Shades

by Eric Dallaire

  Concerning our deal, I reasoned the Djinn sought a thread of the myriad technology tapestry that wove throughout Sasha. He had discovered that I architected Sasha from the 'Data Hound v1.0' sentient program during the Korean Cyber War. The fact that the Djinn had rooted out this information was worrisome, but not surprising, given his talents. I wondered if he had gleaned this information because of the wisp’s attack, or if he had held onto the knowledge for our eventual meeting.

  The Djinn’s decryption echelon took the holographic form of a sparkling, oversized key effusing a soft golden light. Everything about its sleek form exuded a sense of superior design. My hand stroked the stubble on my cheek while a part of my inquisitive mind weighed the risk of hacking it and unspooling its code. It would make a valuable addition to my own utility belt of echelons. Given the craftsmanship of this program, one had to assume an equally elegant protection scheme would delete itself to prevent its theft. I couldn't afford to risk losing this chance.

  My finger traced the key’s outline, executing its program. Its code flowed into my computer, granting it the ability to pierce the wisp’s caltrop encryption code. The golden key flew into the code fragment and dissolved the caltrop’s black bindings. With the trap disarmed, the exposed data floated before me, a helical stream of numbers and characters that composed the deleted conversation I needed.

  My hand reached for the data, collecting it like sticky thick smoke rolling over my fingertips. I pulled it through the air and deposited it into my wrist-com. After processing the information, my console transmitted it to the v-cast generator and fused it with the other end of the conversation.

  The room dimmed and echoed with the high-pitched whine of the projector. The virtual image of Vanessa appeared like before, but the new data filled in more of the scene, including the other person in the conversation. At first, the fidelity of the mystery guest looked poor. Every other frame skipped, creating a distorted stuttering effect. With a couple of hand movements, I made an adjustment to the projector and boosted the hologram’s integrity. There was just enough viable footage to piece the scene together. Both of the projected figures solidified, and their voices became clearer. She was talking to a tall man a handful of years younger than her, his long blond hair tied in a ponytail. I recognized the man as her brother, Andrew.

  “You're not hearing me, Vanessa,” he said, grabbing her shoulders. “You have to drop this case. He knows you've been talking to that Doctor--”

  The strength of the signal failed momentarily, interrupting Andrew before he could utter the name of the doctor. My hands moved across my console to improve the projection's integrity, but unfortunately that part of the source data was damaged beyond repair. Disheartened, I started the footage again, hoping the rest of the scene had not been compromised.

  “For your own sake, walk away,” he continued, his hands trembling. When Vanessa noticed this, he crossed his arms to conceal the shakiness.

  “God damnit! You're 'flying', aren't you, Andrew?” she shouted. “Your drug-dealing boss says jump and you jump? Did he threaten to take away your drug supply if you didn’t shut me up? I can help you to stop using--you need to trust me.”

  Vanessa spotted what I had noticed while reviewing the footage. Andrew was v-casting and his arms and hands shook badly. His head darted back and forth. Based on his physical symptoms, I guessed that he suffered from an acute drug withdrawal. My gut told me that he took the street drug Ick, the street term for the virtual narcotic Icarus. The name derived from a myth about the ancient Greek inventor Daedalus and his son Icarus. Daedalus had fashioned wax wings so that they could escape from their island prison. He had warned his son not to fly too high. Like so many children, Icarus had defied his father. Caught up in the rapture of soaring, he had flown too close to the sun, and his wings had melted.

  Casual abusers of the drug used the psychotropic opiate to intensify their v-casting sessions. Extreme casters modified their devices to deliver the drug intravenously. With Ick pumping through their veins and hyper-stimulating their brain's hippocampus, the user then connected to any v-cast network, preferably somewhere remote and hazardous, to intensify the rush. Illegal and habit-forming, the drug proved irresistible to young thrill-seekers looking for their chance to rebel against authority. I had heard of an underground club of bored and wealthy would-be-adventurers who launched their own private intergalactic satellite relays. Using this galactic array, they had made v-cast trips under the influence of Ick for high-altitude halo jumps off the Uranus moon Ganymede. News nets had published the grisly police report of their deaths. Four members of this club had died, still attached to their casting rigs, after suffering massive hemorrhagic strokes induced by the drugs.

  “Listen, ‘Nessa, stay away from that doc for your own good,” he warned with a momentary expression of sober intensity. “He’s made some enemies way up high. I mean way up. Anyone talking to him winds up dead. You need to wake up and--”

  “That’s better advice for you, Andrew.” She pushed him away and squared herself into a defensive stance. “Get out,” she yelled while pointing to the door.

  “You'll regret this,” he said.

  The v-cast projector sputtered as it reached the end of the restored conversation. The outlines of Andrew and Vanessa wavered, then the hungry proto-matter tanks re-absorbed their materials with a mechanical sucking sound.

  So, Vanessa's own brother had betrayed her. Such anger welled up that my vision blurred, my ears roared with the memory of her shouting, my muscles tightened, and my hands clenched until all the knuckles and fingers whitened.

  I ran to my desk and ripped out the central drawer. Taped to the back, I found the cold cartridges of four full ammo clips. While I loaded the grav-gun, I let the image of Andrew threatening Vanessa fill me up with anger, burn me down, like a fire scorching through a forest.

  Now I needed to know where to find him. I pried deeper into the data fragment, my eyes swimming through lines of code, hoping that Andrew was careless in his drug-addled state. At first glance, he had made a modest attempt to hide his v-cast location. All the traceable markers had been blocked. That informed me he wanted his location kept secret. To hell with that; he would not be able to hide from me. There was no structure, real or virtual, that I would not tear down to find her.

  It was time for one last bit of detective work. Bringing up my virtual console, I evoked an analytical program that formed a second blue skin over my hands. Like a doctor donning surgical gloves, I prepared for an operation to dissect the exposed code.

  “Talk to me,” I whispered. My echelon transfused the broken data fragment with life-giving energy to restore its pathways, like fresh blood into the arteries. In a sense, I wanted it to revive and make contact with its home network. After a minute of the infusion, the broken data started to breathe a data stream and revealed a subtle but important clue in its v-cast history log. For two seconds, Andrew's v-cast signal strength had ebbed just slightly at the same moment he was about to name the doctor that Vanessa was seeing. I probed into the minutia of the data, like I was massaging a failing heart back to life, and with that last attempt my persistence paid off. Andrew had been v-casting from a public rig at a location experiencing tremendous power fluctuations. Not many locations pumped out those massive energy spikes, and only one came to mind. I traced a viewing window in the air, creating a virtual window overlooking New York. Zooming closer, the familiar skyline rushed toward me, altered by the appearance of a tall medieval castle wedged between the iconic skyscraper buildings. The Gozen High Tower, the world’s only shape-changing skyscraper, lorded over the city. That bastard Andrew felt he was safe within its ever-shifting walls and floors.

  My fingers moved around my v-console, releasing data hounds into the datanet and darknet. These bots scoured the streams for intelligence regarding the High Tower and its reclusive owner, Tomoe Gozen. Mere seconds later, they bounded back with an overwhelming amount of information. W
hen my console display overflowed, I started to flick the news reports, videos, and financial statements into midair, transforming them into hovering digital windows. All these glittering shapes enveloped me, forming a dense forest of captured data. Plucking one from the air, I read a report about an interstellar mining venture between Gozen Industries, Tomoe’s company, and Goliath Corp.

  Delving further, I discovered little else than prepared public statements regarding Tomoe’s life. Vast wealth derived from her lucrative v-cast device patents funded the privacy and independence she craved. I wondered if even the White Djinn had gleaned any secrets from her impregnable data vaults. Another video floated up to my eyes, showing the last appearance of Tomoe, six years ago, when she had donated the High Tower to the people of the world. No one knew her true form. When she appeared in public, her v-cast form was a perfect recreation of the legendary 12th century heroine whose identity she assumed as her hacker name. With her black hair spilling over her golden samurai armor, she struck a visage of strength, confidence, and beauty.

  “I am proud to announce that henceforth, the High Tower will become public property.” Tomoe spoke with a musical lilt, each word carried with perfect pitch and tone. “On the outside, it will be subject to the laws of New York, but within its virtual halls, the High Tower will be home to the meta.duel, inspiring boundless creativity from future architects.”

  As she spoke, my hand grabbed a floating schematic of the building itself, and with a hand wave I stretched the image to my height to study its features. I marveled at the structure’s ingenious design. Below the foundation, a hidden reactor harnessed the raw power from a stockpile of disarmed nuclear missiles Tomoe had purchased from bankrupt foreign powers. This energy allowed twelve mark-6 v-cast devices to work in parallel, creating the planet’s most realistic virtual world generator. This remarkable engineering marvel fueled the most dangerous sport in the known galaxy: the infamous meta.duel. Programmers and echelon wielders from around Earth and the colonies flocked to the weekly contest, intent on claiming its most unique prize. The winner of the duel controlled the full v-cast printing resources buried beneath the High Tower to remake the form of the building in whatever shape they desired. No other contest came close to stoking the inspiration and desire within the hearts of hackers everywhere. The prize granted the victors the chance to make their imagination real. There were only a handful of limits for the winner to abide by, since the design had to meet with the approval of Tomoe, the mayor of New York (to prevent profane structures), and as a rule any design had to include her home Aerie, the only constant shape that had to be integrated into any final configuration. Through a friend-of-a-friend-of-an-agent-of-a-friend of Tomoe's, I had received five invitations to compete. Each time I had declined, never interested in exposing my skills on a grander stage.

  With a wave of my hand, I shut down my computer query. All of the suspended images winked out, leaving me alone in my apartment in silence. It was a welcome quiet. I closed my eyes and sought a single-minded focus. This focus reprogrammed my thought, intention, and desire, turning me into an unerring bullet train. I was going to find Andrew. Then I was going to find Vanessa. I embraced this simplicity and wrapped myself around the confidence that whoever or whatever appeared on my track, whoever tried to prevent me from seeing her again, would be run over.

  I holstered my grav-gun, tucked away the extra ammunition clips into my shoulder strap, and headed to my car. It was far past due that I accepted my invitation to the meta.duel.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Low Down in the High Tower

  “The science of our Mark IV v-cast generators conjures the magic of your imagination.”

  - Tomoe Gozen, CEO of Gozen Industries

  I drove fast toward lower Manhattan instead of v-casting there instantly. With a local, jacked-in connection, I would have more control over my echelons. Also the satisfaction of laying my actual hands on Andrew’s stringy neck convinced me to travel in person.

  My temple throbbed. Hot adrenaline seared my blood, making my busy hands fidget over the directional controls, pushing my restless foot down harder on the accelerator pad.

  “How could a brother betray his own sister?” I asked aloud out of habit. “Who was the doctor that Andrew mentioned? Who was the boss that wanted Vanessa silenced?” Sasha did not respond. She navigated the uncharted waters of the WhiteOut with the Djinn. Talking helped me process the mystery by working through the variables, to find connections in the code that could help me.

  A mile ahead, a line of flying yellow cars turned into a floating parking lot. This was no time to deal with rush hour bullshit. Without my AI it took me a few extra moments to infect the local trafficnet with a control virus. Like dominos, each taxi in the row turned to fly down to the ground lanes. After diverting their courses, I made swift progress through the aerial lanes.

  Within a few minutes, Manhattan’s concrete and steel horizon greeted me. Polished glass windows reflected the rising moon’s glory, suffusing the city with a soft white glow. The airways teemed with streaking vehicles, flying luxury sedans and gleaming stretch limos, late for their penthouse floor cocktail parties.

  The outline of the city’s skyline had not changed for four weeks. Eight more days would break the record for longest city configuration since 2032. In its current medieval form, the High Tower stood brazenly anachronistic amidst the neighboring skyscrapers. Its underground v-cast generators changed the building's true form into a magnificent German castle that rivaled the majesty of Neuschwannstein. Flags bearing the symbol of the griffon billowed atop the four white marbles spires. As victors of the last seven meta.duel competitions, the brothers and sisters of the New Teutonic Knights claimed dominion over the High Tower for another week. Feared and respected throughout the hacker community, the Knights ranked high in all the dueling tournaments thanks to their fearsome leader, the Magier-Hochmeister. His real name was Heinrich Teuber. By morning, he was a middle-aged bank manager counting Deutsche Marks in Berlin. But within the virtual world, he was the Grand High Master Sorcerer. His reputation for ruthless, merciless tactics made him a feared competitor. Knowing the Hochmeister possessed great prowess and dangerous echelons, I decided on a strategy more reliant on stealth than force.

  My Mustang twisted its thrusters inward and lowered toward the High Tower. Before the tires touched down, a valet greeted me in medieval dress, replete with puffy shirt and leggings. To complete the ensemble, a feathered purple tricorne hat adorned his head.

  When the car neared the entrance, its metal body shimmered. An automatic message from the building’s management appeared on my console. It requested permission for the v-cast network to change the outward appearance of the vehicle to a horse and buggy. A series of more insistent messages streamed across my screen as the High Tower's network systems attempted to force a renaissance coating. The valet approached with an expression of frustration and surprise.

  “Good evening, sir, and welcome to the Hochmeister's High Tower,” the valet said, bowing. A dull yellow energy field enveloped my Mustang. Again my car’s protection systems rebuffed the Tower's persistent attempts to apply a virtual form. With great restraint, I suppressed a chuckle at the valet's obvious discomfort. “Our system is sending you the appropriate attire for the High Tower. Will you please accept? It is the Hochmeister's wish that everyone conform to the period of his rule.”

  Fun time was over. I didn't need to make any waves, at least not yet.

  “No disrespect to his Majesty,” I apologized with a hint of sarcasm. My hand waved over the console, allowing the High Tower's network to communicate with my vehicle’s system. The yellow energy field reached out again. This time it changed my car into a wooden cart drawn by a single brown horse. The valet was not able to suppress a grin, amused by the Tower’s choice of a peasant’s carriage. I chose to ignore the insult and exited my vehicle with as much dignity as possible.

  “If I may suggest some attire a
s well, sir,” the valet said as he mounted the horse to take it to the garage, which I assumed looked more like stables in this construct.

  Four choices of dress floated before me. The choices ranged from a white simple tunic, a basic padded leather doublet, a brown and wrinkled robe, and a well-worn slightly rusty set of chain mail. I walked through the leather doublet and it appeared over my body with a perfect fit. Satisfied with my compliance, the valet started to drive my car-horse-cart away.

  “Make sure my horse gets plenty of water,” I joked as he disappeared.

  “Enjoy the meta.duel, sir,” he called back.

  Equipped with a suitable appearance, I followed a pair of armored swordsmen into the Tower’s white marbled foyer. In the center of the wide square, a towering stone fountain of the Hochmeister himself lorded over all people. Standing twenty-five feet tall, the gigantic statue held a broadsword. Its other hand held aloft a long staff topped with a diamond that rained multi-colored water into a gem-encrusted basin.

  At least two dozen people, some real-bodied like myself and others that v-casted into the Tower, all walked throughout the foyer, conversing and laughing at their private jokes. In the shadowy southern corner, four sword-bearing castle guards and three robed prestidigitators chatted together. Their faces illuminated when one of the wizards evoked a simple fire echelon. It was a parlor trick, a simple program from an amateur used to impress other novices. Another group of people along the northern wall huddled close to a tall man in green robes. They spoke in hushed, conspiratorial voices, passing small pouches to each other. I pegged the tall man as an Ick dealer selling drugs to hackers looking for a fix.