A Desperate Plea

Astrid Parker was on her way up. Her internship application passed all the final deep background checks—in large part due to the skills of her Netrunner mother—and she was due to report for her first day in the Rushlight Biomedical Paramedic Training Program in the morning. Astrid’s test scores put here near the top of class, and the program offered a couple of perks that she was keen to take advantage of.
 
She was gathering up some personal belongings in the small apartment she shared with her mother. Her personal allotment wasn’t much for the freshmen corporate housing, but she wanted to take along a few precious hardprint books—an 18th birthday present from her father—and a few pieces of jewelry. She wasn’t going to need much of anything else as it was all provided by Rushlight.
 
Dad was off on a job down in Oregon. Astrid and her mom had been living on their own for as long as she could remember, but he made a point of writing emails regularly, the occasional vid call, and a weekend visit when he could manage. The life of an edgerunner solo was always on the go, and he had to keep a low-profile, so he didn’t get a chance to visit face-to-face often. Her mom was able to do her gigs through cyberspace, but they still lived in the shadow of the highway and kept a low-profile far from the glittering lights of the Seattle Executive Zone.
 
Astrid couldn’t wait to get out of D-town.
 
She also was looking forward to getting far away from Moses Reed.
 
Astrid’s closest friends were a gang of street kids; orphans living in and around D-town. Astrid, as the oldest of the group, took it upon herself to help them. Arjay, Box, Mikos, and little Thea would all get “gigs” from Reed, and Astrid would come along to make sure they didn’t get in over their heads, clean up any injuries, and make sure that whatever eds they were rewarded with were spent mostly on food, decent shoes, and warm clothing.
 
On the few occasions she dealt with him, Moses always made Astrid’s skin scrawl. The boys idolized him, and from what Astrid could tell he always dealt straight with them. Over the years, his gigs kept them going, and they usually had a safe place to sleep at night as a result of his patronage. There was just something about the way he looked at Astrid that bothered her. She worried that someday soon Thea would start getting his attention too.
 
Done with her inventory and packing, Astrid went to check in with her mother. Amira Parker was laying as she often was in a netrunner’s chair, multiple interface leads connecting her to a cyberdeck. Gentle lights played across her cybernectic eyes, and her attention was well away from the physical world of the apartment.
 
Astrid donned a pair of smartglasses laying next to the chair, and pulled an electronic lead out from her right wrist. Taking a moment to take a deep breath and steady herself, she pushed the lead into a port on the cyberdeck and tapped a button.
 
Jacking into a cyberdeck always felt like an elevator falling. Astrid stumbled a little catching her balance as her nervous system adjusted to the barrage of electronic signals. After just a few seconds the VR world resolved into being around her. She was in a simple rectangular room, her mother’s “lobby”. It was mostly an empty space, but the textures on the walls were a scintillating pattern of blue isometric shapes which Astrid always found beautiful.
 
Her mother’s gentle voice filled the room, “I’ll be with you in a minute, honey…”
 
She always said, “a minute”, but it usually took more like 5… Astrid filled the time scrolling through a virtual display that hovered near her avatar’s head, checking for any interesting social feeds from her friends. Eventually, the lobby’s wall began to pulse with light, and the avatar of Astrid’s mother stepped through.
 
Netrunners, like most of the world’s edgerunners, put a lot of stock in appearance. Reputation was currency in that world, and first impressions mattered more than anyone liked to think about. Amira’s avatar was a humanoid shape—although many of her associates in the net tended for animalistic shapes—outlined in shimmering azure light. Some script-kiddies would go for simulated fur or hair, but most professionals felt it wasted processing cycles better spent elsewhere. The more impressive part of her avatar was the aura. You felt her exude control and authority in the space, and it always gave Astrid a little shudder down the spine when she first came into the room.
 
“So, you are all packed?” The words were more thought than spoken.
 
“Yes. Leaving most things behind and packed up a crate for you to store for me. Not sure when I’ll need again.”
 
“I’m so proud, my sweet. I still have some work to do, but if you can be home by midnight, I’ll order you something special and we’ll have a late-night dinner to celebrate.”
 
“Sounds good.”
 
For a moment, the avatar hovered, inspecting Astrid’s presence, and then nodded as she strode back through the wall. “Until then.”
 
Another free-falling elevator ride later, and Astrid was standing again next to her mother’s form on the netchair. Looking down, she noticed that her mother’s hand was wrapped around hers, gently squeezing a moment, then letting go. Astrid removed her own neural interface jack and took off the glasses.
 
Astrid got dressed for going out. She had already told Arjay that she was leaving D-town and had asked him to let Box and Mikos know but not until tomorrow. Now she needed to talk with Thea, and she was usually found at the local punk club.
 
While D-town lacked much in the way of investment or services, it more than made up for it in large, derelict spaces. The local punk scene moved about a lot, but the fans always knew where to find the current location. This week it was in an old warehouse, or more accurately on the roof of an old warehouse. Most of the rest of the building was underwater. It didn’t add much to the quality of the smell, but it made for an excitingly reflective surface for stage effects.
 
When Astrid arrived, she was dressed in her usual loosely flowy dress, dark colors, and heavy boots—heels and other non-sturdy footwear were a liability in this part of town. The majority of the crowd were in the usual arrays of blacks, even more blacks, and the occasional white. While the ganger-types had the flashier fashionware, most of the locals lacked the glow effects. The bands were usually decked out, and they were the focus of the show anyhow.
 
Astrid scanned the crowd looking for Thea. She spotted her standing near the stage chatting up one of the stage gaffers about the gear and instruments. Thea was always the life of the party, and even when she was a little girl she had ‘stage presence’ in a group. Thea also tended to shift clothing styles like a snake sheds it skin, and she often crafted up her own look. Today Thea was dressed in synth-leather pants, T-shirt, and an old pair of combat boots with short-cropped blonde hair. She was sporting an old leather bomber jacket festooned with tiny prismatic mirrors.
 
Astrid worked her way towards the stage, but since the act hadn’t started yet there wasn’t yet too much of a throng so she made good progress. When she got there, Thea was done with the gaffer and was “holding court” with her group of punk friends waiting for the show. Like Thea, they were all tweens or just barely teenagers.
 
Catching sight of Astrid, Thea shouted out, “Mommy!”.
 
Astrid blushed. She hated it with Thea called her that, and that was why she did it so often. Her friends all looked over and--expecting to see someone much older than an 18 year old--briefly looked past Astrid.
 
“Hi, Thea,” Astrid returned as she closed the remaining distance. “Please don’t call me Mommy.”
 
With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, Thea replied, “Fine. Don’t call me Thea then.”
 
With a little sigh, Astrid nodded in agreement, “Right. Hi, Thresh. How’s it going?”
 
Thea proceeds to introduce Astrid around to her friends, referring to her by her street handle. “This is Skinner. She’s a choom. A sweet one at that,“ taking a moment to look Astrid’s outfit up and down, “If a bit of a square.”
 
Thea had insisted the boys and her all pick out street handles, although she had gone through about a dozen of them herself in the intervening years.
 
“You staying for the show?” Thea asked after a few minutes of idle conversation.
 
“Um, I can stay a while, but I… have…” pausing a little uncomfortably, “an early morning. Look, can we go somewhere nearby for a quick chat?”
 
Thea assessed her friend a bit more closely, catching that something was up, “OK. I can give you 15 minutes.” She gathered up her drink and threw a look at one of her friends. “Verge, don’t let them start without me.”
 
Astrid and Thea worked their way around to the far side of the stage which was a lot less crowded. A few of the bouncers were hanging around keeping folks out, but Thea knew all of them by name and was able to get them through for a bit of private space.
 
The pair stood near the corner of the warehouse roof, looking out over the last light of the day in the distance. You couldn’t see the downtown at all from here, but there were plenty of lights and AVs flying about in the distance. The highway still dominated the skyline, full of traffic busily flowing by.
 
Thea turned to throw a serious look at Astrid. “Ok, Astrid, what the fuck?”
 
Astrid had spent the better part of a week practicing this conversation in her head, but now that it was here, her mind went blank.
 
“Thea, my love. I’m leaving D-town in the morning and I want you to come with me.”
 
“Seriously!?! Did you hear that on some sappy vid?”
 
“No, I’m serious. My mother and I have been working on getting me into a medical program for years and it’s finally happened. I check in tomorrow and I’m not coming back.”
 
A brief moment of shock covers Thea’s face, but she quickly recovers. “Stupid bitch. OK, what does that have to do with me exactly?”
 
“They have a dependency allowance for the top three spots in the class, and I’m #2. Come with me. The boys will be fine, but…”
 
"Living some corpo suit life may be your dream, but it’s not mine. We’re out here trying to burn this shit to the ground, to bring it down. The fuck happened to 'Blaze your way down the rebel path?!' Ain’t never gonna change the world living inside the beast, Skinn. Fuck!"
 
Astrid tried to recover, “A real roof over our head, a safe place to sleep at night, and decent food. We can get you into the best conservatory in Seattle. Please…”
 
By this time, Thea was in a full-on rage, but tears were streaking down her cheeks at the same time. “No. Hell no.” and just like that she turned and stormed back into the crowd.
 
Astrid’s own face was wet, the lights of the stage blurring through her tears. Every fiber of her being wanted to chase Thea down and get her to safety, but too much of what she had said felt true. It had been her dream, not Thea’s. She wanted desperately to share it with her somehow.
 
But it wasn’t going to happen.