I hadn’t had crap to eat for like six days now, I was actually paying off a debt, and munch-munch crackle-crackle, my system sighed and paid the food debt down, and as my eating continued, it shrank to nothing, and I began to build up a reserve.

Of course, that meant I ate six days worth of food, and now was working on seven.

The waitress was rather wide-eyed, and I caught the eye of a few of the patrons, too. I was eating steadily and strongly, salivating at the tomatoes, meh with most everything else, although the taste wasn’t too bad. It all went down, down, down, paying down the tens of thousands of calories I’d burned, and then started coming up the other side.

Of course, my bill racked up with it, and I slurped down the faux chicken and potato soups, ordered their biggest steak on a whim and a red wine to go with it (the wine disappointed taste-wise, but it was actually real), and then had six slices of different pies and half a gallon of ice cream to go with them.

The waitress looked at my abs, and the fact my stomach was NOT bulging like I was pregnant, very impressed. Several of the patrons who’d actually stayed to watch me eat clapped in approval when I was done. I waved at my fan base, totally digging a physiology that could binge eat like this and not lose my figure.

“How do you do that?” the waitress had to ask, as she flicked me my bill. I glanced at it mentally, tallied it up, paid it, and flipped her two hundred-credit coins.

“Biopsi technique, Mind Over Body. You ever hear of a Binging Stone?” She shook her head, frowning. “Based on the same effect. Used by nobles. Actually stores food up. So, you eat and eat and eat to fill up the stone with all the excess calories and nutrition, and it pays it back to you over time, meaning you never get fat. Mind Over Body does the same thing, but stores it psionically. You can go without food or water for a long time, but when it comes time to eat, you pay it all back, or you could go from perfectly fine to totally dead of dehydration between steps.”

“Are they expensive?” She was looking at my abs hungrily, belt of Marks and all.

“A Binging Stone is a crystalweight.” Her face screwed up. That was a lot of money for a normal person. Grim only cost a fifth of that, and the mithral plates for my Disk not much more. “Yeah, just one of the reasons the Upspires look so svelte, not just visits to the body docs.”

“And you’re a psi, too?” Her hopes kind of crumbled.

“Nah, I’m a Null. Anyone can learn Mind Over Body, if they have the will and get Opened. It’s not that hard.” Which was true.

Her eyes got really wide. “Really?” she asked. I nodded. “How much does it cost?” Her voice lowered dramatically.

“About ten minutes and a thousand creds. You have to accept a Mark.”

She looked a bit wild suddenly. “I go on break in ten minutes!”

I laughed despite myself. “Better make it thirty. I have to go buy some ink.”

She nodded very quickly. “Emperor’s Throne, how is it so easy to become Opened?” she whispered to me.

“You’re thinking you’re going to become a psion?” I waved my hand. “Perish the thought. I’m not a psion. I’m a Null. Psions are the bright shiny happy people flying around. I’m the cold grim rock trundling around on the ground.”

She looked at me. “I’ve never heard of a Null...”

“Here’s me looking totally surprised at that.” I just made a face at her.

“A half hour it is! Where do I meet you?”

“Someplace we won’t be bothered for ten minutes and you won’t feel too uncomfortable in.” I flicked her my credentials, to settle my bill, and she acknowledged receipt with an excited gaze.

I started to get up as another customer walked by, heading towards the rest room.

-Not human!-

I blinked, and didn’t think too deep. Chalice came out and struck as I slid out of the seat like I was greased, striking across the young man’s legs as I swept past my waitress, and coming back to take off his head as I Flared on him.

Psychic shock ravaged up his body, and I knew instantly from the feedback that the warning was absolutely right, because that wasn’t a human nervous system and flesh.

The combination of shock and my Null started the reversion, and even as the shouts of alarm rose, I caught his falling head, transmitted the features as they were reverting, and called up My Queen with all kinds of urgency.

“What’s up.” came the flat voice over my Band link.

“Found a dop. Need a Boole lockdown on this site. Band is next to mine.”

“Locking. Hacking.” Totally bored, as if suddenly being thrown into a dop hunt was just the next thing on his list. “Alerting the Dop Squad. Any others nearby.”

I tore the Band off the arm that was reverting from a common yellow-brown to a pasty grey-white, hair receding into the warped flesh.

Biopsis and cannibals were the root sources of dopplegangers, those who used too much shapeshifting and those who ate tainted human flesh evolving into creatures that could manipulate their flesh and bones like clay, no longer human, and capable of eventually being able to consume the brains of their victims and use their memories at will. Mind readers, consummate actors, and even able to generate short-term gene-proof copies of their templates, dops were hated, feared, and loathed, and hunted mercilessly when they were discovered... only discovering something that could think like someone you’d known your whole life was a hard thing to do.

Dops were social creatures, moving with the herds of humanity they thought themselves above, and preying on them, looking for ever stronger brains and identities to take for their own, enjoying their riches and pleasures for themselves. They were one of the ultimate tools of Amourae, taking down societies, families, governments, or anything else from within with consummate skill and the ability to literally take the secrets of anyone they could eat.

Some were solo, but many were groups, moving in pods that didn’t really trust one another, but did so more than any humans. The key to taking them down was speed. Once you found one, you had to trace connections; family, friends, co-workers; everyone had to be found and vetted against one another.

But I was lucky. This WAS a social venue.

I turned to the waittress. “What table was this person at? How many? Are they all there?”