Gunwitch: Rebirth

by Niall Teasdale

  She had put aside a weapons project she was working on for one evening so that she could adapt the phone to her purpose and… Well, she had to admit that the diversion was enjoyable. She was problem-solving, something she always enjoyed. Creating new devices was always interesting, but she had got very good at it. Very rarely did she need to bug-fix her inventions: she conceived of an idea, built a prototype, and it worked. Now she had to work out the function of someone else’s invention and figure out how to build it into her own kit.

  She glanced over at the nanofabricator. It was in the process of building a circuit board for her and, according to the display, that would be ready in about ten minutes. Supplies for the thing had not been a big problem: there was plenty of scrap around Manhattan and the box could recycle materials quite effectively. Power had been a bigger issue, but she had got her hands on a solar charger which she could use to charge the fabricator’s batteries during the day while she was out.

  Once the circuit board was done, it would be slotted into her arming pod, which she already had opened up and waiting beside her. She was going to reuse the phone’s antenna array since it seemed like a fairly optimal arrangement. Then, when she put on her pod, she would be able to access the phone functionality through her neural connections, just like her internal radio. Of course, she would not be able to test the thing until she got into the enclave, but that was just part of the thrill of building something.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said to the empty room, ‘this should be fun.’ Then she frowned. ‘When did I start talking to myself?’

  Sky City District, 19/12/83.

  With access to the diagnostic ports on the chip, Annette could get access to all sorts of things normal phone users could not. For one thing, the phone system used a burst-mode, packet-switched protocol, very difficult to hack into or snoop, which was nice to know. Well, very difficult unless you could use the diagnostic port to grab every packet you could find and assemble them manually. There was no encryption: presumably no one had thought it was needed. So, Annette could listen in on conversations the people around her were having on their phones.

  Of course, once you’d heard ten people ordering pizza, another dozen having arguments with their spouses, numerous conversations which could only be described as mind-numbingly mundane, and two people planning an extra-marital affair, you began to suspect this was a feature you could live without. Though the affair call had featured some fairly juicy descriptions of what the couple planned to do to each other…

  But that was not really helping her figure out the enclave. She was coming to the conclusion that Sky City was just too… controlled for her to hide in. Her aim was still to find a location within the enclave where she could disappear, hide from the UDF amid the population of another community. She would have to stay under the radar and there was just too much radar in Sky City. The LIPD ran vehicular and foot patrols. There was some gang activity. It took Annette a while to find it, but there were a few tags in back alleys: folded wings with a crown on top which gave no clue regarding the name. The fact that the gangs were that suppressed in the district suggested that the cops had fairly tight control here.

  Annette doubted that the Greenland District to the east was going to be more useful, but she decided she should take a look. After lunch, since she had just spotted what looked like a really nice Italian restaurant.

  Greenland District.

  The reason for the name appeared to be ironic at first. As you passed through the tunnel from Sky City, you emerged into a built-up area, semi-industrial from the look of it with a few housing blocks. Annette could see further tall buildings in the distance, but she soon realised that she was getting the wrong impression.

  Out beyond the buildings, the district was all farmland, what seemed like vast tracts of green; well, given the season, that was actually mostly brown. The buildings she could see in the distance, mostly to the south, were huge vertical farming platforms: layer upon layer of hydroponic gardens had been set up to supply food to the enclave. And in the normal growing season, those were supplemented by traditional growing methods in the fields.

  Sure, there was housing. Annette stopped off in a built-up area in the centre of the district, a small patch of grey amid the green and brown. But this was housing for the least wealthy residents of the district. Most of the population lived in gated communities and large homes dotted around the landscape. Greenland was full of rich people, supplemented by workers from Sky City and Queens.

  Within fifteen minutes of setting foot in the area, Annette felt like she was under surveillance. There were LIPD patrol cars in this area, very few foot patrols, but it appeared that they could smell a non-resident from a thousand metres. Annette headed back to the station after the same car had passed slowly by for the third time. Greenland was not a good place to disappear unless she could get her hands on a lot of money.

  She headed back toward Sky City. Hamptonville, to the east, was going to be worse. Greenland had a population of around a hundred thousand, and still it was no use to her; Hamptonville had a smaller population of even wealthier people and was going to be no good at all. No, if she was going to live in the enclave, she was going to have to make a choice between Brooklyn and Queens, at least for the immediate future.

  Manhattan, 20/12/83.

  Annette checked her work, made sure her goggles were in place, and then poked a small probe into the device she was building. There was a hiss and the tiny rocket engine she had built began to fire. She let it go for a few seconds, nodded, and removed the probe. Okay, that was good, on to the next stage.

  The motor was a component in a device she had been working on since her arrival in Manhattan. Not only were there Cyber-Kings to worry about, here and in the enclave, but the UDF had a plentiful supply of cyborgs too since they primarily shipped SAU operatives out on their abortive attempt to bring the Long Island to its knees. Annette figured there were times when she was going to need to stop cyborgs in their tracks, and her bullets were not always effective.

  So, she had hit upon the idea of using an EMP weapon. If she messed up, she could be affected by it herself, but the plan was to use it before another cyborg got too close. Plus, her immediate thoughts on generating an electromagnetic pulse effect big enough to be useful had, when she had done the math, suggested that she would generate simultaneous concussive and flash effects. It was just a matter of rapidly discharging a capacitive cell of sufficient density and wham bam, general chaos. Even fully organic humans caught in the blast would be disoriented, maybe blinded.

  Then she needed a delivery system since, frankly, her throwing sucked. Hence the rocket motors. Maybe she had overcomplicated the whole thing a little, but she was getting close to having a self-guided EMP grenade ready for testing.

  Which was good, because she was also almost ready to leave. Another day or so of checking over Queens and Brooklyn had pretty much fixed her on Queens. Brooklyn was, theoretically, the better option. Annette doubted even the enclave’s government knew who lived there so one extra resident was not going to be noticed. However, pretty much anywhere you went in Brooklyn, the local gangs were either mugging the residents or fighting each other. If Annette moved in, she was going to end up in the middle of something bad. The last thing she needed was the kind of attention that could bring.

  Queens, on the other hand, was basically home to one gang, the Black Widows, and Annette was of the opinion that they were less militant than their neighbours. If she avoided bothering them, she figured she would be left alone. There was a bigger police presence in Queens, but the district was not as heavily monitored as Sky City. Rents were higher than in Brooklyn, but nowhere near the levels in Sky City or Greenland, and Annette had looked into it and discovered that she could also rent workshop space in the industrial zone where she could get proper power and a decent network connection.

  ‘Oh, the luxury,’ she said to the circuit board she was working on. ‘I’m doing it again. Damn, if I don’t
get people to talk to soon, I’m going to go mad. Well, madder than I clearly am. I mean, I’m talking to a circuit board.’

  So, Queens. She was going to need some paperwork that would stand up to at least a basic level of inspection, and then she was going to need to find somewhere to live. That was going to need money, but she had a plan for conning some extra funds out of her UDF taskmaster. In fact, she was fairly certain that he could put her in touch with someone who could handle the paperwork requirements if she told him the right story, and she already had the story worked out.

  ‘A week, maybe ten days, and we’ll be living it up in a new home,’ she told her project. ‘I wonder if I can get enough cash for some psychotherapy when I get there?’

  21/12/83.

  ‘So, that’s the plan,’ Annette said. ‘I set myself up in Sky City and get myself a job in the fusion plant down by the southern wall. I’ve got the technical skills to pull it off. Frankly, I doubt they’ve ever seen anything like me. Once I’m in, I can gather intel on their security and weak points in their design we can capitalise on. There will be weak points. Then we work out how to sabotage it. The others will be the same. We can yank the plugs on their entire infrastructure in one go.’

  The UDF officer-in-charge in Manhattan was a thin man, going grey around the temples. On her last session with him, Annette had worked out pretty quickly that he was cynical, unhappy, and not there from a desire to do good work for Utopia City. He wanted, she figured, to get out of the hellhole he had been stationed in as fast as possible, and he had been there for five years. He was also no one’s fool.

  ‘How is it that you have come up with this idea in a week, which no one else has thought of in all our time here?’

  ‘Well… I’m pretty motivated.’

  ‘There are plenty of motivated operatives here.’

  ‘How many of them have two degrees and know how a fusion reactor works? SAU doesn’t generally induct academics.’

  ‘That’s… a valid point.’ The OiC sighed. ‘I assume that this project is going to require funding?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m going to need paperwork, a fake identity. I’m going to need to rent an apartment for at least a couple of weeks until I can get a job. There’s food and such…’

  ‘All right. We have a contact in the Frankies down in Hudson Yards who does good work forging identity documents. I’ll get you directions to his safe house and a budget to handle the costs. I’ll expect weekly reports sent through the Tarantulas.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  He peered at Annette for a few seconds and then said, ‘Honestly, I rate your chances at less than fifty per cent. They may be a disorganised backwater state, but their police have an annoying habit of detecting and capturing our operatives. More than one has vanished. Be careful and come back with useful information.’

  Annette nodded. ‘I’ll do my best, sir. For Doctor White.’

  As she left the OiC’s office, Annette wondered how many of those missing operatives had been captured, and how many had done exactly what she was planning to do. Her best guess was that more had vanished voluntarily than had disappeared into a cell somewhere.

  22/12/83.

  The Hudson Yards Frankies were a pretty organised bunch operating out of an old convention centre beside the river. Their stock-in-trade was live people, rather than the parts of dead ones many of their associates handled. More often than not, that meant shipping people captured by bandit gangs on the mainland into Manhattan to service the ever-present need for more workers, but they could also be persuaded, for a fee, to smuggle people onto the Long Island. For an additional fee, they would give you identity paperwork so that you could actually live there.

  They were not quite what Annette had expected, their chief forger doubly so. He was a middle-aged man with a dumpy body, a somewhat bulbous nose, and grey in his hair, and he was dressed in a three-piece suit which looked immaculate. He went by the name Inky, probably because his fingertips were stained with at least three colours of ink, though there was also a case to be made for his eyes which were an inky black colour.

  ‘You want the full package?’ Inky asked. ‘You get an ID card, driving licence, all the immigration paperwork.’ He was not actually looking at Annette as he spoke; his attention was fixed on a computer screen on his desk, though Annette could not see what he was watching. ‘We get your details into the immigration system over there so it all looks legit. It’ll stand up to anything the Lip will generally run on it.’

  ‘The Lip?’ Annette asked.

  ‘LIPD.’ It was kind of obvious when he said it. ‘If they check you out, they won’t generally go deeper than a quick look and most of ’em don’t know what to look for anyway.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Well… Christmas is coming up. A week. Ten days maybe.’

  Annette frowned. ‘What if I want something faster?’

  ‘Huh, rush job, is it? Well, I can do you an ID card for an enclave native in a couple of days. Records of births in Brooklyn are pretty shoddy. Lips know ID cards get issued and they don’t always link back to proper records. You get more questions, but they don’t push it much.’ Now Inky looked up at her. ‘Course, there’s an extra fee for putting a rush on it.’

  ‘Of course,’ Annette replied. ‘It’ll do.’

  ‘Right then.’ Opening a drawer in his desk, Inky took out a notebook and opened it up. This was followed by a pen, which he licked before preparing to write. The tip of his tongue was stained with ink too, so maybe the eyes had nothing to do with it. ‘What name do you want on the card?’

  Annette considered for a second. ‘Louise Barrington.’ If she was really leaving her old life behind, her old first name might as well go with it.

  24/12/83.

  ‘What is this Christmas thing anyway?’ Annette asked as she examined her new ID card.

  ‘Christmas?’ Inky replied. ‘Oh, yeah, I forget you people don’t have religious stuff. Not that Christmas is very religious… It’s a holiday. Back before the plague, they used to give out presents on Christmas Day, which is tomorrow. Not so much these days, but it’s still a big holiday in the enclave. No one does much work, except for the Lip, and the crooks, and the hookers, and–’

  ‘I think I get it.’

  ‘Right. You might see some fireworks. Spyders sometimes shoot off rockets and stuff over the park.’

  ‘Sounds wonderful,’ Annette replied, wondering how much more of a party would be going on outside her house. ‘This looks good,’ she said, waving the card. It looked like a quality piece of forgery. It was a pressed-out plastic card with a hologram verification panel and a barcode of some kind. The picture they had taken had been altered to give her back her brown eyes and Annette could not spot the changed pixels from the unchanged. And they had weathered the thing, abrading the edges and scuffing the surfaces to suggest it had been around a while. Her birth date was down as ‘25/09/2095’ and the issue date was ‘Sept 2113.’ She was going to have to get used to the new calendar, or rather the old one; the enclave and Manhattan, in fact more or less everywhere except Utopia City, still used the calendar from the days before the collapse.

  ‘Seeing as it’s Christmas, we figured we’d do our best work, even if we had to rush it.’

  Annette dumped a stack of money onto his desk. ‘And the fact that I’m paying you a small fortune had no bearing on that?’

  Inky smiled. ‘Might have had a little to do with it. I might even knock off early today.’

  ‘Well, it is almost Christmas.’

  ~~~

  Peering at the primary subassembly of her new gadget through a magnifying lens, Annette considered her progress.

  New identity: check. She had an ID card which would be sufficient to get her an apartment in Queens, especially if she picked the right building. Down near Industrial Avenue, the landlords tended not to ask questions.

  She fitted the circuit board into the lower half of the shell she had manufactured an
d began to screw it into place. ‘And you’re going to be ready for testing tonight.’ She considered that for a second. ‘Tomorrow would be better.’ Tomorrow would be Christmas, apparently, which led to two factors in her decision. One, no one would be concerned over some pyrotechnics if the Spyders were likely to set off their own at some point. Two, if it was really a holiday in the enclave, no one was going to be around for her to talk to about an apartment.

  ‘Okay then. Tomorrow I’ll find some Cyber-Kings to test you on, and then I’ll head back into the enclave the day after to hunt for an apartment. Great. Now, if I can just stop talking to inanimate objects, everything should be okay.’

  The inanimate object in question did not offer a comment on the matter. Which, all things considered, was probably for the best.

  25/12/83.

  There did seem to be something of a festive atmosphere on the streets of Manhattan. The Cyber-Kings were drunker than usual. You could always purchase the attention of one of the cyborgs with a good bottle of booze, or even a bad bottle of booze, but it was as if the local gang leader had decided to break open his stockroom for the day. If Annette had been the leader of the Spyders, she would have been arranging for a major raid about now.

  As it was, locating a trio of inebriated cyborgs gathered around an oil drum fire in an alley was not a major undertaking, but Annette was careful about it. She wanted them a little dulled, but not so drunk that they might not notice what was happening until the effect was fading. These three were laughing and joking, and passing around bottles containing liquids which ranged from clear to dirty brown. Definitely spirits, definitely inebriating.

  Annette put her hand behind her back and accepted the little device her pod dropped into her palm. It was a black discus-shaped device about ten centimetres across with three angled vents around its rim. She picked her primary target, sent the image to the bomblet, got the verification back, and tossed her weapon into the alley. The motors kicked in, spinning the disc and sending it flying out toward the three men. It worked on a simple, infrared homing system; Annette supplied the target signature and sensors on the rim of the disc directed the jets. The fire in the drum would add to the test, making the target-seeking system work harder.