You Can Be a Cyborg When You're Older by Richard Roberts

Author:Richard Roberts [Roberts, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2020-01-20T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Cappy looked around with curiosity as we headed up to the illegal street crossing tunnel right above the orphanage. I’m sure he’d seen it on our trips back home, but we hadn’t used it then.

In the time I’d been locked up, zoning regulations had wreaked their revenge. Someone or something had smashed into the tube, ripping it open in the middle. Fortunately, there was still a path of floor all the way across. Yes, it wobbled a bit in the breeze you got on buildings high up, but Cappy and I didn’t even have to climb in the office. We hopped right down into the tube through the gap, and walked across.

He liked the weird service hallway with its glowing tubes, too, but that wasn’t our target. No, we were headed across the street to the restaurant building. Not to the restaurant, either. I’d rather a little idle curiosity from self-absorbed rich women and their dates at the kid walking the walls than pass through a mass of folks with fancy SPUDs Fry Smiley might happen to peek out of.

Okay, enough of quiet sightseeing. I’d left the orphanage about four hours earlier than usual, which meant the hologram on the street corner should get her free time any minute.

At the moment, a pair of fantastically deformed animals wrestled fang and claw over the sidewalk. I refused to admit that I could recognize a manticorn or a tyranipede, but if anyone didn’t know an AR monster when they saw it, they’d figure it out from logo on the coat of the phantasmal little girl cheering the fight.

Someone didn’t program the commercial schedule well enough. I knew the clock ticked the hour, because the tyranipede twisted its fangy head free, flapped its crest up and down in excitement, and greeted, “Hey, Vanity! Nice biodrone.”

Did everyone but me spectate car wrecks for fun?

…actually, scratch that. This AI didn’t have any choice but to watch one occasionally. Yuck!

My failing to immediately answer gave the hologram a chance to continue. “Oh, wait wait wait! I’ve got a good one this time! Tell me what you think?”

The image flickered, and a giant man loomed over the street. Instead of a coat, he wore a ragged space suit, although ”wore” was a generous word for an outfit completely open in front. He looked over thirty, pale, but the unfastened suit showed off more rock-hard muscle than a man that age should be capable of. So many muscles. So much chest hair. So much stubble. Somehow, he looked tired, strong enough to lift a mech, and had fiercely intent black eyes as well.

He also had an absurdly deep voice. “Ladies, I may not be your man, but on Mars you could have two of me. That’s right, two for one men, like me. Isn’t your daughter worth it? Join the Martian colony today.”

I swear people had already started to run away before I sat down on a window overhang and put my hands over my eyes.

Cappy’s projected voice actually sounded approving.

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