Light-years away from Limbo City, a cloaked satellite that orbits no body, operating illegally without registration, receives a command and begins to move, rotating in place until it faces the correct direction.
Once the precise trajectory has been calculated, the satellite extends its firing arm, a massive railgun more than half a mile long. Drawing on internal power reserves, because this is a long shot in the most literal sense of the word, it charges the railgun and fires.
At first glance, the projectile it launched could be mistaken for a torpedo, thanks to its ergonomic design, but there’s one crucial difference- it lacks an independent propulsion mechanism of any kind. In a frictionless environment, the initial impulse behind its firing will be enough to carry it straight to its destination, provided the travel corridor doesn’t suddenly change. If the projectile happens to get hit by a stray speck of space dust that throws it wildly off course or destroys it, we won’t be getting a refund.
That scenario is unlikely, but if it comes to pass, we’ll be in trouble. This process isn’t a cheap one- the first major expense of our operation. This projectile was aimed squarely at the planet Liese, from the nearest in a network of illegally operated satellites that serve the Imperium’s criminal fraternity.
When the projectile reaches Liese, it’ll be caught in the planet’s orbit. In theory, it could have been fired with enough force to escape the gravitational pull of the planetary nature preserve, if we’d paid significantly more, but that wouldn’t have served our purposes. Instead, the projectile will orbit the planet for a matter of hours, until it’s as near as possible to our target, the home of one Anselm Salzwedel.
Once it’s close enough, the projectile will rotate, using oxygen jets, to face the planet’s surface. Then, the ‘warhead’ will be launched from the projectile’s body, firing a payload directly towards Salzwedel’s residence. Most of this warhead is just protective shielding, to keep the payload from burning up on atmospheric entry. After getting within range of the building, it will split apart, releasing the payload- a miniature drone, roughly the size of a housefly.
The lag time between Limbo City and Liese is too great for Tommy, who’s arranged most of this, to pilot the drone manually. Instead, it’s been pre-programmed to do what we need- namely, make us a map of the home’s interior. We’ve already got a blueprint, but that doesn’t do us much good on its own, not when we’re searching for one specific item within a huge building. The drone will, hopefully, be able to give us an idea of where our target is located, if not pinpoint its precise hiding place. Plus, it’ll give us a sense for where the other valuables are located, and what the best ingress and egress points might be.
If the drone doesn’t provide any of that, or gets caught by some ultra-sophisticated security net we weren’t expecting, or simply never makes it to Liese… it doesn’t change much about the plan. We’ll just be going in with much less information than I’d like. Either way, the die is cast now. We owe the Red Sun Syndicate about half the price of a used hovercar, and if we can’t steal enough from Salzwedel’s home to cover that, we’ll be in deep shit.
Tommy came to me with the idea of using the satellite network the same night that Niko and I arrived in Limbo City, and I approved it immediately. The network apparently has satellites set up all over the Imperium, but Liese is so remote that even the closest one is still quite a ways away, meaning there are still hours to go before the drone arrives. We’ll know if it’s reached its destination or not by the late afternoon at the earliest. Which means I’ve got some time to kill.
Originally, my plan was to explore the city with Niko, but when I raised the idea, still laying on the couch where I spent the previous night, Saffi- hair still damp from the shower -just laughed.
“I’ve got a better plan. How about the pup, who’s been living it up at the Citadel for the past two months, covers my route for the day, and I take the day off to show you around the city.”
When I turned to look at Niko, he shrugged and said “Sure, I’ve got plenty of experience covering for your lazy ass. It’ll be just like old times.”
As Saffi and I are leaving the Den, she leans over and says to me- not quite whispering, but not speaking at full volume either -“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the two of you get some alone time. ‘S just that Thirddays are always a bitch for me, so I figured I’d pawn my work off on him while I had the chance.”
“Gotcha,” I reply, trying to suppress a nervous shiver as the door of the coffin-like elevator shudders shut. Keeping my attention on Saffi, I do my best to ignore how small our current confinements are and focus on her. Thankfully, she’s pretty easy on the eyes. “So, what does a typical day for you look like, if you don’t mind me asking?”
No need to stress the fact that I’m not gonna tell anybody- my entire presence here is illegal, probably more so than anything she’s ever done in her life, unless she happens to have truekilled somebody.
“It’s not as interesting as you’re expecting,” she cautions me, with an amused look on her face, eyes half-hidden behind those same pink shades. “Most of us have a route, an area we cover every day. Everybody except Tommy, really. It’s like a cop on patrol. We check in with everybody, keep tabs on people, take the community’s temperature. Make sure the only illegal stuff that’s happening is sanctioned by the Syndicate. Collect protection money once a month. All pretty civilized.”
The way she describes it is incredibly matter-of-fact, like she’s talking about her day job. Which I guess she is. And since there’s no real law enforcement presence on the streets of Limbo City, it makes sense organized crime would take that role.
Finally, the elevator comes to a stop, the doors open jerkily, and I step out swiftly, just overeager enough to draw Saffi’s attention, though she doesn’t comment on it. We step out onto the sidewalk, looking for all the world like a pair of women out on the town. She’s got a stylish black halter top on, with a striking neon-pink sword emblazoned on the front. My outfit is decidedly less conservative than yesterday’s, with a pair of tight black shorts that barely extend halfway down my thighs, and a slightly oversized yellow hoodie with an oversized product label on the back, which is apparently part of some local fashion trend I couldn’t be further from understanding. I was a little worried about being recognized, since the War Games are broadcast all over the Imperium, and my face was featured rather prominently, but according to Saffi, almost nobody around here pays attention to that kind of thing. Not really that surprising- the Nobility has virtually no impact on their daily lives, so they just tune out anything concerning us.
“Course,” she continues, as we head towards the nearest hovertrain station, “there’s some stuff we do that most other 49ers don’t.”
Forty-niners being the lowest-level members of a triad, according to the traditional hierarchy at least. The ranking system is pretty minimal, from what I’ve read- that lowest rung encompasses the vast majority of members, even people who have been with the triad for decades. Only those suited for leadership and management positions tend to climb the ladder.
“Like?”
In an alleyway to our left, an emaciated figure lies curled up on the ground beneath a tattered blanket, shivering, with a small pool of bile next to their head, slowly seeping towards the nearest drain. Saffi doesn’t even spare them a glance.
“Odd jobs. Stuff the average street thug isn’t really equipped for. One corp decides they’d like something the competition is building, and they need a deniable team to go grab it for them. Or a bratva Vor decides he wants out of the life, and needs us to make sure he can walk away safely. You get the idea.”
“Mercenaries, basically. And Mother acts as your fixer?”
“That’s about the size of it,” she confirms. I fall silent, reevaluating my understanding of who Niko is in light of this new information. From the moment I first laid eyes on him, I had a feeling he had a bit of a checkered past, though admittedly, it was mostly the tattoos that led me to that conclusions, and those ended up being entirely unrelated. But what Saffi is describing isn’t much like the vague hints he’s given Sofie and me in the past about what exactly he did for the Syndicate. It does explain why he’s so good at hurting people, though.
The two of us walk in silence for a while, and though I look up at the looming megabuildings every now and then, I keep my eyes down for the most part. Not staring at the streets- the less I’m aware of what I’m stepping in, the better -but at the people on them. For the most part, they look… empty. Not miserable, and certainly not ecstatic, just completely apathetic. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a megabuilding or work for a group like the Syndicate, your life in Limbo City is one of drudgery and toil without end.
Across the Imperium, most manufacturing is fully or near-fully automated. There are still dull, unexciting jobs that can only be done by humans, but their number shrinks every year as technology improves, so the Nobles in charge of governing places where jobs are being lost to automation have, for the most part, instituted basic income programs to make sure nobody is left destitute thanks to the marsh of progress. Others have instituted harsher policies that ‘incentivize’ people to move somewhere else to find work, like a farm-world, where they’ll be paid reasonably well for fairly light work, at the cost of living on an isolated homestead surrounded by fifty miles of corn. But the governors of this system had a different idea.
Instead of providing for people whose jobs would be destroyed by automation, they simply outlawed automation completely. No new technology that would automate manual labor is permitted anywhere on Viņsaule, or any of the neighboring planets. I’m sure there are people up in the megabuildings above us who like to complain about their ‘soul-crushing’ office jobs with whatever corporation they’re a glorified slave to. But it’s nothing compared to working in a factory, assembling the same clock thousands of times a day, almost every day of your life, and knowing that a machine could just as easily be doing it- but that it’s barred from doing so, because it’s in your ‘best interest’ to keep automation banned. Otherwise you wouldn’t have a job at all.
Naturally, human labor is less efficient than machine labor in almost every case, but there’s still plenty of massive corporations that choose to keep their headquarters here, and it’s not just because they pay virtually nothing in taxes. Turns out, if you don’t worry about workplace safety at all, and pay pennies, humans are actually more cost-effective than machines. Sure, they break more often, but you don’t have to pay to repair them, just dismiss anybody whose body is too broken to work, and another one will show up desperate to take their place. Plus, the more employees in-system that a corporation has, the more influence they’re given over the outcome of regional elections, which gives them even more power to rewrite what scant few regulations still exist in their favor.
And of course, the Imperium is all too happy to let all this happen, because if there isn’t a rock bottom in society for you to hit, you’ll stop climbing- and if everybody stopped climbing, society would grind to a halt. There are ways to avoid that, but none that anybody in a position of real power would ever entertain for a second.
I’m so caught up in my own grim thoughts that I barely notice when we arrive at the hovertrain station. Saffi leads me up the stairs, and to the platform by the elevated track. The maglev rail system only covers the lowest level of the city- up there in the megabuildings, they’ve got their own public transit system that’s significantly better-maintained.
Once we get to the platform, we’re confronted with a thick metal gate that has multiple doors, and a small scanner next to each one. Turnstiles would be too easy to jump, I suppose, with nobody actually watching the station. Anybody in a uniform, even a public transit employee, would be torn apart by one of the city’s thrill-gangs in about thirty seconds flat.
The thrill-gangs are comprised of Limbo City’s stupidest, most psychotic individuals, the sort who like to hurt people for fun, but don’t know how to channel that impulse into something slightly productive, like organized crime- so they just hurt people, and subsist on whatever they can scrounge up from their corpses, or torture them into transferring from their personal accounts. Unless you know how to fight well enough to fend off multiple assailants simultaneously, your best bet when you see them coming is to pull your personal kill-switch. But if they manage to hit you with a stun-baton first, it’ll scramble your brain so you can’t pull the plug- because tearing apart a lifeless body is no fun for them, so they’ll do whatever they can to keep you alive and screaming.
‘Protection money’ isn’t just a euphemism for extortion here, even if the triad will absolutely break your legs if you don’t pay up. It also means keeping you safe from the thrill-gangs, and other, less civilized residents of the LC. Niko’s told me a bit about his run-ins with them in the past. Killing them was probably the least morally-dubious thing he ever did while living here.
As we approach the gates, I get ready to transfer a few credits to the scanner to get through, when Saffi snaps her fingers, and all the gates swing open at once, one or two moving slightly slower thanks to rust and neglect.
“Neat trick,” I tell her, striding through the gate and onto the platform, where a handful of LC residents with the same empty looks in their eyes wait.
“City doesn’t have much public utility tech left, but what’s there, Tommy’s backdoored into.”
“Impressive. How’d he end up involved with you guys? Seems a little young for gang life…”
There’s no judgment in my voice. If he wasn’t working for the Syndicate, I have zero doubt he’d be in a much worse situation. Limbo City’s streets don’t stop being unkind just because you’re a kid. If anything, they’re even worse.
Saffi leans up against the wall, one foot up, right next to a flickering holo-screen showing the train’s route, though the display seems to have been digitally defaced to include a gaudy, graffiti-like three-eyed face with an X-shaped, alien mouth full of thin, sharp teeth.
“Fuck if I know. Mother has her people keep an eye out for talented kids, I guess. Rule’s simple with our group- if you don’t wanna talk about what you used to be, don’t ask anybody what they were before either.”
In other words, she doesn’t want to answer any questions about her past, so she hasn’t pressed any of the others on theirs. Niko shared his with Sofie and I, after we got to know him better, but it did take some coaxing, and his life before the Syndicate was fairly tame, since he wasn’t born on the streets, he came to them by choice. The others, I suspect, never got to choose at all.
Thankfully, the train arrives not much later, its maglev hum filling the awkward silence left by my faux pas. Hovering in place, its doors open, and a handful of people disembark, before me, Saffi, and the others on the platform get on.
Our car is pretty empty, and relatively clean- though only by Limbo City standards. There are still grease-stained wrappers from shitty fast food meals littering the seats, a couple loose shell casings rattling around, and some dried bloodstains on the windows. Rather than risk sitting down, I pull my hand into my hoodie’s sleeve and use it as a makeshift glove to hold onto a railing, doing my best to avoid contracting some kind of horrid disease from touching anything with my bare skin. Nothing in this city has been cleaned in the last decade, I’m sure of it.
“So,” I say to Saffi, who’s holding onto the railing above us, wearing actual gloves that I’ve only just now noticed. “How long have you known Niko?”
A question I could guess the answer to myself, if I really cared to know. They started out around the same time, and they’re roughly the same age, so it wouldn’t be hard to get a general number. But what I’m really asking is, ‘How well do you know Niko?’ Only, I can’t quite ask that outright, so I have to be circumspect instead.
“About… seven years. Maybe eight. We were the first kids Mother recruited in a long time, after a team she really liked got wiped out. Him, me, and a handful of others. They… none of them are around anymore either.”
Truedeath can’t be that common here- it’s probably the only crime that might actually get a police investigation, if only to find out where anybody got their hands on some Mindkiller. And that, in turn, would draw attention to hubs of illicit commerce like the Bazaar, which nobody wants. So if the other kids Saffi and Niko started out with are gone, it’s probably in a slightly less permanent sense.
One possibility is that they just got kicked out. The Red Sun Syndicate isn’t a charity, and if someone wasn’t pulling their weight, I’ve got no doubt Mother would send them right back to sleeping in alleys and eating rats. Another option is that they died, and were of such low priority to the resurrection system that they still don’t have a new body. Or, more likely, they ended up getting caught on one of those ‘odd jobs’ Saffi mentioned, and convicted by whatever corporate kangaroo court they were hauled in front of.
For a street rat from Limbo City, there are only two possible outcomes for a trial like that, and neither involves walking free. Either you get sent straight into early retirement, or you get sentenced to hard labor. Corporate slaves may live miserable lives, whether they work in an office or in a factory, but they still have certain basic rights. A convicted felon is stripped of those. They don’t lose their right to a body, but they lose the right to choose what kind of body it is. Their previous one is recycled, and they’re assigned to a new one, outfitted with dehumanizing industrial cybernetics, designed for their new job on a mining colony.
There’s no process of being ‘shipped off,’ you just get yanked out of your old body and deposited directly into a new one, usually on the same day as your sentencing. It’ll be a long way from your old home, on an asteroid mining station, where you’ll probably be spending the rest of your life before retirement. The bodies those people wear are barely recognizable as human, some 80% mechanical, without sex organs, hair, or even fingers. There are no beds, just recharging stations where you’ll spend two or three hours each day, the only brief respite from cold, hard labor. To meet your now-minimal biological needs, you’ll get fed a textureless nutrient slurry through a tube while you ‘sleep.’ The bodies have no mouths, not even voice boxes, but you can still communicate through the brainband- that is, unless a supervisor feels like revoking your communication privileges, at which point you’re restricted to two words. ‘Yes’ and ‘no.’
It’s maybe the worst fate imaginable for a human being. I certainly struggle to think of anything worse. Given that the Imperium was supposedly founded on humanistic principles, one might think that such horror would be anathema to our society- but believing in the sanctity of human life seemingly only extends as far as not permanently killing you. The Imperial Creed says nothing about making you wish every day that you were dead.
If a society like ours needs a rock bottom, and places like Limbo City serve that purpose, those mining colonies are whatever is below rock bottom. A place even the lowest of the low fear being sent.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to Saffi, who hasn’t said a word as I worked through the implications of what she said.
“Hey. At least the pup and I made it out. Did pretty well for ourselves, even. The others- that’s life, you know? Some of ‘em caught bad breaks, but most were just plain stupid, and there’s not much Niko or I could have done to fix that.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
She’s gotta think about it like that, though. Because if not, the horror would eat her alive from inside out. I get to go home after we’re done here. She has to stay. Maybe having Mother’s favor and a more significant position in the Syndicate’s ranks will mean that she’ll be able to escape a fate like her former comrades, but memories are the one thing you can’t leave behind. Unless you can afford to have yours edited. Ironic, that the only people who can afford a procedure like that are also the least likely to need it.
“Yeah. Look, I know this doesn’t mean anything to you, but… I’m not going to let things stay like this. It’s hollow, and naive, and meaningless, I know. But I’m gonna fix all of this. One day.”
A strong contender for the stupidest thing I’ve ever said. It probably doesn’t even make sense to her on a basic level- even if I survive the Citadel, what power could I possibly have to help Limbo City, or abolish the practice of forced labor, or change anything? One Noble, no matter how determined, is never going to have enough power or influence to reform the entire Imperium. And it’s certainly not doing wonders for my efforts to impress Niko’s cool friend, who now knows for a fact that I’m just some weak-kneed, starry-eyed farm-world girl who thinks she can change the way that things are.
But all she says to me is “Why?”
Not asking why I’d want to change things. That much is obvious, I suppose. What she’s asking is why I’d bother to try, when the chances of success are negligible and the consequences of failure are so great.
“Because someone has to.”
----------------------------------------
It takes more than an hour for the hovertrain to get us where we need to go. I spend most of the trip looking out the window at the buildings passing by. Though the train moves fast enough that I don’t see much more than a blur most of the time, the ones further away from us are more distinct, and I get a pretty good look at the architecture of Limbo City.
The word that first comes to mind is ‘patchwork.’ Based on what I’ve read about the megalopolis, it wasn’t planned by a committee like most major cities in the Imperium, but rather handed off to dozens of different corporations and real estate companies to build as they saw fit. The result is that no two buildings seem to fit together, even ones that are mere inches apart. If there’s any unifying factor between them at all, it’s efficiency. With a scant few exceptions, it’s clear no mind was paid to aesthetics in constructing the city. The focus was purely on how to cram as many people into one place as cheaply as possible.
Of course, almost nobody wants to live in a colorless grey concrete abyss, so it’s fallen to the inhabitants of the city- those with a bit of life left in them, at least -to give the place some color. The neon signs adorning so many buildings are a part of it, and thanks to the omnipresent clouds of smog choking the air, they provide some much-needed light in addition to color, bathing the streets in a prismatic glow. But in addition to those, there’s graffiti. Lots of it.
Some of the defacement is digital, like what we saw at the train station. Holo-screens projected onto the sides of buildings, or into the open air, but altered to include vulgar images, vaguely anti-corporate messaging, or simply the defacer’s artwork. But most of it is analog, spray-painted onto the otherwise-lifeless monoliths that dominate the landscape.
There are plenty of gang tags, from the smaller street crews that will probably be wiped out by tomorrow if they haven’t been already, to the more organized criminal networks like the triads, yakuza, and bratva. I even spot a few of the Syndicate’s symbols, angry red suns with accusatory eyes staring out from their centers. Those are mostly to be found lower to the ground, in places that were easier to tag, and seem to mark territory, or in some cases, failed attempts to claim territory, marked by a sign that’s been painted over with a black skull symbol.
Higher up is the more complex stuff, which I’d say actually qualifies as art. Entire buildings completely painted over, with dozens of different styles on display. Many are purely abstract, but some show scenes, ranging from fantastical battles to peaceful woodland groves. Some even appear to be historical- I spot one that appears to depict Urien, the Exemplar, holding back the forces of the warlord Hearteater from destroying Kerpe Village, a story just about every child in the Imperium knows. It’s a part of our childhood curriculum, taught to us before we even get our first bodies.
Urien, like my Founder and Hark’s, was one of the Nine Titans, but unlike Thorn or Vance, he wasn’t known for being ruthless, pragmatic, or even unpredictable. Almost exactly the opposite. He earned two titles, like the rest of the Titans- Exemplar, and Hero of the Masses. Those aren’t names you earn by being a cold, calculating bastard. They’re earned by being a good person, and by all accounts, that’s exactly what Urien was. The kind of guy who never heard a hopeless cause he wasn’t ready to fight for. Including Kerpe Village.
Course, every one of the Titans, no matter how clever or cold, fought a battle that seemed hopeless at one point or another. What sets Kerpe Village apart is that it wasn’t a battle worth fighting. Had no tactical value whatsoever. The warlord had demanded tribute they couldn’t possibly pay, and by that point Urien had already cultivated a reputation for standing up for the little guy, so when they found out he was in the system, they reached out and asked him for help.
The people of the village weren’t gonna die. Not permanently, at least. But their homes would be razed, their prized possessions looted, their fields burned and the ground salted. If Hearteater’s forces had their way, it would be destroyed forever, the population left with nowhere to go when they emerged from the resurrection system. Refugees in the middle of a system at war. So Urien went, even though half his officers were telling him that it was a trap, and the other half were saying that even if it wasn’t a trap, it still wasn’t worth going.
When he found out the Exemplar was diverting his forces to defend some insignificant village, Hearteater sent ten times the number of troops he’d been planning to, figuring either that there was something hidden in the village that Urien wanted to defend, or that i would be a good opportunity to distract him while the campaign raged on elsewhere. So Urien and his soldiers fought, bled, and died for a village that meant nothing to anybody except the people who lived there.
Eventually, Hearteater’s forces retreated, figuring they’d done enough damage to the Imperium’s army, inflicting thousands of casualties that would take months to fully resurrect, diminishing the army’s supply of biomass in the process. For anybody else, this would have spelled the end for their campaign. But Urien wasn’t willing to give up- not against a guy like Hearteater, whose name wasn’t hyperbolic in the slightest. So he came to the people of Kerpe Village, and said ‘I fought for you- now I need you to fight for me.’ Not an order, not conscription, and not a beg or a plea- just a request, as simple as the one they’d made to him. And every one of them said yes.
It’s a good story. Powerful, both as a narrative, and a piece of propaganda. ‘Nobles sacrifice for you, and you must sacrifice for them in turn.’ Representative of the supposed symbiotic relationship between the citizens of the Imperium and those who rule them. Not exactly the kind of story I’d expect anybody here on Viņsaule to appreciate, considering the Nobility hasn’t really done much for them. When I ask Saffi, she just shrugs.
“People like their stories, I guess. The Liberators especially.”
I raise my eyebrow at the name of the group she’s referencing. Not one I came across in my reading about Limbo City’s various criminal organizations and corporations.
“They’re the ones who do most of the art you see around the city. Not the gang tags and shit, the actual art. Which is fine, I don’t mind most of it, but that’s not all they do.”
For most of the ride, Saffi’s been looking at her palm-screen, but now she looks up and turns her gaze to where I’m looking, out the window.
“They call themselves-” she mimes gagging “-hopepunks. Fucking morons, trying to take down the corps with snappy slogans and friendship. Of course, most of them work for the corps, or their parents do. Sneaking down to our level to spray paint a scene from a children’s story on the side of somebody’s apartment is what they do to launder their own guilt about benefiting from the system.”
That’s a surprisingly cogent material analysis from someone who’s spent her entire life on the streets, hurting people and stealing shit for money, but I’m not gonna say that, because it would sound wildly condescending. So all I say is:
“Wow, they sound like they suck.”
Saffi nods sagely, and a couple minutes later, the hovertrain pulls into our station.
When we get out, it’s alongside almost everybody else in the car, which has been slowly filling throughout the course of our trip. This must be a popular destination for tourists, which most of the people around us seem to be- I notice more expensive-looking clothing, and fewer hollow, empty expressions.
The station we exit into isn’t nice by any means, but it’s not nearly as grungy as the one we embarked from. It’s the city center- or at least a city center, any metropolis of this size has multiple -so the corporations have an interest in keeping things reasonably presentable, even down on the ground, for anybody who’s visiting. The floors have a few fewer layers of grime on them, the lights are brighter and don’t flicker nearly as often, and the graffiti on the walls has been painted over so well you can barely tell it used to be there at all.
“Can’t remember the last time I came ‘round here,” Saffi comments, as we head up the stairs out of the hovertrain station.
“Yeah? Rival gang territory?”
Phrased like an idle question, but I’m also implicitly asking whether I should be getting ready to use the sidearm sitting in a holster on my thigh. Saffi laughs like I just told a reasonably funny joke.
“Uh, no. This is pretty much the only place in the whole city, ‘sides the megabuildings, where you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing. It’s… ‘historic,’ so there’s an actual police presence around here to keep things looking nice.”
Indeed, as we exit the station, at the top of the stairs, is a checkpoint manned by two police officers. They’re wearing bulky, heavy-duty armor, the kind that’s so thick you can’t get even a vague sense of what they might look like underneath. If not for their occasional subtle movements, I might have mistaken them for automated security ‘bots.
For the most part, the cops just seem to be standing there, looking menacing as they hold their military-grade rifles. The checkpoint itself is a standard ContraFilter, a thin translucent blue field we all pass through on our way out of the station. It seems to flag our weapons, flickering green momentarily as Saffi and I step through, but neither of the cops says anything. Apparently their mandate for keeping this part of the city looking nice doesn’t extend to taking away anybody’s guns. Not that they’d have any legal basis to do so- the only weapons it’s illegal to carry in the LC are heavy ordinance like rocket launchers or gauss cannons.
More likely, the filter is just there to scan for anybody carrying drugs, illegal mem cartridges, or other forms of contraband that it would be uncomfortable for a tourist to see somebody dealing on the street.
As we pass through the filter and out onto the street, Saffi spreads her arms wide, as if to encompass our surroundings completely, and addresses me with a theatric flair.
“Welcome… to Old Town.”
The name strikes me as ironic, because this place doesn’t look any older than the rest of Limbo City- if anything, it looks newer. The buildings are the same schizophrenic patchwork of design, with height, shape, and color varying wildly, but all seem better-maintained, with less graffiti, no gang tags whatsoever, and slightly more upscale stores than in the parts of town I’ve been so far. It’s still a definite step down from the interior of the megabuilding, but that’s probably intentional. The city wants this place to look a bit run down, so the people visiting feel like they’re getting an ‘authentic experience’ without having to head into a part of the city where they’d get killed and have their body sold off for parts within minutes of arriving.
“This is where the LC began,” she elaborates, seeming to sense my confusion. “Bunch of preconstructed buildings got shipped in from off-world by a couple different corps looking to set up some new manufactories on a frontier world. From there, it just… kept growing.”
Far as I’m aware, it’s never actually stopped growing. Despite the crushingly miserable conditions for people on the ground here, they haven’t stopped having kids, and those kids will always need somewhere to live, even if it’s just a concrete coffin of an apartment. That demand, in turn, necessitates more expansion of the megalopolis, which creates jobs for its citizens. And once a new district of the city gets big enough, a corp might decide to drop their headquarters there, and ship in a couple hundred thousand employees from off-world to staff it- most of whom will live out their entire lives within the building, but some will inevitably all from grace, have their contract terminated, and find themselves on the streets. A cycle that practically sustains itself.
“I hope we’re not here just to sightsee, because there really doesn’t seem to be much here worth seeing.”
“Oh, there isn’t,” Saffi confirms to me. “We’re here to visit the Sensorium.”
“The what?”
She just laughs.
“It’s hard to explain. You’ll see.”
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The Sensorium is genuinely difficult to describe. It’s not the kind of experience easily put into words.
Saffi leads me into an out-of-the-way part of Old Town, where a bright red neon sign advertises the Sensorium, surrounded by a symbol representing each of the five standard human senses. Inside is a luxurious parlor, all plush red leather and imitation wood, dressed up to look as classy as possible. Blinking twice at the holographic receptionist, Saffi transfers payment for the both of us, and leads me further within.
Beyond the front desk is a room filled with comfortable-looking loungers, and dozens of people sitting in them, all wearing the same blissed-out expressions, and the same metal headsets. We find an empty pair of seats, and Saffi sits down, picks up the accompanying headset, gesturing for me to do the same. With some trepidation, I do so.
“Don’t worry,” she assures me. “Whatever you’re assuming this is, it’s not that.”
Then, before I can ask for a more specific explanation, she puts the headset on and leans back into the chair, closing her eyes and waiting for the process to begin. So I follow suit, trusting that Niko wouldn’t have left me in the hands of someone untrustworthy, even if I’ve known this woman for less than a day.
When the headset activates, it feels the same as entering a mem- all your sensory inputs are hijacked, with false data being fed to them through the brainband. But unlike a mem, which is literally a recorded memory of another person, this isn’t real. There’s no sequence of events, no narrative. It’s more abstract than that.
It takes about a minute for the Sensorium to calibrate, by feeding me a series of different split-second inputs all at once. The scent of honeysuckle, then tar, then fresh-cut grass. A stained glass window with the noonday sun shining through. The sound of laughter, or tears, of screams. It’s disconcerting, but not upsetting, the headset somehow modulating my response so I don’t get overwhelmed by the sensory cacophony.
Then, after the system has calibrated itself based on my synaptic responses, the process begins in earnest. From this point, things get more difficult to describe. It’s like trying to recall a dream- there’s some kind of fundamental, underlying logic that seems perfectly clear in the moment, but afterwards, it’s fleeting. I don’t perceive any of it in a coherent, linear way. Instead, it’s just a melange of sensations that scratch some kind of deep mental itch. Like the feeling of being warm and cozy in bed on a lazy morning, or laying on your back in a field of soft grass on a cool summer afternoon- but dialed up to eleven.
In reality, those moments of perfection are always just that- momentary. Before long, the birds outside start chirping a little too loud, or a cold breeze wafts in through your window, or a fly lands on your nose. But inside the Sensorium, it feels as though the feeling could last forever. It’s not a single scene or sequence of events, but a collection of sensations that blend together perfectly to create the most powerful version of that feeling possible.
Make no mistake- this isn’t wireheading. I’m not having my pleasure centers stimulated artificially. Any technology capable of doing that is ruthlessly sought out and eradicated by the Imperium. This isn’t pure pleasure, it’s just a momentary pause, a respite from having to worry about everything else going on in my life. Not a single stray thought drifts through my mind the entire time I’m inside of the Sensorium, the same way you’re not quite capable of thinking when you’re in that limbo state between asleep and awake.
Instead of being jolted awake, however, the process ends slowly, gently, as the sensory inputs begin to dull, their effect growing less potent by the moment. But I find myself with no desire to claw my way back to that state of pure bliss- already the feeling begins to fade, and I’m left with only the memory of feeling really good, but no way of properly explaining to somebody why I felt that way.
Saffi comes out of it a few seconds after me, and once I’ve shaken off the slight haze over my own thoughts, I take a moment to study her expression as she’s doing the same. It doesn’t resemble the practically slack-jawed expression on the face of almost everybody else in the parlor, presumably including me while I was under. Instead, she seems to have merely been smiling contentedly as she went through whatever her version of the process was. Presumably, it induced the same state, but through a different set of inputs, calibrated to her tastes. I imagine there were a lot more bubblegum scents and gemstone fractal patterns than in mine.
Checking my internal clock, I discover that only about half an hour has passed, though it feels like it was a lot longer. Noticing my surprise, Saffi chuckles, a little less edge in her voice than usual.
“Not bad, right?”
“Not bad at all,” I reply, doing my best to sound nonchalant. “You wanna get a bite to eat?”
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There’s a takoyaki stall nearby, and as we wait for our food to be prepared, Saffi tells me a bit about the Sensorium. Apparently this is the only part of the ground level where they were able to set up shop, because a room full of effectively comatose people anywhere else in Limbo City would be a prime target for thrill-gangs. There were security measures in place at the other locations, but none that couldn’t be subverted, or simply overpowered, by a sufficiently motivated sadist.
The technology is fairly new, and hasn’t yet been approved across the entire Imperium, so it’s mainly flourished in places like this, where ‘regulation’ isn’t in most people’s vocabulary. There’s no indication that it’s addictive, fortunately, but those who can afford frequent trips often make them, because that sensation of comfort and safety basically can’t be found anywhere else on the entire planet.
Obviously, it’s a lot more common, and a lot more popular, in the megabuildings and corporate arcologies where more people can afford them. Down here, only tourists really make use of the place, because ordinary people living on the surface can’t afford regular trips into Old Town from wherever they live, just to make use of an expensive service that provides no value except of the intangible, psychological kind.
Some corps do offer trips to their local Sensorium as part of the benefits packages for their executives, because it’s thought to increase productivity, but having a benefits package of any kind is a laughable idea to anybody living down on the surface of the city, so they’d have to scrimp and save if they wanted to make such frequent visits. Aside from tourists, people involved with organized crime are some of the only ones who can afford it, because jobs like the one Saffi has do tend to pay well, in accordance with the level of risk assumed, and the illicit nature of their activities.
Halfway through our meal, I get a notification from the sole member of my copyclan here on the planet, informing me that the data from the spy drone we sent to Liese has come in, earlier than expected.
Taking our food with us, Saffi and I head back to the station, and catch the next hovertrain to Lilyhaven, the district where the Bazaar and the Den are located. It’s far from the only part of Limbo City where the Red Sun Syndicate holds sway, but it’s certainly one of the more strategically valuable parts of the city for a gang to control, thanks to the high traffic of illicit commerce passing through the Bazaar.
I spend most of the train ride studying the drone data, almost as dead to the world around me as when I was within the Sensorium, though decidedly more focused. While I’m in that state, Saffi watches my back, making sure nobody tries to take advantage of me.
Watching footage from inside Salzwedel’s home makes for a decided change of pace compared to the pervasive crime of Limbo City. Every surface seems to be polished to the point of gleaming, and if I wasn’t watching through the eyes of an insect-sized drone, I’m sure I’d be seeing my reflection in almost everything.
The collector’s home is large, but not sprawling- he’s got no partners, so the extra space not devoted to basic necessities is mainly apportioned to his collection, which seems to be distributed throughout the entire house. Slipping in through a ventilation shaft, the drone emerges straight into the living room, which is arranged around a single centerpiece- an antique globe featuring the topography of old Earth, made from precious metals and gems. The landmasses are gold and emerald, the oceans glittering lapis. It’s got to be immensely valuable, but unfortunately it’s likely too large for us to take with us. We’ll have to find some more portable items if we want to pay back the debts we’ve incurred to the Syndicate, even just by launching this very drone.
On the walls are paintings, tapestries, and ancient scrolls preserved behind class. Stationed around the house are various suits of armor, many of which appear to be Earth relics, from samurai to medieval knights, but with some Conquest-era armor that the placard next to it claims to have been worn by the Exemplar himself, of all people. It’s painted in his colors, the breastplate adorned with his symbol, the shield-dove, and it’s got a number of bullet holes in it. None of that means it’s actually authentic, but if Salzwedel was able to get his hands on a Regalia weapon, there’s no reason to believe he couldn’t get a real set of Founder armor. Nothing makes it particularly special save from the person who wore it, no special properties, but it would probably fetch us a decent price, if we disassembled the set and took it with us. Or, I suppose, somebody could wear it, though that would probably hurt its value.
As I watch the drone buzz through the house, occasionally passing by one of the guards that Salzwedel pays to patrol the place at all times, a plan begins to form in my head. Nothing too concrete, just the outline of an idea, but I can already feel it growing more solid by the minute.
When we get back to the Den, I’ll buckle down with my copy and iron out the details of the scheme. After that, it’ll just be a matter of getting our hands on everything we’ll need to pull the job off. And that shouldn’t be too hard, given that Limbo City is the contraband capital of the Imperium.
Oh, and of course, I’m going to have to put together a team.