Cheat Read online

  Cheat

  P.S. Power

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Copyright 2015

  Chapter one

  As Mason pumped the pedals of his auto-bike, he tried to be a good citizen, and keep an eye out for pedestrians. He’d never hit one, since the fact of the matter was that his ability to power himself down the street in the little fake car he’d made wasn’t all that great. He could hit nearly thirty miles an hour in it, most days. If there was a downhill slope and a good breeze behind him. The speed limit through the downtown area was only twenty-five, so he managed to keep up with the electric vehicles pretty well.

  No one honked at him to speed up, or called him names through their windows at the moment. Some people did occasionally, because his bike was a bit funny looking, and people could be assholes when others were a little different.

  He’d printed it at home, and done the design work for it on his own. That meant there was nothing else like it on the road. Instead of a chain, he had a flat belt with micro-hooks in it, for instance. It was complicated to make, but worked about as well. He also didn’t have to pay anyone else a copyright use fee. Rather than use traditional gears, the auto-bike had a cone shaped drive shaft, which he could slide from the narrow end for more power, to the thicker end when he wanted more speed.

  In short, it was no better than a regular bicycle. The only positive thing about it was that it had a roof that he could slide into place when he wanted. That was nice, because rain was a thing. Plus, the seat was easier on his backside, being broad and flat. Regular bike seats seemed nearly designed to kill the prostate, and give you ball cancer. His was like a form fitted chair, cozy and roomy in the right places. He was too boney back there to not have something like that.

  The whole thing was a nice pearl blue color, and mildly shiny in the bright sun of the late summer afternoon. The streets of Portland were dry that day, and very clean, the regular rainfall having washed away the dust storm residue that had dropped on them a week before. That was out of the Gobi, and had left things covered in a fine yellow patina for a while. Now it was better again. Nature doing the hard cleaning work for them.

  That meant, with a lovely blue sky above, that Mason was tooling to his date with the top down.

  He smiled at the idea. Not that he had a super advanced convertible, but that he was going on a date. That was a bit of a joke, he knew. Sam, the friend he was meeting, was a gender neutral, and so far had managed to keep his, or her, sexual orientation from being discussed rather handily. Actually, now that he’d thought about it, Mason realized that he’d never even brought the idea up, either. It wasn’t that he was shy about it, or didn’t like Sam, but it was a lot of work to have any relationship.

  Bringing sex into it, into anything, was normally a poor idea.

  That’s why he had a full virtual rig at home. At any time, day or night, if he felt the urge, he could have sex with anyone, or anything, he could imagine. It took about thirty minutes, and he didn’t have to put in even a tiny fraction of the maintenance that a woman would have required of him. A man either. As far as he could tell, males were no better that way. Not that he was into guys, personally. He’d given it a try a few times, in VR, but it hadn’t really done much for him. The anal had kind of hurt, and while he could see why some might like it, it just wasn’t for him.

  Sam was cool enough as a friend anyway, and not needing te for sex, that part being taken care of, it didn’t really matter what gender te were. It was work to think te instead of he or she, but that was the rule. Polite people went with te if they didn’t know what a person wanted to be called.

  He kept his mind on his driving, working his legs hard to keep up with the traffic. Luckily he didn’t weigh too much anymore. For a while, in his late teens and early twenties he’d been kind of chunky. It hadn’t been enough to need medical disability, but he’d gotten his share of teasing over it. Mainly from his brother, Ford.

  Now he got daily exercise, and took Slimtrix. It helped him feel very full from normal amounts of food. It was a crutch, because he had a weak mind, but it was better to use it than to be chubby and unhealthy, as well as unable to resist food. On the great side, it let him eat anything he wanted.

  Mason would just feel like he was going to pop about halfway through a plate of food. It worked, so he did it.

  The street the restaurant was on wasn’t in the best part of town. Sam had said te liked it though, and had introduced it to him a few weeks before. That it was a dicey neighborhood showed in a few ways. The building needed to be repaired in places for instance, and while the surveillance cameras were on every street corner, there were patches between them where people had graffitied the walls. That meant the coverage wasn’t perfect, or Watch, the government surveillance system, would have caught them doing it.

  Taking a moment to glance over he saw that the art was of two clear types. The first was what everyone probably expected. Bright letters, outlined to look three dimensional, which spelled out some kind of message. Normally in code. That was a guess, but anyone putting up even their initials would be asking for the police to come arrest them for vandalism. So if that ever happened, they were probably the names of people that others wanted hassled by the cops. That was what he’d have done anyway, if he were that kind of person.

  The other kind was art in the truest sense of the word. Some of it was good on a rare level, but strange, even to him, and Mason prided himself on having an open mind that way. For instance, along the brown colored brick expanse to his right, Mason saw something that nearly made him veer when the image hit him. It was a face, subtly worked into the pattern of the wall. It was the color of the fake stone, more or less, and seemed to actually be projecting out from the surface, even though it couldn’t be. Like it was carved in place, rather than painted on. It would have been interesting to go and look at it more closely, but doing that would make him late, so he pedaled onward.

  He didn’t get out enough to be late going anywhere.

  It was hard enough not to be run over by the entitled assholes in their electrics, without being distracted by the walls around him. It was nearly like they thought they owned the road. As if to prove the point, the driver behind him sped up, even though Mason was already doing a bit over the speed limit, and sat there, not two feet from the back of his bike. It pretty much guaranteed a crash the instant he slowed down at all. Growling a bit he risked pulling his right hand from the steering wheel, and flipped the bird over his shoulder.

  “Back off, fucker! I’m pedaling here!”

  It had the effect he’d expected, which was nothing, except an angry honk in return. He could see it in the mirror. Jerks would be asshats, as his grandmother used to say.

  It took a bit of finesse for him to slip sideways at full speed, once near his destination. There was, thankfully, a free parking spot, and his brakes held perfectly when he slammed them on as hard as he could with his left thumb. The inertial flywheel arrangement let him stop a lot faster than most would have figured, thankfully, or the hyper aggressive dick would have pushed him into a crash. That was probably the point.

  A lot of people really hated to see anyone doing something different on the road. It was as if they felt offended by him bothering to be creative.

  Mason looked over to get the plate number, just in time to see the older woman drive by, flipping him the bird in return.

  He wanted to grouse a bit, but knew that sooner or later she’d mess up, and have her license pulled, if she kept up like she was. There were cameras everywhere, after all. The police might not even fine her for what she’d just done, but it would be on her record now. Watch saw everything. That wasn’t just a clever statement either. The AI really did. It would be noted. So would his flipping her off and acting aggressively, but that was a pretty minor hit. Besides, he didn’t have a license to take away, his vehicle being human powered. It was technically a bike, even if it could carry a passenger, and had signal lights for street use.

  Trying to make him crash was probably something like a thousand-point hit to the grumpy granny’s record. If he’d been in a real car, he’d have lost about five. The system wasn’t perfect, but it tended to be pretty fair and realistic in the end.

  He had to park on the street, but the meters in the area all accepted thumb swipes, so the two dollars he’d need for the four hours of parking he might want was taken from his account instantly. It was still a walk to the eatery, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to see his auto-bike once inside. To that end he had a chain, with a lock on it. It was a very old fashioned thing, that opened when you spun a dial and input the right combination of numbers. He liked it, both for its low power usage, and the fact that no one knew how the things worked anymore.

  Anyone coming to steal his bike would end up standing there, baffled at his wicked cleverness. Wasting their time and trying to use an overswipe box on a lock that didn’t even have a scan screen. The thought was kind of hilarious. He wished them luck with it, knowing the black and silver thing he had would stop pretty much any modern thief dead. Smiling about that, Mason wandered toward the right place.

  That was about half a block down, but on the same side of the street. The place had a large glass window, with the name of the place right there in nicely painted green letters.

  “R-Street Eats” It was a horrible name, and a pretty mediocre place, but was also cheap, which was probably why Sam was a fan.

  When te was paying they went to low rent bars and pubs, and places like R-Street. When Mason Sims was doing the heavy economi
c lifting they went to nicer establishments. Then, he had a top job, freelancing with a good company. Sometimes he even picked up work with other places, just because he was that skilled at what he did. For a twenty-five-year-old, he was doing pretty darned good that way. Not everyone could say the same.

  It wasn’t really their fault. The jobs had pretty much gone away two generations before, and never come back. That was what everyone had always told him. If you weren’t one of the top minds in your field, you just didn’t work.

  Not at anything meaningful.

  So Sam being able to pay at all, ever, meant something. Probably that te had real money coming in from somewhere. His pal was certainly smart enough for it. That was one of the things Mason enjoyed about their friendship. They could actually hold a conversation without it becoming all about fashion, or who Lexi Horn was sleeping with that week.

  He grinned. After all, the famous girl was about the only one of that sort that he could name, off the top of his head. Mason had even slept with her, in VR. Sam had mentioned her a few times, so he’d looked the woman up, and only then realized that the actress had been in a few things that he’d seen and interacted with. The sex was, he’d been assured by the program, slightly better than the actress actually would be in real life. It was the universal virtual rule. If something was similar to reality, it got an upgrade whenever possible. Otherwise no one would bother with it.

  So banging a hot actress wasn’t going to be exactly like the real world. She’d always be set up to be what you liked, or at least a bit closer to it than the reality would probably allow. Not that he’d be testing that one out anytime soon. Lexi Horn might live in the same city, but he’d never seen her anywhere. Probably because she was rumored to be the kind of person that liked farmers markets, thrift stores, and things like that, and Mason enjoyed tech shows in his free time.

  That would be why, he reasoned.

  Not the fact that on his best day he was pretty average looking, and she was the kind of woman that people recreated in VR to fuck. That was fine though. He’d already had her in bed, which was good enough for him. They probably wouldn’t have had anything to chat about anyway, if they met in real life. Mason knew nothing about acting, and if Lexi Horn knew anything about nano assembly printing, or disassembly systems, at least as more than something used to make things around the house, it would have been shocking.

  People just didn’t have that kind of skill after all. It took a lot of schooling to become good at it, so most didn’t bother. Even the smart people generally only learned enough to pirate products occasionally. That did take some brains to manage, since Watch would know about it if you did it wrong. Maybe even if you did it right. Mason wondered, and not for the first time, if the system actually looked the other way on things like that, if you didn’t do too much of it. That didn’t make economic sense, but the thing was an AI, not a program. AI were really rare, but could think for themselves, so it might actually have different ideas than its governmental masters would have wanted.

  The front door of R-Street Eats was glass in a wooden frame. The paint was green to match the oversized lettering in the big window. It needed to be touched up in places, since it was cracking, and hadn’t been professionally applied the last time it was done. If he had the whole thing right, the layers of built up colors had been mishandled for decades. It was twenty-sixty-three after all, and some of these buildings had been there for over a hundred years.

  It meant that it was time for a lot of them to be replaced, before they fell down.

  No one came to seat him, though he was waved at by an average to cute woman who looked to be in her thirties. She was dressed in an old fashioned waitress costume. It had a little apron to go with it and an actual skirt. She also had white stockings on, and what looked to be uncomfortable leather shoes. Hopefully that was just for show, since being on your feet for hours would suck if you didn’t have good cushions at the end of your legs.

  Mason smiled and waved back. It didn’t hurt to be nice, after all. Pointing, he indicated where Sam was sitting, and got a nod from the woman, along with a professional smile. It wasn’t hard to see who he was there for, most likely.

  He was dressed all in black, with a self sealing close nap jacket, and cargo style pants. It wasn’t gen-neutral, being pretty manly, he thought. Like he was overcompensating for something, when he stopped to consider the idea. Given that he was in decent shape and probably the fittest person in the room, except maybe Sam, that meant he either had a really small dick, and cared about that which he didn’t, or really wanted everyone to know just how much of a guy he truly was. If he’d been there to meet with a gender obvious woman, he wouldn’t have bothered, so that meant he was there to see a man, or in this case, a person that no one would know what to think about. Like Sam.

  Te had pulled out the stops this time though, and really looked incredible. The clothing was heavy as always, to hide any hint of manly muscle, or womanly curve, and a buff color that would have seemed about right if machining work was about to be done. It was nearly protective clothing. Like for welding, or grinding things into smaller, sharper bits. It was the kind of thing te wore, day to day. At least when they met up.

  The face was made up into a fantastical creation however. The base paint layer was smooth, like fine china, and about the same color of off white, with dark blue swirls on the right hand side. Spiral patterns that looked familiar, but weren’t something he could identify off the top of his head. It was so over done that not only could you not tell what gender te was, you couldn’t even really identify Sam as being who was sitting there.

  That didn’t mean the look wasn’t a good one. It was alien, but impressive.

  Which was the point, no doubt.

  Mason waved as he walked up, his friend watching him attentively the whole time. There was a small smile, and a half raised hand in return. When te spoke, it was always in a perfect tenor, which really could have been a boy or a girl. The only thing that could be told from it was that whoever it was under the makeup either wasn’t very old, or took the really good anti-aging drugs.

  “Mason. How are things treating you?” Sam rarely said anything as boring as hello.

  “Not too poorly, all things being what they are. Work is good. All the VR women think I’m hot. Same old, you know?” There was a smile to go with it as he slid into the soft, and slightly cracked, fake leather covered seat. It was a faux wood chair, made of old style composite. The stuff lasted forever, but felt wrong, when made to seem like wood. Hollow, almost. It was a strange way to think of it, but he wasn’t the only person to ever state it that way.

  The person across from him knocked on the table twice with their right hand, the knuckles looking small. It was one of the things that had Mason about half convinced that Sam was actually a female by birth. Small, pale hands, tinted a light shade of dusty black today. It was an unusual color.

  The saturation tattoos, imbeds, all had different uses, but Mason wasn’t familiar with that one. It was a thing he could do, being part of his own work from time to time, so it was odd him not knowing off the top of his head. Most were easy enough to tell at a glance, if people had large scale mono-colors like that. People with red skin generally had a thermal imbed, for instance. One that kept heat from escaping over their entire bodies, until a certain temperature was reached. Purple indicated various antennae functions. Blue was electrical generation, normally taking the light that hit the skin and turning it into power.

  Black though, was a new one for him.

  “Let me guess, this makes you… Fifteen percent more interesting at parties?” He reached out and tapped the right hand, which felt wrong on contact. Then he got it, and nodded a few times. “Um, armor?”

  Sam nodded, ter head making the white and blue face makeup bob.

  “Both. Not that I need the help in public, of course. It’s a new interlocking carbon armor. Really it has about ten different uses, that’s just the most notable. Heating and cooling, communications filtering, electromagnetic distortion, so a lot of sensors can’t pick me up. Not if they’re using anything that reads the right signals.” There was no hint of bragging, even though something like that had to cost a lot of money to have done. More than most would have dreamed of for something that would just baffled a sensor or two, and make them harder to kill with bullets.