MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets

by George Saoulidis

  “You are a saint,” Leo told him and passed on a picture of the snake charmer from those social media ones the daemons had searched for earlier in the cell.

  “If I am, it currently feels like martyrdom,” the bum said wearily and got on the phone to call his buddies.

  Chapter 39:// Going after

  Back in the stolen wifi named Silence of the LANs, the bandwidth was freed up again. The owner must have finished downloading whatever it was. But the hunt was still on, they couldn’t risk any communication that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Even though encrypted connections could not be traced back per se, the mere act of secure connections would raise red flags nowadays.

  Leo rang the doorbell.

  He could hear her soft footdrops running towards the door, then a long pause, then she opened it and said hello casually.

  He also said hello, and the awkwardness was palpable.

  “You left without saying bye,” she said with no real accusation.

  “Yeah, sorry about that. Listen, either let me in or send me away fast, I can’t stand here talking where somebody might see me.”

  Katerina took a stern expression for a couple of seconds, letting him know that she wasn’t eager to take him back mister, hooking up with her and then running off into the night without a word.

  She stepped aside and left a gap for him to come in.

  “Thank you,” Leo said and walked in.

  He sat down and said again, “Thank you, really. You’ve helped me so much.”

  She accepted the thanks and shrugged.

  “I need to ask you something more. You mentioned your dad’s survivalist gear, can I borrow some? Do you have anything I can use?”

  She scoffed. “Of course I do. Dad had everything,” she said, and went to pull down some duffel bags from the closet.

  Leo helped her bring it down from the high place, touched her body with his and blushed.

  She cleared her throat and cleaned up the dust that fell. “What are you going to do?”

  Leo sat on the floor, checking out the gear and sighed. “I’m not sure. There’s this turban guy, a street peddler. His cobra took a bite out of me, you know it, you treated it. I need to find him, figure out if he had something to do with framing me for murder. I asked George the bum, but his pals don’t really know where to find him.”

  Katerina pursed her lips. “A turban guy? You mean a Sikh?”

  “Dunno. Bright red turban, orange shirt, loose pants. Very dark skin.”

  Katerina stood up and walked to her bookcase. “You Dumbo. Sikh people have an organised religion in Athens since the 1950’s.” She opened an encyclopedia, not a website, a paper one, and found a specific page. “Their Sikh Temple is at Tavros, southern Athens. They are very religious, if you are looking for a Sikh man, you are definitely gonna find him here,” she said, and pointed at the listing while passing the heavy tome to Leo.

  He frowned and read some stuff about them. Indian minority. Like to play with snakes. Quite pacifistic, though they do have some wars in their history.

  Huh.

  Offline information that was useful. Imagine that.

  She looked at him jokingly and said, “It didn’t even occur to you to find him through his beliefs, did it?”

  Leo shook the stuff around the bag with purpose. “It did.”

  “Sure it did.”

  “Hey, I’m in a bad shape right now, OK? I can gloss over major details all I want,” he said, and cut the air with his left hand in a firm gesture.

  Katerina laughed and came next to him. She hugged him and blew him a deep, slobbery kiss.

  He felt great, head in the clouds. At that point, he noticed something and picked it up.

  “Hey, does this actually work?”

  “I thought you said it was huge.”

  “Yeah, I mean the principle. Does it work?” He picked up a small cagey tube, with something like an inward funnel at its end. It said “SNAKE TRAP” in bold letters, followed by: “Warning: Live snake may be inside.”

  He spun it around in his hand, taking note of the design. It was simple, an easy entrance and an exit unreachable to someone without limbs.

  “I can build something like this.”

  “Great! How?”

  “Or find one.” He mumbled for a while, thinking his options through.

  Leo looked into her green eyes, kissed her softly on the lips and said, “I know we just met and all, but I can’t drive with only one arm. Will you help me steal a truck?”

  Chapter 40:// Boiling over

  The snake-charmer was furious.

  He was breathing quickly, waiting in the parking. It was a five-story private parking, where you paid to get a spot. There was a gate and security and everything.

  Bhai Sharan just snuck in of course, his cobra helping him climb up the difficult parts. He had to be extra careful, because his princess had been wounded. He tried to step on her as little as possible, he could feel her pain as she propped him up.

  That mean bastard had shot his princess.

  She was fine in general, she had some reptilian DNA in her mix that would help her recover fast, but she was still in pain.

  That mean bastard had emptied a whole pistol clip inside her.

  Bhai Sharan wanted to slice him up into nice chunks and feed him to his princess.

  But he couldn’t. This was supposed to be an easy framing, not a free-for-all. Yet, as Kaur slithered into the shadows behind him, he felt his face burn with rage.

  He waited in the shadows, avoiding the building’s security cameras and the drivers. A lady with a stroller came and parked right next to them, humming to her baby and juggling her phone and her purse. She had some sort of presentation to do, at Hermes Information Technology. Somehow, her reservation at the company’s daycare centre had vanished.

  Silly computers.

  The baby looked at the cobra in the shadows and said… Well, we have no idea what was said because it was babytalk. If it had been a proper language it would have dictionaries and a dropdown selection on Google Translate.

  The baby said something and drooled.

  The cobra looked at it and tasted the air.

  The mother pulled the stroller away and went on to her oblivious corporate life.

  Right on schedule, the limo parked in its spot.

  The old man got out of the car and Bhai Sharan slid from the shadows and had his kirpan on the man’s neck in an eyeblink.

  “What?” the old man said, horrified.

  “Are you trying to make me look like a fool?” Bhai Sharan asked with gritted teeth.

  “Oh! Oh, it’s you. Oh my God,” the old man said, dropping his briefcase and clutching his heart.

  “Don’t pretend to have a heart attack. I know you’ve got a mechanical one,” the snake charmer said, pressing the curved knife into the man’s neck. “Tsk tsk. All that sugar can’t be good for you.”

  “Okay! I’m cooperating. You don’t have to hurt me.” He turned towards the limo, which was bobbing from something heavy inside. “Where’s my driver?”

  “He’s fine. Slightly bitten, but alive. Might be out for a few hours,” the snake charmer said and dragged the old man into the shadows.

  The cobra slid out of the limo and vanished. The limo’s suspension raised the car up again.

  “What do you want? Is this how you handle failure?”

  “Failure?” Singh spat out. “I couldn’t possibly fail. Someone is helping the mark. What games are you playing? Are you trying to take me down with him too?”

  “What? No! Honestly, no. There are no other assets in play, just you,” the old man said and was terrified.

  Singh glanced at his cobra, who slid between the man’s legs. She tasted the air and then took out her tongue in quick bursts.

  She was telling her master, that the old man was telling the truth.

  Bhai Sharan pushed the old man to the wall and holstered his kirpan.

  “How did you find me
here?” the old man asked, rubbing his joints in pain.

  “I can find anyone. Remember that,” Singh said and pointed menacingly. Damn! His anger had subsided. He was certain he had been double-crossed, set up to take the blame along with the mark. It wasn’t uncommon for clients to try this shit with hired operators. It was the reason they had a loose dark-web rating site for vetting clients. And blacklisting them.

  The problem was, the process had flaws. Somebody had to fall in the trap first and then live to tell the rest about it.

  Bhai Sharan looked for something to kick. There was nothing, not a can, not a rock, nothing. Damn these cleaning drones! You couldn’t even vent properly in these corporate buildings.

  The old man composed himself and straightened his tie. “I assume you haven’t completed the third part yet.”

  “Someone is helping him! He’s just an ordinary guy, but he’s evaded the authorities even in this police state, he fought off my cobra, escaped the prison, and is now vanished! Ordinary people don’t do those things, old man. He’s doing things that took me years to perfect. Who is helping him?”

  The old man grunted, a hint of realisation in his face.

  Singh darted to him and punched the wall next to his face. The old man flinched. “Speak!” Singh hissed.

  “Yes. Of course. I might have an idea of what happened. It’s the nanodaemons,” he said nodding.

  “The nanod-” Singh struck the wall again. “Aren’t they under your control?”

  “Yes, and no,” the old man explained. “They are self-aware digital entities. In order to function at the level we want them to, they have little in the way of rules and restraints.”

  “So… what? They decided to help their user? Turn against us?”

  “No. They were always helping their user, that is their prime focus. They are the same as the buried process that duplicated them, froze them, broke the three laws and carried out the… assassination,” the old man said, whispering and glancing around the parking.

  Singh nodded and clicked his tongue. “You mean that in order to infiltrate and carry out the hit, they are posing as real benevolent entities. No, not posing. They really are helping him. They themselves don’t know that they have betrayed the user.”

  “Precisely. And, unfortunately, these are AIs whose sole purpose was to keep their user alive in an urban environment, no matter what the cost.”

  “They turned an ordinary man into the perfect urban warrior,” Singh said shaking his head.

  “Yes!” the old man said excited, seeming to forget the situation. “Imagine what they could do with a properly trained user! They could change guerrilla warfare, help out diplomatic missions, infilt-”

  Singh just glared at the man.

  “Sorry. Got carried away with the sales pitch there.”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t tested them before in the field…”

  “No, we haven’t. But the results are extraordinary so far. The nanodaemons have succeeded in both their objectives, the main one and the hidden one. And they are keeping their user safe from a master assassin such as yourself!” He was way too excited for this mess.

  Bhai Sharan turned his back and walked away. “I’ll finish the job my way, then.”

  His princess slithered over the old man’s toes, pushing him aside with her enormous hood. Then she followed her master.

  Chapter 41:// Breaking in

  Back at constructionsite7, the gates were locked.

  There were security cameras, but Leo knew where a couple of blind spots were from some coworkers who liked to slack off every now and then.

  He wasn’t a snitch, he was the last person to betray someone but he’d stumble on them sometimes so he remembered a gap in the fence.

  “Give me the cutter,” Leo said and then fumbled with it, having only one working arm. He tried a couple of times but he only managed to cut it once and scratch it a couple more. At this rate they would be inside just in time for the skyscraper’s opening ceremony.

  “Gimme that,” Katerina said and started cutting the fence.

  His walkman shuffled to the Mission Impossible tune, and he was pumped up. He bent the wire fence and pushed himself through, holding it open for her like a gentleman.

  “Where to?” she whispered.

  “Stay right behind me, grab my belt.”

  She did, and they moved in the shadows. There were some big blinding floodlights but they actually made it easier to stay hidden, casting long distinct shadows and blinding someone who would stare at the lit areas.

  A guard walked close-by, doing his rounds. He was weary and bored, not alert in the least. It was a construction site, not much happened, the company just wanted to have some people on site to avoid vandalisms or thefts. Pretty much everything was locked up, and the heavy machinery was, well, heavy. You’d need to be blind and deaf to have something stolen from in there and not notice.

  Now that he was closer, they could see that the guard was middle-aged. His gait was slow, and he sat on a crate he found and yawned.

  He pulled out a thermos from his backpack and sipped slowly, warm coffee filling their nostrils. The thermos was red with a white emblem of a Greek-style person’s profile.

  “What the hell are we gonna do?” Leo whispered. “We need to get to the garage behind him.”

  Katerina covered her phone to block out the light and peeked at the time. “We’ll wait twenty minutes.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s game night.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. My dad always used to watch football on game night.”

  “Huh.” Then he added, “How do you know he’ll watch the game?”

  “He is wearing his team’s red jersey underneath his shirt, can’t you see?”

  “Huh.”

  They waited. A few minutes later, the guard pulled out a tablet and propped it with a small base in front of him, like a TV. He sat back, and turned it on.

  It was loud.

  The holosound system provided binaural audio for an exciting, immersive experience. It was as if you were there in Gate 7, while Olympiakos, the Greek team that usually claimed the championship, was playing off somewhere in Europe. You could hear the roar of the crowd, the rubbing of the seats, the thumping of the ball. Sports commentary optional and toggleable.

  It was loud, and it filled your ears making you effectively deaf to what was right next to you.

  “I’ll do it, I’m quiet. In there?” Katerina asked and pointed at the rusty metal garage doors.

  “Yeah. But you need my hand to start the engine.”

  Katerina put her hands on her hips and protested quietly. “I do not! I can start up a car by mys-”

  Leo put his finger on her lips and cut her off. “My hand has an RFID chip. It starts the truck.”

  “Oh. OK then. Stay right behind me, grab my belt.”

  He tried, but girls don’t have belts for some reason.

  Katerina opened up the football game on her phone and muted the streaming video. She waited, watching the match. The holosound was coming in distorted to them from the guard’s tablet, it was made to be heard positionally. Upon a crowd cheer, she pushed forward and rushed to another shadow. Leo kept close.

  The first shadowjump was easy, it was close by. The next was a big one. They would practically be in the open, lit from a tiny sun on a pole. But the guard was transfixed on the game.

  She took a readied stance, wobbling herself as a runner would, waiting for the starting shot, watching the match.

  The crowd protested, they darted off and ran the distance, jumping into the garage’s shadow.

  The guard did not notice. He was too busy cursing along with the crowd.

  They walked carefully, the ground was gravel, which is the-worst-possible-ground to sneak up on someone.

  Leo winced at each step.

  He managed to get close, and pushed aside the creaky, rusted garage doors slowly. Katerina monitored the match, gest
uring him when to stop and when to push on.

  They got inside, no alarms raised.

  A row of trucks was in the garage, and they were quite a long distance away from the guard now so they could walk easily. If he turned around though, he would see a door wide open when it shouldn’t be.

  Leo went to a concrete mixer lorry and banged the tank. He went to another and banged again. This one was empty.

  He thought he heard someone closing in on them, looked around, but he didn’t see anyone in the dark.

  He stepped in the passenger’s seat. Katerina climbed up the driver’s seat and said, “A concrete mixer? That’s what you need to make the snake trap?”

  “No, the concrete mixer is a snake trap. I was trying to figure out how to make one when I remembered that a cross section of a concrete mixer is effectively a large metal container with blades inside like a screw, that mix the concrete. So, here we are.”

  “Stealing a truck, on our second date.” She gasped theatrically and fell on his shoulder.

  “Yeah, wait till you see what we have to do now. Make sure the lights are off. Turn on the ignition,” Leo said, and placed his left hand over hers on the big steering wheel.

  armd> Go on. It’s fine.

  rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

  “You have to keep your hand on top of mine all the way? How romantic,” Katerina said, revved up the enormous engine, and ran the tons of metal and engineering through the garage doors, spitting gravel past the startled security guard and breaking down the main gate, all the while accompanied by a thunderous goal-cheering roar of the crowd.

  Chapter 42:// Dropping back

  parrotd> Did you get it?

  armd> ACK.

  armd> How was the ride? Furry? Smelly? Shitty? *snort*

  armd> Hey I’m gonna punch your bits out!

  armd> Punch me? Go fetch, you quadrupedal meatbag!

  armd> Why you-

  parrotd> Kill -9 armd

  The controlling daemon parrotd killed the process that he had forked earlier into the dog, when he had created a perfect copy of the program armd. The cyberarm daemon, being the only one with servo functions and motor controls, could take over the dog’s prostheses and manipulate the faithful pet back to the construction site. A preloaded and pre-sniffed vulnerability in the construction site’s CCTV was run at that time in the van. The daemons couldn’t code of course, they just used scripts available online, ready-made exploits that anyone could point and fire. Some would call them lame script kiddies, but they didn’t care.