Read Online Digital Venous by Richard Gohl - Free Book Online Page A

punching the air backwards and forwards.
    “I just said. It’s old music.”
    “No, I mean that ‘boom boom boom’ thing. What is that?”
    “It’s the beat,” replied Beak-face, nodding heavily.
    “It sounds… mechanical,” she said. “Robotic,” added Vampira.
    “It used to get them dancing. They’d move arms and legs around at the same time as the beat.” Beak-face was a real ethnographer.
    “All together?” asked Button.
    “All at the same time,” confirmed Beak. “How horrible,” said Vampira.
    “Moronic,” agreed the other, fourth woman.
    “That’s what happens when one person makes the music—before the music actually starts,” said Beak-man.
    “What?”
    “Someone would sit around and just make up a whole lot of different noises, with a beat…”
    “So one person did all that?”   “Yes. They would write the music.”
    “That’s insane,” said Button Nose, laughing. “Selfish!” added Vampira.
    “And… that person would then put the music on a memory disc. A big round, black, flat disc. And then everyone would buy it.”
    “How long did the music on the disc go for?” she asked. “A few minutes.”
    “And that was one sound?” Button Nose loved music.
    “Just one set of noises—and they’d listen to it over and over and over.”
    “So they all hold up their discs…” she asked.
    “Records,” corrected Beak-man.
    “Records… and that made the sound?”
    “Well, yeah,” he confirmed.
    “How awkward,” she said. “I know.”
    “It’s so much better, what we’ve got now.”
    “Oh, there’s no comparison.” The others nodded their approval. “Frickin’ Freakoids,” said Shane disparagingly under his breath.
    He pushed on, making his way to the front wall and gateway of the research facility and saw everything locked and under twelve-camera live surveillance. He decided to begin at their destination and radiate outwards.
    Using his scanner, he began on the Eastern side, moving slowly west, but in a north-to-south zigzagging pattern. Nothing. The bioscanner couldn’t see clearly through Lunatex, so Shane had to carefully enter every disused building in the area. He was sure he would find them, and if they weren’t in this area, he at least had a breathing space.
    Shane was within five hundred meters of the facility. The three major apartment blocks in this area dominated the skyscape. Done in a historical architectural style called modernist, the buildings seemed to be melting, or made from some type of fluid, or soaring overhead at impossible angles.
    The structure closest to the Bauhaus Service building was deserted. No one had wanted to live so close to an area where there was twenty-four-hour live surveillance. Napeans figured they were under surveillance enough already.
    Shane wondered—and it had happened before—if someone was harboring the escapees. He turned south from the vacant building, deciding to survey some of the modernist apartments in the area.
    The honey-glaze glow from the moon was now gone, and it had grown very dark. The group of buildings on the northeastern side of the modernist precinct looked like flowing pleated white skirts, being quite slim at the top and then billowing at the ground floor. The windows were set into the creases that ran all the way from top to bottom. He entered the ground floor of the apartment. There was music, a dance area full of people swaying and gyrating, and a swimming pool—all popular. Shane strolled around the pool and saw a man standing watching the dancers.
    “You live here?” Shane asked. “Yeah. Can I help you?”
    “Had many visitors tonight?” asked Shane.
    “Oh, the usual extras: boyfriends, girlfriends, locals… hangers-on.”
    “Anyone… unfamiliar?”
    “Ah, there was a couple. Came in about six. Looked pretty relaxed. On something. Had a swim and then left.”
    “Appearance?” asked Shane. “What are you, a guard?”
    “As it happens, yes, I am. Can you describe