Ms Fixit

by Peter Salisbury

Ms Fixit

  Peter Salisbury

  Copyright © 2010 Peter Salisbury

  Cover design copyright © 2010 Peter Salisbury

  **

  Ms Fixit

  Bernice sprang the clips on the communications cupboard. Another routine job. She got these every time: ‘the dog’s chewed the wires’, ‘kids have stuck something in the card slot’, ‘someone spilt drink in it...’ ‘Smoke? Yeah, a bit of smoke, then it just stopped.’ Always some ‘mystery’ fault.

  The white plastic case had a row of tiny winking lights and a hinged lid. It was mounted at eye level behind the door to the hall, next to the thermostat. Lucky this one has been fixed the right way up, Bernice observed. As if trying to be helpful, the little lid hung down out of her way, to reveal a selection of components. First she pressed the reset button to generate a test signal, then she pulled out the input loop. The fibre optic bundle bobbed as it found its natural curve, shooting glowing shapes onto the flush, cream wall.

  Incoming data, blasting down a beam of light from who knows where. Technology! Where was it taking us? After a hundred years of chips this, lasers that, people had no idea!

  ‘You want a coffee?’ a man’s voice interrupted. ‘There’s still some in the pot.’ At the front door he had greeted her in his business suit, all set for teleconference after she’d finished. It was important, so could she be quick about it.

  ‘Me? Oh, yes. White no sugar, please,’ she replied, twisting round to take the diagnostic probe from her pocket. A tantalising aroma of breakfast toast lingered in the hall.

  She glanced at the laser light and a stern warning entered her mind. “Do not look directly into the beam.” A bright spec appeared, into which the words dissolved as if cascading down a plug-hole. Bernice scratched her head with the end of her probe, eyeing the dot suspiciously. As she stared, patterns flowed out of the spot. Weird patterns, swirling patterns, hypnotic patterns. Was it true some people could read the data streams directly? As she heard the man approach, she let the probe slide out of her hand, ‘thump’ onto the carpet.

  ‘Here’s your coffee,’ the man said as he put a mug and coaster on the hall table.

  He noticed the dropped probe and the woman’s unnatural stance. Then he moved closer, looked curiously at Bernice’s blank face. She lifted her hand mechanically and pointed to the wall.

  A flickering beam from a thin, drooping cable flooded across the paint. How can light come out of a wire? The words formed slowly, his mind lost to the mesmerising swirls.

  The man turned to Bernice, his gaze met her vacant stare. Her eyes were strangely bright but he could not sense her breathing. He watched the patterns dance, reflected on her pupils. Memories of breakfast and meetings faded, so absorbed was he now in the woman’s awful stillness.

  ‘Hah!’ A smile lit Bernice’s face. ‘Had you going there!’

  **

  If you like this short story, you may also enjoy Peter Salisbury’s 110,000 word science fiction crime thriller

  Passengers to Sentience

  Chapter 1. Upside

  Sonia sighed over the hypo. Her eyes widened as the light reflected, shimmering, from her silver brooch. Its large, synthetic opal hid a fine-needled pistolet that urged precisely metered, costly fluid through her skin. The chemical rush struck her brain in mid thought. A rainbow burst of fireworks sparkled behind Sonia’s eyelids and she absently steadied her body for the afterglow, leaning into the doorpost as a sleek two-seater settled on the gravel of the driveway.

  ‘Michelle, you always arrive first!’ Sonia said, hugging her friend after she closed her shiny, red car.

  ‘You know me, I’m the early bird.’ The two entered the house together.

  Michelle followed Sonia down the hall, between the golden-threaded tapestries. ‘Did you manage to persuade your parents to leave you alone?’

  As the sense of suffuse, warm light filled Sonia’s mind. Long gone was any sense of anxiety over having lost count of the number of times she had used the Yellow. Lost was any fear of its progressive destruction of cells deep in her brain.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Sonia said. In the lounge, they sat on the deep, leather sofa while Sonia adjusted the sound and light system. She studied the sparkles on her dress. ‘They’re staying away.’

  ‘They go to that new hotel across the valley?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Careless and her every pore open to perception, Sonia’s mind swept through a freshening sea of swirling, subtly-coloured music.

  The door chimed and a display showed another two friends waiting to enter.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Michelle said, briefly resting her hand on Sonia’s arm. ‘I can see you’re ‘busy’. I’ll let them in.’

  Light years away, relaxed and comfortable, I accessed multiple threads of data traffic streaming between the dozens of worlds populated by human life. I was detached, free from direct involvement. I’d learnt to manage close interpersonal relationships, once they’d got going, it was starting them up I found hard. So, instead of working face to face and one to one with other individuals, I felt easier looking for subtle, abstract changes in data flow, discrepancies which might be characteristic of illicit transactions, mismatches and anomalies signifying criminal activity. Luckily, these were skills my bosses appreciated.

  Charged with leading a team bent on tracking down the production and distribution of Yellow, I knew there was plenty of work still to do. Leaning back into the gently resilient space of my cushioned, simulated flight couch, I made use of a pair of vid specs which displayed a virtual screen. For me the two secrets of working from home were comfort and distinctive work clothes. The first was taken care of by the replica flight couch copied from the set of a twenty-first century sci-fi movie, it was made of solid, polished alloy castings, covered in well-padded, supple black leather; the second, by the soft black leather loafers, baggy black pants, flowing white cotton shirt with open collar, and a silver mail and suede waistcoat having a couple of discreet but useful pockets.

  My task now was to scan the Net for unusual data flux. Images hovered three feet in front of me, projected in my fluid crystal goggles. I systematically zoomed the graphic analysers back and forth, searching for clues with the air mouse which was no more than a dot on the end of my fore-finger. I waved my finger and the display indicator moved, a spoken command and it changed to a scratch pad stylus for voice text. The AI input system meant I could control the machine with any combination of hand, eyes and voice.

  The display was a 3D environment with scalable images, movies and floating data ribbons. There were so many data ribbons that scanning text presented an almost subliminal supply of information. As soon as a word, phrase, image or symbol caught my attention, the text would drop into a more easily scanable box. In a side thought, I idly marvelled at how the Department always got the most advanced systems available: intuitive AI software, organic electronics, infra-red transponders, next generation quantum processing terminals, gigahertz satellite uplink. Chief data handlers were treated well in The Department for Data Tracking and Determination, the DDTD. From the satellite I had a continuous fast connection to the Net. It was expensive but the only way to transmit data between planets in different systems in real time was by using faster than light Ultra Radio.

  A red data flag fluttered momentarily at the corner of the screen and I felt a frown shadow my brow. For days I’d been picking up occasional, disjointed bursts of contraband data packets. The Department should have sourced them by now but they were more elusive than usual. Virus attacks and freelancer interference were showing rapid increases, too. I had a nasty feeling it was something I wouldn’t like at all.

  Rose, a reader in the USA said “I was so happy to find a good scifi author, having grown tired of the fanta
sy books that pass themselves off as scifi. Passengers to Sentience was wonderful. I loved the premise, I also loved the way it ended with humans not being so ‘human’ and actually being flexible and aware enough to make the right decision.”

  New in August 2010, Peter Salisbury’s second novel

  Passengers to Zeta Nine