Ice in the Veins

In a cyberpunk city, a man waiting on a rainy street corner encounters an unusual addict.

It was storming on Casanova and 6th Street. The clouds loafed above the intersection, the red traffic signals blinking and throwing out cones of soggy, bleary light. Between the lines of cars and cops blowing their whistles a herd of people weaved through on bikes and with umbrellas or newspapers over their fragile heads. Stir fryers sizzled in small food carts as their owners hollered for business. Massive jumbotrons stapled to the faceless towering concrete buildings flickered between Oriental and Western advertisements. A biker rang his bell. The police whistled. Rain fell down over all of creation.

Park Yeon-seok slowed to a stop under an awning at the street corner opposite the ground floor of a cold ugly building where five short concrete steps led up to an ornate glass door. At the moment, the door was utterly dark. Park checked his watch: he was early. He leaned against the nearby pillar to wait.

A bundle at his feet shrank away. “Sorry,” said a thin voice. “Sorry.”

A ghostly blue light went past his feet. Park looked at the sky and then around at the crowd. There were no police copters overhead, nor any police around shining flashlights around to clear out peddlers. It hadn’t been in his imagination, either. The light flit past his feet again, two perfectly round circles that appeared to come from the bundle at the foot of the pillar.

Park crouched down in its face. It receded at first. Then an arm that was part flesh part circuitry tilted back the dark rag hanging around its head. A nervous face glistened in the rain. Its nose was long and ribbed like a zipper, and the mouth was a bare pucker squeezed tight by swollen cheeks. Inset in the middle of the face were twin blue eyes—alive, bright, and electronic.

“What are you doing here?” Park said. “Get back to your job.”

“I don’t have a job,” said the android.

Park laughed. “I’ve never heard of a homeless bot before.”

“I’m not homeless. I have a place at the shelter.”

“Then go back to it. Quit crowding the streets.”

Its eyes became downcast. “I don’t think I can go back.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not supposed to be out here anymore. It was a condition of my boarding at the shelter. I’m not supposed to be out here, but I am anyways.”

Park glanced at the building he’d been watching. The light was still out. “Alright,” he said, “then why are you out here?”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“Who?”

The android paused as if it meant to blush, but couldn’t find the right program to execute, nor quite remember the way a blush was supposed to feel on the flesh it had. Its face looked lost and confused. “Just a friend,” it said.

Park seized the android’s arm and yanked it forward. The android did not resist. The arm was a Frankenstein mesh of exposed circuits and fused flesh, wires and veins carefully crocheted together but in a typical, familiar way. The android wouldn’t be wanted in any reward flyer posted by a woman living on the hundredth floor. It was a run-of-the-mill, off-the-shelf bot you could buy at any store if you had the dough for it. The flesh of the underarm was dotted with purple bruises centrated on thin points that looked like pencil lead. There were at least a dozen of them. Park ran a thumb over them slowly.

The android reluctantly pulled away from Park and tucked its arm against its body. Park stared in after it. The android kept its eyes fixed to the ground.

“I’ve never met a bot that was a hop addict,” he said. “How bad is it? You in deep?”

The android shook its head. “I do not owe anything.”

“Then how do you pay for your hits?”

The android seemed reluctant again. Then it pulled aside the other half of its rags. It was missing its other arm and sections of circuitry from its side, shoulder, and ribs.

“Jesus,” Park said. Disgust and indignation rose in his throat as he got to his feet. “You’re sick, bot. Clean yourself up.”

“This is my last one,” it said, rising with sudden vitality. “My last one ever. But I can’t quite afford it. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping someone would… Can you spare me some money?”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Just a little,” the android pleaded. It took Park by the arm. “I’ve always paid back my debts. I just need a little money for today.”

“Get off me,” Park said.

“Please!” it cried, drawing attention from the apathetic crowd. “I don’t want to sell myself anymore. I don’t have anything else. But I need this. It’s my last hit. Please. Look at me. It’s my last one, I swear.”

Park knocked the android back and it shrank down into its rags and shivered in a miserable pile. Park’s stomach wrung itself tight. Across the street, the light inside the building was finally on. Park crossed quickly in the rain and didn’t look back. His hands were shaking.

He mounted the steps and entered into a beautiful receiving room decorated in gold and light brown wood. The bartender was already shaking up his favorite drink. Park slid into his usual seat and grabbed at the glass with eager hands.

But as he went to drink, he paused with the glass at his lips. An unusually obsessive glint was in his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Park lowered his glass just slightly, then looked over his shoulder at the large window staring into the street. The rain tapped at the glass, the murky crowd beyond swaying like seaweed in a black river, impenetrable and dark and hiding a set of pale blue eyes that had stared at him from the bottom of an immovable pillar. Park sighed quietly.

“Bots too, huh?” he said, almost at a whisper. Then he downed the contents of his glass.

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