Chapter 18: Hunting The Lynx Part 2

A pizza wrapped in a tortilla like a taco. This was the symbol of the great restaurant header Tacquizza, where the taco-wrapped pizza served a dual purpose as the letter A. The shtick did not work as well for the Burger Queen across the street, that tried to make its B in 'Burger' the shape of a hamburger.

Jessica entered Tacquizza from the back corridor, as a recycle bot tossed a hamburger in the Organic canister. Entered to white smoke, the sound of sizzling and rap battling then weaved through the kitchen line, where her boss, Eva, sang Italian while wrapping tacos. It may as well have been gibberish, rhyming gibberish. She could, however, understand coworker Gus, who rapped his Spanish row and rolled pizza dough. Whether or not Gus and Eva understood each other was anyone's guess.

Eva hailed Jessica over heaps of sizzling meat. "Hey, Chetah! Primi ordini sono pronti!"

"Of course, they are!" Jessica replied. "Only thing faster than my delivery is your cooking!"

Italian laughter.

"Hey, Jess!" called Gus.

Jessica turned to meet the big grin on Gus's tan, oily face.

"A priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a vegan enter a bar."

"You already told me that one, Gus!" She continued toward the counter.

"Ey, it's still funny!"

Per routine, Jess extracted two carriers at a time. Always insulated packages and the occasional backpack cooler. Eva did not want to spend money on a stasis cooler, which meant no skate tricks when soda was involved

***

Navigating the suburbs was a fluid race. Jessica leaned on memory for GPS. Her goggles added x-ray vision, the lenses highlighting law enforcement by placing their red outlines against the blue of civilians. Red's proximity was all she needed to gauge whether or not she could skip roads or grind rails. The ability to see through walls definitely helped.

"Play 'Crash' by The Primitives."

The sight of an Azarean guard brought her to a screeching halt. A member of NSS: New Sumer Security had appeared around the corner block. He was idle on his bike, outside the McDonough's restaurant. No one seemed to pay him any mind as he sat there, drinking whatever Azareans drink from his plastic bottle.

A sense of irony simmered in Jessica's stomach as she stepped outside the McDonough's restaurant, but there were more deliveries to make. When Eva got a call from the inner city, the boss seemed rather inspirited by someone's passionate yearning for Tacquizza. Jessica had no qualms; she was already used to New Sumer's traffic and "Mobography." The only foreseeable issue was the speed of the delivery. Again, Jessica had no qualms.

Her eyes rolled faster than her gravity board. "Three Mermaid Stars." She surveyed New Sumer's eastern district, everything in her path. Skyscrapers were city sanctuaries, housing the majority of its living population and workforce. Sky traffic in the high sprawl and everything below assumed a hive essence. "One Burrito Bar, twoÑthree Jack N' Cups, two vehicle rental locations.

"Nine recharge stations." The city skyline bore many hangarsÑlike cantileversÑfor airborne traffic, where every vehicle recharged its beam rotor and refilled with Synether fuel. Many more stations occupied the ground than the air because mid-air stops were typically reserved for emergency vehicles.

"Seven. Arts, entertainment, and electronics." Ironically, electronic retailersÑlike Game Non-Stop, Block Shop, and Sky MartÑstayed in business for the same reason: aliens held a peculiar aversion toward workforce robotics. Software and digital goods made too many people jobless. Azareans were baffled by archaic humans, how they protested immigrants taking jobs but not machines. Upon their arrival, Azareans outlawed artificial intelligence and terminated all affiliations with extreme prejudice.

"Two genetics labs and three pharmacies." Humans were paid lab rats, unlike other forms of indigenous life. Below the red letters reading Genesis, pods were visible past the sliding doors. Never serving a subject herself, the test subject's life was a bit of a mystery. But as stock prices will attest, pharmaceutics prospered from the experiments.

"Eleven vegan restaurants and markets." Lunch in a green restaurant had the ambiance of dining in a forest, decorated as they were by trees on soil floors. Vegan locations witnessed a substantial Azarean presence, but the primary difference between aliens and humans in sharing a diet was that Azareans failed to reveal theirs unless asked about it.

"Seventeen officers of the law," Jessica counted, "an average of 0.94 per square block." Azarean authorities had vehicles; humans wandered on foot or on mopeds. Aliens distinguished themselves through armor, while humans donned black jumpsuit harnesses. Humans carried stun guns. Azareans: unknown.

Someone once attested to seeing another human vaporized. That was false. There was another claim, that Azareans could shoot bubbles and float people all the way to space. Funny but false.

By the time Jessica reached her destination, she had counted every noteworthy block of capitalism, a snapshot of New Sumer: people, places, transactions, and normalcy; everything that comprised what Azareans called an Eden. In every corner of the world, Edens, self-sustaining, advanced, and not oppressed. Whether it was Kunlun in China, Atlantis in Greece, Babylon, Zion, or Camelot, the aliens had embedded a network of technologically advanced havens for their kind and others. A network of independent but cooperative megacities.

"Angel Arms Conservation." She arrived at a bio-dome encapsulated within another superstructure, the big letters Terafell Plaza reflecting sunshine just outside. Inside, a concrete library of isolation reclined up and down the cavernous skyscraper. Grimy walls painted every angle of her peripheral field, not counting the glossy layer of glass right before her. Outside the entrance, she found a buzzer and audio panel. Buzz.

"Delivery!"

A man's raspy voice coughed through the speaker. "Who goes there?"

"Tacos and pizza from your friendly neighborhood Tacquizza!"

"Gooood. Gooood. Enter." The doors slid open.

Jessica warily set foot into the elongated antechamber, which reminded her of an igloo. Windows and overhead beams extended the length of the treadmill path that carried her across. It was an awkwardly quiet slide, so, halfway through, she walked. At the end awaited a dark-haired secretary on a lacquered desk, her nose buried in a magazine. The woman leaned forward just as Jessica arrived, black blazer brandished, then smiled and said, "You may leave it here."

"Thank you for ordering from Tacquizza! Where your satisfaction is our satisfaction!" Jessica performed the full gesture, then removed the tablet from its carrier sleeve. The secretary presented a credit chip.

"Mr. Mandible insists you receive a tip for the quick arrival."

"I hope your lower jawbone will understand that it's against company policy," Jessica said humbly.

"He's informed your superior." She inserted the chip into the slot like a pro.

"You gah some esplainin' to do, Eva." As she turned, Jess inhaled the majesty of the glass dome: green and vibrant overgrowth spanned into a canopy that brushed all but the zenith. She then glowered suspiciously at the secretary. "This wouldn't happen to be the place where those feral bears escaped and mauled some visitors?"

"Uhh," she hesitated. "It may be that news of wild animals played in the emergency holo-channels next to the Angel Arms name. We have since resolved the matter and have taken precautions to avoid a repeat incident.

"What of the bears?" said Jessica.

"What about them?"

"What do you think caused them to go mad?"

"None of the staff from that night took responsibility," she said impatiently. "Therefore, I cannot comment."

"But were the bears feral before or after they got out?"

"Don't you have deliveries to make?"

"I'm actually on break after this."

"Unless you are with PETU, or some other nonsense organization, and have a federal writ of disclosure, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Nope." She had to return to Tacquizza anyway. She checked her watch, turned around, and fastened her goggles. "McFly!" Instead of using the treadmill, she hopped on the rail. This stirred the woman's ire.

"You can't do that!"

"Do what?"

"Skate on the rails like that!"

Jessica extended her arms to maintain balance.

"You can't-do that!" the secretary persisted. "Stop that!" She stood up and walked around the desk. Jessica was too busy ignoring her.

"'Nana nana na nana nana naaaaa.'"

"Stop!"

"'You're gonna craaash.'"

"Stop it!"

"'Nana nana na nana nana naaaaa.'"

"Slow down!"

"You're gonna craaash...'"

Jessica figured she could make a few more deliveries before a break. She departed Angel Arms, hoping that a tip would not disrupt the balance of her four non-existent humors. Expectation is the mother of all Rotten Tomatoes, she thought. Tips derailed from pride in one's work, a fact the aliens knew upon their arrival. Hence why Japanese philosophy became the cornerstone of New Earth's labor logic. It did not, however, place a dent in the corporate structure.

"Adam Smith prevails."