Hardwired Faith (The Exoskeleton Codex Book 1)

by Sean Kennedy

  “The ultimate badass,” Teeva finished as Joni returned, bouncing silently through the modified doorway.

  She handed Jacob back his glasses after dropping back into the giant canvas pillow.

  “There's a ton of stuff about the Guanyin ship online, most says it was going to Mars. The weird thing is, the jump happened just as the Shidoshi takeover of the Cornucopia Arcology did. Jacob must be one of the lucky ones who they got out. Apparently, the rest are being repurposed by Shidoshi; total brain format... Oh... uh...” Joni looked away, embarrassed. “I mean ...well... sorry Jacob.”

  “It’s okay, I really don't remember any of them.”

  “Well apparently, most people think it's a little too convenient.” Joni finished

  “Shidoshi skags!” Teeva said, “I wish they’d have a corporate rebellion so they could stop wrecking everyone else's day.

  “Who’s ...Shidoshi?” Jacob asked, remembering the netscreen.

  “Shidoshi is the corporation who did this to you Jacob.” Majka said. “Shidoshi is who took your home."

  Jacob remembered the sight of the huge tower falling away behind the autopod. “Well, I mean, at least they didn’t kill me or anything.”

  “Oh not at all bro, they just dropped you in the quarantine zone to get eaten alive.”

  “What's your bounce?“ Butai asked.

  “My... bounce?”

  “Are you even in the t-game?” Butai laughed.

  “Wiped bro!” Teeva locked his eyes on Butai, who shrugged again.

  “Chill Teeva, Butai didn't mean anything.” Kage said and Teeva nodded. After a moment, he turned back to Jacob. “He means have you used Droids or if you game bro? Like... online... with other bros?”

  “Have you even used Immersion before?” Butai asked, without waiting for Jacob to answer.

  “I’ve sent messages and read things," Jacob answered, unable to find a memory, but he must have used the Immersion browser before. He remembered the urge to get online and strained, searching in cerebral darkness for a memory that just wasn’t there.

  “Try the shields.” Joni said from her cushion beside him.

  Jacob slid on the iGlasses, and a prompt appeared in the overlaid display: “Connect to the Immersion Augmented Reality browser?”

  Jacob confirmed yes with a thought, and a second confirmation appeared. He confirmed it too, and when he did the room fell away in a wash of reshaping light like a great burning flame.

  Jacob found himself seated on an elaborate silk cushion, the floor rugs were replaced with a bamboo tatami mats framed by Japanese paper walls and black lacquered wood, like the houses he’d seen behind the fighting figures on the vanished media screen.

  Kage appeared the most different as he stood in the circle. He was tall, wearing tabi boots and tightly wrapped black clothes. Butai was dressed the same way, as was Joni, only her eyes seemed bigger and brighter. Majka was wearing the same ninja uniform, but hers was bone white.

  Only Teeva wore the brightly colored clothes of a wandering eastern traveler. A round straw sedge hat covered his eyes, and Jacob could only see his chin and mouth exposed.

  “Wow!”

  Jacob pressed himself out of the cushion trying to see where the illusion ended. On the far wall he saw a window, and as though in trance, he stood and walked towards it.

  Teeva rose and walked just behind him to the window. Through it, Jacob saw he was was not on a ship, but an island fortress, built in the Nihon Kenchiku style of sloping roofs and elaborate carved joinery.

  “Wow!” Jacob whispered.

  “First time huh bro?”

  “I sure don't remember anything like this.” Jacob looked down at his hands and clothing, still unchanged and unremarkable.

  Jacob stepped away from the window just as Kage walked over to an elaborately carved box and withdrew a small rectangular device.

  “How is this possible?“ Jacob asked, still turning his head around to find the seams to make the illusion unravel.

  “It’s just an overlay bro, like painting reality.” Teeva led Jacob back to the circle of cushions on the tatami mats. He knew he was still on the ship, but his senses were telling him he was in a Japanese island castle.

  The tall version of Kage took Jacob's hand as he looked around. This close to him, there was something a little too clean about his face. It was too perfect to be real, but Kage’s grip felt solid enough as he touched the device’s metal nubs against the palm of Jacob's hand.

  “This won't hurt.” he said as a sound like a static snap came from the meter and Jacob felt a tiny shock where the metal touched him.

  Kage pulled the box away and as he looked down at a tiny screen display, he squinted and shook his head.

  “I have to do it again.”

  Jacob offered his hand. This time Kage pressed the nubs harder against Jacob's wrist. He felt the tiny jolt again, but Kage’s scowling expression didn’t change when he looked at the screen.

  “This meter must be busted!”

  “Hang on, one sec.” Joni vanished through a sliding paper doorway where the bulkhead hole had been before. A moment later, the door slid back as she returned with a larger meter, this one with red and black cords trailing from it leading to small metal testing leads.

  Joni handed Jacob the two leads. “Here, hold the tips of these in each hand.” She said and Jacob obeyed, pinching the metal tips of the two cords.

  He didn’t hear the static click this time, but felt the gentle tug as current travelled through his body.

  Joni stared down at the meter's readout screen. Without saying a word, she took the leads from Jacob and holding the tip of one between her teeth with the other in her hand, looked again at the screen and started shaking her head.

  “That can't be right...”

  “What?” Butai and Teeva said together, but Joni ignored them as she roughly wiped the leads against her black wrapped leg and handed them back to Jacob.

  Jacob took them and waited to feel the pulse go through him again. When it did, Joni eye’s grew wide as she stared at the screen.

  “How are you doing this?” She asked in a whisper.

  “I'm not... doing anything.” Jacob replied just as Teeva asked, “What’s it say?”

  “Zero.” Joni said.

  Jacob exhaled and his breath was loud in the room.

  “What does zero mean?” he asked.

  Teeva was the first to snap out of the surprise “Bro!! Are you kidding me?!”

  “What were the pills they gave you?" Majka asked, her pale eyes squinting at Jacob.

  “Just these.” Jacob produced the small bottle from his pocket. Teeva snatched them from his hand.

  “Tetrazine!” Teeva studied the label. “Bro! do you know what these are worth out here? That’s seed money right there bro!”

  “Did anyone give you any needles Jacob?” Joni asked.

  Jacob thought through the haze, “Not that I remember.”

  “And you’ve never t-gamed at all?” Butai asked.

  “I’m sure I don't know what t-gaming is.” Jacob watched the smile growing on Teeva’s face.

  “It’s not a bad thing Jacob.” Majka said “These meters are measuring what we call your bounce. The bounce is a rating of resistance to electronic interface, how much your body naturally pushes back against a signal current.”

  “If you got ...like a ten, you would be a rubber tire bro. Most people prolly sit at about three to five”

  “Six is pretty common actually.” Joni said “mine’s three point five, Teeva’s is three point one.”

  “She hates that I’m quicker than her bro.” Teeva elbowed Jacob and reached up to high five Joni, who slapped him against the chest instead. Teeva stumbled back laughing.

  “She kicks my ass all the time bro, but Majka is the real beast online.”

  “Bounce don't mean skill, it's just a metric, how easily your nervous system interacts with the machine.” Kage said.

  “So, what
does it mean if you have a bounce of zero?” Jacob asked.

  “It means you're a ninja bro!” Teeva said and raised his hand in the air. As quick as he could, Jacob reached back and slapped Teeva's hand with a satisfying clap, and felt a little better.

  “Joni, are those shields good enough to piggy back?” Kage asked as he turned and picked up his Immersion mask, dropping back on the ornate silk cushion.

  “Should be, but I'll need to set it up” Joni replied and looked expectantly at Jacob, who wasn't sure what to do. He saw the nod shared between Kage and Butai as Joni asked, “so if you wanna check out the t-game I’m going to need your shields again.”

  “Oh right, sure.” Jacob handed his iGlasses over. The castle fell away, and he was back on the ship as he slipped them off.

  Jacob blinked hard from the transition and watched Joni’s shifting motions as she wore his iGlasses, taking a few moments before handing them back.

  “You’re only observing right now; I've got you on Kage's feed.”

  Jacob slipped them on. The iGlasses were a blindfold until the EEG in the arms scanned and synced up with Jacob’s brain, and he became someone else.

  He looked down, but the transmitted vision didn’t track his movements. It was an unnerving feeling, like being a spectator in a dream inhabiting another body.

  “You are watching a feed to the telepresence droid I’m operating.” He heard Kage's voice. Somewhere far away Jacob heard someone laughing.

  Joni’s voice was suddenly close in his ear “Telepresence droids are an extension of the user. The brain feeds synthetic nerve responses through a virtual or augmented reality, and effectively the user becomes the droid.”

  Jacob saw his new body was crouched, hidden inside a ship's doorway. With Kage piloting, Jacob felt himself stand and step out of the rusted bulkhead door into the open night air, and watched moonlight spilling across the wreckage of a ship's deck.

  It was as though he could actually feel the ocean wind. Through the droid’s microphones, Jacob heard movement and saw another humanoid robotic body pull itself onto the slanted deck through an open hatchway. Jacob watched through lense eyes as Butai’s t-droid approached.

  Both his and Butai’s droids were just under two meters tall, with a humanoid chassis, painted dull black, complete with dexterous limbs that allowed the pilot to move in a natural way. The t-droid Butai was piloting lifted its arms and turned as if displaying some fashionable garment, letting Jacob observe him.

  “Whoah!” Jacob heard more high five slaps around him.

  “Ready?” He heard Butai's voice come across the com link, and watched his t-droid pick up a loose bolt that had propped itself against a cargo hatch.

  “Let’s go.” Kage’s voice replied inside Jacob’s head.

  Butai’s droid stood in front of Jacob, and held the bolt up between two fingers. With no warning, Butai dropped the broken bolt and Kage’s droids arms shot from his side and grabbed the bolt as it fell.

  Butai didn't move his hand and Kage's metallic hand froze where it caught the bolt. Jacob watched as an illuminated arrow appeared measuring the distance between where Butai dropped the bolt to where Kage had caught it.

  “164 millimeters.” Butai read off, and somewhere Teeva's exuberant voice called out, “Told ya! Bro’s a ninja!”

  “Is that even possible? Do it again!” Joni's voice interrupted his cheer.

  Kage gave the broken old bolt back to Butai who held it between two fingers in front of Jacob's face and he felt the t-droids arms return to his side.

  Butai dropped the bolt, and again Kage snatched it from the air, but this time the illuminated arrow read differently.

  “162 millimeters,” Butai said with a hint of wonder as Kage turned over the bolt in his fingers.

  “This is incredible!” Jacob said, and the others laughed.

  “We haven’t even done anything yet.” came Kage's voice, “and it seems you may have a zero bounce after all.”

  “Does that mean I can walk around in this thing?” Jacob asked.

  “The body you're in right now is Kage’s t-droid bro, those iGlasses you got on can see what he does, but you’re just along for the ride.”

  “The thing is,” Kage added “Anytime there’s a human interface with a telepresence or virtual body, there is always some degree of resistance. With you piggybacking on the signal, there should be more lag in the relay, so the t-droid should be slower.”

  “Oh! I can log off if you want, I mean, I don’t want to slow...”

  “No bro! That's the crazy part!” He heard Teeva say. “Kage has faster times with you on his back!”

  Jacob paused “I... don't know...”

  “The drop test is something we do as a live test,” Joni said “it shows what your reaction time is. If we drop an object with no warning, the reaction time of the droid that catches it can be defined by how far the object falls.”

  Jacob nodded but his vision stayed on the bolt Kage was twirling in the droid’s fingers.

  “Normally my drop test comes in at 170 to 175 millimeters,” Kage said, but Jacob was too bewitched by the feeling of being in the t-droids body.

  “This is so awesome! What can you do in these things?”

  He heard Majka's voice close to him. “This is how we gather the goods we sell in Zone Town. We use the t-droids for salvaging in the quarantined wrecks, they let us get what we need to survive in the physical world.”

  “We were just checking this ship out when you got here, didn't find much.” Kage said, and walked past Butai back to the door he’d been hiding beside.

  Jacob saw the dark interior of the ship's bridge, abandoned and frozen from when the crew left. As the lenses relayed the data, Jacob stiffened, seeing a body lying by the ship's rusted command console.

  “There's ...a dead person in here!” Jacob gasped.

  “Yeah," Kage sounded bored, “A lot of the cargo ships had contamination breakouts. Lots of bodies wound up parked here.”

  “Is the stuff you bring out contaminated?” Jacob asked as Kage and Butai moved through the darkened bridge.

  “Most contaminants have long died out, especially the bio stuff, but we clean it anyways.” He heard Joni say.

  The moonlight drifting in through weather-worn windows was hardly visible, but Jacob saw something as Kage panned across the darkened bridge.

  “What's in that bag?” Jacob asked.

  “What bag?” Butai and Kage both spoke together.

  “By the body.” Jacob paused as Kage's vision sweep back and forth. “There! Under the console.”

  Kage’s vision fell back on the pile of bones under a ragged crewman’s uniform, long dried after years of decay. A beam from an led light activated on the t-droid's head and fell on a small travel bag, zipped up and forgotten.

  “How the hell did you see that?” Butai asked as Kage approached the body. Kage's outstretched metal arm pulled on the narrow travel bag, and with a pop, it unstuck from the floor. Jacob watched his shared t-droid hand unzip the bag, revealing a rectangular box with the shimmer of sealing plastic surrounding it.

  Kage picked up and turned the box in the dirty bridge window moonlight. The humanoid head of a blank-faced droid was pictured on the side. Kage turned it over and Jacob recognized the shodō logo on the top of the box.

  “I’ve seen that before! That’s the same symbol Mac had on his cap.”

  “Kaizen.” Kage said, “It's worthless in zone town, but your uncle might want it.”

  “What's a Kaizen?”

  “That's the kind of droids you got running around that house,” Butai said, “heck, who do you think made all those stacks anyways?”

  “They’re not droids,” Joni corrected him, “they’re probably not even simtelligence units, and they should never have been banned in the first place.”

  “Yeah well,” Butai shrugged “there’s still a worldwide ban on whatever they are, so we won’t get anything for it.”

  “J
acob spotted it, so it’s his if he wants it.” Kage said.

  “Mine?...really?”

  “Rules bro, you keep what you catch.”

  Jacob watched his body slip a small backpack off his t-droids frame and place the sealed box inside it. He pulled the pack back on his shoulders, and rejoined Butai as the two mechanical skeletons crept out the ship’s doorway.

  From the high edge of the deck, the moonlight’s soft glow revealed a scene of landlocked ships stacked tight against each other, the spaces between them falling away to make a dark labyrinth of hulls below.

  In the moments of bright moonlight between the clouds, the abandoned ship's decks reminded Jacob of city rooftops, and farther beyond the jagged peaks, sweeping searchlights flailed against the nighttime sky.

  “Are you ready to fly?” Kage's voice was sly, and Jacob heard the smile in it. Before he could respond, Kage leapt from the edge of the deck, throwing them both into flight.

  Jacob gasped as the falling rush filled his senses. His t-droid form flexed and turned, landing with grace and barely a sound on the ship’s deck below.

  A brief pause for a visual bearing, and Kage launched again, running with the powerful strides of an Olympic sprinter, stretching the t-droid’s legs wide as it ran along the nightscape of angled decks.

  Jacob followed Kage’s vision as he looked back to see Butai’s t-droid landing on the deck behind them. Butai rolled his droid into a sprint across the new freighter with the whisper of raven's wings.

  “This is amazing!” Jacob gasped as Kage threw them into another diving leap. Kage slid to a halt at the edge of the new freighter's bow, frozen high above the other ships, breaching like a great whale in the lunar light.

  He pointed the t-droids arm to a barely discernable glow beneath the dark horizon to the east. It was only after Kage magnified the t-droids vision that Jacob saw he was pointing to the dim light strings of the Dojo in the distance.

  Kage leapt again, dropping some twenty meters to the dusty scrub of the former ocean bed, bouncing into a racing sprint as Butai landed beside him.

  The wind whipped past him as they thundered back through the quarantined zone’s ruins towards the Dojo. Feeling the freedom of this drone's body, Jacob realized why Teeva had been so keen to bring the shattered t-droids back with them.