Urban

Monday morning, rush hour, a New York subway. It felt oddly familiar to Julio. Driving a minitank through the maze of Baghdad, neural implants jacked directly into the vehicle's systems, had felt just as clausthrophobic, crowded, and lonely.

Coming down from the train and back to the street was worse. He didn't feel exposed; unlike many of his comrades, he had never been trapped by the paranoid delusions so prevalent among the last batch of veterans.

He just felt restless. Eager to start his week's work.

The itching between his shoulder blades -where the tank's systems would have alerted him of an EM sniper's laser lock- was just restlessness.

His darting eyes were taking in the city and its people out of love. He loved the city more than most, better than most.

A loud yelp at his back merely startled him. Nothing more. It was just a delivery girl falling from her roller skates, and his reflexive finger movements -sensors and weapons, lock and fire- were just harmless reflexes. He no longer was a tank, microcannons at his fingertip and an angel satellite guarding over his shoulders.

He was a civilian. He was fine with that.

Some of his former unit members might be now under treatment, the ones he knew about at least, unable to adjust to war and flesh, but not him. He was fine, he had a job. He had the world's best job.

He was jittery, yes, but his boss didn't mind. She had told him, in fact, that he was the best possible man for the job. Even shielded him from the Health Board's preaching morons and their fake psych reviews.

After entering a nondescript office in a nondescript government building, Julio connected his implants to the city's feed. A few thousand cameras filtered themselves to a hundred neural networks, and those to Julio's jacked-up brain.

He saw through New York's eyes now.

He was New York.

Watching.

He felt himself relax for the first time since Friday.

.finis.