DEEPER DARKER Week 1 Ch. 4-7 (Patreon)

4. Shopping

Fourth Quadrant

Epsilon-416

Collection Zone E4-J

Ubik stuck his head out of a shaft he had discovered when he was twelve years old. It was a little snug now, but he had a scrawny body with hardly any fat, and muscles that weren’t the kind that bulged when he flexed, more wiry and taut, so he was still able to squirm through the myriad tunnels under the rubbish plains.

There was a layer of dust cloud in every direction, as there always was after a drop. It would settle down again in a few minutes. Overhead, the Merlin Vance’s engines screamed an ear-splitting farewell as it rose into the atmosphere. Ubik could just make out the glowing green and orange logo of the Rigogo Company, waste disposal professionals. He couldn’t quite see their slogan, which he knew was there, but it was famous enough for him to know by heart.

Another load off your mind.

Goggles affixed, Ubik heaved himself out of the shaft and scuttled across the surface, weaving between the mounds of scrap that had yet to be flattened by repeated impacts. As he ran, he threw out small discs that attached themselves to the nearest metallic surface.

Ubik had a thin gauze covering the bottom half of his face to prevent inhaling the dust but he could still feel the metallic particles in his throat. He had been using an industrial filtration mask until recently but it had broken.

That was the problem with living in an age where novelty was valued over durability. There was no point using the best quality components when you knew the usage expectancy of a device was far less than its life expectancy — it would get thrown out long before it fell apart. The customer satisfaction of secondary users like Ubik was not a factor worth considering.

Ubik wasn’t the only one who kept an eye on the arrival of shipments to the facility. He could already hear the buzz of drones hovering over the dust cloud, waiting for it to clear so they could target any unauthorised visitors in this restricted area.

Even if the authorities had no use for the broken and unwanted items that were dumped here, they had no intention of allowing anyone else to make a profit from what was now their property.

Occasionally, a sanctioned collection unit would come in search of particular materials that had been located and tagged by specialised drones, but by and large it was not worth the effort. It was always cheaper to buy new, unless you couldn’t even afford cheap and had to rely on what you could get for free. Free, assuming the drones didn’t make you pay in other ways.

Why they insisted on making life difficult for someone like Ubik, he had no idea. Did it really make a difference if he helped himself to the flotsam and jetsam others had discarded?

Whatever their reasons, they were committed to defending their property. But not as committed as he was to taking it.

Ships arrived on a regular schedule, every hour or so for the rest of the day. At night, they would move onto the waste facilities on the other side of the planet. Not to avoid disturbing the locals’ sleep — nobody cared about that — but because visual telemetry was a lot cheaper than trying to make accurate drops in the dark.

In the past, ships had been decked out with the most advanced electronics available. But electronics required maintenance and repair. Modern pilots for spaceships were augmented tech-fliers who relied on organics to navigate. The number of pilots who had multi-visual capability was limited, and they didn’t fly junk ships.

Small dark spots moved in the corner of Ubik’s vision. The drones were on the move.

Ubik knew every inch of this district of E4-J, knew where the best hiding places were, where the radiation was high enough to interfere with sensors, where the ground had turned to mush and wouldn’t support his weight.

He also knew that the morning ship from Darragut-492 was his best opportunity to claim high-quality electronic goods. Eden was the most technologically advanced planet in the sector, and also the most profligate.

Ubik had never been to Darragut — he’d never been off-world — but he had seen VODs. If Epsilon-416 was the dustbin of this quadrant, Darragut-492 was the precious oil painting, hanging in pride of place. It also had the highest number of registered organics.

What they threw away on Darragut-492, anyone else would have gladly paid good money for. The newest, the most expensive, and out-of-date by exactly one iteration. Every time a new model of anything came out, you could safely assume thousands of the previous model would appear on E4 within a few days.

The detector vibrated in Ubik’s hand. The black polycarbon tube was as long as his arm, even with most of the backend sheared off. It was meant to be mounted on the nose of a military frigate, able to withstand enemy fire and light-to-medium impact hits. Ubik had learned to tell the difference between military hardware and commercial. If it had come from a mining ship there would have been a lot more wear and tear. This one was in near pristine condition. Military ships were built for show, mining ships were there to work.

Ubik had set the device to detect a specific metal found in the latest generation of communicators. Latest bar one, that was. Ubik had no need of a new phone — he had no one to call — but the nanochip the phone contained was just what he needed to complete the repair of another item. Repair was perhaps the wrong word. Upgrade might be a more accurate term.

Ubik moved quickly, jumping over areas he knew to be unstable, landing lightly and constantly moving.

The dust was starting to clear and Ubik recognised he was in the right area by not being able to recognise his surroundings. The landscape shifted every time there was a fresh delivery.

The detector buzzed loudly, letting him know he was close to his target. He turned it off so as not to give his location away.

Up ahead, communication implants glittered in the light of the morning sun. They had conveniently landed in a pile, probably gathered from a single housing unit which were hundreds of metres high on Eden, and contained residents in the tens of thousands. Hundreds of implants, small discs with two wires on opposite sides, like a small pyramid of gems.

Electronic implants weren’t as good as organic ones, but then people didn’t throw away organics.

Ubik scooped up as many as he could fit into the bag clipped to his belt. There were other items lying close by, but Ubik ignored them. Now wasn’t the time to browse.

He heard the drones overhead. The distinct sound of their targeting mechanism was hard to mistake, especially after being targeted as many times as he had.

Ubik pulled out a short rod from a pouch strapped to his leg. He planted it in a hole in what looked like a mangled kitchen sink and flicked the top off the stick of red metal with his thumb.

The surrounding area became heavily ionised. Scraps of metal began vibrating and shaking all around him. Ubik waited. Any movement would alert the drones of his presence. The latest models didn’t have human controllers, relying on their own onboard scanners to identify targets. Newer models would be here by next week, maybe even able to detect his base under the rubbish. He planned not to be here by then.

The drones would wait, of course. They had infinite patience, as long as there were no other possible targets. Ubik waited for the ionisation to spread, slowly gently, working its way around the piles of trash until it reached one of the disks he had thrown out earlier.

A metallic scream to the left was followed by a small explosion. Then another, and another, forming a chain reaction. The drones shot off to investigate. Ubik grabbed the rod and ran in the opposite direction, throwing out more disks.

5. Escape Routes

Epsilon-416

Collection Zone E4-J

Ubik didn’t expect to get away unnoticed. There was no way to avoid all the drones, and they weren’t dumb enough to all go investigate a loud noise. Things collapsed or exploded all the time. Acid ate its way through metal, fibreglass and polycarbon, creating collisions and igniting fires. The drones dealt with them without making a fuss.

Ubik preferred to deal with as few drones as possible and splitting them up was his strategy for making sure he wasn’t targeted from multiple directions.

He ran without looking back, knowing he was being followed. There was a buzzing sound up and to the left. Possibly two of them.

His home wasn’t just a mound of trash, it consisted of valleys and pits, also. Occasionally, a shift in weight would bring a large hole into existence where none had existed before. It wasn’t too hard to recognise where the weaknesses were — you could feel the ground give as you ran over it. Speed was Ubik’s friend, and often his saviour. Strength was a fine attribute to have in life, but speed kept you alive and in the race.

There was a whirring as the tasers prepared to discharge. He had nothing to protect himself from being hit. There were ways to counter the hi-focus beam aimed at his back, but they were generally too heavy to be practical. Perhaps if he was bigger and stronger, but then he wouldn’t be running, he would be standing and fighting, which would only lead to him attracting more drones. A poor strategy.

A crack in the ground was open in front of him. A crevasse formed between two heavily compressed areas of domestic appliances, split open like a knife had been slashed through a carcass.

Ubik leapt off one foot, soaring through the air and then he plummeted straight down.

A loud crack behind him indicated the electric discharge had hit the ground instead of him. The targeting system on these drones wasn’t exactly sophisticated. It would lock onto its target — in this case, him — and fire in a straight line. If an object came in between them, it would take the hit, assuming the timing was right.

Heat-seeking projectiles would be available in the next model, arriving next week. He had seen the manifest when he intercepted the weekly security update — the security of which needed updating most of all.

The new drones would fire darts that would follow you up and down and all around. The new model cost less than these ones, if you bought in bulk. Progress.

Ubik hit the ground at the bottom of the artificial chasm with a splash. Acid pools were the other problem he faced as batteries leaked and units broke apart. Highly corrosive liquids were a common component of many modern appliances. They weren’t the most efficient or safest methods of powering units, but they were cheap for equipment you didn’t expect to use long anyway.

Ubik’s shoes were the one item he spent money on. He needed good quality footwear that was both light and durable. He couldn’t afford not to buy the best. Delgado Footwear, a reliable name in an unreliable galactic market. Built to last, for collectors of vintage concepts and ideas.

Acid splashed up, stinging his cheeks. His hands were gloved and his eyes were protected by the goggles, but there were chinks in any armour. His clothes were covered in tiny holes where acid had burnt through, but the damage was minimal if you kept running.

He darted through the little canyon in the rubbish. The drones had spotted where he went but were flying over the surface, reluctant to get trapped inside a heavily metallic area and lose signal. Once they lost contact with their central processor, they would drop dead. Online or no-line was their credo.

The fissure he was running through was twice as tall as him. Climbing out was possible, but it would take time, leaving him an easy target. Fortunately, he was familiar with this particular opening. He made it his business to regularly explore E4-J when no drops were due and the drones were recharging. Know yourself, know your enemy, and definitely know your own backyard.

Ubik’s base of operation wasn’t known to the authorities — who would choose to live inside garbage? — and he managed to stay off their radar by not appearing too often. And also because he had a small jammer to prevent detection by the central processor’s long-distance surveillance system.

He was being a bit reckless today, but time was running out. He had to take a few chances if he wanted to catch his ride off this world.

At the end of this small canyon was a hole. It was barely big enough to allow passage if you got on your stomach and crawled. The acid on the ground made that inadvisable.

Ubik was prepared. He pulled out a cloth from his back pocket and threw it on the ground in front of him.

As soon as it unfolded to its full size — about as big as a small towel — it stiffened and became a tray.

Ubik threw himself on top of it, landing on his stomach. He shot through the hole, riding on the acid surf.

Momentum could only take him so far. The tunnel was just big enough for him to get his hands on the roof above and then bending at the elbows, allowing him to punt himself forward when he slowed, the light from his goggles illuminating just enough of what was ahead to keep him from smashing his face into jutting metal pipes.

The drones could have followed him if they wanted to, easily small enough to fit through the opening. They would have lost signal, though. They let him go.

Ubik had already tested this tunnel as a prospective escape route, so he knew where it exited. He shot out of the other end and sailed through the air. The ground was only a few metres below him, he just needed to make sure he didn’t drop into a pool of acid.

He landed on his knees, which were protected by knee pads, and snapped his sled back into a cloth. He put it in his pocket and checked for signs of drones. The sky was empty, for now.

A simple and uneventful expedition. Compared to most days, today had been a little more frantic, but well within his means to deal with. He had managed to lose his pursuers and was free to sneak back to his base. He might even have time to pick up a few more items.

This area was all hills and valleys. You had to watch out for the occasional garbage avalanche, but it was much easier to avoid detection here. Ubik quickly sought out cover and headed towards the nearest tunnel back to his bunker, perusing his surroundings with a practised eye. Ubik had a lot to do now that he had the components he needed, and not much time to do it in.

He stayed low and moved quietly. The entrance he was heading for was close by. Once he was in the tunnels, he would be safe.

Ubik moved a sheet of metal that had probably belonged to a land vehicle of some kind. It looked like a door with a window. Underneath was a hole leading straight down.

Normally, it would have looked dark and uninviting, but today it was even more so. As Ubik peered into the gloom, he could see jagged metal crisscrossing the shaft, preventing passage.

The occasional collapse was to be expected. Nothing stayed the same very long in E4-Jericho, or anywhere on Epsilon-416. Permanence was not a Silon virtue.

Inconvenient, but nothing to worry about — it just meant he would have to try the next tunnel. Or the one after that.

He turned around to get his bearings. A dark, foreboding figure stood on the hill opposite, flanked by shorter but no less threatening associates.

“I saw you picked up some nice trinkets back there,” said the tallest figure. He took out a metal pole and rested the end on his shoulder, letting it bounce up and down. “I hope you were planning to share.”

The others pulled out weapons of their own, batons and tasers, a few knives. They came running down the hill towards Ubik.

6. Getting Away

Epsilon-416

Collection Zone E4-J

Professional scavs. Why today of all days? Ubik had no desire to fight them and no chance of winning if he did. Their equipment looked top notch. Goggles with full spectrum vision. Adjustable face masks with built-in oxygen packs. Augmented braces on their arms and legs to allow them to move quicker and stronger. They were decked out more like a military unit.

All brand new, the latest design. Ubik could tell from a glance that nothing was very likely to break from age or overuse. His only hope was that the software was so new it might crash. New gear always suffered from unoptimised software until the second or third update patch.

Ubik ran. He had the home ground advantage, but they had every other advantage. All of them.

What did they want? There was plenty to share. It wasn’t like Ubik was the type to keep everything for himself. They were welcome to help themselves. But their focus was decidedly on him.

He had the communicators, and he hadn’t even taken all of them. He’d picked up a couple of fuel cells, but they were common as muck. No way that was what they were after.

Did they just plan to teach him a lesson? Release a little tension by beating the snot out of a competitor? His childhood on the streets of Epsilon City had taught him that big men liked to prove their power by stamping on the faces of anyone who was smaller than them. They usually received applause for the display of prowess, and if they were on the police force, a regular wage.

Ubik could have gone that way, used his skills to power his revenge. Big men looked a lot smaller when faced with the true power of technology. Organics could turn anyone into a beast. Electronics could too, if they were used right.

These yahoos were kitted out in the finest electronics currently available (obsolete in three to six months). It would be their undoing.

He could hear them whoop and holler as they gave chase. This was fun to them, their morning’s entertainment. No sign of any drones, which meant this was a sanctioned group, here on official business. To pick up something that shouldn’t have been thrown out, perhaps, or something that was smuggled out via a junk ship, to be collected when no one was looking. Could the devices in his bag be what they were looking for? He could dump them and hope it gave him the chance to escape, but he didn’t have time to mess around.

They might be pros, but he was a goddam genius.

Ubik made it to the top of a small mountain of crumpled robot legs. He had no idea what they had come from, robots that now had brand new legs, presumably. The gradient slowed his escape so his hunters were able to catch up. They would have caught him anyway, he was merely making it quicker for them. They wouldn’t stop to think why he would do that, they would assume he was an idiot and that they were the geniuses. Wrong.

Ubik turned and threw a handful of shiny discs down at his pursuers. They were busy fighting with each other in an attempt to get to him first. They probably had a bet going to see who could make the kill, just to make things interesting for themselves. When the discs struck them, they paused, mildly alarmed.

“Identify,” shouted one.

“Nothing,” said another. “Shows as brass. He’s throwing buttons at us.”

The kind of gear they were employing was very accurate and able to identify the composition of an object in less than a standard second. What it was less good at was being able to understand how a seemingly inert substance might react when combined with another seemingly inert object.

Mixing two properties to find a third was a lost art these days.

Sodium was explosive when exposed to water. Chlorine was highly toxic. Put them together and you got table salt. It worked the other way around, too.

Ubik stuck the red rod in the top of the mound and flipped the lid. The buttons he’d thrown all popped. The electronics around them went dead.

Brass had an unusual property that not many people knew about. It was an old metal amalgam that no one used these days, except maybe for buttons on fancy military outfits. When vibrated at the correct frequency, it powered down fuel cells. Not all types, just the modern ones that were currently the most popular. The brass absorbed the energy, and then it exploded.

The explosion wasn’t dangerous, just a toy pop gun loud. The loss of power could be fatal.

“No power,” shouted one of the scavs.

“Dead tronics,” called out another.

Two were on the ground, unable to move. Their implants had been fitted directly into their muscles, leaving them crippled, at least until they found a way to recharge.

But one scav remained standing. He didn’t look affected at all. In fact, he looked stronger now than he had a second ago. His body looked bigger and his hair was standing on end from some kind of static discharge.

An organic. Why would anyone send an organic to a junkyard? Didn’t they have something better to do with their time?

Ubik decided it would be impolite to ask and ran down the other side of Mount Rubbish.

He heard the footsteps crunching metal into scrap behind him. It was obviously a strength-type organic, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have additional augmentations. Flying, telepathy, firing eye-lasers… if you’re going to send an organic to pick up junk, why not send a military grade assassin?

It made no sense, but that was because Ubik wasn’t familiar with the ways of modern society. He was more of a stay at home type.

Downhill was quicker if you allowed gravity to do the work for you. Ubik had the cloth out and dived onto it. He skidded towards the rusted remains of a boat, half-sticking out like it was in the middle of capsizing.

Ubik jumped, leaving his cloth to carry on without him. It was a useful tool that he’d had for a while, but needless emotional attachments would only get you killed. Repair and recycle, yes. Cling beyond reason, no.

He landed in the middle of the boat’s rotting skeleton and ran, barely keeping his balance. There was a deep shaft here, one he hadn’t explored completely yet. Now seemed as good a time as any. He jumped into the hole without checking for obstructions.

The shaft was a vertical drop but wide enough for Ubik to touch the sides with hands and feet. It enabled him to slow his fall. He looked down to see if he was about to impale himself. Then he looked up and saw red goggle-lenses bearing down on him. The goggles weren’t working anymore, so the red glow had to be coming from his eyes.

The scav had jumped in head-first and was dropping free-fall. Gravity had taken sides, and it wasn’t on Ubik’s.

Ubik pulled in his arms and legs and plummeted.

“I don’t know what you want,” Ubik shouted up. “I don’t have anything. Here, have this explosive device.” He threw a ball towards the red-eyed pursuer.

Ubik didn’t have any explosive devices, but the scav didn’t know that. He twisted and slammed against the shaft walls in panic.

The ball didn’t shoot past him, of course, it fell at the same rate he did. It had green numbers counting down on it. Ubik had found people considered numbers counting down to be very upsetting, especially if you shouted, “Bomb!” first.

While the scav slammed and smashed to a stop, clinging to the walls, letting the ball fall away, Ubik looked down and waited to see where he was going to end up.

7. Fixer Upper

Epsilon-416

Collection Zone E4-J

There was a pool of something wet down below, but it wasn’t acid. Ubik knew all the different acrid smells that accompanied each of the caustic liquids that appeared in the junkyard, and this didn’t smell like any of them. It didn’t smell like anything, because it was water.

He landed in a loud splash that soaked him to his waist before he hit the ground. It helped slow him down and saved his ankles from a nasty shock. He looked up and caught the ball falling towards him. The timer flashed 00:00.

High above, the scav was perched on a beam. He was probably bracing for impact. Obviously not rocking an organic brain implant.

There was a shaft to Ubik’s left, just within reach. He scrambled up the wall and pulled himself through. It wasn’t tall enough to stand, but he could crouch and move at a reasonably fast pace. The light from his goggles showed a long, straight tunnel he didn’t recognise. It seemed to be part of another structure, perhaps the interior of a building that had lived beyond its usefulness, a chimney, a water pipe, a connecting tunnel for prefab biodomes, who could say?

He ran for twenty seconds and then the tunnel pinched in the middle where the walls on either side had been pushed together by whatever external forces had been shoved at them. Ubik couldn’t get through without losing a serious amount of weight but he had other ways to make himself fit into small gaps.

There was a splash behind him. His uninvited guest had decided to join the party. Ubik pulled out a hydraulic jack from his backpack. It was very light, about the size of his forearm, and looked like something you might find in a child’s toy toolbox. It was actually a heavy duty piece of emergency equipment for getting people out of crashed vehicles. He stuck it in the gap and hit the button.

It snapped open from a straight line into a diamond shape, widening the gap and making the tunnel shake. Bits fell off around Ubik. but there was no time to assess the stability of his escape route. There was only time to escape, if that.

He managed to squeeze through and reclaim his jack. There was no way to return the gaping hole to its original size, but the scav was a lot bigger than him and might not be able to get through. He probably had a way to make the hole even bigger, using his bare hands most likely, but there was always the chance that might bring the whole place down around his ears.

Ubik ran on into the darkness with only the light just ahead of him for guidance. He could quite easily end up trapped with nowhere to go but back. There were endless tunnels down here under the garbage, but they didn’t necessarily go anywhere. Ubik had carefully mapped out the useful routes that allowed him to get around the junkyard unseen, and had done his best to have an awareness of where there were other tunnels in case of emergencies (like this one) but there was no way to know them all. He was relying on a little luck this time, which was not a position he enjoyed being in.

The tunnel widened and then he was able to stand upright. Perfect timing as the way forward was blocked by a sheer wall of junk, but there was a crack of daylight above. How big of a crack, he couldn’t say.

There was no sign of his pursuer, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still back there. It was highly unlikely the presence of a scav team had anything to do with him, but now that he had given them a bloody nose, they would most likely not give up until they had found him and beaten him to a pulp. He had acted foolishly and rashly and had no one to blame but himself, but that was fairly normal. It would have been okay to make them a little mad, but he had made them really mad. Really mad could get you killed.

Ubik began climbing, quickly scrambling up the many handholds. The one thing that was guaranteed when climbing junk was that there would be many handholds. You might not like what it was your hand was holding, but that was okay. You didn’t need to hold it for very long.

As he approached the top, the light grew brighter. The crack was big enough for him to climb through, he just hoped there was no one waiting to help him out. It would be very upsetting to have gone through all this effort only to be met by the people he was trying to get away from. That kind of smugness wasn’t fun to be around.

He popped his head out and was relieved to see no one, not even any drones. His fingers were hanging on the lip of the opening. He let go of one hand and stretched out his arm, looking for something to grab. Vertical surfaces always had handholds, horizontal ones tended to be beaten flat.

He hooked his fingertips onto something and pulled himself forward. He had a strong grip and powerful wrists — twisting rusted lugnuts off a particle accelerator was excellent strength training. He got his other hand up and swung up one foot.

With a mighty, “Hnnng!” he threw himself up and over, rolling onto his back. He lay there for a second, breathing hard. Then he opened his eyes as he felt the ground under him tremble. He scrambled to his feet and ran as the ground collapsed and dropped away.

Ubik threw himself forward and grabbed a swinging washing machine door hanging open. It was an industrial one, used to clean hundreds of clothes at a time, so it held his weight. Beneath his dangling feet was a hole falling away into darkness. If the scav was still alive down there, he’d be really, really mad.

Ubik made it back home through a hatch in the roof. He didn’t like to use that entrance because it was too noticeable, but speed was more important than discretion right now.

He fell into the room, his Delgados landing solidly on the top of his trusty bed-table.

The ten by ten by ten cube that had been his base of operations and his bedroom for the last ten years was just as he’d left it. He wondered what would happen to it once he was gone. Good thing he wasn’t the sentimental type of he might have shed a tear over it.

There were machines and electronic devices of all kinds here. None of it was new, and he’d often had problems powering it all, but he could still access the net, intercept broadcast signals, build his own circuit boards and punch rivets in sheet metal. And that was just in one corner.

Ubik had no interest in what was going on in the rest of the quadrant. War and politics and important treaties, none of it affected him. Whoever was in charge at the moment was doing a terrible job, no doubt, but no worse than whoever did the job before and whoever would do if after. Access to the wealth of information available on the net had allowed him to teach himself to be a damn good tronic tech. There were videos on every aspect of engineering, even those the large companies didn’t want you to know. Ubik had gleaned several lifetimes worth of knowledge from the net, now he had to put it to some use. But not here.

He emptied his bag on the table and sorted through the dozens of implants he had found that morning. He quickly separated the ones that looked like they were still intact and then tested them with a signal detector. Only one of them was still capable of holding a signal.

He stripped it down to its core components and removed the tiny circuit board which was barely visible. He took out a small box from his iron chest and opened it. Inside the box was a signal booster attached to a transponder he had built from scratch. The chip inside it was from a missile, used by mining companies to split open space rocks, or something.

The circuit board slotted into the transponder with no problem. New products changed on the outside — new screen, different shaped buttons, access ports on the left instead of the right — but inside, things were built the same, so as to make it as easy as possible for the manufacturer. If you’re still using the same processor as you were last year and the year before, might as use the same connecting system. Not that they would admit it. Ubik was fine if they voided his warranty.

It would be best to test the device was working, but he didn’t know how much juice it had. He didn’t want it to cut out halfway through, and he trusted his skills.

He grabbed the stuff he knew he would always need. Basic tools, some useful devices that were illegal to own, and Grandma’s soul box. Everything else was either too heavy or he could build again from scratch.

Then he took one final look around, opened a hatch in the floor and jumped in.