Chromed: Consensus: Future Forfeit City Stories, #1

By Richard Parry

In 2150AD, humanity surrenders decisions to corporate masters.
Megacorp Reed Interactive's prodigy Austin Ainley creates abhorrent mind-influencing tech. Reed terminate his contract but keep the invention.
Austin plans to get it back. He hungers for the wealth and power his invention promises.
With a team of off-grid mercs, including the mil-spec cyborg Ruby Page, Austin plans a heist on a syndicate titan. If he succeeds humanity will fall, but he'll have his vengeance. Is that too big a price to pay?
Megacorps. Cyborgs. AI. Gene-spliced monsters. Syndicate enforcers. Off-grid illegals. Supersoldiers. Rock music. Violence. Einstein-Rosen bridges. Liquor. Enhanced reflexes. Power armor and energy weapons. Full body replacements. Swearing. Mind control. Telekenetics. G-Men. Drugs. Neural links. Orbital cannons. THIS IS CYBERPUNK.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mondegreen
• Release date: Nov 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780995114807

Book preview

Chromed: Consensus

Chromed: Consensus

A Cyberpunk Contingency Story

Richard Parry

Mondegreen

Contents

Stay Primed

Before you begin…

Bare Survival

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

About the Author

Also by Richard Parry

Glossary

Acknowledgments

EXCERPT: CHROMED: DELILAH

The Job Interview

CHROMED: CONSENSUS copyright © 2018 Richard Parry.

Cover design copyright © 2020 Mondegreen.

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All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9951148-0-7

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Second printing.

Future Forfeit Reading Order

No parts of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission. Piracy, much as it sounds like a cool thing done at sea with a lot of, Me hearties! commentary, is a dick move. It gives nothing back to the people who made this book, so don’t do it. Support original works: purchase only authorized editions.

While we’re here, what you’re holding is a work of fiction created by a professional liar. It is not done in an edgy documentary style with recovered footage. Pretty much everything in here was made up by the author so you could enjoy a story about the world being saved through action scenes and witty dialog. No people were used as templates, serial numbers filed off for anonymity. Any resemblance to humans you know (alive) or have known (dead) is coincidental.

Published by Mondegreen, New Zealand.

Stay Primed

Get updates from Richard Parry:

https://www.mondegreen.co/get-on-the-list/

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You can find out more about him at:

mondegreen.co

For MDC, and the glorious opportunity of other worlds.

Before you begin…

This story was originally published as part of Pew! Pew! Bad versus Worse . Since Bad versus Worse is no longer available digitally, Consensus is presented — for you! — as a standalone story.

Prepare to meet Austin Ainley.

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— R. P.

June 2018, Wellington

Bare Survival

T he problem with trying to change the world is that you need to work twice as hard for half the pay, said Austin, and not without feeling.

No, said Kerry. She had her face down in the silicon, hair cascading about her head as she worked. Her voice was distracted, like she was only giving him half the cycles he deserved. That felt like the status quo these days. That’s women. That’s what women have to do. You’re just a, a, and here, she raised a hand without looking up, waving it through the air, a common criminal.

They were in the lab they shared, crates of packaged dreams around them. The crews had scored big last night. They’d hit an automated Reed Interactive truck taking the latest batch of memory-based entertainment out for distribution. Reed had always been a little old school, fabricating silicon instead of distribution over the link. It made compromising the memories a little harder; you needed a tech good with silicon, equally good with crypto. Kerry was that tech, and it’s why Austin kept her around. This latest haul? A mix of the usual: my-first-date, wedding-night, race-driver-victory, secret-agent-fantasies, and so on. If you were the kind of asshole who couldn’t get yourself a date? No problem. Drop some credit down on the counter of your local convenience store and you could live someone else’s better, shinier encounters.

Is there something you want to tell me? he said. Austin stretched, his back popping. When he had a little more cash, he’d replace his spine with something more durable, but since those fuckers at Reed had tossed him out on the street — him! On the street! — times were a little tough. Kerry was good at what she did. One of the best. Her talents were wasted here cutting black market porn crystal, but — like him — her options were limited. His eyes strayed from the top of her head, currently sporting ruby-red hair that wasn’t at all natural (but still in style, after all these months of not-enough-cash to get the latest color growths at a clinic). Austin surveyed the heart of his empire. Empire. Hah. Synthesizers for chip production. A decent deck for editing out a few of Reed’s more obvious watermarks, like the blonde-blue-eyes thing. It’s like the entire syndicate was trapped in a time warp back to 1940. It’s a wonder their share price hadn’t tanked prior to the brutal beating it saw after that Seattle business. Spirits. Mind control. Gates to other worlds.

Bullshit, A-grade, but bullshit regardless. People wanted mind control? He’d give ‘em mind control.

The rest of the equipment was in various states of repair. There was an older deck with its innards exposed to the air and poor lighting in equal measure, components being harvested like organs to breathe life into some other project of Kerry’s. Nothing here was new. Not a single scrap of it was shiny.

His comment caused her to look up, meeting his gaze. Those expensive Nikon eyes, a brilliant green, looked out at him under the cascade of red hair. She’d never have the cash to get work done like that, not again, unless they were successful. I don’t know. Is there something you want to hear?

C’mon, Kerry. You know we’re on the right trail. A little more time in the oven, that’s all it needs. Austin stroked his beard. He kept it close enough for a job interview without being an asshole about it. People who had the time for close trimming and beard oils were people without enough real work to do. Not that he wanted a job interview. The time for slaving over other people’s dreams was done.

Like you know how to cook.

Sure I know how to cook, he said, taken aback. I take the food out of the packet and put it in the oven. She stared at him. Or, he offered, you put the food in the oven.

There’s poor work distribution going on around here, she said. Anyway. You said that back at Reed. You said—

I know, he said.

You said, and here she deepened her voice, but also tossed a little nasality in there for good measure, ‘Kerry Forsdyke, we’re on the brink of—’

I know, he said again. Also, I don’t talk like that.

And I said, ‘Boss? Mr. Ainley, sir? We’re messing with people’s minds. Someone from HR or PR will come down here.’

Austin sighed. Those fuckers, he said. Fucking PR.

At least it wasn’t HR, said Kerry. They’d have sent you in for reprograming.

PR just wanted to steal my tech, said Austin.

Kerry looked bored, like they’d had this conversation a hundred times before. Which they had. All the good it did them. The tech doesn’t work!

"The tech works, said Austin. He realized he’d clenched his fists. He made himself relax. The thing about being in charge was you needed to look like nothing got in your grill. No cheese in your taco? No problem — fire someone, move on. It works better than we imagined. Just … not in the right ways."

Doesn’t matter, said Kerry. Since the rain came down and people started losing their minds, shit’s got real, you know? She was, of course, referring to the A-grade bullshit in Seattle. ‘Spirits in the rain’ or some nonsensical line noise. The aftermath left Reed’s tower a smoking ruin, the head of Apsel Federate missing, and Metatech on top. Because what the world needed was a genuine syndicate of arms dealers like Metatech ruling the world. Business moved on, of course, and Reed had relocated ‘key personnel’ to the sewer of New York City. Austin had come along — it was that or get sidelined. The fuckers had sidelined him with extreme prejudice anyway after they’d found out about