The Outlier's Dream

Stream 0, Collected Protectorate, Vegas, a year ago

Andrea Wrendel, Recorder

It was rare these days for Andrea to venture out of her domicile by herself without mentioning to her AI where she was going. This time she checked the temperature outside, selected clothes from her drawers sufficient to keep her warm, applied them in layers, and exited inward, to traverse the stairways down and out.

“You didn't mention where you were going?“ her AI questioned as she passed through the threshold and into the long hallway. Andrea closed the door behind her, saying nothing.

The hallway wasn't well-lit or well-used, except by maintenance robots and the like, and though every few steps she saw an opening that led to another domicile from the back, she stopped short of trying to imagine the people behind the doors. Dreamers, Recorders...Outguard...even some rumors the Protector lived in a stack like this. As she thought it, she looked at the opening in a doorway, imagining the Protector lived there. She shivered.

At the end of the hall, she reached a stairway, where a vertical column of cold air wrapped around an elevator shaft used for cargo by delivery and waste robots and chilled her.

Descending the levels, her heart rate elevated. She anticipated an in-person meeting, and everything about her actions now felt secretive, hidden, opaque. If she saw anyone in the stairwell she'd feel exposed, but she wasn't explicitly disallowed from being here and nobody could know what she intended. Could they?

By the time she exited her building on the ground level and came in contact with the dirt on the ground, Andrea was filled with a new boldness, a new resolve.

She was going to see a wetware hacker.

Outside, the ground was wet and the air sour. It burned her throat. She wrapped a sleeve around her face and walked. The city was spread out, had long since been obsolesced, there remained no economy, no storefront, no citizenry. Any who wanted to be clothed, fed, or paid had to do so with the blessing of the Collected Protectorate. There were other parts of the country she supposed operated outside the government, that perhaps people still lived in, but she hadn't seen them. More likely they'd traveled away and never come back, wasn't it? Or installed hacked wetware and gone 'smelse. Like she wanted to.

The journey wasn't long by pod standards, but on her legs she felt like she was barely moving across the cityscape. Buildings, blocks, neighborhoods, rats and stray dogs. She kept looking for the sign she was near the wetware hacker's domicile, a green and yellow flag. The post she'd read was years old, so there was a chance she'd find nobody. A chance this was all for nothing. In that case she'd return to her domicile, lie to her AI and go to work in the morning. She shuddered at the thought, walking faster, looking for the green and yellow flag everywhere she stepped. She saw none.

Old graffiti on storefront facades illustrated the despair of the transition. “Hemmelhaut did this.“ “If you're reading this, I'm sorry,“ and “The only way out is wet.“

This last one gave her pause. “Wet?“ A reference to wetware? Maybe she was in the right place.

Andrea walked to the building sporting this phrase, peered through the windows, saw nothing. She walked around back. Behind the place there were piles of brick, rusted metal, old trash. Peeking from beneath the pile was some plastic, smeared brown and orange, but...was it a flag? She bent and rubbed it with her thumb. Beneath the dirt, the color showed through a bright green.

Andrea started to sweat. Green and...she rubbed a little more, this time the plastic triangle to the right of the green one. It was orange to start with, but when her finger rubbed it, it showed through a chemical yellow. Green and yellow flags.

She was close.

Andrea circled the pile of rock, she walked to the side and around the back of the building. She saw nobody.

“Hello?“

The wind gave the only response, rustling the trees that grew up the sides of the remaining buildings. She turned, looking, sighing, throat burning, and decided to turn back. What a useless exploration, and now she'd used her only free day in months to do something futile.

As she was walking away, she had the thought to turn and look at the pile of rubble. From here it seemed intentionally constructed, not the remains of some natural destruction. She moved her gaze along the ground, where the flags were.

Something moved. Something small. A mouse? A dog?

A hand.

Andrea didn't know if she should leave or approach the hand. So she stood where she was and watched, seeing it lengthen, now attached to a forearm, the forearm undoing some hidden latch.

Latch undone, a large part of the pile of junk lifted upward, like it was all connected, intentionally built this way.

It was dark under there, but for a shiny bald head, a greasy pale man's head with open eyes and a closed mouth. Andrea felt a moment of revulsion.

The man cocked his head at her, then slowly with his other hand, coming up from beside him, beckoned to her.

She walked forward at once, subconsciously trained for subservience based on her day-to-day as a Recorder. Once she was moving she no longer hesitated, not even when she could make out bumps on the man's face, discolorations and when his mouth opened to smile at her, rotted black stubs of teeth.

“I...“ she found herself trying to speak as she got near, but couldn't come up with words. What would they be? “I'm...“

“Lost?“ the man provided, his voice the creaky production of someone who'd not spoken in quite some time.

“Looking for...someone called the Wetsuitor. Are you him?“

The man blinked at her. A flash of what looked like annoyance passed over his face. He looked past her, and to the sides.

“The Wetsuitor, eh? 'Smelse, if you'll believe it.“

“'Smelse?“

“'Smelse. You from the Collected Protectorate? Outguard?“ He seemed more curious than worried.

“No, no,“ Andrea said, “I'm a civilian. I read a post on the archived web, from the people before the Offstreaming. I read a thread about someone named the Wetsuitor, and he lived in my city. Vegas. I'm...my name's Andrea.“

The man smiled.

“Wolfred. The Wetsuitor was my wife. Now, listen. That business hasn't gone on for at least a decade. You should go home.“

“Wait,” she said. “I can't keep living the life I have. The things I see, the things I do to people...I can't do it and there's nowhere else to go. I need another stream, any other stream.“

“Oh? Well, listen. I'm not going to talk to you out here, in the open like this. Too risky. Come inside or leave. Up to you. But I'm warning you, there's no real reason to come here anymore. Nothing I can help you with.“

Then he winked at her. Conspiratorially, not the wink of an old man who's seen some young woman reminding himself of earlier conquests.

His words told her to leave but his behavior told her to come inside.

“For a few minutes, I think I'd like to come inside to chat. Hear about your wife.“

The man nodded. Then he crawled out of the pile of junk. He wore ragged tight clothes, dark grays and browns, and he was long and tall. “You first,“ he said. “I have to close the hatch, you won't be strong enough, no offense.“

When he stood up he was a full two heads taller than her. Andrea shivered, and looked down into the hole.

Is this how I die?

She bent down, hung her head over the column and looked down what appeared to be a thin silo that went down further than she could see.

“How deep does it go?“

“Four levels. I'd back in and step down one rung at a time if I were you, but I don't know what kind of skills you have.“

“Not those,“ Andrea said. She watched the man make a circular motion with his right index finger. Hurry up. Then he started looking around.

Andrea considered again. She could leave now, but then she'd always wonder. Would work her dead-end job and come home at the end of the day and stare at the ceiling of her domicile, wondering how it differed from prison. Different walls, different daily priorities, responsibilities, but didn't it amount to the same thing? Wasn't she just as dead inside without finding out if she could be free?

So she turned around and put her legs into the opening, until her foot caught the metal rung of a ladder. She started lowering herself down.

The air was dry and hot and sour, like the sweat of someone who hasn't showered in years. Sweat baked into the walls, every surface. Andrea forced herself not to make a face.

When she reached the floor at the bottom of the fourth level, (the man hadn't lied about that), the ground she stepped on seemed to be covered in a thin layer of what felt and looked like hair, and ash. It disintegrated when she stepped on it. She stood aside, waiting. Above her, the lanky man climbed into the silo. The light around him created shadows and rays that made her brain hurt. Bits of rust fell into her eye and she didn't look up anymore.

By the time Wolfred got to the bottom of the ladder, everything was darker. The hatch was closed. Locked.

Will I be able to leave?

She didn't dare ask. First she wanted to hear what he had to say, wanted to talk.

He motioned past her, then started walking that way without checking to see if she would follow. Andrea followed.

They walked through two submarine doors down a metal hallway with him leading the way. Andrea kept a mental map going in her mind as they went, recording their progress.

“So you're here for a story?“

“I'm here for wetware.“

The man turned to her, the look of annoyance passing over his face again.

“I told you that was my wife, and she's 'smelse, and the things she did I watched but I don't know myself.“

“Your wife was the Wetsuitor?“

“She was a nurse first, and she wanted to help people. I helped her, I hid her.“

“From the Collected Protectorate?“

“Before that, even. I hid her from Outward Industries, when their software leaked. I hid her and people would come, fighters against the corporation and the impending government. Political opponents of President Hemmelhaut and then Protector Blyhart. Malazarians, dissidents. Those with diseases that could never be treated on this stream.“

They walked into a cylindrical room, rounded walls with shelves and drawers installed. In the center of the room was a chair, padded vinyl with a metal footrest like a dentist's chair.

“I'd give you the whole tour, but I wasn't expecting to and the rest of the facility hasn't been touched in years. Dangerous.“

“I bet.“

“Mind sitting there?“ He motioned to the chair.

Andrea looked at the chair, then at him. “I'll stand.“

“Okay, well don't mind if I sit, I'm used to it and haven't been topside in quite a while, but when I saw you loitering around up there, touching the flags...I thought maybe a Collected Protectorate agent had come to...“ he laughed, “...collect and protect me.“

“I'm not an Outguard agent. I'm a tech. A nurse. A Recorder.“

“Oh...it makes more sense what you said now about doing things to people. Harmony, that was my wife's name, she did some digging on the Dreaming Initiative when that whole thing got started up. Unpleasant stuff. This isn't the only stream with dreamer farms, you know.“

“I don't.“

“Well, probably better that way. You have the feeling it's bad, it sounds like. Trust that. What else can you trust?“

Andrea thought about her family. How her father had died during the Hemmelhaut assassination and soon after she'd lost her mother to alcoholism and depression. Her brother Gery had stolen from her, rewritten their parents' will so she was left with nothing, then since he was able to pay for a journey 'smelse, he swung away. She never saw him again.

She'd been poor enough, desperate enough to think she was lucky to be handed a position as a Recorder with the Dreaming Initiative. Overpaid, in a landscape that barely had an economy, trapped in her own private home, with only artificial friends to keep her company and, more importantly, under control. Now she was underground, in what under another circumstance might seem like a precarious situation, seeking escape from that life.

“There's nothing left, nobody left to trust but myself,“ she finally responded to Wolfred.

He nodded.

Behind her, a female voice, old. “That's right.“