Grand Junction by Maurice G. Dantec Read Free Book Online Page B

going like that for more than a week.
    And it is getting worse; every day, every hour. Every time the constrictions are more explosive, more painful, more infernal.
    He knows very well that if nothing is done he will die. And worse still, he knows equally well that nothing can be done.
    His Sony-Motorola implant is failing. His central nanogenerator.
    It is a marvel of transgenic technology. And if it breaks down, the retroviral nervous-degenerative illness will rapidly recur at full strength. This is a disease that doesn’t waste any time. He would only have had a brief reprieve anyway, perhaps a few years.
    The implant functioned for five years. It’s almost a miracle.
    But now it’s over. He has been infected in his turn, just like all those billions of other human beings who thought they were safe and then died during the past six years.
    He has often prayed to some cybernetic god to protect his new implant from falling prey to the mutant strain of the virus. This outbreak seems slower than the original one, the one in ’57. There are still some people with bionic implants around who survived after the death of the Metastructure.
    Maybe a little slower. But just as merciless. And now, voilà—it’s his turn. His day. The first of his last days.
    Thirty-nine years old. Not even forty. And probably less than a week to live.
    After the attack of vomiting comes a terrible migraine, as usual, clamping his skull in its burning grip. A ton of aspirin wouldn’t be enough; it’s useless to hope for anything from classic analgesics, or from anything that can still be found in Junkville. The head pain indicates the beginning of the recurrence of his degenerative disease; the Sony-Motorola implant will probably be good for only three or four more days. And he will probably live only three or four more days after that.
    Lying on his small Japanese futon, he watches his legs and hands shake convulsively, unable to control their frenetic movement. He feels his facial muscles begin to contract in jerks, and he knows—he watched it in the bathroom mirror once—his eyes are rolling back periodically in their sockets, causing him to lose his vision for an instant.
    And all this is only the beginning. The symptoms are only going to get worse, gaining amplitude and intensity, and soon other dysfunctions will appear.
    Finally—and it will doubtless come as a relief—he will die. All this effort absurdly thwarted, all this life reduced to nothing, all this strength of will erased from human memory.
    For two or three years during the time of the Metastructure, more than a decade ago now, James Vegas Orlando was one of the young prodigies of the township of Little Congo. He had been quickly noticed for his sense of business organization and had advised the committee that renovated the Flesh Market district in order to make it a true showroom for the local whores. He had established solid rules with the pimps of Monolith Hills. He was full of ideas, careful to never step in anyone’s flower bed as he ran his business like an old pro. Even better, thanks to him, the pimps of Little Congo had seen their collective prosperity multiply by two or three times in the space of twenty months. It was some sort of record.
    His trajectory within the elite of Junkville’s aristocracy had been like one of the cosmodrome’s rockets. He had quickly become rich, really rich, and was serenely envisaging a home in the city of Grand Junction itself—MonolithHills, most likely, or even one of the trendy quarters: Novapolis, or Von Braun Heights?
    Then the dream had been shattered, along with the rest of the world.
    The attack passed shortly after noon.
    He is able to think again. He tries to place his thoughts in some sort of order, so they might at least delay the end.
    Of course, there is the rumor. It has been swirling throughout the whole Territory for two years now. It’s the biggest rumor around. It’s THE rumor. But it’s only a rumor,