Port Casper

Chapter Seven

The day unfolded bright and warm. Grace walked the city, studying everyone she passed. Desensitize, she told herself. If she was going to operate in this town, she had to shed her shock of mechflesh. That woman with the blue binocular eyes? Normal. Clearly, she wanted to see better. The man with the reflecting skullcap? Maybe he was going bald anyway. The kid with the metallic ball for a hand threw her, but she convinced herself he had a real one underneath. Or at home.

Citizens didn't maim themselves to fatten their résumés. They were just upgrading. Yes, that seemed more polite.

Other things caught her attention, too. Heading along Avenue Main Mall, she passed an extremely tall building with a grocery complex occupying the entire lobby. The façade of the lower floor, in contrast to the gleaming spire rising above, attempted to mimic a cloister village market. A lie, Grace thought. The food came from the same place: a laboratory. Bacteria or viruses or some kind of starter cells were tricked into making nutrients. Atoms raided and recombined. Supposedly no difference. Grace felt otherwise.

Desensitize.

Ten blocks up was an apartment building nearly two hundred stories high. People streamed in and out, carried by movers from below that merged with the rest of public traffic on Main Mall.

"The Frawley Building!" chimed her ptenda. "The perfect combination of housing, shopping, entertainment, and commerce. Leases now available! Shall I send information?"

Ahead, another tall building had a wrap screen traversing the entire rim between the lobby and the second floor. News of the day flickered by, six meters high. Grace paused to study the numbers. The unemployment rate fluctuated wildly in real-time between two percent and a negative tenth of a percent. How was that even possible?

Just below the wrap screen, large steel letters spelled out: WYOMING COMPSTATE OFFICE OF EMPLOYMENT REGISTRATION.

She entered the building.

"Next!" called out a pudgy woman from behind a curved counter. Grace stood, smoothed out her dark gray jumpsuit, and walked up. At first, the official appeared uninterested: a bored bureaucrat. But as Grace drew near, the clerk came alive, albeit sluggishly.

"Good afternoon. State your name, origin, upgrades, and any certifications recognized by Cloister Act, Compstate Act, and the Continental Treaty Package of the Americas. If you are a returning registrant wishing to amend, please follow the light line on the floor to the counter. You may begin now."

The woman continued in Spanish. Grace examined her face. A polished ribbon of silver metal came out of the hair where her ear should have been. It ran along her jawline, burrowing through her cheek.

The clerk started the speech in Hindi. Grace caught a glimpse of the metal band inside her mouth. There should be teeth, Grace thought. Instead, she viewed a row of transparent caps covering a red band mounted on the gum line.

She had metarm grafts emerged on both arms. They arched from the elbow and followed down the forearm to the hand, ending in green painted fingernails.

Grace's visual inventory ceased with a flash of her ptenda. I'm supposed to select a preferred language, she thought.

She selected English and the clerk stopped talking.

"Donner, Grace, Cloister Eleven, Red Fox Academy, Protector Certification waiver code zero-zero-sixteen, and no upgrades," Grace said.

The clerk stared at Grace. She didn't blink. It was unnerving.

"Place your hands on the counter in front of you, palms down."