Ghetto Page 3

  I have to admit, I quite like having my hair and make-up done; it makes me feel pampered and I know that if I was left to do it myself the extent of my effort would barely stretch to a bit of lip balm and a ponytail. Usually, if I didn’t have anywhere official to go, I just leave my hair to air dry, which means it ends up a frizzy mess. With Micah’s skills, though, he manages to not only tame the mass of ginger curls, but wind them up into a sophisticated chignon atop my head. The make-up he applies is soft and unobtrusive, accenting my features instead of hiding them beneath a thick layer of foundation.

  As he sweeps the soft brush across my cheeks, he comments, “Your colour is a lot better…” By now I know how terribly nosy Micah is. However, though nosy, his saving grace is that he is incredibly discreet and I know that anything I say will stay between us. He isn’t a gossip, he just likes to have the information, it makes him feel superior to know something that no one else does. Either way, I don’t want him to know, so instead I simply nod in response to his fishing and make a noncommittal sound in the back of my throat. Sounding vaguely disappointed, he says, “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  After my makeover, which includes a second cup of coffee and a bit of a natter, I dress quickly in a bright, figure hugging teal dress, which accentuates my tiny figure and yet still looks professional with its knee length hem and high neckline. If there was one thing Micah had taught me in the years we’d been together, it was that bright colours looked good on me, I just had to have the confidence to pull them off. Pairing it with a pair of nude heels – with jelly insoles to stop them from rubbing – which Micah picks out for me because after all these years he still doesn’t have confidence in my ability to colour coordinate. Some simple stud earrings in my lobes completed the look and then I’m ready to stand behind my dad as he makes another speech. Being President was a continual string of speeches it seemed. This one was pretty much the same as what he had said to me last night, only more polished.

  An hour later and I’m able to shed my uniform.

  A couple of days come and go in utter boredom. It isn’t so much that I actually have anywhere I want or need to be, but the very knowledge that I’m not allowed to leave the apartment makes me want to do just that. Especially since, after spending a whole day trolling through websites, I’ve finally located a Typewheel for my typewriter. After hacking into the encrypted government site, I manage to locate the program that runs the satellite up in space, which is basically an advanced CCTV camera that could never be put out of commission, and uploaded a picture of the artefact I needed.

  Within seconds the advanced satellite had picked up several possibilities. Zooming in on the first option, my heart jumps with excitement as the crystal clear picture shows exactly what I’m looking for sitting in a shop window, but then I glance at the coordinates and wince. It’s in Russia. I may be obsessed, but I’m not that obsessed. Deciding to search by location, I manage to narrow it down to three options. Two of them are hours away, but the third is just outside the city limits.

  Once more excitement bubbles up inside of me, until I zoom in and realize exactly where it is. Balanced atop a pile of rubbish in the dump, just inside the walls of the Ghetto, it’s was a wonder the satellite had been able to pick it up amid all the other junk. It’s even more astonishing that it hadn’t been buried out of sight, or taken by scavengers hoping to sell it for scrap metal. Chewing on my thumbnail, I continue to study the screen of my laptop – for something like hacking it was easier to use the laptop than the Eye-Net, because a single wrong eye movement could mess everything up. Plus, I like the tapping sound the keys on the laptop make as my fingers fly across them, which is one of the reasons I’ve always wanted a typewriter. I suppose, maybe I could sneak into the Ghetto; after all, my prize doesn’t look like it’s that far in. I think I could be in and out within ten minutes. The hard part will be getting past the patrols that constantly guard the outskirts of the Ghetto; though I don’t think it’s illegal for an outsider to go in, it’s definitely not advised and I’m certain they won’t just let me enter.

  But, I wonder…

  Since it’s such a monotonous job, pacing endlessly in front of the one side of the Ghetto that wasn’t bordered by water, it was tasked to robots, whose programming should be accessible through the government site, which I’ve already wormed my way into. Navigating the site and pin-pointing the correct files isn’t hard, but getting into the encrypted file isn’t particularly easy. In the end I manage it, though. Something to add to my resume.

  Proud of myself, because I’ve never tried anything quite so complex, or quite so risky, I take a moment to marvel at my achievement, before quickly setting up a simple delay on one of the robot patrols which I can activate when I get there, thanks to a link I send to my Eye-Net. Going back over everything I’ve done in the past few minutes, I make a few last tweaks and then go back and erase any evidence that I was ever there. With that sorted, I face one more problem… Ludo.

  Slipping my Eye-Net into my jacket pocket, I leave my room dressed from head to toe in black, so that, theoretically, I will blend seamlessly into the night. Walking down the hall, I don’t have to worry about my dad seeing me dressed like this because he’s working late and probably won’t be home until late morning. Over a foot taller than my laughable five foot one, Ludo is standing by the elevator, head down, arms hanging passively at his sides. He looks like he’s asleep, but robots don’t sleep, they merely shut down to conserve energy and as soon as I come close enough to be noticed by his sensors, his head snaps up and the light enters his eyes.

  “Hello, Sunny, how can I help you?”

  “I’d like to go out please, Ludo.” It’s a long shot, but why would you kick down a door if you haven’t ascertained that it was actually locked?

  “Request denied.”

  Sighing, I push a hand through my hair and quickly tie it back in a ponytail. It looks like I’ll have to do this the hard way. Thankfully, I’d foreseen this years ago. When I had first began developing my computer skills, I’d spent a lot of time tinkering discreetly with Ludo, adding my own commands to his inventory, creating back-doors, primarily just to see if I could. Before today I had never attempted to implement any of them. Stepping forward, I run my hand down his arm until I find the reset button in his wrist, where a humans pulse would be. It’s fingerprint sensitive and one of the adjustments I’d done was to add my fingerprints alongside my dads’, so there’s no problem there.

  A high-pitched whirring precedes the shutdown and his eyes dim before going blank. Immediately, I prise open the flap in his chest with my miniature screw driver, part of the tool kit I’d shoved into my jacket pocket; there is only a limited window of opportunity whilst his security systems are down, so I have to work quickly. Crouching down to better see the screen, I tap it to confirm the reset and then, quick as a flash, a list of encoded orders begin to dart across the screen. Waiting until the end, I select the final command on the register and have to pass several other complex security measures before I can scan my Brand and delete it. With that done, I shut and manually lock the door covering the inner-screen and bring Ludo back to life. Sometimes I impress myself.

  “I’d like to go out please, Ludo,” I repeat my earlier statement once he is fully functional, holding my breath until he answers.

  “Of course, Sunny, where are we going?” The knot in my stomach instantly unravels. If I had wanted to, I could also have discarded the order that meant Ludo had to accompany me everywhere unless I was with my dad, but I honestly don’t have a problem with it, in fact, it’s comforting to know he’s there to protect me should something happen.

  “We’re taking a trip to the Ghetto.”

  Under the cover of darkness, we creep out onto the streets, or at least I do; Ludo’s steps make a heavy clunking sound against the pavement. As usual there is a car waiting by the curb and I scan my Brand before climbing inside, half watching Ludo fold himself into the vehicle as I t
ype in an address on the outskirts of the city. From there we can walk.

  Driving through the city centre, I notice a higher police presence than usual, both human and robotic officers patrolling the streets, but none of them pay us any attention. True to his word, my dad had indeed quelled the uprisings, but there were still small pockets of rebellion which were deemed dangerous to an extent, hence the extra uniforms.

  We stop at a zebra crossing to allow a group of party-goers, in barely-there dresses and lethal heels, to totter across the road and I press my face against the window to stare out at the city. High above our heads, the Sky-Train races along its’ roller-coaster tracks, ferrying people around the city in next to no time, stopping at selected rooftops to deposit commuters, though at this time I doubt there are many passengers. Below the tracks, since they are limited to how high they can fly due to insurance issues, privately owned Hover-Cars zip around. My dad had one given to him when he became President, but we’d never used it; when he was a teenager he’d known a boy who died in a crash, back when the vehicles were still in the experimental stage and since then he’d been prejudice against them, despite how much they’d advanced over the years. He’d even go so far as to create a law that stopped Hover-Cars being sold to the general public, which meant only a select few, with lots of money and a special licence, could possess the vehicle, ensuring that there were only a few in the city.

  Once the group of girls are safely across the road, the car starts forward, only to jerk to an abrupt halt as a teenager on a Hover-Board shoots out in front of us. I’m thrown forward against my seatbelt. Ludo’s arm also snaps out to save me. Wincing, I scowl as the boy swerves the board around, flips us off and whizzes away. He’s lucky the cars sensors picked him up; a human driver definitely wouldn’t have seen him in time to avoid disaster, which was probably why people no longer drove, there were fewer accidents this way.

  The rest of the drive is uneventful and within half-an-hour we reach the edge of the city, rolling green fields suddenly stretching out in front of us as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of years ago, the world had been in sever danger, not only from human wars, but also from something called Global Warming, which was creating holes in the ozone layer, deoxygenation due to the cutting down of trees on a colossal scale and the extinction of hundreds of species of animals, thanks to their habitats being destroyed to make room for the ever growing human population. It had taken many years and lots of hard work from various ‘Green’ organizations, but these problems had eventually been solved by quarantining human activity to large, solar-powered cities and leaving nature to reclaim all the land around them – the issue of space being solved by simply building upwards instead of outwards, the average height of buildings nowadays being around one-hundred storeys. You now had to get special permission from the Green Government, an organization outside of the actual Government who handled matters concerning the Wilderness, to build outside of the city limits and more often than not applications were denied.

  It’s a longer walk, through the knee high grass, to the outskirts of the Ghetto than I had originally thought and by the time it comes within sight my legs are burning; I freely admit that I rarely exercise and I eat more chocolate than is healthy. However, I can smell it long before I catch a glimpse: damp, rotting garbage and open sewers. How anyone can bear to live within a mile of the place is beyond me, yet I know from pictures that there are ramshackle shanty towns erected beside the dump where some of the Ghetto Folk live.

  Crouching down at the edge of the field, I press my sleeve to my nose as I study my surroundings. A mown down field stretches out in front of me and stops at the foot of a tall fence, illuminated by floodlights which highlight the piles of garbage on the other side. Just then, one of the robot patrols strides around the corner, posture stiff in a way that screams its inhumanity despite the fact that he looked human; instead of gleaming white armour making up their bodies, like Ludo, these new, advanced robots had a synthetic material that looked like skin covering the wires and mechanics within. Ducking my head to avoid being seen, I wince. Stupidly, I had forgotten that the fence was electric.

  Immediately, my mind begins racing to find a solution. I could attempt to short circuit it, I suppose, but, though it worked on smaller electric fences, this one was military issue and I doubted whether it could be defeated by a little stick. I’d probably need an entire tree. Having gnawed both my thumbnails down to the quick, I stick my little finger into my mouth, whilst staring at the deceptively innocent looking, if extremely ugly, fence. Thinking that my only option may be to indulge in a little more hacking, I twist around to see Ludo standing behind me, his white body sticking out like a sore thumb in the darkness.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss, scrambling over to him, “Get down before they see you.”

  Grabbing his hand to yank him down, I shift in front of him, in the hopes of concealing him as he squats down, and glance furtively towards the guard. He is standing completely motionless, angled towards us, his eyes glowing eerily through the night. I hold my breath, wondering how far his sensors extend. The furthest I’ve heard of was twenty meters, but technology advanced fast nowadays; there was a new discovery every day. It felt as if we were staring each other down for what seemed like eons, before he abruptly swivels on his heel and strides off to continue his round. Only once he is out of sight can I breathe easily once more.

  Using the screen in Ludo’s chest, I use the satellite, which backs up all of the files in this part of the world, to locate the files grounded nearby. It takes me longer than I would have liked to locate the relevant system and then the correct file. It takes even longer to get into it; since my dad wasn’t the one who came up with the passwords, they aren’t very easy to guess. Eventually though I manage it, but it then takes me several more minutes to figure out how the site works. Gaping at the amount of voltage coursing through the fence, I lower it a little and consider that my good deed for the upcoming day – I wonder how many poor, innocent animals had wondered obliviously into it and been fried.

  Tapping away at the screen, I create a temporary virus and set it loose. It will hopefully create enough mayhem that the system will be forced to temporarily shut-down. Said shutdown would last several minutes, before the virus would destroy itself, leaving no trace, and the system would be able to fix itself and reboot. The virus gets to work immediately and I quickly begin the program I created earlier, to delay the robot patrols so that I’ll have a larger window to slip through. We have roughly seven minutes to reach the fence and climb over it. There will be no time for hesitation and no chance to turn back without being caught. After the next patrol rounds the corner I’ll make a run for it. This is my last chance to turn back, but I don’t, instead I square my shoulders and, the minute the robot is gone, leap to my feet.

  Predictably, Ludo is hot on my heels as I sprint across the field, my arms pumping and lungs floundering. When I reach the fence, I don’t give myself time to hesitate, I just grab a wire with both hands and begin to climb, slightly surprised that the metal isn’t burning hot beneath my fingers and doesn’t send a shock through my body. I’d expected Ludo to be a clumsy and uncoordinated climber, what with his heavy limbs, but he’s scaled the fence and is standing on the other side looking up at me before I even reach the top. Straddling the top wire, I wobble precariously, getting a rush of vertigo.

  “There is ten seconds left until reboot,” Ludo supplies helpfully, beginning to count down, “Nine… Eight… Seven…” Oh dear, I probably should have checked if the fence ran on AC or DC current! It would make a hell of a difference if I got electrocuted…

  Gritting my teeth, I grip the wire convulsively with both hands and lean sideways, swinging my leg over and letting myself hang. I’d planned to climb back down, but my toes can’t find a wire to balance on without my eyes to guide them and Ludo has reached two in his countdown, so I simply let go. Dropping to the ground, I land awkwardly and my ankle gives out beneath me, l
anding me on my bum in the dirt. Looking down at myself, I yank my foot away from the fence, where the toe of my boot is almost touching the lowest rung.

  “Do you require assistance?” Ludo angles himself towards me and looks down.

  “Yes, please.” Taking the hand he extends, I let him pull me up, wincing as I get my feet back under me and muttering irritably, “It would have been nice if you’d caught me.” Despite my grumbling though, I’m not really angry, because I know that it’s not really his fault. After all, Ludo has no ideas of his own, spontaneity is not a word he knows the meaning of.

  Having brushed myself off, I glance around in disgusted dismay. It’s even worse than the pictures depicted and the stench almost makes me gag. The ground squelches sickeningly beneath my feet as I lead Ludo away from the fence, out of the yellow glow of the floodlights which spill over into the Ghetto.

  Hidden in the shadows, I pull out my Eye-Net and slip it on, using the satellite, which supplies my internet, to pinpoint my exact location and then to locate where I need to go. Climbing up the mountains of rubbish, I slip and slide on old tin cans and other disposable items which nobody has any need of – in the next few days I suspect scavengers will relieve the dump of any recyclable items to sell to the conservation groups, but for now they are underfoot.

  Turning off the internet on my glasses, I switch on the night vision instead, scanning the ground as I step carefully, in search of anything that might be of some use to me. My focus on the ground is what stops me from noticing him until we’re toe to toe, his tattered, toeless sandals almost meeting my black leather boots. Jerking back, I lift my gaze to see the grubby little boy standing in front of me. Shock holds me stock still for a moment. Why is there a child in the Ghetto, what could a boy this young have possibly done to get himself imprisoned here? But then, I suppose, he may have been born here… The night vision makes his face appear green, but I can still see the suspicion that narrows the eyes in his skinny, dirty face.