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Fighting for Utopia, Chapter 2
I’m writing Fighting for Utopia as a serial on Substack. You’ve landed on chapter two of this sci-fi short novel about a young hero finding a solarpunk commune within a cyberpunk city, but not being content to enjoy the peace there.
Enjoy chapter two below | For chapter one go here
Buzzing from her brother’s win and her own haul of tips, Zara barely noticed the commute home on the subway.
She got off and walked through the light rain the few blocks to their apartment building, a squat seven-story building. The bottom four stories were original, from the early 1900s when this part of Bay City was called San Francisco. The facade of the bottom four original stories was largely still the Edwardian facade built in the early 1900s, the top three stories appeared crudely out of place, a rectangular stack of prefabricated metal and glass on top of the worn, dirty, but still beautiful Edwardian stories below. When looking for a way to expand housing supply decades ago they figured out how to just stack more prefabbed units onto existing buildings. The Edwardians could take two to four more stories, depending on their foundations.
Zara, Benji, and Mom all lived together on the top Edwardian floor, before the metal parasite on top. They didn’t have an elevator, and Zara was huffing slightly from the four-story climb as she opened the door to their cozy apartment filled with an eclectic mix of gorgeous antique furniture and cheap, pretty, easy-to-assemble furniture perfectly designed by AI and produced by some multinational conglomerate of a Swedish and Japanese company.
Mom had a green thumb, and they always had nice plants all over the place. The apartment had bursts of color with throw pillows, fuzzy shag rugs, plus an ever-rotating catalog of augmented reality digital art viewable through their glasses or contact lenses once they connected to the home network.
As she threw her stuff down in the entryway she called out, “I’m hooooome!”.
“In the kitchen!” called back Mom.
She saw a small notification in her glasses that she was connected to their home network, joining Mom and Benji. She rounded the entryway heading into the old kitchen, mostly original from the late 1800s and early 1900s time period when San Francisco blossomed, she spotted Benji. He was perched on a stool by the sink, shirtless but in smart material sweats that aided recovery. Mom stooped over him tending to Benji’s swollen face, fast developing fresh purple bruises. Benji fought often enough that she couldn’t remember seeing him recently without a black eye, crusted lip, or swollen part of his face.
Benji crooked a devilish, swollen smile at Zara and said, “Hey Zar, how was your haul?”
“437 credits” Zara boasted as she took off her lightly steaming jacket - which contained heating elements to keep her body at a perfect temperature. Now in the house, the evening’s moisture was steaming off the jacket.
“Not bad, not bad. I made a couple of thousand creds for the fight, but a few more in betting!” Benji said.
“Oh, you bad dog!” Mom said.
Benji wasn’t supposed to bet on his own fights, and if they caught him he’d likely face jail time or steep financial punishment, but he always figured out a way to place an untracked crypto bet on himself, not too large that it drew scrutiny. The AIs can crack the encryption if needed, nothing is truly cryptographically safe from the AIs if they’re looking. He never tried to get rich from one bet, just skimmed a few extra credits each fight, always placing the bet on himself and his consistent winning average.
Benji smirked at Mom’s jest and made a few swipes at his wrist pad. A small chime made Mom pause from attending to Benji. She stood up straight, and looked quickly up and to the left, her eyes unfocused on the room, checking the notification in her augmented contact lenses in her eyes.
“Benji, no!” she cried when she realized he’d transferred nearly all his winnings to her. “I can’t take them.”
“No Mom, I don’t need them all, I just like to fight and have a little more creds than the monthly allotment. I’m not the one with plans and goals like you. How close are you now to that bar?” he asked.
As long as Zara could remember, her mother had been saving to open her own bar. She’d worked as a bartender, stripper, and occasionally as a prostitute all of Zara’s life. That’s where Benji came from, actually, the prostitution, he didn’t know who his father was. Zara’s parents had dated briefly when she was a bartender at a swanky joint Upcity, Mom never spoke much of their time together, just that he was a nice man, and it never really would have worked between them. When pressed for details she’d just brush it off and say that it never would work between someone like her and an Upcity techno-elite like her father.
Her Mom was smart, kind, and hardworking, but always worked for someone else. She’d been managing bars for the last ten years or so. For the last seven years, she ran The Helix. She essentially was The Helix, running front and back of house, managing the AIs and bots, and the handful of humans. She knew all the regulars like family. She made a decent chunk of extra credits, but the profits went to the owner. Some techno-elite, a friend of her father’s, actually. Mom alluded to it being a gesture from her father to help fund Zara’s life. Zara never asked her father about it, but she knew he cared for her.
As Mom flicked her fingers about, gesturing in the air, pulling up documents only she could see, she said, “I’m really close Benji.” Then with a pinch and flick of her fingers toward the center of the kitchen, the document she was looking at appeared for all of them to see.
“If I add in the 2k you just gave me to my plan I have about 279k, I’m only about 20k more away from having enough.”
Mom was thorough, she didn’t just calculate the down payment, but anticipated all the costs and had calculated and recalculated her number countless times throughout the years.
Zara stared at the 279,136 credits blinking in Mom’s spreadsheet on the screen for a minute, “that’s amazing Mom! Damn, you’re so close to your number. I mean, you have more than enough for the downpayment already. You should just go for it!” Zara said. “Maybe ask my father for a loan for the last bit?”
“No, Zara, I’d never ask your father,” Mom softly said.
“Just a thought,” Zara said as she walked into her room, thinking about her Mom’s bar and her father.
She had a decent relationship with him, and she always thought that maybe Mom and he could be together again.
He’d come around from time to time, and take her out. Buy her birthday gifts, things like that. He always asked the questions, rarely answering questions about himself. She longed to spend more time with him. She had a recurring fantasy since she was a little girl of her and Mom and Benji going to live with her father in Upcity. She’d brought it up to him once when she was eleven or twelve and he just chuckled and changed the topic. She didn’t bring it up again. He never talked much about himself or his relationship with Mom so she never knew why it didn’t work out between them.
Despite not seeing him often, she loved him, and felt a connection to him, to his life in Upcity as a techno-elite, even though she’d rarely been to Upcity and only knew the elite from infrequent encounters with those that ventured into the barrios. The techno-elite rarely mingled with commoners, but her father was different she felt.
She threw herself on her bed and grabbed the pillows, propping herself up. With the 437 new credits, she knew she had enough. She tapped on her glasses, pulled up a browser window in front of her, and clicked on a link for the ball gown she knew would change her destiny.
She projected it into her room and stood up to try it on in the mirror with her AR glasses. The gown shimmered and glowed. It was made from the finest living fabric, a hybrid of organic living organisms and nanobots. The material emitted soft bioluminescence as it moved and folded, and it conformed perfectly to the user's body as if made bespoke by the finest tailor just for her. The AIs had made the breakthrough in material science with the fabric, and it was useful in a wide array of applications, but it was all the rage in fashion. She knew it would make an impression. As she gave a twirl she turned back to the open browser window and looked at the price: 19,997 credits. She looked up her account balance, 20,221 with the credits from tonight. Only 224 creds to spare, but the allotment was coming again soon. 20,000 credits was by far the most amount of credits she ever had in her account at once. The allotment barely covered food, her portion of rent for their nicer-than-normal house, and other basic needs. All the extra credits in her account came from over a year of savings from her waitress gigs at the fight arena.
She pulled up the news article she’d saved about the ball. Her father would be there, the article mentioned the ball was for some charity thing her father was associated with, and he’d be saying a few words, it had a picture of him. He was almost never in anything in the news, she knew as she’d searched everything she could find on him over the years, a scant six things, this charity ball announcement included. He was a private man.
She hadn’t dared to breathe a word of the ball or her plan to Mom or Benji. She knew they’d try to talk her out of it, to see reason, but she didn’t want to see reason. She wanted to get to know her father better, to join him in his world. Whenever he was with her, he was warm and kind. He gave her things like her glasses and access to expensive educational AI programs. It’s just he was techno-elite, and she wasn’t. Mom worked hard, and they were much better off than most, but her father was on another level. She’d never been to his house, but she knew he lived in Upcity. All the techno-elite did.
The ball was her chance, the gown her ticket in. Ball gowns were ridiculously pricey, she’d never owned anything that expensive in her life. For the techno-elite, she knew it was nothing. She closed her eyes and imagined being one of them for a minute. Opening a massive closet door to a whole rack of ball gowns, she slid her fingers over the fabrics, traditional silk, living fabrics, smart fabrics, vibrant colors, textures, everything.
She knew there would hardly be security for the ball and they’d never check a pretty girl in a ball gown. If she could show up in her father’s world and look like she fit in, maybe just maybe she could join him in Upcity. She lingered on her daydream a few moments longer.
When she opened her eyes, she saw herself in the mirror, the glasses still projecting the ballgown on her augmented reflection.
She flicked her wrist, pulled the browser window over, and hit purchase. A pang of anxiety hit her as she watched her account balance nearly zero out, but then she swiped over to confirmed purchases to look at the dress. Confirmed. It would be delivered tomorrow morning, just in time for the ball that weekend.
She pulled off her glasses and threw herself on the bed, falling asleep to a confusing swirl of emotions and hope.
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