The Aethernet Falls

Chapter 3 - Siblings

Boros was right, his sister had began crashing after he arrived. She couldn’t leave with him; whatever she was dosing with left her with just enough energy to fall into bed and pass out. He was scared for her for the same reason he was scared for himself: he had no idea what everything meant. He only had the feeling it wasn’t good.

He was left to sit in her apartment, just as clean and well-lit as the rest of the complex, while she slept off the tail end of whatever compound was running its course through her veins. In the beginning he was manic; wandering around the apartment with everything on his mind and nothing to do. After a period of what felt like hours he began searching the place for the drugs she was taking, but couldn’t come up with anything.

He hoped it was a one-off.

If he was right about everything he would need her clean. It would be easier to get her to safety. The two of them were immensely close from a very young age. Their father had been violent, abusive, and though the primary target for his rage was their mother he wasn’t above laying his hands on his children. Any opportunity Boros had, he took the beatings for his sister. He was certain she had done the same for him on a few occasions.

When their mother had finally had enough she left, leaving the two of them behind with their father. He was happy enough to come home after long days of working, and then drinking and drugs, to beat his children. Boros always thought the violence was just another intoxicant to him, that he enjoyed the way it felt.

It hadn’t taken him long to grow tired of it, and by extension them, though. He had simply told them to get the f**k out of his house and that was that. The two of them had become homeless.

The settlement schemes in the city were always very efficient. Less than one percent of the population burgeoning on fifty million had to live on the streets. Most of those were, for some reason, by choice. Boros could never understand it. But the system didn’t account for children and as such they received no help. Not from anyone.

Sitting on the auto-form sofa Boros recalled the day he made a declaration to Clarissa crying out in the darkness while the rain tried to beat down on them even though they were under a wide bridge. He remembered how he felt when he proclaimed that he wouldn’t accept help from anyone. Ever.

He remembered how sheepish he felt the very next day when he accepted the charity of the first person to look at them since they had been forced away from home. It was only a loaf of fungal protein. Dry and hard. It had tasted so much like s**t when they ate it that he thought it actually might have been. But they swallowed it down greedily, crunching it down to a powder that made their throats raw.

-

Two hours had passed and Clarissa still hadn’t awoken. His stomach rumbled and turned and made him acutely aware that he hadn’t yet eaten. The scene in his fridge had turned him off food as much as it turned his stomach, and the pulse-pounding adrenaline he felt as he had forced his way from his place to hers had put anything else on the back burner.

He got up and moved to her kitchen suite, much in the same location as his own, the same layout as his own, though everything had seemed that fraction newer. He pressed on the panel that swung open on hydraulics, not hinges, and rummaged through its contents, producing a box of takeaway that was decidedly not off, and a single apple in a tight bio-plastic wrapping. He grabbed a fork out of the sink and rinsed it off with the tap then wiped it on his shirt and sat back on the sofa, opening the box; some kind of noodle dish that smelled of soy sauce and red pepper. It was devoured with ravenous hunger in its entirety. He sat the apple beside him.

Satiated, Boros took back to searching the apartment for the drugs Clarissa was using, hoping to come up with something. He had a brief notion to dose himself if she had anything good, but quickly dismissed it, remembering the time his sister had gotten lost in the labyrinthine markets while he sat on his ass smoking synthesized THC. When she had finally found her way to him she burst out into tears.

He knew now that she wasn’t sad then. That she wasn’t scared. She was just angry with him because he hadn’t taken the time to go searching for him. He had assured her that he knew she could make it out on her own, but she never left without him after that.

By the time they had gotten their own place in the settlement scheme, and they were more than a few years older, he had began running contraband for a small-time outfit that had called themselves the Black Cyphers. They were a small-time data-smuggling ring on the verge of extinction on any given day, hence why they used a teenager, barely fifteen years old, to run the various data packets in between fellow members.

It was money that he got from the Black Cyphers, who had helpfully given him a false work record, that he ensured their place on the list to get a home to call their own. By the time they got it they were so used to living rough that the one-room, six metre by seven metre allotment felt like a palace. To Boros it also felt constricting. He was used to the sky as his ceiling, and the surrounding buildings as his walls, but Clarissa was so impressed with him that he couldn’t help but feel a certain tinge of pride.

-

Six hours since Clarissa had crashed and she still wasn’t up. And he still hadn’t found her stash. In between reveries and his searching he had found time to eat the apple. He thought about preparing something for his sister, but had no way of knowing when she would get up. He had checked in on her, of course, from time to time. The need of privacy between one another had long ago vanished. She hadn’t overdosed, though the amount of time she was out for was beginning to concern him.

He considered nudging her foot to wake her, but decided it best to let her sleep. He had found that when the body rests for so long, it must need it. There were times when he wouldn’t sleep for days on end, looking over her in the night. After a few days he would simply crash. His body couldn’t take the punishment, no matter how many nutrients or stimulants he put into it, which was never very much. He knew she would take that day to look over him as he slept.

Neither of them talked about it, especially not back then.

Finally, when he was using the toilet in the on-suite refresher, hers was its own, tiny room though he kept the door open, she stirred.

Clarissa sat straight up in the bed, hair disheveled, face not in much better shape until she turned to see him. A wide smile appeared on her face so instantaneously it could have been magic, though he could see something in her eyes.

“Bobo!” Her cheerful tune rang out, “Sorry I passed out on you, you know how it is.” She brushed her long locks of auburn hair back with her fingers and stifled a yawn. “What were we talking about?”