by Kate Moretti
That evening, she slips through the cracks, veiled and with a silicone mask instead of her identity surrogate, and sends Seven pictures of the fountain, the jugglers, and the traffic. Then she attends the hacker conference.
She spends the evening going from board games, 3D games, and research villages to casual demos, and shopping for vendors who may have less-legal hardware modifications or cutting-edge tech that hasn’t been regulated yet.
Everything at the tables is legitimately purposed, to her disappointment. A sign at one of the booths states, “Earth regulations prohibit the sale of Class 4 technologies to those without a proper Permit. This vendor complies with all government regulations.” Nearby, several people without veils look around in suspicion. An quickly sweeps the room to listen to all the bands. Signal strengths spike from three figures surrounding one booth, and she flags those as government officials on her visual translator.
The savvier vendors conduct business on a localnet, invisible to meatspace. Their wares are better but still hardly controversial. An sighs and retreats to the cipher village for the remainder of the evening. An is careful not to send any messages from the hotel.
A small group of veiled hackers is busily sharing cache data at one table, and she scans them. They appear clean, so she sits nearby until one of them wordlessly reaches out an ungloved hand to her. She unsheaths her own hand and shakes. This isn’t merely the mirror of an ancient human custom; the touch triggers a physical proximity exchange of keys that enables her to join the share.
Once in, she dumps the data from her collections yesterday and gathers the data the others are sharing. One of them turns its head to her and sends her a message.
Seefu: “Where did you get this one?” The ID tag belongs to the corrupted data.
“I don’t remember,” An sends back. “Why?”
Seefu: “Know what this is?”
An: “Corrupted data.”
Seefu: “Wrong. Medical code.”
An: “For what?”
Seefu: “Don’t know.”
An: “Who would?”
Seefu: “Medic.”
An: “Why?”
Seefu: “Rare. Thanks for share.”
An nods back then disconnects from the share.
That’s strange, An thinks. She crypts the file and moves it to a NoSector on her PAD, then goes to a data booth in the business center. She disconnects the business center node and connects her disposable unit with a data cryptor onto the line. She quickly accesses the network to download schematics for medical data formatting from a local medNet, providing a permit key from one of the hospital executives at the MedTech conference. She puts the data through a scrubber and a sanitizer then extracts the parsing data, which she then manually transfers to her PAD.
She checks it against the cache data, and a genetic sequence drops out. Something called HEL438. The descriptive text reads, “This RNA is proprietary intellectual property registered to the Biogenetics Division of Earth Coalition. Possession or use of this information outside of the context of Biogenetics Division of Earth Coalition is punishable to the full extent of Earth law. Subject: HEL438 is an RNA sequence designed for treatment Syndrome 438 using the Meiliken process.” The words mean little to An, but she deletes the translated data, leaving the original crypted and NoSectored.
The next day, An looks at the schedule and, after consuming several technical talks, decides to tap into the television feed for a conspiracy presentation: “What EarthCorp isn’t telling you: the Transworld threat.” Normally, conspiracy talks frustrate her, and she avoids them; those that are true are nothing she can do anything about, and those that are false aren’t quite insane enough to prevent gullible people from perpetuating them. But feeling brain-fried from the other talks, she decides this sounds like it will be comedic more than frustrating.
“It’s in the water,” the presenter begins. Wearing an oldstyle Guy Fawkes mask as a veil, the presenter could be male or female, fat or thin. The identity surrogate being used is fairly high quality. “The last five years have shown an increase in cancers and mutations, fatal diseases, and crop failures.” A graph on the projector cites several studies from academic journals. “This corresponds with climate changes.” A new line is added to the graph, showing moderate correlation. “But it is caused by additives to the water table.” Another line is added to the graph, showing an exact correlation.
Photographs from a report marked Classified display on the screen. “We stole these from EarthCorp status reports. They’ve been putting additives in the water to better control populations. If you are sick, they can control you. If you don’t work, you don’t get doctors to treat it. This lets them eliminate entire classes of citizens—anyone they decide is against them.”
An rolls her eyes.
“We know you won’t believe us. So, check it for yourselves. Here’s how we did it.” The presentation goes on with instructions about how to construct an athome lab and how to test water samples for the mutagen. An files it away but largely ignores the technical detail.
That evening at the bar, she overhears some people talking about it again. When she looks, she notices that one of the conversation participants is one of those flagged as a government official. He’s pressing a naked sheep about it. “If there were a cure to the mutagen that EarthCorp were somehow lording over everyone, don’t you think it would be public with all the other documents he put up?”
“I don’t know,” Naked Sheep says. The sheep is a fat, middle-aged man with zero electronic signature. It’s possible he’s wearing silicone, but he’s fat, and it would be an absolute work of art to have a whole head mask with full articulation like that. “I heard a rumor there was a gene cure. That’s all.”
“And where did you hear that rumor?” Government asks.
“Just some people were talking about it at the villages last night,” Naked Sheep says.
“What villages?”
“The villages. You know, with the games and stuff. There were a bunch of dudes sitting around in veils, talking about sharing some kind of medical data. I heard one of them say it was a genecure sequence.”
An becomes very still as she hears this.
“I still say it’s bullshit,” Government says. “But you show me who talked about it, and I’ll believe it when I see it.”
An wants to warn the sheep but knows there’s no good way to do so without getting caught. So she finishes her drink, pays her tab, and goes to the hardware store to buy what she needs for the home lab.
Back at her hotel, she pours the second half of her morning’s bottled water into the test rig. The test works almost exactly as the talk details said it would. An feels cold trickle over her spine. If this is real, she is exposed to the mutagen. She replays the talk on her PAD. “Exposure rates suggest significant chance of developing the Syndrome after single exposure, but that approaches one hundred percent with subsequent exposure. Furthermore, they have been tainting Transworld ship water supplies, and it is likely that water supplies on other worlds now also have the mutagens. EarthCorp’s plan, according to this document, are to generate dependence on medical technology as a result of the syndrome. There is no published cure.”
An fights with the urge to scream. She wants to tell Seven about what she’s learned, but she doesn’t want to generate a red flag. Even retransmitting the talk could draw unwanted attention. Her family is drinking this. She has drunk this. Nearly everyone on this planet has. And they’re all suffering. And she has the genecure but no way to distribute it. Even then, who would believe?
An suddenly wonders whether there are any other copies of the cure. By now, Government is going to be searching for the sharers from the village. She was there, too. What about the data cache? If they find that, they may be able to find the original source of the leak.
; She sits down at her desk, takes off her hacker conference badge, and begins to tinker.
Later, An travels once more to the cache, this time, using her surrogate to pose as a security maintenance tech. She works behind the camera and quickly detaches the cache, pocketing it and disappearing into the crowd. The next day, she takes a shuttle back to the space station, and from there, she successfully returns home.
It takes Seven only three days to identify the right crew to print the genecure and distribute it. Earth nets censor the information, but outrage ripples through the outer worlds. Charities that offer free offworld transport to Syndrome sufferers are branded as global terrorists. In the outer worlds, there’s rumor that someone has created a formula to neutralize the mutagen in water and has distributed it. But, so far, it’s only a rumor.
Some time later, a new protocol circulates for a new cache in Las Vegas. Telling you where it is would be giving it away. But somewhere, there’s an old electronic ID badge with… a couple of modifications on it. And there’s information on it someone doesn’t want you to know.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Davien Thomas is a YA speculative fiction and science fiction author who dabbles occasionally in horror and poetry, but not together. Davien holds a degree in computer and information sciences, but mainly enjoys writing because technology is so important to the future of humankind that everyone should be involved in it.
THOUGHTS ON BRAVE NEW GIRLS
“I chose to contribute to Brave New Girls because fiction is such a strong inspirational force, especially when the societies in which we live do not feed our personal aspirations. I hope that, by featuring more women as role models in fiction, we can change some of our more embedded cultural norms, inspiring men to accept more women in technical fields, and inspiring more women to embrace the idea that there is no good reason their dreams need to be constrained by someone else’s cultural norms.”
Illustration for “The Data Tourist” by Christopher Godsoe
ROBOT REPAIR GIRL
by Josh Pritchett
Madison Brown looked through her father’s well-organized store room and at last found what she thought she was looking for. She picked it up and walked back to the work station where her father sat. “Is this it?”
Alan, or Al as his friends called him, examined the part. “Yeah, that’s the one.”
Al started to insert it into the robot on which he was working and then paused. “Here, you have smaller hands. You try it.”
Madison smiled back as she took the screwdriver and the relay switch from her father. Al moved so she could sit in his chair and work. “Now look down there beside the core processor,” he said. “See where those wires are disconnected?”
“Yes,” she said, looking with wonder at the robot’s insides.
“That’s where it goes.”
Working carefully, Madison connected the wires to the processor and saw a small green light come on.
“There you go,” Al said and let out a cough. “Now can you turn him on?”
Madison rolled her eyes and reached down to the robot’s lower back until she found a button. She pressed it, and the robot’s eyes lit up.
“Please stand by for updates,” it said.
“Give him a minute,” Al said.
“Dad, why do you call it ‘him’?” Madison asked.
“No real reason,” he said. “He just seemed like a male to me.”
Madison decided to accept that explanation and looked back at the robot. “All systems are functioning normally,” it said.
“Good,” Madison said.
“My master will be very appreciative,” the robot said.
“Glad we could help.” Al turned to his daughter. “How about dinner, Robot Repair Girl? You didn’t think I forgot your birthday, did you?”
Robot Repair Girl was Al’s nickname for Madison. A long-time fan of superhero comics and movies, Al couldn’t help but give Madison a nickname that made her sound heroic. Madison had liked the nickname when she was younger, but at fourteen, she found it felt like an anchor.
But she didn’t mind it as long as her father was taking her to her favorite place. Big Josh’s made the best hamburgers in town, and Madison thought they were like something from heaven. She sat in a booth across from her dad as he slowly ate his dinner. He was much older than most of her friends’ fathers. Al’s receding hair was almost totally white, and his beard gave him a Santa Claus look that had made more than one of her teachers think that he was her grandfather. Her mom had passed away from a rare cancer five years before, so it was just the two of them.
“You did real good repairing Jeff earlier,” Al said.
“Was that the robot’s name?”
He nodded.
Madison looked at him. “Was that a name his owners gave him?” she asked between bites.
“No, he is designated as 2796 over at the spaceship factory. He calls himself ‘Jeff,’ so I go along with it.”
“Why?” Madison asked.
“Just because something is made of metal doesn’t mean that it isn’t a person, and people don’t have numbers; they have names.”
Madison thought about her father’s words as she looked out the window and saw three men standing on the sidewalk, hitting something with large hammers. “Dad!” Madison said, pointing.
They were hitting a robot. Not a very large robot—the little kind that Madison had seen delivering small packages around town sometimes.
Al’s eyes went wide. He got to his feet and rushed outside without putting his coat on. “Hey!” he called out. The men didn’t seem to hear Al, but he kept calling at them. “Stop that!”
Madison followed her father to the door of Big Josh’s and watched as he crossed the street to confront the men.
“I said stop that!” Al cried.
“Back off, old man!” the one with the hammer shouted. “This piece of junk took my job!”
Madison felt a shiver of fear run through her. She wished she had not seen the men hitting the robot and pointed that out to her father. Scared, she watched Al walk up to the men, who were all bigger than he was. The men turned from the robot to her father, but she couldn’t hear what was being said. Suddenly, one of them pushed her father so hard, he fell onto the sidewalk.
“Dad!” Madison ran across the street and was nearly hit by a car. The driver honked at her, but she didn’t care as she rushed to her father’s side. Al was sitting up when Madison to got to him. “Leave him alone!” Madison looked at the man. At the sight of his angry red face, she immediately wanted to run away. It was redder and angrier than any face Madison had ever seen before. His nose was a jagged series of broken red lines that stood out in the dark night. He glared at her and at Al, his fist tightening around the hammer’s handle as if he were about to swing it down on them like a monstrous judge from another world.
“This thing took my job,” the man said in a low voice. “I lost my insurance, and my kids are sick. It’s all because of that thing!”
“Fred, let’s go,” one of the other men said. But Fred continued to stand there, glaring at Al and Madison.
“Madison, your phone,” Al rasped.
Madison reached for it and started to call the police. Fred watched for another second and then turned to his friends. “Let’s go,” he said.
They turned away and headed back down the street, away from Madison and Al.
“Help me up,” Al said.
Madison held one of his arms as Al got to his feet. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Maybe we should go to the hospital.”
But Al was already looking at the robot on the sidewalk. “Help me get her up,” he said.
“Dad,” she urged, afraid that the men would come back.
Madison didn’t care about the ro
bot. She only cared about her father. He had stopped those men from hitting the robot—wasn’t that enough?
“Madison, honey, come on!”
She helped Al lift the robot out of the snow.
Back at the shop, they laid it onto the work table. “Her processor is down, and she’s leaking hydraulic fluid,” Al said.
Madison watched her father start to work as if he were a doctor rather than a repair man. For him, the robot was not a collection of circuits and parts but a person who deserved compassion and help.
“There’s a type-two hose down that row of shelves somewhere,” he said to her. He pointed. “Run and get it for me.”
She nodded and headed down the row until she found it. The hose was three-quarters of a foot long. She came back with it and saw that her father was covered in hydraulic fluid, like a surgeon covered in blood.
“Set it here.” He gestured with his head to a spot on the bench. “Think you can bypass her primary power supply?”
“Sure,” she said. Madison knew this was a big job. The robot’s main memory and core processor ran on battery power, and there was no way to do a proper shutdown to save energy. If power was not returned to the hard drive, the robot would lose both its primary and back-up memories.
After grounding herself by attaching a wire with alligator clips to the metal table, Madison removed the damaged leads from the robot’s power pack and ran a new cable along the body to its cranium. She used a power drill to open the side of its head then plugged in the new line. This would work until Al ran a new line from its power pack to the hard drive, but for now, the robot was safe.
“Good work, honey,” Al said. “Now what can you do about that arm? It looks like the elbow joint is crushed.”
Madison looked at it and went to get the torch welder. After cutting away the damaged bits, she went out into the junkyard to find a new joint. Part of her wondered why they were doing so much for a robot no one was paying them to fix, but the rest of her didn’t care. She was glad to be working with her dad, and she would not have traded moments like these for the world.
