Psychogen (Galactic Syndicate Cycle Book 1) Read online

  PSYCHOGEN

  The Galactic Syndicate

  Book 1

  N.C. Madigan

  Copyright © 2021 N.C. Madigan

  All rights reserved.

  For Shawn.

  1

  Liza Strange stomped through the street, avoiding as many people as possible in the surging crowd. The heat generator for the Moon colonies was broken, again, so Liza was bundled in extra clothes, blankets, a hat, gloves, and a scarf. Every exhale sent a puff of white fog drifting up into her face. Dying solar lamps threw weak light along the alleys, struggling to light the Moon colonies during the two weeks of night. Liza had to squint through the semi-darkness to see the tattered sign above Alank’s shop. It read “Colony Curiosities,” which was a deceptive name considering Alank only bought and sold junk. Liza was sure that he would find some way to screw her out of Simlars, just like he had the last few times she’d sold her scavenged parts to him. A brown dreadlock stuck to her cheek as she walked. She swiped it away with a gloved hand, muttering to herself.

  Alank, the greasy old man who sat on the other side of the window, looked up from his ancient tablet and smiled a near-toothless smile. His receding hairline ended near the back of his crown, where his stringy gray hair fell to land on his shoulders. He wore clothing that had likely never been washed.

  “Ah, hello Lizzy Strange,” he grunted.

  “Don’t call me Lizzy. You know it’s Liza,” she barked and heaved the bag up onto his counter, nearly crushing his tablet. He swiped it away quickly with a surprised expression on his face.

  “What’s all this?” Alank poked at the bag with a stylus. “Dead body?” he joked. Liza rolled her eyes.

  “Parts, stuff you want, stuff you asked for,” she said, pulling open the zipper to allow some of the contents to spill down over his counter. Alank casually picked up a few pieces and inspected them, then tossed them over his shoulder into piles on his floor.

  “Looks okay,” he said, still shuffling through the bag. Liza planted her hands on her hips and waited, her gaze drifting around the marketplace. She spotted a couple of kids a few meters away, shuffling through the crowd. Though most people wouldn’t notice, Liza could see how quickly their hands darted in and out of pockets. Picking was at its worst when the heating system went down. Many people would just stick their Simlar chips in their coat pockets. And though the Moon colonies were poor, some colonists still had the random inherited watch or some other trinket from before the space migration. Liza watched the boys pick the chips from shoppers’ pockets and stash them in their own coat pockets, looking way too conspicuous. Liza rolled her eyes. Who was teaching kids these days?

  The boys moved closer to where she stood, so Liza casually turned around and craned her neck, as if she were trying to see over the heads of the crowd. When two boys passed her, she spun quickly, her hands darting into their pockets and retreating before they took three steps. She turned back to Alank’s window and opened her hands, in which she now held four S-chips. The slim rectangular cards were about three millimeters thick, each with their own unique barcode and processing chip. From what Liza knew of the time before the space migration, people had ways of keeping their money secure, but now the whole system was just a devolved mess. Many people ended up with nothing if their S-chips were picked, much like the ones now lying in Liza’s hands. But times were hard, so Liza tucked the cards into her inner coat pocket. She’d hack them later.

  Alank finished going through her canvas bag and was now making a few quick calculations on his tablet. He looked up at her with his watery eyes. “I’ll give you twenty-thousand Simlars,” he said. Liza gaped at him.

  “That’s it?” Alank shrugged. “Our rent alone is seventy-thousand!”

  “Times are tough,” he replied. “Most of those parts are from outdated ships, anyway.”

  “They are not,” Liza argued. “Didn’t you find the bag of Jar cables?” Alank turned and rummaged around, then turned back with a plastic bag in his hands.

  “These, dear Lizzy,” he said, pulling a few of the cables out of the bag, “are from merchant ships. Nice merchant ships. No one comes here in a nice merchant ship anymore, and no one buys parts for nice merchant ships. These’ll sit here for a few years until I finally throw them out.” Liza glared at him, knowing he was lying, but finally shrugged her shoulders. She had four S-chips in her pocket and wasn’t in the mood to argue. Maybe that would even things out.

  Reluctantly, Liza removed her own S-chip from her coat and handed it over. “Glad we agree,” Alank said. He took her card and scanned it with his tablet. Liza punched in her access code on the keypad. A few taps on the screen, a short beep, and Alank tossed it back.

  “Pleasure doing business with you, as always,” Alank said with his toothless smile. Liza rolled her eyes, snatched up her canvas bag and stomped away through the crowd.

  Liza wandered the streets of the colonies, passing by food stands, trinket stands, and scalpers trying to sell transport tickets to the Sun Station colonies. Liza knew the tickets were fake, and besides, the Enforcers would slaughter any “dirty Moon colonist” as soon as they set foot on a Sun Station. One of Liza’s classmates had tried once, and it was only a matter of time before a comm chip message from Sun Station Alpha declared that the boy died of “natural causes.” Bullshit.

  Lost in thought, Liza took a wrong turn and found herself down a dark alley. Almost immediately, her nose burned with the acrid stench of Fultraline. She pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth to block out the stench. Up ahead, three Moon colonists huddled around a hot plate with a blanket draped over their heads. Despite their attempts to keep the Fultraline vapors contained, the stench filled the alley, and Liza thought if she stayed any longer, her insides would begin to decay from the drug.

  One of the colonists lifted her head from under the blanket. Her face was splotchy, and her eyes were red and watery. Her lips twisted into a grin. “Five thousand Simlars for a huff, honey,” she said, her voice strained like a fork had scraped along the inside of her throat.

  “Don’t think so,” Liza responded. She turned quickly after the woman shrugged and ducked back under the blanket. Liza hurried out of the alley and traced her steps back to where she had been before. She found a familiar side alley and turned in that direction.

  This time, her nose was filled with a much more pleasant smell. It was gumbo, the smell coming from a nearby stand. Her stomach rumbled. There had been no food in the apartment that morning. She was reluctant to spend her money, but her stomach took over her mind, so she backtracked to the gumbo stand. The large man with a bushy mustache smiled at her when she stopped in front of his window.

  “Afternoon,” he greeted, lifting a paper bowl from a stack beside his large pot. “Gumbo?” he offered, holding up a paper bowl. Liza inhaled deeply, enough to where she could almost taste the smell on her tongue. Her eyes drifted to the little sign hanging below the pot. Only 1,000 Simlars for a bowl? Liza felt that it would be stealing to pay so small an amount for something other than soybeans.

  “Yeah,” Liza said, a little too eagerly as she dug out her S-chip. The man exchanged the bowl and spoon for her card, and quickly took his money from it before handing it back to her. Liza stuck her nose right up to the bowl and inhaled again, savoring the delicious spices, meat and tomatoes.

  “How did you even get the ingredients for this?” Liza asked, after taking her first delicious bite. The man simply smiled.

  “We have our ways,” he said, glancing at a few of the other stands around him. Liza slowly lowered her spoon from her mouth, her eyes narrowing on the man.

  “Is this human
meat?” she asked, lifting the bowl. The man burst out laughing, his belly bouncing.

  “No, no, of course not!” he said. “Some of us still have standards!” Liza released a breath of relief. She had been tricked into eating human meat once. She was not about to let it happen again.

  “Then where did this meat come from?”

  “We’re traveling cooks,” he said, once again gesturing to the other stands around him. “We’ll only be here for a few weeks as we gather what the Moon colony has to provide, then we’ll ship off to Mars, and begin our circle again, at the Sun Stations,” he said, his voice low, like it was a big secret. Liza frowned.

  “What the hell do the Moon colonies have to offer?” Liza asked. “We’ve got no spices, no vegetables, no meat… just soy.”

  The man smiled and regarded her as if she were a child.

  “Soy can be useful for many things,” he said. Liza shrugged her shoulders. Instead of arguing his point, she filled her mouth with gumbo, thanked the man and walked away. She could feel his eyes on her for several minutes before she rounded a corner towards home.

  What Liza considered “home” was merely a small apartment that had been sectioned off from a larger house. The Strange family’s apartment was a three-room section: two bedrooms, and a combination living room and kitchenette. The bathrooms were shared among all the residents of the house, which usually led to fights and feuds among the inhabitants. The strongest families stayed while the weaker families moved elsewhere. The Strange family had managed to keep their hold on their home for several years.

  Liza entered the passcode to the apartment and pushed open the door after she heard the click of the locking mechanism. Metal screeched against metal in the cold and refused to budge until Liza threw her full weight into it and forced it open. Inside, Liza found her younger sister, Vely, sitting on the floor, surrounded by ancient books that had survived the space migration. Liza had snatched the books from the school when Vely had expressed an interest in near-ancient history. Liza grinned watching her sister read from one book, set it aside, and stick her nose in another one.

  School was not something most Moon colonists aspired to finish. Liza had made it through school without being thrown in jail, which was a rarity among colonists of her generation. Theft was the most common crime, and the hard-nosed Enforcers took it very seriously. Vely was eighteen now and was the smartest kid to come out of the Moon colonies, graduating at the top of her class. Vely was tall for her age, with blonde, nearly white hair. Unlike Liza, she kept hers neatly groomed and long. And like everyone on the Moon colonies, Vely was paper-thin with nearly translucent skin.

  As Vely read, she muttered to herself, reading sections out loud before switching to another book. Liza found no use in studying the distant past, but Vely was fascinated by it.

  Finally, Vely paused her reading and looked up at Liza.

  “How much did you get?” she asked.

  “Well, hello to you, too,” Liza said. She kicked off her boots and flopped down into a chair. Vely lifted an eyebrow skeptically. “Twenty-thousand,” Liza answered after a dramatic sigh. Vely wrinkled her nose but said nothing. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

  “Still at the fields,” Vely replied, turning back to her books. Liza frowned.

  “Why?”

  “‘Cause of the cold. Without the heat, the plants will freeze and die. So, they’re trying to keep them warm,” Vely said, a slight condescending tone in her voice. Vely was one of the smartest kids to come from the Moon colonies, but she knew it, too. Liza rose from the chair and pretended to kick Vely in the thigh as she moved past her towards their shared room. “Quit it!” she shouted.

  Liza ignored her and shoved the door to their room open. The door retraction mechanism was busted again, but Liza hadn’t found the energy to fix it for the millionth time. Inside the room, two narrow beds filled most of the space, and their clothes hung from metal rods that ran the length of the room. Liza shifted through her clothes, minimal as they were, and found another long sleeve shirt. She’d froze while in the marketplace, though the gumbo helped warm her up, if briefly. Liza pulled the shirt on over the others and put her coat back over her shoulders.

  “Are you going to the fields?” Vely called from the other room. Liza glanced at her reflection in the shard of a mirror she’d stuck on the wall. Her face was paler than ever, and the dark bluish-purple circles under her eyes stood out, resembling bruises. Beneath her skin, a network of blue veins crossed over her face and down her neck. Liza wrinkled her nose, huffed, and turned away.

  “Yeah,” she answered. Liza tightened her scarf around her neck and stepped back into the living room. Vely watched her from her place on the floor. “You wanna come?” she asked. Vely shook her head.

  “Too cold,” Vely said.

  “It’s just as cold in here as it is outside,” Liza said, but Vely said nothing. Liza reached into her coat pocket and removed the four e-chips. “Wanna hack these for me?” Vely looked up, and Liza tossed the cards to her. Vely caught them in her hands.

  “Sure. Bring back something to eat, will you?” Vely added, her eyes focusing back on the book in her lap. Liza rolled her eyes, but agreed and exited the small apartment, back into the bitter cold.

  2

  The walk to the fields was a few miles from where the Strange family lived. Liza made the trip easily enough, following the old maglev system tubes. The tubes had been built and the track had been laid, but money ran out, so no one bothered to bring in the trains. Motorized vehicles were a thing of the past on the Moon; no parts to repair with and no fuel. A few bicycles remained, but most had either rusted out or were stolen and dismantled for parts and scrap metal.

  The tubes that lead to the fields were nearly empty, though at this time of day most people should be heading home for the evening. A few older workers were shuffling down the tube, their arms crossed tightly over their sacks of dried soybeans. Liza passed by without making eye contact.

  She leaned her head back as she walked and admired the sky through the clear tube dome. Stars dotted the space above their heads, but in order to see them, one had to look beyond the satellites, the broken ship debris and other litter that floated through space. The area around the Moon resembled the Moon colonies’ own streets, and sometimes, it made Liza sad to see everything in such disarray. But it has always been that way.

  Liza passed through the doors that separated the tubes from the fields. An Enforcer in an orange uniform stood beside the door. When she entered the fields, he stopped her, asking for identification. Liza sighed and pulled her eyelids apart with her fingers. The Enforcer held a small device up to her eye and scanned it. The retina scanner beeped out her information. The Enforcer nodded and waved her through. Though she wasn’t a worker in the fields, she could still gain access to the fields, provided she didn’t cause trouble.

  The fields were giant enclosed spaces with high, domed ceilings made up of solar panel windows, which were supposed to catch as much energy from the sun and focus it into usable energy for the plants. They hadn’t been working lately, and Liza had begun to suspect that the electrical components had gone out, and that the Moon colony government was too poor or too lazy to fix them. Or too cheap. The soil had come from Earth, most of which was contaminated by radiation, a health hazard, but it helped the plants grow a little bigger a little faster. Since food was more important to the people of the Moon colonies than their overall health, everyone ignored this dangerous fact. In between harvests, the soil was supplemented by collected waste waters from the drainage system on the moon, then treated to prepare it for another growing season.

  The artificial lights hanging from poles, which had been brought in to try and help give off some heat, glowed a sickly yellow color. Scraps of fabric covered the soybean plants in large sections, and in other places, there were large heat lamps, each tended to by one or two field workers. Armed Enforcers stood at equal distances apart from each other, watching over the work
ers.

  Liza spotted her parents. Her father squatted beside the base of a heat lamp, and her mother tacked down burlap sheets. Liza walked towards them, stepping around other workers who barely acknowledged her as she passed. It was always eerie in the fields; the people who worked there were extremely poor and very hungry. Stealing soybeans to feed your family was a punishable offense. Liza had never seen the punishment, but she’d heard stories.

  “Mom, Dad!” she called out, stepping over a row of small plants. Her father, Hane Strange, looked up from the exposed wires in his hands. He smiled at her and motioned for her to approach. Liza stepped over another row and knelt beside him. So close to the heat lamp, she could feel the warmth it gave off. Gradually, her body thawed.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked her, returning his gaze to the wires in his hands.

  “Vely said you were still out here. I just came to see how things were going,” Liza said. She looked up at her father. His face was wrinkled from age and malnutrition, and just as pale as everyone else’s. Several days of facial hair growth stood out on his chin and cheeks, a mixture of brown and gray hairs. His head was covered in a thick hat.

  “Well, if the main heaters and the panels are fixed soon, we should be okay… otherwise… there’s talk that we’ll lose the whole crop.” Liza frowned.

  “How can they not fix them and let us starve?” Liza asked, thumping her fist on her knee. Her father shrugged his shoulders. The light from the heat lamp went out. Hane grumbled to himself and twisted the wires in his hands until the lamp sputtered back to life.

  “We are a low priority, Liza. You know that,” he said sadly.

  “I guess,” she replied. Liza told her father about the money she made from Alank, and at least he looked a little happier about it than Vely had. She mentioned the street vendor selling gumbo as well, but when she mentioned this, her father quickly looked away.