From: Mosquito_Andy_<benway@uclink2.berkeley.edu>%Holonet@paradigm.co.jp (Mosquito Andy <benway@uclink2.berkeley.edu>,Holonet
Subject: Outside In -- short story (comments welcomed)
Date: Thu Mar 02 20:04:29 MET 1995

On the outside wanting to be on the inside, and vice versa
Matt Saunders 1995

    It was in a shoe store two levels below the surface that I first met
Weaver. The shoe store didn't get much business, being so far from the
center of the mall, but Sherman, the owner, stayed afloat by selling
bootleg software. That's the most honest answer he ever gave me, at least.
Of course, bootleg software was pretty common, and people routinely sold
it on the street, shrink-wrapped and complete with photostatted manuals.
Sherman didn't sell that kind of wares. I never saw a company's name on
any box of software he sold. The sort of people he did business with came
to him for a reason.
    I came to him because there wasn't anything else to do in the mall.
Sometimes I'd go up into the positive levels, where people from outside
would go, where the decor was modern and there were windows and real
light, but I couldn't stay for long. I usually didn't have any money to
see a movie or get something to eat, and the mall cops were paid to keep
residents and other riffraff away from the goldcards. So I mostly stuck to
the negative floors, and Sherman was a welcome change from the people I
went to school with every day. People who live in a mall system tend to
think they live in a prime-time TV show, but Sherman was a welcome change.
He sat in his little hole-in-the-wall shop all day, but he didn't bother
with TV. He had one upstairs on the wall of his apartment, but I don't
think he watched it. He just kept it tuned to some scenery channel so that
it looked like a window. Sometimes he'd listen to music, and when I'd ask
him what it was, it was always a person's name, not like the pop-trash
things my friends would buy, and then sell six months later, when they
didn't like the band any more. Some of the recordings Sherman had sounded
like they were recorded from analog sources, and all of them were illegal
copies. Hanging out with Sherman was the next best thing to actually
getting out of this place.
    Of course, he sold shoes, too. He cut me a deal on some slick black and
white leather oxfords, on account of I gave him someone to tell stories
to. I used to think he made up the stories, but once in a while you could
tell a character in one of his stories was actually him. And when I saw
the guy in the shoe store Monday, I knew it was Weaver from Sherman's
story. He had the same look as Sherman had described, with black hair
combed back and fixed in place with something that gave his head the look
of a hedgehog that had been spray-painted black. His mouth was slightly
open, revealing small teeth, angled forward slightly, and his eyes darted
toward me in a way that reminded me of a rat caught in the middle of the
room when the lights came on.
    I walked in the door and saw Sherman there, talking to him in that way
Sherman called "conducting business," and I thought maybe Sherman was
going to tell me to come back later. But he grinned, like he'd been
waiting for me to show up, and flicked his forefinger at a chair. Then he
introduced me to Weaver.
    "This is Mr. Spline," he said, with a wink. He didn't bother to tell
Weaver my name, which was fine by me. I hadn't chosen a name I wanted to
go by yet; all I had was the name my family gave me, and you can't go
around introducing yourself to people like Weaver with your real name.
    Weaver, having determined that I wasn't an immediate threat, shook his
quills at me in a vaguely friendly gesture, then redirected his attention
to Sherman.
    "Look, I trust you. You know where to find me when you need to."
    He stubbed out a cigarette I hadn't noticed before--he hadn't drawn off it

in my presence--and headed for the door.
    "Talk to you Wednesday."
    "Right," Sherman grunted, and poured himself a cup of coffee. Sherman
never asked me how school had been that day, which I liked. I knew he
didn't give a damn, and for that matter neither did I. He looked
quizzically at me over the coffeepot.
    I nodded and held out my mug, the one that said MAKITA in bold blue
letters. Sherman had a cupboard behind the counter full of an assortment
of old mugs, made from everything from thermal plastic to tin. He
accumulated coffee cups like people accumulate anything that pertains to
their particular area of interest. I guess Sherman's area of interest
involved a lot of patience, because he was always waiting on someone or
something, and usually drinking black coffee while he was at it. In my
health class, they had told me some bad things about drinking coffee all
the time, but that doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that concerns
Sherman. He's probably developed an extra node of his liver to process
caffeine and neutralize it before it gave him cancer or some other
condition that makes doctors shake their heads and prescribe a lot of
opiates. As far as I know, it was the only drug he ever did. He never
drank, and he always told me smoking was for squares. I think his father
was a political type or something, some guy who sat behind a desk all day
on the phone and running to the coffee machine every time his cup ran dry,
anything to get away from the desk.
    He filled my cup, and as he handed it back, said "I got a new story for
you."
    I grinned and settled into my chair. Sherman's stories tended to lack the
luxury of a beginning or end.
    "And you're in it," he added.

    Four days later, I was living in an abandoned maintenance space, some
forgotten vessel in the massive circulatory system of the mall system. I
don't know what it had originally been built for, but Sherman had given it
some rudimentary furnishings and it looked like people had lived there
before. There was one picture on the wall, a grainy old photograph of a
rooster.The walls were standard cheap stainless, and the ceiling was five
feet above the floor--a bit more than what I'd call a crawlspace, but not
much. The place where he set me up wasn't much of a room either, just a
place where someone had once stored some sort of equipment. There were a
lot of places like this in the system, that had become obsolete due to new
technology or management, and it was easier to just erase the place from
the blueprints than actually close it off or make it into something new.
When I was a kid, we used to explore abandoned parts of the mall, playing
hide-and-seek through disused air ducts or the tunnels that honeycombed
this place. My father worked for the telephone company once, scurrying
through these tunnels on the clock, so that people like my mother could
come home and turn on their soaps if they had paid their bill. But he took
off one day, left for work and somehow never got there, and my mom always
said that he'd run off with some girl and finally gotten out of this
place, like he had promised her the two of them would eventually. I told
Sherman that story, and Sherman said my mom watched too many soap operas.
    The place hadn't gotten much prettier since they shut it down. There was
some sort of black mold growing along the seams in the walls, and it
didn't take me long to get accustomed to beetles crawling over my legs.
Once when I swatted at one, it gave me a nasty bite, and after that I
tried to leave them alone. There were electrical outlets every ten meters,
but none of them were live anymore, so Sherman had left me with a little
unbreakable fluorescent lantern so that I could see when I ate, or read
once in a while, but the first of two sets of batteries had already run
down, so I was spending more time in the dark. Sherman said he was going
to come back for me when he could. If he didn't, I probably wouldn't be
able to find my way out; Sherman had led me here in the dark, and it took
him twenty minutes to get here. He had left me some old coverless books,
and a stack of ready-to-eat meals in self-heating plastic trays with foil
covers that pictured meals a lot more appetizing than what I found when I
opened them. It was a month since the date on the bottom of the packages,
but Sherman said that was the least of my worries right now. There was
also a hundred-gallon tank of water in one corner, more full than empty,
and a chamber pot. Sherman showed me where, a short way down one corridor,
there was a one-way sealed chute for waste, and after a couple days I
could find my way there in the dark. I had started one of Sherman's books,
but when I started to be afraid I'd be left in the dark, I gave that up.
Instead, I mostly just thought about how I'd got myself into such a mess.

    When he had told me what Weaver wanted, he told me that it was a little
risky, but it also paid fifty dollars cash, which was more than I had made
all of last summer working at a supermarket on level negative three. So I
said I'd do it; Sherman was doing me a favor by letting me in on it, after
all. I didn't want to pass up this chance to get my head out of the
stagnant pond of obedience that was our lovely city, the Baltimore mall.
    So Sherman gave me the details and told me to come back Wednesday
afternoon. Tuesday a couple of friends and I went to see a double feature
at the Cinema Sabrosa, a spy movie and a movie about a submarine crew and
how one of the crew went apeshit and started chopping up the others with a
fire ax. Wednesday after school, I came back to Sherman's store. He ran me
through what I had to do, step by step, and then we waited for the guy to
go out. I drank black coffee with Sherman and got the jitters something
fierce. Finally, at about 5:00, Sherman got a phone call and told me it
was time to go. He gave me a heavy nylon lunchbag.
    "Everything you need is in there."
    "Thanks," I said, stuffing it into my pocket.
    I expected him to say good luck or something, but he didn't, and I didn't
wait for it; I had to be in and out of this guy's apartment before he came
back, and he could have just popped down to the corner store for a
newspaper, or he could have jumped on the train to New York, for all we
knew. I didn't know his name, but I knew where he lived: Level -2, 1030
Madeira, apartment 502. I was there in two minutes. I knocked on the door
first, like I'd seen in the movies, and looked around while I waited for
someone to move inside. It was an old place, and there wasn't anyone in
the halls. The lock was electronic, opened with a key card that I didn't
have. I could pick it, if I had the experience, but I didn't have that
either. What I did have was a pair of leather work gloves and a high-speed
drill. I pulled out the lunchbag and looked at my watch. He'd been gone
almost four minutes. I took the little .357 four-barrel pepperbox out and
stuck it in my pocket. It made me feel like someone, but I really hoped it
didn't come to that. I'd only held a gun in simulations at the arcade,
never a real one like this. It even smelled like danger. I got out the
drill. It was about ten centimeters long, bright blue plastic with a grip
molded in it and another seven centimeters or so of drill sticking out of
its end. I took another quick look around--no-one home, everything was
perfect so far. Sherman had told me exactly what to do. I set the drill
against where I guessed it would be most effective and squeezed its
trigger, pushing with the hell of my other hand. It made a high-pitched
whine against the metal of the lock's innards, but it cut through in a few
seconds. I put the drill away and pulled the bolt back with a tool that
looked like it had originally seen service in a dentist's office. Sherman
had told me exactly what to do; I was inside in twenty seconds. It was a
small place; there weren't that many places you could put the satchel I
was looking for. There was a bed filling up one wall, a small dresser next
to it, and a sink with a mirror over it. I looked under the bed first, and
there it was, easier than I had expected. Black plastic case with a couple
of airport tags hanging off the handle. I wanted to find out what was in
it, but it was locked, and if I used the drill on it, someone would be
pissed. I shook it lightly. Nothing moved inside. So I got up to get out
of there, and there he was, standing in the doorway.
    At least, I assume it was him, because I'd never seen him, but it didn't
really matter who he was; he was blocking the one way out of this hole,
and he had an automatic in his hand.
    He told me to put the case down. I didn't hear him clearly, I was
picturing myself in the corner with a bullet in my head. This guy wasn't
going to turn me over to the cops, he'd shoot me as soon as I gave him the
case, and then chop me up and shove me down the garbage disposal. If I put
the case down, I was dead. I grabbed the gun instead. He saw me do it, and
as the gun came clear of my pocket, he shot at me. He couldn't have been
more than ten feet away from me. I saw his gun come up and knew I
shouldn't have gone for the gun, I was lunchmeat for sure. I pulled the
case in front of me reflexively, and a train hit the other side of it. It
knocked me off my feet, and as I fell, my arm finished what it had begun
and I shot him with the pepperbox. I hit him in the chest; all those afast
draw' video games finally found a practical application. Good thing we
have those games, or we'd never learn how to shoot at each other properly.
Then I landed on the ground, and realized I was bleeding. He was flat on
his back, with a surprised look on his face. Shots fired. Cops. The case
had a silver star on it where his bullet had hit, and my right side had
been chewed up by the fragments of lead that had been deflected from their
intended course. The guy on the floor moved. I found his gun in the corner
and stuck it in my waistband. I was starting to feel light-headed, but I
had to get out of there. I closed the door behind me, and ran for the
stairs, holding the case under my arm. A girl, older than I was, looked
out of her door and saw me there and I saw fear in her eyes. Then I was on
the stairs and I heard her voice in my head describing me to a cop with a
notepad.
    'About a hundred seventy centimeters, a hundred and thirty pounds, black
hair, brown eyes, wearing a green coat, carrying a black case under his
arm. No more than sixteen.'
    I made it to the street without anyone trying to stop me. Nobody seemed
to care what might have gone on upstairs. What would I have done if
someone had tried to stop me? I avoided people, worked my way back to
Sherman's by a roundabout route through numerous back alleys and other
unorthodox measures. Sherman was waiting for me, drinking coffee from the
black mug with the silver Yamaha symbol on it. He saw me coming, sweaty,
pale, and jumped to take the case off my hands. He took the two of us
upstairs, and then I told him what happened as he took off my shirt and
patched the leak in my veins.
    "He wasn't dead?" he asked, rummaging for a first aid kit.
    "Not when I left."
    "Anyone else see you?" He found an aluminum case with a red cross, and
swabbed my wound with a local anesthetic.
    "One girl got  a good look, maybe a couple others. No cameras that I saw."
    "I'd better stash you someplace safe until we know." He grinned. "No
charge, on account of we're friends and all. Besides, I kinda got you into
this mess." He removed a splinter of lead from my side with a hemostat.
"Nasty, this. Safety slug, shatters on impact. Can't penetrate for shit,
but if it hits something soft, it tears you up pretty bad. It looks worse
than it is."
    I closed my eyes against the pain that found its way through the
anesthesia. "Thanks. I hope you don't think I fucked this thing up."
    "No," he said, cleaning the wound with a sterile gauze swab. With all the
blood cleaned away, it looked like a few jagged tears in my skin, like the
time I was climbing over a fence and tore my jacket on the barbed wire
looped along the top. "Just bad luck, that's all. You handled it pretty
well, actually." He sprayed my side with a bright yellow disinfectant and
bandaged it with gauze and white surgical tape.
    "Thanks, Sherman."
    "Don't mention it. Listen, I have to attend to your cargo. You stay here,
try to get some sleep." He stood up and picked up the case, fingering the
place where the plastic had been blasted away to reveal the metal plate
underneath. "When I get back, I'll take you someplace safe." He went
downstairs, and I heard him turn off the lights and lock the front door
behind him. I didn't exactly sleep, but I drifted for maybe an hour, until
I heard him come back. Then he took me to his hiding place.

    I only have six trays left, diminished from twenty. The lamp's dead, so I
have to eat in the dark. I'd better space my mealtimes out more; I had
hoped Sherman would be back in a couple days, but maybe getting me out of
Baltimore is a tougher job than I had thought. I know I can trust Sherman,
though. When he does a job, he always does it right. He's been in this
business for as long as I can remember, and bad news never seems to touch
him. I guess he knows how to cover his tracks. I sort of admire the way he
keeps a distance from his work; I bet he never knew what was in that case,
and it probably wasn't even important to him.
    Off in the dark, I hear the familiar rising call of the waste system,
marking time for me the way my dad taught me when I was a kid. He knew
which of these systems you could count on coming on at a certain time, and
the waste system always came on right at seven. "When you hear that," he
told me, "you know it's time to come home, cause we'll be expecting you
for dinner." Even now, the sound makes my stomach rumble. I never have
needed to carry a watch in Baltimore; my dad taught me everything I needed
to know to keep track of time here. Listening to the distant sounds that
come whispering through the miles of tunnels, I can hear his voice
murmuring just quietly enough that I can't make it out.

:::mms@soda.csua.berkeley.edu::::::::::benway@uclink2.berkeley.edu:::
:::You find one in every car. You'll see.::::::::::::::::::::::::::::