by Lee Bond
Another mindpiece bitterly pointed out that not only was the entire building a veritable black hole of information, but that the … data emptiness was spreading; even now, right that second, people outside the convention center were alternately staring at, smacking, shaking and outright hollering at suddenly non-functional cellphones.
“Am I good?” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been at the epicenter of a powerful tech-spike like this, but it would be the first time the cause, nature and full effects of said spike remained unknown. “Am I good?”
The pieces came back positive, though with caveats that Chez hadn’t been expecting to receive here; it seemed –and the news was rather disheartening when it was properly digested- that the Convention Center was under precisely the same sort of … high-tech blanket as Changetech, but again, try as the ‘pieces might to find the location –or even a starting, mid or finishing point to this web- they failed.
“I do not like this at all.” Chez picked a park bench and sat his arse down for a moment, ears half-hearing people curse out their various flavors of interconnected technology as he tried to pierce the veil surrounding the center; using a lot more of his primary consciousness should do the trick nicely, and as the assassin plied his great and wonderful mind to that task, he reflected that it’d been more than fifty years since he’d been thusly challenged.
The first thing Chez grew aware of as his intellect skirted the widening rift of connected versus unconnected was that the miasma was indeed growing inch by inch, a widening rift into which all technological devices fell, an invisible black hole swallowing telephone numbers and emails and login passwords and … everything else.
A chill frisson of worry –followed quickly by a hot shriek of concern- erupted through the ‘pieces, and then through the primary mind that called itself Chezzik Elteren.
The anti-signal, the slow, rolling wave compromising everything in it’s path … it was trying to burrow into him with languidly insidious claws, long, thin ropes of powerful data looping around his virtual identity and infecting him with repeating codes that would snip him right out of the connectivity that this world thrived upon.
Unlike the lads and lassies with their terrible Blackberry phones and their overpriced iPads and fashion accessories that sometimes doubled as a means to communicate with the greater world at large, Chezzik Elteren could not simply walk away from the plight.
He was a cyborg. Granted, there was quite a bit more to him than all that, but the absolutely bottom-level, underlying control mechanisms that controlled all the disparate organic bits and pieces and that allowed him to function … that was machinery.
Machinery designed here, now, in the 21st century, just a few weeks from the moment he was stood, frantically considering what the best option would be for survival. The only thing going for him at the moment was the anti-signal’s hesitance as it tip-tapped it’s way through the outer layers of the Chezzik operating system.
“Not artificially intelligent, then, but close enough for horse shoes and war, hey?” Chez took a deep breath, focused himself, and then, when he was dead certain that he was in total control of his processes, launched a very subtle counterattack. Humming ‘God Save the Queen’ under his breath, the first thing Chez did was attempt to examine the code trying to spiral it’s way in through his left ear.
Basic. Basic code. That’s all it was. Chez tilted his head to one side as one of his ‘pieces stripped a copy of the code clean of all the big bad bluster surrounding it’s inevitable domination before flat out shaking his head in confusion. As far as intrusion measures went –at least from a 25th century perspective- the code really was bog standard stuff. Complicated as fuck to someone looking at it from the 21st century, mind, but he was a now officially a time-traveling assassin, so he were allowed to look down at most things.
The code was inexorable, aye. Given enough time and effort and invisibility, the snippet would roll through everything and anything in it’s path. That was what these sorts of codes were for, after all; he himself had deployed a not dissimilar packet a hundred and thirty years ago according to his personal timeline, all so that he might make his way into one of the very last underground bunkers left in the world, to deal with a very influential BishopCo employee who’d done a few things he shouldn’t have done.
Confident he were still in control of himself and that the code wouldn’t suddenly strip him of his ability to walk and talk and function like a real live person, Chezzik whipped up a mindpiece, a mindpiece with the sole purpose of existing to convince the code that it’d been successful in dominating this particular bit of equipment. On the off chance that Nickels –for who else would be guilty of deploying something as nasty as this dominator code but a time traveler?- was actively monitoring code acquisitions, Chez programmed the ‘piece to mimic a high-ranking official’s encrypted cellphone.
“Crikey, I is brilliant.” Chezzik slotted the ‘piece into place and watched the code –blindly attempting to hammer it’s way through ICEblocks of profound size and shape- react like a python being offered food; the hard edges of Nickels’ predatory program slammed into the ‘piece and stripped it bare, revealing a soft underbelly full of access codes and quickly mustered false information.
The ‘piece, locked into place, mimicked a converted cellphone. The code ceased all primary functionality, leaving behind a small kernel of operational awareness that was primed to alert the main user if the digital embargo was breached.
“Well.” Chez brought his mind back out into the world and he surveyed dozens of men and women looking at one another with vaguely puzzled looks on their faces. “Virtual apocalypse, hey? No need to destroy a people completely when you can just cut them loose from their electronic teat. These here people don’t know what to do with themselves right this moment. In a day, they’ll be desperate for information, hungry to update their status. In a week, they’ll be gagging for Instagram pictures of their favorite celebrity’s bleached arsehole. In a month, they’ll be weeping for cat memes … oh aye, ‘piece, I am aware of you still, and I urge you to behave. I realize now I do not miss this world. Not a bit of it. The 25th may be full of villains and monsters and disease and poverty and Wayfarers ruining lives with their redes, but there hain’t none of this neither, hey? Every man and woman and occasional child stupid enough to open their flaps and blow words my way, they each of them have their own brains, don’t they just? Hain’t never heard of Facebook. Hain’t never locked themselves in front of the telly playing Madden for a week solid, to come out into the light, blinking like a wee fishy as is pulled out of the aquarium for a larf. No sir, give me my world. With all it’s stink, with it’s poor amenities, and lads and lassies wi’ no social graces. Give me a Wasteload full of monsters forgotten by their long-dead masters, waiting every ten, fifteen, fifty years to rise up out of the ground, scaly devils all, to rip and rend. Fuck this place already.”
To complete his summation of feelings for the 21st century, Chezzik hawked up a big glob of spittle and launched it away from his person. It sailed off into the distance. Feeling better for having cleared his body of ailment, Chez spared yet another of his precious moments to consider something else about the virus –if that was what you should call it- that were spreading throughout San Francisco at unparalleled speeds.
The initial attack had indeed come from the Convention Center. His big old brain gleamed with original assault points and aye, in the beginning, Nickels’ assault on the world at large had a single point of origin, spreading outward from the center in a perfect, pristine radial growth pattern.
But his assault, the one so rudely intent on burrowing into his brain and stealing away what theoretically remained of his soul … that’d come from outside the sphere of influence. By the time the viral onslaught had come to him, there were instances of long, thin strains forcibly tunneling well past the main body, undoubtedly indicative of poorly protected systems, but the pathways taken …
Followed no know
n or identifiable system. No lines. No wires. No Wi-Fi Chezzik could detect. There were no broadcast stations inside the convention center capable of producing a signal so powerful that it immediately overrode every piece of equipment capable of carrying a signal.
Chezzik didn’t like not knowing something. Didn’t like it a great deal. But … he dare not make any attempt in locating just how the digital offensive was being carried to the rest of San Francisco because he was by this point absolutely convinced that should he stick his luvverly brain outside the confines of his own metal skull, he would not only be subjecting himself to yet another attempt, but an attempt that would be successful because while the code wasn’t necessarily smart, the cybernetic hit man couldn’t help but feel that out there somewhere, there existed a guiding intelligence.
“Most likely back at the lad’s HQ.” Chezzik didn’t like being trapped inside his own brain. Even back home in the 25th, there’d always been summat in the air to listen to. Long forgotten radio stations left on repeat, somehow still with enough juice to beam Golden Oldies into the atmosphere for anyone to hear. Black Ops repeater stations, belching long useless, heavily encrypted maneuvers to troops so dead even their bones had turned to dust. So on and so forth.
But this?
This sudden emptiness? Being left alone with his own thoughts? No good, no sir, not at all.
Chez decided it were time to move on in and take hold of Master Nickels. Fulfilling the agreement with Baron Samiel had just become evermore important to him, hadn’t it just?
***
Getting in would be easy. So easy, in fact, that no matter how simple it’d be for him to walk through the solid glass doors to apprehend his target, doing so was the absolute last thing on Chez’s mind; ignoring for the moment that he had no safe way of determining just what was going on inside the convention center, there was the undeniable fact that the very moment, the absolute split second he went crashing in through anything on the ground floor would be the moment that everything went so far sideways that it shot right past ‘pear shaped’ and into some strange new country of FUBAR so intensely odd that the assassin feared he’d need to invent an entirely new language to describe the situation.
“Last fing I want.” Calm everyone inside might be, listening to the wonderful and sagacious words of the Man Who Would Save America they very well might be, all the while remaining blissfully unaware that they were cut off from the outside world, but as soon as a door went crash or a window went bang, the horde of interested onlookers inside would lose their fookin’ minds and then …
Well. Mayhem. People did not deal with sudden and inexplicable explosions of glass well. Based on hazy recollections of cyborgs crashing through solid walls from films of the era, Chez knew down to his teeny-tiny robo-toes that the appearance of a grinning maniac in a brilliant white suit might just launch them right over the edge and into Overreaction World.
“Means roof access, innit?” Alas, the relatively simple feat of burrowing deep into the building’s infrastructure was a possibility that’d been forcibly removed from the field of play, all thanks to Master Nickels and his improbable virus.
The same almost certainly held true were he to attempt accessing the Internet; until he was done with Nickels, the code being held at bay by the valiant ‘piece was going to remain right where it was, just on the inside of his brain, peeping outwards, telling the primary structure that everything was under wraps.
“Oh. He’s good.” Chez slapped a knee and nodded. “Yes, he is very good indeed. Can’t right say if he knew there’d be someone out here like me, or if this is the sort of thing he’s used to doing, but it does seem as though he’s got all his bases covered, hey? The very moment someone outside the sphere of influence wanders in, they’re coopted. If they possess a level of tech beyond what the code is designed to handle, off it pops to let him know, and a more powerful virus is unleashed. No wonder our man Samiel has got his floating arsehole in a twist, hey? Move and countermove, all laid out nice and neat for those as can see the pattern. But I hain’t deterred, oh no, Master Nickels, not in the least. Because an infection can be infected, can’t it just?”
Sitting on his bench, watching the world go by, laughing into a sleeve at the people suddenly slapping their phones and looking around to see if someone were having a go at them, Chezzik assembled a few extra mindpieces from his remaining stores, cautiously remembering that this were it, that if they died, he’d need to replenish, a feat which would certainly bring attention.
The first of the ‘pieces connected itself to the compromised stitch of intelligence, constructing wee little bridges of interconnectivity there, and to the second ‘piece, which were the one that’d be –hopefully- engaging in a bit of masterful hacking.
Chez held his breath, locking a virtual eye on the alien snippet of data. It was beautifully meshed with the first ‘piece, looking to the assassin’s eye like nothing so much as a brightly multicolored zipper. Neatly passing itself off as a user-generated antiviral software check on the hardware wagging off the tail end of that was the bridge; Nickels’ worm saw the program running, spawned a few spurious and entirely believable status updates concerning the ‘health’ of the ‘phone’ it believed it was inside for the equally non-existent user, then left the bridge alone.
The dark haired time-traveler exhaled. “Brilliant. Now, master ‘piece, if you would be so kind as to begin?”
Inside the virtual cavern that was his mind, the second mindpiece attached itself to the bridge very, very carefully, keeping a kernel of it’s intelligence peeled for any signs of activity from the virus. Wisely passing itself off as a series of rudimentary check-me subroutines from the original antivirus test, the ‘piece remained not quite invisible but otherwise beneath the virus’ notice.
“All right now, lad, be on your best.”
From here, the steps were ‘simple’. So long as everyone inside his mind remained invisible or otherwise uninteresting to Master Nickels’ semi-intelligent snippet of viral deviltry.
First step, politely hack the tail end of the virus. Which should be simple, if for no other reason than it appeared to Chezzik that the bulk of the intelligent program was invested in keeping the original piece in virtual checkmate; so invested was this code that the tail ends, filtering off to connect to the still-invisible network, were left very nearly unprotected.
Running intrusion measures very similar to the assaults his protein rescriptors utilized when dominating then repurposing fresh organic matter into his systems, the hack should –in theory- simply add a wee amount of … veins … to the end of the virus. Rather than connecting to the overarching structure from which Nickels was controlling everything electronic in nature, Chezzik’s microscopic addition would branch outwards.
To other instances of domination.
Second step for the ‘piece, pass itself off as an integrity check coming, as it were, from the home office. Carrying with it morsels of original code from the occupying virus, other occurrences of that same assault shouldn’t even bother concerning itself with security checks.
Third step?
Easy peasy lemon squeazy. From there, once past the vigilant guard at the gate –even in a digital, viral world, any ‘guards’ wouldn’t stoop to check the identity of someone coming from the same place as ‘they’ had- a simple matter indeed to burrow into the digital storage devices on every phone, computer, and laptop in the area.
For what?
“Well,” Chezzik said to himself, at last lounging properly on the bench as steps one and two took place very nearly simultaneously and without flaw, “’s a big convention, innit? All sorts of things inside as worth taking picture of, hey? Aye, they’re taking pictures of all the men and women and whatnot as are doing the talking, or of fancy innovations that might save America from becoming a shitpile, hey, but what they are also taking pictures of, right, are the fucking walls and ceilings and the building itself.”
And from that? Well. He wer
en’t a Master Assassin for nowt. With all those pictures inside his mind, it’d be the work of a minute to build a nearly picture-perfect schematic of the convention center.
Armed with that, Chezzik knew he’d be able to get inside, whisk Nickels away, and be back at the newly devoid of life Changetech HQ before anyone were the wiser, wouldn’t he just?
“Hey, man, your fucking phone working?”
Chez eyeballed the man slapping his phone fairly aggressively against his thigh. “Sorry, mate,” the assassin pantomimed being very, very sad, “but mine is for shite at the moment. Prolly sunspots or summink, yeah? I’d, just, like, wait a moment or three.”
The man might’ve said something in response, but the first of thousands of photos was tricking in through the fragile link between himself and the many, many iterations of ‘piece coopting Nickels’ invisible network.
A most illuminating and literal picture began to develop.
Chez flipped the chatty man with the non-functional phone the bird and sat there in stony silence, watching the convention center grow before his eyes.
***
“I do not like this at all.” Chez said to himself, going over the whole picture in his mind’s eye, counting the number of soldiers with guns all standing in front of Garth Nickels. Fourteen. There were fourteen soldiers in there, surrounding a General of some number of stars –Chez had never bothered to understand American military titles, or, for that matter, British ones- and from the multitude of stills that turned that particular section of the center into a kind of live-action flipbook, said General was more than genuinely displeased at summink coming from Garth’s mouth.
From the look of the man, all smug and polite up there on the stage with that tremendous mane of black hair and those odd eyes –not to mention the absolute disinterest in possibly being shot to death by a nervous soldier- Chez took it on solid faith that the General’s displeasure was probably well founded.
