8 – Shepherd
Addie lay in her bed, watching the colorful lights from the neon signs flickering on her ceiling and listening to the sounds of the city outside her window. Her body was tired, but her mind was busy, far too busy for sleep. She was thinking of her story about the Royal Breeze, but she was also thinking about Tony. He was interesting and strange and definitely not who she’d expected him to be. She knew if she said as much, her dad would tease her about judging books by their covers.
The thought made her smile; she always teased him back about that one. “Where would anyone even see a book these days?” she’d ask, and her dad would get flustered and stomp over to the dusty old shelf in the far corner of the store where he had a dozen ancient paperbacks lined up. She loved that little routine. Of their many silly rehearsed disagreements, it was definitely in the top five. Tony was an odd sort of “book,” and his “cover” was turning out to be a lot different from what was on the inside.
Of course, Addie realized she didn’t know much about him, but it was nice to see he wasn’t a chem fiend or a creep of some kind. It was nice to see that he had a head on his shoulders—his idea to distract T-bomb and keep her out of the crosshairs had been well-intentioned if premature. And he had manners! He’d thanked her for the noodles, held more than one door for her, and been polite to Mr. Nguyen.
“Calm down,” she muttered, sighing as she rolled over to her other side. It wasn’t like she was trying to build him up in her mind or that she was falling for him or anything—she was just happy he wasn’t what she’d expected. She hated things that were obvious. She hated routine and ordinary. It was nice, for once, to be wrong.
She hoped that was the case—that Tony wouldn’t wind up being a problem for her dad. He deserved to have something good work out for him, and Tony might just be the ticket. He could help her dad and free up a little more time for Addie. She had work to do and, she reminded herself, didn’t know how much time she had left to do it.
That thought drove Tony and other frivolous notions from her mind. She flopped onto her back and held up her right hand, spreading her fingers wide. As she stared, watching the neon lights flicker over her pale skin, her flesh seemed to turn semi-opaque, then translucent, and then her hand came apart—like her skin, bones, and blood had suddenly become steam. She stared at the empty air at the end of her wrist and the weird, bottomless darkness where her hand should be attached. After a few heartbeats, her hand came back—translucent and colorless at first, then gradually more and more solid, more real.
She felt like it was happening more frequently, but after a few sleepless nights, as she counted the occurrences, she could only conclude the same thing as ever: it was random. There were two consistencies, though: it always happened at night, and it was getting worse. It used to only happen to her finger. That was when she was twelve. Over the years, it had spread to her other fingers until last year, not long after her twentieth birthday. That was the first time her whole hand had done it—phased in and out of existence.
Even at twelve, she’d known about fades. She’d known what happened to them—how they “phased” in and out of the world more and more rapidly until they eventually became dust wraiths or specters, depending on who was telling the story. So, she’d immediately thought it was happening to her. She was becoming a fade. She’d cried, of course, and when her dad came to her, asking why she was crying so much, she’d lied and said she was missing her mom.
Of course, she’d wanted to tell him the truth—what was scaring her—but she’d seen her dad’s depression after her mom died. He hadn’t been himself back then. He’d been someone else, a shallow, cheap imitation. She’d lived through his slow return to normal and couldn’t risk that happening again. She couldn’t put that weight on him. Over the years, she’d revised her opinion about her dad and what he could and couldn’t handle, but she’d gotten so used to the lie, the deception, that she still hadn’t told him. What good would it do? There wasn’t a cure for people becoming fades.
She squeezed her wrist—nice and solid. “When are you going to go?” She chuckled at her macabre practice of viewing her body as an adversary. If she thought it would help, she’d do a volunteer limb replacement, but that had been tried on fades. Cybernetic, bionic, dust-tech—it didn’t matter; they all “faded.” Whatever was causing the separation from the real, solid world wasn’t housed in the flesh.
She flexed her fingers, making a fist, staring, waiting for the next fade. Sometimes, it never came before she fell asleep, and sometimes, it happened two or three times. One thing Addie knew was that she was fading slowly. She’d done plenty of research, and some people faded in a matter of months. Addie figured, at her rate, her head and brain wouldn’t start fading until she was in her thirties.
That was when things would start getting really bad. When her brain started fading in and out, she’d start to lose it, like the poor creature Tony was going to “take care of” for Rene and Eddie. She was pretty happy that he hadn’t argued about not killing it. “Her or him,” she sighed. She didn’t want to become an “it” when she lost her mind, did she? She supposed the “danger to society” aspect made it easier to dehumanize them. If a fade “faded” and came back inside living flesh, it killed it—instant necrosis.
There were theories about that: a fade couldn’t exist within another person, so it would instantly phase out again, and in that process, it would take something vital from the flesh it had inhabited. Examination of the necrotic tissue revealed cells with disrupted structures and truncated telomeres. Addie groaned and flipped over, annoyed with herself for thinking about those things again.
Despite her irritation, she couldn’t blame herself; the scheduled encounter with the fade the next day was a rare and exciting opportunity. The only other time she’d seen one in person, it had already been fleeing, chased out of the neighborhood by Beef and his boys. By the time she caught up, the fade was dead, lying in a puddle of blood just like any other poor slob the bangers might put down. A fade could be hurt and killed as long as the part of their body being shot or stabbed or whatever wasn’t “faded.”
“That’s what’ll happen to me,” Addie sighed, wondering if it would be Beef who did her in. She doubted it. Bangers had a shelf-life almost as short as fades. “JJ?” She had to say his name to get his attention because she’d put him to sleep.
“Yes, Addie?”
“Let’s update my schedule. Tomorrow, I have an appointment with Tony. I’m going to film him interacting with a fade.”
“What time?”
“Nine AM, but let’s be sure to be downstairs with breakfast by eight. We’ll make oatmeal with raisins for the two of us.”
“With brown sugar and Forest Milk?”
“Sure, JJ, if we have that brand. I think Dad bought some kind of generic ‘plant milk’ ’cause he was at H&Q’s instead of Lucky Mart.”
“Noted. And coffee? Should I remind the pot to brew—”
“Yeah, of course. Now, after we get done with Tony, I want to message Jamal Hoshock. I think he’ll be much more forthcoming if we can get him to meet us away from the Royal Breeze. Speaking of which, be sure to run an analysis on our traffic for today’s vid. If we get enough views, it’ll give me an in with Jamal. I want you watching the net stats all night, okay? You better have a detailed report waiting for me when I wake.”
Addie talked to JJ about her plans for another half an hour before her eyes became heavy enough to tug her consciousness away from her body, and she drifted off to sleep. JJ knew better than to prompt her at that hour, so their conversation went unfinished. When she woke the next morning, it was to the beat of Leeda Pop’s Transcendence, and she rolled out of bed humming the tune with a silly smile.
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She flexed her fingers in front of her face, ensuring her hand hadn’t left her for good in the middle of the night. As she smiled at her solid fingers, she saw a blinking ALERT in the lower-left corner of her AUI and narrowed her eyes. “What’s the problem, JJ?”
“Good morning, Addie. There isn’t a problem that I’m aware of.”
“What’s with the alert?”
“You set that protocol to notify you when your vids achieve new viewership metrics.”
“What? Display my page!”
An AUI window flickered into existence before her, obscuring a large portion of her view. She saw her dashboard for her CityNet page—a social media network that was working to incorporate all the different pub-nets in the North American states, provinces, districts, and independent cities. Addie hoped it would continue from there, connecting to similar conglomerations on other continents, but there was still a lot of stigma about the dangers of a universal net and the lingering fear of true-AI.
Her follower count was flashing with little starbursts going up. She’d broken through to the second tier—five hundred followers. It didn’t sound too impressive, but five hundred regular views was a big deal for an up-and-comer who’d only been posting stories for about a year. The most amazing fact about the number, though, was that the day before, she’d been sitting at a hundred and ten! “Holy—JJ, is this real?”
“This is the correct net address for your dashboard, Addie; I don’t detect any tell-tale phishing—”
“Forget it, JJ. That’s not what I meant.” Addie was scrolling through the comments on her news story, and a slow frown turned down the corners of her mouth. They were all about Tony. The comments were from people in the district and neighboring ones making fun of T-Bomb and speculating about the origins of “Shepherd.” Addie groaned, slapping her forehead. She’d used a filter to obscure Tony’s appearance, replacing his entire head with that of a dog—A German shepherd.
She’d done it as a temporary fix while editing the video, but when she watched German shepherd Tony—tongue lolling—tossing T-bomb around, she’d laughed so hard that she’d left it in. “I knew people would find it funny, but I didn’t think I’d pull this many views!” She’d gotten more than seventy thousand, which was more than she’d gotten in the previous month. “This is insane, JJ!”
“I agree that some of those comments are needlessly derogatory!”
“Ugh! Quiet.” Addie jumped up and got dressed. Then, she grabbed a tray she often used to bring her father’s lunch down to the shop and loaded it with coffee and oatmeal. “Message my dad. Is Tony up?” She didn’t want to barge into the storeroom if Tony was sleeping.
“Your father says he’s up!”
“Beautiful!” JJ could have told her just about anything, and her mood wouldn’t have fallen—her page was taking off! Addie stuck her tongue between her teeth, concentrating as she carefully balanced the tray on one hand and pulled the door open with the other. With a sigh of relief, she started down the steps. At the bottom, she said, “JJ, message my Da—”
The door opened, and Tony was there. “Your dad said you might need me to get the door.”
“Thanks, Tony!” Addie beamed at him, and he looked a little startled by the sunny expression.
“Good mood?”
“Very good! Come on; I brought you breakfast. We’ll eat at the counter.”
Tony eyed the tray as she walked by, and she could hear him inhaling. “Smells good. Raisins?”
She glanced at him askance. “You can smell the raisins?”
He chuckled. “Nah, I just saw the black spots in the oats.”
“Do you like them?” Suddenly, Addie was reminded that not everyone had grown up with her father making them breakfast.
“Sure, I do. Am I a mutant?” As they walked into the shop proper, Addie saw her dad helping a customer in the electronic parts section. She let Tony’s remark about mutants slide; he didn’t know about her…issue. When Tony saw her dad, he nodded to the oatmeal and asked, “What about your pops?”
“He doesn’t eat until lunch. He says he’d outgrow his overalls if he ate three meals a day.” Addie set the tray on the counter and proceeded to doctor her oatmeal with some plant-based milk and brown sugar. She watched Tony copy her and then pushed a cup of coffee to him, wondering if he’d add any of the creamer or sugar packets. He didn’t, sipping it black with a satisfied sigh. Addie smiled, stirring two packets of sugar into her cup. “So, are you ready?”
“To face the fade?”
“Yes! I can’t wait to get some more footage of you in action. By the time they start to lose their minds, most fades are very quick, Tony. You’re going to have to really move. You said you were fast, right?”
He backed away from the counter and kicked his right leg up, parallel to his body, so his shin was right in front of his face. He hugged his knee to his chest, obviously performing some kind of stretch, and nodded. “Let me loosen up, and I’ll be ready to run.”
Addie snorted, coughing as some coffee went toward her windpipe. After she’d gathered herself, she said, “Relax! Eat breakfast first, you nut.” She regarded him, noting he still wore the same tracksuit, and then considered the fact that he probably didn’t own any other clothes. Or did he? She hadn’t seen what he’d had on when her dad found him. He scooped out a spoonful of oatmeal, blew on it several times, then slurped it up.
His eyebrows shot up, and he made a pleased sound. “Fantastic!”
Addie smiled. “You’re in a good mood, too, aren’t you? Sleep well?”
“Well, not great, but I guess your cheer is contagious. Care to share why you’re so chipper?”
“Um…” Addie tried to imagine Tony’s reaction to the video and realized she didn’t know him well enough to guess what it would be. “Well, I’ll share something with you if you promise not to be angry.”
He took another bite, narrowing his eye at her as he leaned his mechanical elbow on the countertop. “Now, why would whatever has you in a good mood also be something that could potentially make me angry?” He scrunched up his brow, and Addie swore she could see the gears turning inside his brain. It made her laugh, and he sighed, shaking his head. “I guess I can’t figure it out. Okay, I promise.”
“Yay!” Addie laughed and reached under the counter, digging out one of the old tablets her dad might or might not ever sell. She woke it up, set the display to non-AUI, and then connected it to the store’s private net. “Sec,” she said while she had JJ transfer the vid file. Tony continued to eat while she was working on the deck, and before she was ready to hit play, she heard his spoon scraping the bottom of the bowl.
She looked at him, at his angular face and how his broad shoulder bones stretched the large track jacket to the limits. Tony was a big guy, and he didn’t have any extra fat to burn. Addie passed her bowl toward him over the counter. “I’m not very hungry. Do you want it?”
In an expression she was beginning to get used to, he arched his left eyebrow and asked, “You sure?”
“Yep.” She paused what she was doing and gave him an appraising look. “Don’t get too full to run, though.”
“Not a chance.” He started eating, and Addie propped the tablet up so he could see the screen and then pushed play. Tony leaned over the oatmeal bowl, eating it automatically while he watched the video of himself, with the head of a happy German shepherd, making a fool of T-bomb. He snorted softly, clearly amused, as he ate. When it was over, he looked at her with that single silvery eye of his. “You’re in a good mood ’cause you turned me into a dog-man?”
“Well, not exactly. I’m in a good mood because that video got me more page views than I’ve had in the last month. I mean, so far—they’re still racking up!”
“Seriously?” He snorted again, shaking his head. “I’ve never gotten into the whole social media scene. Anyway, happy to help.”
“That’s a relief because you’re going to become a feature on my news page.”
“Huh? How am I news?”
“Well, today, you’re helping the neighborhood with a lingering fade. I’ll hook people with the footage of you leading the poor thing to a safer area, and then I’ll do a piece about the debilitating effects of fades—on themselves, the people who love them, and the neighborhoods where they linger. I’ll talk about the leading theories about their causes and about how there’s not much research being done to help them because the corpos aren’t seeing enough profit in it.”
“And do I get to keep the, uh, dog head?”
“I think we’ll need to keep it, yeah. People in the comments are already calling you ‘Shepherd.’ I think it’s pretty funny, anyway, don’t you?”
Tony shrugged, scraping the last of her oatmeal out of the bowl. “Yeah, I’m fine with it. Just don’t show my face. Not until I’ve dealt with some stuff.”
“Hey!” Having finished with his customer, her dad walked behind the counter. “Good morning, sweetie.” He looked at the tray and smiled. “Nice of you to bring breakfast for my new employee, here. Are you two going after that fade soon?”
Tony stifled a burp, holding his fist to his mouth, then stood and nodded. “Ready when you are, Boss Junior.”
Her dad laughed. “I like it. Boss Junior!” He gave Addie a playful punch, and she scowled, even though she knew that was what they were fishing for.
Tony chuckled and pulled his sunglasses out of his tracksuit’s pocket. “Show me the route to the safe area first. If these things are as fast as you say, I'll want to plan my run.”
Her dad regarded Tony for a moment. “They’re quick, Tony. If you can’t get away, start running through doors; they can’t always control when they fade, so you can slow ‘em down that way.”
“Got it.” He jerked his chin toward the exit. “Shall we?”
“Sec!” Addie picked up the bowls and Tony’s empty coffee cup. “Let me take this up and get my drone.”
Tony nodded. “I’ll go outside and stretch. See you in a minute.”