SF in The City Anthology Read Online Free PDF Page B

races, but they had to concede that he never owed anyone money. Horses in bod mod races were the best to bet on also. Ángel hadn’t become rich by taking unnecessary or uninformed risks.
    Once the woman had completed her purchase, Ángel walked up to the vending machine, cred card in hand. Two lobsters seemed enough for the road. As his order was completed, two packages fell into the slot at the bottom of the machine. He pulled them out and looked at the seemingly angry crustaceans, with their appendages folded up around them in the plastic. Perhaps Ananya would like one? She had seemed crabby enough that day. As a last minute decision, Ángel pulled o ut his cred card again.
    ***
                  Devon Globa inserted the last cartridge into his Nukpana OWO 23 sniper rifle. The round was informally referred to as a “snot (sniper + shotgun) shot,” because it had the range of sniper ammunition and mimicked shot gun shell rounds. Each of these bad boys had a preset charge inside of them, which could be set to explode within a desired distance of a target. Central Authority loved this type of ammunition precisely because it couldn’t be linked back to agents. A sniper could sit in a window and take aim at a target five miles away, yet his round would break up into buck shot right next to the victim. Street gangs could be blamed for the whole ordeal and the real shooter would be back home in time to catch the nightly State of the City address.
                  Today, it looked as if Devon would get to shoot some crazy mujer [10] in front of a Lobster Launji. At least he was told that she was a little off. He never really knew who CA wanted him to kill anymore. Last week they had him bump off some short man at an amusement park, and he turned out to be nothing more than a producer of 2D films. Why somebody involved in such an outdated business threatened the security of The City, the sniper would never understand. It wasn’t his job to ask such questions, just to point and click. He loved the dramatic sound of the magazine as he shoved it into the weapon. With a thought, “The Old Pianna Rag” started to play in the micro liners of his ears. Here he was criticizing that producer for archaic pursuits.
    Going into a prone position, Devon looked into the Electronically Amplified Scope or EAS on his Nukpana. Using his mind, he called up the GPS data on the thoughts this woman, Ananya Leclerc, emitted. She still sat out in front of the restaurant, as expected. From four miles away, Devon zoned in and saw the woman sitting in her seat. Given his current angle, it would be best to set the explosive charge in his shell to a twenty foot distance, so that people would think the sho t came from across the street.
                  Something seemed oddly familiar about this woman, the strange way she kept her blond hair tied back, and the curvature of her neck. When he had nanotubes inserted into his brain as a child, Devon’s parents had put a great deal of emphasis on backing up his memories externally. Whenever he returned home from school, he would transfer copies of his daily experiences to a “memory box” in his room. At the time it had seemed that his parents worried too much, but as he got older, Devon quickly realized that his father suffered from retrograde amnesia. Bing Globa had been a security guard at a local chemical factory. While working his shift one night, a couple of thugs opened fire on his guardhouse. A stray bullet had pierced his head in just the right location, impairing his ability to recall memories for the rest of his life.
                  Understandably, Devon always wore a Kevlar lined helmet to work these days. He still couldn’t place the woman down there, but he told himself that she deserved whatever happened to her. Of course, he didn’t know what Central Authority had accused her of, but Devon really wished that he hadn’t felt a glimmer of