The Beam: Season One Read Online Free PDF Page A

and available for the asking at just about any place in the NAU. Most people in the better parts of the city had cochlear implants for audio calls, and even some of the bums had ancient phones. The time was on every digital billboard, every screen.  
    But Doc hadn’t gotten the watch upgrade because he wanted to see the time on his wrist. He’d gotten it because he liked the affect of looking down. The gesture conveyed class when he wanted it to, and it conversely conveyed “fuck you, hurry up” about a thousand times better than anything else a man could do. People hadn’t worn functioning watches for over fifty years, but tapping one’s wrist still meant “let’s hurry up” in the same way people still referred to “getting something on tape” when they meant making a recording. And looking down at a cocked wrist was still singularly insulting in a way that checking a display could never be. It told the person he was talking to that he gave less than a shit about whatever they were telling him, and that they were just wasting his precious time.  
    “Run them down,” Doc told the driver.  
    “Hey, they’ve got a right to protest,” the balding man in the driver’s seat said without turning back.  
    Doc drew a deep breath, then exhaled, watching the line of protesters through the cab’s window. He touched the glass, brought up a tint panel, and dragged a screen across the glass to block his view. The cabbie would, of course, be sympathetic. Here he was, carting some uppity Enterprise man around in his cab while a bunch of his fellow low-end Directorate protested the same uppity Enterprise bastards. Doc wanted to argue — to point out to the cabbie that every single one of those protesters could have chosen to make their own way in the Enterprise instead of accepting a fixed government dole that was barely adequate — but his words would fall on deaf ears and possibly result in an “accidentally” higher cab fare. Directorate members didn’t want to hear that they’d made the wrong choice. And you know what? Doc thought. They wouldn’t move over to Enterprise when Shift came, either. It was easier to bitch about how the system was unfair and suggest taxing the wealthy members of the Enterprise so that Directorate stipends could be increased. All while half of the fucking Directorate sat on their asses and didn’t work at all, because so much could be automated.  
    “Look, fella,” said Doc. “I’m not trying to be uppity. But I’ve got an eight-thirty sixteen blocks down, and that parade ain’t getting any thinner. Can we go around?”  
    The cabbie looked at the meter and they both watched the fare click up. “Not really.”  
    “Can I ask you a question?” said Doc.  
    “Hell, you can do anything,” said the cabbie.  
    “You don’t have to work. This cab could drive itself. So why do it?” Doc wasn’t trying to be rude. He wanted to know. Besides, Doc — always an entrepreneur and a fierce determiner of his own future — believed there was a little Enterprise logic in everyone.  
    The cabbie opened the window and stuck out his arm. “Scintillating conversation,” he said.  
    “But it could have an AI driver, and you could sit in your house and…”  
    “Sometimes the dole ain’t enough,” said the cabbie. He hooked his arm over the headrest and looked Doc over from top to bottom. Doc was wearing jeans, boots, and a simple suitcoat, but it was all expensive. Doc’s shoulder-length blonde hair had a sheen that could only be maintained by nanos. “Not that you’d know that.”  
    Doc wanted to debate, but it was pointless. The cabbie had already judged him, just like Directorate protesters always leapt to judge the well-off Enterprise every six years, in the weeks preceding Shift. He wanted to argue that he’d scraped his way up from the bottom, but he stopped when he remembered that he was talking to a man who’d taken a job that existed solely so that he could