Amino: A Tale of Self-revenge by Luke Feistamel

Author:Luke Feistamel [Feistamel, Luke & Feistamel, Luke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Slime Mold
Published: 2017-01-18T08:00:00+00:00

VANDER: prepares to leave Chicago.

He applied for his travel permit and saw no reason it wouldn't go through. He had no red flags on his account, and the fees, which could be as high as half a year's wages for most people, were no problem for him. He knew the higher the cost of a permit, the more sure it was to pass bureaucracy with ease. It was the cheap plebeian permits which were much more highly scrutinized. But those were all just details. The point was that Vander made up his mind to leave. What reason did he have to stay anymore? His mother thought him responsible for his brother's disappearance. He lost his partner, who was, he hated to admit, his only real friend besides the brother who he couldn't track down. It was getting more difficult to be an agent. Even the unknowns of a life in South America couldn't be worse than what he knew, and feared, in Chicago.

Before leaving, he wanted to say one last goodbye to Five.

Though Five didn't drink, Vander invited him to a place that had the cheapest algae brew around. In Zone Ten, on the border with Eleven, only blocks from his flat, was a small tavern where many of the agents drank regularly. Since it was across the border in the less expensive Zone Ten, the beer cost half what it did in 'Leven. They served agents without checking zonals, and the Peace Keepers never bothered the proprietors over this breach because some of their own from Eleven drank there too.

"Well, Van, we're gonna miss ya something awful. I know I sure as hell am."

"You and who else?"

"This place is just great," Five said, looking around, as if he didn't hear Vander's question. "I can't believe they don't check our zonals."

"The zonals are meaningless anyway. They're not what they used to be. Now it's all so they can keep track of you. It has no connection to its original intention of creating localized economies, and reducing all the pollution from economies of scale. Now it's just so they have on record everything you buy, where you bought it, when you bought it, where you were at that point in time, how often you buy certain items, etc. They know everything about you from your zonals, and they use that information to market more useless shit to you. It's entirely frenic, and what's worse is no one cares about this gross invasion of privacy. We just accept it like it's as natural as the air we breathe."

"I care." Five was scratching the hardened shell of a small pimple off his upper arm, an arm bronzed by exposure. He looked closely at his find before flicking it away.

"But," Vander said, in a more resigned manner, "it won't matter soon anyway. Not to me."

In the flow of traffic next to the tavern, an e-trike passed with a megacapacitor in its bed. The driver was hard looking, dirty with grease, hair cropped short and bristling.

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