CHAPTER 10
Photosynthesis, perhaps THE most important chemical pathway on our planet. And yet from an engineering perspective, it is a failure. You heard what I said-an absolute and complete FAILURE! Four percent efficiency? Hell, Mother Nature worked on this grand creation for four billion years and this is her feeble offering? Surely we can do better.
Todget’s right eye was nearly swollen shut, and the gash on his neck was deep. Still, he did not stop to properly tend to it. Like always, the moment the fight was over, he took just enough time to get his money and then he got out. For tonight’s fight in the pits, Todget was paid more than five hundred thousand dollars. His opponent had paid with his life. Todget clutched the bag of filthy, crumpled thousand-dollar bills tightly. The money may be good, but my ritual is even better, he thought while walking home to his apartment.
It was his well-deserved unwinding time, and he could hardly wait for it to commence. First, he would remove the little white box from under his bed, take out the appropriate medical supplies, and then carefully and methodically rub his body with pungent healing ointment and wrap his wounds with antiseptic white gauze. The gauze was magic in its ability to seethe and slither its way into the wounds, bringing welcome relief to the localized pains. Next, he would take a shower to wash away the filth of both the human’s and his own rage. The shower would be extra hot, and while standing in the stream of scalding water, he might even smile. Finally, naked and sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, surrounded by darkness, he would let his muscles and mind relax.
Todget let himself dwell on such things, which is probably why he did not notice the female human standing suspiciously close to his door, looking like a stranger to these parts. Glowering out from under his heavy hood, he recognized the woman. She was the one who had knocked on his door hours ago, before he had left for the pits. He had not answered the door. By Stag, what is she about? he wondered. It was too late to turn back, for if he did so it would appear odd and he would draw attention to himself. Instead, he decided to walk right past her and his apartment and return later when she was not lurking about.
“Greetings,” the woman exclaimed as he passed by. She bowed her head slightly while turning her face upward so that her emerald green eyes could remain fixed on him. She showed him a big, gleaming smile. Such white teeth, so straight, Todget thought. Teeth always reminded him of what these humans really were-just a skull with a little softness around it. That’s how he thought of humans every time he went into the pits with one to punch, kick, and tear at it.
A hairy muskrat of a thing slinked about the mysterious woman’s calf. Its eyes turned up at him in an unblinking stare. It is a machine, Todget thought. He did not like these constructs, for it was difficult enough to trust the living, who at least had some common ground with one another. What would compel any living creature to want to make such monsters?
The woman’s lips parted slightly as though about to utter something, but she did not. She simply smiled again and then began walking down the hall past him. Todget did not return her smile. Rather, he hung his face down, watching only the floor as he walked unhurriedly away down the corridor in the opposite direction.
She’s not in the pretend place. She actually looked at me. He had felt naked under that stare. Although she was merely a feeble human female, there was something confident, even powerful about how she carried herself.
A good fifteen minutes passed before Todget felt it safe enough to return to his door. Looking around, he did not notice the tiny points of eyes belonging to the ferret peering at him from around the bend of another hall as he waved his card past the key panel. Todget was one of the few in the mounds to have a lock that could be opened with an actual key card. It cost extra for a lock of this type; instead, most residents preferred to have a microchip embedded in them that proved their identity when approaching their dwelling. Todget would not abide anyone injecting machines into him. To him, the key card lock was well worth the money.
Having been slain by a hellhound and forcefully ejected from NeverWorld, his entire gaming account had been locked down. It would be nearly a half hour before D_Light could re-spawn and continue his search for private doors in the spanker ghetto. And so, after notifying the rest of the team of this setback, he sighed deeply and mouthed a silent prayer, asking that they find the demon fast. The sooner they found it, the more bonus points they got. That is, if they found it at all.
He then leaned against a poplar tree, its paper-thin leaves rustling enthusiastically under the moderate night breeze. There was no light, save the moon, which cast soft shadows upon the scene below. He was standing on the top of an apartment mound. Thick, dewy grass blanketed the dro-vine beneath him. Stationing himself at the top of this taller-than-average mound enabled him to get a better look around. From this vantage point, he hoped to get an idea of how much was left to search.
Smorgeous informed him that it was nearly dawn. Any minute the eastern sky would begin to glow as the rising sun began her ascent. D_Light’s view of the surrounding land was hindered by other tall mounds in the distance and by tall, woody-stalked flowers that surrounded him. D_Light pushed aside a few of the more ambitious flower stalks that had managed to grow up to his eye level. The stems bent gently, but they did not break-breaking them would actually take some effort. They had been engineered to be pliant but tough, a good design for wafer-thin plants in a place where people held little regard for designated trails. Soon, when the sun broke, these beautiful and patient marvels of industry would get to work converting the sun’s rays into energy- energy to be used by the mound beneath. The strong, fibrous texture of the dro-vine mound contained just enough elasticity to give him the sensation of walking on an exceptionally tight trampoline.
It was quiet at this time of the morning. A few hard-core spankers sprinkled the streets here and there, but for the most part, the place had cleared out. However, as soon as the sun came up there would be more of them to be sure-the morning players, the responsible ones who tried to get in a little spank before they reluctantly grinded for an hour or two to get a bare ration of points. They would then take the rest of the day, as well as night, to spank some more. D_Light knew the drill, intimately.
Years ago, D_Light himself had been hard-core, the hardest of the hard-core, in fact. He used to engage in a lifestyle called “ramboing,” a term that meant he lived entirely off the land. Not that ramboing was that big of a deal, as many spankers did it at one time or another. Finding free lodging was easy. There were tons of wild dro- vine burrows in between the official housing tracts. The stuff grew anywhere, and it spread tenaciously. If you could find a bit of abandoned land, chances were you had somewhere to stay. And dro-vine did more than just shield you from rain and the morning dew. It actually regulated its own internal temperature and humidity, which made for quite a cozy dwelling. Nevertheless, living in abandoned dro-vine burrows meant that you had to go without a few things. For one thing, you had no electricity, no lights, no wiring of any kind. However, this was of little concern. You could just jack into SkinWare to be able to see, and your familiar or onboard computer could provide trivial entertainment, like music and video. D_Light rarely used electricity at home, except to recharge Smorgeous.
What was more of a hassle than lack of electricity was no running water. Luckily, bathing was not a high priority to most ramboes. And when it came time to relieve yourself, you could do that outside, or if you were lucky and had an extra dro-vine chamber in your hovel, you could just do it there; after all, although dro-vine was efficient at extracting nitrogen from the air, it did not mind the extra fertilizer.
For a rambo, the acquisition of food in the wild was even easier than the acquisition of shelter. Everywhere you went there were trees and flowers engineered for the sole purpose of creating nectar, the most ubiquitous source of energy on earth. People, products, most machines, and many plants, including dro-vine, could eat the sticky, honey-viscous liquid. And nectar came in many flavors, all of them tasty enough to impress even a distinguishing palate, at least for a while.
Indeed, ramboes did not have to sweat the basics, and they did not have to beg anyone for anything either. The real downer of living off the land was the loss of drugs, and not just the performance enhancers that helped you sicken your game. Worse than that was the eventual revocation of your health contract. The health contract
