Rune Zero: A Cyberpunk Thriller (Rune Universe)

by Hugo Huesca

  She disappeared again. Again, David couldn’t ask her why she, a hallucination, knew things he did not.

  It didn’t bug him for long, anyway. He forgot all about their conversation as soon as she had left, just like he forgot about their last conversation inside the VR jail.

  He didn’t forget about the locker room, though. He started to walk, weakly, trembling all the while, in the direction Leonor had pointed him to.

  There was a guard in civilian clothes walking away from him, watching a sporting match on his phone. David heard him mutter:

  “Goddamn Scorpions, what kind of play that was? I shouldn’t have bet on your asses…”

  He trailed off, focused on the game’s rerun. Two minutes later, a naked David Terrance ran out of his corner and rushed into the locker room.

  Even in his current state, David suspected why he was so lucky. This prison was built as a prototype business model. With all their prisoners immobilized and drugged inside a Virtual Reality, the administrators could save a lot of money on security. After the initial investment in the coffins, software, and maintenance were paid off, it was much more profitable. Smaller buildings, etcetera.

  The idea was wicked smart. Which was the reason why David could only think of fucking-it-up forever, instead of focusing on escaping.

  Most of the lockers were locked, and he spent a while checking them all until he found one that a guard had forgotten to lock. He took out a sport pack with the guard’s uniform neatly folded. David cleaned himself a bit with toilet paper from a bathroom nearby and then got dressed. He looked in the room’s mirror.

  He looked like a psychotic guard, with his pale face, disheveled hair, sullen eyes, and psychotic grin.

  “Hey, there, handsome,” he told his reflection, giving himself a thumbs-up.

  He ruffled through the sports pack some more and he found the guard’s work phone. Perfect. Time to talk to his good friends at K-Sec.

  Yo, guys, how are you doing? I’m fantastic. I just decided I want to blow up this place to all hell and back, kill everyone inside. Have some fun, live a little.

  Can you point me towards the boiler room or something?

  Orville’s response came five seconds later.

  That’s some strong shit they injected you with, wasn’t it? How about instead of killing a ton of people, you go public with the prison’s inner workings? Tell the world about the VR cells, let them raise hell for you.

  David wrote back:

  That’s just no fun :( Besides, I think people would love the idea of a VR capsule or whatever they call those coffins.

  Orville’s message was a bit frantic. That kid ought to ease up a bit.

  Dude, get yourself together! You can’t avoid the security they have at the exits, you can’t hack people. So, focus, start thinking clearly, and figure something out. Attached are the plans of the prison.

  David downloaded them and while the phone’s interface loaded them up, he walked to the sink and dunked his face under a stream of freezing-cold water.

  “The kid’s right,” he told his reflection, “you have to fight this shit until it wears off.”

  The reflection gave him a thumbs-up and a wink. At least someone was supportive.

  Thinking of a plan in his current state was the hardest thing he had done all day. Even perfectly sober he wasn’t very good at reading maps.

  Nearest exit was close to the locker room, through three security checkpoints. K-Sec had been able to hack their way into the VR capsules because they were connected to the Internet —it had real-time streams of news, after all— but security hadn’t made that oversight.

  Different contractors.

  David wasn’t in a position to make a break for it, so instead, he left the locker room and followed the map’s directions away from the exits and into the administrative offices.

  He had dealt with contractors before, because he loved to steal information from them and sell it to anyone thinking of hiring them. They usually paid top-dollar. Whoever built this jail had saved a lot on terrain and building. Which meant he could access the management’s network by walking from the guard’s locker room.

  In a normal jail complex, that would’ve been impossible. Prisoners and guards would be in a different building than management.

  It was a bit of irony that made David smile. Thanks for the assist, assholes, I never could’ve done it without your help.

  He reached the offices and almost ran face-first into another guard.

  Oh fuck me, thought David.

  “Jeez, man, watch your step—” the other guard did a double take when he caught sight of David’s face. David considered punching him, but he was quickly running out of non-broken hands.

  “Man…” the guard looked at David’s shirt, “Jones. You look like crap, buddy. Everything all right?”

  “Yeah. I mean. I…” David’s mind raced. “Uhh… you saw the game? With the scorpions and the uh… the grizzlies? I… bet a lot of money… and… uhh…”

  The guard laughed. “You’re telling me you’ve been pissed off since yesterday? I can understand that, man. The scorpions totally stole the game, the referee never should have allowed that play to finish.”

  “Yeah. I mean. Such bullshit, right? Go grizzlies!” David smiled weakly.

  The man looked at him with pity. “Sure, buddy. Someday they’ll get out of their rut. Don’t lose hope. You may want to stop betting on them in the future, though.”

  David had the brilliant idea to look to the floor and appear sad. The guard clapped his back with empathy.

  “There, there, buddy. Anyway, I have to go take a leak. Mind watching the stiff-heads shit while I’m gone?” He laughed like he had made the funniest joke ever.

  David’s smile grew into a shark-like snarl. “Oh, it would be my pleasure.”

  The guard hadn’t even closed the bathroom’s doors when David was already sitting in front of a monitor, pounding the keyboard with his free hand.

  Click. Tap, tap, tap. Oh, look here. Someone accidentally leaked every single email, balance statement, top-secret memo, patent, government deal, bribe, blackmail, and compromising picture. Someone didn’t even bother to sell the information. Just sent straight to every newspaper in the country.

  Click. Click. Tap. Someone accidentally released every prisoner’s holding tank, after injecting them with synthetic adrenaline to help them fight off the drug’s effects. Oh boy!

  Click. Tap. Click. Every fire alarm system in the entire facility turned on at the same time.

  Brown water fell everywhere from the sprinklers in the ceiling, shorting electric systems and filling everything with the smell of dank water. David Terrance covered his head with his guard’s jacket and smiled triumphantly.

  “Jeez! What the hell is going on?” The guard came out of the bathroom running with his hands over his head.

  “I think the place is on fire,” said David. “We should get out of here.”

  “On fire? Damn it, we have to check on the prisoners!”

  “We do?” David had already seen how the prisoners were doing. Half of them were stumbling around, looking for the nearest exit, buck naked, while the other half was chasing after the few remaining guards, high out of their minds. “Look, I don’t know about you, but they don’t pay me enough to run into a burning room to save a bunch of assholes.”

  The guard’s mouth was wide open in surprise. He quickly closed it. That brown, old water got everywhere. “You know what, you’re right.”

  Chapter 10

  The reporters had beaten the firefighters two minutes to the punch. That meant they reported on a fire in jail for five minutes before someone had the nerve to tell them it was a false alarm.

  “I’m reporting live from the Grandhaven Detention Center, where a ravenous fire broke out. The automated systems in place appear to have released all prisoners, somehow sidestepping country-wide standard procedures in these cases—” a naked mobster ran behind the reporter, sc
reaming incoherently before running head-first into a tree and getting into a losing fight with it. The reporter was a professional. She turned to the human-tree fight for less than a second, before returning to face the camera with a blank expression. “Currently, the police are on their way to try and contain the escape. Meanwhile, the firefighters are trying to ascertain the origin of the fire with their scout drones. More developments to follow, here in TRR.”

  She walked towards David Terrance, still dressed as a security guard. He was covered in a blanket and had the deer-in-the-headlights expression of someone who really shouldn’t be in front of a live stream.

  “Sir, you were one of the first Grandhaven personnel who left the facilities. Do you have any insight in the disaster currently unfolding before our very eyes?” The reporter shoved the mic at him. She had a tough frown on her face, like a teacher who was getting ready to deliver unholy punishment on a misbehaving student.

  “Well…” David shrugged. “We don’t get paid enough for…”

  “You’re telling me, Grandhaven’s administrators don’t include enough funds for the bare minimum prisoners’ security standards in their budget?”

  “Eh. Yes. Actually, yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. There’s this new program they’re making… Look, you guys haven’t checked your email in the last ten minutes, have you?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Listen, I have to go. I can’t give an interview, because, well… I’m in shock?” David smiled tentatively.

  The reporter gave him a skeptical look. David could read in her face that she suddenly didn’t think he was acting at all like a security guard. Police were everywhere. She would only need to call to them…

  “Janice, you should read this email—” another journalist from her own network called to her, earning her attention. The guy looked frantic. “Holy shit, this is going to be a national scandal! The ratings—”

  David Terrance was on his way before the reporter realized he was gone. He kept the electrical blanket and the hot chocolate. He had had a rough couple of days. He deserved a warm blanket and hot chocolate, at the very least.

  Next in his order of business was to get some money. A year ago, he could’ve easily walked up to any ATM (the very few still left) with his phone and walk away with thousands of dollars of cash in his wallet. Those days were over: He had no idea what security features the ATM’s were packing today.

  He still had one strategy left.

  “Yo, Orville?” he called over his phone. A grown man’s voice answered back:

  “No, bro, this is Rufus. We’re watching the news. That was one hell of an escape you made.”

  “I thought I was done when someone decided to interview my ass.”

  “You’re missing the best part. They’re talking about your leaks right now. I don’t think Grandhaven will get open again after this.”

  “Cool. Uh… I’m in a tough spot right now. Mind spotting me some cash?”

  “You’re still going to go after Vicente’s murderer?”

  “I’m going to try.” He owed it to Wade Phillips and the family the professor would never get to see again.

  “I’ll text you some credits. Get a cab or something.”

  Rufus ended the call. A few seconds later, David’s phone buzzed with a text. It included a special barcode which linked to a temporary account with a couple hundred dollars. Scan the code, pay the bills. Easy.

  David arrived at a motel (this one on the opposite side of the city from his last try at hiding in a motel) and quietly dropped himself in a hard, uncomfortable bed. To his pained body, it felt like heaven.

  He fell asleep instantly.

  It was the middle of the night when he woke up. His phone was buzzing and he had an “I need more sleep” headache. But the drugs they dosed him with had finally worn off. His mouth was dry and his broken hand pulsated in continuous buzzes of pain.

  Are you holed up safely? I have the data you asked me for. It was behind some intense layer of security, man. Too intense. We’re hightailing out of the hideout, these guys have mercenaries and shit. Jean says you better get to the bottom of this or you’ll owe us big time.

  Whatever. I attached the documents. Several gigs of them, so don’t use public WiFi.

  R. Orville.

  David closed the email. His phone still had the dataplan intact from its previous owner, the prison guard whose uniform he was wearing.

  Thanks for the assist, buddy.

  David downloaded every single gigabyte.

  Wade Phillips worked on the Skyline University research team, but it quickly dawned on David that the doctor’s research had been custom-built for private interests. Wasn’t Skyline funded by corporations?

  Most of the documents were too arcane for him to comprehend. Phillips had worked in a myriad different projects, some of them with little relationship to each other. Since they were sorted by date, David started from the beginning of Phillips’ career in Skyline.

  All the documents involved human / machine interfaces of some sort, and Phillips’ job had been to code the interface that allowed the hardware and the human body to interact.

  In other words, he programmed prosthesis. He helped war veterans walk again, hell, see again. His work fixed broken spines, replaced lost organs, and gave hearing back to the deaf. David was this close to start thinking of the guy in biblical terms when he stumbled upon the not-so-humanitarian parts of his research.

  Phillips research not only was directed to veterans, but the military, too. He tried to improve on drone technology by using human neural pathways. It wasn’t like he stole people’s brains. He simply studied them and tried to translate their structure into chips and software. It wasn’t so bad. David could also see that his research hadn’t gotten him very far. Most of the documents in that decade announced little, if any, advancement, and the later ones were written in the shaky voice of a man worried he may lose his job.

  A couple of his reports in those years had little to do with his own research. Projects that studied genetic engineering, that tried to create super-soldiers in vat-tanks, but which used zero to none of Phillips’ own research. David had stolen a lot of data over the course of his career. This part of the doctor’s folder was a life insurance of sorts, to make sure if anyone wanted to fire him, they’d try so in the standard way. Firing via gun to the back of the head wasn’t something that happened every day, but it, nonetheless, had happened enough times. Obviously, someone had decided the risk of letting Phillips live and talk was bigger than the risk posed by the life insurance folder.

  Then Phillips had started using cadavers in his research, and the investigative pathways had opened up again. The human brain, Phillips had written, is, when turned off, little less than an unused computer. Delete the files you don’t need, work on the rest, and you have a billion neurons more powerful than any modern chip. The possibilities are staggering. Soldiers have previously reported a mistrust of their drone companions during live combat. Understandably so, in this researcher’s opinion. Humankind isn’t ready to trust their only life upon an unfeeling, unthinking machine. We are, at our core, built on the same principles our machines are built. We have software and hardware. Yet, when working together with a tank-drone, the soldier instantly recognizes something is missing in it. The superior machine recognizes the other is incomplete.

  With this new technology, we can add the missing ingredient. We can give a soul to our creations. The pathways to create a personality, emulate emotions, add an element of non-linear data processing (creativity), are right there in our neurons. This new line of research will add all that to our microchips. The only thing slowing us down are both the limitations of human-built software and the biological limitations of our own neurons. I believe they can be fixed in this generation if the people studying it have the adequate funding…

  The following documents were too technical for David to understand, but they all said more or less the same t
hing: We’re making progress.

  Hell, human neural pathways paved the way for other investigations. Phillips had started working with both the military and private contractors. Some of his articles were reports for higher-ups in the administrative echelons of those corporations, so they were easier for David to understand. One, especially, caught his eye:

  Data Corruption

  To the Directive Board of Sleipnir Incorporated:

  As we have known since humanity first rose from the primordial mud and began gathering in caves, information comes with an expiration date. All cultures, all societies, function thanks to the efficient propagation of its core concepts (Data) through the population. Said culture’s method of storing information and transmitting it dictates its evolutionary success. Stone tablets rendered vocal storytelling obsolete as data safeguarding, in those civilizations where it was implemented. Other cultures used paper-like techniques of data recording. Cheaper and more efficient than clay, but it came with its own risks. The burning of the library of Alexandria is the quintessential example. We can easily trace mankind’s history to our attempts —with varying degrees of success— to fight back the limitations of our methods for storing data.

  Voice. Stone. Clay. Leather. Paper. And we arrive at the modern age, where we store our most valuable information digitally, as ones and zeroes.

  Thanks to the Internet, our information is no longer vulnerable to low-to-mid disasters like a fire or an earthquake. To accurately threaten our information, bigger disasters than those are required. An all-out war could do the trick, but current international relationships make a war between equals improbable.

  It would be easy to think we’ve finally achieved perfect safeguarding of data. That the western civilization is now non-threatened in the geological scale.

  That would be a mistake. After all, we haven’t created a mystical cloud to store our information. Digital data still is kept in the modern equivalent of hard-drives. Those hard-drives are, like the stone tablets before them, clusters of matter. Matter, in galactic scales of time, is volatile. It refuses to remain unchanged. It’s prey to entropy.