FIVE
Ethan waved his hand over the keypad display next to the front door of one Unser Realm. Felt the familiar tingling in his palm and digits. The scanners just under his fingertips told him what device he was working with. His mindchip, located in his forearm, went to work on the rest, pulling everything but everything about the owner off the internet, his private intranets in his various corporations and his computer inside the house, which wasn’t hooked up to any network at all, for security purposes. It hardly mattered as Ethan had already hacked the house robot inside the home, customarily providing maid service and meal prep, and had him sit at the computer to give Ethan all the remote access he needed.
It all boiled down to this: the most likely passwords to give Ethan entry into the twenty-five million dollar home. Starting with Dean C. Moore, the oligarch’s favorite author, and seventeen other likely candidates. Dean C. Moore worked. Go figure. The author had zero respect for the status quo and would have happily dispatched the resident to the dark side of the moon to serve out a life sentence for doing his best to keep the ninety-nine percent of Earth’s populace poor and in their place. Maybe the owner got off on the author’s naïveté. His tilting at windmills.
Ethan smiled as the door popped open with a satisfying click. Getting this far had been no walk in the park. There was the small matter of the guards securing the grounds to get past. But they were all chipped for easy tracking. And it was nearly as easy to lobotomize them by overriding their mindchips. They were currently staggering about the property begging for spare change. He wasn’t sure if anyone would get the joke. He could hear their squishing feet on the wet grass in the background.
As to the prolific amount of cameras about the property, they each had to be blinded. Since they were internet linked for remote viewing, Ethan chose to run his favorite porn clips instead of showing nothing but snow or a black screen.
Stepping inside the house stilled even his jaded heart. Okay, so this much money in one man’s possession wasn’t all bad. Christ almighty! Was that a Henry Moore doubling as a coffee table? One whiff told him there wasn’t an unnatural fiber in the place to offend his nose with a distinct preference for hypoallergenic-habitats. Of course, the gorilla in a cheap suit standing before him holding a gun wasn’t doing anything for the view.
Ethan held up his hands placatingly. “Hey, buddy, just looking for a job in security like you. Figured this was the best way to introduce myself.” The guy wasn’t chipped. Ethan was just waiting for him to grab his hand, twist it around his back, handcuff him, hell, punch his face, anything but shoot. The instant he had skin contact he could just shock the guy’s heart into stopping.
Instead the bastard fired the gun. No questions asked.
People, these days.
Absolutely no sense of decorum.
Ethan’s mindchip took over his spinal cord response. Having grown and extended a backup nervous system through his entire body with its miniature onboard 3D printer and its ASI to handle integration of this new nervous system with his brain, muscles, and organs, it would take a hell of a lot more than one bullet fired by one gun to slow him down.
He had plenty of time to get the gun out of the guard’s hand and send the bullet on a new trajectory, towards the other guard coming his way. A hand to the chest and a bolt of electricity caused the gorilla in his mitts to give Ethan the gun, however involuntarily, as his muscles went flaccid. He dropped like a stone, minus a heartbeat.
Having watched enough action movies to know it was just poor form to take out the other guards in the same manner as he took out the first two, he pocketed the gun in the small of his back, and went about his search for the owner of the house. The mansion’s computer, now hacked, told him Unser was on the third floor in his bedroom, watching everything going on on the first floor, while enjoying his cup of Top Ramen noodles. What was it with rich people? Live a little, pal. At least have some Playboy bombshell spoon feed you the soup.
Moving through the house, Ethan did his Remo Williams dodging bullets number repeatedly as he casually ignored his attackers, firing at him from various vantage points in the house, including the upstairs balconies. They had to redeploy themselves constantly to get a better angle on him. As it turned out, he didn’t have to dodge that many bullets despite their predilection for going through clips as if they too had watched too many action movies in their day.
Ethan’s entourage of cameras that had entered the house shortly after he did were doing rather well at providing choice angles on the action and deflecting bullets at the same time. Their hive mind AI more than sufficient to the divided attention requirements. The quadcopter cameras were big enough to draw most of the fire, but his AI entourage would not have been complete without the gnat-sized cameras invisible to the naked eye. The guards the bulletproof quadcopters didn’t take out with their ricocheting bullets, were taken out by the gnat-sized cameras burrowing into their brains through their ears to drop their “eggs” and fly out the other side. The eggs exploded shortly thereafter, leaving some headless goobers puttering about before their bodies had time to register they were dead and fall.
One quadcopter, apparently annoyed that it was taking repeated hits by a guard determined to bring it down, unfolded its own firing mechanism and lasered the guy in four, tracing a Z pattern across him. The sections took a second for friction to be overcome by gravity to slide over one another and onto the ground. The guard, still trying to process this latest development, muttered “Shit!” before the light went out in his eyes.
In an effort to keep it fresh, the cameras ceased and desisted with their protection detail, and gave their full attention to making director’s choice decisions on where best to position themselves to relay the unfolding drama.
Ethan could see in his mind’s eye, courtesy of his mindchip, that Unser, watching everything going on upstairs hadn’t shown the slightest emotional reaction. His pace with soup sipping hadn’t deviated in the least. That was one cool customer. Apparently one doesn’t get to rule the world without having remarkable composure under the most heart-stilling of circumstances.
So Ethan decided if Unser was in no hurry to see how the drama progressed, why should he be? He stopped at the kitchen to make a blender shake, something high protein and low cal. He had some finer talking points to get through with Unser and he didn’t want to forget any of them owing to a drop in blood sugar.
Besides, the break in the home invasion gave Ethan a chance to take in the eye candy inherent in his surroundings better. The two massive sunken living room salt water aquariums were set up so that the flying fish in each one were prompted to jump from one tank to the other to avoid predation. They were in the act of flying back and worth for Ethan when his attention shifted instead to the blue and yellow macaws landing on the stone balcony outside. A sight common to Caracas, Venezuela, not California, where it was too damned cold for the birds to survive. Evidently, his host, had seen to heating this section of coastline for them.
Don’t get Ethan going about the white lions and tigers lying about casting a passive eye on him and the goings on in the house. They acted as if they’d seen it all and there was nothing in the human drama which appealed to them in the least. Though a couple fallen guards, more dead than alive, provoked the mother lions and tigers into action with their moaning. They dragged the wounded sentinels back to their roosts so the cubs could practice feeding on live prey. Possibly that was explanation enough for the big cats’ ennui. They were just overfed from constant home invasions in the neighborhood. The zip code being what it was, he knew if he were a thief, where he’d go shopping.
In the middle of preparing his protein shake, Ethan found a copy of Dark Money by Jane Mayer on the kitchen counter. He held it up to one of Unser’s security cameras. “Love this thing. You might say it’s what started me on this mission.” He slammed the hard cover down on the counter. “I figured, first wipe out all the oligarchs, then go after all the politicians in governme
nt willing to let you guys buy them. Then, after they’ve been eliminated, use all their ill-gotten gains to help real people’s-choice candidates to get elected. Though I’m thinking somewhere along the line, before the last evil bastard falls, people will recognize the pattern and figure ‘corrupt bastard’ is no longer a survival strategy. What do you think?”
Unser’s disembodied laughter came over the house speakers. “All the others will go underground even before you get to me. And as to you getting to me, SWAT is on their way, the FBI, and my own private hit squad of assassins. I didn’t even have to pick up the phone.”
“Bring it on, pal, because, in case you haven’t noticed, I enjoy a challenge.” Ethan turned to a guard that had made it down from the third floor balcony, finally, evidently working on a kill strategy all this time after seeing what happened to the others. The guy, showing himself, and his gun, shaking, decided, “What the hell?” He set down the gun on the counter and took a seat on the stool. “Protein shake?” Ethan said.
“Yeah, sure. I could use something to settle my nerves.”
Ethan poured some of the blender drink for him into a glass, took a sip straight out of the blender with what was left. “Anything you want to tell me?”
“He loves to diddle little boys. Keeps the hi-def tapes over his bed in a hidden compartment.”
“I’m not really here to impugn the guy’s reputation,” Ethan explained. “Everyone in America already hates him and all the others like him. They just think he’s untouchable. That’s the mystique I mean to put an end to.”
“Well, in that case, you should probably realize that most of the security team remains proximate to him. They won’t deploy until you get closer. And they’re not all human.”
Ethan laughed. “I didn’t say the guy was boring, just that he was an evil bastard. But thanks for the heads-up. This is all going out live on the internet,” he said, waving to his camera entourage. “So if you feel you need to stay for fear of missing anything…” The guy held up his hands demonstratively and shook his head with a grimace. “Then you’ll want to get home, work on that résumé. I’ll make sure he gives you top flight references posthumously.”
“Damn white of you.” He caught himself and gave Ethan a panicked look as his face went slightly purple. “Sorry, we’re all Nazis around here. Let me guess, you’re not racist?”
“We’re all racist, pal. Just some of us are a little better at ignoring those voices in our heads than others.”
“Appreciate you not hanging me on a verbal slip. It’s more than my present boss would allow.” The guy bowed to him, holstered his gun and walked, then ran towards the front door and kept running until he was well clear of the house.
Ethan set down his blender drink with a thud and headed down the hall towards the stairs.
Say one thing for Unser, he had anticipated someone getting past his human protectors. Perhaps in the spirit of “good help is hard to find.” It was time to use his backup security system against him.
The second story guard started feeling the heat, courtesy of Ethan messing with the habitat controls. He absently wiped his forehead and stepped back towards the thermostat. Allowing Ethan to trigger one of the house’s defenses; it was a security cage through which there was no passing. Of course, for the gate to work, the metal rods had to come out from the walls on either side of the guard, effectively skewering him from head to toe. It wasn’t pretty, but it did remind Ethan of another one of Dean C. Moore’s book covers.
The guy had the decency to die slowly and painfully, thus minimizing any need for Ethan to take additional action to get another of the sentinels to abandon his position and rush toward his colleague to give aid. Before he got halfway there he ran through the laser mesh. He fell to the ground like cubed sugar, in chunks only slightly bigger. The house AI was fun, no doubt about it. Especially since being coopted into being Ethan’s coconspirator.
Ethan signaled the security measures on this floor to stand down with his mindchip, and watched the laser grid disappear and the bars retreat into the walls before proceeding further.
By the time he made it to the third floor he was encountering some of that non-human resistance that the guard in the kitchen had warned him of.
Robo attack dogs.
The kind there was no hacking without opening them up and messing with the hardware.
Drats and double drats.
The mangy mutts made a lunge for him.
Ethan thought about sacrificing some of his camera droids, but at the expense of inferior video coverage of mankind’s first real push to freedom? Perish the thought.
Then it occurred to him.
The dogs quieted themselves in mid-leap. Smelling their master. Apparently even the robo mutts relied more on sense of smell than on sight. And Ethan was adjusting the sweat glands in his armpits and his crotch to exude “eau de Unser.” The house, not being antiseptic, meant Unser had left little bits of himself about, shed skin, hair, what have you. Enough for Ethan’s finger pad and hand sensors to pick up on when making the blender drink, and when clutching the DARK MONEY book. The mindchip extrapolated from there, and his synthetic nervous system was dialoguing furiously with his natural one to procure the necessary secretions.
Ethan stepped up to the bedroom door behind which Unser was hiding. SWAT was making its presence felt outside. Their sirens pulsing better than the sax section of a warm up band at a Cheap Trick concert. Picking up the audio feedback off the perimeter cameras, Ethan reactivated the video on the outside surveillance to keep a better eye on what was going on out there.
He kicked and pounded at Unser’s door angrily and cursed. Then he pointed with an angry look on his face. The dogs got the message.
They began chewing their way through the steel reinforced door with those robo jaws. Their mission enhanced by their robo-laser-vision cutting chunks through the door, making holes for which their teeth were particularly good at widening.
Unser, viewable in Ethan’s mind’s eye, had finally set down the cup of soup, more because he was finished with it than feeling the pressure. He slid his laptop onto his lap as he worked from his bed to do some last minute accounting. Locking down any traces to his hidden offshore funds. Too little, too late, Unser, but you go ahead and feel in control. It’s what you’re good at.
The hole in the bedroom door was now big enough for Ethan to step through. So he did.
One look at him and Unser said, “Wow, I was wondering what you really looked like. Cool trick with the pixilation about your face. It’s almost like I can actually make you out, like an illustrated man with different tattooed colors about him, but that’s a lie too isn’t it?”
“Yes, the more you try to zoom in on the pixilation, the more it distorts. But let’s not talk about my cleverness, let’s talk about yours.” Ethan couldn’t control the look of contempt on his face. The dogs, their eyes to him, figured their job wasn’t done. So they tore into the real Unser with a gusto that only robo-synthetic hormones could generate.
Ethan should have foreseen this. He roared like Kong after his favorite chick-toy was ripped from his hands. He was furious with himself. He had Unser’s murder carefully choreographed. He was going to split that fat abdomen of his like a piñata with his knife, leave all the “candied” insides as a gift to the poor of the world. Instead the dogs sent chunks of Unser flying about the room, chomping off a piece and flinging it before chomping off another. “God damn it! I guess there’s no getting the theater-improv element out of these staged massacres.”
Unser barely uttered a sound. Superior Nazi mind control up to the end. Damn him. Now Ethan would have to mess with the audio for the proper effect. He hated artifice impinging on his cinéma vérité.
But right now, he had bigger problems; they went by the initials S.W.A.T.
The bastards were storming the house like cockroaches after the lights went out.
Ethan sighed. He didn’t have it in him for any more artfulness. The
ruining of his ritualized killing had taken all the fight out of him.
So he sealed the house, locking the SWAT team inside. And gassed them, using the fumigation protocol meant to eliminate unwanted insects. He adjusted the chemical admixture on the fly with the house computer’s help and a few gardener droids with access to the chemical containers in the garage feeding the gas tubes.
The choking sounds coming from downstairs were truly heartwrenching.
The SWAT team wasn’t wearing their masks. Their only recourse was to shoot their way out. But the generous window panes were bulletproof to withstand .50 caliber shells. The doors and walls, though done in the Cubist style, were no less impenetrable. Their heavier arsenal in the hands of the remaining SWAT members still outside the house would make headway, their grenades and RPGs. But by then everyone inside would be dead. And in fact, they already were.
The big cats, God bless them, had had the sense to nuzzle beneath the fallen SWAT members to minimize exposure to the gas. Even the cubs knew to emulate their parents. Possibly they were CRISPR enhanced. If so, the whole lot might well outlast the fumigation protocol. Ethan hoped so; he was a real nature lover.
He made his way up to the roof. The breeze was just invigorating enough to ease his heartache after this latest debacle in his life. The negative ions one associated by living this close to the beach were really living up to the hype.
Ethan climbed in Unser’s private helicopter. Waited for the chop-chop of the rotating blades to hypnotize him out of his self-mollification over Unser’s botched killing. Seconds later, he lifted off. Didn’t even bother making a quick getaway. Instead he swooped the helicopter down over the SWAT members still outside, blocking all exits and coordinating from their mobile headquarters. They fired on the helicopter. But Unser never spent a bad penny when it came to security. The bulletproof helicopter was unmoved by the assault upon it. The SWAT team proved less impervious to the rocket launchers attached to the bottom of the helicopter.
Biohackers: Cybernetic Agents Page 4
