Chapter Twelve - Doorframe

“The internet has existed in one form or another since the 1980s. Even before that, though that far back it’s practically unrecognizable to what people now think of as the internet.

Meshspace, a creation started by a small group of Samurai with the backing of IBM and Microsoft, was meant to be the next step in the evolution of the internet. A place where people who were ‘jacked in’ (that is, connected directly into the mesh via neural augmentations) could communicate, play, create, and express themselves.

Within a month, it was a hive of advertisments and pornography.

There have been major steps taken to police and regulate Meshspace, but as with the original (and still extant) internet, these have been met with ridicule or outright ignored.

Now, the Mesh is a world of advertising, pornography, and vice. Truly an improvement.”

--Extract from “A History of the Mesh.” 2048

***

Myalis parked our little taxi right in the middle of the driveway of the hotel and opened the door with a whoosh of expelled air. I stepped out and stretched a bit while glancing around.

I’d left the last place in a bit of a hurry, only pausing long enough to make sure the scavengers had left all the shit that wasn’t theirs behind. It would probably make the few people on that one floor happy.

The only other thing I did was placing a digital warning at the door to Katallina McCarthy’s little apartment. She shared a one-room apartment with her mother apparently, a mother that Myalis was able to confirm as dead.

Anyone stopping by her place would get a pre-recorded message politely asking them to contact me, and then a pre-recorded threat that if they fucked with the place, I’d be contacting them.

Making threats was turning out to be a whole lot of fun. It was kind of cathartic. At the same time I was a tiny bit worried I might become an asshole... more of an asshole.

I walked past a group of valets by the door, only acknowledging them with a wave before I was in the hotel.

The moment I stepped in, about six different people from all over the lobby perked up and turned my way. Had it been only the one I might not have so much as noticed, but out of the fifty-odd people going about their business, six was just too many.

“Myalis, trouble.”

I felt the guns on my back shifting. Not deploying just yet, but certainly getting ready to.

I started towards the elevators, taking a circuitous route around part of the building where I’d pass some partial cover behind glass-walled terrariums with some no-doubt exotic weeds within.

The first of them cornered me just past that. His opening salvo came in the form of a bright, startlingly fake smile. “Hello miss! I’m a representative of Nimbletainment Inc, and I think I have just the deal for you!”

It took half a second for that to register. “Are you suicidal?” I asked, dumbfounded.

His smile never so much as twitched. “I’m a retail salesman ma’am, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. And I hope that your answer will be a yes too, but to an entirely different question! Did you know that Nimbletainment has a sponsorship program, exclusively for Samurai?”

“Uh, no.” I said. “I’m leaving now, and... get help? Elsewhere. Please?”

I circled around him, then jogged a bit to make it to the elevator. I think a few of them had the clever idea of joining me in a small, enclosed space for an indeterminate amount of time, because they started jogging too.

One of the elevator doors opened, and a business woman started to step out. “Myalis, door!” I said before I ducked down and scooped the lady off her feet instead of either shoving her back in or tossing her out of the way.

She squeaked, and wiggled in my arms while the door clicked shut behind me.

“Sorry,” I said as I set her back down onto her heels. “Didn’t mean to pick you up like that.”

She smacked me with her purse. “I, I ought to sue you!” she said.

Then she took a good look at me and the colour drained from her face.

“You’re not a Samurai, right?”

“I am; a real sorry Samurai who’d rather you didn’t sue her,” I said.

She huffed, then straightened her outfit out. “Why were you in such a hurry?”

I shrugged. “Very aggressive, possibly mentally unhealthy salesmen?”

Her eyes closed and she let out a sigh. “That’s fair. You’re making me late to an appointment, you know?”

“Aw, well, shit,” I said. The doors opened again, and I recognized the floor the kittens were staying on. “Sorry again,” I said as I slipped out and jogged past two new valet-guards.

“What a bitch,” I heard the woman mutter a moment before she poked at the button to close the doors.

I sighed and slowed to a walk before stopping before the door to the penthouse. I knocked, just in case, then tried the handle.

The door opened about an inch, then stopped on a chain. I hadn’t known they had that kind of low-tech security on top of everything else.

“Coming!” I heard Lucy claim. She walked over, her gait a bit hesitant, like she wanted to run but wasn’t sure.

The door closed, the chain rattled, and then I was face to face with Lucy again.

This time, when I swept a woman off her feet it was to giggles and a rather intense kiss that only stopped when my back started to hurt. “You’re heavy,” I complained as I set her down.

She jammed a real hard finger in my ribs. “Close the door. And maybe go stand on the other side of it, if you’re going to be calling me fat.”

I rubbed the flat of my hand against her not-at-all fat stomach. “So chubby,” I teased. It earned me another poke in the side.

“Why’re you here already? Did it go well?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah!” Nose asked. “Did you kill anyone?”

“Can we see?” Nemo added.

I looked over and noticed our audience for the first time. About half the kittens were in the living room, and paying a bit of attention let me suss out the location of the rest in various rooms in the penthouse. “No, I didn’t, and if I did you couldn’t see it,” I said.

Lucy grinned and pulled me after her towards the kitchen island. “So?” she asked.

“Went well enough. I have a lead to follow, so I’m not quite done. Where’s Daniel?”

“Daniel?” she asked. Then Lucy gasped quite dramatically. “Did you misplace all your gayness and now you need a man in your life?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re an idiot,” I said. “I need to do a thing online. Figured he could help.”

“He’s in the second living room,” she said. “Want anything to drink?”

I shrugged, accepted a can of some low-calorie crap that was no doubt subtle revenge for that fat joke, and then followed Lucy. “Why does this place have two living rooms?” I asked.

“I don’t know, and I never want to leave,” Lucy said. “Oh, look, no crutches.” She skipped ahead for all of two bounces, then slowed down with a huff so that I could catch up. She then used me as a two-legged crutch, confirming once and for all that all those times she hung off me before really were just disguised cuddling.

“You need to work on that some more,” I said.

“I’m going to learn how to strut,” she said. “And wear heels. Sexy heels that you’ll buy for me, then take off.”

“Uh huh,” I said. I was more than willing to hear all about the heels I’d apparently be buying her.

We stepped into a smaller but still stupidly lavish living room to find Daniel on his back on one sofa, a bloody pile of toilet paper next to him and a cloth pressed to his face. He groaned as he strained his neck to look my way. “Oh. Hey.”

“Hey,” I said. “So what happened to you?”

“Walking’s hard,” he said. “It’s not fair. You see the Kittens running all over the damned place. Never stopping. Little shits making it look easy.”

“Daniel’s been rediscovering his long lost relationship with gravity,” Lucy said.

Daniel made a noise that could have meant anything.

“Right,” I said. “And all the blood?”

“Doorframe,” he said.

I nodded. “I need your help with a thing.”

“Does it involve walking?” he asked.

“No.”

“I’m your man,” he said. “What do you need?”

“I need to get into the Mesh to visit some folk.”

“You couldn’t have come to a better place. Now go get my shit from my room because there’s no way I’m getting off this couch.”

***