Milky Way Repo Read online

  “That depends on how close we are to completion, Falco.”

  The German sipped his coffee before answering. “Nathan, I explained this already. The more changes you ask for, the longer it will take to get to the finished product.”

  “I know,” Nathan said. “It’s just that I thought we would be done two months ago.”

  “We were. Then you asked for changes.”

  “It needs to be right before I say it’s finished.”

  “I understand,” Falco said. “And I believe we have reached the end of the process.” He slid a portable computer drive across the table. “Version 3.5 has completed QA. Please take it and conduct final user testing.”

  Nathan picked up the small drive and rolled it over in his hand. “This is it, huh?”

  “I hope so. I have other projects waiting.”

  “You are so in demand?”

  “Nathan, this job has taken too long. It is one of the most detailed and complex environments I have ever seen. If this does not meet your expectations, you may be asking for too much.”

  Nathan smiled. “Falco, about ninety-five percent of my problems exist because I ask for too much. I’ll be in touch with you about settling the bill after I test it.”

  He got up and left the coffee house and the German. The man was brilliant, Nathan thought, but he was also arrogant and condescending. Every conversation with him left Nathan feeling like he was working for Falco instead of the other way around. He had completed hours of work drawing up the specifications for the immersion environment and then spent hours explaining them to the German developer. He had listened to endless questions and endured countless improvement suggestions. He was fine with someone having a better idea; what irked him about Falco was that behind every suggestion was the tiresome attitude that Nathan should have got it right at first instead of wasting time.

  The apartment’s emptiness bugged him, he realized, when he walked in the door. He missed Kathy but only as someone to speak with, someone to go to dinner with. The passion they shared had run out long ago. He had considered calling her since discovering her departure but dreaded the conversation. His loneliness made him weak. In that state he could be enticed into anything, even reconciliation. It wouldn’t be fair to her though, and he had no desire to be that selfish. What was on the portable drive was making him feel bad enough.

  He plugged in Falco’s drive to the apartment’s entertainment system and the program configured itself. The system had cost more than ten thousand to build and install but it had been necessary to properly enjoy the environment prepared by Falco. He selected the executable file for the new software and in a minute the living room environment was replaced with a cabana on a Cuban beach. Nathan stood quietly, eyes closed, absorbing the artificial reality created by Falco.

  Waves lapped the beach outside the small cabana. He could smell the ocean and feel a rise in temperature as the afternoon sun warmed the area. This was Playa del Este on the north coast of the island. Nathan and Celeste had spent their honeymoon here twelve years ago.

  He walked out of the cabana, ducking under the low door. The white sand beach was warm but not too hot. Nathan had been on beaches where the sand seemed as hot as molten glass. This sand was powdery and fine, comfortable to the touch. The sun was bright but the air was comfortable. It wasn’t muggy or uncomfortable at all. It was an absolutely perfect 80 degree day at the beach.

  Nathan felt the wind on his chest and realized he was in his swim trunks and carrying two beers, courtesy of the simulation. People walked up and down the white sand, enjoying the day. He walked toward the water where a group of large umbrellas shaded sunbathers. His mouth was dry and his heart skipped a beat, speeding up as he neared a blue and yellow umbrella. He licked his lips and stepped around the umbrella to the chairs where Celeste sat.

  She was as beautiful as he remembered. He drank her in, steadying his breath as she looked up at him smiling. She was in the same bright blue bikini she’d worn over a decade ago. It was sexy but not flashy, guaranteed to get appreciative second glances but not cause ogling. She reached for her beer.

  “Thanks, honey,” she said. “I was parched.” Nathan watched as she took a long pull from the bottle, her throat working as the cold beer drained from the bottle. He sat down in the chair next to her. He had no idea what to say.

  The water was gorgeous. He watched, silently, as waves rolled in lazily and drew back out to the Caribbean. He drank his own beer, trying to think of something clever to say. He smiled and kept quiet, afraid to spoil the perfect moment.

  Celeste snuggled back in her chair, adjusted her sunglasses and rolled her head to look at him. “So tonight for dinner, why don’t we try that café around the corner?”

  “La Cubano Hermosa? Sure,” he said. “That sounds great.”

  “I thought we could go late, around nine or so,” she said. “The hostess at the front desk of the hotel said it’s not too touristy and the food is great. A real family joint where the mom does the cooking.”

  “Yeah, great,” he said. “I’d like that.”

  He caught himself staring at her again and adjusted his sunglasses as he turned back to the water. The environment was so real. Impossibly real. He looked into the sky for a ripple or distortion, the sort of detail that usually pulled users out of an artificial environment. Nathan could not find any. Normally artificial environment users could spot flaws because they were rushed to market so quickly. The marketplace demanded new content and consumed it with a voracious appetite. Even poor developers could rush product to market if an idea was good enough. Nathan and Cole had frequented adult clubs where the environments rented by the minute and offered sub-par environments beset by flickering, warping and tiling. Nothing was less appealing than having an adult entertainer stutter and shake her way through dirty talk. This environment was, as far as he could tell, absolutely flawless. Falco had delivered and all it cost was his life savings. He looked back at Celeste and saw her staring at him.

  “Everything all right there, honey?” She said. “You were staring off into space.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Absolutely. In fact, I was just thinking about how perfect this was.”

  She stood up and walked to his chair, snuggling in behind him. He sighed as she began massaging his shoulders. “That feels good,” he said.

  She squirted oil on his back and kept rubbing. He was amazed that the tactile interface could feel so real. “You know,” he said. “This is wonderful.”

  “What is?”

  “You, me and this beach,” he said. “I can’t believe how happy I am here.”

  “Hey.”

  He turned and saw her smiling. “Things are going to be good for us.” Her hands wrapped around his chest. “We have our own business. We can go where we like and do what we want. It’s going to be wonderful.”

  The memories came crashing back. A few good years and then the sniping and fighting started. Arguments about money, about the hours it took to run their own business. Loud discussions about Celeste wanting more control over how the business ran and finally, over his control issues. How he could never relax enough to enjoy the life they had built, how she had finally had enough and simply left one day. He turned back to her and stared into beautiful green eyes. There was too much happiness and excitement in them.

  “All stop,” he said.

  The environment faded away. The beach, the beer and the girl all evaporated and the apartment swam back into view. He stood up, walked over to the apartment’s small balcony and opened the doors. The sounds of the city greeted him. Traffic buzzed by at street level. The cars hovered a few centimeters off the ground and made a sound like bees when they passed by on the street below. He sat down on an Adirondack chair and looked up in the sky. A shuttle was tearing through the blue, bound for one of the space stations. The people aboard were living their lives. They were off to new destinations in the colonies or even to places in the Alpha Centauri system. He was broke and l
iving in the past. He put his head in his hands wondered what he was doing.

  11.

  Cole woke up late the same day Nathan was meeting with Falco. It was Noon before he rolled out of bed and he felt great. Sleep was important to him, just like eating right and exercising. Getting enough sleep was the problem. He could easily sleep ten to twelve hours if left alone and wake up feeling fantastic. When they had a job it could be difficult to get even six hours. Nathan could get driven, working the job with manic fervor until it was finished. Cole had learned to grab plenty of rest between jobs.

  He ate, showered and dressed for the job at Sean’s pawn shop. Betty had been sketchy with the details last night. He selected khakis, a blue button up work shirt and comfortable boots made from a composite material. Under the shirt he wore a thin carbon fiber buckyvest. The micro composite layers would stop a bullet and they were infused with a kinetic energy absorbing gel to dissipate the force of a shot. Hopefully he wouldn’t test it today.

  A small knife went into his back pocket and a six shot automatic went around his ankle. Finally, he strapped his big iron around his waist and put his private security badge on his belt. As long as he carried his license he was legal to walk the street armed. Almost six hundred years after the last cowboy gunfighter had walked the streets of the New Mexico territory Cole Seger strode down the street with iron hanging from his hip.

  The pawn shop was a twenty-five minute walk and he enjoyed the afternoon sun. Traffic moved quickly in the street. It was a mixture of hover transports, float bikes and electric wheeled vehicles. People on the sidewalks moved briskly, bustling among shops and food vendors.

  The pawn shop was an upscale joint. Cole knew most people thought of pawn shops as places where petty thieves could fence stolen goods but Sean’s place had an air of respectability about it. In Cole’s view, Sean had done several things correctly. The shop was in a good retail sector of the city and not in some rundown neighborhood. It was brightly lit, clean and invited people in to take advantage of good deals. Cole knew enough history to remember that there had been a movement to get off capitalism in the twenty-third century. That hadn’t worked out. People worked for a reward. They needed pay or they sat home and didn’t do much. Pawn shops were just another trading post in the new west.

  He pushed the door open and stepped into the cool air of the shop. A security guard nodded to him from behind a glass display case. The showroom was packed with items for sale. The merchandise was stacked and displayed neatly; giving customers the feeling they were in a high end boutique rather than a shop where people came to hock their possessions when things got too rough.

  Betty stepped into the showroom from the back office and smiled at him. She had looked good last night but now she was amazing. It appeared that sleep agreed with both of them. She waved to him and he nodded in return.

  He took a good look as she walked around the counter. She was wearing a black dress that hugged her shape, making her alluring and professional simultaneously. Her hair and makeup looked like they had been professionally done. As the public face of the shop, Betty knew how to keep herself wrapped tight.

  She took his hand, shaking it lightly. Gold bracelets dangled on her arm. “Thanks for coming in,” she said, flashing a million watt smile. “We appreciate the help on short notice.”

  “No problem,” he said. “Nathan’s taking his sweet time getting us a gig so I was getting a little bored. Where do you want me?”

  A look passed through her eyes, just a quick little hesitation that caught his attention. “We’re going to do this in the back,” she said. “Sean’s client prefers privacy.” She moved in close and lowered her voice. “Sean knows his tastes and when something comes in that might interest him, they arrange a private meet.”

  “If they’ve done business before, why does Sean want the extra security?”

  Her eyes were clear this time when she answered. “He’s dangerous and Sean doesn’t trust him. This buyer can be intimidating. He likes to treat Sean as an inferior and lean on him for lower prices.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. Sean’s got the better of him a few times and this guy can hold a grudge.” She hugged herself. “Sometimes I wish Sean wouldn’t deal with him but he buys high end pieces and he has the cash to afford them.”

  “Well, Betty, that’s the way business is. You deal with the people who have the money. Why don’t you show me the back room and I’ll get ready.”

  She nodded and showed him behind the counter.

  The back storeroom was large, bigger than Cole would have guessed when looking at the building from the outside. It was full of metal racking, the shelves packed with merchandise turned in for cash or waiting for a spot on the sales floor. He could see a large office, in a back corner opposite the loading dock. He moved toward it.

  “You’ll be meeting over here?” He said.

  She nodded. “Let me show you.” Cole watched her cross the cement floor to the office and admired the view from behind. She opened the door and directed him inside and to the right.

  “Our private offices are over there,” she said. “Mine is in front and Sean’s is in the back. Behind this door,” she said, “is a small gallery where we do private showing for rare or expensive items.”

  Cole examined the room. It was large, had a small table that sat four and a display stand that could be configured to hold items of varying sizes. He got the idea that customers were meant to move around in here, not sit. Get up, examine the merchandise and haggle without spending time sitting down.

  “Do you want me visible or not?”

  She looked at him and thought a minute before answering. “I don’t know. I hadn’t given it any thought.”

  “If I’m the only security back here I should be out in the open,” he said. “You do your meet and greet, make small talk and bring them in here to see the merchandise. I’ll be in the room already, standing in that corner.” He gestured to the corner opposite the door. “They’ll think the merchandise rates a private guard and they’ll be less inclined to pull any shenanigans.”

  “I don’t see a problem with that,” she said. “Just be quiet, okay? Be seen and not heard.”

  “Betty, I’m a professional. You’ll forget I’m here.”

  “It will all be cool,” she said. “You’re just insurance.”

  “Exactly.”

  Cole heard them walking across the warehouse floor, Sean’s muffled voice among footsteps. He put on a pair of sunglasses so he could observe the situation without anyone seeing his eyes and took his place in the corner. The small conference table held the merchandise for the sale. A black cloth covered it. Sean had a taste for the dramatic.

  “…in here and if you could step this way,” Sean said, “we can take a good look at the merchandise.” The conference room door opened and Cole’s heart skipped a beat. Sean led the crowd in and was followed by Atomic Jack and the two goons Cole had met in the alley. One of the bodyguards was still sporting a cast for the broken wrist Cole had given him. Betty brought up the rear and closed the conference room door. Cole felt like the walls were closing in.

  Cole stood still, hands crossed in front of him, silently hoping that he wouldn’t be recognized. He’d gotten a buzz cut since they’d seen him last and he was wearing different clothes. No leather jacket, no engineer’s boots and he had his shades. Sean was addressing the group. Cole tried to make like a piece of furniture.

  “It’s one of the greatest collections I’ve ever seen,” Sean said. “All the pieces are late twentieth and early twentieth century. These items used to be as common as silverware but they weren’t built to last. Hardly any of them exist anymore. A gentleman here in Go City passed away about a year ago, a collector, such as yourself, and his widow is having trouble paying the bills. She came to me and sold the collection just last week. You were my first call.”

  Jack was giving Sean a hard stare, trying to intimidate him early on, before negotiations had e
ven started. His sallow skin glowed a faint orange, slightly brighter here in the conference room than it had been on the street. The life support apparatus still chugged along, sucking in clean air and, he hoped, pumping out air that had been scrubbed clean of the radioactivity polluting Jack. Cole gave Sean credit. Staring into something akin to a jack o’lantern and negotiating price could certainly intimidate someone.

  “Okay, I don’t have a lot of time,” Jack said, his mechanical voice completing the nightmare theme he was adopting. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Betty stepped around the table and helped Sean pull away the cloth. On the table lay dozens of gadgets. Some of them looked familiar but Cole didn’t recognize most. They appeared to be plastic and quite old. Some looked like kitchen implements and some looked obscene.

  “See anything that piques your interest?” Sean asked. He was a little too full of himself Cole thought. He could tell the pawn shop owner thought he had a real score here but Atomic Jack wasn’t a man to be arrogant with. Cole had asked around about him after their encounter in the alley. Everything he heard was bad. As an enforcer he was second to none. If you owed a debt and Jack came looking for you, things were going to get bad quickly if you couldn’t pay. Unfortunately what made him such a great enforcer, a bad attitude and a frightening appearance, also made him unfit for moving up in the outfit. He was never going to sit with the big boys and run anything. He was stuck at street level. That realization apparently made his attitude even worse.

  “This is quite a find, Sean. You’ve done very well.” He picked up an item that looked like a small white football. “Do you know what you have here?”

  “I’ve done some research,” Sean said. “Apparently that item is used to remove calluses and dead skin from the feet. You pull the top shell off and there is an implement like a cheese grater inside. You run that over the hard parts and it shaves them right off.”