Free Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction by Joyce Chng, Nicolette Barischoff, A.C. Buchanan, Sarah Pinsker

glad my phone is nice to me.
    “I’m sorry,” it said. “I couldn’t understand your request.”
    “Call R-A-M-I-R-E-Z.”
    No processing delay. It rang and she answered.
    “What do you want, Vasyl?”
    I could never read her tone of voice. Maybe I’d caught her at a bad time. Maybe she was still mad at me about May Day. Maybe she was tired. People who aren’t me seem to just kind of pick up information like that when they talk to people. I don’t think they even second-guess themselves. It seems like magic to me.
    “I’m looking for work,” I said.
    “Of course you are,” she replied.
    There’s some irony to that. Work was the last thing I wanted. But I was walking east, away from the water and the dead bastions of industry. I was walking towards work.
    “I’ll meet you,” she told me, and hung up.
    A random helicopter went overhead and my eyes grew wide and wild. There was a dumpster, I could throw the phone in there. Not secure enough. It was two blocks to the river, I could sprint, probably get the worst evidence into the water before I surrendered. But no searchlight lit me up from the dark heavens and the sounds of the rotors faded from the world before the adrenaline cleared my system.
    I picked up the pace.
    I got to the corner of Grand and Belmont, went under an awning. I took out my phone, called no one, and put it to my ear, started pacing. Fake phone call—you need a reason why you’re just standing around on a street corner or you’ll deal with cops. Cops and I didn’t get along, and I had the warrants to prove it.
    Ramirez’s car rolled up, black and glossy in the rain, picking up the dull blue of the streetlights. I climbed in the passenger door. No Ramirez. No driver at all. Typical. It probably wasn’t a slight; it was just efficiency. I closed the door and the car took off up Grand, heading north up past Rosa Parks, then wove into a neighborhood and stopped in front of a house I’d never seen before.
    Kids were playing on the block, chasing a glowie, laughing as the ball darted between them with a mind of its own. They laughed harder when one kid tackled the thing on the pavement and another three dog-piled up.
    Most of the houses on the street were burned out, and not one of them had a light on in the window. Those kids weren’t from the block, or else they were squatters. Either way, they seemed happy enough.
    The house in front of me was blacked out, I realized. The windows were too dark to just be unlit. It was three stories, painted the color of sand, and had an overgrown garden full of lavender and those creepy fucking passionflowers with their alien little stamen or whatever-the-fuck those antennae things are. The whole place was a paint-peeled reminder of the rise and fall of the Portland middle class.
    A camera over the door saw my scowling mug and decided to let me in.
    “You’ve got face-reg on your fucking door?” I called, when the door closed behind me.
    “Good to see you too,” I heard her say.
    The house was an empty shell, a dusty showroom. Ramirez was sitting lotus in the dining room, her yoga mat spread out on the hardwood floor.
    In the corner, discreet against the moulding, was a matte black box no bigger than my fist. Hair-thin cabling ran out its top and into the ground of a three-prong outlet nearby. If it worked right, that little wire kept the modem from overheating its core and spitting fire-hot bullshit all over the room.
    It didn’t even have an indicator light. The best tech doesn’t anymore. The best tech doesn’t want you to even know it’s there.
    “Sit down,” she said, indicating the room as a whole. She made eye contact. Or maybe it’s better just to say she looked my direction. I couldn’t see her eyes behind those Readpro FOV contacts and their bright blue glow. And she probably hadn’t bothered to look past the screen that filled her vision.
    I sat.
    “What kind of work?” she asked.
    “Anything,” I said. Then I thought it