Shyft

by Damien Boyes

  “You hacked into Standards…?” That’s supposed to be impossible, but right now impossible is the easiest thing to accept. “Doesn’t matter—you know Xiao?”

  “He is my benefactor.”

  “Benefactor?” First Vaelyn now this guy. “Is he fucking sponsoring your art career too?”

  “He is not,” the cutsey voice deadpans.

  “You’re telling me it’s you that wants me dead.”

  “A fragment of the entity I once was, yes.”

  “And Dub, Elder, even Tala and Miranda—they’ve all been caught up in this—fragment’s—vendetta against me?”

  “Not a vendetta. Self-preservation.”

  “What self-preservation? I didn’t even know who you were twenty seconds ago.”

  “It doesn’t know that,” he says, and then his voice breaks, only slightly, but enough to notice. “I had learned so much then. I lived as many, jumped from skyn to skyn.”

  “And now?”

  “I am contained. A stranger, even to myself.”

  “That’s not what I meant. If this fragment really is out there, what’s it going to do next?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then how do we find it?”

  “I’m working on that presently—” then the transmission breaks and when he returns his voice is strained. “I have to go.”

  “What? No—”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Call me Ankur,” he says. And with that, the Sküte’s dash reignites and the feeds spring back to life.

  Before I have a chance to consider what I just heard, a call from Shelt announces itself from the speakers: “Fuckin’ ack me fucking now.”

  He sounds like he’s losing it.

  I let the call through and Shelt’s face fills the Sküte’s windshield. “Where the fuck have you been?” he says.

  “Talking to the guy who killed me.” That cuts through his agitation.

  “Which time?”

  “Both.”

  “Damn,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “You need to get over here.”

  “What happened now?”

  He sighs and shakes his head. “You’re gonna want to see it for yourself.”

  “On the way,” I say, turn off the Sküte’s feeds, watch the night roll by, and try not to think about all the choices I hadn’t made.

  StatUS-ID

  [a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]

  SysDate

  [12:33:12. Sunday, April 21, 2058]

  Chaddah thinks the two cyphers that attacked me were sent by Xiao, or Kade, or one of the other Five Marks. Someone whose business we disrupted by crashing the arKade. Some kind of retribution.

  But she doesn’t know what I know.

  It wasn’t Xiao and it wasn’t Kade.

  It was him.

  And if he wasn’t the one driving the TACvan, he knows who was. I’m sure of it.

  I wanted to stay, to help Galvan and Omondi pull the skyns apart, see what was inside, help figure out where they came from, but Galvan wouldn’t talk to me and Chaddah made it clear, despite being targeted for some kind of half-assed assassination, I was on leave for the next two days. She offered a lawbot to keep me company, but my apartment’s small enough as it is, I don’t need a Service bot watching over my shoulder while I defy Chaddah’s direct orders to drop my personal investigation into Connie’s death.

  I can’t fuck around anymore, waiting for things to drop into my lap. I need to pull the driver’s face from my memory. And for that I’m going to need a ReCog: a shyft that I can use to render my memories straight into the AMP’s facial image search.

  Luckily, the one man who can help me is currently out of a job.

  Once I get home I log into my Gibson account and craft another note for xYvYx. He didn’t respond to my last message a few days ago, so this time I up the ante, tell him I have a business proposition, and that if he doesn’t get back to me, I’ll find someone else to give my money to.

  If this doesn’t get his attention, one way or another, I’m going to have to find another source for a ReCog shyft.

  I shouldn’t have worried. He replies almost instantly, text only. Not. Fucking. Interested.

  ‘It’ll be worth your time,’ I dictate. The IMP turns my words to text and sends them in reply.

  Impossible. Fuck off.

  ‘Just hear me out.’

  How many times do I have to tell you to fuck off? I’ve taken shits that smell better than your karmaed-up account. I don’t deal with an-os.

  He’s responding. If he really didn’t care he’d just put me on ignore. That means I’ve already hooked him, it’s just a matter of getting him to admit it.

  ‘My anonymity is for both our protection,’ I say. ‘Besides, you’re clever. If this was some kind of sting, do you think I’d be stupid enough to try and fool you with an alt?’

  I think you cops would be exactly that stupid.

  ‘Fair enough. But even if I was a cop, you think I’d be able to track you down?’

  I know you couldn’t.

  ‘Then what are you afraid of?

  Nothing you could do.

  ‘Now that Kade’s out of business you’re going to have to find something else to pay the bills. If she trusted you, you must be good.’

  You know Kade?

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  What makes you think she’s out of business?

  ‘The arKade got raided last night, lost a whole lot of skyns and equipment. You think she’s going to bounce right back from that?’

  His reply takes a beat, but it comes.

  What do you want?

  Gotcha.

  ‘I know you’ve been investigating the link. The things living in there we can’t see. I have too. I want to work together.’

  There’s a pause, then: I don’t work well with others. Give me one good reason why I should start.

  I skip over the haggling and jump straight to the end:

  ‘$50 000.’

  For what?

  ‘You’re a Rithmist.’

  Yeah, so?

  ‘I want five days of your time and your skill.’

  $100.

  ‘$50. And I share what I find. Final offer. You have thirty seconds to make up your mind or I move on. I know you’re not the only one looking into this, and I guarantee you I know more about it than you’d think.’

  Try me.

  Got to give him something. ‘How about the details on a stolen TACvan found at the bottom of a quarry up north with absolutely no record of getting there?’

  He takes the full thirty seconds to reply, but he bites.

  I knew it. Payment in advance.

  ‘Half now, half at the end,’ I send back.

  He sends an alphanumeric string that my IMP tells me is a bank account registered in Dubai. I tell the IMP to create an anonymous eCash account and transfer a hundred thousand dollars of Connie’s life insurance payment to it, then send a quarter of that to xYvYx.

  Two minutes later, the eCash account is down twenty-five grand.

  So then Gibson, you got five days of my time. What do you want?

  ‘First, I need you to get me a shyft.’

  Then you came to the right man. If I can’t get it for you, I’ll roll it myself. What do you need?

  ‘A ReCog.’

  You wanna repeat that, cause it sounds like you said you want a thoughmod that any second-rate rithm-tweak could source on a Grasser Preserve?

  ‘ReCog.’

  Shit, Okay. But clearly you are a man unconcerned about spending your money wisely.

  ‘Not that easy. I want to use it on myself.’

  The cursor blinks on my tab, waiting for his reply.

  Interesting. I’ll need to adapt the control module for your headspace, translate the long term memory addresses to a virt output. Facial imager?

  ‘Good guess.’

  I’ll need a
couple days. Test it on FRED before I send it. Don’t want to scramble your rithm any more than necessary.

  I flip him a dronedrop address nearby.

  And you’re gonna share whatever it is you’re looking for that’s locked away in your head?

  ‘Just send it and I’ll be in touch.’

  Easiest money I ever made, he sends, then drops the connection.

  Soon.

  A sense of anticipation drills through me as I set the tab down on the coffee table, next to the block of the Revv shifts I lifted from evidence before I left the station. Enough to keep me seeing the future for months.

  I signed the Revv out of the evidence locker and replaced it with a brick of alcosofts. There’s no active prosecution—or even a suspect to tie the shyfts to—no one’s going to miss them. I need them more than they need to be sitting useless in a storeroom.

  If it weren’t for the Revv, we never would have made it into the elevator at the arKade, let alone to the third floor. And with what’s after me—someone who stalks the link like he owns it, someone who could hack a Sküte and send mindless skyns after me—I need a fighting chance. The Revv gives me that. Otherwise, I’ve already lost.

  Those two skyns today were freshly decanted, could barely walk. They hadn’t had time to acclimate to their bodies, if they’d waited a few more hours to pay me a visit, my Cortex might be on Omondi’s table right now instead of theirs.

  I have no idea what I’m up against, but I’m not going to be unprepared again.

  I grab the brick and dig my fingers into the thick plastic packaging, tear a small hole in the side and work one out. The flickering electric storm snaps to life as it senses the movement. I watch the lightning crackle once, twice.

  Why shouldn’t I? Why not let myself be all I can?

  Why not give myself every advantage to stop people like Kade, like Xiao, from destroying us?

  What’s really stopping me? Human Standards?

  Those laws were written by humans to preserve something they can’t understand—their own limitations. But those limits no longer apply to me. I’m not human anymore.

  I’m Reszo.

  I have my own Standards now.

  Why should I crawl because humanity is afraid to let itself walk?

  So if not the law, the only thing stopping me is me.

  My fear.

  Of what it might do to me.

  Of what I’ll become.

  But I can’t live my life in fear. Connie deserves better than that.

  I slide the Revv into my jacket pocket.

  It’ll be there when I need it.

  StatUS-ID

  [fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]

  SysDate

  [03:21:54. Saturday, January 18, 2059]

  “You’re sure it was Elder?” Shelt asks, scratching away at his scalp under his tangled mop of hair. Based on the level of urine in the jar on his desk, he hasn’t left this room since the last time I was here.

  I’ve told him what happened at the Fāngzhōu, my chat with Petra, my visit with the Mayor, even about the superintelligence—who’s murdered me twice—hacking my Sküte for a conversation. All that, and Elder is still Shelt’s biggest concern. “You’re certain it was him?”

  “I can’t tell you who was behind his eyes, but it was his definitely his skyn. He hasn’t shaved in a while, but it was him.”

  “Where has he been?” Shelt says, almost to himself. “Why hasn’t he contacted me?”

  “Where he’s been isn’t as important as why he’s come back. It can’t be a coincidence that he shows up minutes before Petra snapped.”

  “Maybe he was trying to help,” he offers, but I don’ think he believes it.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t even think that’s really Elder.”

  “You think he’s been jacked?”

  “Not just mindjacked, possessed by a superintelligence who’ got it out for me.”

  He stops and looks at me but only shakes his head. “Maybe, but Elder still hasn’t popped on rep-net. There were only twenty-six open dox checked into the Fāngzhōu last night, including Petra and Vaelyn. The cops will be able to see everyone though, including you. Especially you. You think it’s a coincidence Elder showed up? I bet Special Agent Wiser will be thinking exactly the same thing about you.”

  “Yeah.” I’ve already considered this. Hopefully the Mayor will corroborate my alibi, but I can’t count on her. Petra Anderson has no ties to Mayor Anders. Her Honour will likely want to keep this as quiet as possible, which means I’m on my own. I wasn’t responsible for what happened in the Fāngzhōu, but Agent Wiser already thinks I’m up to something. My proximity to a mass shooting is only going to stoke that fire.

  “I told you there’s something you’re gonna want to see,” Shelt says with a sideways look.

  “Right.” I’d forgot. “What is it?”

  “From the Fāngzhōu. I’ve pieced together a rough virt cobbled from a bunch of livefeeds that started when the shooting did. People have been adding to it, enough that it provides a pretty good record of what happened.”

  “I know what happened. Petra killed a bunch of people.”

  “Yeah, but you’re gonna want to see for yourself.”

  Shelt flips me a cuff and I sit on the edge of his cot, zone into my headspace and accept the invite that casts me into a well-lit recreation of the second floor of the Fāngzhōu. Daytime. Empty tables. Chairs neatly arranged. Years of dust cleaned from the ceiling’s red-fabric. Then Shelt’s beside me.

  “Someone had already made a virt of the Fāngzhōu’s interior, so I used it as a base and overlaid the feeds I found. This is the first,” he says, wiggling his fingers, and as he does a cone of darkness slices through the room, emerging from somewhere near the bar like a reverse flashlight, carving a path through the light to reveal the dim events of last night.

  The video has been processed into 3D and layered over the virt shell. It’s rough and incomplete, but clear enough to feel like it’s happening right in front of me.

  Petra’s about ten meters away from where we’re standing, a gun in each hand—the ones Petra’s bodyguards had used on me—both pointed at the crowd. The two bodyguards lie in pools of blood behind her, with what looks like a double-tap to the chest for both. Terrified people flit in and out of existence as they scramble across the feed’s field of view trying to escape.

  Vaelyn rushes Petra, screaming her name, and before she can get close Petra snaps her head to the side, flings her right arm out and fires. The muzzle flash is followed a split second later by a burst of blue light as Vaelyn’s Cortex explodes. Petra blasts her again with shot from the other hand on the way down, just to make sure. The sounds are huge in the small room, and send the crowd into a frenzy.

  Vaelyn’s muscle had been two steps behind, but the spray of bone and blood and plastic changes their minds and they immediately turn and duck out of view.

  Petra turns back toward us, face calm. She isn’t angry. Isn’t raving. She’s focused, staring at something across the room. At something behind us.

  “Who’s she looking at?” I ask, and turn around forgetting only the blank bright interior of the empty Fāngzhōu is behind me.

  Shelt shrugs.

  Petra starts walking, keeping her eyes fixed, somewhere just beyond where the feed is originating, headed toward us. She raises her weapons and fires, one shot from each hand and the bullets pass through where we’re standing. Someone behind us screams and the cone of action jerks away from Petra toward the door. Whoever was behind the camera must have decided it was time to see themselves out.

  The view of Petra is gone for a moment as it focuses on the crowd jostling at the exit. People pushing. Trampling over each other. Fighting to stay upright.

  Two more shots snip out from somewhere in the room. The sound lighter, likely a suppressor, but still enormously loud in the low-ceilinged room. Someone returning fire.

  Another cone of darkness snaps on from a
cross the room, someone hiding in the back of a bench seat. Petra is right beside us, staring past us, toward the rear exit, and bleeding from the abdomen. She doesn’t seem to notice.

  Another camera adds its view from beside the exit and provides a crosshair, Petra in the center, her image right beside us. The feeds are from further away, dim, choppy, jerking between the action and the exit, and in the dark Petra is only partially visible, her form waxes and wanes in human-shaped eclipses as people pass in front of the cameras and block the re-creation.

  “I haven’t had the chance to extrapolate missing voxels,” Shelt says in apology, as if I was grading him on his work.

  I wave his concern away. Who cares if it’s a little blurry? Shelt’s given me a ring-side seat.

  Again Petra fires, two shots from each hand, and someone fires back. I still have no idea who’s shooting at her. Petra shoots again, four quick blasts. There’s a yell of pain and another scream as a fleeing body falls out of the field of view and dissolves into the well-lit floor.

  The feed by the door swings to show the exit now open and it moves down the stairs and leaves us with just the one feed left, a wide-angle of someone hiding on the other side of the room, the lighting still too dim to make out who Petra might be shooting at, just indistinct forms at the periphery.

  I’ve been subconsciously counting along with the shots until, if the four in the guards were the first four shots she fired, she has two left. One in each weapon.

  The room is almost empty now. The only sounds moans of wounded bystanders and the ringing in my ears.

  She squeezes one more shot from her right hand lets the spent weapon fall from her grip. She’s counting too.

  Shelt sucks in a breath as two more bullets strike Petra, center mass, and stagger her backward. She tumbles over a table but manages to steady herself and smiles. Her teeth are dark with blood.

  Another shot takes her in the upper chest. Blood blossoms in the air behind her. Her knees give out and she drops, but catches herself on the table with her left arm cocked at the elbow, only her head and upper body visible, weapon pointed at her head.

  As footsteps rush in from the back of the room she spits blood and says, “You’re next, Gage,” then puts the last bullet through her temple.