2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
Nickel shivered like he was in a tundra. Although, he couldn’t tell whether his tremors were from the flights of cold settling in or if the unsettling news was playing a part as well. Somehow, the world and its discontents were even more unnerving without the Ether to inundate him with its information.
Why didn’t I follow Rishi? Nickel thought, sighing. He couldn’t make sense of where he was heading, but somehow, that was both liberating and terrifying. He’d just found out that the canyons weren’t as free of the Ether as he had thought. He had passed a swarm of Ether farms overhead above Merrix on his way to the shopkeepers’ square. One of those farms was releasing Finneban campaign satellites, which meant he’d probably become the nominee of Realm Eight. If they’d pushed him to the Elector Ring, then he would be a final candidate to go up against Rixen, the president who had defeated Finneban thanks to cybernetic implants that decelerated his senile aging faculties.
Before Nickel had left the Academy on his hovercraft, he’d been told that the Ether Wars were just a legend—that they’d never happen. Their prospects had been destroyed and defeated alongside Finneban’s political ambitions. But really, the Ether Wars had been going on the whole time, brewing, until they were about to cascade.
Nickel tried not to think as he looked for Apple’s Inn. He was following the instructions of an old woman he had seen outside a mystic’s shop. He’d asked her about any places he could stay, and she had proffered Apple’s Inn.
“You looking to buy some wares?” came a crooning voice.
It was an old man standing by the side of a vendor next to the block of squat tenant buildings that Nickel passed. His voice caught Nickel by surprise, stopping him in his tracks.
The man wore strange visors over his seamed, hairless face. They were darkly tinted, but occasional sparks of yellow light shot across his lenses like polka dots, coming and going.
“No, sir,” Nickel said, waving his hand as if to shoo him away, but dropping it and leaning closer to ask a question:
“Excuse me, do you happen to know where Apple’s Inn is?”
“Oh, you won’t get any cyber-wares there,” the strange man said. He wore long faded purple overalls shot through with embedded silicon strips. The table at the vendor before him was filled with strange crystalline objects embedded with electronic equipment. “I have the best around—oh!”
His face lit up, nearly jostling his visors off as he ducked underneath and popped back up, holding a headset inlaid with a light strip so dark and purple that it looked like a tube of liquid encircling the headgear. “You’ll never miss a night of sleep with these trinkets,” he said, spinning the rizzler-cups embedded in the earmuffs. “Melatonin-enhancing membrane. You’ll be fast asleep over there—”
“There?” Nickel exclaimed, looking around. “—Where?”
“If you want a good night’s rest in the inns—”
Over the heads of a stream of huddled people pouring into an open doorway, a large sign read:
APPLE’S INN
No dogs, cats, lizards or
ANDROIDS
Permitted entry!
Ignoring the continued stream of words from the seller’s mouth, Nickel adjusted the straps of Rishi’s sack over his shoulders and bounded for the inn.
He turned back to look over his shoulder, shouting,
“I’ll be back! I like those mufflers! I’ll come back and buy them!”
As he bounded up the incline of the street, toward the growing crowd, it came into greater focus, revealing the headsets with glowing tabs strapped over the heads of a throng of people in large trench coats. Jacked in. This was where the Ether was on the ground level. Without the hovercrafts, people wore them.
As Nickel slipped into the crowd, the stench of grime and sweat overwhelmed him, emanating from the weary travelers. Dulled mutterings and conversations swarmed around him. Their softer voices indicated that they were in a hurry to get inside.
As Nickel walked underneath the large sign of the inn, a ranch building across the end of the street next to the inn caught his attention. Spangled over its right side were large banners that read:
FINNEBAN
2201
MAKE EARTH GREAT AGAIN!
On the front-facing side of the ranch, facing the street and every pedestrian and traveler on it, was another banner, just as large, with its font big enough for everyone present to read:
FUCK
RIXEN
AND FUCK YOU IF YOU VOTED FOR HIM!
G.R. Nanda 