Motor City

When there are blackouts—‘cause we don’t have enough power for 8 million people charging EVs and hovercars, tuning holo-TVs and tech rifles, auto corps running ads on skyscrapers, mega-complexes powering A/C, people escaping at the plug-in or at underground clubs bumping bass—we roam Neo-Detroit like we own the place . . . ‘cause we got nothing better to do.

It’s the usual suspects—Kazim, Slaw, Elena, and I. We're townies in our early twenties who came outta the womb lathered in battery fluid and oil only manufactured in this corp-controlled Motor City. We throw on self-lacing white kicks, high heels, tight-stretch jeans, tank tops tagged with dead artists like Mars Bound and Melvin “the Duck” Huxley, and puffy nylon jackets that barely fit the guys but are too big on the girls. Our colognes and perfumes smell like pepper and synth-jasmine, and we spray five times each like we’re richer than we actually are.

We stop at the corner store in Poletown, the one at Chene and Fredrick, where Mikey behind the counter has the place lit up with flashlights to stay open, and he’ll make a killing on nights like these when there’s nothing to do but drink. Since the Wi-Fi and 11G are out, he can only take cash—not like we have much in our e-wallets anyway—so we hand him balled-up bucks we found stuffed in piggy banks and in pants we haven’t worn since grade school. We buy a handle of bottom-shelf vodka and dollar cigarillos and pass them around on a bus that had a full charge before the outage.

* * *

The bus drops us off downtown, and this city looks like it did eighty-one years ago. The streets are barren. Fast-food burger wraps roll in the wind and clutter at storm drains. Police sirens wail, and their drones whirr above, trying to snap pics of graffiti artists tagging middle fingers on everything in sight. Campus Martius has a few people wandering like us, but the upscale Italian restaurants and vegan clothing shops that don’t sell suits cheaper than ten grand—places only for corpos—are empty, lifeless, and losing bucks. Good.

There are a few flickering billboards running on backup generators, displaying ads for flashy new hovercars, Bulwark Private Police, AI-softwares For Your Business, cybernetic enhancements, rhinoplasties, and lip fillers. The buildings that don’t have ads are tall and gray like tombstones.

“Huh,” Kazim says.

We look up and realize that the elevated subway tracks aren’t screeching, hovercars aren’t whirring, and music isn’t jamming. Slaw takes a big puff from his cigarillo and blows it into the air like he wasn’t a loser at East Detroit High. He pulls out his phone and starts playing downloaded tunes we haven’t heard since junior high. Songs with lots of reverbs and heavy bass, songs that feel like they’re from a time better than now, songs with lyrics like, “I can’t breathe under the weight of this place” and “Take me back to Miami / Take me back before the floods.”

We sing and sing and sing.

* * *

We drunkenly wander through back alleys where drifters have made tarp palaces and spaceheads hit their OC inhalers and lean back against dumpsters, floating through the cosmos. They don’t look unlike the people who hit up the plug-in. Wonder if that’s what I look like when I’m there—when I slip on a headset, spike into a sim, and forget that I work my tail off and don’t get paid jack.

Slaw finds a service entrance to a skyscraper that some cleaning crew must’ve thought they’d come back to. It’s wedged open with a small metal box, and we race up the stairs, shoving each other and laughing until Elena has to stop ‘cause the vodka in her stomach is rolling around and about to come up. We get to the roof and smile. From 500 feet up, we look out at the Detroit River, the New Manhattan Island skyline, the trudging freighters, and the mansions on Belle Isle that’re lit up like a drone show ‘cause, of course, all those corpos and actors can afford generators that could keep all of our old neighborhood running.

The vodka makes us slap-happy, and our chit-chat echoes down. It makes us think we’re hearing our own voices for the first time. This city normally has a way of shutting us up real good.

Slaw, Elena, and Kazim dance on the half wall, and I tell them they can’t fall off, though we all know that wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen to them, to any of us. Kazim pulls out a baggy of hash tablets, and he and Slaw hop down, toss them in, lie flat on the roof, and look up at the stars that you can’t normally see ‘cause of the light pollution.

Elena and I sit down on the half-wall, pass each other the handle, and kick our legs like we’re kids again. Sometimes, it still feels like we’re kids even when nobody’s watching, even when this place makes you grow up fast.

Elena is thin, doesn’t like synth-conies, and casually cosmeticizes. She’s had lip filler and bone contouring and a scalp follicle pad insertion. Her hair’s black with streaks of blue tonight, but she can make it red or pink or blonde in a week on the companion app. She had the bluest eyes when I first met her, and now a synth-purple creeps in at the edges. Probably cost her two weeks’ pay.

“I’m thinking about a chromium tattoo, Wic,” she says.

“Mm-hmm,” I say, and she grabs my hand and runs it along her left forearm.

“It might hurt,” she says.

“‘Cause it’s supposed to be permanent.”

She releases my hand and rests her head on my shoulder. I listen to her breathe. In and out. In and out.

We’ve been on and off, and right now, I don’t know where we’re at. But even when we’re off, I know she loves me. I don’t know how or why. I don’t have looks or muscles or brains. I steal, I swipe, and I lie more than I tell the truth.

Don’t have the heart to tell her I can’t love her back, to tell her to stop changing, to stop rearranging herself over and over like her body wasn’t perfect the way it was. Don’t know if she’s changing for me, herself, the corpos, or this damn city, but I’m worried I’m going to fall in love with someone who I eventually won’t recognize. Someone who won’t recognize herself either.

Don’t know how to tell her this. Don’t know if I can.

We’re still up there when the neon flashes back on, when the skyscrapers light up like bullet holes at dawn, when music and subway cars blast and screech, when holo-ads of corpo-backed supermodels dance downtown saying, “You can be like me, you can be like me,” and the dream ends, and we’re standing somewhere between escape and reality.

We’re also outta vodka.