The Wake Up Call
Chapter 1.31: The Wildcard
The apartment was stifled by an atmosphere of panic. Josh crossed the room time and time again, pacing up and down like a caged animal unable to handle it's own captivity. The alcoholic vapour, still strong on his designer clothes, gave a 15% proof reminder of those two unwelcome visitors. He had often been the recipient of intimidating guests all threatening him with some form of verbal, physical or mental violence. All of this he could handle, but the truth was a different story. He slumped back into a low, black, leather S-shaped chair and thumped his head onto the headrest again and again. The longhaired old man had reopened some old wounds.
A few years ago Josh almost had everything, a beautiful wife, a dream apartment fitted out with every unnecessary gadget known to man, a high profile career, over a million credits in various bank accounts and a gambling problem. That's where it all fell apart. Once the novelty of success becomes faded there is nothing left, nothing to work for, nothing to cherish, except failure. In some strange way Josh Weller was on a collision course with failure. The drinking problem was a mere accessory to the other dark sides of his nature. All those years spent in the gym or on some precision made enhancement bay table to become one of the Milton Citadel citizens came at a heavy price. It spilt over into an obsession with an extra few minutes here, another upgrade there and yet still he grew more distant to his beautiful wife, Carena. He dealt with it the only way most 'mizers' deal with their emotions, bottle it up and train hard, work hard and play hard. The stewardess was a thorn in his side. Her beauty tormented him. It was natural and that was the real kicker. She needed zero implants. His unstoppable drive to be 'A-1' had turned into resentment and then physical abuse. The alcohol was used as an excuse but eventually she saw through it. Even now after those acts of betrayal he couldn't face the truth. His secrets were beginning to break the surface, no matter how much he scrubbed his skin the guilt would still be there, gnawing away like an incessant pit ball.
He sat there and stared at another empty glass in his hand. The crystal patterns around its base reflected a myriad of colours. The cool, Air-conditioned room was stale and lonely. Those rows of this year's executive gadgets offered no comfort. The large coffin tilted against the sidewall began to stare right back at him. The Brox Club was decorated in the same, low-grade material and it was the scene of another one of his acts of betrayal. Josh had been playing both ends off each other and now they were getting close to the centre and to him. None of this mattered. He was well and truly on a course of self-destruction, beyond the point of no return and taunting fate with each double-crossing step.
He rolled the cold glass over his face and closed his eyes. All that he had worked for had long since slipped from his grasp, but it was only at this moment in time that he finally accepted it. All his bridges had been burnt, friends traded in for a hand full of credits and his self respect bought and sold like a cheap hooker. He was no better than Mewco. In fact he envied that dead, corrupt son of a bitch black-market trader come crime lord. Mewco had started with nothing, a mere gutter kid forced to survive in ghettos where unknown plagues were frequent and poverty owned everyone's soul. Mewco had used people. Yet some still stuck by his manipulative side even after his death. His twofaced nature and razor sharp mind for pulling deals back from the brink of disaster had helped to create the myth of Mewco, a man to be feared and respected in equal measures.
Josh Weller on the other hand was a sorry character, one of life's aimless individuals who occupied his time with material things. He searched with each turn of the gambling wheel to find that something to give his life meaning. He thought he was unstoppable, an invincible Ubber-man capable of anything and everything. The dark traits dormant in his character began to surface with each new gambling debt. It wasn't long before he was gambling with more than credits. He was driven by a dark desire to push himself to the very limit. Playing Mewco and the McKaffs off each other had taken a great deal of balls. Each new twist added another element of risk to the game. That sick, fucked up game that could soon end up with him losing his own life. That was the real drug. The chance of pulling off a deal which used human beings as gambling chips intoxicated him with a god-like power or at least the illusion of it. But good luck can't last forever and today it had run out. It was only a matter of time before the McKaffs hunted him down. Tragedy would be waiting around the corner.
He detached the slim remote from the arm of the chair and worked the navigation menus. Vid-images flashed past his blood-shot eyes until he caught sight of Carena. He pressed the circular control wheel and began to play the homemade hologram recording from the start. His hands covered her eyes and they were entering her apartment in the Eldora Tower for the first time. She laughed, kissed and hugged him after looking around. It was clearly an exciting time. Captured in the stream of data was a brief, passing period of happiness. He froze the playback on a close-up of her face. She was totally oblivious to the horrors that were soon to follow the recording. The apartment itself was already used to store a steady line of smuggled items. He had rescued her from Mewco's sleazy grasp in order to fuel his own desire for credits. She was in his debt and this meant power over her. He reached his hand out and interrupted the projected hologram beams of light. She slipped away from his grasp as she had in real life.
He looked at the shattered fragments of glass on the floor and then at the metal case. The emptiness of it gave him another reminder of the 58th Junction Bridge and of Rhyson. The real case was in a locker, away from the McKaffs and the prying eyes of their enforcers. The plan had almost worked. The rookie courier Hetch had played his part perfectly and so did Carena. The helpful stewardess ploy ran like a charm except when Hetch failed to get off at the Rhyson shuttle terminal.
How many innocent citizens had he slaughtered in his quest for power? It was a question he never asked himself. A blood thirst, that’s what it was, a desire to decide whether others live or die. It disgusted him. The creature he had become.
"System: Blinds up."
The motorised window shades drew themselves upwards to hide away in the thick exterior wall.
"System: Windows open."
"Beep. Cannot comply. Request is prohibited by safety regulation 83-e paragraph 1."
His sorry looking figure made it's way over to the windows and leaned against the quad-pane glass.
"Fuck! I can't even kill myself", he cursed at the empty room.
Beyond the windows and spread out as far as his bio-enhanced eyes could see into the night was the Milton Citadel shuttle terminal. The deep rows of lights and sprawling buildings gave the appearance of being trapped inside a gigantic machine. In every direction some man-made structure was injected into the landscape. Shuttles darted amongst this maelstrom of concrete and metal like angry bees swarming around their nest. Communication towers were the closest things to trees each with a thousand channels of data streams buzzing to and from them, carried across the ether by invisible ultra-high frequencies. No doubt jumbled up in this storm of data packets were some secure transmissions between the McKaffs and their various underlings, all eager to divulge the information that would begin a sequence of events to snuff out Josh Weller's existence.
"So this was the start of the end", he told himself, "all that deception, those cruel acts, slave trading and drugs trafficking would finally catch up with him."
The frozen hologram of Carena faded as he switched off the projector and tossed the remote onto the table. The case swung against his leg as it was pulled handle-first from the table. His nostrils flared up as they accepted a line of high quality class-A drugs. After a glance around the apartment he walked slowly towards the doorway.
He was preparing himself to see what bad hand fate had in store. This was one game in which he already knew the odds and they were all against him returning. The door closed as it had opened, silently and with a sense of clinical precision. He had flaunted the risks for far too long, gambling the lives of those closest to him and his own.
Now it was time to pay up and close the account.
To be continued...
TAD "