Synthetic Monsters

“But you've never called me for hope, now have you?”  The voice sounded like leaves blowing across a grave.  Kiki felt nothing for it, fear long dead, a stain in a shipping container.  But, some things she couldn't let go. She kept silent until the connection was gone.

“Velaya, what is your opinion?” The sound of her name over Nahmi's lips brought her attention back to the gathering.

As she turned and smiled at them, she said what she knew they wanted to hear, “I believe it is an excellent plan. It will most certainly keep things in compliance,” And she let that smile that they all adored cross her face. It was like a magic trick, soft murmurs and nods erupted from the afternoon luncheon. Everyone there was proud of themselves for having such a brilliant idea.

The conversation resumed as they reviewed their plans on bringing the lower hive into compliancy. She only sat there smiling, looking at them. It had initially startled her how they all bore similar appearances, each with sun darkened skin to boast that they were of status enough to be above the pollution of the planet and bask in the sunlight. All of them bright green eyes, mostly a byproduct of families inter-breeding for centuries on end. Each of them had a slightly slopped forehead and large protruding chins.  Even their hair styles were the same, the men kept their skulls shaven to a shine and the women kept their hair in long and lavish braids adorned with jewels that were taken from the hallowed out core of Hive.  The colors they wore were bright, almost neons, contrasts to their tans, showing enough skin that it was barely acceptable for an afternoon gathering. Every manner and exchange that they engaged in was done so only to illuminate their wealth, even among themselves, trying to establish the pecking order.

These games were hobbies of the rich and once she had learned them, she had lost interest in them. Why did she remain among the court of Hive's elite when even her essence felt obtuse there? She sat there pondering if the answer really was as simple as fresh air and clean water. She knew Hive in a much more intimate aspect. She had navigated though all of the layers, from the lowest rabbled ruin dwellings to the tallest spire that held the delicate glass room they were all currently socializing in.  

The discussion had turned to the planning for the Day of Unity. A cold kind of sensation gripped, her fluttering attention shifted back to the conversation.  The elders of the group spoke fondly of the previous cycles for Unity and the younger ones of the group who would be in first attendance listened with awe, their thick jaws loose and slacked.  If she could have taken an halo-image, it would have captured generations of inbreeding, almost comical considering their status on Hive and its place in the universe. Eyes half closed, she tried to chase after the cold consciousness that occurred when the topic was born, but without assistance, she was not able to pursue it. Perhaps it was just the hope she would be in attendance, carried away from the monotony of her limited and present company.

“Velaya, have you ever been to Pillar?” Essis, or perhaps it was Dene, asked her.

“I hear it is a lovely place, a lavish green landscape and clear oceans,” She said, skillfully as she completely avoided answering the question so she would not have to lie.  They accepted her answer, without questioning.  After all, they seemingly knew where she was form.  The lowest levels of Hive. The conversation continued around her and offered reinforcement to her statement.  Her smile became genuine as they spoke.

Once attention went back to their trivial matters, she shifted. Why did the topic of Pillar and the Day of Unity stand out? Idly listening, she moved her fingers over the sweeping neck of the silken green gown she wore, empress cut with the fabric bunched and draped over her shoulders.  Touching as if the answer was just upon her person, fingers traced those bands around her neck.  She wore three thick metal rings, one of copper, one of silver, and one of gold. Her hosts and hostesses had assumed those were her way of remaining humble in their company.  They took it as a sign of her submission; graceful enough to be adorned in their company but not audacious to consider herself equal by wearing gems. Her appearance was a careful balance that had been to easy to learn. By the moment, she could feel the answer about why Pillar stood out slipping further away, but she came to one conclusion.  “I must go,” She said out loud as if in a trance.

The melody of conversation died, over a dozen sets of bright green eyes turned and focused on her. Superficially, they each cast off their emotions - discouraged, frustrated, satisfied, unworried, “To Pillar. I should make plans to go as a visitor for the Day of Unity,” Velaya said, against the general atmosphere of the room, silently addressing it it. Her expression an uncomfortably neutral, physically unable to make eye contact with them at the moment. She trembled under those gazes, focus coming to a sharp pinpoint.

“It would be lovely if you traveled with us for Unity,” Senator Sofiya said, her voice musical. Slowly others agreed with the eldest of the Hive house, the confabulation turned dangerously as if Sofiya had suggested the idea herself.  

Soon enough the conversation resumed, now drifting with causal plans for the upcoming Day of Unity. Hive leaders would also speak to other leaders of the plan that would help ensure the complacency of lower Hive. This was a very important matter to address, and may require outside help. In the lowest part of the cities of Hive there was an under utilized resource dwelling there. People. People were always needed for cheap labor, for mining, for defense, and for cheap manufacturing.  The massive numbers that dwelled in low caste Hive society could even be used to expand military forces and exported as cheap labor to other planets. They came already trained in some ways.

Velaya knew well enough what went on in the darkest parts of Hive.

As the conversation bloomed around her, she lost herself in thought thinking about the lowest parts of Hive; the parts that was her home at one time.  The pleasant scent of flora faded, and her memory invoked the toxic sent of dirtied water being boiled clean and the smell of 'cast off' being cooked for a cheap high.  In the lowest part of Hive, she knew there was no streets and there was no law. Dwellings were carved out of the rubble that was once the upper parts of the city-scape but had toppled down. Heat and gases were vented up from the core of the planet; allowing poorly networked natural gas and heat serve as a fuel source to power lights and other necessary devices. There was no pattern to inhabitations or streets in low parts of Hive and everything was covered in perpetual grime, the consistent sump dripping from the higher parts of the cities.  

Drug lords with paramilitary-like discipline reigned in power in the lowest and unincorporated parts of the the hive cities.  Mass population that dwelled below the middle and upper areas of Hive were rarely taught to read, but they were taught the skills of harsh work conditions, a short life spans, and a willingness to die for a cause. War, was not a popular thing to think about, especially when it was occurring daily less than three hundred kilometers down from where the royal observatory resided.

There was a sense of hopelessness in the lowest part of the hive cities. People dwelled towards the core of the cities to avoid the poisonous smog that blotted out sun; thick, brown and toxic. Makeshift seals were created to hold back the effects of the smog.  However, there were people who would venture out to ground level, but most felt it took a certain type of madness, to explore the land there in hope of bringing back something from the outlands.  The outskirts of the cities were where waste was cast and the wildlife was unchecked and mutated.

Upward mobility in Hive was almost an impossibility.  Barriers existed both physically and socioeconomically, creating an informal caste system that was vastly denied by the ruling class.

There were guards that resided at the tunnels that connected the lower parts of Hive to the middle parts. Port entrances were blocked and heavily guarded; work documentation was one of the only ways to pass through the gates. Daily, masses of people would go to the barriers, in hope of crossing to a better life. The sound of begging would rang out for miles in the lower to middle hive city transition, cries of desperation echoing in the zones dedicated to manufacturing.

Oh, but there was always smuggling across those lines.  Those that took a different kind of risks. A special kind of skill.

The middle hive, however, enjoyed luxuries such as government presence, planned roadways, and travel by train and aeronautics. Life could be hard, but the middle parts of Hive was a paradise compared to what rested below the smog line. This was where most white collar and bureaucratic measures were enforced. Children had to attend public school, reading was common and there were several artificial locations beauty that had been carefully planned in the planetary cityscape, to attract tourist and remind citizens of Hive that it had a native nature.  

Velaya sighed and shook her head, her attention going back to the room as she pulled back from her thoughts and looked at the faces of the ruling class.  All of them nearly the same, just with different ages hung upon them.  Senator Sofiya stood and placed her saucer over her tea cup, indicating the gathering was over.

Obediently the company all stood in unison and clapped.  Velaya clapped too, feeling a longing for diversity.  For once, looking forward to a regal event.  The Day of Unity.  And in the departure she fell in step beside Nahmi, her fingers resting on the girls arm, “We are going to have such a wonderful time of Pillar, a wonderful time indeed.”

“...a wonderful time indeed,” Nahmi said, her eyes distant and her mouth dry. The smell of water in the air and greenery just over the horizon seemed to occur to Nahmi as she walked. A memory that almost felt like hers. “Wonderful time,” She said, emptied this time.  

Coders and Violent Vixens.  I responded, she fell off the face of the the earth, I don’t know what happened to her.  Maybe the witches swallowed her up.  Kiki has ghetto tendencies.  Donny is another story for another time. 

The ghetto was a beautiful and magic place; one she barely fit into but one that offered her certain types of comforts. One was, the almost inability for the locals to properly lock down a WiFi router. It had taken her less than fifteen minutes of war-driving to have a wide-berth of networks at her disposable. She moved to the rhythm of the urban landscape the way only a pariah could, with a combination of fearlessness and cluelessness. Has the silver-blond vixen moved down the street she caught the eyes of gangsters, thugs, dealers, and of course those looking for a little late night love for a payday. Little did she know, one of the blackened too-nice for the neighborhood cars that passed with its tinted windows would meet a different kind of danger that night. One that was better equipped to handle the novelty of such acts, with her garter tucked gun and hot-and-cold tendencies.

With a tablet tucked in the nook of her arm, as if oblivious to the cars slowing and the foot traffic that she was building behind her. Sure, she heard the voices well enough, trouble was a language she spoke well. She was currently viewing a map of rental properties in the area, the kind of shit slum-lords threw up on BackPages; and sometimes cash or ass was the payment. However, with a pocket full of blanks, she wasn't looking to pay anything. She shifted, turning, and taking a few steps backwards to see a group of three males following behind her. She looked them over and spotted their insignia easily enough.

A creep of a smile crawled across her face, she said a name, “Fuentes' boys? Yes? Oh, he'd be unhappy should harm come. He'd call for the Santa Muerte to lay her hands upon, y'all,” She said, still walking backwards, watching the expressions on their faces get a little bunched up. She knew Donny was gone; this part of the ghetto out of his hold, but there was still that question – that had never been answered. They kind of fell out of pace, and as she turned, she heard the exchange between them. She didn't speak Spanish well enough to translate it all, but she cut down an alley and made haste to the next block, using her small stature and urban landscape to her advantage. Confusion was the name of the game.  

Coming between a long closed pager shop and a fried chicken shack, she pulled open a rusted, gated door and took the dozen or so steps up to the second flat part of the building.  Using the illumination of the tablet, she spied 35B; supposedly empty, as of Saturday according to the post. One of the blank keys were pulled from her pocket and ground into the lock, protest of course, as she shimmied it, trying to get the inner-locking pins to turn. She stood there, the weight of her body against the door as she pressed with her right hand, and twisted the knob with her left. There was a certain amount of give, that was a good sign, and eventually, after more work than it should have taken, the lock gave way and she stepped into the empty rental flat. The first smell that hit her, was the smell of mold; aware that there was an apartment above her.  She closed the door behind her, flipping the dead bolt, as she held her breath, opening a window that gave a grand view of the opposing alleyway. The smell of the city, fought with the smell of the mold of the apartment. This, she decided, would be the foul scent of home, as she pulled the messenger bag from her shoulder, sitting it on the narrow counter in the kitchenette.

Switches were tried, no power. She was barely surprised by this discovery. The wet smell should have been enough to know that the minimum effort had been spent on this place. What the hell did a slum-lord care if the place stayed powered enough for basic maintenance. She stared at the fridge, hopeful that nothing had been left inside. Not that it would be of much use. She could probably grift an outlet from the apartment above her; enough to keep the computer charged.  She sat in the window that led out to the rusty fire-escape, a near straight drop down into the alley way. “Home sweet home,” She muttered, fingertips pressing though code on the tablet, addressing the work that needed to be done on a more immediate basis. Simple pull jobs that allowed her not to generate too much heat, since she planed on settling in for a week.

Tired of running, and avoiding the motel scene after the last time.  Last motel she got locked down, twisted up in somebody else's business. Some biker bullshit with some Asian faces. Feds and CIA showed up; she kept her bike then, but the second time she hadn't been so lucky. She had a car, but she didn't bring it here. She was fond of it having things like..tires. No, the ghetto was a vacation spot for her. A place were she wasn't looked for, mainly because government agencies failed to grasp her personality profile. At best, she get harassed by a cop, but if she acted like an itchy crackhead, they too quickly abandoned. Bringing her in would mean paperwork. And if she acted exceptionally crazy, that meant an EDO, which meant more paperwork and a hospital bill for a detainee. She had to know the game to play it, and at this point, she was getting to be a pro.

One leg hanging out of the window, she actually did some work while using the remaining battery life on the laptop. Sure, she could go somewhere public and charge it without issue, but that would mean, well, interaction. And for the moment, it just wasn't on the table.

Time slipped by, the old inevitable. She came back to reality with a ache in her hip and a low battery warning on the computer. She eyed the time and from the life style she lived, it was still an appropriate time to go out. With minutes left on the battery, she looked up the public transportation schedule. A stop was a few blocks away. The screen blinked out and she dropped the computer back in her bag. She wasn't leaving it in a place with a busted lock. She had been burned before. Leaving the window open, that moldy smell just starting to dissipate, she moved and went back out into the night.

Sticking to the main streets, she made the next bus, paying with a CTA card that she reloaded with a fake name and password. Easy enough to do on a network that was so vast. The city had more people that some notable countries. A pair of headphones connected to nothing..were kept on her head, a way to avoid conversation as she read an old dog eared copy of Transmetropolitan. Warren Ellis had written an urban god in Spider Jerusalem, the undertones there and the city raw. It was interesting how so much of the work applied to the current city-scape. As the city bus fumed, jerking its way though the stops the ghetto melted into something nicer, till finally she was in the more down town district.

Rip cord pulled and she exited the bus; fitting in a little better here..then the places from which she came. She moved down the street, watching the people that passed. And fate, which was a terrible thing, landed her in the same space as another known; with a name as elusive as Code C how could she not be interested in the general gathering of such a place. It was like then name of the place appealed to her in an intimate nature. Was it a coders club? Was it a computer themed bar? She had the look of absolute delight which lasted up until the point she pushed though the door.

Disappointment was palatable. “Oh.” Was all she uttered as she flashed the first fake ID she pulled out of her messenger bag. Most assumed the silver-blonde tresses were a dye job anyway, but at least the height was right on this one. The bored door man glanced at it then her, and let her pass into the place without another word.

To her, the music was too loud. It tugged on the edges of her reality, sober, and threatened to invoke colors. The pounding of bass bouncing blue off the walls, the shrill singing the same red-pink color as the neon that advertised ice cold beer. She was only a few feet past the bouncer, when she paused, her neck arched her gaze on the grimy ductwork that loomed above. 'Pull it together,' She told herself, a wash of longing those opioids that had made shit like this so much easier.  She let out a deep breath; letting music be music and the reverb be part of the background. Small paw rubbed her face and she moved, to the bar, already accumulating attention.

A man who was too sweaty, heavily scented with Axe body spray, took to her left, “Baby, dance,” She said over the music and touched her arm. His hand moist. She winched and physically shook her arm as if trying to shake him off the same way she would a bug or something equally annoying.

Expect, he didn't seem to get the hint and he followed her to the bar, still talking in Kiki's ear, words which she barely comprehended. She understood he had a midwest accent. She understood there was a slight slurring, which didn't surprise her considering the quality of his breath. But the man was the worst type annoying – he was persistent. Though, a small blessing he hadn't touched her again.  

And, in her reluctance to dance, she went to the bar. There was a bit of an open landscape here, so when she came to set near her contact, it was nothing that could be mistaken for an accident.

Her contact had a look that wanted attention, the heels, the lipstick, the little black skirt, the leather jacket. It was the kind of predatory want that could easily draw the eyes of men. And in those moments, as she took a seat two down from her - Kiki was hoping to shed her unwanted companion on the woman who was way more deserving of attention.  

Like magic, the man took the stool between the two of them, looking back and forth between them like a hobo that just won the Lottery. “Ladies, Ladies,” The man said, rubbing his a-shirt, rolling it up enough to show off the best six pack a personal trainer could buy, “Let me buy you both drinks,” He said, with the cantor of a sales man.

“Orange soda,” Was all Kiki said, moving her bag off her shoulder, and setting it at her feet, twirling the strap around her right ankle if anyone should choose to bother her bag of livelihood.  She glanced past the man, to her contact, gauging her reaction, hopeful it would be warmer to the man she had already found incredibly annoying.

-Dedicated to Cara, she of no response.  The first entry in my hall of shame.

This is a woven history; peeks into Kiki’s background and the ties that she had even from birth.  Here, ‘family business’ is discussed and Frisches Mezkrin becomes more established.  

It was a matter of fact that she made good money for black market work she did.  On one side of the coin she had become somewhat of a professional at finding people.  This was a skill she was commonly contacted for.  Honestly, most of the time the digital deviant didn’t have to leave her home to do so. Footwork cost extra, everyone who had ever employed her was warned.  Public contact was a risk. On the other side of the coin, her safe house had a high reliability soldering station, fiber optics, computers, the works. She was on every federal list since she could remember, but trouble was intangible like some etherial mythology that meant nothing until cold cuffs clicked.  Luckily for her, it wouldn’t be happening this night.

Some people wasted hours on the internet.  She made better use of her time.  Data-mining, reviewing data she received, playing with algorithms, and such as that.  In her down time, those rare free moments she always went back to it.  She always went back to searching, trying to connect the dots based on the information that Gerulf Beckerbauer had drunkenly slurred at her as he died.  She still remembered the thick German words falling from his mouth as the blood lulled out of his neck in lazy waves.

Eight years out and she still remembered every word like it was on the endless loop.  He told her how.  He damned her with those words, he made the exile from the maternal side of the family an easy cut. When she was announced a pariah by her Grandfather, it didn’t even hurt. And she had never buried that axe that she carried for those events; perhaps she would one day make it back to Germany.  Perhaps one day she would bury that axe in her grandfathers head.  In simple summery, Frisches Mezkrin was a monster.

She had come to an understanding at a very young age that monsters didn’t live under her bed or in the closet, instead they walked around wearing faces of people.  Sometimes people she knew.  Mezkrin was a human trafficker.  From Germany, he exported underaged girls from poorer parts of Russia, Armenia, Lithuania and Poland. The scam was he would send his handlers to do his work, promise families of these young girls a better life for their children and basically run a con that essentially sold the girls into slavery. They were sent to the States, often by long and questionable barge transport.

Gerulf Beckerbauer was a handler for the overseas transport.  There was a need to keep the girls quite and alive.  He was an experienced handler, with thirty-five years under his belt. He was Frisches Mezkrin’s wolf. Gerulf had bragged how he would do whatever was necessary to get the girl’s ‘ready’ for their new lives as they made the travel from Germany to the States.  What did it take to get a seven year ready for prostitution? Gerulf’s life ended thinking he would demonstrate the answer.  

From the States, Gerulf had told her as he bleed out, her Grandfather would pull kids from the foster care system.  A high rate of run-aways, minorities, and fragmented systems made it easy pickings for underaged children to be trafficked.  There was a network of foster parents that had provided him with children on the East Coast. Mercifully, that network had been dismantled, by means that were less than honest but more than effective.  It was a different story, and it had done nothing to ease her inquiry into the matter. And, the problem was starting to occur again, though, honestly she didn’t know these days if it really was a better system of reporting run-aways from foster care or if it was the slow building of the network again. If it was?  It would be addressed.  She would do everything she could to ruin her Grandfather who proudly called himself the Warlord of Germany.  

All these memories, baggage she carried around, felt a little heavier these days.  Merin was dead, a suicide perhaps. She passed away in her beautiful apartment overlooking the ocean.  All Kiki could hope for was that she felt no pain.  Merin was one of the ones taken from the States to Germany.  Kiki had met Merin in a German hospital, Helios Klinikum, in Berlin.  They had been the same age and ended up roomed together.  On a locked unit.  On a wing dedicated to Frisches Mezkrin to honor his finical contribution to the institution.  There were others there, locked away in rooms but she had been with Merin. She remembered meeting the girl, she remembered the story she told, and remembered thinking that the world was wrong. She’d seen the marks first hand, the bruises, the broken bones, the signs of frequently injected drugs for compliance and infertility in a girl her age.

She had made a choice to come back to the States, to be smuggled in. Her grandfather told her she would never make it back to America.  He was wrong.  Once home she had to deal with her mothers disappointment and her fathers evasiveness.  Her grandfather had her declared as dead. Her duel citizenship questionable because of that; she was an undocumented immigrant before she hit eighteen.  The good times really just kept rolling.  

Tonight, data was being reviewed on microfilm that had been placed on a jump drive and sent to her.  She was going through old cases concerning missing foster kids, ones that were around the time that Merin disappeared.  This was the type of physical work she paid others to do.  The work wasn’t hard and she paid well.  This job she had sat up through a university e-mail and she had found an east coast college student to pull the records.  To her, it was six grand well spent, the quality of the microfilm scans were good and the follow up e-mail suggested the student was eager for more.  On her desk, there were a handful of other jump drives with similar information on them, from all up and down the east coast.

She finished prowling through the images on the screen, seeing the same story over and over reported in the disconnected fashion these foster run-away stories brought, she put in another jump stick.  Her labeling system wasn’t great and a few slides in before she realized there was more local stuff.  She noted a story that didn’t belong, one about a murder and a missing foster child from the time frame that Merin would have been taken. But it was a Vegas story.  She skimmed quickly and moved on.  Seven more images, then another murder of foster parents.  She paused, skimmed the story.  Different areas, different reporter but nearly the same scenario.  And, she kept on scrolling, wondering if this jump drive had anything from the east coast on it when a third story caught her eye.  Even skimming, it was similar.  She leaned back in her chair.  This was old stuff, dating back awhile.  She was wondering if there was a serial killer or something.  A net search rendered nothing, the three stories were on a forum site as a sort of urban legend.  But, there was nothing else.

This stood out to her, a weird kind of void of information that felt significant.  It rose the question, why were the foster parents killed?  Why was there more than one set?  Were they looking for something?  All the girls were thirteen, white, in the foster system and in Las Vegas. She knew enough to know what smoke and mirrors looked like, but the cases never seemed to go anywhere.  She leaned back in the chair and stared at the converted microfilm on her screen.  This was local and a challenge.  It stood out to her like a puzzle.  A few screen shots made, new folder created, and the images were dumped on the home screen.  

A glance to the time on the monitor, it was very late for her.  Looked through the homicide lists for the years, and sure enough the groupings of the foster parents were there, along with addresses and means of death.  Oddly enough, the names of the missing girls were not there.  Either their bodies had not been found, or they didn’t appear because they were minors.  She rubbed her face, open palmed. She hated how her interest could stray. Why did she even care?  She hated the west coast. But who were they?  

He knew instantly that taking such a casual, borderline condescending approach to this bombshell was a mistake. It hadn't so much been arrogance or confidence, but rather laziness and habit. He had let her choose the meeting grounds, she chose a public library.  Initially he had found the idea laughable, but he grew more concerned as the time went on.  She sat perched atop the bike watching him and saying very little.

"Your German citizenship has been revoked," He said and it barely got a reaction from her. It was as if she fully understood her status as a pariah. It was deeper than just on the Utah side of things, Saul had been told.  “They want you to take a job.” And that was always the problem when dealing with them.  The Sureños, as she had been taught to collectively call the group.  Never a he or a she, like when dealing with the mob or the cartels.  It was always 'them' or 'they'.  Saul for the moment had her attention.

He explained the job.  It was to easy for the price.  It was a test run. She already knew it, but there was no need for her to point it out. Saul was a mouth piece.  A messenger.  He was a face and an attractive one at that.  She only nodded her head.  Saul had brought what was required; actual there were two envelopes in the seat of his car as he reached in and grabbed the bottom one. “You'll be happy with the ID; it kind of looks like you.”  It was a ligament state issue.

The meeting ended.  Saul was happy.  She was wary.  

She would have rather stayed behind the screen.

Transponder is a proper name for a FasTrak, iPass, or E-ZPass depending on what part of the country one lives in. They operate using simple RFID technology that hangs out around 915MHz.  Basically when a transponder goes through a toll both it gets read, the account gets charged, and commerce can move on.  In a system without corruption, the use of transponders is limited to paying tolls.  It's cheap and functional.

The Sureños were not asking for this information.  It's publicly available and there for has little value.  The instructions they have provided were simple and the short end was: It has come to our attention that large quantities of goods are entering entering LA though legitimate trade and transportation routes.  We know there are trucks running heavy for ConGlobal and but everything continues to look perfect on paper.  Why?

The answer was simple and insanely so.  She couldn’t decide if the method was that of a genius or a madman.  Both sides of this knowledge presented answers, and if she had proven anything it had been infomation went to the highest bidder.  Saul, yes, had made contact.  But this?  This was bigger than the coin that the job had been given, at least on that end.