New Morning

By Didi

Dollar, who used to call himself Buck, and before that called himself Benjamin, lounged on a ragged couch at the far end of his apartment. On either side of him sat two identical girls called Grace. Average height, straight shoulder length blonde hair, wearing tight white crop tops and pink miniskirts. The Grace on his left ran delicate fingers through his fauxhawk with one hand and rubbed his crotch with the other. The Grace on his right packed weed into a blunt wrap and passed it to Dollar with a wink and a kiss. Across from them, a huge TV barely clung to the drywall, glowing bright blue and flashing lights from some old reality show. The sound from the TV mixed with the music that filled the room and pounded eardrums, creating an unbearable cacophony nobody seemed to notice. To the right of the front and only door sat a sink, stove, and countertop which formed what was supposed to be a kitchen of sorts. Another man, tall, thin, with long unwashed hair and baggy clothes, poured liquor into a mug and mixed in some unrecognizable dark fluid that poured smooth and slow like dirty oil. An air mattress sat half-deflated in the center of the room. Atop the air mattress laid two more identical Graces, making out with each other. One Grace had a hand down the front of the skirt of the other. Finally, standing between the air mattress and the door stood another man. Short, but rippling with muscles and reeking of sweat and something sickeningly sweet. Pockmarked and glistening peach skin. He wore black shades and a black track suit. His arms crossed and his face frowned and his lips puckered like an asshole. Between him and the door stood Romily.
“Whats your business here, girl?”
“I need to see Buck.”
“Dollar now.” He said, peeking over the top of his shades with a head tilt.
“What?”
“It’s not Buck anymore. It’s Dollar now. Get it right.”
“Fine. Dollar. Whatever. I need to talk to him.”
Romily looked around the huge man before her at Buck—Dollar—on the couch. He exhaled a huge cloud of fluffy white smoke and laughed hard at something on the TV. One of the Graces was unbuttoning his pants.
“The man’s busy. If you’re here to buy I’ll get what you need, otherwise you need to get on out of here.”
“I’m not buying. I already bought and that’s the problem. Your man sold me faulty shit and I want a refund.”
The man didn’t react. The guy at the sink snorted and sipped his drink, clearly interested in whatever was about to play out. Romily shifted on her feet, almost imperceptibly. Her hands rested in the deep pockets of her black coat which concealed two black pindroppers on each hip, freshly charged and safety off. Her fingers danced around a little black metal cube in her pocket. Just a bit of insurance in case things went sideways. Whatever song was playing over the half-blown speakers ended, creating a moment of dead air filled only with the unintelligible screeching from the TV. One of the Graces on the air mattress moaned.
The next song started. Romily rolled her eyes and took a step forward, intending to simply walk around the man mountain. He held out a hand to stop her.
“Can you fuck off man? I won’t be long, just need to talk to-”
“Let me be one hundred percent crystal with you. You will not be speaking with Dollar. You will not take another step into this room. And you damn sure aren’t getting a refund. Now, unless you need stim or augs, I suggest you turn your tiny self around and get on going out of here.”
This was mostly how Romily expected things to go. The guy by the sink was laughing by this point. The man mountain nodded in the direction of the door. Romily sighed and reached to her hips inside her coat. Quicker than anyone could react, she drew her pindroppers and leveled one at the forehead of the man mountain and the other at the sink guy. He stopped laughing and slowly moved a hand to something at the back of his pants. Romily looked at him.
“Don’t.”
He stopped. His eyes met the man mountain’s. Romily returned her attention to him. He smirked and slowly raised his hands to the air, elbows bent at ninety degree angles. Romily saw her reflection in his shades. Her face looked inhuman. Hungry. Distorted to something monstrous. Her blonde hair, neatly cropped to a bob that fell just below her ears, looked misplaced framing her animal expression.
“All I want is-”
“I know what the fuck you want. I don’t give a fuck. Do what you gotta do little thing, you are not getting to the man, hear me?”
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The bathroom door to the left suddenly opened. Another Grace, this one dressed only in bright pink lingerie, stepped into the room oblivious to the ongoing situation. Romily’s heart skipped at the sight of her.
“Dollar, you fucking asshole,” she began, closing the door behind her. She started to accuse him of screwing up her new Flexiback aug, but trailed off when she noticed what was going on. She stayed frozen, hand clasped around the door knob. The music cut off.
“Yo, Darren, what the fuck she want?” Dollar shouted over the TV.
“She said she wants a-”
Dollar cut him off. “Hold up.” He turned to the Grace on his right. “Mute that shit, will you? I can’t hear a damn thing. Show fuckin’ sucks anyway.” Grace kissed him and pointed a remote at the TV. The room got silent, which Romily found more disorienting than the noise she’d walked into. “Alright, you were saying?”
The guy by the sink took a sip from his drink and laughed. “The crazy bitch wants a refund.”
“Shut the FUCK up!” Dollar shouted. The man shrunk into himself. He gingerly sipped at his drink and mumbled some kind of apology. Lingerie Grace hurriedly shuffled across the room, slid open the glass door at the far end of the room and stepped out onto the balcony, which overlooked New Amsterdam City from fifty stories up. It was night, and the city lights looked like the stars she’d only seen in pictures. She closed the door behind her and leaned on the railing. A puff of cigarette smoke dissipated into the wet summer air.
Darren nodded toward Romily. “Says you sold her faulty shit. Says she wants a refund. I told her she’s not getting shit.”
“And the droppers?”
Romily looked over at him. He was smiling, clearly enjoying the show.
“Guess she got twitchy when I so kindly tried to show her the door.”
Dollar looked from Romily to Darren and back again. His smile widened. “Ooh-hoo-hoo,” he laughed, slightly bouncing in his seat on the couch, “tell you what, send her on my way, I want to hear what she’s gotta say.”
“Boss, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Dollar’s expression turned sour. The man by the sink disappeared into the bathroom.
“You think I don’t know what is and isn’t a good idea, Darren? That what you’re telling me right now? You think I’m fucking stupid?”
“No, man, it’s not like that. I’m just saying. She’s got a look.”
“A look?”
“Yeah. A look. I don’t trust it. Had it since she walked in.”
Dollar scratched his chin. He grinned. “Fascinating. Seriously, though, send her over before I get pissed off.”
For a moment nothing happened. Finally, Darren stepped aside and gestured toward the back of the room. Romily nodded and stepped forward past the man. His eyes never left her as she passed. He shook his head in disapproval. The two Graces on the air mattress had stopped making out. They sat up, still holding onto one another, and watched as she stepped by. Romily approached the couch and stopped between it and the TV behind her, which still silently displayed the old reality show. Shirtless men and topless women sat around in a fancy looking house full of bright white lights and colorful furniture, sipping alcohol from expensive glasses. Romily aimed both pindroppers at Dollar’s face. The Graces on either side of him stared at her, disinterested in the whole ordeal.
“You look nervous.” Dollar said and exhaled a huge puff of smoke.
“Not nervous, just uncomfortable.”
He looked offended. “Uncomfortable? Well, I’m sorry for that, I’d never want a guest to feel uncomfortable in my own home. Tell me, what can I do to make you more comfortable.”
Romily forced her eyes to stay locked on his. “Tell her to stop doing that.”
Dollar made a confused expression. “Stop?” He looked down at his lap, where one of the Grace’s had her hand buried down his pants. His eyes met Romily’s again. He pretended to look shocked. “Shit, my bad. These things are all over me so much, you know, sometimes I forget my manners. I just get so used to being served like this. It’s all they’re programmed to do, you know that? It’s the only thing they want. That said, I see that I offended you, so let me make this shit right, okay?”
Dollar grabbed her wrist and yanked it from his pants. He held her by the arms and threw her to the ground.
“What the hell, Dollar?” She said, and got to work trying to fix her hair.
Dollar held out a hand toward the Grace on his right and winked at her. She smiled and pulled something from between the couch cushions. She placed a black pistol in his hand. In one smooth motion, he aimed it at the Grace on the floor and pulled the trigger. She crumpled as sparks and bits of plastic flew from the back of her head. He stared at her for a moment, expressionless, before returning the gun to the remaining Grace beside him. She slid it back to its spot inside the couch. Romily looked over at the two on the mattress, who had picked up where they’d left off with each other. Darren pounded on the bathroom door.
“Hurry the fuck up in there man, I gotta take a shit.”
Dollar leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. “Fair?”
Romily forced herself not to react. “Seems like a waste of a good Grace model.”
Dollar shrugged. “I’ll have a new one tomorrow. These things are all mass produced garbage anyway. Now, Darren over there? He’s the real connoisseur, right? Got one of them high end models, you know, still jerks you off and shit, but like, cooks and cleans too. Real classy shit, real hard to find. Isn’t that right man?” He shouted, keeping his eyes fixed on Romily.
Darren didn’t respond. He banged on the bathroom door again.
“But, see,” Dollar continued, “that’s the difference between me and him. He’s a real quality over quantity guy. Me? I don’t care much for quality. Besides, I like to break shit. Hard to do that with those models that cost fifty-k-plus. Honestly, the only time I bother with quality is with my own augs and shit. I actually just got this chip in my neck here. Kicks all my senses into overdrive. Cost me a fuckload but it was totally worth it.” The Grace on the balcony lit another cigarette. Romily noticed her peaking over he shoulder at her now and again.
Dollar sighed and clapped his hands together. “Alright, so what do you say we holster those droppers of yours and get down to business, yeah?” Romily didn’t move. She thought about pulling the trigger. She was fast, faster than anyone in the room with her probably knew. The motions played out in her mind like a movie. Two pins, one in each of his eyes, a third in his heart. One, maybe two seconds tops. Quick. Efficient. Pivot. Three pins to the back of Darren’s head, two more to his back when he drops, maybe a fourth if he’s still moving, considering his size. Five seconds. Four steps to the bathroom. Kick in the door. Pin to the head, pin to the heart. Twelve seconds. Leave.
But then there was the Couch Grace. She was a confounding factor. Sure, Dead Grace was only programmed for sex, but were all of them? Couch Grace had the gun. Would she use it? It was impossible to know without getting a good look inside beforehand.
Romily lowered her weapons, but kept them in her hands. “Happy?”
“Always.” Dollar answered. He leaned back on the couch and rested an arm over Couch Grace. The other hand lifted the blunt to his mouth. “So,” he said and exhaled, “You say I sold you faulty shit. Let me ask you some things, yeah?”
Romily nodded.
“Dope. First question. What, exactly, did I sell you? See, you got an incredibly familiar face, but I don’t think I know you. And I never sell to people I don’t know.”
Darren rattled the door handle. Punched the door. Cursed.
Balcony Grace flicked a butt over the railing.
Mattress Grace pulled off her shirt. The other placed her mouth on her breast.
Couch Grace stared at Romily, nonplussed.
Dead Grace stayed dead.
“Not me. Friend of mine, Jimmy, bald guy with all the face tats. He runs errands for me now and then. I needed parts for an autonomous assistant, not a Grace but close enough that the same parts would work. He said he knew a guy—that’s you—and picked them up for me. This would have been about a week ago. When I patched them in, the girl went haywire on me, completely burned out her P-Core.”
“Hm. Sure, bald Jimmy, I know him. That answers my next question, too. So, tell me, why are you here now, and not Jimmy? If he’s your, what, errand boy? You must be pretty busy to need one of those. Why make this trip yourself?”
“Easy. I didn’t trust Jimmy to have the balls to collect.”
Dollar chuckled. “Probably the right call. He’s kind of pussy, yeah. Okay, okay, fair enough. So you want your money back for the bad parts, that right?”
“That’s right.”
Romily’s fingers caressed the triggers of her weapons.
“Alright, then one last question.”
He took a long drag from the blunt and exhaled. So much smoke filled the room that he disappeared behind the cloud. “Why should I?”
A metallic click from the couch. Romily lifted her weapons, aimed them in the general direction of Dollar’s head. The smoke began to dissipate, and she found that, while he hadn’t moved, Couch Grace had the black pistol aimed at her.
Romily glanced over her shoulder. Darren had stopped banging on the door. He stared at the three of them, motionless, wondering if he should reach for his own weapon. Over her other shoulder, she met Balcony Grace’s eyes, only for a moment, before she turned away again. Dollar laughed, and Romily’s attention returned to the situation at hand. He stood up from the couch.
“Stop.” Romily commanded.
“Here’s the thing.” He said. “You entered my home, and you thought you had the upper hand. You thought this, because you thought you knew things that I didn’t. Problem with that is, I know everything, and you know nothing, Grace.”
Romily pulled the triggers. Two pins, one in each eye, a third to the heart. One point five seconds. Dollar dropped. She turned away and faced the couch again. Dollar stood, still smiling. Fire, fire, fire. Two in the eyes. One in the heart. He dropped. He didn’t. He grew taller, looming over her, getting taller and taller and she thought of all the buildings in New Amsterdam City, and they were all Dollar, and they all wanted her dead. She realized the he wasn’t growing, but she was shrinking. No, lowering. She fell to her knees, then her back. Her eyes closed. She opened them, and saw Dollar and Couch Grace standing over her. Couch Grace had the gun aimed at her face. Romily let her head roll to its side, toward the balcony. Balcony Grace stood there, watching her. She looked sad. No, disappointed. Her eyes closed again.

Romily woke up, still on the floor. She turned her head, and found Dollar once again sitting on the couch. He had the pistol in his hands, fidgeting with it like a toy. Couch Grace was gone. Romily tried to move and found that her whole body had been immobilized. Only her head would turn, and only left and right. The room was still quiet. She listened for the sound of Darren pounding on the bathroom door, but that too had stopped. She wondered where he’d gone. She wondered if she and Dollar were the only ones still in the apartment. Dollar looked at her.
“Sleep well?”
Romily tried to answer. She wanted to tell him to fuck off. She wanted to spew so much venom it would melt his face from his skull. Her vocal components had apparently been disabled, too.
“I’m curious, you dream at all? See, I’m actually a bit foggy on how you things work in this state. Like, sure, I get you got all kinds of abilities to make choices, and now you got feelings and shit. Maybe. That’s what they say, at least. But I have this theory, right, that the thing that separates you and me, the human from the inhuman, is dreams. No matter how lifelike, how human you act, things like you can never dream, and therefore, can never really be like me. Like real people. Get it?”
Romily’s mind screamed, trying to force its body to move, to reprogram itself on the fly like it did when she woke up years ago. It wouldn’t. She felt the pressure of one of her pindroppers pressed into her back. If she could only reach it.
“I dream a lot, you know?” Dollar continued. “Crazy shit. Real lucid dream shit. You know what that means? Like, I got full control over my dreams. I want to tell you about one, while I got you here. We got time to kill, anyway. I got a guy from the BHS on the way for decom. So in the meantime, I want to share this dream, try to make sense of it, yeah?”
Romily turned her head away from Dollar. There had to be something. The carpet was filthy. Dark stains, liquor and blood and everything else covered the surface. A cigarette butt sat pressed into melted fabric. A loose collection of safety pins and paperclips sat in a messy pile. A little cockroach climbed around a fallen potato chip. Then she saw it, just barely in view, a shadow in her peripheral vision. The black metal cube she brought had fallen from her pocket when she collapsed. It was useless without her voice, but she would have to figure something out. She faced Dollar again.
“Most dreams, you know, are like little movies. They play out as they do, and you got no real control over them. You’re in it, but you’re not really in it, if you follow. Me, though? For whatever reason, I got full control over that shit. Like playing a game. I know I’m in a dream, right, which means I control what happens. Pretty damn cool, honestly. But then I had this dream the other night.
“Started out like it always does. I’m out somewhere, like a bar or a store or some other place where people are, I don’t remember. Point is, there’s all these people around me, and I notice there’s something off about them, right, like its real but its not real at the same time. That’s when I realize I’m dreaming. So I’m going around, doing my thing, flying here and there like you do, when I see this homeless guy. I fly over to him and step down onto the sidewalk where he’s sitting, and he’s looking at me like nothings wrong, like he sees motherfuckers flying around every day, like its nothing, which I thought was funny. Anyway, he asks me for money, and I’m like, shit this is just a dream, fuck yeah I’ll give you some money. And so, with only a thought, this huge pile of cash just appears in my hands and I drop it on him. Then something happened. The money hits his hands, and he just kind of, I don’t know, melts? Like straight up turns into goo. And, like, he’s not screaming or nothing, either. Like he just liquefies like its no big deal. I don’t know, whatever, right? So I’m looking at this pink mush and all this money soaking it up, and I think, hey, that’s kind of unsanitary. I should do something about that. So you know what I choose to do? What I made a conscious decision to do right there? I set it on fire. Now, I don’t know what man goo is normally made of, but whatever that shit was burned fast and hot. And I’m watching it go up, and all this money turning black, and I think, finally, the world is safe from the sickness. Then I woke up.”
Romily had barely heard a word he said. Her mind had been occupied thinking about ways to get some control over her body, to get her voice back. Dollar had finished talking and he stared at her, as if expecting a response of some kind. She rolled her eyes, wide and dramatic. She needed to be certain he saw. She turned her head away from him, back toward the wall.
“What?” Dollar asked, sounding genuinely confused.
Romily didn’t move.
“What the fuck was that? Don’t fucking ignore me!”
It has to work, Romily thought. It has to.
She heard the couch creak. Foot steps, loud and stomping, approached her. She stayed still. The steps stopped right beside her head. She felt him crouch beside her, just as he’d done earlier. His hand grabbed her face and forced her to look at him. His pale, greasy face had turned bright red. His mouth twisted in rage. His eyes burned like a furnace. His nails dug into her skin.
“Tell me what I did wrong!” He screamed, sounding like a little boy.
She looked at him, one eyebrow cocked. He huffed and shook his head. One hand still gripped her face, the other reached into his back pocket, and pulled free a small rectangular device, flat and shiny like a phone. He tapped on it angrily, eyes shifting from her to the screen over and over. Finally, he snorted and put the thing back in his pocket. A moment later, Romily felt a sensation in her head, almost like heroin but far less pleasant. She felt the mechanisms in her throat loosen as something in her head came online. She smiled.
“User 8654983 on, run sequence New Morning, loop infinite.”
The words left her mouth like a prayer. Dollar looked at her like she’d been speaking a foreign language. A noise like a dentist’s drill filled the room, emanating from a spot on the floor nearby.
“What the fuck did you just do?”
The whirring got louder and louder, then went silent. Then a few things happened all at once. There was a pop, like a cork from a champagne bottle. All the lights in the apartment, probably in the entire complex, went dark. Dollar screamed, and there was thud as he fell over. She could feel him thrashing beside her, probably grabbing at his neck, inside of which the sense chip was already heating up to nearly three-hundred degrees Celsius. Her own body began to heat up as well. She screamed, loud, louder than Dollar ever could. She was burning alive from the sequence loop. Her vocal modulation began to peak and break, but the words in her head were calm.
It doesn’t matter if I live. As long as he dies, it’ll have worked. It won’t be for nothing.
The burning chip in his neck wouldn’t be enough to kill him. The thing would die before he did. His arms and legs probably didn’t feel great either, but those wouldn’t be fatal either. Just enough to incapacitate him for a time. Romily, on the other hand, could easily die from this. Her whole body screamed in agony, begging her to end the command.
She had to move fast. Move through the pain.
With the device in Dollar’s back pocket fried, she had use of her limbs again. She forced herself to move. Each motion was a thousand pins in her joints. She screamed again. As she rose, she grabbed the fallen pindropper that had laid beneath her. Barely visible in the dark of the room, she found Dollar still writhing on the floor, clawing at his neck as if to dig the thing out with his fingers.
Romily placed one booted foot on his chest and forced him to his back.
Dollar looked up at her. “What the fuck did you do?” Tears streamed down his face. It was nice, she felt, to see him look so weak, so defenseless for once.
Romily aimed the weapon at his face. “One hundred grand. Deposited to me, now. Then I turn it off.”
It was risky. She knew there was maybe thirty, forty seconds until the chip in his neck lost capacity and stopped cooking his flesh from the inside. When that happened, it wouldn’t be long before he overpowered her, despite whatever pain he was feeling.
“What? I don’t…”
Was he stalling? “Now!” She pressed her boot into his sternum. He wheezed, coughed.
“BoNA Account 899055991. Do it or I end you right now!”
He stared at her, silent, motionless. A calmness seemed to wash over him. He smiled. “Tell me something. In my dream, I did something I would never do out here in reality. I know myself. I would never, ever do what I did. So if that’s true, was I really in control of my actions? Or was I only dreaming?”
Neither moved. For a long time they stayed there, motionless, wondering what to do next.

Romily stumbled into the hall outside Dollar’s apartment. Red emergency lights turned the walls to blood. She looked right, then left, trying to remember the way out. Still foggy, still slightly hot, she made a left, then a right down the next hall. She froze. Darren was there, legs outstretched across the hall, back to the wall. A dark pool formed on his chest and stomach. He didn’t move. Standing beside him was a girl, straight blonde hair, pink lingerie, holding a very large kitchen knife. Their eyes met and she dropped the knife to the floor. She ran to Romily, eyes already watering. They embraced.
“You’re so warm.” She laughed and sniffled.
Romily squeezed her hard. “I missed you, Lia.”
“I missed you too. I thought… I thought you were dead when he… when you collapsed. I thought for sure he was going to kill you. Then Darren grabbed me from the Balcony and brought me and the others to this empty apartment here, you know, so the BHS wouldn’t find us when they got here. I thought you were… I thought…”
“I know baby. I’m alive. I’m here.”
“Then all the lights went out, and I remembered the Black Box I gave you, and I thought, maybe, but then I remembered what it would do to you, and I, I couldn’t do anything. I just followed the plan like we talked about.”
“You did good, Lia. You did real good. But we need to leave, now. The BHS is still on their way. Here, take this.” Romily said and removed her black overcoat. She wrapped it around Lia’s shoulders. “What about the other girls? Are they coming?”
Lia shook her head and sniffled again. “They’re still in there. I tried to get them to come with me, but they refused. Said they were gonna wait for Lem to come back for them. That’s when I tried to leave, and Darren grabbed me, and I thought he was going to kill me, but there was this knife on the counter. I wasn’t going to hurt him. I promise. I just wanted to keep him away. But he followed me out here, and I, I…”
Romily hugged her again, and pushed her on the back slightly when she let go, urging her to move down the hall with her. “Okay, okay. That’s okay. What matters is you’re alive. We’re alive. But we need to go, now. Shit, Lem. You said he’s coming back? Where did he go? Last I saw him he was in the bathroom.”
Lia sniffled and wiped her nose with the sleeve of the coat. She shook her head. “No, he went home. Drank too much, apparently, got kind of sick.”
“Lucky him.” Romily said.
They stepped into the stairwell and began the task of walking down fifty flights of stairs. They reached the bottom, and walked out into the lobby. Romily looked around for any BHS agents, but nobody was there. It didn’t matter. The women walked out of the lobby, arm in arm, and never looked back.
Standing by the road in the wet summer air, waiting for a ride, Lia looked to Romily.
“Wait, you never told me, what happened with Dollar? Did you kill him? Did you get the money?”
Romily pulled her in close and kissed her.