Day -10: Mr Ink.

I walked out of the blinkport and into a line of waiting zipcabs, still hung over from the trans. The reception kiosk said, in its usual unnecessarily cheerful tone "The solar wind advisory for today is moderate to upper-moderate. You may feel a little discomfort in your transfer from Jupiter to Earth. Have a nice day!" I thumbed the identiseal on the first one, got in and, call me old fashioned, put on my seatbelt.

"Newark Har..." Through the fuzz I noticed I wasn't quite alone. It may have been the smell that tipped me off, or the heavy metallic click. I put both hands on the wheel and looked forward.

"Get out of the car and give me your wallet!" the robber yelled, pointing a gun at my face. It was large, probably fully automatic, and looked very heavy. I thumbed the autodrive off and stomped on the gas. "I'm betting you don't have life insurance." I said, "And off we go."

"I'm serious man, I'll blow your gaffing head off!" He said, waving his gun at me

"No, you wont. If you were actually going to, you'd have pulled the trigger before I closed the door," I said, gaining speed and turning onto the highway. "Less mess, and you could shove my corpse out later. Plus, we're going too fast now. If I crash, you're dead." The thug sat in what I could only assume was stunned silence while I dodged between cargo crawlers. Post-impact safety devices like airbags weren't on the cheaper zipcabs, and after autodrive became standard on vehicles nobody really used seatbelts.

We sped through the Pulaski skyway at about two hundred. I had pretty much banked on nobody using manual, which was correct. Cars and cargos screamed at us with their collision alarms as we ploughed through traffic. The Newark swampland had pretty well faded away as we headed for the North Jersey Archipelago. I was already late, and couldn't afford to joyride around some tweaked up

"You're f-fucked up, mn. I should do you for the co-common good." he said. His arm was rattling more than his voice, and I could see the weight of the gun was starting to get to him.

"My wife would agree with you. Well, two-thirds of her anyway." Out of habit I showed my ring hand.
"What's the tattoo?"
"That's why you lost.

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"It means Shinobi."
"Isn't that like a ninja?"
"Sort-of."
"Doesn't that defeat the whole, you know, purpose?"
"Shut up."
"No, I'm serious. If you're a ninja you don't go around with a sign that says 'I'm a ninja.' That doesn't make any sennse."
"Fine," I said, touching the tattoo senspad and turning off my tattoos. We were almost there anyway, and the robber had pretty much given up. The gun was in his lap and he'd made a cup of coffee from the dash-dispenser.
"Oh, yeah. Now I get it. Cool."
"Anyhow, why don't you give me that thing before I have to drive us both into a wall and get us downloaded into fresh bodies."
"Yeah, okay. I don't have insurance anyway."

I pulled out into the docks and got out of the car. The weapon was actually not bad. A ultra-compact AR-30 with a collapsible stock. WW3 leftovers. A little heavy for a pistol, but accurate out to half a kilometer. The zipcab went off on its merry way and I walked down the docks to The Spoon.