Rupert Ainsworth

Rupert stepped onto the bus and glanced along the eight passengers—pasty in the interior glare. All had the sheen of a Beyul connection suit.

With a sigh, he paid his fare.

“Welcome,” the bus said.

Rupert only nodded and retreated up the step into one of the ends.

“Is he the one?” one of the passengers asked.

Rupert cringed and looked to the closing doors. It was too late to bolt.

“It’s okay,” The kid about the same age as Rupert held up hands. “It just that I heard that sometimes you play AR keyboards.”

Rupert glanced at the audio microphones in the bus’s ceiling and nodded.

The bus started moving.

Rupert adjusted his Beyul settings to allow the keyboard’s sound to be proximity public. He gestured to unroll the keyboard and considered his options. I’ve lost too much of my music to the House. Still, they haven’t found a buyer for Broken Trust.

He started the bass chords and made it through the first stanza.

The kid spoke again. “Do you have the music to it? Would it be all right if I played too?”

Rupert shrugged. A flick of his wrist sent off a copy of the sheet music.

The kid looked over the sheets. “There are some others here who play and one who sings. Can they join too?”

Rupert froze. Is this a trap? Would the House let me hear it performed before taking it from me? Does having this song, any song, performed mean that much to me? He nodded and adjusted the sharing settings.

The kid brought up an AR guitar. Another kid on the other side of the doors pulled out a drum set. A girl in the lower middle gestured for a microphone and attempted to adjust the song’s octave.

Rupert sighed. He adjusted the song until the girl gave him a thumbs up.

He considered what the changes meant and made a few more changes in other places. Nodding, he started the bass beat again.

The others joined in. While not professionals, they knew their stuff — hitting the cords and beat. The singer’s voice was a bit weak on specific notes.

Rupert flagged pieces of the song for additional adjustments.

The song ended. The regular passengers cheered.

Rupert sat back and smiled. So, this is what it feels like.

The bus stopped. More passengers got on, some got off.

“Once more?” the kid asked.

Rupert judged the distance to his stop and nodded. He made the last adjustments and started the bass chords.

The song ended, the bus stopped, and the passengers cheered.

Rupert leaped for the doors and made it onto the ruins of the sidewalk.

“Hey!” the kid called and stepped down onto the broken concrete. “You wrote that song.”

Rupert nodded.

“We have a band. We’d like you to join us.”

Rupert needed to shake his head, he needed to get to the House before curfew, he needed to get away from the bus and the potential ears of the House. He turned and walked.

The kid didn’t give up. He tugged on Rupert’s sleeve. “At least think it over.”

The last bus of the day hadn’t moved — the big, beefy drummer standing between the doors — preventing them from shutting. None of them, none of these ‘better’ kids, wanted to be stranded out here.

Rupert tried to determine if they were far enough from the bus and hoped. “I want to. I can’t.”

The kid held out an AR contact card.

Rupert only saw the logo, Algold Music, and first name—Jason. He shivered despite the heat of the night. Not taking the kid’s card, he handed over his own AR card over.

The kid saw the logo on Rupert’s card. “Ah. Shit.” He gestured back toward the bus. “They took that song?”

Rupert nodded.

“Did they find a buyer, yet?”

Rupert shook his head.

“I can work with that.” The kid dug into a pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out a physical business card. “If you want, we can hire you … on spec.” He hesitated. “Even if we paid you, you wouldn’t be able to keep it.” He gave Rupert a questioning look. “Right?”

Rupert shrugged and then nodded.

Jason nodded and planted his back to the bus and lowered his voice. “If you need to run away, reverse the address and go there. Anytime. We’ll get you to a safe house. And out of the city. Out of the state. Whatever you need.”

Rupert doubted the words. In the space between their bodies, he made the sign language letters C and O.

Jason cringed. “Yeah.” He inhaled. “That’s possible.” He eyes darted over some AR display given by his Beyul suit. “Fifteen days. It would require fifteen days to travel to Denver.”

Rupert frowned. “Forty hours by bus,” he whispered timed that a motorcycle passed them.

Jason nodded. “But, as a dependent of a House, you can’t buy a bus ticket. At any stop, the agents of the Houses can drag you off and charge you for criminal theft and add to your family’s debt. It is hard to smuggle people out of Port Birmingham and across the Sea of Mississippi. The Port of Dallas refuses House refugees, as do the rest of the Red Ports along the western shores. You need to think differently.

“Have they sold any of your songs?”

Rupert nodded and splayed out the fingers of a hand.

“They’re not going to let you leave.”

Rupert bowed his head. “Price?”

“One song. Maybe this one.”

“Credit?”

Jason frowned. “What name do you want it under?”

“Rupert Ainsworth.” If I’m leaving the name behind it won’t matter.

Jason smiled and stuck out his hand. “Done.”

Rupert shook the hand. “Why does the name matter?” Keeping his voice against the rumble of a delivery van.

“I can’t explain here. Come see me later. Remember: Spec if you want. Run when you’re ready. We musicians have to stick together.”

Rupert memorized the card and walked away. He thought through everything he needed to do before returning to the House. Get out of and dispose of the Beyul connection suit and erase its memory with military-grade software — erase any connection to his Beyul account, any link back to the bus’s recordings. If any connection survived when the suit was recovered, the House would ground him—lockdown—or relocate him away from ‘bad influences’ including his family. Including Tapan. Any connection and Jason Algold could be charged with conspiracy to commit felony theft—the debts of Rupert’s family.

Rupert didn’t believe Jason could hide him, get him away from the House, get him to Colorado. Capacity to commit a crime no longer matters for criminal conspiracy.

A few drops of hot rain fell. Then the floodgates of the opened and the downward deluge threatened to wash everything away.

Rupert ran and brought up his Beyul account and smiled at both the paycheck and the college scholarship. I did it. I won the Beyul lottery — for music. Now, I just need to get to Denver. He downloaded the erasing software and had it delete and backfill the entire connection suit. He exited out of the suit before that exit app vanished.

The Beyul suit pulled away from his skin gathering into a liquid, mercury-looking, metal sphere in his hand.

He threw it into the emergency flood control canal.

Already the water siphoned from the city threatened to overflow the retaining walls.

He ran toward the next place he could dispose of the suit. I hope six possible stops is sufficient.

His House tracking anklet blinked and sparkled in the rain.

The driving chords of the rain and the pounding timpani and rattling metal sheets of thunder had left Rupert shaken. The thin polyester House onesie clung to his skin to show off his muscle definition — more from lack of body fat than serious exercise.

As the main character of his favorite book would describe his ‘home’: The House was a ten-story bookcase sandwiched between abandoned corporate offices with a distinct lack of children’s or romance stories. The stories, however, were of people who had once worked in the offices next door, had once bought the illusion that work meant pay meant the ability to live, had once resided in tidy little homes and lived in tidy little lives. Then the workers been sold by their corporate employers to a technical rehabilitation House to learn new skills, to earn new wages, to yearn for new breaths of freedom.

But like the words of the book’s narrator, the description and stories were all filled with lies.

Police lights flashed off the gray and glass construct — lending color to the sponge of deceit. Silhouettes and shadows shaded the returning Rupert from the direct glare of the lights.

Like any other call out to the Houses, the police came in force — prepared for a riot, prepared for an insurgent army, prepared for a vast criminal enterprise. And like desperate children, they clung to those comforting fairy tales.

Tonight the residents of House #9173 stood in the rain outside the holographic/volumetric strip between marker poles declaring, “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS,” which separated them from their dingy coffin rooms and their dingy soylent lines and their dingy hopes.

One family of secondhand hopes looked worse than usual.

“Evening Mister Salas, Ma’am. Where is Tapan?”

Mister Salas hugged his wife. New tears flowed down her face. In a cracked voice, Mister Salas answered, “He committed suicide this afternoon.”

Rupert took in the news. His heart felt cold.

Doubt flagged certain memories.

Everyone in the House hoped to win one stage or another of the job lottery — to go from unpaid intern to underpaid temporary worker to probationary wage slave to part-time beggar. Sure someone somewhere always won big, but no one knew them, no one from their House won, no one in any family won.

But Tapan had won the big ticket, the grand prize. He won the salary star lottery months ago.

Out of some sense of … something — love or fear or obligation or guilt or something else — Tapan decided to stay and avoid telling his unlucky parents.

But Tapan had bent the lottery — placed Rupert’s music under the noses of Beyul’s executives — to give Rupert an exit from the House.

Together he and Rupert made plans to move to Colorado together and start a life with some possibilities.

“I’m sorry.” Rupert swallowed. “Take his lottery winnings, his annual salary, his life insurance money. Leave, start a new life. He would want that.”

Mister Salas’s eyes narrowed, and his brows derailed into each other. “What are you talking about?”

Rupert lowered his voice. “He won the job lottery. Beyul hired him as a salary star. You are the beneficiaries of his finances.” Rupert took in a shuddering breath. “There is enough there for you to live —” He looked at the lights flashing against the House. “— really live.”

He hugged his arms against his body and walked away. Nothing made sense — the notes refused to form even minor chords. One does not plan for the future and then commit suicide. One does not look forward to eloping and then commit suicide.

Tears threatened to break through of Rupert’s façade.

Rupert moved to a spot where he could see the cops complaining to each other. But … They won’t do anything. They are paid to make the corpses go away, to blame the victims, to save the House from scrutiny.

He continued to weave back and forth along the outer edge of the crowd of residents waiting to return to the spots they called their own within the House.

Who would want to kill an entry level applications designer? Sure there is a ton of technical information involved. Maybe some propriety corporate secrets. Really? Entry level designer offered access to secrets? Nah. The only thing special, to the outside world, about Tapan was Beyul. Does that mean some enemy of Beyul killed him? Why?

Rupert found his mind running in circles.

The only thing which makes any sense, someone wants to take down Beyul, and Tapan Salas was in the way. Since he lived in a House, make his murder look like a suicide. Case closed.

So, great master detective — he snorted at his own joke — what are you going to do about it?

No answer came to him.

“Rupert Ainsworth?” A waddling pile of lard in a soaked suit asked.

Now what? He glared at the man. “Who are you?”

“Gorelli of Castro, Horwitz, and Harsha. It has been brought to the attention of Concord Technical Rehabilitation Centers that you have been wearing a Beyul Connectivity Suit contravening the contract you signed.”

The latest shakedown. At least it’s not some religious heaping pile. Rupert crossed his arms and took a half-step forward and unloaded his practiced lie. “You are misinformed. My internship authorized my use of a Beyul suit when conducting specified activities. Upon the termination of my internship, the Beyul suit was scrubbed and destroyed in accordance with their security policies.”

“Destroyed?” The pasty jowls found the taste of the word disgusting. His beady sunken eyes narrowed until they become tiny slits. The silver sheen of his Beyul suit emphasized his greasy skin. Then his face paled.

Must have been informed that he lost his cut. Rupert stepped closer. “You see, Mister … whoever you are … from wherever you slithered from, the firm I worked for took their security very seriously. Every day I was given a cleaned suit, and the one I used for the day was wiped before I left the building. So, inform whoever your client is that I have nothing to give.” He faced the suit-of-lard and walked backward. Once Rupert was out of reach, he turned and put several people between him and the man.

Damn. I hope the wiping has done enough damage to the OS that the suit has fallen apart by now. Once the orb collapses, they’ll never find enough of the nanorobots to reconstruct squat. But until then … I don’t know what could happen.

A shiver played his spine. Beyul was interested in me because of Tapan and my music. Are those enemies after me? Was that sleazy suit encounter to determine if they need to kill me too? Do I need to run?

The blinking red lights on the ankles of every House resident glittered in the rain.

How do I run?

Rupert stood in the pouring rain near the police line and thought. He tried to weigh the pros and cons of buying out his contract … or even if he could. If he bought out his contract, his tracking anklet went away, and he didn’t need to run from the House. That would be one less enemy hunting for him. But, without the anklet, it might be easier for the enemy to make him disappear. His head hurt.

Tapan had these sorts of answers. Tapan had made all sorts plans and contingencies. But none of Tapan’s plans fit this situation.

My family wants me to buy out and leave. Leave them behind — even if I can buy out their contracts too. Tapan didn’t say anything because he … he wanted our families to come with us. Otherwise, Tapan might still be alive.

Unable to decide, Rupert went looking for Mister Monte, the House manager.

Rupert found the man talking to one of the officers. He waited just outside the line denoted by the holographic/volumetric police displays.

Monte saw him, smiled, waved him over.

What?

Monte talked to a cop who came over to him. “Mister Brandt Monte says you knew the deceased. Is that true?”

“Yes?”

“Come on,” the cop gestured to the car where Monte stood.

Mister Monte held out a hand to Rupert. “Congratulations, son.”

Rupert shook the offered hand. “Huh?”

“This morning, the funds for your songs cleared. Your contract with Concord has been paid in full … and your parents’ contracts if you want.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

Monte gave a sad smile. “I understand that some Houses, even some Concord Houses just steal everything not nailed down. Honestly, less than ten percent of the people here will ever be able to leave. Your songs. Your songs are your ticket out of here. Your songs are the key to your future. I sent them to a friend who bought them for a fair price. I credited your contract less the standard agent amount.”

“Really?” Rupert played along with the performance. Where is this going? Why are we playing this duet?

Monte nodded then leaned in close to whisper. “Once I deactivate the anklet, you need to run. Get out of the city. Get away from this place. Get away from your family. Don’t look back. Don’t touch your Beyul money. Don’t contact anyone I might know. Otherwise, the monsters who killed Tapan Salas will kill Rupert Ainsworth. Do you understand?”

Rupert did. The song sales cleared months ago. Perhaps the price was fair or not. The contract’s remaining balance remained staggering but within reach of his Beyul check. “Will my family be safe here?”

“Yes,” Monte said retreating a step and raising his voice. “Yes, I agree that is the best option for your remaining funds.” He pointed a data connector at Rupert’s anklet.

The nanorobots which made up the anklet turned off and disconnected from each other. The anklet turned to dust.

Mister Monte turned away from Rupert.

Rupert ran. I’m sorry, mom, dad. I hope Mister Monte explains this all to you in a way that doesn’t make you think less of me. His heart broke as he ran. Hot tears were colder than the rain.

There was only one potential person who could get him out, the person he met tonight.

It might be too much a coincidence. It might be a trap either by the killers or of some other kind. All I can do is hope.