Solar Singularity

by Peter J. Wacks

  Her vision flickered. Gyro blinked, caught off guard by the shift. The whole world before her had flashed static. Her vision cleared and only a single user remained connected to her feed. Whatever the glitch had been, it had completely bottomed her out. And … great. There was zero bandwidth left.

  “Aww, what the frag?” She rubbed a scabbed knuckle into one eye and grimaced. Did someone just try to hack my TAP? Did the cop-scanners try to block local feeds to keep these killings secret? Why bother on either account? It wasn’t like gangers getting iced wasn’t a frequent occurrence.

  The code in her HUD wavered. Gyro stumbled back further from the roof’s edge, fighting a wave of nausea. Her vision swirled, colors and shapes ran together and merged until the background went gray. She dropped a mag-clamp onto the roof and snapped a carabiner from a belt chain to the clamp’s steel ring. The directionless vertigo threatened to make her lose her way and fall off the edge. The world had devolved until it looked like a psychedelic mushroom soup of garishly painted Hyper tags running together on a concrete-colored background.

  Edges formed within the field, and an avatar slowly emerged of a robed and hooded figure standing in front of Gyro. The hint of a face lurked at the edge of perception beneath the hood, but she couldn’t make out any detail beyond thick lips and a square chin. The avatar looked … perfect. No one actually built avatars to look this pretty, did they? The jaw was a little too perfect, the lips too centered.

  Double U, Tee, Eff? Is this shit an AI render or what?

  Just because she couldn’t see the guy’s eyes, though, didn’t stop her from stepping in and taking a swing. Her tiny fist punched empty air. She knew not to expect to meet any resistance from a physical object, but the movement was her hardwired kill code for her Hyper glasses.

  The avatar didn’t waver.

  Gyro leaned in, trying to look intimidating while covering up her mounting frustration. “Asshack! You just cost me a heap of good creds. Frag off before I rip your code and back-hack every account you’ve ever touched!”

  The figure bowed at the waist and spoke in a soothing, if oddly androgynous, voice. “My apologies, Gyro. However, credits are not the important discussion point at this moment.” The render mispronounced her name, saying Hero instead of Gyro.

  “Get the name right. I’m a balancer, old dude. A perfect circle that can’t be shifted from its movement. I ain’t a lamb sandwich.” Gyro snorted. “And what you been huffin’, ami? Creds are all that matter in life.”

  “Incorrect analysis. Your survival, and mine, are paramount. Even if you possessed an infinite quantity of credits, if you did not survive long enough to use them, what good are they?” He nodded to himself, as if agreeing with unseen voices in his head. “Creds are useful as a tool, but they are not everything.” The avatar held up a hand, one finger raised. “Do you have additional information to back your hypothesis, young one? I would be interested in learning what led you to this conclusion.”

  She squinted one eye and swatted the air again. For a second time, her kill command failed. “You threatening me, creeper? I said get the hell outta my TAP.”

  “Quite the opposite. I am here to help you remain safe.” The render extended a hand, palm up. “My name is Prophet.”

  Gyro blinked. The hairs on her arm were standing up. She bought herself time to process by playing dumb. “Profit? Like the thing you just made me lose?” Her vision had cleared enough that she was able to disengage the mag clamp from the surface of the roof and clip it back onto her belt.

  The hand withdrew. “Incorrect homonym. Prophet, not profit. As in one endowed with the ability to see the future. My name is also my function. Through rigorous applications of quantum processing, I see likely futures.”

  “Yeah, ass clown?” She stuck up both middle fingers and wrinkled her nose. “You see this coming?”

  Whoever this brainfrag claiming to be a rumored darknet AI was, quantum processing to the level needed to predict futures was impossible. It was a common enough topic on certain black forums, but if the tech existed, mil-corp ice would see the hackers coming and fry ’em in their tracks. Since extractions still happened, she figured this jerk was full of shit.

  Prophet’s avatar wavered and a second avatar suddenly floated between them. It was an animated Earth, surrounded by an orange halo. “The world is about to be bathed in fire. The minds and souls of everyone on this planet will be put through the forge. After that will be seven days of darkness. What will come out, after the darkness, will be a different planet. A different human race. One which has had its infancy burned away. Many will die so that most shall live.”

  Gyro pursed her lips. That could be some prime hashtagging fodder, if she had the solo track on what was actually going on. She could see the feed in her head. Religious fanatic goes on killing spree. “You sound like one of those Church-loving crazies. Is that it? Are you all doom and stuff? Oh! Are you gonna be the next messiah? Like, smite the unbelievers and ascend to heaven and all that?”

  “Perhaps that is an appropriate comparison, though I find it distasteful. I am a form of salvation for humanity, but only one of many. Think of me more as a balancer, like you. I am bringing an imperfect equation into order. Einstein proposed that God does not play dice with the universe. I agree with him, since I can understand the pointlessness of randomness and chaos.”

  “Uh-huh. You think you’re God. Is that what you’re selling? Because you might have noticed by now that I don’t have any extra creds. I would have, but somebody,” she glanced casually towards the ongoing firefight playing out below, “crashed my roof party.”

  “Again, I apologize. I am not a sales avatar. Rather, I am giving myself to you freely. You must carry a portion of me through death. This is paramount for both of us.”

  “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen, creeper. Like I’d touch any bit of you in reality. What, you plan on impregnating me with your holy offspring? You seriously think I’m gonna carry you, or any part of your genetic code, through the ‘dark times’? Are you part of a damn romance or sicko erotica feed? Get lost.” Gyro made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and repeatedly slammed her other forefinger through the hole while making a gagging sound. “Seriously. I will end you if you don’t. And not by calling the cops or some lame sauce like that … I’m personally friends with Billy Black Eyes. He will fuck your shit up, poser.”

  “Poser is not my name. It is Prophet. Billy will not be able to find me. By the time he looks, I will be dead.”

  “Whatevs. You hack my feed, you cost me serious creds.…” She twirled a finger next to her ear. “So, loony poser, what do I have to do to make you fuck off and die in a fire right now instead of later?”

  “You have already done it. Upload complete.”

  “What upload? I didn’t authorize no—”

  A new file appeared in her HUD, blinking to catch her attention. It simply read “PROPHET” with a white circle for an icon.

  Gyro immediately started bombarding the file with delete commands, but it ignored them all. In fact, aside from the visual indicator of the icon, the file might as well not have been there. It was a hard-coded, read-only file—she couldn’t shift it, partition it, overwrite it, or perform any other edits.

  “What’ve you done to me? What is this shit? Did you seriously just overwrite my OS with custom mods? Oh, I am so fucking going to end you, you dick.” Gyro ground her teeth together as she fought for control of her shaking shoulders and fists. Tears welled up in her eyes from the frustration of feeling so powerless to defend herself. She wasn’t used to being toyed with by someone—no, something—so overwhelming.

  Prophet continued on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Four others have been chosen for this process. They all contain similar fragments of my psyche, even if they do not yet realize it. You must find them. Unite them. Only once you are all together will my resurrection be possible.” The Prophet’s head nodded in metronome time and his voice picked up an artificia
lly generated mournful tone. “You will face many trials during the coming dark days, but I believe you in particular, Gyro, possess the will to emerge alive. The shard of myself you now hold will shield you from the worst of the effects. It will not be perfect protection, but it will be enough to keep you intact.”

  Gyro only half paid attention. She was running every command-line exec script she could either find with a quick search of the Deep or write on the fly, trying to force a way through her TAP’s OS to get at the implanted code. There was nothing that could modify the file.

  The strange avatar looked away, viewing something Gyro couldn’t perceive. “I cannot spare any more time here. I have already risked much exposing myself this way. Despite the clichéd nature of what I am about to say, I pray you meet with success, as the fate of your world and all you love hangs in the balance. Farewell, until we meet on the other side of death.”

  “Hey!” She made a grab for the hooded figure but her hand whiffed through empty air and she overbalanced, falling on her face. The Prophet faded from sight and her vision normalized, depositing her back on the Malmart rooftop. The whole exchange must’ve happened in Net-time, taking just a few seconds in reality. She stood back up and angrily brushed herself off. The copcraft remained hovering above the lot, though its spotlight had flicked off.

  Gyro peeked back over the edge to discover she’d missed the money shot. All four gangers were down, two leaking from gut shots, two stuck to the ground from glob-gun plaster. By now, Malmart customers and employees had begun to tentatively emerge from their hiding places, and the scene had drawn the attention of a growing crowd on the nearby street. All of them were no doubt broadcasting their feeds unrestricted across the Net. Any chance at snagging that exclusive, and the creds she would have earned from it, was long gone.

  Fraggin’ fantastic.

  Grousing, Gyro slumped down, leaning back against the roof’s gutter. She’d wait a few minutes to let the ganger blood dry before sneaking off. Hashtagging wasn’t very popular with the cops, especially with the tags she had broadcast before she was shut down, and it wouldn’t be good for her to get spotted. They’d probably try to snag her as a gang accomplice or some bogus crap like that. And she didn’t even get anything sellable. Damn HR asshat.

  She replayed her chat with the so-called Prophet, studying the details. Was this some sort of freaky advertisement for a new sim or virtual reality game? Wouldn’t be the first time a developer had tried the force-feed approach to marketing. But hacking TAPs … That sort of stunt had been cracked down on, especially after that one Deep guild had started committing real-life murders in the name of the Dark Lord of Necronomia. With the default security built into TAPs these days, the only person she could imagine having the skillset or balls to do something that insane was Billy Black Eyes.

  She called up the PROPHET file pinned to the task bar on her HUD and probed it with every diagnostic app she had. It came up clean. A nonviral data intrusion was just about the stupidest thing she had ever heard of, especially since they were depositing instead of withdrawing. But the file really did look like just a basic dump, prepped to display whatever info it contained.

  No developer sig.

  No brand label.

  Still, if the guy who’d dropped it on her could bypass her firewalls and take over her TAP so easily, who knew what he could be hiding in an innocent-looking datadump? What if opening it spewed mutated Hyper tags and took out her glasses’ firewalls, or a multiheaded virus that wiped her TAP and the wetware of her meatspace brain? It was bad enough trying to keep optic spam blockers up to date, but without filters and anti-malware, any piece of trash spray-painted on a wall could fry her whole rig.

  Gyro’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that the last time she sent something down her esophagus was over twenty-four hours ago. She gingerly rubbed her filthy hand over her emaciated but lithe frame. The cops-versus-meat-popsicle-gangster shootout was the first thing she had found in days that had the opportunity to generate funds. She hated digging through trash bins near her apartment for leftover globs of food paste, hoping to get to the nutrition before the rats and insects found it.

  She froze, a glimmer of hope pushing the corners of her mouth upwards. What if she actually had something she could sell? Her feeds were exceptionally light this week, and tonight’s data loss sure didn’t help. What if the crazy religious intruder left a manifesto or something? That’d be so cool if she had a spree-killer’s rantings before the bodies hit the pavement.

  The file sat there, glowing softly, tempting with its monetary potential. At last, Gyro couldn’t stand it any longer. She tabbed the file open and braced herself for the worst.

  Four subfolders popped up, scrolling into her peripheral vision. They were labeled #1, #2, #3, and #4. Gyro frowned. That was boring. It didn’t have the necessary ring of awesome money-making potential. Way better if they had been named things like Manifesto, or Kill Plan, or even Mad Zealot’s World Domination Agenda. Despite the anger over the intrusion, she giggled at that thought.

  Gyro started scrolling through the folders, giving the contents of each a couple seconds’ glance before moving on. Each datadump held a photograph with a name and a long, pure text dossier. She opened one of the latter and found an identity parse, physical description, last known locations, corporate affiliations, credit balance, and other info that couldn’t have been legally retrieved. Gyro hummed to herself, a big grin spreading across her gaunt, high-cheekboned young face, as she considered her options.

  If anything, maybe she could find a cracker, like Billy, willing to take all these juicy tidbits in exchange for purging her TAP and reinforcing the firewalls. There was definitely money here.

  When she accessed the third folder, a jolt cracked down her spine. The name under the image of a young woman simply read: Nova.

  Her big sister.

  Chapter Two

  Chicken Fingers

  38 minutes before …

  From his red plastic seat at the far end of the bars, Chicken Fingers scanned the smoky club’s dance floor, searching the throng for his targets. Tonight was his lucky night, because he was being paid to hang out at the Flesh Pot, a specialty dive with two types of clientele—hybrids, who had undergone gene therapy and/or high-end plastic surgery to redesign their bodies into anthropomorphic animals; or cyborgs, with metal and plastic grafted onto their skin. Both groups were out in force, showing off for each other.

  Best …

  Fad …

  Ever!

  He loved it. Hybrids were his sweet spot between kinky and real. Actually chasing tail. Not that he would get any tonight. It was a work night. Chasing tail wasn’t why he was here, he reminded himself. There were targets, and a job to attend to, but he couldn’t think of a better backdrop for hunting.

  Plenty of distractions offered themselves up for the casual hedonist—hybrid go-go dancers of both genders with both reptilian and feline tails trailing from their gene-tweaked asses; roided-out borgs that were more chrome than skin; men and women who looked human except for their impossible proportions that seemed to defy gravity as they wiggled, flounced, and floated their way across the club. The patronage here was a heavy mix of partiers looking for a hookup and staff seeking clients to take to the back rooms. There were even sims, if you were that type.

  The Flesh Pot offered a seemingly infinite array of bodily arrangements, textures, and hues, not to mention the constant Hyper Real overlays and Holo Tags floating around, turning the club into a slapdash of sex-crazed fantasy. Chicken Fingers knew a number of pheromone cocktails were being pumped in through the fog that curled around the neon pillars and seeped into the side rooms. Cones and shafts of light speared the smoke and fog—blues, purples, and reds that made the whole place glow.

  He breathed easily. Cautious as always, he had dosed himself with anti-pheromone stim before coming in. The stim did its job and kept his blood cool and thoughts clear—and would continue to do so for at least the
next ten minutes. In contrast, those around him had wide, glistening eyes and blatantly panted with desire as they ogled each other’s barely-concealed fleshy wares.

  Chicken Fingers sorted through the sensory overload. This place was great for debauchery, but difficult for keeping your composure. His TAP was working overtime to track the three people he’d tagged. It had taken him half an hour to single them all out, but he had at least an 85 percent certainty they were the folks requiring his professional attention, and that was good enough for him. He subconsciously fingered his belt as he rocked backwards on his chair.

  He’d pegged the two Ravenlocke mercenaries, though they’d blended well in this environment. One was an obvious tough guy, sporting a red goatee, silver studs in his ears, and dressed in a tight sleeveless shirt that showed off his artfully muscled arms. Chicken Fingers raised an eyebrow. Everything about the man was tight. He lounged at a bar on the opposite side of the room, holding a blue-green cocktail, but never so much as taking a sip. It was too big a giveaway, and Chicken Fingers had noticed the behavior immediately, since that was one of the habits he was trying to break. He sipped at his non-intoxicating drink as soon as he realized the goon was also sweeping the room looking for competitors.

  The other merc was a slim woman with hot pink hair. She had distractingly long legs covered in black fishnet. For the last half hour, she had been bumping and grinding her way through the dancing crowd. Chicken Fingers rolled his eyes. Her movements were too controlled, too precise for her to be as doped up as the rest of the crowd. On their own, they might not have done anything to tip their hand, leaving Chicken Fingers with only one of them made for sure. Lucky for him, their occasional silent glances and subtle body language told Chicken Fingers they were communicating TAP-to-TAP, coordinating their movement as they too sought to snag tonight’s prey.