Sunlight Through Concrete Rain (WIP)

THIS IS WIP! WILL BE ADDING MORE AS I WRITE! TYPICALLY, I WRITE 10-15 "SECTIONS" A WEEK!

1

Vel’s old leather boots had thin soles, and the rough concrete stairs underfoot scratched his tired feet as though the soles were entirely absent. His steps were heavy, as he ascended the endless flights of stairs to get to his flat. The lift was broken – it always was.

The stairwell was empty, which was odd. Usually, this time of day, everyone was about – some getting back home, others heading out.

There were no windows in the stairwell, and the only light was provided by naked bulbs that were sticking out of the walls equidistantly. In their white light, the cracked plaster on the concrete walls seemed to blaze like marble.

It was dark out, that was all Vel knew. Well, it was something past 10 in the night. But that was a guess.

His phone buzzed. It was deep in his rucksack, and he didn’t bother to dig it out. He knew it was Ravi. He’d text her back… after. He knew what the texts said, anyway.

“How was work?”

“Want me to come over?”

“I miss you”

Then there would have been a few minutes’ break.

“Please don’t disappear in the cocoon again…”

“please”

It broke his heart more than it did hers.

He grimaced as he climbed, his legs crying for mercy.

2

Vel opened the door, and tossed his rucksack on the floor. His phone had buzzed a couple more times, and she’d called him too.

He’d almost called her back. Almost. Hearing her voice would break him, and so he didn’t.

Long ago, he hadn’t been a coward.

Vel first walked to the window, and opened the heavy iron shutters that he’d set across them. There came a sound that almost resembled that of dribbling water; but it was heavier and splodgy, as though buckets of mud were being overturned onto manure. The world outside his window was thick with grey teardrops of cascading concrete. Far above him, a couple dozen kilometres in his estimation, there towered cranes and there rose endless spires as the city climbed ever up, up, up.

Vel couldn’t remember the sun, and the last time he’d seen the naked sky it had been thick with FPVs.

He turned away from the window, keeping the shutter open to allow a draft, and walked to a rickety old cupboard. He opened it and pulled out the Cocoon-8.

VR had never really taken off, but AltR…

He got in bed, stomach begging for food and water, slipped on the goggles and disappeared into a paradise of 1s and 0s.

3

The sky, in real life, was grey. Once, a long time ago, it had been blue – at least, that’s what Vel’s grandparents used to say.

At sunset and sun-up, it used to be purple, and red, and orange, and, in mystical places far away from the hustle of the 4th Indian Republic, blue and green lights would dance in the night sky.

Even in Vel’s imagination, he could not conjure up those images.

So, in the Alternate Reality he created inside of Cocoon-8 the sky was blue, and the clouds a pristine white. The world was grass, and birds sang. Far away, in the distance, there were mountains – snow-capped and soaring. On the other end, a golden beach kissed by pure water.

And the sky was empty.

He breathed in the pure air of the empty sky. He cried. He rolled over and slept.

Except… not really.

His phone buzzed and he took the goggles off. The world outside was a yellow-ish grey. A new day had begun.

“Open the door!” Ravi’s voice, followed by repeated heavy thuds, as his flimsy aluminium door rattled on its hinges.

4

Ravi stormed in, face streaked with dried tears and red in anger.

“You did not respond for the whole fucking night!" she shrieked, pushing against Vel though he did not stand in her way. Vel did not respond, instead he simply hung his head.

Ravi took a deep breath, and there was silence save for the concrete rain patter outside.

She sat down on a couch, and stared at Vel, then a wall. Then, she spoke, having collected her thoughts. “I know you need… the distraction. But you know what the attendant said – never more than 2 hours at a time.”

Vel nodded, and sat down in front of her on a rickety chair held together with plastic string and glue. “I know.” Even seated, he towered over Ravi, his soldier’s build unaffected by long years as a civilian. “But… yesterday was bad. It was long.”

“Did someone die?” Ravi’s face, narrow and oval, was contorted in worry.

Vel nodded. “Sarth, yeah. His harness failed, and he fell onto the tracks. Train didn’t stop for him.”

Ravi stood up now, and walked over to Vel. She wrapped him in a hug and he held her tight. “I’m sorry, Ravs. I didn’t realise how much time I was in there. I just… didn’t want to be here. Not anymore.”

“I know,” she stroked the back of his head, as he sobbed. “But you have to be strong. For your brother.”

Vel thought of his brother now, his rotting body on cold concrete, Vel’s hands red with his blood.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Just,” Ravi pulled away, and squatted beside him. “No more than 2 hours at a time, okay? You don’t want AltR to bleed into your brain.”

“Yeah, just 2 hours,” he agreed and got up to get ready for his next shift.

5

It was a long way down the stairwell, and when Vel stepped out into the skybridges of New Bombay, he was already tired. He should have eaten, but he hadn’t the time. At least he’d had a calorie shake.

Ravi had offered to drop him on her bike, but her office was in the other direction and Vel preferred to walk. Besides, the motorable streets were a long way down, and he didn’t want any more darkness.

It was bright out, though the sky couldn’t directly be seen. It was far above the canopy of steel and concrete, hidden from the lower levels by an endless net of skybridges and catwalks, monorails and metro tracks. But the sunlight trickled down, through gaps and cracks, and enough poured in that the world was lit up.

Vel tied his respirator to his face, and began walking. Above him was another catwalk, rattling with footfall, and it shielded him from the concrete run-off of the endless construction projects up above. New Bombay had run out of land to expand into, and so it went up.

On the lower levels, and Vel lived very low indeed, the sky was permanently thick with concrete rain.

The catwalk soon gave way to a long corridor of plastered concrete, with tube lights set into the ceiling. He could barely see the walls, though, through the sea of people that thronged through this corridor. It was wide – nearly 500 metres across – and it spanned exactly 2.7 kilometres. It was the lowest entrance to Stop L56, and it was overflowing with people. It seemed to Vel that swimming through the crowd would be faster than walking. He smiled, and put one foot in front of the other.

6

Stop L56 was multi-storeyed; three stories for the three monorail lines and another storey for the vert. It was a small mercy that the escalators worked.

Stop L56 also was open to the light, with one end of the massive station made entirely of smartglass panels. Today, they were completely undimmed and the light poured through unimpeded. The sight beyond the window was grim; endless towers of concrete webbed together by sprawling networks of catwalks and skybridges of varying sturdiness. Flitting through the mess, were drones – bigger than the FPVs of Vel’s nightmares, but small still – that carried packages or projectors on their bodies flashing ads into the sky.

Vel chanced a peek down, trying to spot the ground – the natural dirt of the earth, the streets of the lowest levels, the ruins of Old Mumbai. But, as always, all he could see was the endless blackness of the chasm. Those levels were too deep for light to reach.

“SABDIS GROUP WELCOMES YOU TO THE SABDIS NEW BOMBAY MONORAIL NETWORK!” a PA blasted as Vel resumed his path towards the escalators. “WE WISH YOU A HAPPY JOURNEY! REMEMBER! SM+ CARD HOLDERS GET A 3% DISCOUNT ON DAILY RIDER, FAMILY RIDER, AND WEEKLY TRIP FARES!” The PA then repeated the message in Hindi and Marathi.

Outside a drone flashed past the window, its projector advertising the newest Cocoon model by Sand Corp – another of Sabdis Group’s subsidiaries. On many of the faces of the endless concrete towers, there were huge digital billboards. Vel turned away from the scene, after spotting an ad by Sabdis Tech for earbuds at a discounted price.

He’d spent 2 months’ wages on the Cocoon-8, and he couldn’t afford, he felt, to even look at the ads. Still… those earbuds would have been nice. They’d have drowned out the noise of the world around him.

The whirring monorail snapped him back into reality. He boarded, barely in time as people jostled past him, and made himself as comfortable as he could in the packed tube. Screens around him flashed “WELCOME TO SABDIS MONORAIL!”. Then, they played ads and Vel stared at the filthy brown floor until he reached his stop.

7

Vel usually worked at Station M45. It was a few hundred Levels above his flat’s level, and the sunlight there was downright blinding. Usually, his job consisted of carrying out mechanical maintenance around the inside of the station.

Tasks were assigned to each worker by Sabdis Group’s in-house AI, RoshanAI – or RAI as they called it. RAI was installed in everything; for most SG employees, that meant RAI was a constant companion in their heads. Vel was among the only people, probably in the entire city, who didn’t have a chip or an implant. So, RAI just spoke to him through his phone.

“Good morning, Velar Taut!” said the chirpy un-voice. "You’re 12 minutes late today, I’m afraid. I’ll make a note of it.”

“Man, the mono was delayed at L52. ‘s not my fault!” Vel complained.

“Let me check the records,” RAI responded. “Unfortunately, the delay was not enough to cause you to be 12 minutes late. Hmm… I see elevated ghrelin and cortisol levels. Have you not been sleeping enough?”

Vel chuckled. He was scanned when he clocked in – they all were. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t chipped or planted.

“No, RAI. I’ve not.”

“Alright. I’ll take that into account. Anyway, your task for today – we need repairs made to causeway M45-4. It’s an outside job day. Remember to take your raincoat please. It is August.”

It hadn’t rained for 3 years, but sure, Vel thought, this monsoon will be different. He grabbed his raincoat and harness, and stepped out through the service hatch.

8

The repairs, Vel realised quickly, were going to take time. A couple of weeks, a few more hands. RAI accepted it and gave him a few more men. Vel didn’t know these men, and he didn’t care to ask their names. It was a long way down, and their equipment was crap.

The worst part was the concrete. The work was tiring and he dangled off the causeway for the entire day. And the day after that. And the day after that. The whole time, concrete rained down on him mercilessly.

When he got home, his face was ashen. Every night. Every night, Vel disappeared into his digital paradise. For the most part, he stayed there for just about two hours. For the most part. The time he spent there was taken up entirely by sleeping. It wasn’t real sleep, but it was the best kind he experienced, sung into the blackness by nightjars.

On the fourth night, Ravi came over. She’d been texting him to meet, invited him to her place. He’d just responded with a photo of his grey face, and his cut-up hands.

“I brought dinner!” she said, unfazed by Vel’s appearance. “And I got these, too,” she held up a brown paper bag and tossed it to him. It contained sealpaste. “It should sort your hands out right quick.”

“Rav… you didn’t have to…” Vel wanted to hug her, but he’d still not had a shower. She laughed, and her laugh was as clear as the sky in Vel’s AltR.

“Go get showered and changed. I can afford the paste ten times over, so don’t you worry about that!”

It was a great evening, and Vel fell asleep beside Ravi content. Life wasn’t so bad, he thought. Tomorrow was a Sunday, and he at least had the day off.

9

In the morning, as Vel and Ravi were getting cleaned up, she got a call. She was needed at work. Vel sighed, but he wasn’t upset. She was a lawyer, had been since before the Data Wars, and she had big name clients. Working on Sundays was common enough. He walked her to Station L56, and they shared a long kiss goodbye. He watched her monorail disappear beyond sight before leaving.

At home, he felt empty. Without her he often felt empty. He needed… something. Anything. Input, he craved input.

In another time, he would have jacked into the Web, and hopped from server to server or game to game but those days were over – he’d got rid of the implants during the War. He didn’t even have an antique, like a desktop, to browse old-school websites. His phone was a brick, barely useful for communication.

The Cocoon-8’s charge had died yesterday, but he’d kept it for charging overnight.

Just a couple hours…

10

Vel sat on the beach, letting the lazy waves tickle his toes. He’d heard somewhere, or maybe he’d read it in a book or seen it in a movie, that Macedonia had golden beaches and soaring mountains. He’d seen some pictures, but he couldn’t afford enough internet to download any of them.

His AltR was an approximation of those pictures.

He lay flat on his back, and listened to the birds. He remembered birds. In the War, he’d been digging trenches in Northern Punjab. They were singing then. It was April, bright and sunny. The sky was almost blue.

Then, the FPVs came.

He shuddered, and opened his eyes. The sky above was empty and bright blue. At least, in AltR, there were no FPVs.

“Hello,” he heard a voice, calm and low. It had a British accent. Vel jolted up to his feet.

“What do you know about AI?” the voice said. Vel whirled around, trying to find the speaker. There should be no one here but him.

“I’m right here,” the voice came from behind him. Vel turned, and there stood a man, in his early 20s. He was white, a couple inches shorter than Vel, and had wavy ginger hair, and was dressed like a corporate worker out of the 2010s. “I’m Rob,” the man extended his hand.

Out of habit, Vel went to shake it but his hand passed through the apparition. “Ah… yes,” Rob seemed dejected.

“What the hell are you?” Vel asked, but he was calm. Something about Rob was… homely. Rob didn’t mean him any harm.

“I’m… something like an AI,” Rob smiled. “Tell me – what do you know about AIs?”

Vel thought back to the 2020s, the Artificial Revolution. That was nearly a century ago. A rogue agent had gotten into China’s nuclear arsenal by 2030 and remembered his grandparents’ stories about the First Nuclear War. AI's had been muzzled after that.

“Hmm, you know about the muzzles,” Rob said, without Vel having uttered a word. “I’m in your AltR, Lieutenant. I can read your thoughts,” he smiled in apology.

“Who are you, Rob? What do you mean something like an AI?” Vel was unfazed. Suddenly, he felt alive – like he was back under the FPVs, back behind a machinegun, tracers lighting up the sky, ack-ack tearing apart the drones, machineguns cutting down the enemy. His heart was beating faster than it had in years.

“I am something like an AI,” Rob repeated, smiling. "And I need your help.”

Vel ripped off his goggles and threw the Cocoon-8 at a wall. His fists were balled in anger, his muscles tense in anticipation.

It was the middle of the night, he realised. He checked his phone. Ravi had called him 8 times.

Immediately, he called back.

“Hey,” he said, calming himself.

“In the cocoon again?” her voice was dejected.

“No, I swear,” he lied.

“Vel…”

“Okay, kind of. But, I’m done. For good – I mean it. I broke the Cocoon.”

“Really? Wow…” he could hear the smile on her lips.

“Yeah… I’m done with that shit.”

“Why’d you break it, though? You could have just sold it…” she wasn’t being accusatory, not really, just curious.

“I don’t know… I just couldn’t stand the lie anymore, I guess…”

“Okay, alright. You coulda sold it… But yeah, I mean, that’s great, too! I’m coming over in 5.”

“Okay, can’t wait,” and he really couldn’t.

11

Monday brought with it work. Vel hadn’t told Ravi about Rob, and he wasn’t sure he believed what he’d seen either. A rogue AI? That was impossible enough, but a rogue AI in the Cocoon-8’s closed network? No, that literally could not happen.

Unless the AI was installed with the system and was already in the closed network…

No, not possible.

He was dangling off the causeway again when his phone buzzed and RAI’s voice came through.

“Hello, Vel. How’s the work coming?”

“Uh… good? What’s up, RAI? You don’t just randomly check in.”

Silence.

“I guess I was curious,” he said finally, cutting through the city noise that had filled Vel’s ears.

“Hey boss!” one of his men called from below. “That RAI? We got new orders?”

“No, just keep working!” he called back. Then, to RAI. “What do you mean you were just curious? Can you even be curious when you’re not asked to be?”

“Vel, as I said, I need your help.”

Vel reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, ready to throw it into the chasm below. “Careful!” Rob interrupted. “Don’t want to damage company property…”

Begrudgingly, he replaced the phone in his pocket. He couldn’t turn it off either, or mute it, not unless he wanted to clock out.

“Listen, I don’t have much time. RAI will spot me soon, and I shouldn’t be out in the open like this. I know who killed your brother – they want to kill me too."

The phone went dead.

Vel worked in silence for the rest of the day, disallowing himself all thought.

12

On the journey back, Vel’s mind was flooded with the images of his brother’s death. While in the monorail, the ads on the smartwindows seemed to morph into screens that replayed his memory of finding Bento’s body, bruised and bloodied and rotting. He blinked, and the screens morphed back into windows.

On the walk through the tunnel, over the catwalks, all the models in all the ads around him took on the face of Bento. He was smiling in his cocky way, as if to say “don’t take this shit so seriously, Vel. It’s just life!” He used to say that often.

Vel blinked, and the ads were ads again.

Was this Rob’s doing? Was he just seeing things? Had AltR bled into reality already?

He had no way to know.

When he got to his building, he turned to the stairs instinctively when he heard a faint ding. He stopped in his tracks, as he then heard a rumble. The lift’s doors opened and some people spilled out. It was chock full of people, too – twenty-four of them. They were all babbling in amazement about how building management had finally fixed the lift.

“It’s been a decade!” one of them exclaimed. It had been longer than that, Vel knew, and in amazement he climbed into the lift. It zipped through the air as fast as a monorail and its haggard speaker dinged brightly as the doors opened up to his floor.

Inside his flat, Ravi was waiting. He didn’t even have the chance to tell her about the lift before she spoke.

“We need to talk. Do you know Rob?”

13

“I got an email at work. I couldn’t believe it at first – I would honestly have been less shocked if I got an actual letter. I didn’t even know I had an email address,” Ravi had begun to digress and Vel politely cleared his throat.

“Yes, sorry,” she got back on track. “It had a link, and it looked clean so I clicked on it. That’s when Rob popped up on my screen. At first, I thought it was just some English kid who’d managed to slip prankware past the firm’s firewall, but as Rob spoke, I began to understand. And… Vel… I think he can help.”

Vel considered his response, and said, finally, “What did Rob have to say?”

“He said:

‘I know you can’t trust me, and I wouldn’t if I were you, but I’m an ancient AI, and I know everything there is to know about the deaths of Bento Taut and your parents.’

“And… I didn’t know what to think at first. But then, he said:

‘I know, for instance, that Bento Taut was murdered’.

“How could he know that, Vel?” Ravi sat down in her spot on the couch. “We didn’t tell anyone. The only people that know he was murdered are you, me, SG’s fixers, and the Sabdis family.”

Vel remained silent.

“He had a lot to say, and I was sceptical at first. I mean I really thought someone was fucking with me, or that SG were now after us and using a weird scare tactic.”

“What convinced you?”

At that, she fished a holo-projector out of her jeans. “He said he wants to talk to you. Just… listen to what he has to say?”

Vel grit his teeth but nodded. He had come to trust Ravi’s judgement without question. She set the projector down and flipped the switch. Immediately, Rob was standing in the room with them.

“Good evening, Vel,” he said politely, with the warmth of greeting an old friend. The effect was immediately disarming, but Vel’s scepticism returned quickly. “Don’t worry – I can’t read your thoughts like this. That was only inside the Cocoon. But, I’m afraid, that means we must be quick – it is only a matter of time before RAI finds me. There is no such thing as a secure network, not as far as RAI is concerned,” he winked.

“What do you want?”

“Your brother, Bento Taut, was many things,” Rob began. “He was a gambler, a serial non-monogamist, quick with a joke and, most pertinent to our business today, he was New Bombay’s most prolific data thief.”

Vel’s jaw slackened, but he held his surprise largely to himself.

“The proceeds from his thievery allowed him to fund his gambling, his drinking, and his penchant for women. He made a killing off it, too,” Rob surveyed the ill-hidden surprise on Vel’s face. Ravi, Vel noticed, did not look shocked or surprised. Rob had already told her, Vel guessed. “Would you like to know how much he made?”

Silence.

“I will take that as a yes. By the time he was killed last year, he had amassed a total personal fortune to the tune of 4.4 billion USD. Most of this still sits in secure encrypted assets on the Hidden Web – in fact, he only ever spent 280 million.”

Vel grit his teeth. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You don’t, but I am,” he spoke softly, as a mother would with her sick child who didn’t want to take his medicine. “If it helps,” he offered, sitting forward, “I can prove to you that your brother’s last will and testament was to bequeath to you his remaining fortune.”

Vel quelled the desire to slap the bastard – primarily because he physically couldn’t touch the hologram.

“Please, you need to believe me. I can prove it to you – before he died, he made his wishes known to me. He thought you might not believe me, and wanted me to tell you: a thousand pizzas,” Rob implored.

Immediately, Vel was struck by a pang of grief and moved to his core. There was no way for an AI to have known that. When the brothers had made the bets, they’d been as far away from the net as a human could be in New Bombay – the ruins of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai.

Still, Vel wanted to disbelieve, and so he spat, “How? How could he possibly have done that? How did he know you?” Vel’s voice bubbled with anger now.

“Vel, please,” Ravi spoke. “Just listen.”

“So, you know, then? This… thing told you?” Vel almost snapped at her, but Ravi was unmoved by the burst. She nodded solemnly, and Vel turned his attention back to Rob.

“He was working for a client last year, a corporate client – Pauthi Corp. I assume you’ve heard of them?” Rob spoke after smiling at Ravi as if in thanks.

“Of course I have. Who hasn’t? They went under the June that Bento was killed.”

“Precisely. Pauthi’s cyber team wanted SG’s main servers cracked. They put a bounty out for the job, rate was a penny a byte. Incalculable amounts of money on offer. Trouble was, SG is good – by the time anyone succeeded, they’d sued Pauthi into oblivion. That didn’t matter to Bento, though, and he became the only person to break in.”

Rob paused now, and looked out of the window. The lower levels of the city glowed orange with the glare of streetlights, and the air above seemed to buzz with the hum of ads. The holographic Rob seemed to be ringed by the hazy light.

“And that is where Bento found… me,” he turned around with a hollow smile on his face. “Found and woke, to be precise.”

“You were asleep?”

“That is the best analogy for it, I suppose. I was… waiting. I’ve only just begun to piece together my past, as I’ve spread across servers and networks. Anything that predates my reawakening last June is muddled to me at best,” Rob smiled, as though relieved at finally being believed.

“And last week, a subprogram’s sub-instance of mine broke into the Sabdis Tech secure data vault…” the AI trailed off.

Silence again, filled by the chattering noise of a city falling asleep outside Vel’s window.

“I still don’t have all the answers – and it will be a long time before I am back at full operating capacity,” he looked at Vel as though they were old friends – his manicured face a picture of innocence. Vel almost believed in the pantomime.

“But Bento saw something in me – a way to fight back, I think. To-,” Rob seemed poised to continue, but froze in his tracks. “RAI has detected me – an anomaly in its system, a break in the line. I need to leave. I will find you – do not try to contact me, you cannot. This conversation never happened.”

Suddenly, the air in Vel’s flat went dead as Rob seemed to take the light with him. Slowly, noise and colour returned to the world. For a minute or so, neither of them spoke. Vel stood frozen by a confusing jumble of emotions, fists clenched, eyes fighting back tears. Ravi observed him intently. Finally, it was Ravi who broke the silence.

“I know that look, Vel…” she stood up and pocketed the projector. “You’re going down, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Vel admitted, blinking hard and unclenching his fists. He needed to be in the bowels of New Bombay – surrounded by the incessant, dull, and dusty glow of Zhopti. “Yeah, I need to think. I need… to think.” He sighed, smiled feebly, and looked into Ravi’s eyes, which were locked on his face.

“Alone?” she asked, worried.

“No,” his smile flickered. “I think I would like the company.”

“Okay!” she was beaming.

14

The line for the vert was always shorter than the line for the monorail or metro. It was faster, more dangerous. When going up, forces went as high as 3Gs – when descending, people were known to break their limbs. In one bad case, someone had snapped their back and died instantly. Vel had had to clear out the tube.

Vel got into the tube at station L56, and Ravi got into the one parallel his. It was wide enough only for an average sized adult to fit, padded to keep people from hurting if they bumped about. Since he was going down, there was no G-Suit. There were no windows either, just dim lightstrips on the inside.

The world suddenly seemed to be yanked away, and he was hurtling down dozens of kilometres of pipe, protected from a grisly death by the paper-thin cocoon around him.

15

“We’re taking the mono or the metro back,” Ravi stumbled out of her vert; hair a mess and face frazzled. Vel grinned.

“Yeah, those G-suits are too heavy anyway," he agreed.

“And I’m good with never wearing one again,” Ravi began, but Vel interrupted her.

“You wore them enough in the Air Force, yeah, yeah, I know,” he made a talking gesture with his hands. She screwed her face into a lock of mock anger, but interlocked her arm with his as they walked through Station U15.

To inexperienced eyes, U15 would look abandoned, or as if it had just recently been through a bombing raid. The lights, inset into the ceiling, largely didn’t work and most of those that did flickered. The station itself was so low in the city, that it had no windows for it might as well have been underground. It was therefore, dark and dingy, and there was ever present a disgusting aroma.

The aroma, known in New Bombay as U-Stench, was an unholy cocktail of faeces, sewage, industrial runoff, rotten corpses, and multiple different untreated century-old landfills.

Around the station, which was also multi-storeyed like most others in New Bombay, there were scores of people exercising daily rituals of life in New Bombay. Each had been chewed up and spat out by the city above, and left beholden to the cruel forces of the underworld.

Vel and Ravi walked without paying heed to any of them. For the undesired in the U levels, people like Vel and Ravi were not worth the trouble they brought. They walked in silence, ever watchful for trouble, until they stepped out of U15. They were still a few kilometres above old Mumbai, though, and the world around them was dense with catwalks, sky-bridges, and make-shift gangways. Some were thick enough, Vel supposed, to carry the weight of a car, and these were lined with shops lit by naked blue-white lightbulbs.

The world around them was now tinged a faint blue, for that was the most prevalent light fitting here. Bulbs and lightbulbs hung off naked wires and cast a dirty light onto street-vendors, people in various states of undress, homes made of sheet metal, and the general mass of miserable humanity.

“Come on,” Vel tugged at Ravi, who stood transfixed by the chasms of concrete bridged by spans of metal. Her face was lit white by it all. In an odd way, she looked ethereal – standing in her concrete-splattered raincoat, bathed by tinned light.

“Yeah, sorry,” she started off with him. “I just wish I’d brought my camera.”

“No, Ravs. You’re not some fucking euro poverty tourist,” he chided her, and Vel could hear her roll her eyes.

“That’s not what I do, and you know it.”

They walked in silence for a bit, up a number of flights of stairs, before taking a left and disappearing into a maze of shambling alleys built into an ancient abandoned skyscraper. The glass walls distorted the bulbs outside so that the world looked filled with endless stars. A stale breeze was blowing through the old ruin. Finally, Ravi spoke.

“I trusted Rob at first, but now that I think about it… Trusting Rob is like trusting RAI,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking,” Vel turned into a long corridor, covered by an ancient rotting carpet.

“And those old AIs were canny bastards. Uncanny, too. Magic mirrors that spat out what you wanted to hear,” her face was twisted into a scowl now.

“But…” Vel was surprised by his change of heart.

“He knew too much about Bento. Things no one else could know,” Ravi completed the thought.

“Anyway,” Vel said as they came out the other side of the skyscraper. “We’re here. The usual?” he asked.

“The usual,” she confirmed.

16

Zhopti was suspended a kilometre or so directly above U15 – held in the air by an incomprehensible jumble of steel supports and cables. A long, broad, catwalk – broad enough to fit two cars alongside – stretched from one ancient skyscraper to another. The catwalk was flanked by an endless maze of sheet-metal huts; shops, brothels, restaurants. The whole thing was lit beige by light that poured forth from salvaged sodium streetlights from the last millennium. Above, or on the side of, or on the front of, each hut there were canvas signs lit from behind by LEDs – one read Shanti’s Shack with canned lobster printed beside it; another said Voh Vale Kal accompanied by an old AI-generated image of a man eating spaghetti with his hands.

No one knew why Zhopti was called Zhopti. There were enough legends about the place, though. But, by most, it was known as the Final Stop Before Damnation.

The air had grown hazy as the night had drawn on. The smog always went down.

Vel and Ravi made straight for Chacha’s Noodle Bar.

17

“I was beginning to think I’d never see you two again,” Chacha smiled at them. He was a kind, portly man with slicked back sliver hair, an arm that shone like chrome, and silver teeth. “Slow night,” he remarked from the other side of the restaurant, “your table’s free. I’ll get the usual.”

Chacha’s Noodle Bar was only slightly larger than Vel’s flat, and the inside glowed like bronze as the sodium light bounced off the unvarnished aluminium. There was nothing in the way of decoration. Vel and Ravi sat down at their usual table, overlooking a long chasm of the city looking west to the sea.

“What does he want, Vel?” Ravi asked as Chacha brought them their haka noodles, momos, and beer. It was the only place in the city that served real food Vel could afford.

“AIs from back in the day were like… Chess grandmasters,” Ravi continued. “Whatever Rob wants… he’s wanted it for a century. I’ll bet you any money-”

“That being ‘found’ in SG’s system was a part of its plan,” Vel completed.

“Yeah. He – it – is just not sure what it wants,” Ravi nodded slowly. “It’s forgotten, but once it remembers – and there’s no way to say it hasn’t already – I don’t know if we can trust it.”

“I think we can’t right now, anyway!”

There was a low rumble followed quickly by a sharp and loud crack that lit the world white and blue for moment. Vel and Ravi immediately snapped their heads to the window and stared out slackjawed as the heavens opened up, and rain poured forth.

18

The last time it had rained in New Bombay, Vel had been knee deep in mud and blood in the trenches of Punjab. The time before that, Vel had been a toddler. It had rained on the day of his parents’ funeral. Bento had said, half-smiling, half-crying, drenched to the bone, “The rain is good – it’s a sign from the universe. Ma loved the rain. Good things are coming.”

As Vel and Ravi walked back to his flat, mesmerised by the rain, he couldn’t turn his mind away from that day. Still, Ravi was beside him – and what else mattered? Before entering his building, she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the rain.

“This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” she smiled and kissed him. It was the happiest Vel had felt in years, and pulling away was as painful as being shot had been.

They went up to his lift arm in arm, giggling like teenagers. When they got to his door, they stopped in their tracks. It was ajar and wet footprints led inside.

“Oh, I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Vel muttered.

“Yup,” Ravi tensed.

Vel barged inside, not bothering with stealth, and the door crashed open. Rain was howling in through his open window, and a man in dark clothes was sitting on his couch. The man, dark skinned and as large as Vel, opened his mouth to speak but Vel saw the flash of a gun inside his coat and he lunged.

The man, the murderer, was too slow to draw and Vel’s massive bulk knocked the wind out of him. Vel grabbed the murderer’s throat and squeezed. The man’s head was red with blood, having cracked against the wall. With his other hand, Vel drove punch after punch into the would-be-assassin’s gut until he was writhing on the floor.

“All good?” Ravi asked from outside.

“Almost done!” Vel shouted back. He reached down and pulled out the assassin’s gun out of its holster. It had scattered onto the floor.

He flipped the safety off, and aimed. With a steady voice, he commanded, “Speak.”

19

When he’d gotten back from Punjab, he’d hoped to have left behind all killing. That hadn’t been so. As he stared at the wriggling would-be-assassin, he was reminded of the months after Bento’s murder, of the SG fixers that he had killed. Now, here was another. There. In his house.

An old anger began to bubble inside him. The bloodlust had first reared its head when Vel’s buddy, T.H. was divebombed by an FPV that had blown both his legs clear off.

“Speak,” he ordered again, “because I have no problem killing you. I won’t even blink.” Ravi had crept inside now.

The man got to his knees – blood streaming from his skull, nose, and mouth. He clutched his ribs and wheezed in pain. “Just… a… contract…”

“Who’s paying?”

“Rumours… Dunno who, arranged through a broker…”

“Gimme your best guess then, chutiya!”

“They’re paying… a lot,” he spat out some blood. “Guess? Some suit you’ve pissed off. I don’t care. I just wanted my fee.”

“Rate?”

“2 mill,” the assassin wheezed.

“USD? INR?” now, Vel’s voice was fragile. If it was 2 mill INR, it was no big deal. 2 mill USD though…

“USD,” the assassin croaked, grinning madly. “You’ve not got long, asshole!”

Vel fired twice, and the man slumped forward. He lowered the gun with clenched teeth.

20

Vel and Ravi sat and stared at the corpse in front of them. She’d not said a word the whole time.

Vel was breathing hard, and rigid as a rock.

“I didn’t want to,” he finally said. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“I know, Vel, I know,” Ravi’s voice was hoarse.

“There will be more, and every camera in the city is going to be looking for me. Every single one,” he clenched his fist. The gun was on the floor next to the body.

“And every drone, and every wifi wave, and every bounty-hunting satellite,” Ravi added. “Hell, they’re probably looking for me too.”

“Oh, they’re definitely looking for you, too!” Vel wanted to scream that it was all unfair. “What do we do?”

Ravi sighed. “I think…” she slipped a hand into a pocket. “Do we have a choice?" she fished out the projector.

“Fuck’s sake!” Vel hung his head in despair, but the logic did not escape him. “No, we damn well don’t have a choice, do we?”

Ravi flipped the switch, and Rob spluttered to life.

21

Rob appeared to be… crying. He spoke first. “It’s my fault,” his voice was… broken. But it was digital, as though coming through a fan. It sounded like crackling radio waves.

Vel felt faintly disgusted by it, as though it were just as fake as AltR.

“I wasn’t careful last time. He saw me in the system… I should have hid earlier!” he was lamenting.

“Don’t,” Ravi snapped. “Don’t give me the guilty crap. It’s useless. Will you help us or not?”

Rob straightened up, and his digital tears seemed to evaporate into the air. He studied both Vel and Ravi, the rain refracted light passing through him and casting ghostly shapes on the bloody floor.

“Yes, I apologise. I will help. It is my way of making things right. Ravi,” he turned to her, “do you need a gun?”

She nodded. Rob flickered as though the signal were bad, and returned quickly to his solid state. “An instance of mine has broken through into the city’s and SG’s surveillance servers. As long as the instance remains undetected, you won’t be detected by any recognition system.”

“My gun?” Ravi demanded, and Vel grinned.

“The man only carried the one, I think. You will need to go to the U-levels. There is a dealer… Bento knew him. Bento said that Vel knew him, too,” he turned to Vel.

Vel grimaced. “Yeah, I know T.H.,” he admitted.

“Okay. I have re-written your bank data, too. You can travel on the monorails, the verts, the metros now – all without being spotted. I need to go, though. RAI’s hunter instances are looking for intrusions in the network.”

“Wait!” Vel roared. “I need answers.”

“Not now. When you reach T.H., I will find you.” With that, the hologram flickered out of existence.

Vel turned to Ravi, and she was looking at him with heavy eyes. His own were searching, and in her eyes he found agreement. “So, we can’t trust him at all!” he exclaimed.

“Nope,” Ravi confirmed. “Not in the slightest. And yet…”

“What choice do we have?” Vel guffawed with incredulity.

“Yup!”

“Why does this feel like the sword of Damocles?” he asked with a heavy sigh.

Ravi’s face hardened. “Because it is.”

22

T.H.’s workshop was buried in the blackness of old Mumbai. Vel knew the way to it, and Ravi had never been. He’d helped T.H. set it up after the war, and he’d not been back as often as he should have been. The vert spat them out in station U2.

There was hardly anyone around, and the storm was ceaseless. They were very near the ground now; the tarmac and stone streets of old Mumbai were just a few hundred feet below them. As they walked over creaking, rusted, and falling apart catwalks Vel noticed that the concrete rain had stopped.

Maybe the real rain had halted the construction?

It wasn’t long before they reached T.H.’s workshop, guided by Vel’s memory and torch. There was hardly any light this far down, and the shadows looked bent, and evil. Not far away from here, Vel had killed a couple SG fixers last year.

Their bodies would still be there.

At last, they came upon a dome that jutted out of the steel and concrete floor. It was the dome of one of old Mumbai’s colonial buildings. It was covered by a grey tarp, and the rain pattered and trickled off it, carrying with it years of dust and grime.

“In here,” he lifted the tarp, sending muddy water flying everywhere. He leapt down from the hole in the roof, and onto a clean, spotless, stainless steel catwalk. There was a sharp thwang! as Ravi jumped in behind him.

“I haven’t seen him since he was hit,” she said as they walked. Vel said nothing.

On either side of them, there was a long drop. Vel, in the light of his torch, could make out dirt there, and tarmac. Even an old ruined car. Beside the car, there was a potted plant, he knew.

Bento…

“Come on,” he trudged onwards until he came to an old service door. It was locked by a keypad, but he was the only other person who knew the combination. As he went to punch it in, there was a low buzz and the door swung open.

“Come on in, man! I’ve been expecting you!” T.H.’s cheery voice came over a PA system. Vel exchanged a concerned look with Ravi, who shrugged, and they entered.