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I knew I shouldn't have taken another ticket.
I knew I was right when the man coughed the moment he got in the back seat.
"34th and Holloway," he said on the other side of a coughing fit before his lungs decided to start up immediately following the words.
"On it," I said. I flipped the till and accelerated radially upward for just a hair of a second before kicking the ol' CC-HO4.4 prograde and moving forward off the side street landing pad and towards the highway.
"Holy shit, you're human?" said the man before coughing once more. The fit at least seemed to be subsiding a bit.
"Sure am, need some water?" I said. I was already reaching for a bottle in the small cooler under the passenger-seat computer.
"Nah-" cough, cough, and a grand finale sort of cough from the man. "It’s all falling apart anyways. The lungs are just the first quitters."
I closed the cooler and set the bottle of water down atop it. I wasn't so sure he wouldn't need it sooner rather than later.
"Sorry to catch you by surprise, the 'H.O.' on the car stands for Human Operator," I said. It’s good to keep ‘em talking. Tips are better. And he finally quit coughing, though even in the rearview, he didn't look good.
"Nah, it’s good," he said. It still sounded like his voice skipped a gear and needed a tune-up. No one should sound like he did. "Human's better anyway, you can speed." He flashed a smile of pearly white, semi-luminescent teeth. They brightened up the rear of the cab. Those weren't cheap.
"You know I can't do that, sir," I said with a smile of my own. No source of light though. "Getting a PD-Scan on the vehicle will only force us to go slower. I'll get you there asap though."
"I know you won't do it, don't want to do it even. But you can speed if we need it."
"Why would we need it?" A dumb question. Why am I talking to this punter about breaking the law? I wanted to turn the conversation. If he wants speed for a tip, then I'm getting no tip. I've already got too many points on my license.
"Because I'm dying back here," he said.
No smile.
The rear of my cab was as dim as it ever was.
I took too long to reply, but I still didn't think before my words came out. Never really did. "Philosophically dying or do I need to swap you over to an Ambo?"
"No flashing lights please," laughed the man. He didn't cough but I saw sweat forming on his brow. Maybe he was in bad shape. "I don't need a doctor, right now I need a cabbie. Preferably, one who can speed." Again, the smile, but now I just saw it light up the sweat on his forehead. His skin was tanned, the perfect bronze that one probably needed genetics and an impossibly lucky window of sun to get in the past, but now just took a bit more money. Even the perfect skin was paling though.
"What's wrong with you?" I said.
"No need to worry about closing your little window there. I'm not ill."
"Well, that didn't answer the question," I said. Again, words before thoughts. I laughed towards the end, with a forced smile. Hoped he thought it was a joke.
"How many implants do you have?" he asked. Now he really was fuckin' with me.
"Little personal, eh?"
"You may be the last person I ever speak with. Let's get personal, and up the speed a bit if possible." Again, the smile lit up my car. It was as forced as mine.
He wasn't fuckin' with me.
I sped up.
"Good, good," he said before overturning in a violent burst. His head shot downwards, and his hands clenched his torso. The man let out a lurch that sounded more mechanical than guttural.
"Goddammit man, you sure you don't need a hospital?" I said, already changing lanes on the froowee. Someone behind me honked, but there are three dimensions to flight and the dunce should have moved in any of them. I'd used my blinker.
"No!" shouted the man. "Don't you fucking dare take me to anywhere else. 34th and Holloway. I die there or I die in the cab." He clenched tighter about himself. "Now answer my question. Implants. How many?"
I pulled back into the center lane and sped up. The kid behind me in their car honked as they passed by me, speeding up in the slow lane.
"Just a few," I said. "Not a lot of free cash to spend in this life."
The man forced himself up. He was still visibly in pain, but he smiled anyway. His teeth didn't light up the car anymore though. "What brand?"
"Huh?"
"What brand are your implants? Eh, it doesn't matter, does it? They all fucking own us anyway. Meteor, Eddison, Red Forest, pick your poison, you'll get cirrhosis no matter what."
"What's killing you?" I interrupted. Mouth over mind, you see. He stopped and looked at me with that now lightless grin.
"The finest Meteor implants money can buy, or that a bonus can give." He laughed a coughing spurting laugh.
As he hacked, I noticed the stench that had begun filling the car. It was subtle still but had become obvious enough I even smelt it up front. The worst punters are like that.
Copper and ozone.
Fire and blood.
This man was full of a lot, but bull wasn't the culprit today.
"You ever get a shooting headache, like the kind that cuts through the worst hangovers. Not that throbbing bullshit that makes you groan and hit detox on your O.S., but that kind that feels like your brain is pushing a knife through your skull, right at your eyebrow."
"Sure," I said, politely ignoring the smell and speeding up further. Whatever story this guy had no longer worth padding out the drive.
"Well, I fuckin' got one, and my detox isn't doing shit. It’s not even on brand. Full O.S. is dying on me. You smell me yet? Fuck I reek back here, you've got to be getting that up there. I can smell myself, you know that's bad. Necrosis is a bitch."
"You really are dying back there?"
"Dyin' not lyin'," laughed the man. His breath wafted up to the front of the cab and I smelt death itself.
"You asked about implant."
"I'd ask your brand," said the man before coughing a bit. "But I don't think it matters. That was my line you know: If you're not rockin’ Meteor implants you best get to a doc and replace ‘em. They'll rot your insides and give you cyberpsychosis. Meteor has a 100 percent guarantee against such mental conditions caused by installation of all proper implants."
"Installation?"
"You're a fast one. Usually, folks don't catch the truth in the pitch, they just see the smile and the pitch." He flashed a dull smile at me. His breath hadn't gotten better behind closed teeth.
"So, what are your Meteor-official implants doing to you?"
"Can't you see the obvious?"
"How are they killing you?"
"With malice."
I let the sentence hang in the air. There would be more, there always was after a statement like that.
"I worked for them," he said. I hid my smile at being right. There was a beep from my dash and the air conditioning kicked on, one fan blowing on me and about five blowing in the rear seats. The temp in the cab had risen above the auto-set. It wasn't the car heating up. "Sixteen goddamned years, I worked for them. Got way up top too. I'll admit, I was given a silver spoon at the start. First five years or so, head of the south-sprawl region loved me. HR, marketing, even the director, for some reason picked me for success.
"There were others, sure. Meteor doesn't have a shortage of silver spoons to hand out if they're feeling generous, but something about me really tickled their giblets. There was this kid, just a year older than me, who had their love even more than I did. Know what he did?"
I didn't answer and he didn't give me time to.
"He fuckin' quit. Fool was a year away from associate and he quit. No more silver spoon there. No more competition. I pulled associate within six months of his departure, simply because they were scared to lose me in the fallout.
"... He's probably not dealing with this now though."
Silence and the man looked down at his hands. The smell of coppery death well and truly filled the car now. We were two degrees above baseline temp for the cab and it was a cold night outside. This punter was fucked.
"Water?" I said. I ditched the bottle I had left out of the cooler and opened it up for a cold one.
"I guess I can't deny ya now." he said.
I handed him the cold water and he took a swig that counted for four gulps.
"How much further we got? " He asked after a dep breath following the drink. He'd drained half the bottle.
I told him our timeline.
"Well, shit."
"Yea?" I asked.
"Yea," he said.
He wasn't going to make it.
"Where did you want to go?" I asked.
"It’s my sister's place. She and I haven't talked in years, but...."
"Family is better than nothing?"
"Exactly. And I've got worse than nothing now. Implants are burning up inside me and I can't even see out of one of my eyes anymore. Everything's shutting down and Its taking me with it."
"What'd you do?"
"Took that silver spoon too seriously. I didn't stop the climb and I fucked it all up."
"Fuck the corps."
"Agreed," he said before finishing the water.
I kept driving towards his sister's place. He hadn't given me another destination.
"She never wanted any of my dirty money, but I'm dying now and there's nothing else I've got to give to the world."
I grunted a response to get him to continue. He was laying on the back seat now, eyes closed, skin twitching, but still he talked. He was persistent, had to give him that.
"She's not poor but, well, you saw the address. I've got to get her my cash. All the credits in my account lock in me when I die."
"That a bug or a feature?"
"Bit of both now," he laughed before another coughing fit took him. This was a big one. I didn't see the splatter, but I doubt it was saliva he spit up onto the floor as he hacked.
"Here," he said, reaching out a hand towards me. "I won't make it long enough to pay you."
"Till’s not done yet," I said.
"Round it up," he said with a dull smile of red teeth. "Jack me in so I can pay you."
I reached back and pulled the port-cord from his wrist out and towards the dash where the till sat.
"Full body security, can't even transfer credits?" I asked.
"Nope. Feature first, bug now."
His whole account opened up on my dash.
I saw everything.
This man was beyond the one percent. I'd never seen so many commas in a number before.
"Got a request," he said. I could hardly hear him over my own thoughts as I stared at his account. He continued without my reply: "Take it all. Take it out of this dead meat I've got and keep going to my sister. Give what you can to her. I don’t even care if you take more than your fare, consider it a tip. But get the money to her."
I started to say something, but he cut me off:
"Transfer it now you dumb fuck! I'm dying and zeros take a while to move!"
I hit transfer. The zeros didn't take a while. They rolled from him and into my account in an instant.
I turned to thank him, or at least say something, but he was gone. There was no light left in his teeth, let alone his eyes. The machine remained, heating up my cab and convulsing his body, but whatever soul had been in the body was no longer present.
The man had died.
I stopped the till, did a quick search on the netmap and found the nearest dumpster.
I ditched the body. I rolled down the windows to air out the death smell. It was raining but the acidity was low enough I got a bit of the smell of fresh water in the air rather than poison.
I wasn't thinking, I was acting.
When I flipped on the cab again after dumping the body, my netmap opened up asking if I'd like to resume my drive to the previous destination.
Now I thought.
I thought long and hard before I began to drive.
Thanks for giving that a read! If you’d like to dive into another dark sci-fi tale of mine, check out A Tale of Two Cocktails.
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Max