Immaculate Conception

By Guilherme Solari

The year is 2116. Millions of American and European refugees run from the destruction of the war-torn Northern hemisphere and flood into Megasampa, the urban sprawl formed when the metropolitan areas of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro joined in the mid-21st century.
They gather in the Novo Bronx ghetto, a place of vice, death and hardship, but also of refugees just trying to rebuild their lives. Novo Bronx was never a quiet place by a long shot, but now unrest grows as a series of macabre murders strike fear into the heart of the populace. Murders attributed to a creature the locals are calling Bebê Diabo, the Devil Baby.
The Proctech private police quells the rebellion for the time being, but the gruesome deaths are unlike anything they have ever encountered. Reluctantly, they call out of retirement the only detective insane enough to solve an insane case.

A detective called Cascavel.

Immaculate Conception is the first book in the Cybersampa series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guilherme Solari
• Release date: Oct 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311297587

Guilherme Solari

Guilherme Solari is a journalist and writer from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He has written about movies, literature and videogames for some of Brazil’s biggest news sites, like UOL and Folha de S.Paulo. He grew up playing video games and watching action movies, but his main hobby as a child was to imagine fantastical stories involving ninjas, dinosaurs and cyborgs. An avid reader of classic cyberpunk sci fi and pulp fiction, he tried to bring these two passions together in the Cybersampa series. The initial novella, Immaculate Conception, is his first book written in English. Solari is the author of The Cascavel Chronicles, a prequel to Cybersampa and a love letter to old action movies. The book, released in Brazil in 2015, follows the owner of a run-down video shop that decides to fight crime. His only “superpower”? He watched every single 80’s action movie ever made. He is also the cowriter of the play Fogo, which was presented in Sao Paulo in 2010. His short story Egofobia has appeared in the Portuguese edition of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, alongside the works of authors like Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore.

Book preview

Immaculate

Conception

Written by Guilherme Solari

guilhermesolari.com

Copyright 2015

Cover by Bruno Dinelli

cargocollective.com/brunodinelli

Book #1 of...

Guilherme Solari's

Cybersampa

Joy and health to you who read this.

It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Chapter 1: Someone had Fun

The very ring of the phone sounded like bad news.

You have lost - two - hours of your life expectancy.

It was the sixth time the Kraftwerk 2000 in Cascavel's wrist buzzed, one after each small cup swallowed whole by the detective. The machine was the most advanced portable data processor from forty years ago, half a dozen generations obsolete by now. It had a bulky industrial design, with a low resolution display and a worn keyboard. The thing had to be surgically implanted on Cascavel's forearm, a far cry from today's non-invasive augmented reality data processors that were all the rage with the kids.

Cascavel didn't know for sure how the machine could guess how much left he had to live. He was told it used a complex algorithm to combine general population statistics with data from the user's bloodstream. He only knew the thing was precise, or at least that's what the good doctor guaranteed. Cascavel pressed a button and contemplated the numbers blinking on the monochromatic screen.

One year, two months, six days, one hour and seven - now six - minutes of life expectancy left.

Not bad, Cascavel had time for a few more drinks. He already did get a lot closer, after all. He got himself an extra year by buying a Brasletric-Yamaha synthetic heart. The hundred year mortgage was a bitch, sure, and the interest rate high enough to buy ten extra organs for the bank. That's the very literal price of immortality: when you can live forever, banking corps can keep you indebted for centuries - and even reanimate your carcass to collect if you owe them enough. Life costs and death is free.

But about his heart, what a beauty that was. Cascavel even went nuts all the way and got himself the series 7 Jensen sport model along with a medium grade artificial liver bundled in the flash sale. Three times more resistant to liver failure than a natural organ!, assured the user manual, so Cascavel naturally took that as medical permission to drink like five people. He pointed to the empty glass and barman Wang filled it with that homemade spirit of his. Bá-Jú, or something. A traditional Chinese recipe spiked with enough radioactive isotopes to make you glow after you got a few cups in your system. The detective engulfed the overflowing glass in a single movement, twitching his face as the drink burned his throat.

You have lost - two - hours of your life expectancy, beeped the Kraftwerk 2000.

Then the pay phone over the counter rang. It was covered with a thin layer of sticky dust, much like the rest of Boteco do Wang. Which did grant a certain decadent charm to the place, as well as bacteria still unknown to modern science. The phone rang and rang again and neither Cascavel nor Wang moved a muscle. Somehow, the very ring of the phone sounded like bad news.

You no go answer? asked Wang. It is for you after all, laowai.

How do you know? replied Cascavel.

Because you only one that still uses phone. And only one that treats my bar as personal office! yelled Wang. When you buy mobile communicator? They cheap! Then people find you easy all time!

That's exactly the point, Cascavel said. Ok, I'll answer the damn thing, pass me the cord.

Cascavel took the payphone's feed and plugged it into his USB cranial jack on the side of his scalp. Immediately an image appeared in his Kraftwerk 2000.

Drinking already, Cascavel? Cascavel could see commissioner Sakurai's signature shark-like smile even in the low pixel monitor. You are not even waiting for noon nowadays?

Commissioner Sakurai worked for Proctech Inc, one of the biggest of the dozens of law enforcement corporations with security contracts signed with Megasampa's administration. Commissioner was a fancy term in the corporate hierarchy, a throwback from when there was an actual non-private government, and it actually owned the police. It pretty much amounts to middle management nowadays, but Sakurai liked to think of himself as something between a town sheriff and c-level executive.

It is always noon, commissioner, the detective said while Wang served him more baijiu. Somewhere.

You know, that's what I like about you, Cascavel. You may lose your dignity, but never your humor. I have another freelance job for you.

I figured you didn't call me because of my charming personality, Cascavel said as he downed yet another drink, Kraftwerk 2000 politely deducting two hours from his life expectancy. But you do know I am supposed to be retired, commissioner.

People like you never retire, Cascavel. Not until you figure a way to pay the boteco's tab with sarcasm.

Cascavel had to concede that the bastard had a point.

Tell me more about this job, Cascavel said chopping with his kukri knife a fried Soylent Green bolovo that Wang served him. Cascavel was unsure what they put in the stuff, but boy did it taste good.

We found two bodies.

I see...

Americans.

And...

On Novo Bronx.

Yes, it's very much a tragedy and all, commissioner, but a couple of dead gringos sounds very much like an average business day at the Bronx. If we are now crying every time that happens you will have to bump my fee so I can upgrade the old lachrymal glands.

Damn you are cold, Cascavel. Didn't you just get a new heart?

Yeah I did. In black.

Sakurai let out an uncomfortable chuckle.

Besides, I doubt they have security insurance, Cascavel continued. Is Proctech getting generous urges all of the sudden to help the community?

Of course they have no insurance. We have been contracted by the active mayoral administration.

That was stranger still. The city was currently ruled by Omni Cities, a branch of the Omnibank Corporation. They were known as an accountant utopia, considered close-fisted even for a financial conglomerate. And it was not like Novo Bronx was booming with consumers. Or investors. Or legal voters.

One of the bodies is from a woman, she is a complete mess. More than usual. Someone had fun with her.

And the other?

Standard beheading as far as we could tell.

You just described a dozen dreamtear deals gone wrong. Still sounds like a regular ghetto morning to me.

It's not just that, there are mad drawings everywhere. You know, that crazy macumba stuff you deal with. The social media trackers are off the charts, let's just say the local community is a bit restless. Also more than usual.

Cascavel could remember well the last time Novo Bronx got more