Chapter 2

I could hear a radio blaring some emergency news all the way from the store’s back room. “-ions have announced a ceasefire. Experts are baffled at the abruptness of the announcement, but our leaders are unavailable for comment. More in five.”

The cashier rang up my items with a smile you don’t often see nowadays. “About damn time, eh pard?” he said as he handed me a paper bag.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Interesting.” I didn’t mean to sound so dismissive, but unfortunately the cashier couldn’t tell. His smile was wiped from his face. I practically ran out of the store just to avoid the awkwardness. I jogged to the corner, trying to reach the bridge as fast as I could… and slammed right into someone instead.

“Ah, shit, man. Watch where you’re going!” said the guy I accidentally knocked down. I immediately offered a hand, which he took. He dusted off his white shirt, but the sidewalk was way too dirty. “Dammit. This was my nicest shirt.” He glared daggers at me. I noticed he was clutching a small black bag pretty tight - I’m pretty sure he basically used his own body to protect it from the impact.

“Not a nanomachine shirt?” I asked sheepishly. The guy closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Look, man, I don’t want any trouble. I can fix that shirt for you.”

He opened his eyes, brows raised in doubt. “Really now. How?”

His name was Genesis Knight, though he just called himself Gene. Apparently he was on the way to some fancy event over at the city center when I ran into him.

“You sure you don’t have to go there anymore, Gene?” I asked when he finished his call.

“I got someone to cover for me, at least for half the event. It’s one of them fancy tech shows, so I literally won’t be let in unless I look like I belong.” He looked dejected at his ruined shirt. “Man, look, even my pants are shredded. You have enough to cover all this?”

“A little trust won’t hurt, y’know.” I took the steps down to my street, Mulberry.

The design of the city of New Pines was touted as one of true efficiency. It consisted of five concentric circles, linked together at multiple points via roads, kinda like spokes on a bicycle. At the beginning, people had a hard time getting around anywhere without a vehicle - which was bad, because all the commercial and industrial buildings were only present on the circles, never on the spokes. Those were reserved for residential housing and small-scale businesses.

The response of the local government was almost instant, and after about a week five bridges made from highly advanced neosteel linked all the residential areas to each other. There were no traffic lights, because traffic flow was nothing short of smooth. The bridges kept the civilian population elevated and much less prone to getting into accidents.

The circles themselves were further divided into sectors. The outermost, and biggest, circle contained the most general sort of big businesses, collectively called The Market, kinda like a massive strip mall. The fourth circle was home to hotels, company offices, an airport, and all sorts of tall, probably corporate buildings - this was Metropolis.

Factories and warehouses dotted the third circle, officially (and imaginatively) called Industria, but the locals just call it the Dust Bowl. While putting these things in the middle of the circles seemed stupid or at least thoughtless, the pollution was actually kept under control pretty well thanks to what is essentially a sky sewer that connects all the factories together - the Dust Cap.

The second circle, which is where I worked, was specifically set up for tech-minded businesses. Green Logistics was just one of them. Every tech mogul wanted a share of the New Pines pie, and the local government knew it right from the start, so they deliberately made the only circle they could be in as small as it was. The Information Center - IC, for short - was the first circle which reached occupancy… three years before the official opening of the city itself.

Finally, at the middle of it all, was New Pines’ local mystery. Not that most people paid much attention to it, because most of the perimeter was under a giant, opaque dome. It didn’t just obfuscate visually, either - there was probably some sort of sound-cancelling tech installed all over the dome too. It was, in fact, already there when groundwork for New Pines was laid down. While officially called the City Center, the civvies just called it The Egg.

“Why the hell were you rushing your ass, anyway?” asked Gene as I looked for my keys.

“I, uh, was a few seconds too close to upsetting a convenience store cashier.”

“Bruh.”

“Wish I was kidding,” I replied, trying not to sound too embarrassed. “Hey, Francis.”

A man outside my apartment building tipped a hat in greeting. “Heyo, Blaze, sir! Ah, a friend, eh? Good for you!”

“He ain’t my friend ‘til he fixes up my clothes,” grumbled Gene. Francis, the building’s brown-haired guard, just laughed.

“Okay, friendo, log your name on the screen next to the elevator and you can go right on up.” Gene looked at me puzzlingly, and I motioned to the blank space at the very left of the wall.

“A fingerprint should be enough,” I said as I clicked on the UP button.

Gene did as instructed, and the wall blurred a little where he pressed it. “That’s it?”

The elevator dinged open. “Yep, pretty much. Francis, we good?” The guard was checking out his datapad with squinted eyes. “Genesis… Knight. Yep, go ahead.”

I motioned for Gene to enter the elevator. “Thanks, man.”

“Anytime!”, Francis said cheerfully.

I pressed the big P at the very top of the elevator. Gene took a sharp breath, and turned to me, eyes wide and jaw slightly open. “Shit, bruh. How can someone like you afford a penthouse in Mulberry? This is between the IC and the Egg - prime fucking land!”

I grinned sheepishly. “It’s a long story.”

“Bruh,” was all he said until we reached the top of the building.

I really couldn’t blame him, of course. The penthouse was sparsely furnished, with the early morning sun casting a warm, yellow glow on the room through the ceiling-height windows. At the center was a large, circular sofa set in front of a flat screen TV. The floor was some good quality wood - pine or narra, I think? - set over noise-cancelling tech that was present underneath the entire penthouse. The other walls were hewn from rough limestone, which prevented the room from getting too hot even during the day. A constant blast of cold air came from the vents in the ceiling.

Fancy lights hung overhead from one end of the penthouse to the other. At the very left was the kitchen, which I first approached with Gene following behind me. “Dude. How do you afford this place?!”

I set my paper bag of food down on the counter. “I don’t. This place… it, uh… it wasn’t just mine, for a couple of years. The old owner was a friend, and when he and his friends had to leave, they set me up with the place. It’s fully covered by the building.”

Gene’s jaw dropped. “The hell kind of luck is that? Jesus.” He also set down the black bag he has been hugging the entire way here. “Mind if I take a few pics?” he asked as he brought out a camera from the bag.

Uh-oh. “NO.” I slammed the fridge door close to make a point. “That’s all I ask. No pictures, and no spreading that I own this kind of place, because I technically don’t. I doubt my friend would appreciate it if I let strangers just stay here. Now come on - my actual room is at the other end of this floor.”

“You… keep your room isolated?” Gene asked. He looked like he had more questions, but he didn’t push the point. “Thanks,” I said with a sigh of relief.

“Why bother helping me anyway, man?”

“Long story short, I don’t want anything hanging over my head. So if I know something was my fault, I offer assistance. I won’t have anything to be guilty about, and you get your shit fixed.”

We finally reached the other end of the penthouse - a blank white wall with a door just barely visible. Gene looked over my shoulder, curious. I tapped on the door once, and a keypad slid out. Instead of tapping a password, however, I formed my ring, middle, and pointer fingers into a sort of triangle and pressed on spaces between the numbers.

The areas underneath my fingers easily gave way, giving me a handle grip on the keypad which I used to push it downward, then to the left. I felt the familiar pinpricks of nanobots running along my finger tips. Just as fast, the door disassembled itself into its nanobot components, which retreated into the nearby walls.

“Holy shit, spiders!” I could feel the floor shake when Gene jumped back in terror and/or surprise. I laughed.

“Chill out, buddy. Not very familiar with nanotech, are you?”

He shook his head. “Not easy affording it if you live along the Strip. Wait,” his eyes widened, “is THAT what you're giving me?”

“Eh, not the raw stuff, just clothes made from 'em.”

“Just… who ARE you?”

My smile disappeared. “Just a guy with luck on his side.”

“You good on the clothes, man?” I asked. Gene didn't ask for much, but he did take his sweet time deciding on the designs. Two shirts, a pair of slacks, and a wool jacket took him two hours to pick out.

At least he was happy. “Yeah. Yeah, I am!” He had a big smile on his face, and he was jumping in place excitedly as I input the final commands on my PC.

Nanotech programming wasn’t easy, but the friends who left me the penthouse also left behind a prototype nano-programming software they developed themselves, along with a few million nanobots. They were stored along the left wall of my room, perfectly inert and non-replicating. Like the one isolating my room, this wall was a blank white. Well, almost. Gene stood near a touch screen that served as an interface for designing whatever you needed or wanted. My old friends specifically designed the screen’s interface for maximum accessibility. Looking at my visitor bouncing in place, I finally understood what they meant.

“Aaaand done.” A small section of the wall to the right of the touch screen opened up. Gene took a look inside and grabbed his new clothes. “Feel free to change outside - not like anyone’s around to look. Give me a holler when you’re done, then we can head over to your event.”

Gene raised his eyebrows. “You’re coming with me?”

I laughed. “I forgot to tell you - my company’s got a product to show off there tonight. Odds are good they’re the same events. Now, I need to get changed - gotta get my formal outfit ready.”

“Okay then.” I stood up and closed the door behind Gene, then grabbed the shirt and pants hanging on the far end of the wall. They were already pre-modified for formal occasions, but I added a bow tie and changed the shirt to a light blue. Just my style. Now fully dressed, I was about to shut down my computer - but the messaging app my friends and I use in-game pinged. The notification didn’t have the sender’s name.

Weird…

Intrigued, I clicked on it. A chill ran down my spine when I read it.

⌜Been a long time, Blaze. Frankly, I didn’t expect you to still be living at our place, but I’m glad you still are. No, I’m not here to take it back - I don’t really need it now. Not anymore. I’ll be on station at New Pines in around a week. Hopefully we can catch up - especially since you probably have nothing but questions right now.⌟

⌜Oh, and you may want to bring a pair of gloves to your event. See you, Blaze.⌟

⌜-Grant⌟

I must’ve stood there frozen in shock for quite a while, because I heard Gene shouting my name outside my room. “Blaze? You okay, buddy? It’s been like ten minutes.”

I took a deep breath to calm myself down. “Yeah, man, I’ll be right out. Was just looking for something.” I took a screenshot of Grant’s message, and as expected, the app froze for a few seconds before reloading. Now it looked like there was never a message from Grant in the first place.

This wasn’t unfamiliar to me. Neither was the name Grant.

The problem was that Grant died a decade ago.