I made eye contact, grinned invitingly, and blew him a kiss. I like to shoot bangers, and it must have showed. He said something to his companion and they turned away.

The crowd poured off the escalator and headed down-corridor. I followed. Tracking someone through a major urboplex isn’t as hard as you might think. Yeah, the halls are packed with people, but the trick is to see through them. Look for the things that stand still. Like the expresso stand that occupies the same spot every day, the kids who throw pennies against the wall, and the blind man who isn’t so blind.

I don’t know why Marvin runs the scam he does, but he’s been at it a long time, and knows Level 39 like the back of his hand. I bought an Americano at the expresso stand and drifted his way. Marvin has black skin, wraparound electro-shades, and hair that looks as if it’s exploding off his head.

“Shoeshine? Shoeshine to help the po’ blind man?”

I stepped onto his stand, sat on the red vinyl seat, and put my boots on a well-worn foot rest. “Poor, my ass. What do you rake in from this racket, anyway? Twenty? Thirty a year?”

Had I been a corpie, just passing through, Marvin would’ve asked me what color my boots were. But I wasn’t, so he let it slide. Carefully manicured hands, stained dark by constant exposure to the polish, slid over my boots. The movement had started as part of the act and evolved into a habit.

“More money than some dumb-assed white-bread shield, that’s for damned sure,” Marvin replied. “Shit, Maxon, they took the bitch right out from under your god-damned nose and left you looking like a chump. My mother could’ve done a better job.”

Mysterious are the ways of a Marvin, so I didn’t bother to ask how he knew about the girl or the fact that I had lost her. “Yes,” I agreed sagely, “your mother could have done a better job, as any mirror will attest.”

Marvin smeared brown polish on my boots and gave a snort of disgust. “Chrome-headed motherfucker.”

“Not so,” I replied solemnly. “It’s true that I have a chrome-plated head…but my relationship with Mom was strictly platonic. Or so I assume.”

Marvin laughed. “So what’s up? You goin’ after her? Or gettin’ ready for a date?”

I sipped my coffee, watched an androgynous hall ho strut by, and looked down at the top of his head. A number of tiny silver bells had been woven into his hair. They tinkled as he moved.

“I’m going after her. Got any idea who they were? Or where they went?”

Marvin grabbed a pair of brushes and buffed my boots. “Shit. If you know who they are…then you know where they went. Everybody knows that.”

Marvin likes to piss me off and knows how to do it. I forced a smile. “Thanks for the insight. Nifwamp iggledo reeko. So who the hell were they?”

Marvin looked up and grinned. “Snatchers.”

I took a deep breath. “I know that. Who did they work for?”

Marvin produced a rag and snapped it across the top surface of my left boot. “Shit. Ain’t my fault if you don’t ask the right questions. They work for a company called Trans-Solar.”

“And how do you know that XXX672TTT?”

“’Cause they wore matching holo-jackets with the name ‘Trans-Solar’ written across the backs. And my name ain’t triple X whatever, turdface.”

“Sorry. They passed your stand?”

“They sure as hell did.”

“And the girl? She was okay?”

Marvin shrugged. “A bit mussed but otherwise fine.”

“Trans-Solar, huh?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Deederwomp.”

Marvin shook his head sadly. The bells tinkled cheerfully. “Deederwomp to you too, asshole.”

I racked my brain trying to remember if the deader had been wearing a jacket, and if so, whether it said “Trans-Solar” on it. As with so many other things, the information was missing.

Marvin gave the rag one last snap and straightened up. My boots looked better than they had for years. He stuck his hand out. “That’ll be twenty-five bucks. Twenty for the information and five for the shine.”

I stood, slid a greasy twenty-five-dollar bill out of my wallet, and slapped it on his hand. “Thanks for nothing.”

“Screw you.”

We grinned and parted company, Marvin to work his scam and me to find my client. The crowd closed around me like a river around a raindrop. No matter how poor they might be, most of the people around me meant something to somebody. You know, friends, family, people who cared. After all, what good are accomplishments without someone to share them with? And a background to compare them to? But, according to the disk the corpies had given me along with my medical discharge, I had no family, no friends, and, outside of a talent for mayhem, no marketable skills.

So that, plus my tendency to make mistakes in social situations, had relegated me to the status of the eternal outsider. And, while some might envy my so-called freedom, they didn’t sleep alone every night.

But that sounds like whining. Something I detest. Work, that was the answer. The fifty K Seculor had promised me was enough for a down payment on a hole-in-the-wall-café. And, surrounded by my regulars, I’d have someone to shoot the shit with. Pathetic, huh? Well, who said I was anything else?

So, back to business. If Marvin was right, Trans-Solar had put the snatch on Sasha. Now, some other person might have wondered why the snatchers revealed their identities when they didn’t have to, but I didn’t. No, it seemed like an accidental slip-up to me, and I proceeded accordingly.

The first step was to make some travel arrangements and find out where Trans-Solar was located: a task made relatively easy by sliding my single credit card into a slot, waiting for the door to slide open, and stepping into a com booth. The door hissed closed behind me and I damned near gagged on the smell. Someone, or a number of someones, had urinated in the enclosure rather than take their chances in a public rest room along with everyone else. Assholes.

The lights dimmed, and a rather seductive female voice intoned the words that everyone has heard a thousand times. “Welcome to the Pubcom Gateway 4000. Lean forward until your forehead touches the padding, take hold of both grips, and wait for the main menu to appear. You may choose between tactile or voice control. Please indicate your preference now.”

“Voice.”

“You chose voice. Thank you.”

“Bite my ass.”

“I’m sorry, but the service you requested is not among those I am programed to provide. Please choose from the following menus.”

Characters appeared as the voice read them off. They were pink and floated over a black background. There was everything from a com directory, to on-line games, to travel services, to a gazillion different databases.

When the voice said “travel,” I pulled the trigger on my right hand grip. An arrow appeared. I pulled the trigger on the left side and was sucked into the network. This particular sense-surround had been designed by the famous cyber-architect Moshi Chow. It was designed to seem like a futuristic race course, complete with bullet cars, and a pipe-shaped track. A track on which you could drive right side up or upside down.

I gave the grip another squeeze, felt my car pick up speed, and used the arrow to steer. Other cars were all around me. They came in every color of the rainbow and wove in and out with what seemed like death-defying courage.

I gloried in the feel of it and understood how people came to be addicted. After all, virtual reality was everything that reality wasn’t: exciting, fulfilling, and forever fun. It was, the critics complained, a carefully orchestrated opiate for the people, subsidized by The Board to keep the workers under control. I tried to think my way through the problem, but my head started to hurt and I gave up.

I felt-sensed my destination ahead, took the proper exit, and was downloaded into a custom-made reality. There was no such place, of course, but it looked real, sounded real, and, thanks to kinesthetic feedback, felt real as well.