Blood Zero Sky Read Online Free

bejeweled Company pulpit. I turn off the imager screen.
    Jimmy: the consummate jovial Southern gentleman, my father’s old college roommate and long-time best friend. I still remember the candy treats old Uncle Jimmy used to bring me when he’d come by the house for Sunday dinner. Even after he stopped visiting, I still never missed an episode of The Jimmy Shaw Hour in Christ. The show’s host was always warm, friendly, loving, and around at least two nights a week (on the imager, at least)—all things that my father was not. His sermons made me think of something bigger than myself. And late at night as I lay in bed alone after my evening prayers, I used to think I could really feel God there with me, just like Jimmy said he was.
    I still pray twice a day, still believe in God and in Jesus—although in a much more vague way than I used to. I still hear Jimmy Shaw’s homey sayings drifting through my head, especially when I’m contemplating doing something he wouldn’t approve of. But lately, my taste for the show has soured, along with my taste for just about everything else in my life.
    It’s the evening after Randal beat me at Rocketball. I’m at home, showered, styled, wearing nice clothes. Alone.
    I rise from my N-Lux suede reclining couch and pace my apartment like a panther, watching the shapes my shadow makes on the wall as I pass.
    From somewhere below a sound bleeds through, the washed-out blare of music and the braying of laughter from some unknown neighbor’s imager. As much as they charge for this apartment, the Company still didn’t go to the expense of soundproofing the floors.
    As alone as I am, humanity still seeps in.
    Now I stalk faster, trying to outrun the sound or distract myself from it, but there’s no escape. Through the floor rise the words of a commercial. This jingle is particularly inane and pervasive:
    You wanna get it, you gotta face it!
Face it, it’s your identity!
N-Corp!
    Even now, with no imager in sight, the vision of the goofy guy from that commercial stumbles through my head. There he is: walking, swinging his cane, falling down, looking like—who’s that film star, from black-and-white silent films? Charlie Chaplin. This guy in the commercial falls down and hits his face on a manhole cover and gets that mark of the cross on his cheek, then suddenly his black-and-white world becomes color; doors open for him, birds land on his shoulders, women come to fawn over him, and his hard-luck antics seem to be at an end. Welcome to the wonderful world of credit, Charlie! Welcome to the life of an N-Corp debtor-worker!
    Welcome.
    The maddening commercial plays all the time, just to make sure no one forgets that the cross implant is a wonderful thing. Naturally, all commercials played in this region are N-Corp commercials, designed to market N-Corp products, just as all imager shows are produced by N-Corp Media division. The repetition is enough to drive a person insane, but research shows it’s the most effective way to get a message across—and anyway, it’s all I’ve ever known.
    As suddenly as it rose, the auditory apparition descends back into the floor. My downstairs neighbors, whoever they are, seem to have given up on the imager and gone to bed.
    Thank God.
    Still wandering, I cross to the window. It’s twice as tall as I am and runs the whole length of my apartment. Viewed from the exterior, my entire building, all 106 stories of it, looks either like a huge mirror or a massive imager, depending on the time of day and whether the ads are on or off. Now they’re off. Gazing out from here, thousands of other mirrored buildings stand in row upon endless row, as far as the eye can see. Each streetlight below has fifty twins by the time it reaches my eye. Everything is a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. The sky is in the last throes of sunset, and by now the city is mostly dark. My apartment is quiet all around me. I reach out, putting my hand to the glass, and