Cyberpunk

Cleanliness and order returned to the slums.
    “Look,” said LaMarco, “I didn’t mean anything by—”
    He was interrupted by the violent roar of airship turbines. Immediately, the old man heard the smack-smack of nearby stalls being broken down. Gonfabs began to deflate, sending a stale breeze into the air. Shouts echoed from windowless buildings. The old man turned to the street. Merchants and customers clutched briefcases and ran hard, their chiseled faces contorted with strange, fierce smiles.
    “Go,” hissed LaMarco.
    The whine of turbines grew stronger. Dust devils swirled across the promenade. LaMarco flipped the wooden countertop over, picked up the equipment-filled crate, and cradled it in his powerful arms.
    “Another raid,” he huffed, and lumbered off through a dark gap between two buildings.
    The old man felt wary but calm. When a massive, dead-black sheet of cloth unfurled impossibly from the sky, he was not surprised. He turned and another sheet dropped. A swirling black confusion of sackcloth walls surrounded him. He looked straight up and saw that the convulsing walls stretched for miles up into the atmosphere. A small oval of dome light floated high above. The old man heard faint laughter.
    The militia are here with their ImmerSyst censors , he observed.
    Two black-clad militiamen strode through the twisting fabric like ghosts. Both wore lightly actuated lower-extremity exoskeletons, the word LEEX stenciled down the side of each leg. Seeing the old man standing alone, they advanced and spread out, predatorily.
    A familiar insignia on the nearest officer’s chest stood out: a lightning bolt striking a link of chain. This man was a veteran light-mechanized infantryman of the Auton Conflicts. Six symmetric scars stood out on the veteran’s cheeks and forehead like fleshy spot welds.
    A stumper attached its thorax to this man’s face some time ago , thought the old man. The machine must have been lanced before its abdomen could detonate.
    “This your shack?” asked the scarred veteran.
    He walked toward the old man, his stiff black boots crunching through a thick crust of mud mixed with Styrofoam, paper, and shards of plastic and glass.
    “No.”
    “Where’d you get that ImmerSyst?” asked the other officer.
    The old man said nothing. The veteran and the young officer looked at each other and smiled.
    “Give it here,” said the veteran.
    “Please,” said the old man, “I can’t.” He clawed the Immersion System from his face. The flowing black censor walls disappeared instantly. He blinked apprehensively at the scarred veteran, shoved the devices deep into his coat pockets, and ran toward the alley.
    The veteran groaned theatrically and pulled a stubby impact baton from his belt.
    “Fine,” he said. “Let’s make this easy.” He flicked his wrist and the dull black instrument clacked out to its full length. With an easy trot, he came up behind the old man and swung the baton low, so that it connected with the back of his knees. The impact baton convulsed and delivered a searing electric shock that buckled the old man’s legs. He collapsed onto his stomach and was still.
    Then he began to crawl with his elbows.
    Have to make it out of this alive , he thought. For the boy.
    The veteran pinned the old man with a heavy boot between the shoulder blades. He lifted his baton again.
    A sharp, alien sound rang out—low and metallic and with the tinny ring of mechanical gears meshing. It was not a human voice.
    “Stop!” it said, although the word was barely recognizable.
    The boy strode into the clearing. The old man, without his Eyes™ or Ears™, noticed that the boy’s legs were not quite the same length. He abruptly remembered cobbling them together from carbon fiber scavenged from a downed military UAV. Each movement of the boy’s limbs generated a wheezing sigh of pneumatically driven gases. The boy reeked of a familiar oil and hot battery smell that the old man had not noticed in years.
    The veteran locked eyes with the small boy and his armored body began to quake. He unconsciously fingered the scars on his face with one hand as he lifted his boot from the old man’s back.
    The old man rolled over and grunted, “Run, boy!”
    But the boy did not run.
    “What’s this?” asked the younger officer, unfazed. “Your Dutch wife?” The officer popped his impact baton to full length and stood towering over the boy. He leaned down and looked directly into the boy’s