been appointed by the UN to extensively debrief us when we returned, as had numerous dodgy intelligence types. It seemed the Air Marshal, who I think was a grudging fan of ours, had managed to smooth things over with the authorities. Which was good, as it meant we weren’t arrested and executed for using concrete-eating microbes on the Atlantis Spoke. The authorities had decided to, if not forgive us, then ignore us until it suited them.
We arrived back just after a hastily called election. It had surprised no one when God revealed that our government of whichever indistinguishable non-event of a political party was in power at the time was a bunch of shits. Those that weren’t in hip deep with the Cabal were sucking other suitably sleazy and unpleasant big-business cock at the expense of the electorate. So they went. Though I’m not sure who people thought would do better.
Our new prime minister was a badly scarred submariner kept together with cybernetic parts who had served in the freezing depths of Proxima Centauri Prime. Reputedly she had served with Balor, though to her apparent credit she wasn’t making a big thing of it. She had grown up in the East End in London’s Bangladeshi community. She was a cockney through and through and made no apologies for her family’s extensive connections to organised crime, though she had distanced herself from their criminal activities. She had run on a platform of national management instead of party politics and had a lot of support in the veteran community. Mudge liked her and compared her to some pre-FHC prime minister I’d never heard of. He’d texted me some books about the era.
Books. That was the best thing about money. I could afford real, old books with paper and bindings and the smell. And I could afford to download lots of good-quality music and buy real single malt Scotch from the park distilleries in the Highlands. Funnily enough I had no interest in the sense booths.
There was a better view on the Mag Lev from London to Dundee. Much of it went through parkland. I’d started paying attention to the date in my IVD. It was November now. I hadn’t been back to Scotland since August. The hot summer had been replaced by a bleak grey autumn of near-constant driving rain.
The Mag Lev curved in over the Tay. It was slate-grey, broken by white-crested waves blown by a harsh, cold northern wind. I looked out the window. The four-track Mag Lev bridge was raised over an old pre-FHC rail bridge. It was a heritage site of some kind.
Even the bright colours of the Ginza were somewhat muted by the driving rain. I could see the Rigs to the east. They looked inert, still and dead, no sign of life. I couldn’t shake the feeling that with my new-found wealth, my first-class ticket on a Mag Lev and my legal transport papers, I’d somehow betrayed them.
I thought about how I’d left Dundee. Sneaking out on a drug-smuggling sub. It had seemed like everyone was trying to kill us. Now this.
Betrayal or not, the Rigs fucking depressed me. Perhaps it was my new optimism, what Morag had said about caring about myself. Or perhaps it was my prospects, the changes that money brought, but I could not bring myself to stay and I had no reason to. This was a place you came when you had nowhere else to go. There was nothing holding me here. After all, the closest thing I had to a friend here was the slug-like sense pusher Hamish, and I really didn’t like him. Mind you, the Grey Lady may have killed him on her last visit.
I’d lost my Rigs legs. It was with difficulty that I made my way across the rain-slick metal of the structures. Past the houses made of salvaged scrap, where people crowded round trash fires for warmth. I avoided a mugging and was able to give money to some begging veterans who hadn’t managed to hold on to replacement limbs and eyes when they were discharged. I hoped it would help them for a little while, but I couldn’t handle the way their empty eye sockets
We arrived back just after a hastily called election. It had surprised no one when God revealed that our government of whichever indistinguishable non-event of a political party was in power at the time was a bunch of shits. Those that weren’t in hip deep with the Cabal were sucking other suitably sleazy and unpleasant big-business cock at the expense of the electorate. So they went. Though I’m not sure who people thought would do better.
Our new prime minister was a badly scarred submariner kept together with cybernetic parts who had served in the freezing depths of Proxima Centauri Prime. Reputedly she had served with Balor, though to her apparent credit she wasn’t making a big thing of it. She had grown up in the East End in London’s Bangladeshi community. She was a cockney through and through and made no apologies for her family’s extensive connections to organised crime, though she had distanced herself from their criminal activities. She had run on a platform of national management instead of party politics and had a lot of support in the veteran community. Mudge liked her and compared her to some pre-FHC prime minister I’d never heard of. He’d texted me some books about the era.
Books. That was the best thing about money. I could afford real, old books with paper and bindings and the smell. And I could afford to download lots of good-quality music and buy real single malt Scotch from the park distilleries in the Highlands. Funnily enough I had no interest in the sense booths.
There was a better view on the Mag Lev from London to Dundee. Much of it went through parkland. I’d started paying attention to the date in my IVD. It was November now. I hadn’t been back to Scotland since August. The hot summer had been replaced by a bleak grey autumn of near-constant driving rain.
The Mag Lev curved in over the Tay. It was slate-grey, broken by white-crested waves blown by a harsh, cold northern wind. I looked out the window. The four-track Mag Lev bridge was raised over an old pre-FHC rail bridge. It was a heritage site of some kind.
Even the bright colours of the Ginza were somewhat muted by the driving rain. I could see the Rigs to the east. They looked inert, still and dead, no sign of life. I couldn’t shake the feeling that with my new-found wealth, my first-class ticket on a Mag Lev and my legal transport papers, I’d somehow betrayed them.
I thought about how I’d left Dundee. Sneaking out on a drug-smuggling sub. It had seemed like everyone was trying to kill us. Now this.
Betrayal or not, the Rigs fucking depressed me. Perhaps it was my new optimism, what Morag had said about caring about myself. Or perhaps it was my prospects, the changes that money brought, but I could not bring myself to stay and I had no reason to. This was a place you came when you had nowhere else to go. There was nothing holding me here. After all, the closest thing I had to a friend here was the slug-like sense pusher Hamish, and I really didn’t like him. Mind you, the Grey Lady may have killed him on her last visit.
I’d lost my Rigs legs. It was with difficulty that I made my way across the rain-slick metal of the structures. Past the houses made of salvaged scrap, where people crowded round trash fires for warmth. I avoided a mugging and was able to give money to some begging veterans who hadn’t managed to hold on to replacement limbs and eyes when they were discharged. I hoped it would help them for a little while, but I couldn’t handle the way their empty eye sockets
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