The Taste of Money

Alyne vaulted over railing, dropping into the gap between the two building towering over the sprawl. She had marked it on her way up as a space that she could descend into the chaos without hitting any speed-ways. It was still a precision drop, no question, but it was doable for somebody with the years of practice she had cultivated. The wind was rushing in her ears. The smog coming up from the sprawl - a mix of industrial fumes, smoke from improvised heating and the noxious fumes emitted from the machinery running on fuel that had been recaptured and recycled from previous appliances at the top - blinded her for a long few seconds. Still, her eyes remained wide open behind the plastic safety glasses, focused on where she knew her feet to be. She dropped below it just in time to plant her right foot onto a metal wall, absorb the shock of her own momentum, then push herself backwards to begin the slight offset she needed to make it down. She fell again for seconds at a time, the speed-way below rushing towards her. She just missed impacting the glass tube, pushing slightly against her back and initiating a slow spin that she used to flatten out in the air and spread her limbs to either side. The thin fabric spanned in between her arms and legs caught air and lifted her into a smooth, gliding arc into the depths of the sprawl.

The buildings around her shifted into a gradient of grime and dirt, all the way down when her feet impacted the uneven pavement tiling of the lowest levels. Down here, everybody bled into the masses. Stained cloth mixed seamlessly with woven-in displays and shiny plastic. Alyne pulled the cloth away from her face and stuffed it into a zipped up pockets on her side. She didn't want to look like a bank-robber dropping off her goods. There were a lot of places where one could find and buy goods from a runner. Asking around wasn't popular, so most of them tended to frequent only a handful of spots. Alyne's go-to location was a club down towards one of the many run-down entertainment streets. It had been a choice motivated by the existing clientele there, a mix of media-hounds and tinkerers, which were the things she knew her way around herself. It was also very far away from any legal entrances to this floor, so they weren't likely to be caught off guard from surprise visits from the upper-level. The way there had Alyne passing by one of the elevators that could transport the locals as far up as fifteen levels, which covered a good portion of all industrial levels. The luckiest ones would have to take it regularly to visit their workplace for most of the day. Maybe some of those would get the opportunity to move up, if it could be proven that being closer to their workplace could increase their productive output. Over the years Alyne had seen the welcome sign at the entrance to the elevator change again and again, as more floors were either inserted between existing ones of added to the very top, a semi-ennial event, whenever the need to differentiate between the various flavours of wealth arose. The architects of layered cities had had to count the floors from top to bottom to appease initial investors, reserving the aethetically pleasing numbers for those who were willing to pay for them. Once there was a triple-digit number of floors, each with their own sets of signs to change, had started factoring into the addition of new floors financially, these lower floors had received a different numbering systems. It now welcomed visitors to Floor -1 in dulled aluminium letters. This didn't turn out to be a lasting solution either. Not far from the elevator, in the direction of the closest commercial street was a construction site, where a long line of private construction companies had been trying to drain a sewage spill with very little success. Dirty water was supposed to flow down where it got cleaned, and pumped back up. The pressure on the pipes had been building with every new floor, so their frequent structural failures shouldn't have been surprising to anybody.

Alyne stood in line for the The Basement. It took a number of minutes for the bouncer to notice and wave her through the VIP line. Electronica flushed out any active thoughts the moment she stepped through the door. Music played through actual speakers was somewhat of a rarity these days. Nobody with prospects of a music career would willingly play these venues, when they could earn several times that entertaining trust-fund kids at a house party. Nowadays music was blasted directly into the headphones or audio implants that one needed anyways, if they wanted to converse in public, where the noise of heavy machinery drowned out anybody who wasn't screaming at the top of their lungs. She had to invest a little extra cash into hers, and despite the numbers in her bank account had made her somewhat sad for a while, it was worth it for the ability to filter out sounds she didn't want to bother with. The ubiquitous advertisements especially. She angled her head slightly as the music in her head faded into a slight drone in the background. Her clients would find her, if they wanted something. Until then she had time to burn. Waiting at the bar was a joyless experience without the music or a conversation partner. It had been a while since she had been in one of these bars casually. If left to just listen and watch the dance floor, Alyne couldn't help but pick up on the conversations around her. Much of the sounds that were left after the music had been filtered down were people shouting conversation at one another over the noise. The irony of the implants that were supposed to guarantee a certain degree of privacy now overtly forcing their conversations into the open wasn't lost on her. There had been a time where Alyne would have been able to at least muster a smile, but the taste had long since grown stale, and the more frequently she saw it, the staler it got. She received a beverage that consisted just as much of artificial coloring as it did any of the listed ingredients. The drinks at The Basement had never been anything to write home about, and she found that after drinking them for a while she lost her sense of taste. She had decided to abstain ever since. The barkeep knew it as well and had long since taken to ignore Alyne once she had her first drink sitting on the plastic top of the bar. She stirred the layers of liquid in the glass, blurring them into one homogenous, sickly green.

That day was business as usual both of the club, and for Alyne. Her first client was one of her regulars. He bought mainly fiction books and audio dramas. Both weren't technically illegal, but somewhat difficult to get ones hands on. Variety wasn't technically an issue, even on the lower levels. They arrived later than everywhere else, but they would arrive eventually. By then it would be old news. If one wanted to be part of the conversation, they would have to be a little more ingenious about getting their hands on it. It was a very regular deal. She opened a small case filled with data-chits, then returned his data-chit to him, he put a standard rate on her bar tap, where all her larger payments went. Clients like these were really not uncommon, not because of their interests and positions in the city, but because of the large number of levels in between. For premium entertainment services to generate the most profit, it had to be accessible enough, even to the lower levels. Lower being the operative word. The people living on the lowest ones had too little cash to spare. Besides, years of neglect of this kind had made thievery a very popular past-time - more popular the further down one went. Clients with these relatively trivial wants were still worth her time, certainly and occasionally she found herself indulging in the same matter. It was still difficult not to write them off as just blips on the radar, compared to the reason she had visited the upper levels that day.

Her foot kept tapping rhythmically against the plastic coating of the bar, entirely out of time to the music. She had only spoken with that day's important client once, but the money he had offered had made sure his appearance was seared into her mind. He was a short man, stocky, with a gaunt face and yellowed teeth. His gait was as long as his legs would allow, and he walked quickly, with little regard to his surroundings. She had no trouble spotting him as he enterd The Basement. It was a rule in her business to never give names, and not to ask for them either. Arrests were no rarity in her line of work, and neither client nor runner had any business getting the other arrested as well. Alyne pushed her case open and readied the chit. Wordlessly she placed it in front of the seat next to her. The man dragged it across the bar top in a motion far too brisque for Alyne's liking, especially considering the precious data that had been loaded onto it. He pushed the chit into a personal device, seemingly checking the data, then he pushed a different data-chit into her Alyne's palm. She almost flinched at the gesture. She understood that the sum wasn't one that went on a bar-tap, but that wasn't how business was done. She pocketed the chit, incriminating evidence as everybody looking her way understood it to be.

Alyne threw off her air-filtration mask the minute she was in her private capsule. For single working folk, there was usually little point for more in terms of living quarters, partially because of the little time spent in personal spaces, and partially due to the mountains of paperwork and forms required to not only procure one, but also to keep it, since living in anything approaching to an apartment put even the most handsomely paid citizens in debt fairly quickly. A capsule was private enough to sleep safely and move about the few square meters without anybody asking to keep it down. She hadn't felt secure enough in checking the credits on the new chit. Not with anybody around to watch her doing. She dropped herself on the cott in the corner of the capsule. The credit from day's payment now made up the majority of what she had. She transfered the credits quickly, placed the chit in between her back teeth, and crushed it. She left her capsule and stepped out onto the narrow street. She spat the remains of the chit into the drain. It came out bloody. It had been a while since she had last done that and like back then, it left an uncomfortable taste in her mouth - the taste of money.