Rood | Page 4

he didn't have to listen to it. Let the John whose print he'd used get the advertising in his mailbox; that's what the vendor really wanted. Pegged for big-business spam for the rest of his life by virtue of selling off his biometrics. Privacy for convenience. Idiot.
Fed palmed the tiny triangular package as it fell into the vending tray and found a quiet corner nearby. He gently pulled the tyvec jacket out of its pouch. It was silk-thin and silver and traced through with fiberoptics, making it look slightly veiny. Still, for something spun out of aerosoled carbohydrates it would cut the wind and hold in his body heat, and Fed had recently gotten a tip for dealing with the blinking ads that covered the jacket's surface. They'd flashed to life as soon as he had pulled it out of its vacuumed-packed container, the Chrysler-Daimler name spinning and blinking around the arms and across its chest and back. Turning the thing over he found the collar, tracing the wire there until he found the discreet bulge near the left lapel. He didn't have anything sturdy enough to bang it with in his bag, but looking around he found that the bolts on one end of the bench he was sitting on were loose. After a minute he'd wedged the bulge into the space between the bench and the floor. After sitting down heavily a couple of times he heard a satisfying crunch and the jacket went dim. By now the station was pretty quiet, and a vendor selling stir-fry across the empty hall yelled at him in Chinese. Fed ignored him and pulled on the jacket. It was stained and rusty around the collar, but Fed wasn't wearing it for the fashion. Even so he thought it made a nice statement to be wearing an almost-new adjacket that wasn't actually flashing anything. Kind of neo-punk. He slung his bag over his shoulder and headed out of the station.

Chapter #2
Greener Pastures was in Chinatown, Fed 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, Fed 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 Fed 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. Fed 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."
Fed 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