Saving the Cyber Soaps, Mike Morris [story books to read TXT] 📗

major organization which even I knew had been getting more and more conservative as the endless cramped years rolled on. Dee was in serious danger of ending her days above ground. Part of me wanted to summon up the easy, self-justifying anger, but she had me, and I knew it. She should have left with the travelers. She shouldn’t have been rejected.
When she finished the lecture, I smiled sheepishly and she told me about her plan to broadcast from the surface, gradually at first, just a few remote stations. We needed change, she told me, just as much as Topsiders did. We needed to come together in order to build again. Somehow, after all these years, she was still an idealist. She wanted us all to be one big happy family. I knew it would never work. That idealism of hers blinded her to realities that even a dumb oaf like me could see. We were rich and comfortable and the Topsiders weren’t. They hated us. As soon as we stuck our heads out of the bunker the surface people would chop them off. But Dee wouldn’t listen, even if I could bring myself to tell her.
I knew I had to go along with her; otherwise I’d lose her. I’d play the soaps, and she would be fighting her losing battle, alone, down here. She wouldn’t summon me again, and she’d go down – fighting - but she would certainly lose. I thought of Jonesy and his ilk, waiting in their pornographic suites for the kill, and told her I’d do anything she wanted. She thanked me and we talked for a while about nothing in particular, just like the old days, and then we spent the night together between pale silk sheets.

CHAPTER 3 – Charades
The next day, she was all business, and I was sent for training. I’d been expecting to wander straight up to the surface dressed as a native and start operations. Instead, over a few weeks, I had three hundred years of Topside history stuffed into me. Dee had been planning this for a long time. Her empire was located underneath Chicago, but we broadcast all over the east coast, and even traded with New York, Boston, and cities south to Atlanta, using the pitifully small and erratic local airlines of those cities, and our own decaying shuttle fleet. When I had thought about it at all, I had imagined that Topsiders had sex, watched the shows and fought each other, just like we played it in the soaps. Some did, but an awful lot of life went on that I had never dreamed of. I was to be an ambassador, offering resources and cooperation to the big city mayors.
In my spare time, I learnt martial arts and the rudiments of espionage from a tough bodyguard type with muscles and no sense of humor. Real stuff, not what we did on television. In the evenings we played Topsie and her Toyboy for Jonesie and his ilk, making the rounds of the awful corporate parties, with me trailing behind, acting arrogant, stupid, and smug while the sharks waited for me to get my comeuppance. I began to feel like a punching bag as I crashed, exhausted into bed at night, but after about a month, we were ready to make our move. I’d stopped drinking and started thinking during that time, and I had to ask her a few questions, even if it was only to reassure her that I was loyal and aware, and still ready to back her.
I took a stroll through the executive corridors one evening. My training was over for the day, and Dee was working late, holed up in one of the plush padded cells they called conference enclaves. I remembered the fortieth level from the distant time when I was still Dee’s pal, before I had stupidly floated upward in a bubble of anger and self-pity. I remembered the big offices; well-appointed suites of the rich and powerful, corridors full of energy and purpose where the new order was being shaped. I realized now that I had been angered and intimidated. These were the new elite, the best of what was left, and they were more forceful, stronger than I. I had felt small and useless, without real talents. Doubly so since Dee, my old pal, my companion, was the biggest and toughest of them all. I blamed her for making me feel small, and we quarreled with increasing frequency and bitterness, until I finally drifted up in a bubble of self-pity to take up my role as the handsome, carefree, unattached soap star. I had left her alone with the sharks. I had let her down.
I began to realize how much things had changed down here. Executive comfort had turned into gaudy pretension, confidence into arrogance. The new executives minced past, dressed in purple and puce silks, powerful leaders strutted by, accompanied by retinues of flunkies, like old-time kings and nobles. Offices stood open to show the status of the occupiers, and department heads fondled assistants dressed like hookers. I saw clearly that, in one respect, Dee was right. We weren’t meant to grub in the earth like this. We had lost our souls. I knew it was too late for us to talk to the Topsiders. We were going to rot down here. With increasing frequency, I noticed Flunkies and Securities flaunting insignia on their sleeves and their breasts, most of them the elaborate ‘J’ that I’d seen on Jonesy’s Securities.
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“You’ve tried this before,” I told her that night. “How many times, and what happened?” She stiffened beside me, sighed and stroked my cheek.
“You’ve changed, William.” She kissed me gently. I was going to tell you, and I expected tantrums and arguments, figured I’d have to persuade you to go on. I was going to tell you that, no matter what, we have to try, for the sake of what we all used to be. I was going to tell you that this is bigger than both of us, and shit, I can’t stop talking in clichés after all these years making soap operas. I wanted to tell you so much, but I know you won’t believe me, and I don’t deserve that you should.” She was almost crying, and I wanted to hold her forever.
“It’s alright, I told her softly. Tell me. I’ll make it work.” I smiled wanly. “I don’t mind not being first. Not anymore. Right now, it’s just you and me. How many times?”
“Only once,” she answered. “Once before. He was a good man, and I trusted him, but not like you. I never heard from him again.”
“That’s OK,” I told her. “It’s OK. Second time lucky.” And I put my finger on her lips to quiet her, and then I kissed her.
The next day, we staged an argument in front of Jonesy. Dee was magnificent and I almost blew the scene by laughing when she threw a coffee cup at me and managed to soak Jonesy’s yellow silk suit.

CHAPTER 4 – Out in the Cold
The next day, they escorted me to the surface. Jonesy was with them, grinning as we shot upward in the cargo elevator to the docking bay. He kept trying to needle me and was disappointed when I didn’t respond.
“I give you twenty four hours out there,” he finally said. “A stupid arrogant bastard like you is going to get killed as soon as he meets a Topsider.” I grunted, and we stepped out into the docking bay. The big doors creaked open, and the cold damp Chicago air swept into the cargo bay. Two of them grabbed my arms, and Jonesy relieved me of my pistol and one of my knives. “Be a shame to let the natives have these,” he smirked while I struggled between the two guards. “Dee left you some supplies.” He grinned, and dropped them down the lift shaft. “Damn, that was clumsy.” The guards were still holding me. “I’ve got something for you,” he continued, and I turned in time to see his fist as it crashed into my face.
They dumped me in the slush above the Warren, in the deserted space terminal. When my head cleared, I could see the spires of the dead skyscrapers shining in the distance. Over the years, the city had shrunk, retreating to its center, as the population stagnated and dwindled. The outer suburbs, a few miles away, were deserted. Many of the houses were burned, and the rest were mostly roofless skeletons. The potholed access road stretched drearily into the distance, and wherever I was hadn’t been visited in years. Sighing, I stood up and started out for the gray distant city.
I’d been training for six weeks, but my feet felt like lumps of ice when I reached the first ruined houses. A faded wooden sign, barely legible, read ‘Linden Coppice, Desirable Suburban Development.’ There had been hundreds of places just like it until the star travelers arrived and sucked the life out of all the cities, and towns, and all the little villages. Those of us they spat out again crawled inward or downward, leaving a million desirable suburban developments behind. I looked at the desolation and shivered, marveling that Topsiders survived at all in this grim landscape. I was cold and hungry. Underground was uniformly warm, and I’d not thought to wear heavy boots. On the other hand, I was sweating in my leather coat, and I realized I felt pretty good. The air was cold and sharp, like good wine, and I remembered that this was the first time I’d done anything real in a couple of hundred years. Had we really been rotting away underground for so long? I looked at the desolate ruins. No one could live here, not even an animal.

CHAPTER 5 – Dr Payne
Then the big dog was on me, slashing at my arm with sharp yellow fangs. He must have been stalking me between the ruined houses, waiting his chance. The coat helped, but one of his teeth went right through and sank into my arm like a hot nail. I fumbled for the knife strapped to my leg, but he was already in the air, fang filled head as big as mine, about a foot from my neck.
His head exploded with a bang, showering me with bits of red meat. It wasn’t at all like the soaps, and I stood there stupidly as the man approached, rifle pointed casually in my direction.
“Dumber every year,” he muttered. “Don’t see the dog, don’t see me. You come blundering in here like some damn soap star.” He looked at me sharply. “Maybe an extra.” He lowered the rifle, and I thought about wrestling it from his thin arms, but he bent and lifted the ruined dog carcass onto his shoulders as if it were a sack full of feathers and I changed my mind. “Come with me, or get shot,” he said as he wandered away.
I followed. My training had been incomplete. The suburbs were supposed to be deserted, not filled with killer dogs and crazy gunslingers. I couldn’t figure how he survived, until he said “Must be sixty, seventy pounds of fresh meat,” ignoring the blood that mingled with the general dirt on his clothes. “I’m fed up of canned stuff.”
“Canned stuff?” I asked stupidly.
“Sure.” He grinned at me. “I hijack the trucks. There’s fresh food going out for you Moles, cheap electronics coming in from underground.” He turned into a driveway and approached a house marginally larger and less dilapidated than its neighbors. “Oh, I don’t take enough to bother anybody. Usually, I’m in and out of a truck, no one even notices.”