Neon was still glittering on the buildings around them and off the wet streets and sidewalks. Groundcars and walking vehicles filled the road. The engines of aircars streaked through the sky like falling stars and a police drone idled by overhead, watching the crowds below. Titama pulled Jojo back for a moment and waited for a young Chinese man to pass. Glowing dragon tattoos snaked down both of the young man's well muscled arms, exposed by his black vest, and cybernetics stood out on his arms, neck and head. One of the local Tong, the real criminal power in Neo Francisco. He stared Titama and Jojo down with eyes like chips of black glass. Titama met his gaze without blinking until he moved on. The Tong was out of his territory but probably just enjoying a night out like all the other punters, hardly worth starting a gang war over.
Neo Francisco was located on the smaller of the two main landmasses that made up the California Islands. San Angeles occupied the larger one. After New Zealand went under, refugees had been forced to flee in all directions, Samoa, Tahiti, and other remaining parts of Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, and, of course, Australia until the Aussies started torpedoing boats out of the water as part of their aggressive border protection policies. Many, like Titama, made it to the West Coast of the New United States and settled in Neo Francisco, which was how Little Kiwitown was founded.
Titama and Jojo walked back to their headquarters, the same building that hosted Little Kiwitown's biggest illegal clone farm. On the outside, it looked like some kind of English manor, painted black, away from the neon and traffic of the main strip. On the ground floor was a huge function room. Tables and hundreds of chairs ran the length of the room, covered in dust cloths. Curtains blanketed the massive windows and most of the space was dimly lit. A long bar lined one wall, dozens and dozens of glass bottles glittering on shelves in the dull light.
"What's the game?" Titama said. "Deal me in."
Five of Titama and Jojo's fellow gangsters sat around an uncovered table near the bar. All originally from New Zealand, they went by nicknames as well. In a way, they had all left their original names behind with their old lives in their old country. Bash and Thrash, Jupiter, Riotgrrrl and Skux. Cards were dealt around a blue holo like a small tower that glowed in the middle of the table. Titama went over to join them but Jojo hung back. The cyborg didn't feel welcome among the others, only with Titama.
"Playing card games instead of doing the job I pay you for, Titama?" A deep, male baritone said. "That sounds about right."
Muturangi, Titama's boss, emerged from his office across the room. Broad shoulders were clad in an expensive suit. Huge hands extended from the ends of his sleeves, a black jacket over a purple shirt. He had a thick and curly beard and hair swept back from his forehead. Moko markings not unlike Titama's were printed on his weathered features, although his were faded and tattooed on both sides of his face above his beard not just on the left.
"Oi, I just got back from working, what the fuck are these five doing?" Titama said.
"You're right, what do I pay any of you for?" Muturangi said.
Muturangi's eyes shone with humour. Also like Titama, he had taken his name from legend when he arrived in the New United States. Muturangi was originally the name of a powerful tohunga, a navigator and high priest. According to the stories, Muturangi had a totem animal, a giant octopus or wheke, which Titama assumed was why Muturangi had chosen the title. Just like an octopus he had ambitions to have tentacles in everything, loansharking, drugs, street viruses, genemods, extortion, sex, hacking, street samurai, illegal cybernetics, gambling, porn, every vice imaginable, as well as of course, the illegal cloning. Even guns, despite the fact the California Islands had the most draconian firearm laws in the country. Almost no private citizen had a license to legally own a gun and the few that made it to the streets were usually stolen or 3D printed and used rarely given ammo had to be smuggled in across Arizona Bay. Plus, police drones responded rapidly to any sound of gunfire.
"We're guards. We're guarding," Bash said.
"Yeah, we got dozens of clones downstairs, growing in those vats," Thrash said. "You want for someone, some other gang or the cops, to come and take the whole Farm?"
"Yeah, right," Titama said.
Bash, Thrash and Jupiter were all white boys. Bash and Thrash were brothers, both with muscular builds, thuggish features and dark hair. Jupiter was taller, sandy haired with a badly healed broken nose, a contusion of cartilage in the middle of his face, but otherwise handsome, and with a gym bunny body. Riotgrrrl was Maori like Titama. She had a leaner build, skinny but hard muscled, dark skinned and with a heavily pierced face. Her hair was done in some neo-punk fashion, shaved and ravaged and twisted into tall knots. Skux was short and fat with a babyish face, youngest of the crew, wearing brightly coloured hip hop gear. The others were all wearing darker clothing, black shirts, jeans and leather, like Titama.
"Come on, I've got another job for you," Muturangi said. "Something more profitable than shaking down tuck shops."
"More profitable?" Titama said. "This something to do with the secret room under the Farm?"
"Ah, girl, you are too smart for your own good," Muturangi said.
"Don't know about any secrets, don't ask don't tell, no, sir," Jojo said.
Titama and Jojo followed Muturangi out of the function area and into a service tunnel. The cyborg scratched idly at the edges of the metallic plate welded to his skull. Climbing into a large freight elevator, they rumbled downward. Muturangi hummed to himself while Titama stayed quiet, waiting and wondering.
Once used for growing marijuana hydroponically, the large and well-lit basement beneath the building now hosted a stranger and more profitable crop. Known as the Farm, the long, wide room was filled with glass cylinders that ran from floor to ceiling and were each almost a metre across. Every cylinder was hooked up to monitors and boxy pieces of equipment that filled the Farm with soft, irregular beeping. Each held a clone suspended in dimly glowing, greenish fluid. They ranged in size from ready to harvest, adult men and women, to embryonic.
Titama was reminded of the clones hanging upside down in Keith Kahura's freezer. Naked, with arms folded across their chests, tubes ran in and out of each clone's body. Of course, they weren't human. Whether they were made for food, fighting or fucking, baseline clones were grown with only their brainstems intact to run basic living functions like breathing and keeping hearts pumping. Porno clones or fighters had their skulls cracked open and were installed with wetware CPUs once they were decanted that allowed them to be programmed to act out basic tasks. They were basically biological computers though, flesh puppets who couldn't think for themselves, or feel pain or any form of emotion. Any clones with full-cog, intact frontal lobes, although easily possible, would be magnitudes more illegal. Visiting the Farm was a good reminder of their inhuman nature. Clones didn't grow the same way as real people. Half the vats were filled with half-grown clones, shrivelled bags of skin that looked like deflated balloons suspended in liquid, filling out as their bones knit together, and as flesh and organs sprouted and bloomed, not growing and maturing like human beings.
"This place is creepy, creepy, gives me the creeps," Jojo said.
"You need us to make a delivery?" Titama asked.
"Exactly," Muturangi said. "Where are those geeks? I told them to be ready."
Two large doors dominated the far end of the room. Previously, the area behind the doors had just been another part of the Farm, filled with more clones growing in glass tanks. A few months ago, however, Muturangi had it sealed off for a secret project. Only he and his 'geeks', the technicians who worked in the Farm monitoring the clones, were allowed in there. It had been a source of great mystery to his underlings but now was apparently ready to bear fruit.
Crossing the room, Muturangi hammered the intercom beside the heavy doors. Titama glanced over at a fully grown male clone in a nearby tank. Its chiselled chest rose and fell even though it was suspended in liquid. The fluid was thick, more of a gel, and oxygenated so much that even a normal person could have kept breathing while inhaling it if they'd really wanted to give it a try.
"Come on, where is it?" Muturangi growled into the intercom. "I've waited long enough to turn a profit on this little enterprise."
The doors opened but the room beyond them was still hidden by thick strips of plastic hanging like a curtain across the doorway, too opaque to see through. Two technicians, the geeks, appeared wearing brightly white cleanroom suits. Like papery coveralls, the suits started at their ankles and covered them all the way up to the hoods that hid their hair and ears. Blue gloves covered their hands and even hairnet-like stockings were pulled over the geeks' sneakers. The two men rolled a large plastic crate on wheels through the strips.
"This is it?" Titama said.
Titama was disappointed by the lack of a reveal. The crate was clearly big enough to hold a clone tank. Grey and mostly featureless, it was marked only with 'Fragile' and 'This Way Up', and the logo of a popular furniture store as if to suggest the crate might be carrying a bookshelf or couch. It was the same ruse they often used to move and deliver the illegal clones.
"Here's the address," Muturangi said.
He handed her a holopad with a fake delivery manifest. The address was uptown, one of the high scale apartment buildings in Upper Neo Francisco. Titama studied it and handed it to Jojo.
"Not a fight pit clone then, that side of town," Titama said. "New porno clones? Something special about them?"
"Curiosity killed the crook, girl," Muturangi said. "Take the crate to the buyer, let them decant it and then bring the equipment back here. Don't look inside, don't ask any questions."
"Worried I might recognise someone if I take a peek?" Titama said.
"What did I just say? Go!" Muturangi said.
Muturangi tousled Titama's hair in a brotherly way. The two geeks rolled the crate over to Titama and Jojo. Heading back past the ranks of clone tanks, the pair returned with the crate to the freight elevator.
"Remember, all business is customer service," Muturangi said. "You treat the customer right, be helpful. Big smiles, no questions."
"Yeah, I've heard that one before," Titama said.
===
Titama is a standalone story but operates as a prequel to characters and events seen in Kill Switch: Serial Escalation by Sean E. Britten.
If you're enjoying Titama so far, please feel free to share, watch out for Part Three next Monday, and check out the Kill Switch series on Amazon, available in ebook and paperback:
Kill Switch
Kill Switch: Serial Escalation
Kill Switch: Final Season
Sean E. Britten is an author, radio presenter and podcast host from Sydney, Australia. His favourite book of all time is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, so that might give you some idea of where he's coming from. Check out his website at seanebritten.com