Free Proxy by Alex London Page B

sliced into him.
    “Marie,” his own face said.
    He bit down through his cuticle and the pain cleared his head. He flipped the holo again to a different menu to see what his friends were up to.
    Grayden: grnded. @home w/ fam
    Simeonie: killr party @Arcadia vry retro
    Nine: @Arcadia w. Simi & Cheyenne. D-troit chic=tyght!
    Cheyenne: crazy tryp!#$^%!!!
    So everyone was at Arcadia, and Cheyenne was tweaked on something. Knox sighed. That party was supposed to be lux.
    Someone had found all these retro cars that ran on gas and parked them all in a giant warehouse end to end, so they were like the floor of the place, with all the roofs and hoods and open-top convertibles forming a crazy desert of dunes and craters. A few of the cars actually ran so that the whole place smelled like classic fumes. It must have cost a fortune to get the antique gas from scavengers.
    Everyone wanted in to this party, and Knox’s friend Nine could make it happen for a price. Nine’s father was some big piracy consultant, so he knew everyone in the entertainment business. Nine and Knox had spent a month making fake ID patches to sell to kids from all over the city, Upper, Lower, whatever, even the Valve, if they could pay.
    They’d been making some serious credit, although Nine claimed that wasn’t why he did it. He said he was “curating” the party, making sure it wasn’t just the same old Upper City bores. Knox couldn’t believe he was missing this scene.
    He swiped the holo to a bright beach, impossibly white sand, no sludge or washed-up flotsam, the sun burning white hot in a clear blue sky. He lay back on his pillow. He wasn’t tired. He didn’t want to lie here thinking all night.
    Thinking was the worst thing he could do.
    His door slid open and a tall medibot came rolling in, its white porcelain body glowing delicately in the dim room.
    “You are awake, Mr. Brindle,” the robot’s sweet female voice said. “You have one message from your father. Would you like me to play it?”
    “Where’s that nurse?” Knox asked. If he was stuck here, he might as well have some fun.
    “Nurse Bovary is no longer in the building.”
    Bovary, Knox snorted. An orphan. He wished she’d stuck around. He could have shown her what it was like to live like a patron, at least for an hour.
    “When does she come back?” Knox hoped it would be soon.
    “Nurse Bovary has resigned her position,” the bot informed him.
    Knox sighed. The workers just came and went like breezes.
    “Would you like to play the message from your father?”
    “He’s not here either?” Knox asked.
    “Your father left the hospital at eight forty-two p.m.,” the bot said.
    Of course. That must have been minutes after Knox fell asleep. Seconds. What did his father care? He was an “important man” with “real responsibilities.” Knox would “never understand the pressures his business entailed.” It was time for him to “grow up.”
    How many times had he heard that speech? His father didn’t need to work so much. Security was the perfect business. No one could ever have enough of it. He just liked working, liked avoiding Knox. Knox had his mother’s smirk and his mother’s laugh. All his happy expressions came from his mother. His father didn’t like the reminder.
    “Right back at ya, Dad,” Knox said aloud.
    Screw it, he thought. If my father doesn’t need to stick around for his only son, then his only son doesn’t need to stick around for him.
    “Delete message,” Knox told the machine.
    “You have not listened to the message. Please confirm.”
    “Confirmed. Delete the message. And bring my clothes.”
    “Your clothes were burned in the accident.”
    Knox rolled his eyes. The textbooks could ramble about the “benefits to efficiency” brought by robotics, and the “emancipation of the proletariat from menial labor,” but there was something irreplaceable about employees you could flirt with.
    “Access my profile and bring me some other