Dark Side (Cyberpunk)

Dark Side is the fourteenth episode of Cyberpunk. The previous was Now or Never.

Story
Jim woke up in the mid-afternoon with a hangover.

“Oh, no,” whispered Jim.

He had been able to control his alcohol addiction since he returned from Insulam, but his fight with Pat and Ron must have pushed him over the edge. He always passed by a bar on the way home from work, and the temptation was probably too much to resist this time. He looked at the time on his wrist-phone. 3 PM. One more hour before he had to serve up fast food and fake smiles to wealthy diners all over again.

Jim lived in a cheap apartment in the outskirts of town, which was all he could afford after his dad cut him off. He didn’t care, though. He didn’t want his father’s blood money. He just wanted to live a normal life and not one where every single opportunity afforded to him came to him because of who his father was. He even changed his last name to Gillson shortly before getting the job at the restaurant. The fewer ties he had to his family, the better.

He heard the doorbell ring, and he opened the door to find a green fish with long yellow hair standing there with an awkward smile. It was his sister, a year his junior, Sarah.

“Hello, Jim,” Sarah said.

Jim and Sarah hadn’t talked to each other since Jim left Pacific City to go to Insulam. Jim’s stomach felt uneasy, so he bent over a trashcan to vomit.

“Oh Neptune, have you been drinking?” she asked.

“What if I have?” he responded, wiping his mouth.

“Don’t do this to yourself. You know you’re better than this.”

“What gives you the right to come here and lecture me?”

“I’m your sister.”

“Oh, now you’re my sister? You certainly had no problem acting like I didn’t exist for the last six months!”

Sarah lowered her head. “I know that, and I’m sorry. But the company needs you. I need you. But not like this.”

“What you see is what you get. And in case you didn’t get the memo, I’m done with the company.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Jim, who was still bent over the trashcan, straightened up and faced his sister.

“I’m done with the company,” he repeated. “It’s run by sociopaths, and I want no part of it.”

“Then you can change it!”

“Huh?”

“Our dad confided in me that he would announce his retirement tonight. He wanted me to take up the mantle, but I told him that you’d be a better choice.”

“Why?”

“Because you care about people. I’ve never forgotten that about you, even though the way I’ve been treating you may have made you think otherwise. In a way, I was jealous because I knew I could never be as good as you are.”

Jim thought for a second, then he sighed. “It’s weird how the people who are supposed to be my friends are treating me as an enemy and the people who are supposed to be my enemies are treating me as a friend.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ll do it. I’ve been running from who I am for too long. It’s about time that I embrace it.”

Sarah hugged Jim. “Thank you so much for reconsidering! It’s so good to have the old gang back together again!”

Jim smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is.”

Pat and Ron walked into SpongeBryan’s apartment. SpongeBryan was sitting on the bed, his red eyes glued to his laptop.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” asked Pat.

“No,” said SpongeBryan. “And I won’t until I find out who Harp00ner is.”

“It’s just one house. We can shop at another one later,” said Ron.

“No, we can’t,” said SpongeBryan.

SpongeBryan turned his laptop around to show Pat and Ron a news article on it.

“Word of Harp00ner’s success is already spreading,” he continued. “Most of the houses in the Upper Ring, as well as houses in neighboring places like Pacific City, are in the process of replacing their current security systems with his.”

“So? Once you figure this Harp00ner guy out, that’ll just make it easier to rob these places,” said Ron.

“But you can’t do that until you get some sleep,” said Pat. “Give your mind a break. We have plenty of time to find Harp00ner’s identity.”

SpongeBryan yawned. “But I’m so close. I know I’ve seen his name before. I just…”

Suddenly, everything went black. The next thing SpongeBryan knew, he was running down a hallway in his elementary school.

“I can’t be late for history again!” SpongeBryan said in a noticeably higher voice.

SpongeBryan ran past giant legs and faces long forgotten before he bumped into a fish not much taller than he was. Once he regained his coordination, SpongeBryan looked down to see their books scattered across the floor.

“I’m sorry,” SpongeBryan said, picking up the books. “I didn’t look where I was going.”

“That’s okay,” said the boy.

As SpongeBryan separated his books from the boy’s, he noticed a picture of a fish holding a spear, with the word “HARP00NER” scribbled under it, taped to the cover of one of the boy’s binders.

“Who is this?” SpongeBryan asked.

“Just a superhero I doodled,” the boy replied. He was holding three of his books with three arms, and he took his binder from SpongeBryan with the fourth.

SpongeBryan immediately recognized who the boy was, but before he could say anything, he woke up in his bed, back to his original age.

“Harp00ner is Wally,” he whispered.

SpongeBryan ran outside, and he saw that it was darker than usual. Wally’s apartment was right next to his, and before he knew it, he was knocking on Wally’s door with a ferocity that surprised even him.

“Wally!” he shouted. “Wally, I know you’re in there!”

SpongeBryan turned the doorknob, and he found that the apartment was unlocked. When he walked in, he saw Wally sitting in front of a holographic television mounted to the wall.

“Wally, there’s something I need to ask you,” SpongeBryan started.

“I never chose to live down here,” said Wally.

“What do you mean?”

Wally turned around. “I never chose to live in the Lower Ring. My mother sent me here because I had become a burden for her. The only reason she hadn’t kicked me out sooner was because I had my father to defend me.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s the truth. I’ve lied to you and myself for too long.”

SpongeBryan’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not the only thing you’ve lied to me about, Harp00ner.”

Wally gasped. “How do you know about that?”

“We went to the same elementary school. I had a dream, or a memory, of seeing that name on your binder.”

“Yes. That shitty elementary school in the Lower Ring. Ever wonder why I went to that school? Why me, the son of the famous Electric Man, went to the same school as street trash like you?”

SpongeBryan was taken aback. He never heard Wally speak that way to him before.

Wally answered himself. “It’s because my kind aren’t allowed in the Upper Ring schools. My kind aren’t allowed in the Upper Ring hospitals, which is why I was never able to get these extra arms removed. My kind aren’t allowed to get jobs, run for office, do any of the things normal Upper Ringers have the privilege of doing. That systemic racism was what drove me to join Cyclops’ gang, but now I know that that was a terrible idea. Now I know that we were doomed to fail from the start.”

Wally clasped together his orange fins and stared at them for a while.

“You know,” Wally said. “My parents actually found a doctor willing to remove these things, back when I was a baby. He said there was a 50/50 chance of me surviving the surgery and going on to live a healthy life, and a 50/50 chance of me bleeding to death. My parents ultimately chose not to go through with it. I wish they did.”

“I’m not here to listen to your life story,” said SpongeBryan. “I’m here to know what this Harp00ner crap is about.”

“Harp00ner is who I want to be!” cried Wally. “He’s everything my condition has kept me from being so far. And after my father died, he was all I had to cling to.”

“You had us.”

“It was your fault he died in the first place! Why did you have to go and mess with the natural order of things? If only I had known it before. Folks like us, we belong in the Lower Ring. We may not have chosen it, but it chose us. And we need to respect that choice. The fact that you not only go up to Upper Ring, but that you steal from it regularly; why, it’s almost blasphemous!”

SpongeBryan began to back away. “Wally, you’re starting to sound a little touched in the head.”

“For six months, for six long months, I studied your methods, your code, so that I could use them against you. I have to say, it wasn’t an easy endeavor, as you really know your stuff, but it was all worth it to know that once I ridded the Upper Ring of your influence and brought harmony back to the ocean, the gods would forgive me of my transgressions and allow me to live in the afterlife as my idol, Harp00ner.”

“So, this was a long game? Did you even care about how we’d feel when this all came out?”

“Why would I care about scum like you?”

SpongeBryan, unable to control his anger, pounced on Wally. Wally pulled out a knife and stabbed SpongeBryan in the leg.

“Ow!” hissed SpongeBryan.

SpongeBryan rolled off Wally and tried to control his bleeding with his hands.

“I think we’re done here,” said Wally.

Wally turned back to the television screen just in time to watch a purple fish walk up to a podium in front of the FutureWorks headquarters.

“Cecil T. Carpfish is getting ready to make his highly-anticipated speech,” explained an announcer, whose hologram appeared right next to the screen.

SpongeBryan limped to his apartment, found a piece of cloth on the ground, and wrapped it around his injured leg. As he felt the pain pulsate from his leg throughout his entire body, he realized the full ramifications of what had just occurred. No more shopping trips. No more adventures with Pat and Ron.

SpongeBryan noticed his laser gun in the corner of the room.

No more Wally.

“…and for that reason, I would like to announce my retirement as CEO of FutureWorks,” said Cecil at the podium.

There were audible boos from the audience. Cecil raised his hand to calm the crowd.

“But that’s not all,” he said. “I would also like to announce my run for mayor of the city of Alveus.”

The audience cheered.

“Man, I’d hate to be the guy he’s running against!” said the holographic announcer next to the television screen.

As Mayor Milton watched this from his office, he felt his gills being crushed by an invisible force. He turned the holographic television off and grabbed his desk to keep his balance.

“This can’t be happening,” he managed to choke out.

He was dizzy. He couldn’t tell up from down, left from right. Then, he remembered something, and everything went back to normal. He searched through the contacts on his wristphone using a shaky, plump fin. When he found whom he wanted to call, he dialed a number. One ring, two rings, three rings. A gruffy voice answered, with no accompanying hologram.

“What do you want?” the voice asked.

“Hello to you, too,” said Milton.

“Something tells me you didn’t call me to make small talk.”

“Well, then, you’d be right. I need a favor.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I assume you heard Cecil Carpfish’s recent announcement.”

“You assumed wrong. I have bigger things on my mind right now than listening to some old guy talk. No offense, old guy.”

“None taken. If you didn’t hear him, here’s the gist of what he said: he’s leaving FutureWorks and coming to Alveus to challenge me in my next mayoral campaign.”

“So you have a little competition. It’s about time you had something to exercise those old brain muscles of yours for.”

“This is more than competition. I’m certain Charles Rutherford tapped him to replace me.”

“Rutherford? The fish with the comb-over?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do to piss him off?”

Milton was quiet for a moment.

“The right thing. I did the right thing.” Milton shook his head. “But no matter. I’m not calling you about Rutherford. I’m calling you about Carpfish. You need to take care of him.”

“Take care of him? Is that what you think I am? A hitman?”

“Don’t forget that you owe me!”

The voice sighed. “This won’t be easy. Carpfish probably has the best security available.”

“Yeah, he recently switched to that Harp00ner system.”

“Wait, did you just say Harp00ner?”

“Yeah. Why?”

This time, the voice was quiet for a moment.

“No reason,” said the voice. “I’ll carry out your hit, but after that, we’re even. You got it?”

“Yes. Got it.”

“Good. Don’t contact me again until I’m finished.”

The voice hung up on Milton. Milton looked out of the window. The sky was at its blackest. As he prepared to leave the office, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. He pushed that thought out of his mind. This was politics. Simple as that.