The Nero Protocol

With shaking hands, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He'd bummed them from an outreach worker who was trying to discern why a twenty-eight-year-old man with an I.Q. off the charts had dropped out of society to spend his life down by the docks, sucking the occasional dick for money and strumming an out-of-tune guitar on the subway. He lit a smoke and sat there thinking about the young woman who had come down to the docks to ask questions. She had meant well, but had reminded him of a time he preferred not to think about.

"It's quiet here," he had told the social worker. "Don't see a whole lot of synths down at the docks anymore." Industry had pretty much all been shipped out to China, and the docks were the only place that hadn't turned into a mass of technology stores and fast food joints.

"You don't like synths?" The young woman was taken aback, as if he'd said something quite frightening. He saw her hooded sweatshirt underneath her jacket read "Equal Rights For All—Synth Rights League." Black hair was highlighted with shocking pink streaks and she wore a leather jacket and brand-name pants that looked pricey.

"I've got nothing against them. I even wanted to be a synth tech once. I even took the course, but I dropped out when my boyfriend died," Elias explained.

"So that's how you wound up here? Down by the docks, turning tricks?" Her nose turned up a little, and Elias snorted in amusement. They were worlds apart, and her concern was not enough to bridge the gap. Sincere as she was, she simply didn't have the life experience needed to relate to him.

"Over ten years ago, yes. One minute, we were driving down the Interstate. The next, a synth-driven flower delivery van bailed over the median and right onto our windshield. I escaped with my life, but Brynn wasn't so lucky. His head was severed from his body in just a fraction of a second."

"Do you blame the synth?" The girl eyed Elias with a mixture of compassion and pity.

"No. His master was the one who fucked up. He thought the synth was fucking his wife and programmed him to turn off at three p.m. every day—the time he thought the synth was banging his wife. Turns out the wife just had the synth helping her out at work and he was driving the van when he shut down. The negligence charges never stuck."

"I could find you a job. You could move into a nice little apartment." The woman twirled her finger as if handing him a carrot he hadn't been offered a hundred times.

"No thanks." It wasn't that he didn't want the warmth and security of a permanent home—he did—but nothing ever seemed to stick. He could never keep a job. He forgot to go to work half the time, mired as he was in depression and saddled with short-term memory defects due to a head injury he'd sustained in the crash. He didn't want to live on welfare—a tiny sliver of pride demanded he make it alone. It was better to be by himself and try to find his purpose down by the water, where he didn't have to rely on anybody else for his survival. Whether he lived or died was up to him. It was the only way of life that afforded him control.

"Is there anything I can do for you? I have to do eighty more hours of this shit. I don't really feel like picking up another case," the girl said.

"A pack of smokes would be nice." Elias smiled, charmed by the woman's blunt honesty. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Caroline. Here." Caroline delved into her pockets and came up with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

"Ugh, menthols." Elias turned his nose up in mostly mock disgust, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth and took a cigarette.

"The girls' choice." Caroline grinned. "Sorry, it's all I have."

"It'll work. Thanks. Sorry I can't lower your homelessness figures."

"Eh, it's just mandatory community service. Between you and me, I vandalized a Cybot store."

"The battle for synth rights, huh? Keep up the good fight. Hand me your digipad a sec."

"Uh… okay." Caroline reached into her backpack and came up with a small tablet. She handed it to Elias, who brought up the interface. His fingers moved across it with lightning speed. He reached into a dreary, torn backpack and pulled out a tiny flash drive, which he inserted into the bottom.

"There. You're logged for the remaining eighty hours of time. Enjoy your freedom, Caroline." Elias smiled for the first time since meeting Caroline. She looked back at him with wide eyes.

"What did you just do? Isn't that illegal?" Caroline asked.

"Are you telling me legality really matters to you?" Elias kept his smirk. "I don't think so, somehow. Beyond not pissing Daddy off so much he stops paying for college, you don't really give a damn about the rules." He scratched the stubble on his chin, handing the tablet back to Caroline after he removed the flash drive. "Have a nice life."

"Why would you do something like that for a stranger? You don't know me. Why would you take a risk for me?"

"I might be the only person in this world with nothing to lose." Elias flipped the flash drive over and over in his hand. The repetitive motion calmed him.

"That can't be true. Everyone has something they care about," Caroline said.

"Not me. There's nothing in this world that matters to me anymore." Elias shrugged.

That pitying look from before returned to Caroline's eyes. She started to make a tactical withdrawal. They all did after a little while—Elias's depression and self-loathing was too much for even the most positive people. Soon she was gone, half-walking and half-running down an alleyway like she was fleeing from a sexual predator. Elias scoffed, a bemused smile flickering on his face before fading away. He probably did look like a sexual predator. People always said there was something not quite right about him—he never knew where to look when he spoke to someone.

Elias returned to the cigarette in his hands and the darkness of the warehouse. He lit the cigarette with the pink-and-black striped lighter Caroline had given him. Smoking was strongly discouraged in a world where most people were subconsciously trying to destroy themselves. Elias liked to think of himself as someone who was simply a little more honest about life. He stood up and paced the warehouse, smoking the cigarette down to the filter and throwing the stub into the fire. He looked into the barrel and saw the dying embers emitting a low light. There was little else to burn in the warehouse. He hoped someone would deliver a dumpster soon. A few places liked to store their trash in the warehouse until a truck picked it up.

As if he'd summoned it, the far doors of the warehouse started to creak open automatically. Elias sat down in his corner and tried to look like he was minding his own business. He hoped nobody had come to cause trouble. All he wanted was to be left alone to his misery. The early morning light shone through the crack in the door and three men surreptitiously squeezed themselves into the warehouse. They looked around, scouting the area. All three wore black masks obscuring their faces, and plain clothing that wouldn't identify them. Elias closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, and either the men didn't see him, or didn't think him a threat. They opened the door wider and pushed a dumpster inside. They hustled it into a dark corner and rushed to the exit, as if leaving a time bomb behind for someone to discover later.

Elias waited ten minutes, counting off the seconds in his head. Once he was sure the men had left the scene, he walked over to the dumpster and lifted the lid. Takeout cartons were strewn on top of the garbage, the disgusting-yet-delicious aroma of rotting Chinese food making his nose curl and his stomach growl. Elias dug a little deeper, because men in masks tended to dump a lot more than restaurant garbage.

"Woah! Ah!" Elias fell on his ass as he backed up quickly. A human hand was sticking out of the garbage. A body! Great, now he was going to have to deal with the cops. They would be sniffing around for information, hoping to pin it to the homeless man they wanted off the streets anyway.

Curiosity overriding his fear, Elias stood up and reached into the squirming mass of noodles. He pulled on the hand and a whole arm came loose in his hand. Wires hung out of the end.

Oh, Jesus, it was just a synth arm. "Holy shit." Elias mumbled out loud, his heart racing in his chest. Fear turning to excitement, he started to dig frantically through the trash. He tossed cartons on the floor until a whole face was revealed beneath pea pods, gravy, and tiny ears of corn. The synth would have been attractive if it hadn't been smashed in the head by what looked like a baseball bat. The dents were obvious and had clearly been delivered with a large amount of force. Whoever had done this had wanted to decommission the synth.

Holy crap, the synth was a Gigolo Maxxx! Elias's heart pounded as much with excitement as fear. Elias unearthed the rest of the synth and pulled it free from the garbage. The synth was heavy, but he was able to pull it out of the dumpster and onto the ground. He wiped noodles from the synth's thick, black hair and wondered how such a lovely model had ended up this way. He knew he wasn't going to like the answer. Down at the docks, a number of illegal activities often took place. Synth torture and snuff porn was growing in popularity amongst young men who wanted power in a world where control over their lives was increasingly slipping from their grasp. Elias felt sick just thinking about it.

"I'll get you fixed up, buddy. It'll be a project. I guess we're going to have to move, huh? You'll be better off at the house." He delved back into the dumpster. "Don't suppose you came with an instruction manual? I guess not. Oh well, I don't need it anyway." Elias jumped down and brushed fried onions from his long coat. He was going to smell like Chinese sauce for days, but it was probably an improvement.
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He stuffed the arm and other loose parts in his backpack and set about dragging the synth to his other—more private—squat in an abandoned house right outside the docks. Hopefully, the men in the van didn't have plans to return to the scene of the crime, but whether they did or didn't, Elias planned to be long gone.