Jensen Blayloc: New Beginnings, Chapter 2

 

Chapter 2

Saturday, January 25, 2020

2:49 PM

I didn't really appreciate being called "old man." Hard to argue the point though, since I am the oldest man on Earth, at least as far as I know. It is August 5th 2295, two more weeks and I will turn 209 years old. I was part of a program in early part of the 22nd century where they built the first cyber soldiers. To protect their investment, they developed gene therapy that allowed us to heal faster, and slowed our aging. Stopped it basically. Though it also rendered us sterile. The technology was perfected, and after the end of the war, was used to allow us to send ships to Alpha Centauri with people who would live through the entire 100 year trip. "The Copernicus Project" they called it. I remember the 10 ships leaving. The first colony ship landed last year. 6 have made it. No contact with the others so far. I should probably pay attention to what I am doing rather than worrying about a colony 4 and a half light years away.

 

I couldn’t exactly saunter back to my abode could I? That is the first place the backup would go. If all my years hunting terrorists with spec-ops taught me one thing, it was that it was damn hard to find those guys; they employed multiple safe houses, and moved around a lot. I took a few pages from that handbook myself once I became a civilian. You are not paranoid if they really are out to get you. Well, all that preparation was going to get me a safe place to sleep, and a hot bath to help with the stiff muscles I was going to have. I decided to go to a flat I rented in sub-seven.

 

New Angeles was a model of modern technology and engineering. I am not sure how they managed to float a city at thirty-five thousand feet, but I understand it is similar tech they use to launch the Mars and Europa shuttles, and to build 10 multi acre colony ships and get them off the ground. I wasn’t a science major. Every time I think about the tech that makes that possible and to even actually breathe up here my head hurts. Let’s just say you can’t keep the volume of air in this phased-crystal-polymer dome at fourteen PSI with a fan.

 

In any case, the city was pretty much just a large platform with a city on top and a mirror of that city on the bottom to equalize the mass around the waist.  It was about five miles across, and a little over 2 miles high. Most of city was below street level, and much of that was unmonitored. I decided to head uptown first, before enabling my stealth mod. There were no obvious threats on the ACTIS, but I decided to run the escape drill by the numbers anyway.

 

The surface city was one of the nicest, cleanest, and overall best-designed places I have ever been. The architecture was marvelous, and the streets and parks design were very, what do the locals call it, “Feng Shui.” One of the reasons I moved here was because it was fresh. That is what I wanted. Until this morning, that is what I thought I had. I had a nice apartment, a decent client base doing mundane investigations, and a new girlfriend. All my troubles were in the past. Or so I thought. Apparently someone wanted me dead, and I needed to find out who, or they were going to get their way. 

 

I walked into a crowded upscale restaurant, took a seat at the bar, and gave it a few minutes to see if anyone was following me. After a stale, overpriced martini, and no activity, I tipped the bartender and headed for the kitchen. About halfway there, I engaged my transponder stealth module, and quickly exited through the service exit into the alley behind the building. I hopped on the yellow line, then the green line, then back to yellow for the trip to sub-six. I felt safer having gone through all that, even though it might have been a waste of time.

 

 As I changed subway cars, I had also changed my appearance, slightly, in each station restroom. I reversed my jacket from a dark grey to a light tan. I changed from dark sunglasses to fashion varilense. Finally, I added a dark brown wig. My short, graying hair was fairly distinctive, as longer hair was back in, and the west coast sense of vanity drove everyone to color.

“I really can’t call her now. I am sure they have a tracer on my coms; I would. Hell, they were probably tailing her right now,” the disturbing idea came un-beckoned to the fore.

“Blayloc get a hold of yourself. They are probably watching her to get you but they won’t cut their own bait. Besides, she has security.” this thought from some more rational part of me was comforting.

I was already starting to stiffen. “I would do her no good right now anyway. I’ll have the police do a courtesy call, and get some rest,” I rationalized.

I made several switchbacks before going below sub-four, each time watching to see if someone was tailing me. Either they weren’t or they were much better than I.

 

I descended further into the bowels of the flying city, and moved through the busy business sections of sub-six, buying a few needed items from the street vendors. Although I acted casually, I kept an eye out for anyone who paid me more attention than I was due. Again nobody, good, I was feeling confident that I had shaken my pursuers, whoever they were. I took my brown cellulite bags full of “fresh” fish and vegetables, some ramen noodles. Now I don’t know where the vendors get real fish, and I am afraid to ask. Almost every food product in the 23rd century is fabricated out of nutri-soy pumped in to food fabricators. Small local markets such as these, buried under thirty meters of steel and concrete and run by seventy-year-old women, seem to have the best goods. They actually grow vegetables with sun lamps, and get some meat products from “god knows where.” Lt. Michaels would steer clear of such un-regulated and probably illegal products. Myself, I when faced with a matter of law versus justice, I choose justice. Law is good; but blind adherence to it, while easy, can bring injustice with as near certainty as no law at all.

 

“So the question, as it stands, is why,” it bugged me. “Why am I the target? I’ll never understand the who, until I understand the why.” The thought turned over in my consciousness, and as I considered the possibilities, I made steady progress towards my destination, though never going straight there.

 

Misdirection is a tool used by people on both sides of a struggle. I used it to ensure my safety, and surely, the enemy used it to hide his identity long enough to accomplish his goal. Unfortunately for me, that goal was my death. What was my goal? Survival; surely that is a pretty strong incentive. I was always proficient at it. That’s what I had been doing every day, surviving. Somedays I even pondered "why bother." I looked 40, but I felt old. Really old. For the last few years I had taken mundane, frankly boring, jobs. There was no major organized crime in New Angeles, no street gangs, at least not the kind they have in Old L.A.. The murder rate was the lowest in the country, partly because it was built from the ground up with integrated “big brother” tech, and partly because this place was a haven for those people seeking a quieter life than was offered on the surface. The place was nicer, and the people echoed it. “So why me?” I wondered. It wasn’t some kind of random murder, some wet-wired street warrior losing his mind and going postal. He picked me. He followed me into the tunnels. If he just wanted blood he could have gone inward, and killed dozens on any street corner. I was not unknown, but I was also not well known, and nobody would make their reputation taking me out. I was nothing but a risk with no payoff.

 

I reached my backup apartment on the sub-seven, and locked the door. I activated perimeter security and did a sweep of the apartment for tracking devices, and other things less subtle. Nothing. The place was clean. Well, at least I had a few secrets left. I recovered a spare five-seven I had stashed in a wall safe, loaded it, and put it in my shoulder holster. I sat down at the terminal, and logged in to my secure apps server. I sent an e-mail to Michaels asking him to check on Rushi, and let her know I was ok. Then I wrote my report and sent it also. I should have been more worried than I was I suppose, but really I felt sore and tired, so I took a shower and went to bed; a pistol snugly under my pillow.