facial recognition camera by the elevator meant JD had to take the stairs. He kept one hand on the banister to take weight off his bad knee as he descended.
Gaynor’s apartment was one of hundreds in a tight tower complex. Lights in the corridors shone twenty-four-seven, abandoned rubbish and filthy concrete walls illuminated beneath the flickering, humming fluorescents. Gaynor—like her neighbors—rarely left the apartment. She worked random search-and-admin for cents per task—one of millions behind the algorithms that kept smart assistants and other “automated” systems running at all hours of the day and night. JD guessed half the building subsisted on that same variety of corporate freelance.
Before falling asleep, JD had quickly scanned the files from Soo-hyun, studying the schematics and timetables as though they were a puzzle to be solved, rather than evidence of a planned crime. Without the official access he would normally receive along with a city repossession order, he’d need help bypassing the target’s security, and there was only one person he could trust with that.
He took the phone from his pocket and checked the warehouse’s robot uptime app. Everything was green, including the Hippo repairer, but he marked himself as on-call just in case. Next, JD scrolled through his contacts, dodging around a small group of children trudging off to school with cube-shaped backpacks larger than them. He found the name he needed and hit call; the phone rang in his ear like a digital cicada.
“Khoder, I need to talk to you. In the real.”
Pain speared up his leg with every step, but JD couldn’t slow down. He felt like bacteria in the body of the apartment building—alien, unwanted. His heart thudded hard and already moisture gathered in his armpits.
“I’ve got your money,” he said loudly over Khoder’s excuses. “Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll come to you.”
* * *
The city shook on digital frequencies as JD made his way to the Varket. Glass facades shuddered with the oscillating purr of bass-heavy beats. The music would spike, then drop, silence like held breath. When the beat returned Songdo exhaled. The sovereign city was home to countless minorities; words from a myriad of languages drifted through the air, mingling to form an indecipherable ur-tongue. Spoken Korean dominated, but in business signage, private conversation, and scattershot insults, everything was being steered toward the entropy of English, the language of globalization.
JD diagonally crossed the intersection where the Egyptian and Ethiopian quarters met, car horns adding to the Ethiopiyawi electronica emanating from a bustling hookah bar, filled with figures in black and charcoal suits. Spice-thick cuisines battled in the air, and everywhere the flat scent of old fry oil edged with engine exhaust and heavy metal particulates. The saltwater scent, carried in on a breeze, brought small respite from the constant garbage smell of the city—green, trash-free plans abandoned when Songdo hit the first of its financial hurdles. The smell was one thing Zero Corporation couldn’t augment; otherwise they might censor the scent of Korean cooking, emanating from pojangmacha stalls and restaurants all through the city, a mouthwatering reminder that Korean culture had survived longer than any corporation, had survived thousands of years of worse than whatever Zero could do to the city.
An AR billboard on one side of the intersection showed the faces of criminals with outstanding warrants—jaywalkers, sexual predators, and violent gangsters, all caught on CCTV but never apprehended. On the building opposite, a video of Kali played: smiling, talking emphatically to a gathered crowd. “Find Truth,” the ad suggested, “Find Happiness,” and a link to her Livideo feed. JD shook his head and kept moving.
Two blocks further, JD stood across from the Varket, the scarlet glow of its anachronistic neon sign calling to him. He dodged between two cars as the ground flared red beneath his steps. He let the momentum carry him past the bugzapper hum of the sign and in through the first door, into the vantablack foyer. The walls seemed infinitely distant, his steps awkward over a floor that his eyes didn’t want to see. He groped forward until his hand touched the second door; he yanked it open and stepped inside.
The Varket was a favored hangout of hackers and hopefuls, freelance share traders, and voidwarriors; lowest ping you could find outside a corporate compound. The soundtrack droned its oppressive, beatless ambient mantras with the scratch and hiss of analogue tape, heavy enough to shroud discussion.
JD went straight for the counter. The bartender slash barista had an asymmetrical fringe over eyes darkened by makeup or