Zombie Road , Simpson, A. [best authors to read TXT] 📗

wide and tree lined with a bluish sky and drifting clouds projected on the ceiling. The light seemed natural and an ocean could faintly be heard breaking against a shore line. Courier bots scurried around, there was a slight breeze from the fans and the air smelled faintly of water and fruit. Maddy’s newfound emotions liberated her from the rigid machine she had been programmed to be. Before, she had pretended to emote because that’s what humans wanted. Now she actually felt the emotions and had to shut them off unless she became completely overwhelmed by the sights and sounds and smells. She opened them incrementally, a little at a time, or she would have stood there crying and laughing and screaming all at the same time. Being human was difficult.

The overpriced and opulent establishments were on the main level. The lower you went, the seedier the stores and bars became. As you descended, it went from hologram filled theme clubs with live bands to hard drinking establishments with skin shows and dancing girls. The lower you went the worse it got. Jessie had money in his pockets, there were sights to see and they tried a variety of foods as they drifted in and out of shops. Each smelled better than the last.

“Does that say what I think it does?” he asked and pointed to an understated sign across the street.

“It’s a travel center.” Maddy said. “Their clientele is likely people who have indulged a little too much on the vacation planet.”

Jessie was already angling his way across the street, the sweetened fried thing on a stick he’d been eating tossed in the nearest garbage can. Maddy caught up with him and when they entered a pale skinned woman looked up from her viewer and frowned at their appearance.

“Welcome to Rejuvenations.” She said in universal “How can I help you?”

“You have a time machine?” Jessie asked, excited.

“Of course, we do.” She said and stood. “Do you have your bracelet or are you first time customers?”

“First time.” Jessie said. “I have a set of coordinates; can you send me there?”

The woman’s look soured. From their clothes and accents she knew they were from a primitive colony and it was highly unlikely they could afford her services. It wasn’t unusual, the spaceport was one of the biggest, the vacation planet one of the best, and the manufacturing world drew businessmen from around the galaxy. It also attracted all manner of outlanders and colonists wanting to start fresh in a civilized system. She answered a few of his questions, briefly explained the procedure then ushered them out. When they left the shop, neither had a travel bracelet. They didn’t have enough credits and it wouldn’t have helped him anyway. Maddy was right, time travel was strictly forbidden but licensed shops had specially constructed rooms that blocked the diffusers that instantly obliterated travelers. They were of limited use, though. You couldn’t actually go anywhere.

Basically, it was an immortality machine. Once you were mapped and digitally downloaded, a copy of yourself was stored in a bracelet. Whenever you wanted, and if you had the credits, you could utilize the travel centers to reset yourself with the option of keeping or deleting any new memories made since the last backup. It could be used to forget traumatic experiences or bad romantic encounters. Cheating spouses could have the times of their lives and then forget it ever happened. It was a quick fix or any unwanted diseases you may have caught and an easy, albeit expensive, way to get rid of a hangover.

Those who could afford it mostly used it to remain young. They could live life for a few years and when they started gaining weight or getting a few wrinkles or came down with a terrible disease, they could reset. Basically, time travel back to their former, perfectly healthy self. The technology had only been in use for a few hundred years but anyone with the credits could live forever, in theory. It reminded him of a story he’d read in high school about some guy named Dorian Gray who had a magic portrait. He ate and drank and did whatever he wanted but always stayed young and in perfect health. Only his picture aged and got ugly. He wondered if it was sort of the same. You could keep a beautiful shell but what was inside could be old and bitter. What if people weren’t really designed to live for more than a hundred years, what if that was long enough?

The credits were going fast, they’d already spent almost half of them on the overpriced drinks and exotic foods. They took a staircase down to the bazaar level and the lower they went the worse the air became. Lights became sporadic and whole flights of stairs were cloaked in shadows and strewn with debris. When the doors opened, they were greeted with a different city. It was dimly lit and they were assaulted with a hundred different smells. The air rejuvenators weren’t designed for so many people, the level had once been used for storage and life support mechanicals when the port was small. Now it was home to resellers, trinket fixers, and skin doctors and data hackers. The open stall flea market gave way to squatter’s quarters where the menial labor workers lived. The cleaners and dishwashers, the runaway slaves, AWOL soldiers and drunks who lost all their credits at the gambling tables. Missing boxes of freight, stolen items and shady characters populated the level and as long as no one got too ambitious, the crimes they committed were petty, the enforcers from above generally left them alone.

Jessie had no desire to sample any of the foods on display when he realized they were operating the burners with methane gas from pipes illegally jacked into the sewer system. The offerings were more basic, there weren’t multi layered cheesecake like ice cream dishes. There were mostly slow roasting meats that looked like