A Break in the Sunlight

30. City Scape

The Night City was located on the perennial dark hemisphere of Denbar. The sole child of the J9 solar system, the small Class M planet rotated in silence around its stellar parent, forever showing her only its dry, burning, inhospitable face.

That face would not support life. Even beneath the surface, the ground of sunside Denbar was hot and acidic. Perhaps domes could have been designed to withstand it, but no one had yet found a reason to visit, much less try to live there.

But on the dark side of Denbar, the story was dramatically different. Built on a Free Net, and placed at the center of an asterisk of space that included Central, Terra, Sona, Dilossia, HgDeu, and a handful of other major commercial centers, the Night City had evolved through the centuries from a black market trading outpost into a fairly vast megalopolis that had eventually overcome the entire habitable area of the planet.

Having grown as far as it could, out, most parts of the City had shifted their expansion upward. As Jaren stood at the 282nd floor window of Jeremy Ren's tiny apartment, she could see only more buildings in the distance, with lights burning from their remote windows. Seven floors down, and eighteen floors up, there were street levels, with aircars zipping past one another, and hoverplatforms on the corners housing food vendors and convenience buzz-thrus.

It was a heady experience, finally being there. She'd seen the holos, read all the stories, been to plenty of other large, populous cities and systems, and yet she still hadn't pictured anything this... vast. It made her feel both insignificant, and vital. As if she could reach out a hand and feel the pulse of the DarkNet moving around her.

"What're you looking at?" Jeremy asked her. He was sitting at his desk, beside his bed. His thin face was bathed in blue light from the three vids that faced him, but his dark eyes were on her.

"All of it," she replied after a minute, turning to face him with a grimace. "I never thought I'd make it, here."

"Tough trip, huh?"

"You wouldn't believe it, if I told you, Jem."

He snorted softly, and beckoned her to come and look at the vids. "C'mere."

"What is it?" Jaren sat on the bed by his knee, looking over his shoulder at the swirls of blue and green wash in spirals and waves over the monitors.

"Well, it's working title is 'Lust'," Jeremy said, smiling back at her. "Its a nanohigh I'm designing."

"See," he pointed, "This program is a simulator. It maps out the potential effect on the nervous system, visually. I let it show me which ones are gonna kick ass, and which ones are just neo-necrotic."

She watched the blue waves encompass the green ones as they spiraled out in lazy circles, and the green roped around to wash into waves of aquamarine, cerulean and teal.

"It's a drug?" she asked. She hadn't known Jeremy designed stimulants.

"Oh, it's better than that." He turned to face her, smiling mysteriously. "But in essence, yeah. What do you think?"

Jaren looked at him, her eyes half-lidded. Jeremy seemed so sharp, so alive, in the blue light. He was everything she'd always known he'd be.

"I think it is a very appropriate name," she replied in a low voice, and then touched his bottom lip with her index finger, tracing the contour of it, her eyes on his.

His eyes widened a little, when he realized what she wanted, but when she pulled him toward her, he didn't resist. Not the innocent little stepsister any more, Jaren thought with satisfaction as she kissed him, and let him roam her body. If only you knew, Jeremy, everything I know, now.

And then she showed Jeremy Ren some of the things she'd learned.

All rights reserved. Copyright Jae Darcy 2016