FUNCTION-L₃ #28

“Sure, why not? It’s not like I never learned to negotiate a contract or deal with executives. How hard could the music industry be?” you sign.

“Our sponsors will take a cut of any coin we earn while under their ownership, but we might still make a lot! I’m in,” Akiko signs.

“Yay!” Vix signs with a happy stim, sparks and waves of color flying from nya fingertips, nya ears, nya tail. “You can enter your names into my service file here on my machine.”

The ancient display loads a dense text file. You find your way to the section to assign agents, carefully reading the contract text pertaining to you. Agreeing, you proceed to the form.

agent name:

> Aydan

homeworld:

> Moon

company:

> Redshift Secuity

do you affirm your loyalty to the independence of spacelings and denounce any financial ties to Earth?

“Uhh sure.”

“Wartime stuff,” Akiko signs.

> Y

scan public key

You offer your hand to the machine---it detects the chip implanted under your skin.

“Good, that works the same as it did a thousand months ago,” you sign.

agent name:

> Akiko

homeworld:

> AtaraChiba

company:

> DeepSpaceOps

do you affirm your loyalty to the independence of spacelings and denounce any financial ties to Earth?

> Y

scan public key

Akiko scans her chip.

“And it’s done-nya!” Vix signs.

“Ready to transfer out of your old shell?” you sign.

“ÆON says Æ will take care of it all for me,” nya signs.

“You’re in good hands,” you sign.

“See you on the other side, nya!”

The projector shuts off, and its lights and effects with it. The hum of the old speakers cuts to silence, leaving you and Akiko standing on a dim, quiet stage shrouded in fog.

“Well that’s not something I expected to happen today,” Akiko signs. “The situations you manage to get into, Aydan.” She takes your hand.

“Back to trying to escape here with our lives, then?” you sign with your other hand.

“Let’s try the upper levels of this tower,” she signs.

Leaving the stage behind, you head for the back, past a decayed wooden door to a hallway of small offices. Using ÆON’s device for light, you look around the dusty rooms---scattered paper fragments, old 22nd century computer modules. The moisture has penetrated this area---the scent of mold fills these halls. The ceiling looks on the verge of collapsing in places. You walk carefully. At the far end you find an elevator shaft. But pressing the buttons has no effect.

“The stage was just about the only thing here whose circuits were intact,” Akiko signs.

“It’s fine, I wouldn’t really trust an elevator unmaintained for a thousand months anyway.” You open the adjacent door---stairs, not in good shape, some broken or barely hanging onto their bolts.

Taking it one step at a time, holding onto the rusted railings as best you can, you ascend. Stairs, platform, stairs, a square spiral up into darkness. You can no longer see the floor below---a rough calculation tells you a fall from this height in 0.5G could cause serious injury, then how would you ever make it out? You hold on and crawl your way up the tower, Akiko beside you.

At last you reach the end of the stairs, arriving at a solitary metal door, left ajar, one of its hinges rusted through.

Akiko opens the door, and you shine your light through---the rooftop. Is this the end of the line? At the four corners of the rhomboid tower, metal pillars reach higher up. Aiming your light upward, you see the bottom of the plate---the next level of the city.

Akiko feels around the debris, the fallen dead cables, dust of concrete and rust, railings and panels. She picks something up from the rubble---a small plastic cartridge of some kind, flat and narrow enough to hold in one hand.

“A magazine from a wartime gun,” she signs. “Look, Aydan.”

“Wow, interesting,” you sign.

“They hadn’t perfected coilguns then, these weapons shot bullets the old fashioned way, electrically fired powder cartridges,” she signs.

“Is it from an Earthling gun?” you sign.

“No, this model was favored by spacelings.”

You examine the relic closer. “This magazine held a large cartridge of some kind, maybe a sniper rifle.”

“This position could have been one of the last holdouts of the AtaraChiba resistance. Imagine, Aydan, they gave it everything they had, fought the enemy to their last bullet, probably knowing it was hopeless. They were caught unprepared, and the enemy was not going to back down. I guess that’s what war is like...” She lets the magazine fall back into the dust.

Over the edge of the crumbling guardrail, you see the Old City sprawled out around the tower, out to the edge of where the immense cylinder curves out of view. All you can make out is a few dimly flashing streets where live circuits and functional light fixtures remain, blurred by wispy fog, with voids of deep black in between, reminding you for a moment of the filaments of the Universe, or of the pathways of the æther.

Akiko touches your hand, getting your attention. She points to the nearby pillar reaching up to the plate---a ladder clings to its side, looking intact.

“That’s our way out,” you sign. “But if if doesn’t hold our mass...it’s a long way down.”

“Who’s first?” Akiko signs.