Edgy and Void in wait state.
Sitting on the steps of the Cathedral of Knowledge: Edgy propped up between Void's legs. Void's left hand--the one with the elaborate Celtic tattoo and missing middle finger--stroking Edgy's stringy, bleached white hair.
Twenty after two in the morning, watching homeless and tourists dancing around a wiccan fire in front of the old Shriner temple.
Their debit card is bulging. Night only half over and they've managed to scam nearly three million nuevo-francs.
They love tourists. The Solstice brings them in from the suburbs in flocks for a two-week long celebration of post-modern pseudo-primitivism and glorious, patriotic consumerism. Pray and spend.
Edgy and Void made their money selling worthless dispensations to the hapless tourists at a dozen nuevo-francs each. A simple scam, Edgy'd wave his hands over the buyer and mumble something indistinct. The tourists would laugh, smile, happy to play along. Figured it was charity. They'd pass their card to Void, and she'd touch it against a home-built reader. The little holographic screen would say TWELVE TRANSFERRED, a lie that wouldn't be noticed until the tourist tried to buy something else and discovered an empty card.
Now Edgy and Void are on breather. They've already made enough to get them through the next week. Food and drugs. And it's only the first night of Solstice.
Void takes a plastic vial from a torn pocket in her precisely tattered vintage Member's Only jacket. She holds it under Edgy's nose between finger and thumb, crushes it. The invisible contents spark, fizz, react with the air. Edgy snorts at wisps of yellow smoke.
Nice, Edgy says. Not out loud. To himself. And not in so many words. Just the emotion. The rawness.
Void reels, rolls her shoulders, smiles languidly as the drug hits her. She isn't much for doing drugs directly. She prefers the filter of another nervous system, the value-added rush.
Reflex, she brushes the transmitter stud at the base of her lover's skull, and reaches up to touch her own. Shiny, smooth nub. 900 MHz short-range packet switching modem.
Edgy shudders. "I feel..."
"Bored," Void finishes.
"Yes." He says it with more emphasis than is needed. He chuckles and Void feels him thinking: Good drug.
"What to do?" she asks. "There's always the Kast."
"Don't feel like alcohol. Depressing."
"Everyone will be there."
"Like I said--depressing."
"Then what?" Void asks.
)
After a profitable evening scamming Solstice tourists, Void and her mind-networked boyfriend Edgy realize they're too bored for their own good and decide to hassle members of one of Pittsburgh's most vicious gangs--the Tarantino Wolfpack--mind-networked and into ultra-violence and Hawaiian shirts. What starts as a lark ends inevitably in a killing, and Void and Edgy soon find themselves hunted by every Tarantino in the city. Hunted, and loving the thrill of being prey, especially once they realize they're in over their heads this time, the pair split up with plans to meet in the safest place they can think of: the good old Orphans' Creche where Edgy grew up. Void breaks in and hunkers down, worrying for Edgy. But the Tarantinos don't give up easily, and soon Void must fight them with the only weapon she has: a floor full of fully-networked pre-teen boys who just want someone to tell them what to do.
