Page 28 of Neon Flux

He blinked, but went along with the subject change. “What for?”

“I need to be able to do a microwipe.”

“How micro are we talking here?” he asked.

“Single circuit level.”

He let out a longyeeiisshhhbetween his teeth. But then his eyes lit up, and that crooked smile returned. “Let’s get to work, then.”

CHAPTER 8

EON

I’d stayed at the clinic after Dev left, not wanting to go all the way back to my apartment deep in the bowels of Magenta before the job tonight. I tried to get ready, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I’d poked myself painfully putting in brown contacts, and after the second time I smeared mascara across my cheekbone, I threw the wand in the sink, clenching the sides of the steel bowl until my knuckles went white.

Professor Tanaka’s kind face was seared into my vision, even with my Vysor lying on the counter behind me.

She was the kind of professor the conservative donors to Elysium were always up in arms about. She did right by her students and was constantly at odds with the higher-ups. She’d been big in the Stellarium Rights riots back in the ’50s—she had thatTimemagazine cover, bloodied and fighting Homeland Security officers in full riot gear. Said it was more important than her degree.

When I was her student, I thought she was the coolest person in the entire world. Headstrong, unapologetically rebellious, and always meeting my problems with a laugh. I idolized her, even after I saw what that rebelliousness earned her.

I remembered the last time we talked. She found me late one night while I was reconstructing data from coma patients’ brain scans on an Elysium University supercomputer—our little off-the-books project. We’d agreed I would come in after hours, no one to bother me, no one to question what I was doing. It had been a few months since I’d lost my scholarship—lost my place at Elysium—but Tanaka had done what she could to keep me working. To anyone passing by, I looked like a grad student burning the midnight oil. But no one ever came around, and no one ever asked why my eye and fingers were twitching as I immersed myself in cyberspace.

She sat next to me in silence, the only light in the room from the holographic terminal screen I had open, data piling up as the computer churned.

She’d been drinking. The glass was still in her hand. I don’t think I had ever seen her drink before—not even at the lab parties.

I shouldn’t have pried. Hell, if she’d been anyone else, I wouldn’t have cared at all back then. But I still idolized her then.

“Rough day?” I asked.

“Grant was denied.” She took another sip from her coffee mug that readWorld’s Best Teacher, the fumes of hard alcohol wafting over to me.

“Sorry to hear that.” What else was there to say? I knew what was coming next.

“I can’t afford to keep you on. You know I have to give priority to my students who are still enrolled at the university.”

“I get that.” I didn’t look at her. A long silence stretched between us, the only sound the faint whirring of the cooling fans in my display’s hardware.

“Are you still working down at that…club?”

“Girl’s gotta eat.” And pay off medical debt and support her other habits—but the professor didn’t need to know that.

“I don’t like that.”

“It’s just a job, and the pay is good.” Far better than what she’d been paying me, to be honest. I couldn’t survive without it. My pinky twitched.

“Is that the only reason?” I finally looked at her. Her gaze was fixed on my fingers.

“Yeah. At least there, they don’t keep me locked in a basement, hidden from your colleagues. Wouldn’t want them to know your best work comes from a dropout.” Harsh words, but I really didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything then, except where I could get my next fix—when I could let the Flux sing in my blood. I only kept working for her so I could surf the Elysium Net high as a kite. Their cyberspace was second only to what the corps had, and at night it was all mine. I’d let the Vector and Flux build inside me until I was barely more than the void, where my memory faded, and it was just me and the machine. But even that wasn’t enough anymore. Nothing made up for the fact that I was alone. That despite a constant stream of bodies and faces who claimed to need me more than anything else, I had absolutely no one.

The silence between us stretched into discomfort, the only sound my nails on my favorite keyboard, making minor adjustments to the simulation on the screen.

“I must seem ancient to you, and by all accounts, I am.”

I stopped typing and looked at her. “Professor, I’m not sure what—”

“I remember before, when no one had Flux. Before we even had Stellarium. The fossil fuel age. The world was so fucked up then—or at least, that’s what I thought. They sold us on the idea that if we just had clean power, everything would be better. Society would be better. The world that was burning, saved. War, averted. Then Stellarium fell out of the sky like some sort of fucking Bible story. But now…” She stared into middlespace before shaking her head, the coffee concoction in her mug sloshing.