***
Elsa surveyed Roman’s techno-commune from the edge of camp, where the woods gave way to the clearing. “A pretty quiet lot, huh?”
Roman had to admit, it looked like Mardi Gras had broken out at Daytona village.
“Let me guess, fans of Burning Man?”
Roman sighed, rubbed his eyes in hope the image would just go away. “You could say that. Most of the group just got back from the desert. This is their way of keeping the party going.”
The human-piloted fire-breathing dragon, about the size of three buses strung end to end, was having a go at the robot-scorpion, also human piloted, and about the same size. The scorpion’s tail came down hard on the all-metal dragon, knifing it like a can opener. Neither pilot seemed particularly concerned about the humans dancing and singing drunkenly on the backs of the dragon and the scorpion, treating them rather like Mardi Gras floats. It was a miracle no one had gotten killed yet. But the biohackers’ upgrades were holding strong, even if they weren’t, forcing them out of the way before the fire burnt them alive or the scorpion sliced someone in half, either with the pincers at the end of its tail or its claws.
A giant robot crab, a giant robot spider, a couple Godzilla-like prehistoric robots, each the size of a mini-mart, were being human-piloted, and were also determined to do one another in. It was impossible to hear yourself think over the clashing metal. Contradictory smells of sandalwood and myrrh saturated the air, which he associated with mellowing out to candlelight in his yurt. And for all the fiery dragon-snorts, the cool air nipped.
The robo-wars mayhem was going on around campers and their tipis, many of whom were sprawled on lawn chair plastic-mesh loungers staring up at the night stars, or possibly rooting for their favorite glorified fork-lift suit in the shape of one or another creature. Some were actually sitting straight-backed, legs crossed in front of them, fingers touching on their knees, eyes closed, meditating and chanting as if all nine rungs of Dante’s hell hadn’t chosen to release all its captives at once.
Roman had no idea how the clueless campers hadn’t gotten mashed to death yet. So far, all anyone had had to do was slide an ice chest full of brewskis out of the way of a monster bot’s foot. Or blindly duck as a dragon’s tail came whipping their way. Or possibly jump the tail like they were skipping rope. Some tipi and chair arrangements scuttled out of the way, like Daytona’s own version of land crabs, on a wooden deck on rollers that apparently were AI-enabled, or simply sensed the presence of metal, which they took as their cue to move, no higher brain function implied. Survival, in any case, was clearly being handled mindlessly by sixth, seventh, and eighth senses like Spiderman’s “spidey sense” while the higher brain functions of the techno-endowed citizenry were out to lunch, if not outright fried on acid, peyote, mushrooms, or some other mind-altering substance.
Roman pulled Elsa away from the commotion towards the barn the size of a small opera house. Lightning flashes were coming from inside. And while things were decidedly quieter away from the “circle of iron champions” there was no shortage of explosions coming from inside the barn.
Neil grabbed Roman by the arm. In the fading sunset overhead, he had found it easy enough to sneak up on them. “This is bad, man, this is really really bad.”
Neil had long-hair and an androgynous, pretty-boy look to go with his lithe figure. He talked with his hands, which didn’t exactly help butch him up any. He was probably the one person on earth that could sleep with either sex, no matter what end of the sexual-persuasion spectrum they were on, with no one complaining. He was kind of the tribe’s shaman. Even if that was a little on the nose.
He wore a stylish visor over his eyes not too unlike the one worn by Cyclops in X-Men. In Neil’s case, however, the whole point was to have mindchips that could be peeled off easily and systems checked rather than running faultily in his mind, well away from immediate access. The quick-removal feature suited his customarily high level of paranoia. The shades had to be peeled off gingerly, by pulling back on the arm bands as they connected via needles to his nervous system.
“Settle down, Neil. They’re just decompressing after Burning Man.”
“No, man. I’m talking about what’s going on in the barn. One of our kind has gone rogue. Declared war on the One-Sixty.”
Roman’s eyebrows tented. “The One-Sixty?”
“The one-hundred sixty oligarchs, multi-billionaires that pull all the strings in this country,” Elsa explained. “They own every politician down both sides of the aisle in Congress, the Senate, the Judiciary, the Presidency, the lobbyists who lobby them, anyone anywhere who matters from the FBI, to the CIA to your local law enforcement. Not everyone, mind you, just the people who matter.”
“Ah, what she said,” Neil said, pointing to Elsa. “Dude, we’ve got a biohacker taking them on and taking them out. And get this, he’s doing it with his own HD photography team in tow. The whole thing is going out to the world in simulcast, on TV, the internet. Though with the slick editing, I’m guessing it’s not going out live. Probably needs to get out of the way of those SWAT teams buzzing around him like gnats first.”
“Your friend’s right,” Elsa said. “If this guy is any good, biohackers are going to take all kinds of heat for this. Everyone will be under the gun, likely dragged in, tortured, disappeared, thrown into some maximum security prison hell, or worse.”
Roman gave her an incredulous look. “This coming from a woman who can barely remember her name and has amnesia on the brain.”
“A retard working the counter at MacDonald’s can tell you how the world works. What planet have you been on?” She groaned. “Let me guess, idealist?”
“Let me guess, cynic?” Roman glowered back at her.
“As the camp’s resident paranoid,” Neil interjected, “I’d just like to say I applaud you dating a cynic, Roman. Shows signs of growing maturity.”
“No, she isn’t… never mind.”
“I have no trouble ignoring your dubious and in any case irrelevant love life,” Neil said flatly. He was smacking himself in the eye and swatting his face unwittingly with his excited gesturing. “Let me lay it out for you what it is I can’t ignore. After they capture public enemy number two, they’re going to come after public enemy number one. And they won’t care how many biohackers they have to chew through to get to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Mr. ‘I had to be first with a neuronet.’ You think they’re going to let someone run around free with that kind of unchecked mind power? Especially after seeing what public enemy number two can do.”
“Oh, no, you’re not drawing me into your paranoid delusions.” Roman gently pushed Neil back with one hand as if afraid what Neil had was catching. “Nor is anyone dragging me into any actual or impending war.”
Neil turned to face Elsa. “Please explain the facts of life to your idealistic boyfriend who thinks there’s no problem a love-in and a circle jerk can’t solve. Though tell him if he’s going with braindead for a defense, that’s not particularly bad, considering the track record of these neuronets. I need to get back to that movie to feed my sense of reality.”
Roman grabbed his arm. “Not before you tell me where Hatter is.”
“Where he always is, doing surgery on someone. The guy’s a serious workaholic. If I were you, I wouldn’t try to cure him of it. If I’m right, and I’m never wrong, you’re going to need an army.”
Neil curtsied to Elsa, “You smell nice, by the way. Love the hint of mint mixed with sea bass.” Then he rushed back to the barn with his infrared vision turned on, jumping over obstacles unassisted eyes could not catch.
Roman pivoted toward Elsa. “You can come with me to Hatter if you like, or…”
“I’ll check out the movie. Hippie-dippy escapist happiness really isn’t my style,” she said, glancing back at the glow-in-the-dark fighting robots. Their pilots’ cabins were now lit and their robot bodies spotlit by exterior light attachments for the show against
the now dead of night that twilight had quickly succumbed to.
“Cool. Tag you later.” He kissed her on the cheek and sped off in the direction of Hatter, leaving her to hold her annoyed expression for no one’s benefit.
***
“Hatter! Thank God.” Roman noticed Hatter was too absorbed in surgery to acknowledge him. It was going on in the animal barn. Horses on one side, cows on another, droppings from both parties everywhere. The smell of manure was so ripe, various seedlings had taken it as their cue to germinate. Alfalfa sprouts were shooting out of cow patties. That his bare feet had so far not stepped in any of the piles of dung was a small miracle; maybe dung-avoidance was a neuronet perk of which he was unaware.
Hatter permitted the horse nuzzling his lab-coat pocket for treats to steal away with an apple.
He stood up from his patient, his victim’s eye hanging out of its socket, even as Hatter examined the bionic eye replacement in one hand, and ate a peeled banana with the other hand. The banana retrieved from the wine casket full of them he kept for the cows. When several of the bovines acted up, awaiting their turn, he threw them some bananas to quiet them down.
“Hatter, I have to talk to you.”
“Yeah, no problem, man. I should tell you I’m approaching my limit with multi-tasking, though, between doing eye surgery, streaming the movie showing in the barn, and feeding and watering the animals. And oh, yeah, arguing with Plato’s avatar about where he went wrong with The Republic.”
Roman looked at the dangling eye and grimaced. “Why not just fit him with an AI-inside contact lens that can do most everything the bionic eye will do?”
Hatter shot him a hang-jawed expression. Big gestures. “I realize my operating theater may seem a little low rent to you, but I don’t skimp where it counts. No contact lens can compare to the volume of computing space allowed by a hollowed out eye. Don’t even get me going on the other upsides. I think I’ll just have my patient show you after the surgery.”
“Yeah, whatever. It’s kind of off point in any case. My neuronet went live today.”
“No shit?” Hatter was busy snipping the nerves and blood vessels on the existing eye and reattaching them to the bionic eye. The biological eye fell to the ground. When the horse couldn’t reach it, he let out a frustrated neigh and kicked it over to the cow, who accepted it greedily, thinking it must be sweet like the bananas since only treats came from Hatter.
“Hey, buddy, you think you can let the doc work here sans distractions? This is my eye we’re talking about.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Hatter and Roman said in tandem. Hatter stuffed a ball gag in his patient’s mouth. “Amazing how a kinky sex life feeds into my surgical fetishes. The synergies are simply stunning.”
“I touched this girl’s arm, and instantly I could see how she was wired, all her tech upgrades, schematics, logistics, everything.”
“How?” Hatter asked, his eyes once again on his patient.
“It was like some kind of psychic hit. I just saw it, like a my-third-eye-opening-on-cue kind of thing.”
“Doubtful. More likely you scanned the internet, hacked away at whatever storehouses held the information you needed that an entire army of Chinese hackers couldn’t hack their way into. But it happened so fast, all you saw was the output. With time, I imagine the neuronet will get the rest of your neurons up to speed enough for you to do more than see the answer in some kind of ‘psychic’ flash as you say.”
Roman grimaced and scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. God, I really have been hanging around these hippies too long.”
“If that’s true, I’m afraid you’re going to want to heed Neil’s advice.”
Roman frowned. His expression was wasted on the back of Hatter’s head. “You were listening in on our conversation?”
“I’m listening in to every conversation taking place in camp. Best way to recommend the right upgrades is to know my customers. And to do that, I have to really know them. Play fly on the wall every waking moment of their lives until I know their innermost hearts’ desires more than they do.”
“Yeah, whatever. I’m not even going to ask how it is you can do that.”
Hatter dabbed the eye socket with gauze as he kept his eyes on his handiwork in progress. “We have microsatellites in locked orbit over us, cell towers disguised as trees, low-flying camera-enabled drones, flying cameras with mikes in the shape of dragonflies and mosquitoes, and that’s just the stuff I don’t mind telling you about. The real trick is processing all that information in real time. For that you’ll need me to give you a mindchip, and some of my proprietary self-evolving algorithms.”
“Yeah, I’ll pass on any more brain surgery right now, thank you.”
“Nah, the chip goes in your forearm, connects up to the brain within a couple of weeks, comes up to speed in another few.”
Roman groaned. He squeezed the banana in his hand he didn’t even remember picking up until it was mush. “We’re getting off topic again.” The yucky sensation in his hand cued him to drop the banana.
“Sorry, man,” Hatter said, continuing his surgery on the eye and resuming his conversation with Roman as if he were just another voice in the back of his head, “this much multiprocessing tends to turn me into a bit of a divergent thinker. More primitive minds would be tempted to call it ADHD.”
“Ah, so this chick I’m dating…” Roman continued, ignoring him.
“She doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“Potáto, potâto. Wait, you were listening to us on the beach too?”
“I told you I wasn’t going to let you out of my sight. You’re kind of my responsibility. That mole on your girlfriend’s cheek isn’t a mole, it’s a ladybug audiovisual camera.”
“Arrr.” Roman pressed his hands against both temples, and paced, before taking to scratching his day-old stubble. “Anyway, look it’s like this. She’s some kind of master criminal. Heads up her own private Chinese pirate fleet, which granted is missing a couple of ships. They went down with the container ship they were robbing when she was last seen on the Pacific, prior to washing ashore. And trust me, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
It was the first time Hatter had looked away from his surgery in a long while. “So you lied to her? She doesn’t have amnesia. You wiped her mind, to protect her from incriminating herself if anyone went to work on her, and to give her a fresh start on life?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Dude, that’s some serious third, even fourth-year-of-marriage shit. Never have I seen those kinds of Machiavellian moves on a first date.”
The momentum of Roman’s pacing and nervous back-of-neck scratching had picked up. “Yeah, yeah, I’m going to rot in hell, I know, the thing is, is she going to forgive me?”
“Dude, not only am I not a marriage counselor, I’m going to sell this information to her the first chance I get to pay for my surgeries. Or have you not noticed that I only live for one thing?”
“You wouldn’t do that to me?”
Hatter stared him down. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t. Only because if what they say about that neuronet is true, even if it hasn’t come to pass yet, I’m not up for playing mental chess with a mastermind. You clearly are though, which is why I suggest you give her back her memories. You’re a good, apprentice mastermind, she’s an evil, experienced one. Opposites attract. You don’t know it yet, but you just blew your best in with her.”
“I suppose that’s sound advice,” Roman said, his eyes going to the floor briefly. “I’ll just wait until the time is right. Maybe by then I’ll be smart enough to figure out how to keep this news from blowing up in my face.”
Roman stopped his pacing and squeezed Hatter’s shoulder. “Thanks, Hatter, you’re a real friend for someone I barely know and who is clearly a mad scientist.”
“Speaking as your friend, man, I suggest you catch the rest of that movie. I’m afraid you have more bad news headi
ng your way than realizing your girlfriend is going to slit your carotid artery the moment you come clean.”
“I was foreseeing a better outcome for the two of us, thank you very much.”
“Ever the idealist.”
***
Roman slipped into the theater. The barn had stacks of hay for seating on the ground level and “balcony seating” up in the loft. Each row back from the stage in the orchestra section had one more bale of hay stacked up so no one’s head would block the view. The screen was as large as in any movie house. The place was only half full. Apparently, even end-of-an-era news was no reason to interrupt the partying going on outside and the accompanying robo-monster-mash for the majority of revelers.
The barn’s cloistered interiors reeked of pot smoke and moldy undergarments. Washing machines came at a premium up here, and Oregon’s damp air was a hotbed for mold. And his people weren’t the most hygiene-conscious on a good day.
Searching for a seat, Roman found himself an unoccupied hay bale in the orchestra section. A bed of nails would have been more comfortable, as it would have distributed his weight more evenly. As for his unimpeded view of the movie screen…
That was a problem.
Because there was no sheltering him from the truth.
The rogue biohacker tearing through America’s oligarchy was none other than his best friend. His stomach suddenly felt queasy. “Ethan?” He spoke the word like someone had knifed him in the belly. He thought he’d just whispered it. But the entire audience lit up with, “Duh!”
Ethan’s face was off-camera, of course. But no one could mistake his handiwork. Biohackers all left very unique signatures wherever they went; they couldn’t help themselves. The tech, after all, was an extension of who they were.
Biohackers: Cybernetic Agents Page 3
