Beautiful Red

by M. Darusha Wehm

  Just take the file. That's right, the one in front of you. And the ones next to it, all of them, take them all and put them in the other folders. This one in your pants, that one in your jacket, the ones labeled "pocket".

  Don't worry about those sounds, they don't mean anything. Just follow the trail on your desktop, follow the path back to home. And stay there.

  I'll just stay there, where everything is warm and safe and nice. Where I won't remember a thing. Not a thing.

  Chapter 16

  Jack rode the ninety minute train home knowing she ought to use the time to get a quick nap, but was too wired to sleep. She really wasn't sure what to think about the things she had seen and heard. She was convinced that the Red were behind the attack on Estella Rowan, but she was equally convinced that the people she met could not have been involved. Not necessarily because they were inherently good people - Jack didn't trust her judgment that much - but because it just wasn't their style. It would offend their sense of esthetics.

  In fact, after what she had seen, she was sure that the majority of the members of the Red had no idea that things like the human control experiment were going on. Such was the nature of distributed systems. What Jack still couldn't begin to fathom was why the Red would want control over a prostitute? She didn't think it was some kind of sick art project, since Rowan had disappeared, and it's not art if it's not on display. But what use was she? She couldn't have been a threat to them, could she?

  I've had a few lovers who've been known to be a little chattier than necessary, Jack thought, and maybe one of them said too much. It could have been a tool to keep her from spilling what she'd learned. But she couldn't see why, if they were as ruthless as it seemed, they wouldn't just kill her; why destroy her mind? And what about the man in streeters alley? How did he fit in?

  Jack's mind was turning in circles and she wasn't getting anywhere. She fired up her display and started paging through her messages. There were the usual daily barrage of ads, subscriptions she should have cancelled and correspondence she didn't want to deal with. Instead, she paged to a new message from Adrian and brought it up on her display.

  J.

  I realize you've already gone off on your wee adventure, but I feel compelled as your friend to remind you that fucking with people who turn other people's minds to mush may be hazardous to your health. I expect you to call as soon as you get this message so I can stop worrying. You'll be the death of me yet! And you used to be such a nice girl. You're too young for a mid-life crisis. Call me.

  A.

  Jack chuckled. Adrian was cute, but Jack had to admit that her friend's half-serious warning did ring true. She should be careful, having seen first hand what these people could do. Still, she wasn't about to give up now. It was nice of Adrian to care, so Jack fired back a reply.

  Adrian,

  You can quit worrying, I'm alive and well. And, thanks for the warning, but I'm doing fine. I'll talk to you later with a real update.

  J.

  Jack closed the messenger and brought up her schedule. She had a full work week ahead of herself, so there was no chance of getting up to Vancouver sooner than the upcoming weekend. As much as she was anxious to get out there and confront BlackEye, she knew she could really use the next seven days to get more information and prepare herself.

  She closed her scheduler and her eyes. She thought about a quick catnap, but realized that the train would be pulling into the station before she would even get into the useful part of sleep and she would just end up more tired than she was before. She opened up a tile game program and searched for players online. She found a group with whom she'd played a few times before, and killed the next few minutes battling it out with them. After a mildly embarrassing loss, she thanked the other players and signed off, her mind unable to focus on the strategy.

  She pulled up Phoenix's card, and saw the usual message IDs as well as a link to a net location. Jack paged over and found herself in an immersive 3D video of Phoenix's art column. It wasn't live or terribly interactive, but Jack passed a few minutes paying very little attention to the content of Phoenix's talk. She set up her system to automatically grab new entries and switched offline as the train was slowing into the station.

  There were fewer passengers at this time of night, so she was able to stretch out a little and work the kinks out of her neck and back. As the train stopped, she got up, making sure she had her bag with her. She hadn't needed its contents after all, but she'd felt better knowing it was there. She walked briskly to the train stop and hardly waited at all before catching the line to her neighbourhood. As the train passed a group of streeters, she was sure she saw someone with that nightmarish vacant expression she had seen on Estella Rowan and the man in streeters alley. She shook her head, and hoped that she was so tired that she was just seeing things that weren't there.

  She arrived in her neighbourhood and got off the train, still feeling a little shaken by the images in her mind. She passed a few streeters on the way to her building, but they were alert and aware, if not entirely benign. Jack avoided any confrontations, though, and pushed open the door to her apartment just before 0100 UTC.

  Ugh, she thought, I'm going to be a wreck in the morning. She grabbed a glass of water and drank it down, then made sure the birds were set. She stripped, stuffing her clothes in the autoclave, and fell into bed. She was asleep almost instantly.

  Jack swore one of those fucking birds clipped her nose. She pounded on the off button and stomped into the bathroom. She showered, dried herself and sucked back a cup of coffee. Her eyes felt glued shut, but the coffee helped a little. She dressed and grabbed two breakfast bars - she was always hungrier when she hadn't had enough sleep. She was out the door and on the way to the train stop in no time, which was exactly how it felt. As if no time had passed since she was last here, getting off the train. Christ, woman, she thought to herself, waiting for the train, it's not like you're in your forties anymore. You've got to stop doing this. She admonished herself, admitting that the past few days had been more invigorating than any other time in her adult life. She boarded the train and noticed the same courier she had seen last week, looking much more chipper than she felt. She gave him a big smile anyway, though, happy for the sense of normalcy she got seeing familiar faces. He shyly smiled back, then disappeared off the train at an early stop.

  By the time Jack made it to her cube at Bellis she was feeling more like an organic human being. She even remained in full control of her temper when Tony bounded over to her and thrust his foot at her. He was wearing some sort of hideous white laced shoes with some kind of a floppy thing poking out the top of the laces, on which was stenciled some foreign looking word. "Aren't they to die for?" Tony squealed, nearly falling over from bouncing on one foot.

  "Well, I do think of death when I see them," Jack muttered. Tony was clearly not listening.

  "They're 100% authentic genuine replicas," he sighed. "The best thing ever." His gaze caught someone else arriving, and he practically flew to the door to share his joy.

  Takes all kinds, Jack thought, heading over to her cubicle. Gilles was still on weekend, so Jack had no specific report to look over, though she had access to them all if she was looking for reading material. She started her beginning of the work week routine and opened the consolidated logs for the past few days, just checking up on everything. There was nothing that jumped out at her, but her mind wasn't really on it. She had determined that Bellis didn't have anything to do with the events of the past week, that they were just a random stop along the way between the Red and Estella Rowan's poor destroyed mind.

  Jack scanned the usual glut of messages that accrued after a few days off. Most of them were Bellis propaganda that she ditched unread, but there were a couple of real messages hidden amongst the crap. First, she opened a note from Mac, the Eastern system guy, thanking her for her help and pointing out that all was well again. She wasn't about to clue him into the falsity of that notion, just hit the
ACK button, and moved on. The other message was from Gilles, saying that he hoped all was well and they he'd see her the next day. She hit acknowledge immediately, knowing that the message was a coded way of asking if she was all right. Aw, she thought, I never knew he cared.

  She started on her report for the day, keeping it light and frothy, letting Gilles know that she was fine. She also started putting together an encrypted personal file cataloguing the information she knew and hunches she had formed. She figured that she would probably need to fill in both Adrian and Gilles before she left for Vancouver, and she had better start getting all the information organized.

  She made sure that she was signed into the underground boards under her b0xenjester name, mostly just to keep maintaining a presence there. She also ran a scraper to archive all the posts so she could scour through them later for any useful information about the Reds and BlackEye.

  Technically, you weren't supposed be using your own system when you were on the clock, let alone working on personal projects, but Jack had never really taken that, or any other, policy seriously. She ran a blocker that made it look like she was only running the Bellis system, and was a master at watching multiple displays simultaneously. Jack figured that one of the perks of working security was being able to choose which rules you obeyed.

  She spent the day alternately poking at the Bellis logs, reading and posting to the underground boards and preparing her two reports. She stayed in her cube most of the day, getting up just briefly to heat up a lunch pack from the stash in her drawer. When the end of the day rolled around, she finished off her report for Gilles, and restarted her own system along with shutting down the Bellis system, the final step in ensuring her private work went unnoticed. She headed for the door, having spoken to no-one since Tony accosted her earlier.

  She caught the early train and made it home in record time. She had work to do, and she needed to get to bed early. There was no time to waste. She threw some food into the zapper and fired up her homemade interface. She knew that if she didn't get a hold of Adrian the universe would explode, so as she stirred her dinner she sent the request to Adrian.

  She had a mouthful of something warm and edible, expecting to leave a message for Adrian to call back when the Escher flashed and the pleasant audio alert sounded, saying, "Incoming realtime secure message from… Adrian."

  "Mmrf," Jack said, swallowing quickly, "okay." She focussed on her system and saw herself stride over to the Escher.

  >Adrian, hi.

  >>Howdy, J. Glad to hear from you.

  >I know, you've been very chatty these last few days.

  >>Hey, what can I say, someone has to keep an eye on you.

  >(laughter)Thanks.

  >>So… what's the good news?

  >I learned some interesting things, but nothing concrete yet.

  >>Hmfp.

  Jack imagined a sound of disapproval, though she had never actually heard Adrian's voice. Apparently Adrian worked long and irregular hours and was rarely alone, so they had never had an audio or visual conversation. Jack had never thought about whether this was strange or not until now. Lately she had begun noticing how much of life was conducted over the nets, where voices and bodies were optional.

  >Hey, Adrian?

  >>Yeah?

  >What do you look like?

  >>Where the hell did that come from? And what kind of a question is that, anyway? Jesus, that's one of the joys of modern life - it doesn't matter what you look like anymore. God, Jack, you're not turning into one of those anti-net freaks, are you?

  >No, sorry, I didn’t mean to be offensive. It's just that all of a sudden it seemed weird that I don't have an accurate mental picture of you.

  >>Sure you do. How my body looks has nothing to do with who I am, same for you. How you picture me is as real as anything else since it's based on what you know of me. When the vast majority of the people in your life are people you'll never see in the physical world, your imagination is all that matters. Come on, man, this is elementary etiquette stuff you learn as a kid.

  >I know, I'm sorry. It just all of a sudden seems weird. Like if you say the same word over and over again fifty times it stops meaning anything and sounds unfamiliar.

  >>…

  >…

  >>And you were wondering why I was worried?

  >(laughter) I'm fine, really. Look, I'm working on a complete report. I'll send it to you when it's done; it will probably take a couple of days, though.

  >>Days?! What have you been up to?

  >It's not that much, but I'm adding stuff all the time. Besides, you'll want it thorough, right.

  >>Abso fucking lootly.

  Jack laughed.

  >>Okay then, I'll wait for your little report.

  >Good.

  >>But you better keep in touch.

  >I will, don't worry.

  >>Don't worry. Ha! As if. Okay. Talk to you later.

  >Later.

  Adrian broke the connection, and Jack shifted focus from her display to her room. Adrian's response to her non-sequitur was pretty normal; asking someone what they look like was pretty much the same as asking their weight or bank balance. Still, she found it a little odd that her friend refused to answer the question. She would have answered. Hell, she would have answered any of those questions if Adrian had asked. She thought that was what friendship was, sharing those things you don't tell just anyone. But, maybe that's not what it was. She wasn't sure that she was qualified to know the answer.

  Chapter 17

  The next day, Jack arrived a little early, hoping to catch a few minutes with Gilles. She rounded the corner to their shared cube, and smiled broadly when she saw his craggy face. "Morning, Gilles," she said, throwing her jacket on the rack.

  "Hey, yourself," Gilles said. "How was your weekend?" She could have sworn that he winked at her.

  "Pretty interesting," Jack said, "I'll be giving you a full written report later." He laughed, and Jack smiled and lowered her voice. "No, really, I'm not kidding. There have been a lot of developments since our little adventure and I want to fill you in."

  "Good," he said, packing up and getting ready to leave. "I, on the other hand," he said, "have nothing to report." He put on his jacket. "You can read all about it today," he grinned and slapped Jack on the back. "Later, dude." Jack watched him walk down the corridor and out of the office. She had been on days opposite Gilles for a few years now and they had developed a very cordial working relationship. They had their little jokes and amusements, they shared pet peeves about their fellow co-workers and made coded disparaging remarks about their bosses. They were pretty good work buddies. Jack didn't know anything about Gilles at all.

  In fact, she had taken a huge risk in trusting him to help her with the break in at Buyside. She had taken the leap of faith and gone with what she knew of his personality from a couple of years of work jokes and funny reports. No one had come from Internal to arrest her, so it seemed like her hunch had been correct, but only now did she recognize what a risk it had been. And it was the same with Adrian, Adrian who didn't even feel close enough to Jack to share physical world details. And these were her closest friends, her only friends, really. It sure made a girl feel loved.

  Jack logged into the Bellis system and settled into the chair, taking a few seconds luxury to feel it conform to her body. There was something almost decadent in the way the machines in the chair worked to make her comfortable. She ran the usual programs and started going through the messages and logs. She opened Gilles' report and skimmed through his usual banter about boredom, colleagues and missing lunches from the team fridge.

  Jack watched one of the logs scroll up and out of her view, not really seeing it but unconsciously monitoring it for anomalies through some sixth sense or mystical power generated through years of repetitive tedium. She usually daydreamed while she worked - an occupational hazard - but this time she thought about her work, her life, the strange situations she had been in the last few days
.

  Almost everyone's life was pretty much like hers. Day in, day out - go to a job, do some things for most of your time that feed into a bigger complex that ultimately makes money and power for the firm. The firm then gets bigger and more powerful, making more things for people just like Jack to do every day, and more things to buy and consume with their precious few days off every once in awhile.

  And on those days off, what do all those free people do? They play games, go shopping, have sex, watch vids, pretty much all on the nets. Most people leave one cubicle at work to go sit in another cubicle they call home. Even the nets are essentially just virtual boxes to hide in - store shaped boxes, theatre-style boxes, boxes filled with naked virtual bodies. Jack knew that the nets had the potential to offer almost limitless freedom within its confines; it wasn't real so you could do anything. But it wasn't like that.

  Sure, there were pockets of rebellion and discontent, the underground boards that Jack's alter ego b0xenjester frequented for example. But the freedom to talk trash about the firms was one thing, the freedom to live an entire life unbound by the laws of either physics or men, that was another thing entirely. No such freedom was to be found in the nets, and Jack wondered why. She wondered how many people were satisfied with their lives, how many even questioned if this was how they wanted to live.

  She snapped out of her reverie as a chime sounded. It was a message from Tony. Ugh, Jack thought, there's someone who knows what he wants out of life. All it takes is a pair of old shoes and he's happy. She answered the chime, "Talk to me."