An unexpected blare from Joey’s NetMini made her jump. When he answered it, a worried holographic Masaru stared at him.
“Where in the nine hells are you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me unless you saw him. What happened?”
“They were gone by the time I got there. The roof looks like something bigger than a hovercar landed there.”
“Transport craft? You think it was the military? Why would they arrange a meeting just to take me out? If they wanted to kill me, I’d just not wake up some day, C-Branch doesn’t prick and dick around, they just do you in your sleep.”
“Whatever. Where are you so we can get out of this shithole?”
“Here.” He sent a pin. “Gonna fly in?”
“Yeah, to hell with it. Be there in a minute.”
“We need to stop at the hospital on the way back.”
“Damn, what happened?” Worry returned to his voice.
“I’m okay, Kat’s okay. We found this chick. I’ll explain when you get here.”
He turned back to the stalemated Gee-ball game, trying not to laugh at Mark’s overstated reaction to the Sector 88 Psychos almost letting the Lunar team’s offense score. By the time the street outside glowed with the presence of Masaru’s headlights, Katya had managed to get Kimberly to whisper a “thank you” to Mark. He held out the holo-cap of his squad, pointing at what he used to look like. A warm current of dusty air swept in as the hovercar settled down for a quiet landing. Mark moved out of his seat like a linebacker and went for the grate. Kimberly almost fainted.
Joey flailed. “Whoa, Mark… It’s a friend of mine.”
“I know. I just want to cover you guys if you’re going to fly out. People out here tend to shoot things that fly, and I heard a Templar going off before.”
“A what?”
“UCF TMPLR… Tactical magnetic propelled light rifle. It’ll throw a 14.5 millimeter slug out to four miles. They are not permitted in the city, even the military won’t bring them here. Too much risk of collateral damage. Nasty piece of hardware… I wouldn’t even want to get hit by that thing.”
“Oh that… He’s gone. He was trying to shoot me.” Joey showed off the red patch on his cheek. “Wait a sec, you called that light?”
“Yeah, they get bigger.” Mark paused. “What the hell did you step into?”
Joey threw up his arms. “Fuck if I know.”
Outside, Masaru squinted in an effort to peer through the darkness beyond the chain link. When the cyborg emerged from the black, he almost reversed into the wall. Japanese cursing reverberated through the closed windows.
“Calm down.” Joey darted over to the car.
Masaru’s eyes fixed him with a fatalistic glare, a look he would give someone he wanted to kill. “What. Is. That?”
“That’s Mark.” Joey pointed back over his shoulder with a nonchalant grin.
“That is the kind of thing you warn me about before I get here.” Masaru glared.
Katya tapped on the locked rear door. Masaru turned at the noise, wincing at the sight of Kimberly coated in filth and unidentifiable substances.
Joey tugged at the handle. “Come on Masaru, I know she’s a little old for you, but we gotta get her to a hospital.”
“You know that’s a damn stereotype.” Masaru continued glaring at him.
Joey laughed. “Yeah, and stereotypes are pulled out of thin air because they have no basis in anything that really happened. Just open the damn door already, or do you want to spend the night here?”
“This is your friend?” Mark asked, folding his arms.
“Yeah.”
As the doors clicked open, Katya helped their foundling into the back seat and snugged the borrowed coat around her. Masaru struggled with all his willpower not to make a face at the smell she carried into his car.
Joey glanced at the hood.
“I will stab you if you try to slide across.” Masaru’s tone lacked mirth.
He had enough danger for one night, surprising as that was, and sauntered around to the passenger side. A ring of debris blasted away from the car in all directions as Masaru yanked on the control stick. Joey barely had time to wave to Mark before the car leapt skyward, tilting forwards as it picked up speed. He pulled hard left and coiled around one of the skyscrapers as the car edged past three hundred miles per hour. The force of their passing sucked old furniture and other debris out through the absent windows of a building they came within feet of hitting.
The structures around them were little more than blurry swaths of color as the car shot down the street at about the level of the ninth floor. Below, on the road, a torrent of plasfilm rectangles swirled about in the severe wind kicked up by their departure.
Once they left the black zone, Masaru climbed to normal cruise altitude, around the fiftieth floor, and slowed to the calm speed of two hundred fifty miles per hour. Kimberly gazed around at the interior of the car; the sense of normalcy made her flash a neurotic smile and knead her hands into the seat cushion like a cat. A nervous laugh escaped her as the reality of being out of that place sunk in. When the car settled onto the hospital’s roof deck, she had almost stopped trembling. Joey studied Katya, not knowing how to interpret the look of genuine concern on her face.
A Division 1 officer moonlighting as hospital security and a slender scarlet-haired black woman in a white coat approached as the engines wound down and cut out. Joey waved at them as he climbed out. “Bring a cart.”
The woman doubled back to grab a gurney as the cop walked over. His flashlight swept the car and then he looked at Joey.
“What’s the story?”
“Got bored so I went into the black zone around Sector 12.”
“Uh huh. Bullshit, but go on.”
“Found this girl hiding in a building. I think she’s that missing reporter… Kimberly something. Gangers worked her over pretty bad.”
The cop looked him up and down, unimpressed. “And you chased them off all on your own?”
Joey laughed. “Yeah right. No. We found her hiding. Another gang tried to get in on the action and she snuck away while they shot each other up.”
The cop still had a look of distrust in his eyes. Joey made it up as he went along, not wanting to cause trouble for Mark. Of course, even if the authorities knew where he was, they would never go there.
“Okay, fine. There is a Class 4 borg out there that objected to an imminent rape. He turned the gangers into hamburger.”
The cop lifted an eyebrow, sensing no lie even with a less plausible a story than the first attempt.
“Fucking wonderful. If you’re not full of shit, let’s hope it stays there.”
“I don’t think he’ll be a problem.” Joey smiled. “It’s not an AI.”
The med tech helped Katya move the reporter to the gurney. After a quick diagnostic scan, she gave Kimberly two injections, an antibiotic and a pain reliever. Within seconds, the reporter passed out. The medic got alarmed and repeated the scan.
“Poor thing has probably been awake for days. Tell her she can keep the jacket.” Katya folded her arms and backed towards Masaru’s car.
Joey shook his head. “We found her clingin’ to the severed arm of her dead holo-cam operator, hugging it like a doll, talking to it like he was there.”
The cop winced. “That’s just not right. What is your relationship with her?”
“Isn’t one… we just stumbled onto her.”
“Okay. If we need to contact you about this, where can we find you?”
Thinking about the potential reward, he gave legitimate info. “Call me on vid as I dwell where cops dare not tread.”
Katya rolled her eyes at his melodrama.
“How’s that?” The officer seemed unamused.
Joey gave his address. “Grey zone. Don’t get a lot of your buddies around there. As a matter of fact, that shithole sounds pretty damn good right about now.”
Joey staggered down the steps from the sidewalk. Th
e rush of air from Masaru’s departure showered him with old cans and plastic cartons. As it grew distant, the thrum of machinery gave way to the eerie stillness of reflected moonlight on the smooth concrete. The apartment waited ten feet away, though it may as well have been a quarter mile to him.
His trudging gait sent trash scuttling and empty bottles clinking into the dark. He grasped the metal door to steady himself before squeezing between it and the wall. The hellhole was mercifully empty, save for a lingering tequila burp hanging in the air. He staggered past the table, dropping the deck off on the way, and fell face first into the couch without even taking his boots off. The trash that launched skyward with his impact settled into a blanket on top of him.
Cleo, and whatever that holodisk contained, could wait until morning.
ours later, consciousness intruded upon his blissful repose. His eyes cracked open with the unwanted realization he was awake and still alive. Cruel fingers of pain squeezed his chest as he tried to breathe.
Somewhere below the other ambient discomforts that wracked his body, hunger lurked. Out of the reach of his conscious mind, behind a layer of misery that even three of the green pills would not fix. He remained motionless for the better part of the next hour as curiosity about the holodisk battled with inertia.
He grabbed the couch above where his face rested, tamping a cloud of dust into the air from the olive velveteen. His attempt to stand turned into a helpless fall that sent his body to the floor, the largest object in an avalanche of trash. A short train of plastic boxes bounced off his head as the debris came to a halt.
Joey closed his eyes and drew in a breath to build up the energy necessary for another try. He leaned his head as far to the rear as it would go and stared at the peeling scraps of paint on the ceiling. The events of the previous night already blurred in his mind, though his body remembered every bump and scrape in glorious detail.
He staggered to the bathroom and stared a challenge at the autoshower. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not, and sometimes it invented altogether new methods of torture. It still had hot water, even here, thanks to an internal heating unit. At least forty years old, it made a habit of performing random reflex and pain tolerance tests on whoever used it.
The welcome thought of how his muscles would feel under the warm water chased away his doubts about the nuisance shocks that it delivered here and there out of spite. Superstition held little sway upon Joey’s mind, though this aging device seemed to have a personality unto itself. He stripped and shambled into the tube; the curved plastic rotated closed behind him.
He hesitated with a smirk at the control panel, coming within a half inch of pushing the start button four times before he made a fist and threatened the machine with a shake of it. Joey knew that touching the panel would be unpleasant, but after the silent warning he gave it, he risked the poke. Sure enough, a shower of sparks rained out, and he waved his scorched finger through the air, trying to cool it off.
Mismatched bands of color wobbled around the display screen and shifted alignment. Joey had not the first clue what should be on the screen, it had been broken like that since he had been squatting here. Joey smiled at the random pixels, wondering if the color patterns made sense to Pinky―he who was high on Flowerbasket in perpetuity.
After an ominous rumble and a series of knocks that came with increasing volume, the spray ring descended, jittered, and started.
Despite the tepid suds, the combination of the warmth with the physical pressure of the water jets eased the pain in his limbs as he grimaced and stretched. Fifteen minutes later when the rinse water stopped, he stood in the center of the unit, dripping. Now came the gamble; the dry cycle was usually where the pain began. It could start up and work, start up and shoot him with frigid air, or do something entirely new and unpleasant.
Rhythmic tapping welled up out of the silence, growing into an oscillating banging as the entire chamber shook. The screen morphed in a mesmerizing pattern of color as the long-damaged device tried its best to pass along information. The mechanical activity in the base grew in intensity; the shuddering tube bounced him off the walls. He screamed, thinking that he might not want to remain inside for the grand finale this time.
He clawed at the door, trying to open the release catch, but the plastic handle had snapped off months ago. A small metal nub he usually stuck his thumbnail into to turn was all that remained. In the midst of all this shaking, he could not hold his hand steady enough. He flung himself back from the door and kicked several times into the transparent plastic. Droplets of water that had settled on the interior surface rained onto his leg with each impact. The cold trickle escaped notice as his desperation to escape the auto shower increased in parallel with the shudders passing through the machine.
The fourth heel stomp sent a chunk of curved plastic bouncing into the bathroom amid a clatter that knocked several dust covered canisters of cologne into the sink. Wasting no time climbing through the gap, he backed into the main room as the shower unit shook with such ferocity that a rain of plaster fragments snowed from where it met the ceiling. Black smoke punctuated with streaking orange sparks billowed out of the base, obscuring the bathroom floor. No way in hell would he go back in there to turn it off, and the unit showed no signs of slowing down; if anything, the noise and destruction escalated. Joey figured this was the shower unit’s last stand and it wanted to take out the entire apartment as a show of defiance.
He sprinted to the coffee table where he left his handgun. The electric chirp of its arming circuit drowned in the racket from the bathroom. He edged to the side, drifting left just enough to get a clear shot. A double-tap shredded the control unit in a dazzling display of electrical arcs and orange specks. The whine of powered movement ceased, leaving only the thumping whir of the parts already in motion. He relaxed, the weapon fell to his side, and the whomping noise and shaking slowed.
“Nothing like a shower to wake you up.”
“Was that really necessary, Joseph?” His father’s voice clucked his tongue. “You could have just cut the power lead.”
“This.” Joey waved the gun. “Was way more fu”―he whirled to face the air from whence the voice had come―“What the f―”
“Dammit, Cleo.” He rubbed his head, pacing. “What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m starting to talk to it.”
After tossing the weapon onto the couch, he got dressed in the least aromatic things he could find, and took a seat by his deck. Something scurried out of his way into the trash at the back of the table. A wave of his hand through the screen opened a hatch just large enough to accept a holodisk stack. He took the thing out of its case with a two-fingered grip on its central spindle, and held it up. Light gleamed from the surface as he turned it over, checking the six individual platters for defects. They held about three hundred and sixty terabytes, but the access speed was ponderous compared to neural memory modules.
He set it on the extended U-shaped arm, which retracted into the deck when it sensed the disk’s weight. Within seconds, the contents appeared in a spread of holographic panes that bathed the wall behind him in green and blue light. The file structure unfolded into a graphical tree of images linked by lines, though the majority of the disk appeared to be blank. One file turned out to be a cipher key, a part of a cryptographic process needed to decode some other data. The only other file contained a series of numbers. He stared at them, tapping his fingers into the side of his cheek as he thought about what the strange spacing between them could mean. It reminded him of a format he had seen before but the exactitude of where escaped him.
He muttered them aloud; the cadence of how they came out made him remember―coordinates for the NavMap system. They pointed at a spot in the western part of an area of the Badlands once known as Texas. Joey picked at his teeth, pondering the meaning of the coordinates with a cipher key. The curiosity was unbearable. It did not make it any easier to resist the siren call of danger, thinking that a man got his head vaporized
for whatever this code would unlock.
Joey just had to find out.
e would need Kenny’s help to put together a trip, but he didn’t think that would be too difficult to arrange. Convincing Kenny to go to the Badlands was like convincing a ganger to accept free tequila. Masaru might be harder to persuade, but Joey wanted him along for protection. Katya, on the other hand, would not want to go. If something did exist out there important enough to kill for, it stood to reason that it would be worth a lot of credits. Perhaps her need for cash could tip the balance.
Now, of course, Joey had something specific to do. He cracked his knuckles as he savored the anticipatory joy of finding Cleopatra. First, he would trace her. Once he found her in the net, he would use a Flypaper soft to block her logout so she could not run away―unless she had a friend in the real world to pull the wire out. With her trapped, he could fry every last memory unit of her deck until it dumped her out of cyberspace with suicide headache.
Joey knew what that felt like. Pain so bad the thought of ending it all seemed almost welcome. The memory of the Black Dragon construct came hand in hand with nausea. One of the more dangerous and powerful AI’s, its attack had so overwhelmed his NinTek Scythe that it blew out from one surge. That had been a grade 5 unit, at least triple the power of this Teradyne junk. It had taken him almost ten minutes to stop flopping around the floor like a fish on dry land. Better that it booted him though, a weakened deck opened him to black ICE. A couple of blown-out chips or a smashed neural memory unit was one thing, easily replaceable. Black ICE forced a deck to send voltage into the M3 interface to cook the brain. The dragon would have killed him for real if it had the time to launch a second attack.
Joey rose out of his chair, opining with a triumphant finger at the roof. “I shall find you, Cleo, and make you scream. I shall flood your motherboard with the agonized wails of ten thousand tortured souls and send you into the zombie mosh of doom! I shall roundhouse kick you in the cerebellum!”
Virtual Immortality Page 21
