The Map Seller

I'm standing in the middle of a an almost empty nameless street at midnight, looking up at the twin searchlights on top of the Universa Dream Company building, and at the building itself, reflected infinitely inside my head only to complete the obsessing image of The Senior's three-dimensional face with a grotesque nose.

Memories of a terminal's LCD, the conventional representation of the AI talking to me one-way. Fast-forward vertigo, images of myself running out of an elevator, displayed on some surveillance camera output screen in the hallway of an apartment building back in Midland City, my hand throwing cash over the rent payment desk, one end of a data stick coming out of my pocket at times, everything left behind me, sliding doors closing.

The Senior's men on my trail.

Countless days spent in countless cities, days of quick eating, quick dinking and public terminals. Days and nights without a minute of sleep.

I was rushing everytime towards a single contact person, through crowds of people I didn't know, always fearing that some of them might know me.

By that time I had no idea of how extended the Senior's network of agents and agencies could have been.

My last day of running away from them caught me realising that I was running the wrong way. They knew that I was looking for a refuge, and sooner or later they would have found me.

Buy I was sure they were done looking for me in Midland City, the place where it all began. So I quickly returned to my apartment building only to find it closed and labeled 'crime scene'.

The Senior's men had gone in and killed everyone, just to make sure. Those had been the orders.

Now I'm no longer in Midland City. I had to leave it again later, once and for all. But that's one of the many things I don't want to think about.

Back then, after my return, my life became an endless row of unexpected acts. I knew that I would stay alive for as long as I could find new ways of running and hiding.

I'm looking at the high ventilation shaft on the inside surface of the city dome, and everytime the holographic sky reveals it for one second, I begin to dream of flying...

...but then I fall and turn my back on the tall building, images striking me again...

...virtual flames, neon dance, muzzle flashes, a carnival of spectral hallucination meant to bring me down for good.

Myself passing out next to the terminal, the screen showing nothing but the goggles' frame rate.

An uncertain morning, the damp taste of disorientation in my mouth as I woke up in my bed at the hotel where I had spent the previous night, the terminal missing, replaced by a handwritten note. I can still remember every single word of it:

' I just saved you. The Map Seller's flashes had turned you into a sitting duck for his hired men. They were triangulating your terminal, so I came in and took it away.

' Now I have finally returned your favor.

' The hotel terminal is gone, your data completely transferred onto a mobile one. Come pick it up. '

There was an address and a signature.

' Someone you used to know. '

So death had once again been avoided carefully.

In that very moment I became aware of The Senior's true power.

Avoided, indeed. But only for me.

The Senior. The Map Seller.