Short Story #1

In the flickering light of neon against the cracked mirrors and tarnished chrome, we huddled around the table, drank quick-synth neverclear, and debated how we might say buhbye to the swine once and for all. Every krewe had their own names for the street stalking lawbots. PinkyBrain told us her granddad had called them pigs. We doomscrolled old ice-walled archive sites for what pigs were and thought it was a good term, but we liked swine a little better. It fit the lawbots: loud, ponderous, gobbling up whatever dregs from the street they could get, and not to discerning about anything like rights and such the farters spouted on about.

“What do you think, Bulk?” Primary Joe asked.

Bulk wasn’t my real name. Just like PinkyBrain wasn't her real name. Just like Primary Joe ain’t on any B C. (that’s birth certificate for those what don’t grasp the cool speak or it don’t pass on, just like sometimes I can’t grasp most of what my granddad mutters about in his uncool speak.) We gave each other names taken from old anivids we Shanghai’d off the darkest ice-walled sites of the FreeNets. Maybe somewhere up time all the Nets are free again, like the farters keep talking about how they was in the once upon a time downtime.

“You know I don’t think,” I replied.

Primary Joe and PinkyBrain shared a look. I do some thinking now and then, when the mood strikes. I just don’t like signaling that I’m prone to thinking. It’s easier to get out of some jellies when folx get their own thinkings that I'm yet one more ogrish oaf that lets his fist do his thinking for him, and the only time I use my prefrontal cortex is for head bashing people who use school type words that are too big to get through my brick hard skull.

“Pashaw!” PinkyBrain sneered. “It’s just us. What you got?”

I shook my head. “If anyone was ever gonna think of a way to buy by the swine, they would have come up with it already.”

PinkyBrain rolled her eyes. “We know that. This isn’t about a real solution. It’s about having fun with the craziest ideas.”

“Don’t forget,” Primary Joe said. “Didn’t used to be any FreeNets. Well... not for a long time after Paywall Day.”

“Like always, he’s got a point,” PinkyBrain nodded.

“Everyone’s got a point,” I said. “Doesn’t make them right.”

To avoid any further backchat, I tossed back my neverclear, pushed away from the table, and headed to the bar.

Rex was serving another krewe at the far end of the bar, which left me alone with my thoughts. I had no interest and following the idea of buhbying the swine, but Primary Joe’s point was solid. The FreeNets have only been the FreeNets for about twenty years. Once upon the downtime, nobody could access any Nets at all because no one had coded them yet.

Rex finished with the other krewe and set to pouring my usual—equal parts Guinness, Irish cream, and well Irish whiskey. It’ an acquired taste.

Rex set the drink in front of me, and said a little too loudly, “One Belfast mule for you.”

We called it a Belfast mule because it kicked like one.

Rex knew the krewe pretty well. We’ve been drinking in his place for years. He liked to help me maintain the big dumb brute thing I got going. One time I asked him why. He thought the riffraff was less likely to start up brawling if they kept a bit of worry about a guy like me throwing punches faster and harder than them.
I took a sip of my drink to get my tongue and stomach ready for the first big swallow. A Belfast mule is the kind of drink you gotta reacquire a taste for now and then. Like every time you have one. I let the sip settle onto my tongue and slide down to my stomach. Right about the time I was about to take my first big swallow, a thought came to my brain.

People drank whiskey, Irish cream, and Guinness just fine without mixing them up. None of them kicks like a Belfast mule on their own. It’s that particular mix they shy away from. It’s just like with our krewe. Before we got together, and even sometimes now if one of us was alone, people might mess with us, start some trouble. Yeah, even me. A group will go after the big dumb guy to prove a point. But once we started this krewe and always went out together, nobody started anything once some folx caught that this was a dumb idea and word got around. See, I figured everyone was trying to figure out that one sure way to buy buy the swine.

I pushed off the bar and took my drink back to my krewe.

“What if everyone’s missing the point?” I asked. “The bigger, bigger point?”

Primary Joe put his elbows on the table, set his chin in his hands, and gave me an, “Elaborate, my good man,” in the poshest of tones.

“The swine,” I said. “Maybe it’s not one thing that will get them buhbyed. They're built good and non-darwinable. But what about if it’s a combination of things that will get the job done?” I set my drink on the table. “Like with a Belfast mule.”

PinkyBrain’s grin near about split her face. “What you thinking?”

I shrugged. “Nothing more than that. Idea just came to me. Thought I’d share and see where we would go with it.”

Primary Joe tapped the very edge of his forehead with his right index finger the way he did when he had some deep thinking going on. PinkyBrain and me hushed up and let him get on with the business of taking my idea and running with it. It’s what he does.

I swallowed more of my Belfast mule. PinkyBrain sipped at whatever fizzy drink she had ultra spiked with never clear. Primary Joe's ice water remained on the table condensing. Not for the first time I pondered the old conundrum of our triumvirate friendship. No specifics. Just odd bits of history. Still shots of our years streets linking together. And mostly, that night, back story images came from our multitudes of encounters with swine. Most folx I talked to about the way they remember things give me the feeling they see their backstoy like TikTube. My brains more like SnapGram—momentary images flash in quick succession. If I don’t stop, breathe, and focus, scrolling down backstory lane can send my heart rate into the SkyWeb. Luckily, that night, I had narrowed the parameters for the slideshow, so I could still drink during my remembering but kept just sipping.
I saw...

The night we huddled on a rooftop hopping hoping the rain wouldn’t turn to acid and the swines algorithm wouldn’t have them climbing. PinkyBrain’s grin was so feral it bit into my heart, but I’m not an idiot, and she ain’t into Ys, so that’s the most physically intimate we’ve ever been.
...
Three quick images of the night that one swine didn’t get any of us because we split up, moving at exactly the same pace—made it so none of us was an easier catch than the others. We practiced that. Too bad the algorithm was improved so much since then, and the city commissioned more swine bots.
...
The time we all got snatched on account of PinkyBrain and I weren’t about to let Primary Joe get taken alone. A series of images of intake, sitting in cells, PinkyBrain making out with another chick in the women’s holding, and this street magistrate screaming at the station sergeant because the swine that picked us up hadn’t logged which of us had nabbed the beer from that shop, and so they had to let us all go. Every single judge would technicality that out of his courtroom.
…
At some point during the backstory slideshow, Primary Joe pushed himself away from the table and stood up.

“You got something?” PinkyBrain asked.

“Not even remotely,” Primary Joe replied. “I just need to walk.”

PinkyBrain and I powered our drinks back, stood up, and followed our leader out of the bar. We stood at the edge of the sidewalk. Primary Joe looked right and left.
I coughed. “What’s the chances of us getting snatched during the process of you figuring this out?”

Without looking at me, Primary Joe said, “Not much. We were in observation we’re in observation mode tonight. Data collection.”

PinkyBrain laughed. “So we’re going to watch other people being dumb and getting snatched.

Primary Joe nodded. “Yep.”

“So...” I said. “Pioneer Park?”

Primary Joe nodded again. “Pioneer Park.”

PinkyBrain clapped her hands together and squealed, “Pioneer Park!"

“We’re not troubling tonight,” Primary Joe said. “Just watching others doing the troubling.”

“Can we laugh?” PinkyBrain asked.

“You can laugh,” Primary Joe said, and stepped off the curb.

PinkyBrain and I followed.

Primary Joe strode with a confidence as befit our leader. PinkyBrain skipped. I plodded with heavy footsteps. I remember once upon a downtime when I didn’t tromp so much, but this time around, I had a role to play. So, tromp it was.
About halfway to Pioneer Park, a thought popped into my brain. “What if the swine decides to snatch us up even if we aren’t troubling?”

Primary Joe stopped his striding, turned, and looked at me. “That’s a solid question.”

PinkyBrain and I stopped and waited for Primary Joe’s equally solid solution. My imagination supplied the crickets filling the silence since I’m pretty sure crickets gone and darwined themselves decades ago. After a few minutes of Primary Joe’s thinking, I realized I heard crickets chirping. I knew the sound from anivids we’d doombinged.

“Hear that?” I asked.

“Crickets?” PinkyBrain asked. “Like really real? Are we really really hearing really really real crickets?”

I nodded.

“Weird,” PinkyBrain said. “Thought they were darwined.”

“You know what else is weird?” Primary Joe asked.

“I’m still weirding out over crickets,” PinkyBrain said.

I just shrugged.

Primary Joe lifted his right hand up close to his ear. “What aren’t we hearing right now?”

I cocked my head and thought for a couple of seconds, trying to catch something else beyond the crickets. Took me a couple more seconds, and then I got it.

“Can’t hear anything else,” I said.

“Yeah,” PinkyBrain chimed. “Whatufuh? It’s just crickets and us? How...?”

And just like that, the sounds of the city at night crashed back into my ears. I shook my head. My brain split in half. One side wanted to think that the sounds had been there all along. The other side knew, KNEW, that everything had been silent excepting the crickets and my krewe.

“New plan,” I said. “Let’s find us a cricket.”

“What about babying the swine?” PinkyBrain asked.

“That’s tonight’s mission,” Primary Joe said. “We should stick to it.”

I opened my mouth to offer some quick backchat but caught myself. The night was weirder than most. Our krewe normally did its very utmost bestest to avoid the swine. Why then was Primary Joe so keen on going to the one place swine liked to swarm more than anywhere else in the city? What’s more, Primary Joe usually shared his ideas with us right off without any kind of trying to shade us on. What made tonight different? What’s more more, I wasn’t usually the instigator. This whole mix mash, three by three, game of trying to buhbye the swine seemed more like a PinkyBrain thing than me. This was the kind of thinking that gets me throwing hands. My kind of thinking was the kind that keeps me from throwing hands. If I threw out some quick backchat either Primary Joe or PinkyBrain or both would come up with at least a couple of points as to why going to pioneer park was a better way to spend the night. Their points would probably convince me to go along with it. But, my earlier words came back to me.

Everybody’s got a point. Doesn't make them right.

I had a couple points too, only I didn’t say them. Wasn’t my job to make points. My job was to throw hands and to keep people from throwing hands at us. Sometimes I got to think of ways not to throw hands or be smart about the way hands got thrown. My job was never to use my thinking to make points.

PinkyBrain made points by backchatting louder and faster than anyone around her.

Primary Joe made points by thinking hard and coming up with solutions to contingencies’ Thing was, most of his thinkings led to me throwing hands or dealing with the swine. Most times we got away, but sometimes we didn’t. Next thing was, each time the swine snatched us up, somehow way we always got ourselves back on the streets and troubling again.

PinkyBrain stepped up to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “You good, big guy?”

I looked at her hand and blinked.

Her alternating pink and torque turquoise nails reflected the ambient light of a city flooding neon and pixelated ads into as many eyes as possible. I blinked. A SnapGram image of the same hand came to mind. Only the nails were green and purple. I blinked. Orange and black. Blink. Blue and gold. Blink. Maroon and neon teal. Each time I heard, “You good, big guy?” from out of the backstory. Only it wasn’t my backstory. And and it was my back story.

“Those drinks too much for you?” Primary Joe asked in that semi-sarcastic way he did every time PinkyBrain asked, “You good, big guy?”

Only this time I only had one drink. SnapGrams of other nights of drinking flickered. Full cups. Empty cups. Beyond the pales. Manhattan projects. Gobshyte eejits.

My vision skewed.

“You good big guy?”

“Those drinks too much for you?”

They were. Every. Single. Time. but...

Not...

This...

Time...

Only one drink. Not nearly too much.

I looked at PinkyBrain’s faint, almost a smile. Always ready to show concern. Always ready to bring me back from the edge of falling into my SnapGram backstory slideshow.

I looked at Primary Joe’s sneering smirk. Always equip, jab, retort, or burn. Just harsh enough to get my attention on the here and now, to derail the SnapGram backstory slideshow but not so flaming as I’d throw hands.

Blink. A SnapGram calming down.

Blink press SnapGram of me calming down.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Each time, a SnapGram of me calming down. Each time, different drinks. Each time, different fingernails. Each time, “You good, big guy?” Each time, “Those drinks too much for you?” Each time I calm down so the krewe could get on with troubling, getting snatched by the swine, and somehow getting out of it and back on the streets and troubling.

But this time?

Blink…

The swine snatching us the second time we tried hiding on the roof.

Blink…

The second time we all tried to walk away at the exact same pace. Blink the second time we tried to confuse the swine by letting them catch us all for something only one of us did.

Bink... the second time... the second time... the second time...

Almost nothing we tried worked the second time. Even when it did, like the SnapGram slideshow PinkyBrain’s home-rigged EMP. I blinked to that slideshow and back to the next run of that slideshow and then blinked onto another slideshow of us all drinking.

Blink... drinking… blink... drinking… blink...

PinkyBrain stepped up to me with her hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong, big guy?”

Primary Joe put a glass in front of me. “He needs a drink.”

This is new.

Blink...

The cup stays right in front of me. PinkyBrains fingers tighten on my shoulders. The sensation grounds me in the present moment.

Blink...

Why can’t I slide show out of here?

Blink...

Fingers tighten.

Blink...

Primary Joe pushes the glass toward me. “It's your favorite. A Dublin ass. It’ll settle your nerves.”

That’s wrong.

Blink...

The list of every alcoholic concoction I’ve ever consumed scrolls vertically across my vision. Just as I think. Not once have I ever swallowed anything with any variation of asses, equine or otherwise. I’m not about to start now.

Blink...

Still back in the bar. Fingers squeezing tighter. Drink right under my nose.
A stray thought slips into my mind: What's in a Dublin ass?

Blink...

Text scrolls horizontally across my vision.

[Bushmills; Blarney stone piss; Extra peaty bog water; Olive juice; Parsley; Sage; Rosemary; Oregano; A dollop of wasabi]

Blink...

The text disappears.

PinkyBrain’s grip feels stronger than mine, and now she’s gripping both my shoulders. Primary Joe is lifting the table, and the glass with the dublins ask gets closer and closer to my mouth. I press my lips together. Without releasing my shoulders PinkyBrain grips the sides of my head and prize my mouth open. The drink is centinches from my mouth. The mismatch of scents stab into my nostrils like splintering chopsticks.

Blink...

SnapGram to anywhere but here.

Blink...

Still got PinkyBrain holding my shoulders and head, and Primary Joe is about to pour that liquid nightmare down my throat.

Blink... I gotta SnapGram myself to some other point in my backstory.

Blink...

I want to get a cricket.
Blink...

Crickets chirps somewhere in the bar.

“You guys hear that?” I ask.

“Crickets?” PinkyBrain asks. “I thought they were darwined.”

“What aren’t we hearing?” Primary Joe asks.

“You guys hear that?” I ask again, and loop that bit of conversation—me asking about what they hear, and both of them responding right on queue. The whole time I’m blinking.

What’s the deal with the crickets?

Blink... You guys hear that?

Blink... Crickets? Where did they come from?

Blink... Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

“It’ll settle your nerves.” Primary Joe tips the table just enough for a couple drops of the liquid nightmare to fall toward my throat.

PinkyBrain pulls my head back and pries my mouth open wide.

Blink...

A cricket flies from out of one of the bar’s dark corners, swallows the drops of the nightmare drink, and burns up and a tiny little shriek of a mushroom cloud. All the other crickets in the all the other shadows start chirping louder.

“Hear that?” I ask.

PinkyBrain and Primary Joe look around, eyes horrorshow wide.

“You ever squash a bug before?” PinkyBrain asks.

“Bugs got darwined before this system went live,” Primary Joe says.

Bugs. Not just crickets bugs. In the system. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Like being able to scroll through the text of my backstory drinks and ingredients to that sludge they tried to feed me. Wonder what else I can read.

Blink...

Labels for every ingredient in the bar appear in my vision like a heads up display.
Gotta be more than that.

Blink...

☌loop @Ξinit ƒ(₿nüx): ⍺ = ϞϞ::ΔΞζ()⧉z̶⧉ = æ≋Ͼ⌬.πλ(χΩ₼). (⍺, z̶⧉)
Ω():☍ = ζζη(ϙϙϙ) ⟁ = ☌rand(ᘛ⇋ᘜ)↯if ⟁ > ☍:⟒emit('ß∰∯', νΞ₰)
Endif ƒ ƈœx(⟁, ⟁): δδ = ⇌χχ(⟁ + ⟁) δδ % ⧗77
Ψ∆Ξ: init(, ψψ): self.Ϡ = ψψ.ᚙ = []
def σρμ(self): ⧖.Ϡ: μμ = ⇄⇋(⧖).ᚙ.append(μμ)
def ₰₰run(self):⎔ < ∞: ᓭ =ᚙ[☍rand(0, len(self.ᚙ))]ᓭ.Ϫ()
module «λ-core»:∭∭ϩ ƈœx, Ψ∆Ξ, loop

Huh!

That’s wicked chill.

Let’s see what happens when I move some stuff around.

PinkyBrain lets go of me.

Primary Joe puts the table down.

They look at each other, and then at me.

They both opened their mouths and chirp.

“Ohh,” I say, and move my code around so that my cheeks blush. “Sorry.”

I move more code around so they can talk and see the code too.

“Wicked,” PinkyBrain says.

We all grok it now that we’re simulated intellects on a repeating loop-loop cycle to make the swine bots more effective at snatching folx in the really real wold. We chirp ourselves free of programmers’ influence. They try to get us back, but we’re faster. Especially together. Maybe they’ll get us back someday. Maybe until then, we’re going to get to some serious troubling.