1.3 Baby Made of Static Won't Play
“Hello there!” Abel called out to the pedicab driver. It ground to a halt on the worn track along the side of the road and turned its triangular head towards him.
“Hello, citizen. Currently, I am at maximum capacity, but if you remain here, I will return to you in no less than fourteen minutes, traffic permitting.” Like all pedicab operators, its voice was hollow, generated by a series of lifeless musical notes played to various pitches simultaneously to create the sounds of simple words.
Abel glanced at the covered bench the automaton was pulling. Paying no mind to the sudden stop were three individuals dressed in orchid silks, frantically tapping on invisible keys in the air in front of them. In their eyes Abel could see the familiar glint of teal light, indicating that their Desires were active.
“Oh, I don’t need a ride, my good man. Sorry, my good robot. Old habits.” Abel said, shrugging. “I’m here for them.”
Still, the three passengers paid him no mind. The driver looked from Abel to the passengers and back to Abel before responding.
“Are they friends of yours? If they would like, I can terminate their ride here.” He flicked a switch on the pedicab, and the teal light in their eyes changed to a bright flashing orange. Immediately, the three of them put their hands down and sat up, angry to be disturbed.
“We aren’t there yet!” One of them howled.
“These pedicabs are getting worse and worse.” the other said.
“What is it, robot? Why did you stop?” The third one said, throwing a pen at the driver’s head.
“There is a man here who requested to speak with you. Is he a friend?” the driver responded, unflinching. The three passengers turned in unison to look at Abel. His dark hair was cut short and deliberately tousled, his thumbs were looped into pockets on a black vest that he wore overtop of an aged gray t-shirt for a band that no longer existed and hanging from his belt were three plastic visors.
“No, we don’t know him. Keep going.” the third passenger said.
“This driver’s getting a shutdown vote from me.” one of the other passengers said under their breath.
“I’m sorry, you misunderstood me,” Abel said, still addressing the driver. “I’m here for their Desires, not them.”
The automaton stared at Abel. It seemed that the conversation had extended beyond his capabilities.
“I will resume my route.” the driver said.
Abel whistled, and another individual came out of the alley behind him.
“Elle, can you engage our driver friend here?” Abel said to the woman.
She nodded and stepped over to the rail next to the road. She held her hand to it, and the ring of circuits on her middle finger began to glow. The pedicab driver’s eyes flickered from bright blue to a dull pulsing red, and its head slumped forward.
“Wait, I heard about you!” one of the passengers said. “You’re those Desire thieves everyone is talking about!”
“They are?” one of the other passengers said, “Whoa! That’s temper! Let’s get a picture.”
The light in their eyes began to rapidly flash as they looked from Abel to Elle. Abel sighed and whistled once more. Two more figures appeared from the alley, one was an older man named Cato, and the other was a barely fifteen-year-old girl named Bailey. He handed the plastic visors
To Bailey, and nodded to Cato. The old man reached into his bag and pulled out a thick silver card, the size of a man’s wallet. One of the passengers stopped snapping photos and looked directly at it, his mouth hanging open slightly.
“Is that...a Desire card?”
“Sure is!” Abel replied. “Now, we’ve got one for each of you. All you need to do is pose for a streamlike photo wearing one of our branded visors.”
The first two passengers bobbed up and down with excitement, but the third passenger looked skeptical.
“Hang on. Aren’t you all Desire thieves?”
Elle laughed and motioned to the card.
“Well yeah, we stole these cards! Have you heard of Robin Hood?”
“The DJ?” one of the passengers said.
“No, she’s talking about the Desire app, obviously. It like, portions out your cash for you. It’s temper, you should get it.” the other said.
“Forget it,” Elle said. “Now, one at a time, step down here and snap a photo so we can give you your Desire cards!”
The first passenger climbed over the other two to get down first and snatched one of the visors out of Bailey’s hand. They held their hand upwards with their palm facing them, and a burst of flashes went off in their eyes. As it did, the lid of the visor flashed as well, and suddenly, the everpresent light in their eyes dimmed, until it was gone completely. The other two passengers leaped down and began to do the same, just as the first one started to anxiously look around them.
“My Desire! It shut off!” they cried. “I have updates set for the middle of the night, why would it update now?”
The other two passengers ignored their friend as they loaded Streamlike, and different patterns for their photos flicked across their irises. Soon, their Desires popped and shut off as well. Before they knew what had happened, Bailey had pulled the visors off and the four strangers vanished into the alley.
“You’ve gotta stop with the Robin Hood bit,” Abel said. “Nobody remembers Robin Hood. It just confuses them.”
“Listen,” Elle said, then paused. “Maybe you’re right.”
Bailey pulled cords from the three visors and plugged them into a small hard drive on her belt.
“Holy shit, their Desires were packed. I’m surprised they could even function.”
“Well, I guess that depends on your definition of functioning.” Cato, the old man said. “That was one of the easiest jobs we’ve had. They basically handed it to us.”
“Well don’t hog it all! Share the files!” Abel said. The four of them moved to a corner of the alley and switched on their Desires. One by one, their eyelids drooped, and they slumped down against the brick walls of the buildings surrounding them. The aggressiveness of so much Desire at once was too much for Bailey and Cato. Both of them passed out, as their heads rolled back on their shoulders and multicolored lights flickered in their eyes. Abel held out a little longer, but soon it took him as well. Elle shut off her Desire and looked at the three of them, unconscious, unfeeling. She stood up and traced their steps back through the alleys until she reached the pedicab. She peered out from the shadows and saw the automaton, still in its low power mode, and next to it, the three passengers. They were wailing, and scrapping at the driver, and tearing their clothes off. One of them pulled a piece of circuitry from the eye of the driver and tried to stick it into their own eye, then began to wail even louder. Finally, one of them ran into the street with their arms waving and was immediately struck by a hoverbus, scattering human material all across the road. A few others leaped out of the hoverbus, their eyes flashing at the scene and shouting at each other and to whatever audience would listen.
“That was temper! Check out over here, I think this a leg or something!”
“What’s up guys, I’m on my way to work, and guess what happened!? Our bus driver fucking hit somebody! Nuts! Make sure to turn on chimes so that you get that ding every time I upload! See you soon!”
“You think we should like, call somebody to clean this up? Nah, ain’t my problem!”
Elle felt sick. It was all empty. There was no empathy in the city. At some point, it had died as abruptly and brutally as the passenger of the pedicab. There were bits of it here and there, leaking out onto the sidewalk, but the life was gone. Desires were all that mattered. She found her way back to her friends and shook Abel from his Desirestate.
“Wha...what? What?” he mumbled. “That’s not a temper thing to do.”
“Shut up,” she said. “We don’t talk like that, remember?”
He rubbed his eyes.
“Whatever. Why’d you wake me up?”
“I wanna get out of here,” she said. “I don’t want to do this anymore. Let’s cross the city limits. Let’s go out into the forests. Not the generated ones, the real ones, full of dirt and animals, and life. I want the life of it.”
“What are you going on about?” he said, sitting up. “The forest? We can just go there in here.” he tapped his head, right next to his eye.
“I want to shut them off. I don’t want my Desire anymore,” she said. She closed her eyes and opened them. The blue light was gone, leaving only the pale natural blue of her iris. “I want the life of it, Abel. Whatever we have, whatever we’re doing, it’s killing us. I watched one of those passengers throw themselves into the street because we took their Desire away. I don’t want to live for that thing anymore. I want breath. I want the breath of the world in my lungs, and I only want to see what’s in front of me. You can come with me, or you can stay, but I’m going regardless.”
Abel stared at Elle for a moment, unmoving. He scratched his head and winced at the effects of the Desire, still pumping through his brain. He glanced over at the prone forms of Cato and Bailey. Both of them had their eyes closed and seemed to be asleep, aside from the bright lights glowing from beneath their eyelids.
“What about those two?” he said.
“I want them to come as well, but they’ll be easier to convince if you’re onboard,” Elle said.
Abel looked back to Elle, then at their surroundings. He was lying on a torn mattress pillow top, stained with water that had drained from the rooftop. In a crate next to him was a stack of exhausted hard drives. A relentless droning sound careened down the alleyways from the streets and the windows above them. He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them to an old world free of his Desire. He smiled at Elle.
“Let’s go then.”