Anansi chuckled as he scraped another sample into the receptacle. He triggered another scan, and the analyzer’s display blanked while the unit hummed. “No, drone. Humans are not created for a sole purpose, unlike yourself. We express dissatisfaction when we feel we are performing a function other than the one we feel optimized for. Sometimes this is a result of economics, which happens to be my situation, and sometimes because of limitations with the brain capacity and wetware of a particular human.” The analyzer finished its scan and the sensor beeped at him, throwing up a reading into his personal TAP visual overlay. Tiny bits of rat hybrid droppings—not just your average simulacra. This one contained a few genetic markers that indicated possible elevated zeek abilities. “Drone—conversation mode off, standby for audio repower.”
The drone backed up to position itself out of the way against the wall near the sonic sinks and turned off.
Checking to ensure he remained alone in the bathroom, Anansi tapped the genetic deposit into a tiny vial, sealed it, and then tucked it into an inner pocket of his uniform.
Everyone knew the CHIMERA megacorp had tons of freaks and zeeks on their payroll. The corporation loved to position themselves in the marketplace as forward-thinking, accepting anyone, no matter what passed for their incarnation of a body or brain. Psychic mutants? Half-animal hybrids? Sign ’em up! Sentient androids? Sign ’em up! All of the above? Hell yes! So long as they were working for CHIMERA and doing so with the corporation’s best interests in mind, they all had an equal opportunity to do something lucrative and fulfilling with their lives. Like making more money for CHIMERA.
While the thought of being surrounded by mutants and psychics always made Anansi uncomfortable, at least it gave him an opportunity to make some quick credits on the side. He believed in augmenting the world, not the body. The irony of it wasn’t lost on him, since he had a TAP and a few other upgrades in his body, but there were lines that shouldn’t be crossed. At least not in his skin.
Even so … with his sanitation engineering position, he got the distinct honor of cleaning up all of the “biological contaminants” corp employees left behind. With his all-access pass to the repugnant and nauseating areas of the arcology, it allowed him to gather all sorts of DNA materials he could sell to a variety of black market vendors. Some of his samples went to labs for testing, others to genetic hackers to experiment with. He never wondered much about what happened with the shit once they paid him for it.
The real trick was finding exotic DNA that his buyers didn’t already have bucketloads of. New hybrid blends, Human 2.0 schematics, or perhaps cells rife with nanotech or black code. Normal zeek genetic tags were particularly valuable, but animal hybrid zeek goop was worth almost as much as he made in a year. He zoned out for a few minutes thinking about what he was going to pick up with the small fortune, his hand absent-mindedly drifting up to his pocket and brushing against the vial there.
The extra creds let him pursue his real passion—funding his night job as a Hyper Reality visual DJ for Predapex, an increasingly popular Chitown band. They’d been getting a lot of prime gigs lately, playing their mashup of cybersonic rock and J-pop to clubs, corporate parties, and private clients across the city. Anansi’s HR trick-outs had given the band the extra edge it needed to make a solid grab for fame, adding insane visual spectacles to the group’s audio wailings and warblings.
He was a different breed of coder, as far as Hyper Reality was concerned. Most street taggers focused on physical art, relying on virtual spray-paint and other visual mediums to hard code HR mods and overlays on people’s optics. The problem faced by all genres of taggers was that GENIE floated fast live filters driven by sophisticated AIs, and they specialized in shitcanning most visual HR work before it could execute. Spam filters driven by their own AIs aggressively fought to protect the corpie HR ads, filtering out the mods and overlays.
Anansi had been smart. He also studied corporate HR, sitting in a viewless cubicle writing drift code that floated across GENIE servers, connecting to hubs and spawning free floating imagery overlays. The problem with that path was that there was already a shit-ton of dedicated nodes spawning hundreds of billions of images across the globe—most of those being obnoxious advertising sprites.
GENIE had widespread filters too. Everyone paid their monthly for spam protection, which was just how it was. The only way for Anansi to get his vision into the world involved low-or-no-paying gigs and a promise of future remuneration if the project was struck by lightning in a bottle: venture capitalism financing or true fame. Localized hubs where people wanted them, down at the street level and focused on a sympathetic crowd who traveled there on purpose for a shared experience. Sometimes it meant working with a club, other times it meant adding his artistic visual touch to a sonic medium. Art might be dead, but the street artist was well alive in him and other trickers that used HR as their medium. Even on bad days, like this one, it drove him.
Smiling unconsciously, he glanced at the sani-drone, still waiting patiently to power back on when needed, and called up the bathroom’s virtual interface. The arcology’s executive restroom walls were loaded with HR sensors and projectors, allowing one to take a shit anywhere in the world they wanted to simulate. Why settle for staring at a bland green-and-gray panel with rude messages scratched in the paint when you could elect to dump a load on the surface of Mars, in the depths of space, or even a glacial palace?
Accessing the projectors via his TAP, Anansi called up the HR code he was still working on and timed it to a set of recorded Predapex songs. He activated the routine, and the stained walls faded into a velvet nightscape as the first thumps of a drum pounded in the background. Anansi glanced around.
He was alone.
With a quick step to the side then a spin in place, Anansi started singing along, pretending his mop handle was a microphone. He slid to the side again, fusing his dancing with the mop’s movements, cleaning as he went.
This was always the best part of the night.
Going full headbanger, he slung one leg over the mop and dragged it with him as he moved through his invisible mosh pit. He rocked the house long after the lights of the arcology went out. This was his house.
The bathroom lights flickered and Anansi jerked up, killing the music. There was no one there. The bathroom walls flickered this time, and the HR projection shattered, exposing a gray field between the cracks, with writhing letters forming in the pixelated static.
Prepare yourself. It is here.
Anansi reeled as reality shattered around him. Layers upon layers of chaotic projections slammed into his mind, swamping him with false horizons, an endless parade of faces and people and places, equally marvelous and monstrous. Fireworks popped inside his eyeballs and it felt like his brain was being squeezed by a giant fist. He fell to his knees and his stomach rebelled. To his credit, he managed to get his head over a toilet. He felt tears streaming down his cheeks as he retched into the faux porcelain bowl. He slammed his palm into the stall’s wall as he choked over inhalations.
With a desperate thought, Anansi’s custom TAP filters slammed into place. They were far sturdier than any corpie spam killer. He had designed them specifically to dive past dozens, if not hundreds, of HR layers during a show in order to remain in control of his own tricks. Getting hacked in real-time by some lame code kiddie or rival tagger during a live gig was not the best thing to have on your résumé.
Even then, with filters in place, chaotic imagery continued to assault him from all sides. Wobbling, he fought his way back up to his feet. The body rebellion was done, eased by his filters, but there was still too much HR popping to focus. He reinforced his filters, pouring processing power into them until the flood of sensations and visualizations receded ever so slightly, allowing him to reorient himself to meatspace and think clearly. He pulled a bunch of toilet paper off the roll and blew his nose, then cleaned up his face. That had been painful, but it was done and he could focus, kind of, now.
Holy hell! What just happened? That couldn’t have been a bug in my HR coding. Is this a trap? Did they find out about my DNA dealings? Is this an attempt to drive me insane? Death by Hyper Reality overload?
He had to get out.
So long as he was on CHIMERA territory, they’d be able to jack with his world. He peeked out the bathroom door. It was clear. He softly closed the door and stepped back into the restroom. It would surely only be a matter of time before security goons were swarming all over him, but he had a second to think right now. Out in the city, he’d have a chance to figure out what was wrong with his TAP. If the corporation had planted any bugs in his system, then the sooner he got a neural flush, the better.
With a grunt he yanked the mag drive off the drone, sliding it into his pocket. “Sorry, drone, but I have to jet.” Peeking out of the restroom door again, he saw the hallway was still blissfully clear. The world was still going crazy. A few minor tweaks to the filter subroutines stabilized them so they would hold against the current level of attack, blocking enough to keep him agile and focused. Another surge could push him back over the edge and leave him vulnerable, but he was more concerned with immediate survival than reprogramming his own brain on the fly.
After taking the longest elevator ride of his entire life, he arrived in the cavernous internal corporate lobby. There was a slight uptick in HR activity as every advertisement and app ever created for CHIMERA was broadcast to any TAP within signal distance, unblocked.
Anansi paused. Unblocked … it couldn’t be just him, could it? The GENIE filters still propagated in here, and his TAP wasn’t picking them up. And he wasn’t reading any traffic off GENIE. What the hell had happened to global wifi? He shook his head. No time for that.
CHIMERA had an ad engine behind the white-noise-generating tinkling of the shallow fountain that dominated the lobby’s architecture; and it was throwing dozens of ads, layered on top of each other. Enough to mess with anyone. Oddly, though, it was as empty here as it had been up in the corporate level restrooms. Just what the hell was going on?
He sprinted for the hallway, heading towards the main arcology gate room as Hyper Reality continued to go insane around him. Despite the urge to hurry as fast as he could, he made sure to avoid the cracks in the floor and took the time to only step on the dark-colored squares of granite.
Execute
Chapter Five
Nova
3 minutes after …
Nova scowled at the worthless flesh popsicle who’d ruined a month of detailed preparation. Despite their uneasy truce and the world going crazy around them, she was still pissed at him. Just as they starting to get along a little, the idiot had to remind her they were screwed and planless. It was ridiculous!
He was ridiculous!
Comically lanky and way too tall, at least six and a half feet, and rail-thin. His stained brown coat made him look every inch the greasy gunman. In fact, she was stunned that anyone wouldn’t recognize the stereotypical smart-assed gun-for-hire out-of-a-box outfit on sight. Stupid self-proclaimed Street Samurai! Maybe she was more than a little mad.
She took a deep breath.
He had taken out a trained Ravenlocke extraction team with clumsy ease; the thing that really intrigued her was his apparent precognitive abilities. Normally, precogs were limited in both what time they could “see” and whether it was truly accurate. She’d always had little flash-forwards, though nothing so intense as what had happened a minute ago. But that he had shared the flash …
And he had acted as fast as her, blindly taking out the pink-haired Ravenlocke merc even as Nova squeezed the trigger herself. There was no physical way he could’ve spotted her and reacted that quickly—she was behind him, partially blocked by some electrical transformer and a pack of rioting civvies. In fact, she couldn’t understand how his shot threaded its way through all those random body parts flailing around.
She knew how hers had. She was trained. She was skilled. He was … average. At least average-looking.
Spinning, she grabbed the thick lapels of his out-of-fashion trench coat with both hands and slammed him up against a light pole. “What the fuck are you, some sort of mutant zeek?” His glossy black hair, streaked with fluorescent purple highlights, bounced along with the rest of his head against the pole. The rioting and craziness around them faded as they locked gazes. He smiled and glanced down.
The barrel of one of his bolters jabbed into her gut.
“What the hell is up with the outburst? You sensed it too,” he replied. “And no. Not a zeek. Why, you a bigot?”
She didn’t release any pressure, though the accusation made her reel. To make a point, she pushed him harder into the unyielding ferroplastic light pole. “No. I … just …” Unsure of what the point she was trying to make was, she switched tactics. “I told you there’d be a reckoning. We’re as safe as we’re going to be with no plan. So, time to deal with you.”
“Lady, we are so far from safe that we’re …” His eyebrows furrowed. “Whatever the opposite word of safe would be.”
“Unsafe?” Was she really dealing with someone that moronic?
“I know the word unsafe. I was looking for something better, like, oh, treacherous, or hazardous, or alarming, or something. Just couldn’t figure out a good one on account of you smashing me against this pole and threatening me. We have a truce.”
“And you don’t have a plan!” she yelled in his face as she felt her cheeks flush again.
He smiled wryly. “’Course I don’t. You don’t either. Difference is, I’m not smart enough to care. I just deal with stuff as it comes.”
She released him and turned away. Even if he was a bit moronic, he had hit a nerve. She was freaking, and it was because she wasn’t in her element. He was. And friends would be better for the moment than enemies. She would have to pull herself off this hair trigger. “So, you aren’t a zeek?”
“Not a zeek,” he said. “I’m Chicken Fingers. Who’re you?”
She blinked. “What kind of name is Chicken Fingers? And what do you mean ‘who am I?’ What kind of freelancer doesn’t even know the name of the person he’s hired to bag?”
He bit his lip, thinking, and absentmindedly straightened his coat lapels. “Dunno? I get the data. I do the job. I don’t ask questions. That’s it, I guess.”
She gaped. “You have no idea what you’re involved in, do you?”
He slipped his gun back into a jacket holster. “Wanna clue me in, then, brainiac?”
She jabbed a finger towards the merc corpse with the hot pink hair. “Those Ravenlocke bashers thought I was a hiver gone rogue with a head full of secrets. They were supposed to nab me and take me in for interrogation. That was going to give me access to their headquarters, and my bosses were going to extract whatever intel I brought back and sell it to …” She swiped a hand through the air. “Fuck it, that doesn’t matter anymore. Thanks to you and your imbecilic tactics, that’s all scrambled shit on a plate.”
He shrugged. “Sorry I screwed it up for you, but I was hired to extract you. I may be just a thug, but I’m good at it, lady.”
“It’s Nova, not lady.” She felt herself winding up again.
“What kind of name is Nova?” he returned fire from her questioning his name, raising an eyebrow at her and smiling.
“Mine. Deal with it, street meat.” It was stupid and she knew it. He seemed to be having fun with the argument, but she couldn’t let herself get angry like this. A clear head would be the best weapon to survive the riots and mass craziness unfolding around them. And … somehow, this moronic gun slinger was actually kind of likeable.
She took another deep breath, then winced as another HR barrage slammed into her eyes. The landscape wavered, becoming a frozen wasteland filled with ice-covered structures. Fiery letters filled the sky, proclaiming, BUY IN BULK. After another second, everything settled back to normal, reverting to the real-time grungy Chitown sidewalk.
The surrounding crowd re
newed its panicked chorus, with some people going into the fetal position on the ground and the more skittish ones running off in random directions—sometimes straight into walls or each other. She shook her head. The world really was, literally, going crazy.
Chicken Fingers appeared to have experienced the same brief disorientation, as he squinted and shook his head. “What the … is it just me or is it getting worse?”
“It’s not just you.” She rubbed her forehead. “I got a … a flash of something just before …” Just before a little bit of madness broke out in this area. “Hold on a second.”
She accessed GENIE, bringing up her app for local news feeds. The general network didn’t respond. Not so much as wireless uplink anywhere in the vicinity. How was that possible? GENIE was global. Literally. It was broadcast from the upper atmosphere or something, and you could be in the middle of the ocean and still get wifi. Unless a person ducked inside a shielded room or had their TAP deactivated, they were supposed to be able to access it anywhere, anytime.
“You getting any Net access?” she asked, trying again.
“Nope. Not since,” he waved at the scene, “all this started. It was the first thing I tried, when the garbage truck almost hit us. I had peer-to-peer with my car till it got blown up.”
Nova nodded as she studied the surrounding streets. The crowd was thinning as people ran off, abandoning cars and one another. None of their actions made any sense. “Whatever’s going on, everyone else looks like they’re being hit harder than us. A lot harder.”
“Yeah. It’s ’cause we’re the cool kids, you know?”
She shook her head, sensing much more going on than they could see. “You sure you aren’t a precog or anything? You have some special software in that big hook-nose of yours?”
He started patting down his leathers, apparently doing an inventory of whatever he kept in his magic trench coat of tricks. “Promise I don’t. You get what you see. I’m good with a gun and I’m fast … and devilishly handsome.”
Solar Singularity Page 6
