The unfamiliar male voice again came, gurgling as if trying to speak through a throat full of fluid, a series of sputters and guttural noises that ended with a gasp of finality.
“Vincent!” A strained female voice yelled, breaking into sobs.
Kenny popped up and aimed over the couch, seeing nothing. With his gun leveled ahead of him, he walked sideways toward the hall.
He nodded at the front door. “Sounds like it’s out front.”
Joey got up to follow. Under protest, Hayley shifted her grip to Alyssa.
“Shh. I’m not letting Kenny go in alone. If you hear shots, go out back and hide in the scrap.”
Kenny hit the wall at the far end of the living room shoulder first, and took several breaths before he spun around and aimed. He sighted down an empty hallway at his own reflection in the glass of the closed front door. There was nothing there but a few pairs of old boots and Katherine’s transparent umbrella propped up against the wall.
“Just stay down! Backup is on the way.” The same voice that a moment ago gurgled to death filled the room.
Kenny spun on his heel and aimed behind him. Joey turned a few shades paler in the harsh light from Alyssa’s bedroom.
“That came from behind me.” Kenny’s expression changed from trepidation to confusion.
Both of them looked down at the same time, in the same way, and their eyes met at the Teradyne Silver Series – Grade 3 upon the couch. They crept up to it, Joey circling as Kenny put his gun away. Three points of light gleamed in the dark. The deck was on, but had no active holo-displays.
“You think this is pretty funny, eh?” Kenny glanced at the deck.
Joey made an innocent face. “I didn’t do a damn thing. Fucker was off last time I saw it.”
The near deafening sound of a ripple of gunfire erupted from the deck, the sound intense enough to vibrate the air in the two men’s lungs. After it came a feminine gasp and fluid-laden breathing.
Joey punched the deck twice and the lights went out. “Serious. I didn’t.”
“Is this your idea of ghosts?”
“Kenny, if I was doing this I’d have stopped when I saw Hayley freaking out.”
“Girls, it’s okay.” Kenny called to the kitchen.
Two frightened faces followed an army of little fingers over the top of the counter.
Alyssa handed Joey back his gun and grabbed on to her father, trying to act less scared than she felt. Hayley stood a few steps back with an awkward look. Arms folded across her chest, she continued trembling. Joey felt like a dick for hesitating, seeing the way she stared at Alyssa with her dad. He did not want a kid yet, at least not without having the fun of making it first. With a sigh, he went over and embraced her.
“Normally I’d be blaming you for this.” He smiled at her.
She mumbled into his chest. “For what?”
“Those sounds came out of the deck.” He pointed at it. “There was no one here.”
“What?” Alyssa looked up at her father.
“Hell if I know. Sounded like sound bits from some kind of slasher holo.” Kenny patted her on the back. “It was fake, hon. Nothing to worry about.”
Alyssa exhaled hard, glaring at nothing in particular. Hayley seemed rattled well beyond what a simple explanation could repair. Joey wondered if she overacted just to be able to hold onto him longer, but his mind wandered over other topics at that moment. If Cleopatra did not make these voices or simulate his dad, someone else did. A blinking red light drew his attention to the deck, to a warning about heat. Something stressed his deck’s processing power beyond its normal operating tolerances.
Up until discovering the deck as the source of the noise, Joey found his mind running away in search of a paranormal explanation. The heat alarm pulled things squarely back into the realm of reality. Other hackers could force their way into a deck even when powered off. Remote boot was ancient technology incorporated since the first days of cyberspace. To get into someone’s deck uninvited was almost as difficult as punching a VidPhone with a closed fist and expecting to dial the number of a specific person.
Kenny patted Alyssa on the shoulder. “Why don’t you two go try and get some sleep?”
“Sleep? After that? Yeah right. Maybe after a few shots.”
He smirked at her. “We’ve had this talk. No booze till eighteen.”
Alyssa sighed, gathering Hayley’s hand. “Come on. Fine, but I can’t promise sleep.”
The girls wandered into the back.
“You talk to her yet about a quick run?” Joey kicked off his boots and moved the Teradyne to the table.
“Yeah. She wasn’t thrilled about it, but since someone’s trying to kill you, she’s okay spending a few days at a neighbor’s place while we go.”
“You must owe them a lot.” Joey smiled.
“I’ve known Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez since I was a kid; he owns a store a little bit down the road. That’s how it is down here, everyone does for everyone.”
“Guess you can do that when there’s not a thousand people living within a hundred feet of your apartment.” Joey laughed.
“Yeah, that helps.”
Joey reclined on the couch as Kenny went down the hall. He interlaced his fingers behind his head, staring at the moonlit ceiling. He wanted to sleep, knowing the Badlands waited in the morning, but too many thoughts spun through his mind. He tried to ascribe cause and purpose to the strange audio. After a half hour of failing to pass out, he rolled on his side and tapped at the deck’s controls.
A quick diagnostic process found nothing awry and access logs showed an external audio stream had been played into his deck from a source that four consecutive attempts to track down could not reveal. The audio had a lot of encryption that the deck had been forced to unwind in real time. The heat alarm made sense. Joey grumbled at the old trick, a neophyte hacker attempt to kill a deck with a processor meltdown. Newer model decks had hardware-level fail-safes to resist the technique because it had become so pervasive about ten years ago.
He could not understand why someone would even bother trying to use such an old attack; there was no chance of it working. Even in a worst-case scenario, the deck would terminate all activity before the processors cooked. Either someone thought he had an old deck or someone was an idiot.
The first option seemed illogical and the second a fallacious assumption. An idiot would not be able to find his deck in the first place. The scan created more questions than it answered, and brought Joey no closer to sleep than he had been an hour before.
He buried his face in the back of the couch, trying to stop thinking.
enny’s boot knocked on Joey’s head, the past few hours gone in what felt like seconds. He moaned into the back of the couch, protesting until Kenny lifted him into a sitting position. Joey squinted, trying to keep the evil light from his conscious mind.
“What the hell, do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Do you want to have any daylight left by the time we get out there?”
Joey slumped forward, catching his head with both hands. He tried to wake up, though his body was not ready to move under its own power. “What’s that smell?”
“Alyssa cooked breakfast.” Kenny leaned in, whispering. “Try not to cringe too much.”
“Huh?” He twisted his palm back and forth in an effort to rub the sleep out of his right eye.
“Since we had a talk the other day, she’s been trying to help out instead of just being a pain in the ass.”
“It can’t be worse than what I’m used to.” Joey stretched, wringing the last vestiges of sleep from his muscles.
Breakfast was edible but little more could be said for it. Kenny smiled despite it. Joey ate food that roaches refused to touch and sprinkled sincere comments about how good it was between bites. He enjoyed the food, as did Hayley, who seemed thrilled to eat something different from the same packetized crap she had been surviving on for almost a year. Kenny bought vat-grown or hydr
oponic, not trusting reconstituted OmniSoy.
“This is awesome.” She grinned at Alyssa.
The older girl blinked at her with distrustful brown eyes. “Mm hmm. What kind of horrible crap do you usually eat?”
Alyssa’s taste buds still worked and she remembered her mother’s cooking and had a good idea of how her efforts compared. Toast pushed eggs around her plate; she felt guilty for shunning her mother’s attempts to teach her.
“OmniSoy.” Hayley made a nasty face.
“What the hell is that?” Alyssa looked up.
“It’s a little packet of protein gel. You put it in a reassembler and the machine turns the goo into whatever you want.” Kenny pointed at a small appliance on the counter with a complicated control panel.
From the look on Alyssa’s face, Joey knew that the device had never been used.
Hayley blinked at Kenny, horrified.
“You weren’t eating it straight out of the pouch, were you?” Joey read her look.
“Yeah.” She looked down at a plate full of scorched bacon.
The others shared a combined wince at the idea of slurping down the flavorless snot-like paste. It would sustain you, but the sensation of consuming it was repugnant. Joey interrupted the shared moment of disgust by pointing out the window at a passing ad-bot. He jumped from his chair, ran to the living room, and powered up the holo bar. Kimberly Brightman’s face filled the living room. Donna George rambled, halfway through a well-rehearsed performance about how thankful everyone was for the junior reporter’s safe return.
Joey smirked with contempt. “Damn, what a bitch.”
Kenny appeared in the doorway, bacon crunching. “What’s lit your ass on fire?”
“I found a video of that bitch bragging about sending the other woman out there on purpose just to get rid of her.”
“Be funny if that found its way to the airwaves.” Kenny chuckled and returned to the table.
“Yeah… You know it would.” Joey was saving it for some kind of payoff, but now his antiestablishment nature made him want to spite the six-foot talking head.
He could always hack the NewsNet and just broadcast it. Any deck jockey of reasonable skill could get into that network, almost joke easy. He smiled, thinking of how he could still monetize it in a less scummy way by selling the footage to the tabloid corp.
The screen cut to Donna George standing in the city with a crowd of people and police vehicles in the background.
“In other news, local technology entrepreneur Dyson Yan was found dead in his home late last night. Sources indicate that he received a lethal jolt of electricity while connected via interface plug to cyberspace. Police are refusing to speculate about the cause of this event and have initially labeled this as a suicide based on evidence they are not releasing to us at this time. If you remember, it was only six months ago that Lauren Yan, his sister, lost her life in an unexplained hovercar accident.
“Many believe the death of Mr. Yan is related to the now-famous self-immolation of Kyle Blank, whose”―an animation of a dancing, burning man with a wire coming out of his head played on the screen―“spectacular suicide became a cyberspace phenomenon a little more than year ago.
“Don’t forget to tune in tonight at eleven for a special report on hovercar safety systems: is your life really in good hands, or have companies been cutting corners at risk to your life?”
Joey squinted at the screen. That sounded a bit too much like black ICE. The police would call it a suicide even if they knew what happened. Civilization would screech to a halt if people became afraid to use their plugs.
“Here with me now is Doctor Preeti Khan, who had been treating Mr. Yan for depression since his sister died. You also are on record as working with another man who met a similar end, Kyle Blank, some months ago.” A split window opened with the reporter on one side.
“Miss George, you know I cannot discuss confidential patient information with you. What happened with Mr. Yan and Mr. Blank is tragic, but I’m afraid there is nothing I can offer you. It’s protected by confi―”
“You are the proprietor of a grief counseling center that operates primarily from cyberspace?” The reporter looked down at her notes for a second before continuing. “New Hope services?”
“That is correct.”
“Police have indicated that Mr. Yan spent a lot of time there as of late.”
Doctor Khan glowered. “If you ask me something I can answer, I will be happy to talk to you, but I cannot break patient confidentiality.”
“Well, there we have it. Is New Hope contributing to suicide?”
The doctor appeared to be yelling, but her audio did not come through. The split screen view slid off the display, leaving only Donna George’s smug face.
Joey shook his head; once again, the news repaid someone for not giving them what they want by smearing them. His brain clunked to a halt when a familiar old man wandered through the crowd behind the reporter. William Dillon checked out storefronts and looked around at the tall buildings. Joey, not breathing or blinking, watched his father move through the crowd until he disappeared off the right side of the image.
Whoever you are, I will find your ass.
Joey stormed through the kitchen on his way to the back porch, tapping away on his NetMini.
“Be right back, gotta make a call.”
Kenny looked at the two girls. “Hon, are you packed yet?”
Alyssa leaned out of the way to let Joey pass. “Mostly, what’s wrong?” She continued putting dishes into the machine.
“What do you mean?” Kenny walked over and helped load it.
“When you go out there, you always jump around like a big kid on his birthday. It’s like you don’t want to go this time.” She smirked, watching Joey pace back and forth on the deck outside. “Is he okay?”
“I’m not going for fun this time, some people are trying to hurt Joey, and going out there is the only way we can make it stop.” He kissed her atop the head. “I don’t really want to go this time; I’d rather be here for you.”
She smiled through tears. “I understand, just…” She choked up. “Don’t get hurt.”
“I’ll be as careful as I can.” He squeezed her before reaching for his NetMini. “On that note… Let me better our odds.”
Alyssa remained quiet as her father spoke to Eldon and talked him into helping out; he’d be there in twenty minutes. She blushed at the sound of his name.
“I know I said I’d bring you next time, but some people are trying to kill Joey and they might be waiting for us out there.” Kenny ran a hand over her head.
“It’s okay… Thanks for asking me about it.” She tried to smile, but could not force it genuine. “If I wanted you not to go would you have stayed home?”
He put a hand on her cheek and looked right into her eyes. “Yes.”
She hugged him. “Someone’s gotta watch Hayley, I guess I’ll stay behind.”
Kenny ran over the trip in his head, thinking about the terrain and the route. “Best case, about four days. Worst case is six or seven if the truck takes a dump and we wind up having to walk back.”
A train of delivery bots glided by in an aerial ballet as they left their parcels in a neat row, supplies for the trip. Alyssa went to finish packing and Hayley stared at her reflection upon the surface her NetMini’s dark screen. She looked on the verge of crying.
“What’s wrong?” Kenny took an adjacent chair.
She picked at the small raised button on the side of the device, the only physical control it had. “I should go home before Daddy gets mad at me.”
Kenny had a feeling she did not seem afraid of getting in trouble. “Your dad called you?”
A tear rolled out of her eye. She shook her head to indicate the negative.
“Why don’t you call him and make sure it’s okay for you to stay with us?”
She looked at him for a moment, then back to her NetMini. Wiping her face with the back of her forearm, s
he hit the button and the screen lit up. A few swipes of her finger later, she placed a call. It rang itself to vid mail. Hayley blinked; that was something new. With mounting panic, she redialed, hands shaking. Just before dumping to mail a second time, a garbled image formed of Jacob Roth. The hologram crisscrossed with lines of static.
“Sorry sweetie. They’re working on the network here, there is a lot of interference.” Her father, busy as ever, offered the briefest of smiles before glancing back at his work.
“Daddy? Member I said that some men broke in at home?”
“Yes I do sweet”―the image faltered out, garbling back together a few seconds later―“patrolmen to check the place out, they didn’t find anything. Are you feeling alright?” The holographic head froze in place as if stuck, moving in a series of short slips before it reanimated.
Hayley’s eyes ran with tears. “I’m not lying.”
Jacob Roth pixilated into cubes, his head reformed facing her―“bullet holes in the wall. There’s a new door. I believe you.”
She tried to get her voice back from the cave of sadness where it hid. “Can I stay at a friend’s house for a couple of days?”
“Who is this friend?”
“Her name’s Alyssa.”
The hologram vanished, replaced with a blue bar bearing white letters: ‘synchronizing.’ A few seconds later, her father appeared in wireframe. “…ow old is she?”
“Fourteen. She’s real nice and her house is big. Her dad’s nice too.”
The image restored itself as Jacob adjusted his glasses. He spoke for a minute or two to someone in the background in a low murmur that did not come through the vid call. His look gave Kenny the impression he wanted to rush her off the phone. “That’s fine, dear. Call me if you need anything.”
“Um. Okay.” She let the NetMini fall through her fingers to the table.
Virtual Immortality Page 29
