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Alarmingly Strange Stories Underbelly by Rob Morgan |
| Magnetic-powered Roller blades. Spiky hair held up with flying goggles. MegaTokyo.
These things he had not seen. He sponged behind a sink in a deli by day, and by night, the blue tattoo on the retina
that was darkness in this city, he slumped on the metro, staring at the lights and tasting the grit in the air
around him. Rich stepped out of the train. A light rain was falling, but this was Tokyo rain, which waxes and wanes as you walk, covers and canopies far above casting shadows of shelter invisible in the night. Rich walked. A raggedy guy peddling some cheap spliffs proffered a bag. Rich took one. You could find these rat-dealers everywhere you went in the city. The smokes were truly terrible, but Rich was past caring. The guy gave him a conspiratorial nudge that that required no translation, and extracted an even grubbier bag from his coat. Rich shook his head. The bag they kept inside their coats was the really dangerous stuff, cut with god knows what. Rich threw a couple of coins at him for the spliff, and meandered away, wreathed in pacifying smoke. The dealer followed him hopefully for a bit, but rich waved him away without force. A shop front beckoned him. A garage, lights on, light spilling out, shouts and beeps from inside. Penny Arcade. Kids wailing at screens. Rich made his way to the bar, really just planks set up on tables. There were two young men, no more than nineteen, leaning against it and holding a heated debate, while the barman, not much older, listened in with the air of an umpire. "No, no, you nark!" one was saying energetically. "Eight is far superior to nine simply because nine pushes the hardware to it's limits. Listen..." The other one silenced him with a wave of his hand, and began to count out points on his fingers. "Right. Right? Listen." he began. "One. (1)." he said. "Superior graphics. Simple as that. Two. (2). The advanced z-buffering makes the whole package run far smoother. Three. (3). The ATE's add a whole new dimension to the game." Richard listened in fascination. "You have to consider the plot development..." whined the first one. He was a small, blond, pale Chinese, wearing an unreadable Anime T-shirt. His hair was spiked into a series of high, curved blades. Around his narrow waist was a plastic belt covered in pouches and wires. "Oh? Oh? We're on to plot now, are we?" said the second forcefully. "Well, let me tell you some thing about plot, Cloud." He was wearing combat pants and a faded black X-box T-shirt, and a pair of white gloves, and his hair was swept forward into a sharp, drooping fringe, held up by a pair of snow-goggles that looked as if they had been moulded into the style. "Actually, Jinn," the barman put in. "Eight's plot is far superior." This sparked a fresh round of protests. Rich walked slowly away, a small smile on his face. He sat down heavily at a table and cast an eye over the rest of the room, dragging on his spliff. A short teenage girl in a red dress, probably the barman's daughter, leaned over the other edge of the bar, typing something into a laptop, chin on hand. |
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