Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

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The problem was the phrase 'for the duration of the crisis'. There hadn't been a real threat in a decade, not since the Faction took their swing. Sure, some dronetown gangs still sprayed the hooked trefoil, and a few academics quoted edgy old papers, but those were few and far between. No one believed in their transhuman utopia or their eusocial fantasies. Now, Faction iconography was just a fashion statement.
The Path was even worse. It had been beaten down in two system wars, torn apart, and thrown into the frozen DMZ. If they built anything more than a pocket calculator, kaboom! A shot would fall from orbit, courtesy of the Authority. They kept their faith, but nothing more. Maybe raw belief helped them shovel ice? They were a relic, a curiosity, and irrelevant to the arc of the human story.
There'd been ten years of peace, and a generation had grown up without the wars. Through that lens, the old guard looked very old, indeed. The only crisis he could remember came in fuzzy childhood flashes, seated on his mother's frayed couch, chewing on kinder-paste and watching the aftermath vids, while she hugged him tight. For most of his life, the threat wasn't Path fundamentalists or Faction radicals, it was getting enough dole rations, avoiding cops kicking in the door, and stealing access to the net. The crisis wasn't a foreign threat the Authority needed to fight. The crisis was the Authority failing its people.
The men in power, obviously, saw it differently.
Suze had talked him into taking "Transitional Government in the Postwar Era" with Professor Lyle. He'd caught in the gist of it on the first day, and spent the rest of the semester surfing the net through contact smart-lenses. Lyle's points were solid, if over-sold. To an engineer, everything was systems and rules, so her positions were so evident as to be unnecessary. The Authority saw threats in every corner because of how it was designed. To unite humanity, salvage the planet, and save civilization, it had built the most massive military force ever conceived. The Path opted for a conventional war, got their faces caved in, and then blasted their own power-base to atoms when their redlined drives failed. It wasn't the victory anyone had wanted, but it was a victory, nonetheless.
After the war, though, the Authority didn't bow and exit stage left. They'd found other reasons to stick around, whether it was a 'resource crisis' or just 'too fluid' a situation. As Kendrix liked to say, 'no government ever gives up power'. Firenze thought he was probably right. Suze, too. They were right about a lot of things, but none of it was worth throwing his life away.
Firenze was the first of his siblings not to go to jail. He'd escaped the Old Chicago dronetown, a little chunk of hell wedged between the baffles. Like all dronetowns, it was out of work because of automation and the stand-down. Unlike the rest, the dole was withheld due to violence. His mother had scraped together three jobs and uncounted gig-works, just to get him out. She'd stuffed her mattress full of printed-credits and prayed that one of her kids would make it. He couldn't betray her. He wasn't going to end up another sad little dronetown tale, especially not on account of misguided idealism.
His mother's credits got him over the baffles and into a school, and he owed her more than that.
Once he broke into loward, he'd had to scrabble on hard work, natural talent, and refusal to ever fall back under the baffles. He would prove mom right and everyone else wrong. He was the top of every class, the very model of the academy, and the kind of grad student that professors fought for. When he got the assistant slot, the stipend should have been enough to push him halfway up the ward. Instead, he'd picked up the few pieces of kit he needed for fab work and sent the rest back home to mom. Neland liked to show him off, call him a 'bootstrapper' for the other profs, but Firenze knew better. Mom pushed him, long before he'd learned to pull. Let Suze and Kendrix have their rants and protests. Firenze was going to keep his head down, stash his credits, suck up to every prof, and wait for his chance to save his family.
Besides, he had more than enough on the net to keep him busy.
His glasses chimed, the stems buzzing behind his ears. The countdown in the lens' corner neared zero. Professor Neland would be calling soon, and it was time to get back into the game.
He crawled back over his dry-rotted mattress and wedged himself between the lumps. He caught his own reflection on the fridge door. His hair was matted, his skin pale, and bags hung under his eyes. He needed to clean up.
He slipped the synth-flesh sheath from his forearm and exposed the dock. The IV clicked into his wrist-port, and the hardjack followed. He laid back, clicked his arm into the elastic restraints, and waited. The computer box beside him chimed twice. He braced. One long tone sounded. Two. Three.
Pandemonium.
He drowned in light. He seized and thrashed on his padding. His veins blazed with the resonant sun dawning within, and raindrop sweat boiled from his freezing skin.
There was tranquility.
Like the moment before sleep, he slipped into darkness, warmth, and ever-softer pillows. His body vanished as the jack disabled motor functions. He drifted upon the conscious sea, as one with the pull of the tide and press of the breeze.
He was back. Or rather, he was arrived. He was in the net, deeper and truer than most would dare to dream, wrapped in their pathetic goggles and softjacks. He was seated in his room, his real room, with the thick leather chairs and the ocean wind through the curtains. He could smell the seaspray, feel the sea's breath on his skin, hear its waves roll under the moonlight. Here, the colors