by Jace Kang
“Then we could phase out istrium,” another human said, “and all the conflicts associated with it.”
Why were the female’s lips quirking into a smile? And just what were they talking about that could solve the galaxy’s energy problems? Istrium wasn’t exactly rare, but large, concentrated amounts would fry the circuits of anything electrical that got too close. If whatever Ryusuke had could replace it…
Aya switched camera angles, but couldn’t see if there was anything other than Ryusuke’s robes on the table. Surely those weren’t what they were talking about. Unless the threads contained some previously unknown power source?
But no, her earlier research had revealed that the robes were made of one hundred percent hemp.
Oh, for a better view!
Sadly, the one camera with an overhead view of the table, which the distant scientists were likely using at the moment, had a Level Six Sentinel guarding it. Though her Avatar was also rated at Level Six, it might see through her Shell if she tried to hack it. Not worth the risk.
She darted from the surveillance partition across a wireless bridge to the CPU for the multipurpose cleaning droid in the room. Its EtherSpace resembled a little fishing village of clustered huts. With its simplistic AI, she slipped past its Level One Sentinel with ease. Unlike the vast Peacekeeper EtherSpace, its control and surveillance centers were located in adjacent huts.
A few swipes of her hands locked out its central Animator AI, and she took control of its sensors and functions.
Aya shifted her perception to the droid’s visual and audio receptors, using a filter to translate their data into sights and sounds. The first time she’d ever done this, the three-hundred-sixty-degree spherical vision had been disorienting; but having practiced several hundred times in simulations since then, her mind was now used to it.
“This has been helpful,” one of the holographic scientists said.
The lead Peacekeeper was leaning over the table, but Aya’s line of sight was still blocked by the Elestrae delegation.
Following her commands, the droid trundled closer to the crowd, sweeping the floor as it went. The new position gave her a better view.
“Hey!” A janitor hurried over and stepped in her path. From her black hair and yellowish skin tone, she was Purebred, like Kentaro, and perhaps thirty years of age. “This is my zone right now.”
Had the Peacekeeper administration totally ignored the fact that a Purebred had helped Ryu escape? If Aya had been running the show, she would’ve barred them from every area at security level two and up, and let droids do the job.
As she pushed the droid past the Purebred, Aya scanned her ID badge. The woman just stared back and muttered. Aya now had a good view of the table.
Just as the Peacekeeper was shutting a durastrium briefcase. The table was now cleared.
“May we take one of the green ones?” the female Elestrae asked.
The holographic scientist tilted his head. “My apologies. We are not allowing them to leave the premises. However, our research team would like to meet you in the twelfth-floor chemistry lab with the items.”
Dammit, was Aya too late?
“Very well,” the female Elestrae said.
Dammit. Until Aya improved her skills, the cameras and droids on the twelfth level were beyond her ability to hack from the outside of the building. She needed to act now, and somehow acquire the case.
The overhead camera might be too well guarded, but not the holoprojectors. But what she was about to do would change security protocols for the future…
Her consciousness crossed from the cleaning droid to the surveillance partition of the Peacekeeper’s EtherSpace. “Ai, block Subject One’s holoprojector and monitors, and cast his image from holoprojector three under my control. Replicate his voice.”
Done, Ai said.
“Leave the robe,” Aya said.
The lead Peacekeeper stared at the hologram. “What? Why?”
Why, indeed. “I just want to discuss the situation.”
“But the robe’s interdimensional space…”
Interdimensional space? “That’s an order.”
“Yes, Director.” With a confused look, the Peacekeeper opened the case, removed the folded-up robe, and returned it to the table.
“I will see you soon,” Aya said through the hologram.
The group filed out of the lab and headed toward a bank of maglifts.
There wasn’t much time. Despite Ai’s efforts, the monitor’s security level was high enough that the real director had probably heard the exchange, and might’ve even seen part of it through the overhead camera. Hearing his own voice, he’d know the system had been hacked. Now there was no time for subtlety.
Shutting down all but the overhead camera, she transferred back to the cleaning droid. Its three-prong hands were hard to use, but she picked up the robe and trundled to another cleaning droid. Along the way, she compiled a subroutine to automate the one she was in.
Then, she crossed into the second droid’s CPU and opened its internal trash bin. As she’d programmed, the first droid placed the robe inside, then went on its way.
Alarms were now blaring, indicating a lockdown on level two and up. The cameras would’ve turned back on, and she’d be barred from most of the EtherSpace by higher level Sentinels.
She created a new subroutine for her current droid, sending it to the garbage chute; then she crossed back into the Peacekeepers’ main EtherSpace. Donning a Level Six Courier AI Shell, she fled the castle town.
From there, she jumped to the waste processing facility in the adjacent building. With the actual building connected to Peacekeeper Central, this relatively unsecured area received refuse from the surrounding skyscrapers. To her SI, it appeared as a small town with low-level Operators maintaining the machinery. A single Level One Sentinel patrolled. Even her Level Zero combat codes could give it a run for its credits.
Still, she used a Level Two Cloak, which allowed her to slip by unseen. Thus hidden, she jumped from droid to droid, installing a subroutine that would make Ryu’s robes invisible to them.
Aya jacked out and returned to the real world.
Besides the usual mental sluggishness, her chest was tight.
And not from the phlegm.
No, this was an entirely different sensation, one that was combined with a racing heart and trembling hands. She didn’t suffer from these mortal frailties in the EtherCloud, and it had been months, maybe even years, since she’d felt them. Her racing thoughts, so accustomed to being connected to the perceptual stream of the EtherCloud, felt disjointed in real time.
Taking a deep breath, or at least as much of a deep breath as her lungs would allow, she rose from her cushioned chair. Her legs wobbled, atrophied from sitting most of her life, which added to the disorientation of returning to real time.
Her home’s surveillance equipment was child’s play to hack via the wireless connection to the quantum computer in her brain, without her consciousness even having to transfer to the EtherCloud.
With a few thoughts, she used her room’s projectors to create an image of herself jacked in, programmed with basic algorithms to respond to her parents’ terse greetings. Then she made herself invisible to the cameras.
She retrieved a portable holoprojector, a signal jammer, and EtherCloud bridge; all three black cubes fit in the palm of her hand. Satisfied, she left her room and crept out into her family living area. No one was around. That was no surprise for this time of day, especially because of the Peacekeeper emergency. She went to her sister’s bedroom and into her closet.
Her own wardrobe consisted of comfortable casual wear for the home. In contrast, her sister had all of the latest fashions hanging from the rows of racks, above shelves of jewelry, shoes, and other accessories.
Aya pushed past those and chose one of the Peacekeeper tactical uniforms. Form-fitting on her sister, it was a little loose at first until the nanocircuitry adjusted. While her own clothes were relaxed, the uni
form made her feel almost naked. The helmet, which her sister usually eschewed, covered her short hair. The interface connected to the jack in her skull, but for now, she activated her brain’s virtual buffer to prevent linking with the helmet’s tactical functions and Peacekeeper Central.
Activating the projectors, she viewed her image. She looked like any other Peacekeeper from the elite tactical units. There was risk to both her and her sister if she stole her identity, so it was time for some more hacking.
“Ai, create a tactical Peacekeeper identity for me.” Aya lowered her buffer, which opened the connection to Peacekeeper Headquarters. As Peacekeeper equipment, it would bypass the lockdown. The high-level Sentinels which she couldn’t trick on her own would ignore her for about a thousandth of a second—long enough to add the forged identity to the HR database and erase the log of her visit. She reestablished the buffer to go invisible on Peacekeeper monitors.
Satisfied, she cleared out her lungs, took a deep breath, and left her home for the first time in years.
The building’s hallways were empty, and she took the maglift down the sixty floors to ground level. The rapid descent felt strange to her real body, even though the tactical suit’s inertial dampeners moderated the sensation.
When the maglift doors opened, she took another deep breath and stepped into the vaulting atrium, whose transparent walls allowed the natural light of dusk in. A handful of people were walking through, the dampeners in their footwear making their steps nearly silent on the slate-grey floor. No one paid her any mind beyond a respectful nod.
She crossed the atrium, went through the double doors, and breathed real air for the first time in a long while. The suit didn’t have a water ionizer—hopefully the updated model would bypass the functional conflicts—so she activated a portable one to disperse the rain in a bubble around her. It left her dry as she hurried toward Kyoto Central’s garbage area.
As she got closer, where Peacekeepers would see her, she activated her fake identity and lowered the buffer. The helmet again interfaced with the Peacekeeper Headquarters’ EtherSpace, and would make her appear on their maps.
She turned into an alley that ran behind Peacekeeper Headquarters. Buzzes and whirs grew louder as she approached the waste processing building she’d virtually visited just moments before.
In an open alcove, refuse tumbled down chutes and landed in piles. Droids trundled through the trash, picking up specific items with their pincer arms and putting them in their bodies for reprocessing into reusable base components. One, currently at full capacity, rolled to the entrance and shat out cubes of differing colors and textures. A Purebred sorted and stacked them, though he paused to glance at her before returning to his job.
She scanned the tops of the piles closest to Peacekeeper Headquarters. It wasn’t long before she spotted Ryu’s robes atop a mountain of trash. She hurried toward it.
“Where are you going?” the Purebred yelled.
She ignored him, like all XHumans ignored Purebreds. He might be a witness, but nobody would bother to question him when they could review the logs from the droids.
Using her mobile EtherCloud bridge, she hacked back into the building’s EtherSpace. In a millionth of a second, she shut down the garbage chute so she wouldn’t get hit with trash, and then jacked out. On all fours, she climbed up to the robes. With muscles poorly developed from extended time into the EtherCloud, her arms and legs burned, even with the tactical suit’s strength enhancers. It took a few tugs to free the robes from a broken chair, and she nearly fell backward off the pile.
Rolling them into a ball, she eased her way down. This was the most physical activity she’d probably ever done at one time, and she might be exhausted for days. She turned, and nearly ran into the Purebred.
“Do you need help?” he asked.
“No. Thank you.”
“What is that?” His eyes looked like those of the virtual puppy her parents had let her raise as a child.
She was dressed as a Peacekeeper, necessitating a Peacekeeper answer. “Evidence.”
His eyes searched hers, or rather they would have done if not for her visor. With a nod, he went back to his work.
Shielding the robes from the cameras, she folded them up and tucked them under her arm. Then, she headed to Kujo Ward.
Chapter 10:
The Purebred
K en’s back hurt from trying to walk with his spine straight, but he did so without question as he led Master Ryu towards the Kujo Ward in streets that were abnormally dark. Perhaps Bodhi had hacked the street lights to keep them hidden from anyone happening to look out a window?
“What can you tell me about Captain Keiko?” Master Ryu asked as he took in the area.
An uncomfortable feeling tangled in Ken’s gut. “She’s kind.” And beautiful. The way she threw her hair over her shoulder…
The master paused and looked at him. “Just kind? What are you not telling me?”
Ken scuffed his foot in a circle on the pavement. “Well, most of the XHumans don’t even see Purebreds. We’re like furniture. But she knows my name.”
Master Ryu studied him. “I see.” He resumed his stride.
If the master took a fancy to Captain Keiko, Ken would never have a chance with her. Not that he really would’ve had a chance with her whether the master had come into his life or not.
They arrived in Kujo without issues, and despite Ken’s embarrassment at how old and squat everything in the district was, the master didn’t seem to mind.
“It’s the best-looking slum I ever remember seeing,” he’d said. “By the standards of my youth, this would be considered upscale.”
How times had changed. Thankfully, Master Ryu had asked to visit a place with trees instead of going to Ken’s home.
He took the master to South Karasuma Park, under the canopy of an ancient cedar tree. The rain had stopped, leaving the air misty.
“Now, practice the stance I showed you at Peacekeeper Headquarters.”
With a nod, Ken tucked his tailbone forward and bent his knees slightly. He extended his arms out, though he left a curve in his arms as before. Within minutes, his body ached.
Master Ryu adjusted Ken’s stance again, pressing on his stomach and pushing on his butt. “Straighter! Our spine naturally curves in at the neck, out in the upper to mid back, then in again at the lower back.”
So why were they going against nature? Arms about to sag, Ken redoubled his efforts.
“Why, you are wondering.” Ryu circled. “Because our natural posture is lazy and causes the weakening of some muscles while strengthening others. You end up imbalanced. You’re young, so you can compensate for that, but after thirty years, it will be harder and harder to rectify. Go ahead, ask your next question.”
“So Cultivation is about strengthening muscles?”
“Basically, yes.” The master drew a line from Ken’s forehead down to below his naval. “But you are also opening your Governing and Conception vessels, and allowing Qi to gather and flow. Now, we need to do something about your Fire.”
Fire? There’d been mention of that before. “What does that mean?”
Master Ryu tapped his chin. “We all have five aspects to our body: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. For you, Fire is predominant. You’re creative and motivated. You’re fidgety and restless. I would guess you sleep restlessly and have wild dreams.”
Wow, that was an accurate description. Ken could only nod.
“This is your first step on your path to Cultivating,” the master said. “Without Wood to nourish your Fire and Water to constrain it, you will burn out. This exercise, which the ancient Chinese called Zhan Zhuang, fortifies both Wood and Water. As you grip your feet into the Earth, you root like a tree. As you hold your arms at a gentle angle, you let fluids pool, ready for you to move.”
For someone interested in science and engineering, this sounded bizarre. Still, the master had done things that had defied scientific explanation.
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br /> “Remove your ear dot for a moment, and don’t touch it,” Master Ryu said.
How was Ken supposed to understand? Still, he removed the translator from his ear and set it on the ground by his foot.
Master Ryu circled again, making small adjustments to Ken’s posture. Then he set his palm on Ken’s chest and took a deep breath.
A warm sensation emanated from Ryu’s palm and flooded through Ken. His legs buckled, and his arms went limp. Then he collapsed.
Head spinning, he looked up. “What was that?”
The master spoke again, but this time, his words came out as gibberish.
Ken reattached the translator. “Can you say that again?”
“What I just did is similar to what I did to the Peacekeepers back at the police station.”
Police station? Ken cocked his head.
“Bodhi said you needed an electrical field to short out your identity chip. I just sent a surge of Qi through your surprisingly clean meridians, which should do that.”
Bodhi. Mention of the mysterious hologram was more disconcerting than the fact that having no identity nanochip would mean he couldn’t acquire anything from the stores.
Master Ryu beckoned him back to his feet. “Focus! You’re letting your thoughts wander.”
Ken’s arms and legs felt like uranium; not in the radioactive way, but in their weight. How he wanted to lower his arms. “You emphasized this is my first step. Is it different for other people?”
“Yes. If our friend Bodhi truly has cystic fibrosis, then I will start him with Eight Brocades, specifically its Earth Path.”
Earth? “Is that how Cultivation works? Earth, Water, Wood, and Fire?”
“And Metal.” Master Ryu splayed his fingers out. “The Five Elements are just the basics, a means of understanding your body.”
Five. It was a lot, but Ken would do it. “So I have to learn five Paths to be like you.”
Master Ryu snorted. “Yes, but each Path has six levels, and you need to master the first two ranks of each Path before you have the basics for a sect to teach you how to go deeper into your main Path.”
