<b>Roo'd</b>

# Roo'd

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# Chapter #3

Greener Pastures was in Chinatown, Fede was disappointed to discover. The stink of real chickens and MSG-derived carbonated sodas filled the air, undercut with the sweet-salty reek of the grey water sewer systems set not-far-enough under the street drains. Chinatown had been targeted for unproven water recycling programs like a lot of the cheaper burbs, sold a bill of goods for plant ponds under their streets to separate them from the rest of the city’s water supply, make them self-sustaining. Now the burb sat on the biggest cesspool in North America and paid a premium for showering and drinking water to boot.

A group of Chinese boys came up the street past him as he walked, their rainbow mowhawks filling the road in a tight phalanx. As they got closer he saw that they were pushing a heavily mod’d scooter. It had aftermarket plastic molding all over it, little logos and flashing product names stenciled in carefully ordered lines over every inch of its carbon-fiber frame. There was a fairing on it, Fede noticed disbelievingly. A stylish wind fairing on a device that could go twenty miles an hour.

A few minutes later he had followed the little blinking cursor in his eye to a tight alley off the main shopping street. The end of the alley had a car garage in it, two three foot long red plastic dragons framing the door. As Fede entered the alley the doors opened and a battered mini came roaring out at him, the cold glare of a thousand white LEDs suddenly blazing from the headlights that unfolded from its blunt nose. Fede skipped backwards and out of the way, and as the mini slowed to join the foot traffic he noticed that the alley was covered with some sort of plastic dome, and that the dome had some sort of mold on it. He pushed his goggles back as he walked into the alley, neck straining to make out the green clouds that seemed to be floating motionless above him.

“Algae tanks” a female voice informed him. “The building’s owners skim off the fuel cells from the cars to feed them. But we like it for the color.”

Fede lowered his head to see a Chinese girl standing against a doorway to his left, the bitter smell of burning wood riding the grey smoke wisping out of her hand. She wore olive cargo pants and imitation Russian combat boots, topped with a cropped brown shooting sweater. The rifle patch on her right shoulder had been carefully embroidered with softly glowing white thread. She was long and thin with an animal look, and her smooth belly was a caramel color that looked pleasantly edible in the green light from the algae tank overhead.

She stuck the stub of a thin hand-roll into her mouth and tightened her short pigtails. Her big eyes were heavily circled with black eye shadow, the pupils thick pools you could fall into, braer tar he’d never come back from. Fede realized he was staring. She was beautiful.

The girl took the cigarette out of her mouth and puckered her lips at Fede; let a ragged stream of smoke tumble out at him. She tossed the butt on the ground, and as she stamped out the ashes and turned to tug open the doorway Fede saw a sign overhead. “Greener Pastures,” it read.

Fede pulled his goggles off his forehead and down around his neck, chewing his lip before deciding to follow the girl inside. The door was heavy, probably metal core for security, and beyond it was a short dark entranceway of stained, gray-painted cement. Matching grey steps met the edge of the real wooden floor beyond, otherwise deliriously expensive real wood from real trees scarred and dented and stained into sub-plastic value. This place was old.

Just beyond the steps sat a huge metal dentists’ chair, an antique in chrome and black plastic barely containing the swollen folds of an enormously fat man. He was getting a tattoo etched on his bare pink belly. The artist, a tall, intensely black-skinned man, glanced once at Fede over the girl’s shoulder as she squeezed by. The man’s head was a mass of steel-capped nubs, a style Fede had heard described in newsgroups but never seen.

In the background, a twangy Thai band was playing on tinny speakers. It was a German metal song Fede had heard on the streaming music channels he listened to while coding, something that had caught the music world’s ear this week. It was an angry, growling song, but the way the Thais played it the metal seemed lollipop sweet. Fede liked it. There was something about the way tonal languages interpreted guttural Germanic ones that sounded more... authentic.

He stepped onto the stairs and past the black man. He was arranging the naugahyde straps of the big silver tattooing machine over the fat man’s stomach. The fat man looked nervous and sad and excited, and he stank. Fede crept by, trying not to touch either of them. The girl was gone. The walls were lined with old soda- and snack-dispensers, those 6-foot high machines you used to put real coins into and which would pop out plastic packets of food and chilled drinks from their glass covered shelves. They were full of tattooing and bodmod equipment now, and a huge assortment of ink jars filled one marked “Fanta.” The place reeked of fluorochlorocarbons and bleach.

At the end of a room a hugely solid metal desk filled almost its entire width, and on the desk was a massive, ancient waldo. A big black helmet was attached to the waldo by a fat data cable, and someone had stuck a Hello Kitty logo in bright pink right on the forehead. As Fede got closer, watching the man wearing the helmet wave thick rubber sensor gloves in the empty air, he got the eerie realization that he knew him, that this guy behind the shiny black plastic must be his brother, and that his brother was miles and miles away in a little tiny space between atoms or cells or Swedish avatars or something, thinking about anything, anything but here.

“Hey, Fede” came a muffled voice from under the helmet. “Be with you in a minute.”

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