1 Chapter 01

I ran across the deserted street, my head tucked down and collar flipped up against the rain. I don't know why I bothered. Fat drops of the acidic water still found a way to slide down the back of my neck leaving little wet trails that slowly grew hot as the chemicals tried to eat my skin. I jumped over a puddle with all my usual grace, swore when my foot came down on something slippery that I couldn't see in the dark, and dove under the rickety awning hanging over an old rusted door.

I wasn't too worried about the rain, it couldn't actually do any damage to me. I just hated being wet. My skin was as artificial as everything it hid, but Sanderson had tried making it as real as possible and that meant sensory feedback. That meant that the rain still felt wet and the chemicals still burnt, there was just no damage.

Didn't stop me from shaking like a dog to get dry though.

I knocked on the door, my knuckles ringing out loudly on the metal, and cast a look down both ends of the street in concern. This was not the sort of neighbourhood you wanted to draw attention in. The street lights lining the road struggled to cast their glow through the murky downpour.

Across the road from me a bright green neon sign for a pawn shop glowed like a beacon. It would have looked inviting, if it didn't help illuminate the piles of garbage littering the streets and clogging the drains.

Dockside was like that. Bright and glaring and right in your face; all so you wouldn't notice the run down buildings and worn roads. Look too close and you would notice the refuse that lay everywhere and the people that were barely better eyeing you up and down with hunger in their dark eyes.

I don't even know why this place was called Dockside. How does a cluster of old squat buildings built on the dried out bed of a once famous old world river get the name Dockside?

I heard movement behind the door before the click of a lock being turned reached my ears. The click was followed by the thump of a dead bolt being thrown, then another bolt, then another...and another. Crap on a cracker I forgot how paranoid Sanderson was. Although, come to think of it, he did have a small fortune in tech stashed away in the basement so maybe it was understandable. Finally the handle twisted and the door swung open an inch to reveal a bloodshot eye staring back at me before the security chain grew taunt.

"Who-who-who you?" Came a harsh whisper from the dark interior.

"It's Haha," I said, trying not to roll my eyes in exasperation. "You called. Remember?"

The eye continued to blink at me.

"...you do remember, don't you?" I pressed the bit of skin between my thumb and pointer finger on my left hand and held my palm up so he could see the blue and green holoscreen that rested an inch above my skin. I slid through the different tabs by flicking the pinky finger of my left hand under the screen and stopped on the message tab.

"Yes-yes-yes! Haha, come in! Come in!"

The door closed, the security chain removed, and then it was opened again to reveal the complete form of my closest and oldest friend. An argument could be made that he was my only friend, but I counted old man stumpy down at the bar that paid for half my booze as a friend as well, so the argument would be lost.

Ushered into the room I looked around as my eyes adjusted to the lowlight. Pushing a little energy into the augments in my eyes the gloom turned bright enough to make out the peeling wallpaper and battered furniture that cluttered the little space. The room, so full, still looked empty, cold. Like a prop. Maybe because it was. This was all just a mask that Sanderson used to hide his real place. That was downstairs. Turning my attention away from the farce I looked at the man himself.

Sanderson, once tall and broad at the shoulder, was now frail and hunched over. His youthful vigor had long since been devoured by the polluted nature of Dockside. He should have been in his late twenties, same as me but he looked much, much older. To make matters worse, he was completely unaugmented. A natural jacket, as they say. Which was rare as hell in this day and age. Even the old chinese lady that lived in front of my apartment building in a plastic tent and cooked footwear for food had at least three augments that I knew of.

His dark grey eyes were bloodshot but still bright with intelligence as they stared at me intently from under a mop of unruly black hair. I wondered if he saw what I saw in the mirror every morning. A man that looked in the prime of his life, tall and athletic, with strong features and a square jaw dotted with stubble. Long hair, now wet with rain, plastered to a face that could have been handsome if the nose was a little straighter, the mouth a little less full and eyes that weren't as hard as they were. Or did he see the perfect, highly illegal, blend of man and machine that he had made to save the life of a street rat that had played with him as a kid.

"You-you look good. How are yo-yo-your energy levels?"

"Fine. The little beasties in my stomach are doing an admirable job. Yesterday, I ate my kitchen... well almost." I laughed at the memory of sitting on my couch with my feet up on the coffee table as I ate the cutlery and watched some HVids. "Ate a whole bunch of spoons and stuff. Didn't do shit for my energy levels but I think I may have gained a little mass."

"Interesting," Sanderson said, stepping closer to me. A sure sign of his interest was the sudden loss of his stutter. "Did you excrete afterwards? Was it metallic? Did it float?"

"Sandy, you're doing it again." I warned.

His eyes shot wide as he realised what he was saying and how he was treating me. We had a deal: While he could poke and prod at me as much as he wanted while I was on his operating table, he couldn't treat me like a test subject during normal conversation. "Fo-Forgive me old friend."

"Don't worry about it, it's cool. So what was so urgent you had to call me over during a downpour. You know the chemicals wear out my clothes."

Gesturing at me to follow, Sanderson navigated his way through the clutter in the living room with ease. That should have been impossible since he didn't have augmented vision like me. He stopped at the old painted wooden door, nondescript in every way, that was tucked under the stairs and pushed against the faded surface. A soft glow of white light surrounded his palm where it rested flush against the wood and with a hydraulic assisted hiss the whole door slid into the floor.

The space beyond differed from the building we stood in like night and day. Or at least night and day from before the pollution cloud hung heavy in the sky and turned day and night into one gloomy mess. Large tiles covered the floor, each segment glowing a soft white. The light bounced off the metal walls and the shiny silver railing that traced the steps leading down.

I would have been impressed if I hadn't seen it all before. Hell, I had been reborn in this place, this womb of metal and light and technology. I followed Sanderson down the stairs and the door closed quietly behind us. Down, down, down we went into the bunker of a mad scientist.

I call Sanderson a mad scientist because he is and his lab reflects that insanity. The room was massive in scale, much larger than the house upstairs, and much better cared for. Just as cluttered though. The metal walls had most of its surface covered in old school touch screens. Various schematics and plans covered the screens, proof that my friend's brain never turned off. Wiring could be seen snaking around behind the screens like veins of some hideous technological beast.

Thick arms of twisted metal and tubing hung from the ceiling between stacks of objects I couldn't even begin to describe.I knew from experience that if Sandy so desired the arms would spring to life and do whatever he told them to with surprising dexterity.

A crescent shaped desk dominated most of the available floor space at the front of the room. A holocube the size of my head rested on its surface. The rest of the space was taken up with various piles of crap and machines with exposed wires that boggled my mind and stretched the imagination. I'm pretty sure I saw a sex swing stashed away in the corner but I may have been wrong and I sure as shit wasn't about to ask.

I moved towards the medical bed stationed near the desk out of reflex and actually had to stop myself before I hopped up on it. Sanderson took his customary place behind his desk and slapped (spanked?) the side of the holocube. Screens of various sizes sprung up around him. I tried to look through them at his face but so much data was present on each screen that all I could make out through the glowing letters and random sketches were a few blurry features of his face.

Resigned to the long wait, I shrugged off my wet jacket and let it fall to the floor before sliding my butt onto the bed and leaning back on my arms. My legs swung back and forth as I waited patiently for Sandy to get to it. His hands, or at least the blurry outlines I could make out, flitted from screen to screen and his voice reached me as a low rumble as he talked to himself.

See! I told you. Nutty professor.

"SANDY!" I barked, finally tired of waiting.

"Minute." came the muffled reply.

It was three minutes later when the screens vanished as suddenly as they had appeared and Sanderson looked at me from across his table. His eyes turned hard. He was actually serious about something, which was rare enough that I sat up straight and gave him my full attention.

"What do you know about Project: Sidestep?" He asked. His voice strong and steady.

Seeing my confusion he went on. His speech rapid and his hands dancing about in excitement. "Of course you wouldn't know anything. Sorry! It was a Government project. It started eighteen years ago and was led by my father. Their goal was simple: find the solution to our dwindling resources...off world."

"Off world?" I scoffed at the idea. Space had stopped being some great unknown years ago. It had been one of the first places humans had spread to once they accepted they had fucked the planet beyond all repair. Rumors had been circulating lately that the richy-riches living up on the moon were running out of food though. It looked like humanity had spread itself too far. "Thats stupid. Everyone knows there isn't anything out there. Space is just endless nothing wrapped up in dark-cold-pretty to look at-nothing."

"No. Not out in space. Through space!" Sanderson said, his eyes getting that crazy gleam in them that I hated so much. The last time I saw that look he was pumping a billion little robots into my stomach.

His hands danced about as he continued. "Imagine there was another world, that mirrored ours in size, and it had enough gravity to hold an atmosphere. It's Earth, but not Earth. It's what Earth could have been, or will be, or has long since evolved from. All those resources in the same location in space as we are now, just at a different time! Moving at a different speed! The government was looking at a way to break through the fabric of space. To find this Earth-not-Earth, this world full of the same resources but none of the same problems. Imagine it Haha! A planet with a blue sky! Like the ones we've seen in the historical data uploads!"

I shrugged my shoulders at his excitement. I didn't dream of green grass and blue skies. The gloom and grime of this world was all I knew and while it may not be much and certainly wasn't pretty, it was mine, and fuck anyone who thought it wasn't good enough.

"The project was eventually labelled as a failure and stopped, but my father kept records. All these years I've been tinkering with it, working on it in my spare time...and guess what! IT WORKS! It WORKS!" Sandy finished with a triumphant shout and slammed his hands down on the table hard enough to make the cube bounce.

Well shit, I couldn't help but think, there goes the neighbourhood.