The Burning Skyline Succubus

Spike slammed his locker shut, somehow more furious than exhausted. Fucking asshole!
He thrust his arms through the straps of his worn backpack and marched out of the dingy locker room. Cocksucker!
He stomped into an empty elevator, jerked his wrist at the security scanner and commanded through clenched teeth. “Level one.” The doors slid shut and the elevator began to ascend.
His X-Pod vibrated; a personal multimedia terminal including Virtual Video Phone, holographic-imager, and Metaverse node all in one. He unclipped it from the belt of his black one-piece jumper and twisted it open: A text message. The sender field is blank. Must be an error. The subject field states the message can only be retrieved in a private g-way train car. Why would he have to jack-in to view a text message? Maybe the blank sender field isn’t an error.
The elevator doors slid open. He twisted his X-Pod closed and clipped it to his belt, while pushing the inscrutable message to the back of his mind. Fantasizing about the gruesome demise of his supervisor took precedence at the moment. He’d love to use his blade-slinger on him, but he’d never get away with it. There are security cameras everywhere.
Spike strode from the elevator across the foyer toward the building’s exit. Shoved a piece of Amp-Max chewing-gum into his mouth. It’s infused with mild stimulants. Then pulled his filtration mask from his pocket and stuck it to his face, before stepping through the exit.
With a thought command directed through a transmitter plugged into his neural interface on the back of his head, just below the occipital protuberance, he activated his DC Razors; sneakers with electrogravitational propulsion-pads capable of reaching twenty-five miles-per-hour. He glided across the vacant loading zone into an awaiting mag-rail train car on the blue line. The car was barren except for a few fellow employees.
Sliding his backpack off, he collapsed into an open seat distant from the other occupants and slipped into the safely-straps. An alarm would sound if he didn’t buckle up. The seating was positioned like a plane rather than a subway train. Twelve rows of four bucket-seats on the left and right side of each car.
A moment later the subterranean magnetic-propulsion monorail fired. It can travel up to four-thousand miles-per-hour. Spike was pressed into his seat, briefly revealing his dark-green eyes from under his straight black hair, which usually veiled his face. His grisly reveries of murder continued on uninterrupted.
Spike works as a day laborer excavator for Halliburton, ten hours a day, six days a week, in a waste dump in the middle of nowhere. Due to lack of petroleum, the buried plastics need to be recycled. Corn oil can only do so much.
Today was one year continuous employment. Never once was he late. Never once did he not show up. Yet, while everyone else under his supervisor had been trained and promoted to using industrial-exoskeletons within six months, he was still doing the shittiest most grueling work.
The only plus to the backbreaking manual labor was the ripped physique he had acquired over the past year. Though he greatly appreciated the female attention his muscular figure granted him, it did little to alleviate his aggravation over his supervisor’s continuous and gratuitous discrimination.
After a few minutes of his homicidal brooding, the mag-rail came to a halt. Spike exited the train car and weaved his way through the crowded loading zone to the closest McDonald’s for dinner. He felt he deserved to treat himself for his one year employment anniversary. He devoured a chicken sandwich and a gulped down a Pepsi Jolt, overloaded with caffeine and other mild stimulants. And then cruised speedily to the Sleepwell Capsule Hotel.
He moved into the germ scrubber, a three-by-three-foot cube decontamination foyer, and the door sheathed closed behind him. He shut his eyes and held his breath as he was flash sprayed with a white sanitizing misty from all directions for two seconds. His skin tingled. He was then scanned for Tuberculosis, A.I.D.S., and various airborne cancer viruses. The entire cube flashed green once and the door before him sheathed opened. He glided out while peeling off his filtration mask and tucking it into his pocket.
Vending machines lined the outer walls within, selling everything from hot noodles and military rations to one-piece garments and nano-bot inhalers. The machines supplied the bulk of his sustenance intake.
He took an elevator down five levels. It stunk of piss and poorly cleaned up vomit that edged the wall. The hotel has been in need of a new janitor-bot for quite some time. I need to remember to keep my damn filtration mask on until after the elevator ride.
Spike hovered passed row after row of capsules stacked four high, until he reached the capsule that he had called home for over a year. He tossed in his backpack containing everything that he owned, then climbed in and laid on his back with a sigh of relieve. The capsule was eight-feet-long, three-feet-wide, and three-feet-tall. Just barely big enough for two people to hump. He knew this from repeated experience.
With a voice command, the door sealed and locked. It became as silent as a sensory deprivation chamber. The capsule self cleaned once a day while unoccupied, so it always smelled of lemon and antiseptic. A luminous strip ran the border of the ceiling, designed for minimal power usage lighting. Warm air flowed in passed the synthetic cyanobacteria filtration system.
His body was heavy with fatigue, though due to the Amp-Max chewing-gum he chomped throughout the day and the Pepsi Jolt he had just drank, his mind surged with vitality.
Kicking off his sneakers, he pulled open his black one-piece and shimmied out of it, then slipped a disposable splooge-catcher over his manhood. Since tomorrow is his day off, he’d love to do a few hits of Hype; a psychostimulant-entheogenic hybrid drug. But it makes him horny as hell, so he refuses to take Hype without finding a partner willing to share the journey. His plan is to visit The Stars My Destination, an exclusive adult nightclub. If he can’t find someone willing to visit his capsule, he’ll settle for the readily available cybersex. Thus the need for the splooge-catcher.
Pulling out his DC Razors’ transmitter, he retrieved his camouflage-green Cyber-Goggles from his backpack, slid them over his eyes and plugged the data-cable into his neural interface. With a mental command he jacked-in to the Metaverse, slipping into an oneiric state of consciousness, similar to the lucid dreaming state. His mind disassociated from his body.
Spike adhered to the urban-ninja fashion style, for it was reasonably admired by the ladies. He wore matching black and nuclear-green leather vest, fingerless elbow-length gloves, tight fitting pants, and bulky knee-high boots. The outfit showed off his mean biceps and firm ass. Each boot also housed a cleverly hidden vibroblade-dagger. They are illegal and very expensive, but no one voyages into a guerrilla-network unarmed.
Spike stepped into a private train car of the Google Metaverse Railway. It is a digital bullet-train used to move from one network to another, and is the only legal means of Metaverse travel. It also provides customizable chat lounges, vast video and music archives, classified and personal ads, and various other social networking tools. Silent advertisements for various goods played continually across the windows.
He sat upon the patterned plush seating and there was a poof of violet smoke. A chirping black bat appeared from the haze and flapped around Spike’s head. He held out his hand to accept its attention, and it morphed into the anonymous text message:
Come to The Burning Skyline
The message included the server address to the club and an access link to the guerrilla-network where it is hosted. The train car began moving without him giving any type of command. The message must have an embedded command file.
Only a hacker could send him a message anonymously. But why would a hacker want anything to do with me?
The train car came to a stop and the doors slid open without his command.
The entire inside of the train car flashed red three times, and a female digital voice sounded. “Warning! You are entering an un-trusted domain. Warning!”
Ignoring the forewarning, Spike stepped out into a desolate landscape, resonate of an alien metropolis long forgotten. Colossal spires of twisting metal, rusted and jagged, reached for the starry night, which was poisoned a toxic green. The streets were constructed of neither asphalt nor concrete, but corroded grating, fallen through here and there. The abysmal darkness below was disturbed by haphazard flashes of crimson and the distant echoes of dysfunctional machinery, grinding and clanking malignantly.
Spike ran a finger over the underside of his left glove and it split open giving access to the watch-sized computer embedded in his wrist. He pressed his thumb to the circle touch-screen and it fanned outward, tripling in size to display a larger image.
“Network map,” was his voiced command, pinging the primary network server, and a three-dimensional map displayed. “Locate The Burning Skyline.” A spire several blocks away pulsed with a red hue. He memorized the most direct route and thumbed the translucent holo-screen. It fanned closed and his glove sealed over it.
Spike wearily walked the course, ignoring a spazzed-out pusher offering the latest cyber-drug upgrades, and declining a techno-pagan cyber-cultist that wished to convert him, until he reached The Burning Skyline.
He waved his wrist-embedded computer over the metal doorway to pay the cover charge; once inside, drink and dance are freely unlimited. The door became temporarily transparent so he may step through into the club.
It consists of a sequence of rooftops connected via light-bridges. Each rooftop overlooks different scenery that corresponds to the music.
The first roof quaked with the breakbeats of drum and bass jungle pop. And looked out over a post-humanity NYC. Spider monkeys climbed huge vines that wrapped around the high-rises. A pride of lions stalked a family of zebra in the crumbling streets far below. Bald eagles ruled the afternoon skies above. The roof was packed tight with half-nude amazonians and a few dark-elfpunks, all dancing a wild tribal jig.
Spike weaved through the throng and crossed over onto the next rooftop. The music shifted seamlessly as he walked the light-bridge, transforming to a post-trip-hop acid jazz hybrid sound. And the post-apocalyptic afternoon became a Neo-Tokyo night. Flying cars, taxies, buses, and trains zoomed around the lit up skyscrapers, leaving streaks of ruby in their wake. Lightning dragons of sapphire and jade clashed in the heavens. The rooftop was crowded with urban-samurai, ninja, and geisha. A few space pirates and steampunks were thrown in the mix. This was his scene.
He moved to the bar and ordered a heavy voltage martini from a bartender wearing the garb of an emperor. As he sipped his drink he watched the breakdancers surrounded by people dancing the techno-robot.
Just as he began to feel the surge of his martini, like arcs of electricity jetting through his muscles, he was spellbound by a goth chick winding through the crowd.
Her shoulder-length hair is jet black with crimson tips, which along with her cherry eye-shadow, emphasize her glittering scarlet eyes. Eyes as piercing as they are dazzling. Her long bangs are pinned back with skull-shaped barrettes, which to him says she’s innocent while pretending she’s hardcore. Her slim neck is adorned with a lacy black and violet choker, and her slender arms with matching corset-style long arm-warmers. Her pointed fingernails look like they’re carved from amethyst. Both beautiful and fearsome. Her black strapless short-dress with plum stitching, and lavender thigh-high stockings, leave about three inches of her tan thighs exposed.
I’d give anything to run my hands up her legs, lifting her dress for a peek at her panties. I wonder what type she wears.
Black and violet sneakers rounded off her sexy attire with a touch of playfulness. She looks about sixteen-years-old, eighteen at most. How the hell did she get in the club?
Spike closed his eyes to mentally access his Cyber-Goggles’ memory, and loaded a hacker-utility bot that he purchased from a hacker alliance known as Section 9. He used it to scan the girl’s Explorer registration.
Her first name is Keaira. She is five-foot-one, ninety-five pounds, twenty-one-years-old. Her ethnicity is a mix of Spanish and Italian.
Either she’s a hacker or she paid one to alter her registration, because there’s no way in hell she’s twenty-one.
Spike opened his eyes and his heart skipped a beat. Keaira was gazing through the crowd directly into his eyes. Did she notice my scan?
She gave him a seductive look and licked her plump pink lips.
Half the men and most of the women on the rooftop were staring her down like a starving fox gawking a strung up chicken. Yet she gives me that look?
Spike leapt from his stool with the speed and poise of a pouncing puma and stalked through the crowd toward her. He retained eye contact as fiercely as if to blink would cause her to vanish from this earthly realm.
Midway through the crowd, she turned away from him and walked toward the next rooftop. Spike followed with a hastened pace, determined to catch her.
He toddled right through the middle of a breakdance mock-battle, narrowly ducking a swinging boot to the face. I’ve got to talk to her. She may have sent the bat.
As he paced the light-bridge the music transitioned into gothic trance. And the futuristic Asian landscape became a daunting vista. Instead of a skyscraper, he stood upon the watchtower of a dark citadel, overlooking a demonic cathedral with a jointing cemetery, where the corpses had risen from their graves. Stone gargoyle sentries circled the fortress.
There were men spanking other men’s bare asses with leather whips. Women fucking other women with glowing strap-on dildos. And a massive orgy of men and women, at the center of the tower, in a huge whirlpool bathtub of blood. Each and every one of them were cybergoths. They glared at him like he was an angel intruding upon Hades.
Keaira seemed to be swallowed up by the swirling sea of neon and black cybergoths. And there is no way I’m going in after her. If she’s truly interested in me, she’ll come find me.
He backed away as though witnessing a crime, hurried back to Neo-Tokyo and returned to the bar for another drink.