They’re out of place. Zara can’t quite put her finger on it, but something is off about the small group. Maybe it’s their clothes or the way they move through the market.
Ever since the ball, she’s been coming here to just sit at a small cafe with a terrace overlooking the market down below. Bay City has many markets that bustle with activity, this one has several tall buildings around it that hem in the people making it a hive of human activity, cooking smoke, and blinking neon lights. Down below, the market could almost be mistaken for a medieval town square or a farmer’s market from the turn of the millennium– if it weren’t for the robots and drones.
Everyone in Bay City gets their allotment and it’s enough to live on. Everyone living off only the allotment has a roof over their heads, food, and a little bit for entertainment or drugs but nothing more. Down in the market below there were vendors selling government food at set rates for weekly grocery shopping, but there were also taco trucks, jewelers, junkers, drug dealers, robots for sale, artists selling their art, prostitutes, bars, and if you looked hard enough, or asked the right questions, weapons dealers. Everyone down there was selling something so they can make a few extra credits. Life was shitty for most people, you received your allotment, you ate, you had somewhere to sleep, and that was it. You couldn’t get ahead in life. You can’t become a techno-elite. For most, life had little meaning, it was a shitty existence, but the markets were the best part of life in Bay City. They were a hive of movement, and maybe even the last place where hope was on display each time a vendor made a few extra credits despite the system designed not to let anyone get ahead.
I’m writing Fighting for Utopia as a serial on Substack. You’ve landed on chapter five of this sci-fi short novel about a young hero who finds a solarpunk commune within a cyberpunk world but is not content to enjoy the peace there.
Enjoy chapter five below | For chapter one go here
Zara took her extra earnings from working the waitress gig at the arena and came to the cafe where she’d sit on the terrace and watch the people below while sipping a cup of coffee that’d gone cold hours ago.
She would people-watch, listen to the vendors hawk their wares, watch the drones move in patterns and an occasional security robot would walk through on its set patrol.
It had been three weeks and she’d come here almost every day during those three weeks since the ball. She didn’t want to be alone, but her shame wouldn’t let her fully confide in Benji or Mom about what had happened with her father, so she came to the cafe and sat, watching the citizens move about the market.
This was the third time in three weeks she’d spotted the group of outsiders below. Everyone in Bay City had an edge to them, a look, a way they carried themselves, a way they dressed, a set to their jaw. Techno-elite or regular citizens, even the robots all fit into the balance of the city, but these people weren’t from here. They weren’t tourists or foreigners, they didn’t have that insanely out-of-place look like techno-elite tourists from another part of the world. Tourists weren’t super common, but she’d seen her fair share to know they weren’t tourists. Plus, tourists usually had obvious security details following them around.
Over the centuries of globalization, most humans had intermarried and race relations were less of an issue than in centuries past. In Bay City, everyone was mixed race and the techno-elite are no different, though they tend to be more a mix of various European and Asian backgrounds. The common people of Bay City are very ethnically diverse, made of the European and Asian mix like the elites, but with a heavy portion of Latino, Indigenous American, and even some African ethnicities. Zara herself is from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and is ethnically ambiguous. The outsiders below were no different, they were the same mix as all of Bay City, it wasn’t their skin that made them stick out.
Their clothes were a bit strange, but not entirely unusual with many of the clothing items looking like standard government-issued allotment clothes. No, it wasn’t the clothes.
It was mostly how they carried themselves, she thought to herself as she studied the group. How they moved through the crowd. They had a mystique to them that went beyond their otherness. Maybe, confidence? They moved about almost like the techno-elite, but different somehow. They clearly weren’t techno-elite, not even foreign ones. They were not common citizens though, stuck in the system. She felt a pull toward them, drawn to their strange confidence, attracted to the way they carried themselves. Maybe it was being rebuffed by her father, or maybe it was her deep-seated ambition to transcend her place in life, but she wanted to learn all about these people.
There was the middle-aged to older woman, clearly their leader based on how the rest looked to her and she seemed to direct their activities. The young teenage boy that flitted about by the woman, always near her. The tough-looking man, broad-shouldered with a set to his jaw the closest to a Bay City native. The fourth person she didn’t recognize, it was always someone different. One or two others, but always the leader woman, the teen, and the man.
She decided to tail them, to find out where they went after the market. She paid for the coffee and caught up to the group on the edge of the market.
She watched as they went to a few machines to get credits and made some purchases, the tough man always watching outwards towards the crowd. He’s a guard maybe, though she didn’t see any obvious tells of a concealed weapon like on security details for the techno-elite tourist. No oversized jacket with easy-to-access interior pockets. No long shirt covering the back of his waistband. Like Benji, maybe he’s just good with his fist and feet, she thought.
The group of outsiders made their way towards the edge of the market and began leaving off a side alleyway.
Zara stayed more than a few paces behind them, careful to not look at them too much. The group quickly made their way down into the metro and Zara almost lost them. She managed to get into the metro and on the very next train coach without drawing any attention to herself. Despite being a fairly attractive girl, Zara looked like nearly any other Bay City resident her age, so she didn’t stick out, giving her an advantage against the muscle, who was constantly scanning the crowd with a set to his jaw that seemed unnerving normal for Bay City.
The group exited the metro a few stops later, in a sketchy, industrial part of town. Zara carefully tailed them, her heart pounding. Why was she doing this? She didn’t know, but she was compelled to follow them, to find out what made them unique.
The outsiders turned down a side street and walked up to a beat-up pickup truck that stood out worse than them. It looked like something from a different century, like out of an old movie, it was huge and bulbous with a prominent metal grill in the front. They loaded their wares in the back and began piling into the truck.
Zara approached the truck. She had to find out who these people were, and without over thinking it, she swiftly leapt into the bed just as the truck’s cabin doors slammed shut. That brief moment of distraction—door slamming and bodies shifting—was enough to let her slip into the truck bed unnoticed she hoped. The bed was cluttered with enough junk for her to burrow herself in. Then She lay motionless, her body pressed against the rough fabric of a backpack, straining to hear past the relentless pounding of her pulse in her ears. Any second, she expected the door to swing open, for the muscle to haul her out and interrogate her. But the door stayed shut. All she heard was the click of the ignition and the low hum of an old hybrid motor sputtering to life.
The truck crept forward, twisted, and turned and was soon out of Bay City. Zara lying in the bed of the truck looked above at the wide open sky, the first time she’d ever left Bay City and she was stowed away in the truck bed of a strange group of outsiders.
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