Serious Shit

God, the booze here was awful.

He regarded the bottle of cheap lager in his hand, shrugged and drunk. Two empty glass bottles already stood like tiny skyscrapers on the mess of his desk, surrounded by fast food wrappers and framed against the glow of his computer screen

They didn't even drink this shit in Heinlein. They could work miracles with some recycled grain alcohol and a handful of smuggled strawberries. God, he'd do anything to get back to Heinlein. This place was almost the same, but he didn't get to see the stars or Earth when he looked up. Although honestly, the domes had been in such a state of decay that you were lucky to see much of both. But down here you could feel the weight of the Earth above you, threatening to bring its iron fist down and smash you.

Not that he particularly cared how he died, at this point. The sooner the better.

He lay back in his chair, not yet utterly... what was the word people used here? Tanked? Crocked? Awful words. Well, he was on his way to it. It helped shut out everything, but it didn't let him do much with his time. At least he was good enough to program, or pretend to, on a few bottles of this stuff. He regarded the screen, decorated with what passed for code in this shitty startup he worked remotely for. Thankfully his fuckhead boss couldn't make him drive to the office in Sydney. His fuckhead boss could make him twiddle his mouse on the screen and pretend to program from six till six. At least the labor laws were like back home.

Home. He didn't know if he missed it.

Pros of being stuck here:

• The food was generally better. 
• The air hadn't yet got the tang of being recycled and filtered endlessly. 
• Polar bears still existed outside of museums. 
• Corporations didn't send men in black suits to kill you, or sassy little twenty-somethings in tailored dresses to serve you lawsuits. 
• Getting a job for some idiot who thought studying the Humanities was a waste of time was pretty easy.

Cons of being stuck here:

• Everyone was stupider -

No. The world had changed. People did not.

• Fine. They were stupid in the same ways, then. 
• The alcohol and fashions were awful. 
• The music was equally bad. 
• You were surrounded by people who had decided, some time ago, that a paycheck from one of the Big Four wasn't worth it. So all you could do in your off-time was get drunk in a bar with a bunch of people who repeated the same stories about their colleagues getting blown up by some maid who could shoot lasers out of her asshole. 
• Sports were worse.

It was about even, all things considered. You could be a depressed alcoholic anywhere, at any time. So maybe it didn't matter where he was being a depressed alcoholic. Only that he was one.

He committed his code with the push of a button and took another swig of his alcohol, grimacing. Through the slight haze he could let his thoughts wander a bit more safely. Of all the things he'd picked up from his old job, this particular perk was, well...

He could hear the woman upstairs fretting about what dress to wear for a night out. He could hear a cat outside trying to hunt a mouse, and he could hear the mouse. He could hear -

The worst thing about being an untrained psychic was...

If you though too hard about how you missed slamming a neural blade into some dipshit anarchist's frontal lobe and watching their connection snap off, people could hear it. Not everyone was psychic, but they could sort of sense it if you were letting your brain indulge in the worst bits. Maybe there was just something about humans. The old chairman might have been onto something before he took a bullet to the head. Some people were exhausting to be around - that conspiracy chestnut around energy vampires or whatever. Or maybe it was just body language and tonal cues or other monkey shit. He could skip some of that, not that it got him any dates. Not that he wanted any at this point. 

He could hear the background hum of a guy driving past, absorbed in the dual distractions of his car and the music on his radio. He could hear the zip-zip of the brainwaves of the kid two doors down playing some shooter. He could hear the flatline beep of the woman collapsed on the steps outside his-

Wait.

Something compelled him to hurl himself out of his chair, stumbling over discarded fast food bags and trash to get to his door, only some bare self-preservation compelling him to throw on a dressing gown over his unfortunate form. He fumbled the locks, wrenched open the door, looked down as he followed the buzz of his neurals.

Oh god. Yeah, there was an unconscious woman on his doorstep. Well, girl might be better, she appeared to be a teenager. Oh, good. He knelt to inspect her, blinking through his glasses. Pulse, breathing, so not dying right away. Asian - he fumbled through his brain and settled on "Japanese". Dark straight hair, wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. Smelt like crap. Her face -

He lifted her head and turned it to look.

Well, she had half of a face and it was probably very pretty for a teenage girl. The other half had not recovered well from what he could only assume was a fight with a bonfire. It was mostly burn scars. Her eye on that side of her face assuredly Did Not Work. The cheap lager threatened to rush back up the way it came.

Okay. Okay.

One last check.

He turned her head back to the floor and brushed aside her hair where it hid the back of her neck.

Yep, yep. there it was. There it fucking was. There it fucking goddamn was, stark against her skin like a middle finger from the grinding gears of the dead universe, aimed straight at him. Fuck. FUCK. 

Alright.

As he stumbled back to his feet and staggered back to his room to get his phone and call an ambulance, Marcus Batty decided that, right here and now, he needed another job.