Sequence Six: Defrag

"Faggot!"

The word echoed off the close, high walls of the alleyway, along with the quick staccato of running feet. There had to be four or five of them chasing him, Ricardo thought.

The alley was filthy, with ancient trashcans lying on their sides. Grimy graffiti wavered and climbed over soot-blackened brick. Thin rivulets of water gleamed dully under the city's perpetually hazy sky, a low-hanging, venomous mist that glowed orange with reflected light. Sometimes alleys would open out into side streets or bend and jog into networks of passages. Often, however, they simply came to a dead end - as this one did. Ricardo skidded to a halt. The footfalls of his pursuers grew closer, louder. He already had a plan in mind but he wasn't sure if he'd have time to put it into motion.

Pulling his defrag unit from his jacket pocket, Ricardo thumbed the activate switch and then keyed in his pass code. The tiny screen glowed with a question that he didn't bother to read - he knew it was asking authorization for the user fee. The fee would be greater or less depending on how many others were using the service just now, but at least the screen was showing yellow text and not a red bar that indicated the inn, so to speak, was full.

Any price for a port in a storm, he thought, thumbing the sensor once again to grant payment approval. The screen flickered to the image of a large green checkmark, and the device grew warm to the touch.

"There he is!"

"You're in for it now, faggot!"

The bashers slowed to a walk, approached him with grins that spoke to their malice and sadism. Their faces were menus of delectation: In their gleaming eyes and moist lips Ricardo could read a dozen or more impending atrocities. Groups like this one - unofficial, but enjoying the imprimatur of the President and his Social Improvement Council - literally got away with murder every single day, in every American city. It wasn't duty that brought them out onto the streets, despite the recruitment ads and the online propaganda. They did it for the sheer bloody fun of pummeling, kicking, cutting, and bludgeoning their victims, snapping bones, gouging eyes, and drawing blood. Sometimes they indulged in any number of extras - like severing fingers one at a time while they stood around dreaming up taunts. Or pressing knives into their victims' skulls, one after the next, until seizure or the simple sudden slackness of death put an end to their enjoyment. Rape was another favorite pastime - and a very common one.

Ricardo had no doubt that rape was on their mind. That's what all the bashers liked to do to gay boys like him. To Ricardo, that suggested the perpetrators were gay themselves, but to the President - who just last week had awarded a Medal of Honor to a notoriously vicious uber-basher, a tattooed young man who had raped 122 men and boys and posted videos and songs about it on his blog - and to the media streams, they were red-blooded heroes, real men doing the hard work of protecting manhood itself.

Hard work indeed, Ricardo thought as the field began to ripple into existence.

He heard their aggravated cries through the space-time distortion. "Aw, fuck! He's going into Defrag!"

"Go ahead, homo!" another voice called. "We'll be waiting when you get back - and then we'll de-fag!"

The gang's raucous laughter faded out, along with the sight of the bashers and the alley's strewn garbage and graffitied walls.

The gang had not actually disappeared, of course. Ricardo had - temporarily, at least. He now stood in the simple, safe environs of his basic-level holding area, the cheapest of the options available to Defrag subscribers.

The area where Ricardo now stood didn't exit in ordinary space-time. It was "dimension mined" from Superspace. Specialized regulators shaped and maintained the space, giving it stable physical dimensions and creating a localized time-flow.

Before Defrag there was a push by some of the big physics companies to tap into Superspace and use it as a workaround for the limitations of sub-lightspeed interstellar propulsion. Other companies were trying to harness tachyons and created localized, highly-controlled space convolutions to permit superluminal travel. Whoever found a cheap, reliable way to surmount the problem of cosmic distances and light's universal speed limit of 300,000 kilometers per second - far too slow to cross the void between stars in any reasonable span of time - would have all the endless resources of the universe to offer. The commercial prospects... materials acquisition, mining, research, colonization, and more... would be literally off the map.

It might be years, or centuries, or never before scientists figured out how to use Superspace for interstellar travel (or maybe even trans-universe journeys), but for the moment the dimensional mining companies were raking in plenty of cash by mining, defining, and renting access to these pocket universes. The creation of holding spaces outside the normal flow of time was the first and, so far, most useful commercial application for the new technology. The commercial jingles were clever and catchy, and they avoided scientific jargon, but they made Defrag attractive to masses of people pressed for time. Have a long commute to deal with? Defrag! Stuck standing in line for the next 40 minutes? Defrag! Had your service call placed on a two-hour hold? Serving a four-year stint on an ice hauler bound for the Kuiper Belt? Swept up in the latest government crackdown and imprisoned until your court date - seven years from now? You could defragment your wasted time and live a continuously productive, enjoyable life. And you could do it for a low, low monthly fee.

Of course, the sort of fee Ricardo could afford - most people could afford - only came out to about 36 minutes per month. Rich people, of course, could pop into Defrag as long and as often as they liked, and their holding areas were - or so the adverts claimed - more like day spas than airport terminals. Ricardo, though, was one of the 99.99968 percent. Far from rich.

Ricardo had only subscribed for about two months, and his plan's default setting gave him two 18-minute Defrags per 28-day billing cycle, but he'd already been in this same holding area before several times. He'd gotten to know some of the other subscribers who were also assigned to its use. He was hoping for one particular acquaintance to be here now, a fellow called Geoffrey.

Ricardo scanned the holding area. Clusters of sturdy plastic chairs sat around low tables; potted plants - also plastic - dotted the space, which resembled a cavern with its low ceiling and curving, irregular walls. The area was quiet; not much was going on. That was partly due to the social expectation that Defrag had engineered around its holding areas being stress-free places of refuge, but it also had to do with a lack of facilities. There were no bars or exercise machines offered to basic-level subscribers. People using Ricardo's cheap plan had little to work with, so they mostly milled around or leaned against the walls doing breathing exercises. There wasn't much else to do unless you brought a lextab or your lunch. Ricardo had heard that this area, 44B-22, was habituated mostly by gay users, so he'd requested it specifically. Before his first visit he's entertained the idea that there might be a cruisy back room of some sort, but if there was, he'd never found it.

Ricardo didn't see who he was looking for, but he did zero in on a familiar face: A fellow named Peter. Or was it Petrie? He was seated near one of the coffee stations, just as Ricardo had last seen him, about a week earlier. A week, that is, from Ricardo's point of view; he wasn't sure how much time Peter spent here, or much he could afford. Ricardo made his way across the room to him.

Peter, or whatever his name was, had his eyes closed and was leaning back in a recliner chair. Ricardo realized that Peter wasn't exactly as he'd seen him last time, after all. He was dressed in a suit, but the suit was wet with what looked like some sort of soup. Flecks of vegetable and pasta clung to his dark jacket, and his dark blue shirt was soggy. It was obvious why Peter he was here - not the specifics of the situation he'd popped away from, but the nature of it. Ricardo assumed it was a date gone wrong. A misplaced word, an escalating argument, and here came the soup. In the old days, people used to just toss drinks in each other's faces. Now, however, people were feeling considerably meaner and dumping hot meals on a bad date had become a thing.

"Um, hi?" Ricardo said, reluctant to interrupt Peter's relaxation but conscious - ironically, given where he was - of the press of time.

"I only have a couple more minutes, then you can use the chair," Peter said, not opening his eyes.

"Actually, I was looking for somebody. A guy named Geoffrey? He's a member of the garda."

"That fascist shit?" Peter opened his eyes and gave Ricardo a hostile glare.

"Uh, well, I was hoping he might help me out. I'm in kind of a fix," Ricardo began.

Peter laughed. "You're gay, right? I can only imagine what sort of trouble you're trying to escape. But what makes you think a member of the garda would help you?"

"He's a pretty good guy," Ricardo said.

"Yeah, he's a fucking coward," Peter said. "Anyway, he got a promotion and a pay rise. He upped his subscription level. His holding area has a bar. And a Jacuzzi. A little nicer than this shit hole with its one working recliner."

"He doesn't come here any more?" Ricardo asked, to be sure.

"Afraid not. Anyway, why do you think you'd find him here now? He works nights."

Ricardo shrugged. "That matters?"

"The garda aren't allowed to use Defrag while on duty," Peter told him. "New policy."

"Oh." Ricardo tried to think up a Plan B, but nothing came to mind.

"Okay, look," Peter said. "I'm about to pop back. We were in the middle of a fight when I left... I've had time to cool down, but when I get back it'll only be about a second later from his perspective. He'll still be pretty worked up... but Mark is the sort who cools down and thinks rationally in a crisis. When I explain the situation to him I'm sure he'll be willing to pop back here with his gun. That's what you're looking for, right? To borrow a weapon?"

"Uh, well, yeah," Ricardo said.

"And whoever's bothering you, are you sure they don't have a gun?"

"No," Ricardo said. "But I know they have clubs and knives. If they had a gun why wouldn't they have been waving it around?"

"Guns are too quick, that's why. You're talking about bashers, right? Those assholes like to take their time, but that doesn't mean they don't have a gun or two tucked into their belts."

"I'd be willing to take the chance, all things considered," Ricardo said.

"Of course, getting the gun back could be problematic, especially if they kill you and steal it," Peter mused. "Unless I get him to lend me his bioscanning Mauser. He got the failsafe insurance for that one. If an unauthorized user handles it, the Mauser explodes. When that happens, the tracker chip automatically files an insurance claim with the company." Peter smiled a nasty, rueful smile. "Funny how you only get good customer service from gun makers these days."

"You're sure Mark would go for it?" Ricardo asked. "I mean, I wouldn't do it if I didn't really need to."

"You kidding? Gun makers love that shit. Any time a verifiable act of violence leads to one of their weapons showing its stuff, they market the fuck out of it."

"Even when the thugs are the bashers?"

"Sweetie," Peter drawled, looking at him sideways, "you know how many guns they are selling to queers these days? And all on account of the bashers? Those fucking brown shirts are the best thing to happen to the gun biz since the Wild West."

Ricardo wasn't sure why Peter referred to shirt color - he'd never noticed the bashers being especially disposed to wearing brown shirts or shirts of any specific cut or color, though there were rumors that the military budget currently before Congress included a line item authorizing a few million guineas to subsidize an official uniform for them. It was part and parcel of the government's preparations to officially deputize the bashers and grant them legal power to hunt, maim, and murder.

"Anyway," Peter added, "Mark is an executive at Guns-B-We. You know it? Online weapons retailer? Well, if he says that he was the one they mugged, no one is gonna contest it. And when it comes out that the 'muggers' were bashers, the garda will probably make noise about unfortunate mistaken identity and the need for upgraded ID transmits, but they won't prosecute Mark or anything. They know he's gay, but he's protected. Comes from old money. And he has too many friends in the weapons trade, too many contracts among the higher-ups in the garda. He'll be fine. Though I suppose that an incident like the one we're discussing will accelerate the whole uniform thing..."

Peter glanced at his watch - which, now that Ricardo looked more closely, turned out to be a sleeker, wrist-worn version of the Defrag unit. "Just a few seconds left. Listen, sit tight and I'll make sure Mark gets here with the gun." The Defrag field grew up rapidly around Peter as he spoke and then rippled into opacity before dissolving into nothingness.

Ricardo sat down in the empty recliner chair and checked his own bulkier Defrag unit. The timer showed fifteen minutes and three seconds. Make that two seconds. Make that...

Ricardo looked away from the readout, then turned the unit this way and that in his hands. It was expensive - they all were - but next to Peter's wrist-worn model it seemed cheap and outdated. It was the size of a large PCD; Ricardo had bought it second hand. The unit had been refurbed and resold by the company itself. If he survived the night he might think about an upgrade. Having a small, sleek unit strapped to his wrist would save the extra seconds it had taken him fumbling the larger model out of his jacket pocket. Plus, he'd heard the newer models could be voice activated, and that they could be programmed to initiate a Defrag and authorize payment all with a single command. That, too, would save time. He didn't like how close the bashers had come to getting him. He'd managed it this time, but next time... if there was a next time...

Ricardo sighed. If only the last election had gone the other way, he thought. Gays had been making progress. They'd actually managed to get church-sponsored bounties outlawed. Now, though, the president was cozying up to the Killvangelicals, and all bets were off.

Not that dipping into Defrag while being pursued was a foolproof plan. In fact, it wasn't much of a plan at all, not on its own. A holographic marker - an image of himself - would hover on the spot, as a way of alerting passers-by to avoid that little bit of space. The marker included an low-intensity exclusion field, but people had been known to try to sit in transit car seats where Defrag users had been and would, in time, resume being. The marker made it plain that someone would be popping back into normal space at some point soon.

No doubt the gang was loitering around in the alley near Ricardo's marker. When he got back, they'd be looking forward to picking up where they left off. With some luck he'd be able to rely on Peter's friend Mark and the promised gun. Ricardo had taken introductory classes in guns while in middle school - it was mandatory - but he hadn't touched a weapon since. He didn't believe it them, and even if he did, he couldn't afford a gun. Ricardo tried to imagine what he'd do when he reappeared in normal space-time. His thoughts vacillated between action movie drivel and a scenario in which the gang overwhelmed him in an instant, took the weapon from him, and...

And...

And who knew what? But he was a dead man with no chance unless he got that gun. If he was going down, he was going to go down fighting.

He'd know soon enough either way, Ricardo thought. His time was steadily trickling away. He was down to just under ten minutes now. What bullshit, Ricardo thought, to charge so much for the higher subscription tiers. Looking around at the sparsely populated room, Ricardo couldn't imagine why there was a need for such stinginess. He'd never seen the place even half full. Then again, he'd generally used the service at night, when most working people weren't working and therefore were probably less apt to need a few minutes of stolen personal time.

Ricardo fidgeted, growing anxious. Where was Mark? Would he agree and bring a weapon for Ricardo's use? Ricardo was in an agony of apprehension. Every few seconds a new visitant appeared in the room or someone who'd been there for a while departed; Ricardo started with each sizzling flash of the field.

Then someone touched his elbow. A tall man with dark blond hair stood here, looking quizzically at him. "Are you Ricardo?"

"Are you Mark?"

The newcomer smiled. Holding up a gun that he allowed to dangle by the grip, the newcomer said, "I heard you were in need of some firepower?"

Ricardo reached for the weapon gratefully. "You have no idea."

"I think I do," Mark said. "Bashers?"

"Five or six of them," Ricardo said.

"They don't like to fight fair, those boys," Mark said. "I wish I could pop back with you, but of course I can't... where will you be reentering?"

"Some alley in the Dokkun district," Ricardo said. "Not far from Club Alibi."

"It'll take us forty minutes to get there," Mark said, frowning. "But as soon as I pop back we'll head over."

"Want to be sure to get your gun back," Ricardo said.

"Well, that too, or at least see the outcome. But also just to see you're okay. We gotta stick together - now more than ever." Mark offered his PCD. "Why don't you use this to message yourself. Then I'll have your number and I can also pinpoint you once I'm back in realtime."

"I can message myself from here?"

"Of course not. There's no service in the fold. But the unit will hold on to the number until it registers a carrier, and then send the message."

"Got it." Ricardo took Mark's PCD, flicked the dust cover up, and tapped his number. Then he entered a short message: "From Mark."

"You had much weapons training?" Mark asked.

"No," Ricardo said.

"So you think you're just gonna pop back into realtime, gun blazing?"

"I'm guessing I'll have the element of surprise," Ricardo said.

"Well, for a moment you will. The field will throw them off, too - they'll know what it is, but if they're right up close the EM field will make them dizzy. If it's really dark the light might blind them for a few seconds."

"Doubt it. Sky was full bright tonight," Ricardo said.

"Either way," Mark said, "the thing is not to waste your advantage. Get a good bead on whosever is closest to you. Aim right at his torso, and squeeze the trigger - don't yank on it, or you'll spoil your aim. Do some breathing exercises before you pop back so you'll be focused and relaxed as possible. Then don't let it be about hurrying - let it be about efficiency and flow."

"Flow, got it," Ricardo said.

"I doubt that," Mark said. "But, lucky for you, I brought something else you'll find uselful." He reached over and Ricardo thought for a moment that Mark was playing with his hair. Then he realized Mark was putting a cerebrex on his head.

"What's this for?" Ricardo asked.

"I've done a lot of training with guns," Mark said. "It's part of my job - I'm a university professor. One thing professors are fanatic about it learning aids, and while not many people think about this, the cerebrex is an amazing learning tool. The same way a cerebrex virt can put a whole knowledge base into your brain for the length of a movie - or even implant a memory share - it can also direct-download a complex skill set into your nervous system."

"What? How?"

Mark grinned. "Hell if I know. But the sum total of my weapons training and experience is in the recording I'm activating now. Let me guide you through some techniques to integrate the skills into your muscles - once you get back, all you'll need to do to access and use my training is to relax, get out of your own way, and not overthink it. The cerebrex will give you what you need."

There were fewer than seven minutes left. No time to waste. Mark sidled next to Ricardo and gently molded his hands around the gun, then adjusted his arms, shoulders, and torso into the proper stance. Ricardo surrendered to him allowing Mark's easy, confident movements to inform his own body as the more experienced man swiveled and pointed the gun, then swiveled and aimed again.

Ricardo thought he heard other in the room muttering comments about the impromptu firearm lesson, and he wondered if Mark would get into trouble with the people who ran Defrag. There had been something, buried deep in the 240 page Terms of Agreement, about no weapons, drugs, alcohol, or serotonin stimulators allowed in the fold, but Ricardo had not read it closely. He supposed if Mark really were the big shot Peter said he was that no one was going to bother him much, no matter what he did. The president, after all, had shot a puppy to death on a busy city street and none of the few remaining statutes about use of weapons in public spaces had been levied against him. It also spiked his approval ratings, as the media feeds and commenterati went wild praising him for personally keeping the streets clear of vermin.

Mark smelled good, Ricardo thought, and his solid, warm body felt nice wrapped around Ricardo's own. The defrag marketing had it right this time - this really was a pause that rejuvenated.

Time ticked by. Ricardo had a sense of déjà vu, feeling like he already knew the things Mark was teaching him. Was that from his middle school training? Or the cerebrex? Eventually, Mark stepped back and said, "Good luck."

Ricardo glanced at his defrag and saw the readout had counted down to six seconds. Now five. Now four. He jammed the Defrag unit into his jacket pocket, assumed the stance Mark had taught him, and held the gun in steady, firm hands. Only as the field grew up around him did he wonder whether he could actually bring himself to kill anyone, even to save his own life.

Guess I'll find out, he thought. Then Mark and the holding area faded from sight.

The silhouettes of his would-be assailants solidified before him, dark and menacing. Darn it, Ricardo thought, his breathing unhurried and his fingers tightening on the trigger. I forgot to thank Mark. Guess I better live through this so I can thank him later.

The gun's report was loud, shockingly loud - the sudden blast did more than the field's light or the EM distortion to rattle and confuse the bashers, who all froze long enough for Ricardo to aim without hurry and fire again. Two of the five were now on the ground, and three silhouettes were starting to run. Ricardo could see what Mark meant when he counseled Ricardo to "get out of his own way." He simply let it happen; his body seemed to know exactly how to move, where to aim, when to shoot. He started humming to himself as he picked off the fleeing figures - one, two, three. They each got a single slug to the dark mass of their bodies.

Now, Ricardo reckoned, it was time to clean up. He stepped over to the closest of the prostrate forms lying amidst the alley's strewn refuse. If the guy was still alive, he wasn't moving or making any noise. That was good enough for now. Ricardo check the others one after the next, moving rapidly forward. Only a single basher seemed to have any life left in him; he struggled weakly to push himself up to his hands and knees, head hanging down and breath loud and rapid.

The barrel of Ricardo's gun nuzzled the basher at the base of the skull where he crawled in the dirt.

The man made a sound that was like a muffled squeal, or maybe a choked sob.

Ricardo didn't care what the sound meant. He pulled the trigger smoothly, saw a dark spray of blood appear on the ground along with white chunks of brain meat, and watched as the man instantly collapsed, falling straight down onto the ruin of his face.

No one else moved. No other sound came from any of the scattered bodies. Sooner or later, Ricardo imagined, there'd be the sound of sirens. He stuffed the gun into the back of his belt and walked toward Club Alibi.

Forty minutes, Mark had said. That was long enough for two or three drinks. By the time Mark and Peter arrived, zeroing in on him using the gun's pinpoint app, the adrenaline surge would have subsided and grief, regret, or any other emotion summoned by the killings would have come to the surface.

Or not.

Once he reached the bar, Ricardo settled in to wait, the gun snug in his belt. Its geomitter would bring Mark and Peter right to him, he knew. If he could ever afford it, he'd have to get a gun of his own to go with his upgraded Defrag unit. And maybe a...

Ricardo started. That's right, he still had Mark's cerebrex, didn't he?

Ricardo pulled the cerebrex from his scalp and stared at it, startled. It wasn't a cerebrex at all - it was a plain old hairband. Really old, in fact, made of durable petroleum plastic, not that flimsy soya stuff.

Get out of your own way. Mark had faked him out, tricked him into believing in his own ability. Ricardo shook his head and smiled. He suddenly felt three meters tall. Ricardo would never have thought he could handle a gun so coolly, so effectually - but Mark had seen it in him, had made it possible for that potential to surface.

Someone who rely even knew him, had never seen him before tonight - he'd taken Ricardo's measure, known how to teach him, what to do in order to help him survive.

We have to stick together.

Gratitude welled up in him, and a feeling of belonging. Maybe this was what they meant in the old days when they talked about the gay community - belonging with and to each other, each one looking out for the good of the individuals as well as the whole.

In the back of his mind was the image of the fleeing shadows, the way they fell when he pulled the trigger. Ricardo didn't want to feel a rush of power at the memory. He hated people who enjoyed hurting and killing. He didn't want to become like they were.

But it sure felt good to be alive, even if it meant having to put down a group of vicious killers... even if it made him a killer, now, too. A reluctant killer, but still... Ricardo wondered how he'd feel once the adrenaline and relief passed over. He doubted it would be anything like the cruel animal satisfaction his attackers had anticipated enjoying.

But he didn't expect he'd feel that bad, either. Certainly not so bad that he'd forget, once more, to say a proper thank you to his friends.

And here they came now, Mark and Peter -- Ricardo spotted them pushpin toward him through the crowd. He slid off the barstool and stood, a smile transforming his face.