Short Story: Server

I've been sorting through some of the short stories in my folders of late, and submitting some to literary magazines to see if I can get any published.  I had this story among them; it was a short little ditty I had:  a sort of messed-up premise with a messed-up setting that I thought was compelling enough. 

The reason why I'm putting it here on my blog and not submitting it for publication is that I think it has the potential to be something bigger - maybe a novella or full-length book.  The biggest potential I see is that there can be more to the characters (I never explain what Li does for a living, and after all this there's plenty of directions this can go), and there's more to the whole thing that can be fleshed out better (I hope you'll catch on that the "service providers" are gangstas, but I probably should explain more about their operations, who runs it all, and how Li becomes involved).  On top of that, I may have to change some names around (Binju might be an actual city name already; I wound up using Aezu in another story).

As it is, this is more like a demo for a larger story.  Feel free to check it out; it could be a glimpse of a much broader cyberpunk crime thriller with some intriguing potential.
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    As Li Varakai crossed the threshold and treaded into Space 5x303, he felt his feet pressing on cool, dew-laden blades of grass.  The air was warm and humid, with a gently balmy breeze sweeping across the field.  It was quiet, save for the soft trickling of water nearby.  Beneath a blue sky with bright orange and pink clouds, Li could see the ocean in the distance.  Turning around, he faced a mountain with towering rocks.  Hot steam wafted around the mountains, as a telltale sign that there were hot springs all around it.
    Moving toward the mountain, Li walked through the hazy steam.  There was a warm pool at the base of the rocks.  As expected, Li found the girl he loved the most there.  Her name was Aezu; she was young, skinny, and petite.  Resting in the water, Aezu’s tanned skin was rendered smoothly, and it glistened in the sun.  Her short black hair was plastered on her soft round cheeks.
    Regarding him with her hazel-colored eyes, Aezu smiled warmly, flashing her perfect white teeth.  Entering the pool, Li immersed himself in the hot water.  It made his skin tingle.  It tingled even more when Aezu grasped his arms and pulled herself closer.
    Suddenly, Li tasted her lips moving across his.  He felt her skin pressing and sliding on his.  Feeling excited and aroused, Li’s hands stroked Aezu’s whole body, and gently tugged away at the lightweight strings that held up her bikini.  As enthralled as he was, he yearned to take Aezu’s beautiful, naked body and devote every inch of his essence to her.  He never wanted to leave her embrace.  If he had things his way, Li would never leave her.
    With the thoughts of making profound love flooding his mind, Li groped Aezu’s small, pert breasts.  He felt her wet kisses on his face, and he could smell her scent of flowery perfume.
    Then, she was gone.  Li was startled when he no longer felt Aezu’s body in his arms.  Then he noticed the glitches:  the water that flowed down the rocks stopped flowing, the grass of the surrounding landscape became pixilated, and the sky turned to strange colors.  All of the sound was cut out.  Li cursed, for he knew that the server running Space 5x303 was clearly malfunctioning.  It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
    The entire island de-rezzed, leaving Li alone in a blank void.  Crossing the threshold, he left Space 5x303 behind.
    Opening his eyes, he beheld his true home once again.  His five-foot by eight-foot capsule apartment encased only his mattress.  The small shelves on his walls had just enough room for the neurological equipment that allowed him to connect to his favorite Space, and be with the girl he loved.  It took him months to save up the money for that equipment; the cost of renting the network bandwidth sucked up most of his paycheck every week.  His Space and his time with Aezu was all he wanted and cared about in his life; it irked Li to no end that his connection was interrupted.
    He took the time, squirming in his capsule to check his equipment.  All the lights were green, all the wires were securely connected, and all the network signals pinged back to him perfectly.  Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t on his end.
    Opening up the panel over his head, Li moved his scrawny fingers over the glowing desktop.  He twitted to his service provider, complaining about the issue in full.  A few uncertain moments later, he received a confirmation message.  There was nothing wrong with the network, according to them.  The problem must have been with the server that stored Aezu’s intelligence.
    Li was not deterred; he should have realized that the issue stemmed solely from the third party that supplied the Space service.  On top of his network fees, Li gave up a good chunk of his salary to rent Space 5x303.  He knew the company only by name:  Sun-Tsar Limited.  It took Li just a moment to pull up the company’s webpage and find its contact information.  He shot them an e-mail, and waited.
    The wait was long and agonizing.  Without the use of Space 5x303, Li had nothing to fill his time, much less the empty gaps in his life.  After spending thirty minutes waiting for a response and toying with the desktop games, he gave up and left the capsule.
    When Li slid the metal curtain open, the full stench of Binju City’s air hit him in full force.  It was the combined scent of smog, machine oil, burning electronics, and the body odor of the city’s ten million inhabitants.  Standing on the concrete floor, Li stood up in the hallway; the entire corridor was lined with rows and rows of other capsule homes.  There were fifty residents in this hallway alone; the building must have housed over fifty thousand.
    Having spent the last thirty hours in his capsule, Li’s legs were weak, and they wobbled uneasily as he strolled to the end of the corridor.  A door opened automatically for him, leading to the dimly-lit lobby.  There was a dirty glass wall in the middle of the lobby, where a series of vending machines stood and diligently provided sustenance.  A number of cheap tables and chairs were set up, where dozens of residents ate their manufactured meals.
    On the other side of the glass wall was the elevator.  Shuffling to the elevator, Li took it down to the building’s main entrance.  Exiting the apartment complex, he stepped onto the main street.  It seemed perpetually packed with hundreds of people moving along the sidewalks and cars constantly clogging the roads.  All of the city buildings stretched up to over two thousand feet in the air, forming an urban canyon that channeled all the traffic down its narrow streets.  As tall as the buildings were, and with all the bridges and highways far overhead, the lower levels of Binju City never saw any daylight.  Even in the city’s upper levels, smog and clouds obscured the sun; Li has never seen sunlight in person.
    As it was, he was comfortable in the dark confines of the city.  It was as comforting as his capsule.  The only source of discomfort for him were the crowds; even as he walked down the street, he hated having to brush so close to everyone else, smelling their odors and seeing their faces as they passed by.  Li was far more comfortable in his capsule with his neuro-sim setup, where he could have everything he ever wanted and needed without having to leave the building.  The longer he went without his neuro-sim hookup, the more agitated he felt.  It bothered him to no end, wondering what happened to his connection and what he could do about it.
    The only other thing he could think of was to meet the man who initially told him about the Spaces in the first place.  Just a few blocks down from his apartment building, he passed by a series of nightclubs.  Their walls glowed as electronic images flashed and danced on them, bathing the streets in colors.  Many of the pedestrians lined up at the clubs, waiting for entrance.  While they lined up, the deep, throbbing boom of loud electronic music filtered from the clubs and made the roads vibrate.
    Passing by the clubs, the streets became notably less crowded, and Li moved more fluidly down the sidewalk.  His legs felt stiff, but they weren’t as hindered as they used to be.  Turning down a narrow street, he reached his destination in short time.
    Li came to an apartment tower.  It was much more upscale than his building; these apartments had actual rooms and furnishings.  It even had a lobby with a desk and working clerks.  Walking across the lobby, Li took the elevator to the tenth floor and went straight to apartment 10099.  It occurred to him that the man he was looking for could be out; Li didn’t even know what the man did for a living.
    Decisively, Li knocked on the door and waited for a response.  A few short seconds later, the electromagnetic deadbolt unlocked, and the door swung open.  Li faced the very man he was looking for.   The overweight tenant – Fröde Schuzhen – looked down at Li with a sneer and stammered, “You…you’re that guy living in the pod, right? Li…Vykara, was it?”
    “Varakai,” Li dully corrected. “Do you remember that you told me about the Spaces?”
    “Yeah, so what?”
    “Mine cut out on me.  It must be a problem with the server.  I want to know where Sun-Tsar’s headquarters are.”
    “Are you kidding me? Do I look like a directory to you?”
    “You helped me get the contract with them.  You must know something, right?”
    “Look, you don’t just go strolling into Sun-Tsar’s turf! What do you think you’ll accomplish? What, do you think you can do their tech support or something? If they pulled one of their servers, they did so for a reason! You don’t go to them and f%*k around with their goods!”
    “What do I pay them for, if they can’t even maintain a good connection?” Li insisted.
    “You’re such a noob! Did you even read the contract before you signed up with them? Payment doesn’t guarantee connection!”
    “What’s it to you? Just tell me where to find them, and they can tell me all this in person.”
    “I’m doing this for your own protection, Varakai,” Fröde said, regarding Li with suspicious eyes. “What’s so important about your Space anyway? Don’t tell me this is all about a virtual woman!”
    “That’s none of your business.”
    “It’s none of yours either, idiot! V-girls are not real! Just do yourself a favor and get laid for real! It’ll save everybody a lot of trouble.”
    “It’ll save you trouble if you just tell me what I need to know.”
    “Whoa, what the f@#k is this? Are you threatening me? You’re just a scrawny punk! I could sit on you, flatten you like a sandwich, and eat you for breakfast!”
    “Try it, bastard.”
    Mumbling obscene curses, Fröde stepped through the doorway and balled his big meaty hand into a fist.  He swung and brought the fist down on Li’s head.
    In an instant, Li swung his body to the side, and Fröde’s fist sliced through the air beside his head.  Grabbing Fröde’s arm, Li pulled hard and yanked him downward.  Despite his size and stature, Li’s strength surprised Fröde.  With a gasp, Fröde found himself stumbling toward the ground; his body tumbled down and his head hit the pavement.  When he looked up at Li, Fröde felt blood trickling from a gash on his head.
    Reaching into his pocket, Li pulled out a syringe full of nanodrenaline.  Bringing the needle to his arm, Li warned, “You don’t want me to hurt you, do you?”
    Fröde knew all too well the consequences of nanodrenaline.  He realized that Li’s unnatural strength stemmed from his body’s tolerance toward the nanite-ridden drug.  With enough uses, Li’s body produced far more energy than that of a normal human being, and it allowed him to move faster and stronger using less nutrients.  If he injected nanodrenaline now, Li would have the strength to literally tear Fröde limb from limb.
    “You crazy nano-head!” Fröde cried. “Listen, I’ll tell you what you need to know.  Just put that s#!t away, will ya?”
    Li kept the needle in hand, but listened intently.  Fröde explained, “Sun-Tsar owns place, like a network hub, over in Kaiong-Odan District.  That’s where they keep all their servers at.  Problem is, it’s their headquarters, so the boss and all his men guard the place tight.  There’s no way you can sneak in, and there’s certainly no way you can expect to walk up to them and ask for their hardware.”
    “We’ll never know until we try,” Li remarked, walking away from Fröde.
    As Li continued on, Fröde shouted, “Are you crazy? Is this worth dying over?”
In his head, Li answered that it was worth living for.
    He knew exactly where Kaiong-Odan District was.  Taking the metro, it took only ten minutes to reach the dense industrial sector.  Coming out of the subway, Li stepped onto the street and beheld a tight road with tall metal walls extending up on either side.  Metal walkways, gantries, pipes, and wires criss-crossed each other overhead.  Dim streetlights provided just a faint amount of light.  The place smelled of oil, metal, and poisonous gas.
    Spotting the Sun-Tsar territory was easy for Li, since he understood what he was looking for.  Wandering down the cramped alleys, he saw a thug standing guard by a small doorway.  The man was clad in street clothes and he sported a pistol in his pants, but the cybernetic implants in his head gave away his affiliation.  The metal casing around the man’s skull had the Sun-Tsar markings imprinted on it.
    Approaching the man, Li demanded, “I need to speak to your boss.”
    “Beat it, punk,” the man sneered.
    “Let me in, or there will be trouble.”
    “You want trouble? I’ll give you trouble, you scrawny son of a-”
    As the thug pulled the gun out, Li suddenly grasped his hand and squeezed hard.  With a shout, the thug dropped the gun.  Li released him and bent down to pick up the gun, while the thug danced around and caressed his aching hand.
    Holding the pistol up at the goon, Li demanded, “Let me in now!”
    “You crazy fool! Fine! Just, hold on a minute.”
    The thug used his head implant to send a digital message to the others inside the building.  When it was done, the man nodded and said, “Okay, go in.  Just be cool:  the boss ain’t happy right now.”
    “That makes two of us,” Li muttered, shoving the man aside and stepping through the doorway.
    Inside, Li walked through a large room filled with racks of hardware.  There were hundreds of routers, switches, computers, and databanks that hummed softly and glowed with flashing blue and green lights.  Webs of cables were sprawled all around the room, connecting all of the devices to the local networks.  Despite the amount of hardware, it was a sloppy and messy arrangement.  Li always suspected, but now he was certain:  there was nothing professional about Sun-Tsar.  It was a small-time two-bit operation run by hoodlums.
    At the other end of the room, there was a staircase.  Li took the stairs to the next level, and entered the gang’s headquarters.  It was a spacious room, dark and filthy.  There was a couch facing a giant wall-sized TV, where a few thugs lounged with their drugs and liquor and laughed inanely at the screen.  Between Li and the couch was a table, where a pile of guns, drugs, and software chips were haphazardly arranged; a pair of goons stood nearby, cleaning pistols and staring at glowing data tablets.  In the corner of the room, there was a man in a chair with dozens of cables coming out of him.  He was tall, bald, muscular, and covered in colorful tattoos
    Rising from the chair, he disconnected all of the cables that were protruding from his arms, neck, and head.  Walking across the room, he faced Li and challenged with a scowl, “You got a lot of guts, coming to my place, interrupting my free time, and messing around with my men.  You better have something good for me, or I’ll be using your skull as a new breakfast bowl!”
    Undeterred by the boss’ threats, Li demanded, “Space 5x303:  I pay good money to use it.  It is mine.  It cut out on me recently, and I want it back.  If you can’t get it back online, I’ll gladly buy the server containing the Space from you.”
    The boss scoffed, “You’re kidding me, right? You come all this way and cause all this trouble just because you can’t get into your little piece of virtual heaven? What, you can’t stand being away from your Space for more than a few minutes? That’s not my problem, you pathetic rezz-head! You should have read our user agreement:  we can’t guarantee total connectivity, and you do not have exclusive rights to a given space! We can and will switch things up when we need to! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not exactly a top-level company here!”
    One of the thugs held up his data tablet and explained, “Boss, Space 5x303 was the one we were going to transfer.”
    “Oh, so that’s the one with the girl,” the boss cried in realization. “That cute, sweet, small young thing.  Is that why you’re here?”
    “She’s all I have,” Li emphasized. “For the last three months I’ve signed up with this company, I’ve spent all my free time connected to the Space, so I can be with her.  She’s the only thing that makes my life worth living.  I need that Space! Without it, I have nothing!”
    “Dude…get a f$&king life! If that’s is all you have to live for, you know what that tells me? It tells me that you’re just some scumbag at the bottom of the food chain! Me and my boys here:  we got the real thing going on here.  If we want women, we get real women! If we want to live a good, meaningful life, we get wasted and party like there’s no tomorrow! And you know what else? We don’t plan on running this operation all that long; it’s just a stepping stone to even greater things.  I don’t want to run this rat-infested hole forever and deal with lowly pukes like you! I want to get out of this dump and live on the top level! I want to be able to walk into the high-roller clubs, shoot the s&*t with millionaires, and stuff my face with caviar and ten-thousand-dollar ice cream and s@#t! That’s just another difference between you and me:  I have ambitions, and that makes life worth living.  You don’t have any, so that tells me your life is worth jack s!*t!”
    Suddenly, the boss and the two thugs at the table grabbed guns and pointed them at Li.  The men at the couch watched them, but were too intoxicated to do much else.
    The boss threatened, “If I kill you, I’ll bet nobody would even notice you’re gone.”
    “Same goes for you:  you’re just the boss of a rat-infested low-level network hub.  I could take you down and nobody would ever notice you’re gone.  Look, all I want is the server.  Give it to me, and we can both walk away from this.”
    “Are you kidding me? Who do you think you are, coming in here and trying to steal my equipment? I’m the one with all the guns, idiot! You know what, f#*k this! Waste this rezz-head!”
    All three men brought their guns close to Li’s head.  Reacting, Li rushed forward and rammed himself into the boss.  Throwing the man against the table, Li dashed past him and vaulted over the couch.  Taking cover there, he pulled out the syringe of nanodrenaline.
    The two drunken thugs at the couch fled in confusion and panic, before the other two goons approached the couch and started pelting it with gunfire.  A score of bullets hit the couch, ripping holes in it and tossing up fluffy pieces of cotton and linen.  The constant roar of gunshots filled the room with ear-piercing noise.  Li watched as several bullets cut through couch completely, continuing past his body and hitting the floor and wall across from him.
    Without any further hesitation, Li injected the nanodrenaline into his arm.  As the nanites fused with his cells, they pumped energy to his mitochondria.  He felt more alert, more awake, and more powerful.
    Rushing into the couch, Li threw his arms up and tossed it in the air.  The couch flew up and rammed into the two thugs; they were knocked down and pinned to the floor.  Their weapons left their hands.  The third henchman was pushed by the flying furniture.  The boss stepped back in surprise.
    The one goon left standing scrambled for his gun on the floor.  Circling the couch, Li flanked the man and kicked him in the gut.  Li’s kick was strong enough to throw the man across the room.  He smashed against the wall with enough force to crack it.  With his spine fractured, the thug screamed in agony, as he fell to the floor and writhed in pain.
    Li kicked one of the men pinned down by the couch, before he could do anything else.  The blow knocked the man out cold; if Li had kicked any harder, he could have snapped his neck.
    Then, the boss raised his gun and squeezed the trigger.  As a stream of bullets exploded from the gun’s barrel, Li jumped out of the gun’s path.  All of the bullets sprayed the room randomly, striking at the couch, the TV, and all the computer equipment that was in the room.  Pieces of each item flew out in all directions.
    The boss swept his arm, bringing the gunfire to bear down on Li’s head.  Li watched as the gun barrel turned toward him, still emptying bullets in succession.  Each shot impacted the wall behind Li, forming a deadly line of smoldering bullet holes that crept toward him.
    Decisively, Li took five rapid steps toward the boss, and grabbed onto the gun’s casing.  He threw his foot out at the boss’ leg, hitting his knee and making it crack loudly.  While the boss staggered and shouted in pain, Li held up the gun with one hand, and threw his fist into it.  It was a strong enough punch to dent the metal and knock its components loose.  The gun’s ammo clip, firing pin, and part of its casing clattered to the floor uselessly.
    Tossing the damaged gun aside, Li loomed over the boss and demanded, “All I want is the server.”
    Cursing at Li, the boss cried, “You know what? You can take it! I don’t care! Just get out of here! It’s not worth killing me over!”
    “Yeah, it is worth it.  You don’t mess with me, and I’ll let you keep your poor, wretched life.  Tell me, where is it?”
    “The basement! There’s a whole bunch of server rooms, and they’re all marked.  You can’t miss it!”
    “Thanks,” Li muttered, before punching the boss in the head and knocking him out.
    Leaving the room, Li took the stairs down.  Passing by the equipment room that he came in from, he continued down into a dimly-lit basement.  It was warm and damp in the basement corridor; the walls were cracked and covered with grime and mold.  There were pipes and wires all along the ceiling, and they were slick with moisture.  On either side of the hall, there were dozens of doors, all marked with spray-painted numbers and letters.
    Toward the middle of the hall, Li found the room he was looking for:  it was marked as 5x303.  Feeling satisfied, he opened the door.
    It was pitch black inside the server room, save for the small green, red, and blue lights that blinked in the corner.  Li touched the walls near the door, hoping to find a light switch.  When his fingers touched the light switch panel, a soft iridescent light came on and provided a dim orange glow on everything inside.
    When Li saw the server, he was taken aback.  It dawned on him that it was not just a piece of hardware that he was looking for, and Aezu was not an artificial intelligence like he originally thought.  He realized that the server he sought was literally one who serves.
    Thus, he beheld Aezu in the middle of the room, in the flesh.  She was far paler and more fragile than she was as a virtual incarnation.  However, she had the same face, the same body, and the same hair as the girl Li knew in his rented Space.  There was a powerful Ethernet hub attached to the wall, with cables stretching from it into the back of Aezu’s neck.  Next to the hub was a canister full of nutrients, which was fed intravenously into Aezu’s arm; it was just enough to keep her alive and fit, but she still looked sickly thin and malnourished.  Next to the monitor was a canister of weak synthetic morphine, which was also intravenously fed into her, to keep her in a constant stupor.  A faded monitor next to the canisters kept track of her pulse and health.
    The emotions that came over Li were a mixed rush of incompatible sensations.  Even though he was excited to see Aezu in a mortal form, it appalled him to see her in this wretched condition.  It angered him to think that petty criminals could kidnap people and turn them into virtual playthings.  Shame soon washed over him and overwhelmed every other feeling, when he realized that he directly supported these activities; his time in the Space with Aezu was nothing more than a form of virtual prostitution.
    Li was compelled to make things right from that moment on.  He wanted nothing more than to rectify his actions and liberate Aezu from her bondage.  As strongly as he felt for her, he knew that it was his duty to save her.  From that moment on, it would be his responsibility to take care of her.
    He started by unplugging the cables from her neck, and pulling out the needles that fed her drugs and nutrients.  Upon disconnection, Aezu’s body became slack, and what small amount of consciousness she had slipped away.  The monitor on the wall informed Li that she was still alive, and she had just passed out.
    Picking up her small, frail body, Li left the building with Aezu in his arms.  Carrying her back to his capsule apartment, he vowed to himself that he would do everything in his power to care for her and protect her.   After seeing Aezu for who she really was, Li felt that he loved her more than ever, and he was determined to give the woman of his dreams everything he could.