Gigaheroes

Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Adam Mason

Five hundred credits for a cheeseburger. I stared at the flickering LED menu until my eyes felt like they were bleeding. They said moving to a digital currency was going to fix the inflation issue. They said a universal income was going to help get people back on their feet. At least we don’t have high immigration anymore. No one wants to live in the Democratic Union. 

But it was five hundred credits for a cheeseburger, and I couldn’t rack up anymore debt on my ID. 

Oh well. I was standing in a grimy off-brand fast-food restaurant. Nighthawk and Yellow Bolt raided the apartment complex where I had been squatting, and now I don’t have a place to live. And they confiscated all my stuff. Any minute now, I was expecting to see a pop-up on my phone telling me I was fired from my welding job. That was the only way this day could get any worse. 

And after all that, I just wanted a cheeseburger. A delicious, factory processed, greasy slab of meat loaded with preservatives and seed oils and heart palpitating chemicals. But a cheeseburger was five hundred credits. And I had jack. 

It was one of those times I wished I had a superpower. Yeah, getting placed on the Registry probably isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but you could at least do cool stuff. If I had super strength and bullet proof skin, I would—well, first I would get my fucking cheeseburger—but after that… it wouldn’t be dumpster diving for scraps because you get the lowest priority for food stamps. 

I don’t know why I tortured myself, standing in that feces smelling restaurant that was barely big enough to cram ten people inside. I remember back in the day that some of these places were still served by people. At least then you could spill your heart out, and maybe, just maybe, they would give you some food. Not anymore. It was all automated these days. The guy taking orders was a tin-can with a zany mustache, and he wasn’t programmed to hand out freebies. I thought automation was supposed to improve the economy? They keep saying they’re hitting a record GDP. 

My stomach growled. I looked down at my phone. It was my very last possession of any worth. It was also the one thing connecting me to my digital ID. It was the only reason I could get a job, make payments, and just keep on the struggle. But I gotta tell ya, when you haven’t had anything to eat for three days, and you’ve been drinking runoff from a gutter, it’s hard to keep caring about the future. Fuck the future Adam Mason! I just want my cheeseburger!

“Hey.” I tugged on some guy’s coat. He was a balding man in his late forties. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, but he was still looking a lot better than me. At least his clothes weren’t covered in layers of caked sweat and dirt. 

I held up my phone. “Get me a cheeseburger with fries and a soda. I’ll trade you this.”

Five minutes later, I was munching on the most delicious cheeseburger I ever had in my life. Fifteen minutes later, I was picking at the crumbs. Thirty minutes later, I was still licking the grease from the wrapper. 

I stayed in the restaurant for an hour until the tin-can told me to buy something else or leave. I miss the days when being arrested guaranteed you a meal. I left the heated restaurant and stepped out into the very cold city. Winter was only halfway over. It would be a few months before things heated up again. In the meantime, I knew I had three options. 

A low priority vagrant in City 57 had three options: prostitution, working for a drug dealer, or killing the other homeless and taking their stuff. I guess there was also enlistment, but that just guaranteed you would get shipped to the front and told to fight some drugged up super solider. There were a lot of ways of going out. Getting partially vaporized by laser beams was not high on my list. 

All in all, I didn’t want to whore myself out either. I might not have much dignity left, but I knew there were some things too low for me to do. I had considered the drug dealer option before, but you needed a vouch, and initiation into a gang was an… unpleasant process. Besides, low priorities were cracked down on the hardest. Unlike everyone else, we weren’t allowed to do crime. 

That left murdering another homeless guy. That game just put you on a timer. Even if you don’t wind up getting yourself killed, it burns through your connections fast. You cross a line when you start killing. If you’re willing to kill the guy out on the street for his coat, who's to say you won’t start moving up to your friends? Word gets around and you’ll find yourself forced across the river to what was once Manhattan. And in there, it was dog eat dog. 

I didn’t know whether the rumors of cannibalism were true, and I didn’t want to know. They went hardcore in Manhattan, ritually scarring their faces and branding themselves. They never show it on the news, but everyone on the street knew you did not go into downtown if you wanted to come back out alive. 

I groaned. I really did like that cheeseburger, but it was a crummy last meal. My feet dragged as I started walking to the nearest suicide clinic. I knew they were going to get me eventually. I was just hoping it wasn’t going to be today. I had a terrible life, but at least I could get a painless death. 

…

“What do you mean you won’t kill me!?” I shouted at the obese woman manning the front counter. 

I had waited in line for three hours, and when my ticket was finally called up, I was rejected immediately. 

“You don’t have your state mandated phone, sir.” The woman didn’t hide the snark in her voice. “No ID, no serum.”

“Why do you care about my ID!? You’re supposed to kill me!”

She clicked her teeth. “Serum is in short supply. You want to die? Go jump into the East River. The cold water will kill you in a few minutes.”

“No! I wanna be shot up with morphine! I wanna be high as a kite before I die!”

“Suicide clinics are a privilege, sir, not a human right.”

“Screw you! You get to stuff your face because you’re a high priority! The rest of us have to eat scraps from the street. Just let me die!”

“Sir, if you continue yelling, I’ll be forced to call security. Either provide me with an ID or leave.”

I gave her the honest middle finger as I left the clinic into the freezing streets of City 57. I sat on the steps of the clinic as I considered my next move. It seemed hobo murder was on. I hoped the poor soul I was going to stab had some fentanyl on them. If I was lucky, maybe even a lethal dose. 

It did not bother me that my corpse would be picked up by garbage collection and cremated. My parents may have had high dreams for their brat, but I didn’t. I saw where the world was going, and I knew I was going to be tossed in the trash. It still astounded me that they had hope after the bombs fell. They still held their heads high even during the five-year winter. I hated them for that. 

I sighed. Time for stabby stab. But then, I shook my head. What was I thinking? I was just as likely to get myself killed for my trouble. Better to storm in the clinic and try to jab myself with as much morphine as I could get my hands on. Let them do the work of tossing my body into the river. I stood up to run back inside, but then I hesitated again. 

I wasn’t going to make it five feet in before security would be on me. And it wasn’t like I knew where they kept the morphine. I would just be throwing my life away for nothing. And if I was going to die, I was going to make sure I went out having a good time. 

I thought back to the apartment complex. I didn’t have any drugs, but I did have a water filter. I had stashed it in a hole in the wall behind a broken table. There was a slim chance that the ASA overlooked it. If I could get my hands on it again, then I could barter that for some drugs. Maybe—just maybe—my dream of overdosing into the next life was still possible. 

The ASA was going to be swarming the place until nightfall, and even then, there would probably be guards and seeker drones. I would have to be quick and clever, in and out with what I needed. And if I was extremely lucky, maybe I could get my hands on some of the goods those food runners were selling. Canned beef wasn’t exactly a good last meal either, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. 

I started for a nearby homeless encampment where I could sit by a warm fire while I waited for the cover of night. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I knew one thing. 

I had absolutely nothing left to lose. 

Link to Chapter Four