Table Of ContentLiving in Syn
(Pantomime City)
By Bobby Draughon
Text copyright © 2012 Robert S Draughon
All Rights Reserved
Cover Art by
Stephanie Anderson of
Neon Armour
To Robert and Theresa, who enjoyed these stories as teens, and then, as
adults, encouraged me to share them.
Table of Contents
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1
Mission imagined himself as part of an abstract painting. The shapes and
structures bore some elemental resemblance to office buildings, shops, and
apartments. The vines and vegetation running rampant imposed an
overwhelmingly green color scheme, to be interrupted on occasion by graffiti or
handmade signs. Genuine Spring Water. Paulson Territory. LP Gas. Leshondra
sux …well, there are some things that will never change. And the people.
Caricatures. Bent and broken. Angular and grim. Faces doggedly staring at the
ground, avoiding eye contact at any cost. The automobiles dotted the landscape
like statuary satire. Designed to be transportation, they were now stationary,
hollowed memories as immutable and anonymous as those that used them, as
market stalls to sell their wares, as shelter from the elements, as security outposts
for whatever gang controlled the block that week.
And amid this monument to detritus, on far stage right, Mission reclined
on what had once been concrete stairs. By and large, he was unseen, which was
his intention. Anyone surveying the street would move their eyes over him
without stopping. He ebbed and flowed between consciousness and some
inebriated vision of voluntary surrender. Nothing of value there. Not the clothes,
not the shoes, not the person. But neither was he aged nor infirmed, not an easy
target. The only risk he took was his smoking and he had taken care to bend and
dampen the few cigarettes in the pack, as new smokes were worth taking,
forcibly. He drew the smoke in deeply, and as he exhaled, he wondered what
was more important, the tangible physical little rush with each drag, the self-
destructive drama in play with the ritual, or the fact that cigarettes had long since
been declared illegal. He permitted a small, inward smile as he flicked the butt
away. Philosophical musings such as those were strictly to pass the time, nothing
more.
In terms of a vantage point, he had chosen well. Fire gutted the building
behind him two nights ago, and this was too soon, even for the most
enterprising, to establish business operations. Too much lingering smoke. Too
many hot spots inside with still burning embers. In one or two more days, a few
of the winos and/or addicts would take up residence, only to be summarily
evicted once the gangs saw that the building was theirs for the taking.
A group of Hare Krishnas passed, chanting and singing, collecting and
proselytizing. The shaved heads and the robes were the same. The Bhagavad-
gītā handouts from copies of copies of copies. The weather was a fine, fine mist
and the ink ran, turning the propaganda into full page storm clouds. Or
Rorschach tests. Or unreadable shit.
It was getting close to 6:00 in the evening and that is when the streets
came alive. The hookers started selling aggressively. The junkies were coming
down from their afternoon highs, and now they wondered where their next fix
would come from. The gangs started to appear, posturing for the benefit of their
rivals. A sot teetered precariously and he, as drunks will do, considered with
great deliberation, the pros and cons of approaching Mission. The smell of urine
on the drunk's clothes even overpowered his Mad Dog breath. At the last
second, some preservation instinct told the old man no. As he turned away from
Mission, the drunk tripped over one of the pieces of concrete and fell backwards
onto his head. He exhausted all his mental and physical resources trying to
stand, and he finally staggered off toward another potential contributor. Mission
thought, "Two months max.”
He had to stay alert now. The streets were full and he would only get one
chance to pick up his mark. A man and a woman, both armed with pistols,
parked a pushcart less than 50 feet down the street and started selling shots,
tequila, salt, and lime wedges. A small crowd gathered and someone cranked
music up to the pain threshold. More people gravitated toward the music. Two
wagons, from separate directions, sensed this was the place to be, and set up
outdoor kitchens with open fires. It smelled incredible, the meat roasting on
skewers with peppers and onions. Mission remembered that he hadn’t eaten in
more than 24 hours.
Every nerve in Mission's body jangled. His mark came into view. He was
six feet tall and 180 pounds, with perfect dark hair. His clothes granted him a
sort of anonymity, it was the getup worn by thousands here in the Free Zone, the
construction worker uniform. He wore khaki chinos, work boots, and a white T-
shirt. He carried a small thermos, and a similarly sized LP gas bottle. Once his
mark passed, Mission stood up, yawned and stretched luxuriously, and finally
shuffled into the street.
Mission blended expertly into the masses, nodding at the vendors, his head
bobbing to the music, just another guy in the crowd. He reviewed what he knew
about this syn, over and over. Model DM764. Factory name Tom Brown. The
nomenclature was simple enough. The D stood for domestic skills such as
cooking, cleaning, and baby-sitting. The M indicated male. The numbers were
0 - 9 ratings. The first digit rated intelligence, the second physical agility, and
the third detailed any special skills. Of course upgrades were available, but his
owners hadn't installed any.
At his one year diagnostics, Brown’s statistics showed that he watched
children an average of an hour and a half a day. He cooked an average of two
meals a day, did laundry three times a week, and painted the home once. Oh,
and he made love to the mother of the household over 500 times. That's right,
500 times. Paradox Synthetics Inc. had discovered that if you made sexual
programming optional, no one bought it, and sales were lukewarm. And even
when it was standard, buyers made it clear they weren't interested. Then when
the synthetic came in for the one year checkup, you found out that the owners
were trying to wear it out. But…nothing unusual in the diagnostics. This was a
profile typical of millions of syns across the world.
So, two months ago, Tom disappears. The family reports it, they get a new
syn, and Mission, among thousands of others, gets a news bullet from Paradox
with a bio and a bounty offer of $40,000. Mission views the perimeters of the
Free Zone as a game trail. For the most part, a renegade synthetic has to live in a
FZ. Any place else wants driver's licenses, credit references, and ID numbers
not available to a syn. But the lifestyle in the Zone is not one that the syn can
adapt to in terms of earning a living. It requires those intangible skills, the street
smarts to make deals, to negotiate, to know when to walk away, and when to just
hang on through the day.
So most syns live in the Zones, but work outside it in skilled labor
positions. Mission would memorize the pictures, and then hang out, and watch
for people crossing the borders, especially at changing times for work shifts.
That's how he uncovered Tom Brown a week ago. He watched him go to his
room, an efficiency in a dilapidated eight story building that was protected by
the Johnsons. He had done his homework and now he looked for an opportunity
to drop him.
Mission had tracked renegade syns for the last fourteen years and it
