Chapter 1.2

 

border patrol

 

An apartment halfway up Sky City Seven, facing north amongst employee housing in Paypal Neighborhood’s twelve district. Rotterdam region—EU.

Ennis leans from the narrow window carefully, still draped in the dark gray sheet, monocular protruding from beneath its folds.

He comes back in to record a set of numbers, then moves to another window, repeating the exercise.

Three clicks away, he watches border guards thoroughly inspect parked rail cars by the southern entrance to Amsterdam’s freight tunnel.

Graffiti on the outer concrete wall reads, ‘Everything has its place in the heart of man, for even what he fears can define him...’

Below it, ‘F**k off wanker!!!’

 

inside the fold

 

The heart of Amsterdam City. Netherlands region—EU.

Long steamers drift through the Amsterdam CBD, two wide in its narrow canals.

Jumpships pass overhead silently.

Several floors up, on the balcony of an exclusive coffee shop, Serrah Zenith paints the scene below.

Her PDA vibrating softly, she takes a moment to finish the detail at one corner of a digital canvas.

“Accept call,” says Serrah, smoking a blend of coffee and herb. “Hi there.”

Her daughter’s face flickers on its projected display.

Apple says, “I’m leaving college. I just thought you should know.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun.”

“Take me seriously.”

“I never presumed to do otherwise, dear.”

Apple pauses. Serrah tilts the holographic window toward her, unable to read her youngest daughter after nineteen years.

Serrah asks, “Why don’t you come for a visit?”

“Please. I’d rather spend the night in a territory.”

“Well I do appreciate your calls, but Amsterdam doesn’t paint itself.”

“Yeah bye. End call.”

 

ace of sleeves

 

Three blocks from the central hub of PayPal’s mag-lev network. Rotterdam region—EU.

“I’m basically looking for a bomb,” Ennis tells the stranger on call. His PDA reads, ‘Audio Only’.

“What kind of bomb?” asks the arms dealer.

Ennis looks around the mag-lev carriage, lowering his voice some.

“It’s gonna have to be nuclear.”

“Regular, or large?” asks the dealer.

“Oh, I ah, hadn’t really thought about it. What do you recommend?”

“Well, I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s better to need a regular and have the large, than need a large and have the regular.”

“You make a lot of sense,” says Ennis.

“It’ll cost you though. And because I don’t know you, I’ll need the funds direct.”

“I’m working on that part now. We should be all good.”

“Okay. We’ll discuss a time and place when I contact you next. End call.”

Ennis pockets his PDA, vacantly staring at floating advertisements as the train descends from thirty floors up, into Rotterdam’s subway system.

 

shooters

 

The unmapped public slums crammed beneath uberhighways connecting Paypal and Kruger(I.S.) territories. Rotterdam region—EU.

“What’s this one?” Ennis asks the man in sunglasses.

“Fission device, one gigaton.”.

“Okay this may seem like a strange question, but which one puts out the most passive radiation?”

The dealer shakes his head. “You don’t want that. Meteorology would register it on the flyby.”

“What if I had a timetable?”

“On company satellites? Good luck breaking that encryption. Trust me on this, it used to be my job.”

“Humor me,” says Ennis.

“Okay, well… I guess you’d probably be looking at something pre- twenty-fifty. Neutron bomb, ninety megaton range.”

Ennis slowly nods, eyes narrowed with thought.

The dealer seems concerned by this. “But you’d want to be damn sure you know when those birds are overhead before taking it out of the bunker. They don’t have Peace Enforcement patrolling under the highways anymore, and the people who have to work here really like it that way.”

“Next time you see me,” says Ennis, “I’ll have the cash and relevant timetables. For now though, I’ll just take this sweet-a*s revolver.”

Ennis taps his PDA, waving it over the dealer’s home feed station. It chimes with the universal sample of a funds transfer.

The arms dealer lights a cigarette and grunts, returning his attention to the muted feed display floating above his bomb shelter’s kitchen sink.

“Volume,” he tells it, filling the cramped bunker with synth music and excited Cantonese.

“I’ll be in touch.” Ennis leaves the room past shelves stocked with tinned food and bottled water, ascending a stainless steel ladder back to the surface.

He climbs out of an alloy blast door in the back yard of the arms dealer’s ghetto safehouse, leaving via a side gate.

Despite the daytime hour, no sunlight penetrates the massive concrete highways overhead.

Large, pale eyes watch Ennis return to his idling taxi, which peels away from the curb the moment he’s inside.

Riding in back, Ennis keeps one hand in his pocket, feeling the revolver’s shape and weight.

For as long as it takes the lights to change, he wonders if he will ever have to use it.