Scar began to lose the plot – literally. Reality was confused between everything that happened offline and everything that happened online and she was starting to lose track.
Offline: lies and fakery and a giant closet and whole dialogues and looks and connections to keep that up.
Online: truth and hope and the brewing of more lies and plans to make a new truth.
And the whole Nina thing just felt like far too much. Aged 18, after the accident, Scar had been patched up and then busted mortifyingly while recuperating, for having an affair with a nurse. After that she’d been shipped out to the Quarter and given a job processing garbage. She’d been told that her parents and Nina had died instantly, her ID docs torn up and that, as they say, was that. Off to the triangles of the twilight zone. She never found out what happened to the nurse.
Sender: Nina Ragnarra
Subject: omg
Message: they said you were dead and i went to a foster home, where have you been?
Reflection … it wouldn’t be too hard for anyone to find out her status as rehabbed Queer, she might as well confess that one.
Sender: Siri Ragnarra
Subject: OK
Message: got pretty banged up in the accident and woke up in a hospital, where they told me you were dead and the folks too (are they??) and that was that. should probably tell you i got involved with a woman, sent to the quarter and now, what … 20 years later, here i am, rehabbed and on the outside. or am i.
*SENT*
Meantime, things were changing. Scar didn’t have access to much raw tech, but she kept the underground supplied with consumables like paste and nodes and a whole bunch of plans and data. Helen was busy overseeing the manpower stuff and Scar saw her about once a week when it was possible. They became adept at intimacy under trying circumstances – and usually in public, hidden by filmhouse gloom and darkened doorways. Far from ideal.
They were building a server in the industrial zone, dockside downtown, in a basement above the shuttleway and below the sewage works. Veto was masterminding the project from wherever he was. Scar’s daily existence would probably have gone on indefinitely, if Intermodality hadn’t created their latest expansion line and made it purple. Suddenly Scar’s genius with colour-connection was completely useless – the presence of purple made her head ache and she began to hallucinate and make errors. After she fainted, causing rush-hour chaos, she was put on leave and sent to see doctors and Scar began to indulge her own unhappiness. The medication blurred most things, but there was always that come-down moment, when another reality intruded and Scar felt useless. And the world saw that she was down and it kicked her.
Sender: Nina Ragnarra
Subject: oh
Message: queer? are you rehabbed? because if not, siri, i am sorry, we can’t communicate. i have a marriage and children to think of.
OK. That was about that, as far as Scar was concerned. Better Nina had stayed dead to her.
Scar faked compliance again, saw the doctors and went on with life as usual. Quietly, she sent her personal tech down to the docks. Sent her work overalls down too, so that some spook could use them to infiltrate and pillage. She packed a light bag, waited while Veto scrambled her wristfeed, cut her hair roughly, picked up the stingray leather and then Scar walked out of the compound without turning back once.
Goodbye cool tech, muttered Scar, delirious with the notion of freedom. Goodbye credit chips and goodbye bloody dresses!
One stop on the way – Java Divers, of course, where her halfway Queer appearance wouldn’t be of any interest; just another inmate on a pass-out. She grabbed a booth in the back, keyed in her order and her code and waited. And there was Helen – as disturbingly beautiful as ever. They held hands under the table and Scar explained it all to Helen through a film of tears. Helen looked numb, shocked and then she did the most impossible thing Scar could have expected. She stood up and said, “OK, let’s go.”
The only way to get to the Quarter without getting busted back to rehab, was just to go. They went.
Scar got her dyke legs back as they walked the street towards the docks, lengthening her stride, feeling the soft old denim shift comfortably like a familiar friend. She threw her shoulders back and grabbed Helen’s hand – just another Hetero couple out in the crowds of shoppers. Her wristfeed made a forlorn noise, like a badly strung guitar. Veto.
blueline station. ask for the daily whatever.
Without breaking stride, Scar wheeled into the station kiosk, “Daily Whatever,” she said and the vendor motioned them in behind racks and racks of paper. Odd how newsprint had survived when so much else hadn’t. Without a word, the vendor motioned them to change into the bundles he held – Generika City Gomi Team – the shit-shovellers, processors of garbage, shifters of other peoples’ junk. Bulky, filthy overalls, shapeless caps, clunky workboots – even their mothers would never have recognised them. Scar strapped her wristfeed to her upper arm – if anyone saw it she’d be arrested; no Queer had tech that new without robbery being a factor. Filling their pockets with candy, the vendor ushered them outside again, straight on to a garbage unit. He didn’t wave.
Surrounded by stink and cacophony, Helen and Scar rode the truck down along city arteries towards the grey sea. There’d been beaches there once, but they were long since eaten up by industry and coated by broken things, unwanted things. The truck dumped its load there and turned towards the city again. Scar and Helen crouched behind machine skeletons.
“So, Butch Cassidy,” said Helen, “what next?” Scar smiled, “Underground, Sundance, underground. Left past the crusher and straight on to sunrise.”
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