Grocery Run
The front door creaked open with the tooth-aching grind of rust on rust, causing Horace to flinch. The pudgy Feline squeezed through the gap he’d already made, just wide enough for his soft belly to get through without tearing his suit if he sucked it in a little. The door wasn’t in such bad shape that he couldn’t finish opening it, and it wouldn’t have been any trouble at all if he wasn’t wearing his portable AR unit on his back. He just didn’t want that sound grating on his teeth again. “Yeeeaaah. Dina, remind me to oil these things when we get back.”
“Item 422 added to your to-do list, Master!” giggled the wire-framed outline of a Mouse as D1n4 floated into view from the edge of his visor. With a little pirouette, his virtual assistant digitized some too-short jogging shorts and a similarly short-cut windbreaker around her figure, filling in the gaps with renderings of milky white fur and peach-pink skin along her tail. The large orbs of her eyes glowed faintly, uniformly blue from edge to edge, like the screen of some archaic CRT monitor still waiting for an OS to load. “Temperatures will be in the lower 30s Celsius today, with scattered acid showers around one o’clock. Did you remember to bring shelter?”
Horace took a second to adjust the hook-loop cuffs at his wrists and ankles, ensuring not one strand of his orange-cream fur stuck out from his environmental suit below his neck. He also squirmed a little in the ratcheting straps holding his AR unit to his back. Giving up on any hope of it actually resting comfortably, he finally pulled the custom-made interface gloves over his fingers to strap them down, overlapping the cuffs of his suit. “Oh, we’ll be back way before that,” the Feline promised his assistant, “Or I’ll die of heat-stroke and anxiety before the rain starts.”
“Crime rates along your proposed route average 16%,” D1n4 noted like she was repeating the weather again. When Horace tilted his head, as he tended to when he couldn’t quite figure out why she had said something from out of the blue, she elaborated, “Mugging will be a greater risk than heat-stroke. This outing is entirely unnecessary, Master. A delivery drone would be faster and safer. It’s just groceries.”
He sighed at that, tucking his thumbs behind the straps on his shoulders, and tried his best to push his chest out a little further than his tummy. “Look, this is literally the only exercise I get anymore. If I give this up, I’ll be round as a Hippo in six months and probably dead in a year,” the Feline argued...ignoring that he almost met that first description already. He pressed the thick visor wrapped around the entire upper half of his face out of nervous habit more than any need to adjust it. “Now navigate, please. You know I suck at directions.”
A bright blue line rolled out from in front of his feet like an endless carpet, reaching down the walkway to the street and taking a left along the sidewalk. With a last, deep breath, Horace stepped onto the route.
Horace was lucky enough to live in one of the few remaining individually-owned lots in the city (thanks entirely to an inheritance from his great-uncle), and was literally the only residence on the street. At the end of his perfectly manicured lawn, just on the other side of the pristine white picket-fence, skyscrapers of smooth steel and mirrored glass reached all the way to the puffy white clouds overhead. A bird sang a friendly farewell from the tree beside his gate as he passed through it onto the sidewalk, and he turned to follow his route down the otherwise empty street. To either side of him, little boutiques and assorted shops displayed their wares through crystalline windows, with hardly a shadow in sight. The faint murmur of friendly conversations hinted at other people enjoying their morning just out of his sight.
The faint scent of spoiled milk threatened to ruin the illusion. Horace tried hard not to let in the memory that his city had not seen even a pigeon in decades. D1n4 did her part to keep him distracted: “Today’s route takes you by Cobalt Plaza,” she announced cheerfully, as always, “I notice you never look at the statue there anymore. Has it become dull?”
Completely unseen behind his visor, Horace rolled his eyes. “The settler memorial? It’s fine. Just not very inspiring to someone settled in his ruts,” he shrugged as they rounded the corner of the block, just in sight of the feature in question. If Horace’s own memory served him at all (which it rarely did), there wasn’t actually a statue there anymore. Just the base and maybe a stub or two of copper where the memorial used to be.
D1n4 swept her hand between his eyes and the statue, leaving behind something like a multi-layered windmill. The overlap of the alternating blades wove a kinetic pattern as they rotated in opposition to each other, reflecting the sunlight in sparkles that danced all along the street. Horace paused to stare at the new statuary for a moment, and two little 8-bit imitations of eyes appeared on the front of his visor to blink in surprise on his behalf. “...Huh. That’s nice,” the pudgy Feline admitted...just before the entire plaza rippled in his sight like a heat-distortion, and was suddenly replaced by a glittering beach framed in lush greenery and endless blue sky.
Horace groaned and tried to turn away before the audio even started, but the tropical scenery just invaded his vision whichever way he turned it: “Welcome to Paradise. A world of comfort, a future without fear, a lifetime without suffering—all waiting for you. Upload today, and set your spirit free,” promised a smiling Vixen in a white sundress as she sauntered across his view. With a friendly wave, she stretched out her hand in welcome, subtly guiding his eyes to the informational link creeping up from the sand. Then the whole scene fluttered like a towel in the wind and quickly blew away.
“Ugh...I’ve got to update the ad-blocker again,” Horace sighed as he could finally resume his walk safely.
“Item 423 added to your to-do list, Master,” D1n4 chimed helpfully before asking, “Don’t you already have the hardware for that upload at home?”
The tubby Feline grimaced. “Yeah, I do, and you don’t need to mention it again,” he muttered as he continued down the sidewalk. He’d cobbled together the hardware nearly a year ago, and scoured the dataweb for a copy of the software...back when that advertisement sounded fresh and hopeful...
At the far side of the plaza, sitting with his back up against the corner of the building there, was a Rabbit. His hands were folded in front of his belly in a posture of quiet patience, his soft, burnished gold fur so sleek and well groomed that it practically gleamed in the sunlight. The suit he wore was impeccable: a deep navy, with crisp lines unmarred by dust or any sign of wear. An immaculate white silk scarf was draped around his shoulders, ruffled gently by the breeze. If he’d correct his posture he would be the very picture of dignified refinement.
Horace winced a little and tried to quicken his pace as he walked by. A perfectly opaque black bar stretched across the Rabbit’s face, from a height just beneath his nose to just above his eyebrows, obscuring his face and hiding his eyes completely. D1n4 knew her master was a sucker for pleading eyes. But he paused out of habit at the edge of the sidewalk to check for oncoming vehicles, even though D1n4 ought to be flashing a warning in his FOV if one was coming...and sighed when the Rabbit now behind him spoke quietly, “Please, sir, have you got a nutri-pack to spare? Or a couple of links? I’m so hungry...”
Horace had nothing on him except his AR unit and his link-rod; a thumb-sized stick containing his government-registered identity information and a connection to his bit-chain account. (Physical currency was something to ogle in a museum these days, though Horace could just barely remember a day in his childhood when it was still in use. Commerce was all conducted with “links” now, units of a digital bit-chain.) The embarrassed Feline rocked his head for a second, considering how much he could spare...
“Your anticipated bill for this trip will consume 480 of your 493 remaining links,” D1n4 supplied the information more cheerily than she had any right to, “Keeping aside 10 for a ‘desperation fund’ until you complete your next commission, you could only reasonably commit 3. He couldn’t even buy a snack. I strongly recommend you keep walking.”
Horace bit his lip, and stepped into the street with a, “Sorry, friend,” muttered so quietly it probably wasn’t heard even by a Rabbit’s sharp ears. Once safely across the street, he added, “Dina, find a different route for the return trip.” The last thing he wanted was to walk by that guy again carrying his own supplies, like he was rubbing it in the unlucky Rabbit’s face...
Down two more blocks and around the corner, he finally arrived at the grocery store. Stepping through the automated doors, he was met with a clean and brightly-lit shop that smelled faintly of fresh bread. Every shelf was stuffed to the brim with a variety of packaged foods and household necessities, and a collection of crates in one corner even displayed crisp, ripe fruits and vegetables. Horace took one quick look around and shook his head. “Once again, Dina, I need to see my groceries. Don’t embarrass me like that one time.”
The lights dimmed and all the color faded, leaving behind scuffed isles with shelves rusting here and there in some spots. Though far from empty, not a single shelf was even half stocked, much less full, and a lot of the packaging was noticeably crinkled or partially crushed. He didn’t even glance in the direction of the produce crates, afraid of actually seeing something there, that would definitely not be edible. The scent of fresh bread remained, at least, pumped into the store through the vents to mask the more acrid scent of the produce section and the otherwise soulless smell of plastic wrapping all the other goods.
Like any fiscally responsible individual, he prioritized the essentials, pulling several flavors of nutri-packs off the main shelf to fill the bulk of his basket. “Why are they all meat flavors now?” he muttered, “They’re made out of vegetables. Just let them taste like vegetables! Or ‘egg’. At least then the texture would match.” He followed those with some properly filtered water, and some condensed soap for his utensils and laundry.
The unwanted thought crept into his mind like spider: no one in Paradise worries about flavors, or grocery runs. No shortages, no regulations...but then, technically, no need for food at all. Period. His tail flicked anxiously as the thought settled in his mind.
Horace was one of the (un?)lucky few with the skill-set to not only find the software for a consciousness upload on the dataweb, but to also vet the code before he ran it. He could still remember the way his stomach dropped when he read through the last few routines at the end of the process, designed to fire an overload of neural-feedback into the user’s brain — killing it thoroughly. Even now, Horace had to wonder how many of Paradise’s new residents understood what they had really left behind...or cared.
After all the essentials had been gathered, like any mildly self-indulgent individual, he picked up a favorite snack or two (ginger cookies, in his case) and a box of flavor powders to make the water just a little more exciting.
He winced a little at the total cost being displayed in the corner of his eye as D1n4 kept him aware of his expenses...and how quickly he was approaching the limit. After bagging up his selections, a large yellow 487 flashed in the center of his view as he stepped back out the door, finalizing the charge to his account. “So much for the desperation fund,” he sighed. The bright and cheery veneer of augmentation covered the outside world again, and the line marking his new path home rolled out from his feet and down the street.
Just as Horace stepped onto it, though, D1n4 pointed to a colorful, eye-popping advertisement displayed in one of the store’s windows, offering a service for “Full Consciousness Upload to Paradise” at a (presumably) affordably low price. The ad naturally featured several pictures of positively joyous people experiencing exotic locales, above the tagline, “Don’t just live — thrive forever in a new Eden!”
“You already have the hardware for this at home,” D1n4 repeated, “Instead of worrying about food and finances, you could be living in Paradise by this evening. All available research indicates there is no scarcity in the system, and with your skill-set—”
Horace stopped in his tracks and turned toward her, though the headset hid most of the absolutely dumbfounded look he was giving to the virtual Mouse “assisting” him. He wondered for a moment if she’d picked up some corpo-borpo adware somehow. His expression fell into a full frown when he recovered himself, and turned his whole body to face toward where she appeared in his view. “Okay, I know I keep your memory kind of full most of the time, but put this one on the quick-reference stack: ‘Full Consciousness Upload’ means ‘DEATH’. I don’t want to hear it again.”
“Committed, Master,” the Mouse answered with a cheerful salute, completely unphased by his change in attitude.
The chubby Feline sighed deeply and resumed following the navigation line. Maybe he should have reminded her that he’d already done the upload, actually. Naturally, he’d commented out the entire feedback section, and done a second (much more careful) scan of the code base to make sure nothing tried to push more than the minimum required output back to his brain. He’d even put a safety on the hardware itself, for good measure, to abort the whole process and eject his senses if the output crossed a healthy threshold. Once thoroughly self-assured that the system couldn’t hurt him, though...well, why not? It was — literally — harmless at that point, so he’d gone ahead and sent the clone of his mind into the system.
He couldn’t help but wonder how that other “him” was doing now. He would never know, naturally. They were separate consciences now, and the one in Paradise just might be the only one that knew his old body was still traipsing around in meat-space somewhere. He could hardly imagine how that might be affecting his mental integrity. If he even remembered. Horace could already tell it was the kind of thing he’d try hard to forget, himself.
As his thoughts started to drift into that depressing line, Horace cut a sideways look at D1n4, imitating strolling along beside him. He needed a change in mood. “Walk in front, please.”
Her answer was a giggled, “Sure!” and she quickly positioned herself directly in front of him along the navigation line. She was aware of the way his eyes were following the appealing swing of her rendered butt with every stride, of course, and didn’t mind in the least. She was programmed to indulge him like this, and it always made him feel a little better...at least in the moment.
He was so thoroughly distracted with distracting himself that he hardly noticed when she cut down an alley to avoid circling the entire block, and didn’t even think twice when she stepped a little to one side to lead him between a couple of people standing along his route. It wasn’t until one of those bodies deliberately moved in front of him, causing him to walk face-first into a muscular chest and stagger back a step, that he remembered he should always be paying attention when he told D1n4 to take a non-standard route...
“Wow, someone needs a new set of glasses, if they think they can just walk right through me.” The Bull in front of him smirked as he produced a knife from his pocket and opened it with an intimidating flourish.
Two large exclamation-points flashed on the front of Horace’s visor as he dropped his groceries and stretched his arms straight up before the stranger could even make any demands. That caused the Bull to laugh, and the grungy Hyena and long-haired Collie leaning against the walls to either side of the alley snickered with menacing smiles. “Well now that I’ve got your attention,” the Bull grinned, continuing to casually wag the knife in front of him, “What’s for dinner, friend?”
Beneath the visor, Horace’s eyes followed the tip of that blade like the head of a snake. “Uh...Beacon?” he called quietly. But he’d forgotten: the little self-carrying toolbox that usually served as his guard-dog on excursions like this had fallen through an experimental worm-hole in his garage last week. He hadn’t had a chance to replace the tools that were in it yet, much less build a new one.
Fortunately, at least one of the muggers seemed to have mis-heard him. “Wait, for real?” the Hyena’s ears immediately perked up, and he stepped forward to crouch down and peek into one of the grocery bags, “Where’d you find bac—!”
One of Horace’s fingers discreetly pushed a virtual slider all the way to the top, unseen outside his own headset, before he swung the same hand down in a hard slap to the top of the Hyena’s head. There was a clap like thunder and a sharp burst of ozone, and the Hyena toppled sideways with his eyes rolled up in his head and some of the fur between his ears smoldering. The other two in the alley flinched, then stared slack-jawed.
D1n4 poked her head out from behind the Bull with a sleepy yawn. “20% battery remaining,” she warned quietly, even as all the atmospheric augmentation in Horace’s view dialed down significantly to conserve the remaining power. The math was simple from there: Horace only had one (much weaker) shock left in the system, and two enemies about to recover from their own shock.
Time to go.
Horace snatched up one of the bags as he turned, but missed the handle on the other, and didn’t risk making a second grab at it before he bolted. “Dina!” he screamed, clutching his one bag of supplies to his chest while he ran, “Evasive maneuvers!!” He could already hear the sharp crack of the Bull’s hooves starting to pound the pavement behind him.
D1n4’s head popped out from the corner of the next alley ahead, and Horace turned down it without question. He threw himself in the narrow gap between two overflowing dumpsters there, twisting caddy-corner to get both his round belly and the AR unit on his back into the tight space. The Bull rounded the corner and made a lunge for him. Horace felt a tug on his sleeve — too close!! — but the smooth weave of the material let him yank free. He stumbled further down the alley, nearly losing his grip on his one remaining bag.
“Incoming!” D1n4 warned suddenly, “Duck!”
Horace crouched low just as a bottle came whistling past his ears, shattering on the pavement in front of him, and kept running. D1n4 reappeared ahead and a little above him, clinging to the ladder of a fire escape...and flickering briefly as his headset struggled to keep up with rendering her on low power. “Jump!” she urged.
Horace swore inside his head. She should know better than to expect athletics from him! His breath was already ragged and his legs burned as he sprinted for the ladder, but he didn’t dare slow down or even look back. He could hear the hiss of metal against cloth as the more slender Collie made her way between the dumpsters after him.
The ladder was rusted and the bottom rung bent at a bad angle, but it wasn’t like he had a choice to make in the matter. Hooking the plastic handles of his grocery bag between his teeth, Horace jumped for all his short legs were worth, reaching as far as his equally short arms were able. He got his fingers on the rung...and nearly bit the handle between his teeth in two, gritting his teeth with the effort of hauling the rest of himself up. Scrambling further up the ladder, he felt the Collie’s fingertips swipe against the back of his legs just as he kicked them up.
With a groan, Horace finished hauling himself up onto the walkway, then started trudging higher as quickly as he could while D1n4 floated above him, leading toward a rooftop exit. “Almost there, Master,” she promised encouragingly between his huffed breaths.
There was a grunt and a scraping sound from below. The Bull had finished going the long way around and gotten his hand on the ladder, while his Collie friend gave his hooves some support.
Horace wheezed, heart hammering in his chest even as he paused to rest his forehead on the railing and take a deep breath. Then he took a firm grip on the metal with one hand, made a small hop to break his connection with any other part of the fire escape...and triggered his last discharge.
A sharp snap of energy arced through the metal. The Bull bellowed, his hand spasmed involuntarily, and his grip broke. Lucky bonus: he fell directly onto the Collie, landing with a heavy, painful crash that splayed them both on the pavement.
Horace didn’t wait around to see if they got back up. He hauled himself up to the roof, gasping for breath, then staggered over to the door leading to the interior stairwell. D1n4 reappeared beside him, barely rendering her wire-frame and postured like she was asleep on her feet after the recent chaos. “Congratulations, Master: you have successfully evaded pursuit. However, you have also suffered a 50% loss in your supplies. 2% battery remaining.”
The Cat groaned breathlessly, barely clinging to the plastic bag in one hand while the other punched a series of codes into the electronic lock on the door. He had to try several before finding which of the industry-documented master codes worked, but eventually stumbled inside for a short rest and a breather.
Getting home after that was a lot slower than he’d originally accounted for...and much more tense. Running at absolute minimal capacity, D1n4 wasn’t even speaking anymore, and the only augment being rendered in his sight was a bright wire-frame outlining his house in the distance. Without the navigation guiding him, Horace barely knew the way, and the raw appearance of the real city without his AR was both bleak and hostile.
His eyes, wide behind the shelter of the now-transparent visor, viewed the whole environment like a beast — one with jagged, rusty teeth, cold eyes, and the pervasive scent of spoil and rot. The buildings loomed like skeletal husks, their facades cracked and flaking, the sidewalk streaked with water stains that had long since dried into rust-tinted scars. Once sleek digital billboards exposed their broken screens, flickering erratically or flashing error messages in blocky text. One of them, a marquis for a long-defunct bank still valiantly attempting to carry out its final function, simply blinked the phrase “Trust in Progress” over and over beneath a buzz of static that might once have been a song.
As he rounded the corner onto his own street, though, Horace thought the worst part was the quiet. Without the AR-generated ambiance of chirping birds and distant conversations, there was only the soft scuff of his own footsteps, echoing too loudly along the empty street. Shadows moved on the windows of the skyscrapers along the way — possibly other citizens in the safe confines of their own apartments, or possibly just the robotic janitors still maintaining office interiors for employees that no longer existed. All the little boutiques that looked so polished and inviting that morning now looked violated, their windows broken and doors mired with grime, displaying only empty shelves and bulging wood.
A little ahead of him, his own house stood like a beacon of safety, still outlined in a bright orange wire-frame. There was no tree in the yard, nor grass to manicure...but at least the walls were still solid, and the door sturdy. He managed to get under the shelter of the porch just as the first drops of the afternoon rain hissed on the paved walk. Pausing just inside the door, the Feline cast a brief, mistrustful look back at the street, then closed it.
The lock clicked shut, and Horace rested his forehead against the cool wood for a moment. Inside the house was quiet and dark...even more than outside, truth be told. But it was cozy, familiar...and, above all, safe. “Yeeeaah...not doing that again. Not for a long while,” Horace muttered.
He was a coward. There was no denying that. Just like there was no denying he sometimes envied the life he imagined his other self might be living, and wished he hadn’t read the code behind the upload to Paradise. It might have been nice to go quietly, thinking he would simply wake up in a better world. Now, his only consolation was a long-held belief that, so long as he was afraid to die, there must still be something he valued in this life. It couldn’t be given up just yet...
“For whatever it’s worth, I do hope that guy’s having a better time of it in there than I am out here,” Horace sighed, shaking his head. Turning away from the door, Horace unplugged his visor from the portable unit he was already shrugging off of his shoulders...then plugged it into the home-unit built into his favorite recliner instead. D1n4 was waiting to welcome him with a bright and eager smile...and a list of his favorite POV kink environments. “Welcome home, Master!” she beamed.
