by Ted Weber
Steampunk Grrl sat at a table. He joined her. She pulled a piece of paper and thick pen from her leather pouch, and started a list. “An orange. A pearl. A bottle of Juyondai sake. The head of Alfredo Garcia…”
When she finished, she called over a server, a beefy man in black leather. She leaned toward him. “Could we see the manager on duty? I have a fun idea for the club.”
“What’ll you have?” he said.
A bot, and not even a smart one. Charles wondered why people even ordered drinks. You couldn’t taste them and they wouldn’t get you drunk.
Steampunk Grrl stood. “Never mind.” She walked over to the female bartender standing behind a long counter, and repeated her question.
“What sort of fun idea?”
“A scavenger hunt.” She showed the bartender the list. “Winner gets an airship and a slot in a system-wide contest with a million credit pool of prizes.”
A jewelry-covered Indian woman, midriff bare like Steampunk Grrl, appeared next to the bartender. She’d teleported there – either a programmer or a special bot. “I’m Priyanka. I’m the manager.”
“Steampunk Grrl.” She bowed from the shoulders.
Priyanka returned the bow, then scanned the list. “Who are you with?”
“Chaoji-Mao Entertainment. Out of Shanghai. We’re prototyping a game for MediaCorp.”
Priyanka nodded.
“What do you think? All you have to do is let me message everyone, and whoever’s interested can meet me on the Level 3 terrace.”
Priyanka ran a hand through her long hair. “Sounds interesting. Give me your text and I’ll send it for you.”
Access to the com system must be restricted, Charles thought. He followed Steampunk Grrl back to the elevator.
The terrace was big, with lots of pools, tiki huts, and palm trees. Bikini-wearing honeys chatted with athletic-looking men in swimming trunks. A dolphin leaped from pool to pool.
Iwisa followed Steampunk Grrl onto a wooden performance stage in the center. She posted the list of items as a grab file, certified by club management as virus free.
One or two at a time, people and creatures gathered from other parts of the club. He’d never seen so many tails and wings on avatars. Except on the Fantasy Continent, you couldn’t even get a non-human avatar normally. But they had to be users—a bot wouldn’t show interest in a scavenger hunt.
Steampunk Grrl waited until people stopped showing, then addressed the crowd. She described the scavenger hunt, list of items, and the prizes. Charles scanned the avatars, storing the video for later analysis. “Everyone’ll get a participation prize,” she said, “and we’re throwing a party here, so be sure to come back. Good luck.”
Angels and demons flew off, followed by a guy with a rocket pack and a goofy looking kid with a helicopter beanie. Other avatars disappeared, no doubt teleporting. The rest ran or walked for the exit, headed for the designated teleport pad or an aircraft. Those ones probably weren’t bothering with.
Charles stored images of the flying and teleporting avatars. “I’ll wait back at the airship,” he private messaged Steampunk Grrl.
“I’m staying to greet the winner. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”
On the airship, Charles loaded the hit list to the vampires. They wouldn’t be able to get into the club without invites. But there were plenty of guests coming and going.
May need help with this. He sent Pel an encrypted message. “You in the Comnet?”
“Yeah, doing research.”
“Got a big op underway, and I need backup.” Time to test his gaming skills.
“Where are you?”
Charles sent him a file, also encrypted. “Activate this script and you’ll pop into one of my vampires.” I’ll put him in Mordoch. He looked a well-dressed young executive, but had the best defenses.
Mordoch messaged him a few minutes later. “It’s Pel. This is weird. Where am I?”
“Airship hold. Get used to Mordoch, try him out. I armed all my vamps before we left. Yours I built guns into both arms. Your suit is bulletproof. We move as soon as Kiyoko gives the word.”
“Kiyoko?”
“Yeah, she got me here. She’s in disguise though.”
“Why am I armed? What do you want me to do?”
“Take out any guards or cybermercs who show up.”
“Won’t they have god powers?”
“The cybermercs maybe, but we’ve got surprise on our side.” He’d never actually seen a cybermerc in BetterWorld before. Would they even bother with avatars?
“Okay,” Pel messaged. “How do I use the guns? What do they do?”
“Just point and shoot. The targeting software’ll do the rest. Game rules apply otherwise, but you’ve got lethal ammo.” If he hit a bot or avatar, he’d probably kill it. Bots would turn to corpses, avatars would disappear and the user knocked offline. They’d have to log back to their normal starting point. “I’ll send in backup.”
“Who’s the backup?”
“Whatever vampires aren’t busy.” The next ask was hard. “If security shows up, make sure you kill Kiyoko too.”
“What?”
“Her Steampunk Grrl avatar I mean.” He sent a picture. “She’ll get bounced out. Can’t get sniffed by cybermercs that way, and no one will guess she’s involved.”
An hour after the contest’s start, Steampunk Grrl messaged him. “First one teleported back. I’m feeding you the video.”
A mostly naked girl with purple hair and balloon-like breasts emptied a sack on the stage.
“Well congratulations, uh…”
“Violetta,” she said.
“Violetta,” Steampunk Grrl said. “Everything’s here, and you’re the first one back. I expected it to take longer.”
A humanoid with tiger features appeared to the right of Violetta. It carried a wooden treasure chest. The tigerman glanced at Violetta, then placed the chest at Steampunk Grrl’s feet and opened it. All the items were arranged inside.
Steampunk Grrl looked at Tigerman, then Violetta. “Am I to believe that Alfredo Garcia had two heads?”
Another avatar appeared, also with a full bag, and everyone began arguing. Steampunk Grrl messaged all the contestants, asking them to return.
“Time to go,” Charles messaged Pel. He released his vampire bots, all thirty of them.
The bots fanned across the aircraft berths and the teleport pad and searched for arriving guests. When able, they touched guests’ avatars and took control of them, then entered the club.
They’d have to act fast. Someone would complain that their avatar had been hacked and then the cybermercs would come in. He ordered his vampires to enter the club in groups of two to four, one a hacked avatar and the others not. Once they got inside, each would approach a potential programmer and attack.
* * *
Pelopidas
Pel/Mordoch joined a hacked female avatar and one of Charles’s male bots. They recited the password to two gorilla guards and entered the nine story ziggurat that housed the club. The huge dance floor inside was mostly empty.
“Where am I going?” he messaged Charles.
A 3-D map of the club opened in front of him, his avatar depicted on the entry floor. Two levels higher, “Level 3 Terrace” was shaded red. Bat icons, presumably representing the vampires, advanced in that direction.
Pel decreased the opacity of the map until he could see through it easily. He climbed two sets of stairs and exited onto a sprawling patio of pools, palm trees, and tiki huts. People in swimsuits and club wear congregated around a stage. Some looked human, if unrealistically endowed, some were human-animal hybrids, and some went further, like the pillar of flame and the double helix. Steampunk Grrl—Kiyoko—knelt on the stage.
“We’re going to have to re-do this without any cheating,” she said.
“How can it be cheating if you didn’t state the rules?” an overdeveloped violet-haired girl said.
Charles’s platoon of vampires entere
d the crowd. They approached some of the avatars, mostly non-human ones, brushed against them, bumped into them, or placed a hand on their back. The touched avatars froze in place. No one seemed to notice.
Mordoch sat down at a thatch-covered tiki bar by the stage, where he could see everything but not present an obvious target.
Behind the bamboo counter, the bartender, a shirtless buff-boy with long blond hair, sidled up. “What’ll ya have, brah?”
Pel ignored him.
“Something’s going on,” a tiger-faced man by Steampunk Grrl said.
The purple-haired girl turned. “What?”
A dark-skinned woman, one of Charles’s, clamped a hand on Purple’s right breast. She stopped moving, lips parted in mid-sentence.
The tiger furry disappeared. Teleported away.
Another avatar vanished. And one, a burly looking man, drew a gun.
Mordoch jumped off his bar stool and pointed his arms at the burly guy. His palms dropped and a barrel protruded from each wrist. Flechettes flew out in a blur, and thwacked into the man’s neck. He shook spastically, then disappeared.
The vampires ran from one target to another. Avatars shouted and scattered in panic. A crimson demon unfurled bat wings and bounded into the air. Mordoch fired another pair of fletchettes. Both hit. It spiraled downward and splashed into a pool.
Club doors flew open. Men and women in guard uniforms rushed out, guns drawn. Others materialized on the patio.
Sorry, Kiyoko. Mordoch put his guns on full auto and shot into the crowd, making sure to hit Steampunk Grrl. She shook violently and vanished. He hit a guard too, who disappeared. And a couple of dudes in swimtrunks, who just dropped and lay bleeding. Those must be bots.
Several guards fired at him. Some of the rounds hit, but his suit absorbed the damage. How much it could take, he had no idea.
He vaulted over the bar counter, bullets whizzing by. Once on the other side, he grabbed the buff-bot by the hair and held him in front as a shield.
Buff-bot twitched and spasmed as bullets struck his chest and head.
Mordoch whipped his arms under Buff-bot’s armpits to hold him in place. He fired at every guard in sight, again full auto. Some of the guards shook and disappeared and others collapsed to the ground.
Both his magazines were empty. It didn’t look like he had refills. Crap.
A sphere appeared in front of him, with a single rheumy cat eye above a gaping mouth of needle sharp teeth, and waving tentacles on top. It swiveled all the tentacles toward him.
Mordoch dove out the other side of the tiki hut, hearing a high-pitched screech behind him. Another cat-eyed sphere appeared to his right.
He kept running, and reached the edge of the patio. It was a long drop, but not necessarily a fatal one. He decided to ensure that it was. Mordoch vaulted over the railing into the air, then jackknifed so his head pointed down.
The pavement rushed toward him. He should have felt wind in his face, but that was one of the subtle effects BetterWorld still lacked.
Everything flashed red. Red switched to utter blackness.
Green reboot messages and hexadecimal addresses scrolled up, beeping softly as they passed. Not a normal BetterWorld death, where he’d appear at his login point. But no doubt this was safer.
* * *
Charles
The beholders had to be cybermerc avatars or bots. They seemed impervious to his vampires’ weapons and infections, and brushed aside the “Word of God” spam attacks that he griefed the regular guards with. They went after Pel first, then counterattacked his vampires. One by one, his bots died or froze.
Then the entire patio and everyone on it stopped moving. Only now did he realize the palm fronds had been swaying in the breeze.
Charles activated the self-destructs on all thirty bots. The vampires disappeared.
Time to focus on the spoils. He’d infected over fifty computers, more than half operated by BetterWorld employees. The viruses sent him avatar parameters, user profiles, and network addresses, created back doors on their computers, and then deleted themselves.
Violetta had won the scavenger hunt, presumably exploiting god privileges. Charles opened the back door to her computer. First, he gave himself root access, then activated a script to erase his footprints as he explored. He couldn’t find her real identity, but it wasn’t important. She had access to the entire BetterWorld infrastructure. He copied all her scripts and passwords, including the ability to bypass BetterWorld’s laws of physics and security restrictions.
Using Violetta’s passwords, Charles unlocked a series of firewalls and entered the network of BetterWorld servers. They said the Milky Way galaxy contained billions of stars. The BetterWorld network looked bigger.
He set up more back doors and downloaded code and passwords that looked interesting, but couldn’t find a network map or search engine. Where was the bank? Where were the portals to other MediaCorp networks?
He could empty the accounts of the fifty elites he’d hacked. That’s why he created the vamps in the first place. But none had admin access to the credit bank. Probably it would be full of traps and cybermercs anyway.
No matter. Violetta and others had the address and passwords to the central MediaCorp intranet. The rest could wait, this was what Pel and Waylee really wanted.
He logged on the intranet. He didn’t have root access, at least not at the moment. But Violetta’s password let him into remote applications, financial databases, personnel files… even webmail and chat rooms. He found a list of the corporation’s Board of Directors and executives, and looked at their bios and resumes.
The directors and officers were all active in business and government, there seeming no real distinction. Some had professorships too. Several had children around Pel’s age. No doubt their extended families would have more.
Here’s a good one. Richard T. Shafer wrote on a Board of Directors forum, “For those of you attending the New Year’s fundraiser: If you get a chance, please pass along my regrets to the president that I couldn’t attend, and that he has my full support. I’ve had this Angola trip scheduled for over a year, and frankly, need the time away. I have a list of trophies to bag before they’re all gone, rhino for example. I’ll bring back something for everyone.”
Pel could take it from here. Charles sent him login instructions, plus a video clip of a pirate swinging by rope onto a Spanish galleon.
18
December 31
Washington, D.C.
Waylee
“Here we are,” the taxi driver said in a Slavic accent, stopping in front of the Smithsonian Castle at 1000 Jefferson Drive SW. Secret Service agents and DC police stood everywhere. I should tell him to keep driving.
The moment of terror passed. Waylee gave the driver $50. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you. You will be wanting a ride back to Greenbelt?”
“Perhaps.”
“I am Jurgis.” He handed her a card. “You call me when you want ride.”
Pel opened the back door and they stepped out. Cold air seeped through Waylee’s dress, but they had no budget for fancy coats, and wouldn’t be outside long.
She didn’t even recognize Pel with his executive haircut, bare chin, and tux. She’d been equally transformed: blue-eye contacts, face made up like a model’s, hair dyed blonde and arranged in a bun, dress long and silver and full of ruffles and embroidery. She’d never worn high heels before and had taken days to practice in them. Learning her new persona had been even harder.
“You are a vision, Estelle,” Pel said.
“And you, Greg.”
Greg was the nephew of MediaCorp Director Richard T. Shafer, currently on safari in Angola to kill endangered animals. V.I.P. Productions had been happy to fit Greg Wilson and his fiancée Estelle Cosimo, both actual people, into the New Year’s gala. Huge bribes of BetterWorld credits, courtesy of Charles, had helped “compensate for the inconvenience.” Their fake messages from Mr. Shafer promised
to pay the entry fee “with interest” as soon as he returned. “Cost is no object when it comes to re-electing our president.”
The taxi drove off. This is it. Pel, normally so stalwart, had been terrified that morning, and his jitters had been contagious. She told him, it’s just another show, no big deal. But they split two minis of liquid courage – Jack Daniels and Captain Morgan—in the taxi.
Waylee/Estelle and Pel/Greg handed their tickets to a young, blue-suited White House staffer, one of several stationed beneath the red stone entry arch. He slid them one at a time in a portable reader, which announced their authenticity with a green light and a beep.
He gave the tickets back. “Welcome, Mr. Wilson, Miss Cosimo.”
Waylee ignored him as she assumed Miss Cosimo would do, and strode up a set of stairs arm in arm with her fiancé. The key to success was to act confident, act like they belonged.
It was easy. Except for the damn high heels. She stumbled on the second step. She clutched Pel’s arm and caught her balance, but heard a gasp from behind. Miss Cosimo was ridiculously awesome, though, so she continued up the stairs as if nothing had happened.
Just outside the front door, two burly Secret Service men, wearing dark suits and the latest in multispectral glasses and earpieces, checked their IDs and scanned them with portable X-ray machines. She’d doused herself with sex pheromones, not that she’d ever needed such things, but the agents showed no sign they noticed.
Their driver’s licenses looked official. And their cameras and signal detectors were well shielded and disguised, just some buttons and threads in their clothes. Security wouldn’t be looking for anything that small anyway, Pel had promised.
“May I see your purse, ma’am?” one asked in a deep voice. He’d shaved his head, probably to disguise early male pattern baldness.
Waylee handed Bald Eagle her pearl-colored handbag, which contained only a temporary comlink and a confusion of makeup supplies.
He inserted a perforated plastic rod inside, waved it around, then passed the purse back. “Enjoy yourselves.” He smiled with his mouth but not his eyes.
