《Hex Runner (Progression Cyberpunk GameLit)》 Chapter 1: Seedy Connection Chapter 1. Seedy Connection As I lay stretched out beside the river bank, words suddenly appeared in bright purple capitals inside my eye. COME FIND ME One moment they weren¡¯t there. Then they were. I blinked but the words didn¡¯t go away. I closed my left eye. The words were suspended against the red-black background of my sunlit eyelid. I closed my right eye. The words hung in the air. Before this moment, I had been wasting the day the way I had wasted every day since Freya had disappeared. Freya was my childhood best friend. I had looked for her, even hired a private detective, but she was gone. When the words appeared, I tried looking at different things: the sky, a rock, the river, a tree, some grass, some dirt, my hand. Each time, superimposed and more or less faint depending on its background, were the words. COME FIND ME I felt guilty. There was no way this was Freya reaching out to me. My friend was gone, lost in the corporate medical system, and if she wanted to reach me she would simply message my phone like a normal person. I¡¯d done all I could to find her from our tiny town. There was nothing else I could do. Right? Except for the government-mandated child-tracking chips and the credit chip in my wrist, I didn¡¯t use the net much. Only to poke around, looking for Freya. I didn¡¯t even watch streams anymore. All I wanted was to grow into a man in my small town, find some work, and spend my days hunting and fishing the way my great-granddad did. And I wanted for Freya to come back. But that wasn¡¯t happening. COME FIND ME There was only one explanation: this was my personal sense of guilt manifesting as a hallucination. I should have done more to find her. I should have gotten over my reluctance to use the net. Fine. If this was my guilt talking, then I was going to find a way to take care of it. I started walking home, reaching in my pocket for the only lead I had left: a scrap of paper, on which was written a name. Hank Rio World¡¯s Greatest Thief Carthage ### I left the central Carthage BRUTE station and did as Dad told me: walked with my head down, my hands in my pockets, toward the place where I was supposed to meet Hank Rio. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone, tried not to let the cameras see my face. It felt impossible to be anonymous. At least the words superimposed over my eye weren¡¯t quite so visible anymore. Maybe my conscience was giving me a break. Following the descending concrete walkways from the transit station, I found myself in a slow-moving crowd, everyone walking like they had to be somewhere five minutes ago but still making time to say hello to strangers in that Southern way. Everyone acknowledged each other, everyone but me, my head ducked, my shoulders hunched. I followed the crowd down a ramp and into the tight, bright grid of downtown Carthage. The buildings near me were relatively small, four or five stories, some of them made of old brick. But those ahead rose up, up, up, two hundred stories or more, and glowed from within their cores. Somewhere on the street was the person I was supposed to meet. Dad always told me that the megacity of Carthage was the most dangerous place in the country, its streets full of freaks zoned-out on AI-designed psychedelics or cartel-custom stimulants, ready to open up your wrist with a razor to yank out your credit chip. And if it wasn¡¯t them, it was the corps, looking to drain your accounts and get you signed to an indenture that would force you to work for them for the next 30 years. Dad had told me not to go. But he didn¡¯t understand. He had brothers and sisters growing up. I didn¡¯t. All I had was Freya, and now she was gone. I had to know what happened to her. And if she were in trouble, I had to help her. Freya and I were closer than friends, almost like siblings, especially because we were both only children. From preschool to senior year, we shared secrets, supported each other, laughed, fought, and always made up. Then, a few weeks before we graduated high school, Freya told me she was going away. She¡¯d been accepted to a university, one of those big, public midwestern institutions on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a place sealed into an enormous arcology. My grades weren¡¯t good enough for me to join her. I was mad, envious of her, and jealous of everyone who would get to spend time with her. That final summer together, I stayed away from her. I still did not believe that Freya would create a great career out in the world while I would be stuck at home, unable to make it into college. But then Freya came back in the middle of her first year. She was sick. She suffered fevers, weakness, headaches, and dizziness. The doctors in town referred her to one of the big hospitals in Asheville. Last I heard she had been enrolled in a clinical trial run by one of the megacorps in Carthage. That was almost a year ago. Her parents had split up long ago, and never seemed to care what she did with her time. When I asked them where she was, they said she was probably still in the hospital. That ¡°probably¡± bothered me. Was she in the hospital or wasn¡¯t she? When Freya first went away, I did what anyone would do: searched the net for news of her. Entering her name, her handle, and her picture, I hoped something recent would surface. But I found nothing. It was like she had never existed.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. After that, I gathered what small amount of money I had and hired a private investigator. Dade was an old man who lived in a restored red-brick paper mill in downtown Canton, a mill that Freya once scaled hand-over-hand up the uneven brickwork when we were sixteen. Like most people, Dade did all his work via the net. He wore fitted white shirts with rainbow suspenders and he knew everyone in town. The second time we met, when I was to pay him and receive his report, he refused my money. Why? Because his search showed that Freya did not exist. ¡°She¡¯s been scrubbed,¡± he said. ¡°Scrubbed?¡± ¡°What the corps do when they want someone to stop looking for a person. They hire people or use AIs to go over every mention, every picture, and erase it, or alter it.¡± He looked at me across his desk with sad eyes. ¡°But why would anyone want to scrub her?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, kid. Why do the corps do anything?¡± ¡°Control and profit, my dad always said.¡± ¡°Your dad knows a thing or two.¡± I waited and the silence in his office built. I wasn¡¯t going to leave on my own. Eventually, he pulled a card from a stack on his desk. A real card made of heavy paper. On the back he wrote: Hank Rio World¡¯s Greatest Thief Carthage ¡°You want out of this town?¡± Dade said. ¡°I want to find Freya.¡± Dade gestured toward the card with his ink pen. ¡°Look him up,¡± he said. I read the card. ¡°What do I need a thief for?¡± Dade shrugged. ¡°Can he find her?¡± I said. Dade shrugged again. ¡°I don¡¯t know, but he¡¯s always keeping an eye out.¡± The strangeness of what Dade said didn¡¯t really come to me until after I had messaged this Hank Rio and set a time and place to meet in Carthage. In fact, it wasn¡¯t until after I had boarded the BRUTE at the stop next to the courthouse that I really began to think of how odd it was. Bus Rapid Urban Transit¡ªEastern was the only feasible way to get from city to city on the east coast if you didn¡¯t own a car, and most here didn¡¯t. As the bus rose up on its hydraulics and the engine made the smooth transition to highway mode, I thought: Hank Rio keeps an eye out, but for whom? So far, Carthage didn¡¯t seem that scary to me. The people seemed friendly, although preoccupied, but they left me alone. The men sitting on squares of cardboard, their wrists bared and lifted to beg for a small transfer of dollars, they didn¡¯t say anything, didn¡¯t bother anyone. Occasionally someone would kneel to transfer something into their accounts. The streets grew narrower, the buildings taller, the crowds denser. From carts on the sidewalk and counters built into the towers, I smelled the most amazing food. I saw the flames of old-style hydrocarbon burners, heard the sizzle of meat on cast iron. It reminded me that I hadn¡¯t eaten anything since breakfast. Maybe Hank Rio could point me in the direction of a good meal, after he gave me the information I had come for. I turned a corner downtown and suddenly found myself in a quiet alley lined with small tables, each hosting two chairs and a vase with a single lily. Men in suit jackets and women in businesslike dresses spoke softly over glasses of wine and plates of olives. In the far back of the alley a man of my dad¡¯s age sat alone, wearing a white suit and lifting a glass to his lips. I approached, suddenly feeling as stupid as a rabbit approaching a wolf. The man was impossibly cool. Where the cuffs of his suit jacket and shirt ended, I saw the gleaming chrome finish of two mechanical hands. Plenty of people had them at home, veterans, farmers who had had an accident with an AI-driven combine, but these were the first I¡¯d seen with such an intricate level of detail. There were gems studding the wrist bones, and spirals etched into the metal, inlaid with something like liquid mercury. His hands were works of art. ¡°Hank Rio?¡± I said. He gestured at the chair in front of me and took a long sip of his red wine. ¡°You must be Rawls,¡± Hank Rio said. ¡°Dade knows talent when he sees it, but I have to say, you don¡¯t look like much.¡± ¡°Excuse me?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t like to repeat myself,¡± Rio said. ¡°It¡¯s just that I didn¡¯t meet you expecting you to evaluate me. I¡¯m here to ask for your help.¡± ¡°Help doing what?¡± He spoke slowly, with an accent I couldn¡¯t place. He may have come from New Orleans or from somewhere in South America. The skin on the back of my neck tingled. I glanced down the alley, thought about how to get out if I had to run. I turned back to Rio. ¡°Help finding my friend. Freya Alexander.¡± His eyebrows rose. He nodded, as if committing the name to memory. ¡°What happened to her?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. She came to Carthage for a clinical trial.¡± Rio couldn¡¯t hide the sadness that passed across his face. I continued. ¡°Dade said she was scrubbed.¡± ¡°So what?¡± ¡°So what? If she¡¯s scrubbed that means all the information about her is gone. I¡¯ll never find her.¡± Rio leaned forward and held out one chrome hand. From the center of his palm, a polycarbonate lens opened and a fuzzy holo projection appeared. It was small, the size of a softball, and indistinct. But somewhere in there was a human figure. ¡°Information can never be destroyed,¡± Rio said. I was gazing at the hologram, trying to make out what it was, but it was fuzzy, the detail washed out in a swirl of blue and green light. Just when I thought I was beginning to make something out, Rio closed his fist and the projection flickered and died. The expression on his face was suddenly much less playful, much more focused. He wasn¡¯t looking at me but at something overhead. I followed his eyes and saw a small drone, its rotors almost silent. In a sickening flash, I realized that the tingling sensation on my neck wasn¡¯t caused by Rio playing with me, but by this thing. Somehow I had known it was there. The drone featured a single bug eye, multi-faceted like a fly¡¯s, scanning over the assembled people in the alley. Rio seemed deeply concerned by its presence. I found I was, too, although I didn¡¯t know why. Rio was frozen to the spot, as if he didn¡¯t want the drone to see him move. As it hovered just over his shoulder, I felt something bump my foot. Looking down, I found a pair of glasses, a cheap eye-mounted rig, the kind we did our schoolwork on because the district couldn¡¯t afford better haptics. Somehow Rio must have slid it to me with his foot. I reached down and then placed it over my eyes. The lenses were not transparent but transmitted real-time video from outward-facing cameras. The view was also augmented, so that I could see a kind of electronic overlay. As I looked at the drone, I could see its components delineated in bright colors: rotors, motors, power supply, processor, photoelectric sensors, lenses. I looked at the drone¡¯s processor and somehow the glasses knew it. My view zoomed in, first to the housing of the drone and then even further until the black plastic body took up my entire vision. But within that blackness, the glasses showed me something glowing inside the drone, like a maze. In a flash, I got it: I was looking at the logic gates within the drone¡¯s processor. I¡¯d always been good at mazes. It was like I didn¡¯t even have to think about it. I traced my way through with my eyes, and found myself looking at something like a set of screws holding a panel in place. They must have been microscopic, or even smaller. I lifted the glasses to glance at Rio. He remained immobile. I could see sweat beginning to form on his forehead, as if holding the position was difficult. The drone buzzed over him, its bug eye drawing closer and closer to his face, as if trying to determine whether he was of interest or not. Lowering the glasses, I began working on the screws by focusing with my eyes. I found that as one screw backed out, another one tightened. It was a kind of puzzle. I paused to take a breath and look carefully. After a moment I understood the relationship between all of the screws, and within a few moments had removed them. A red power button glowed up at me. I tapped it with a thought, and my view zoomed back out to show the drone falling from the air. It bounced off the table, spilling Rio¡¯s red wine, and clattered onto the brick. Rio wasted no time and swept the thing under the table with his foot. He brought out a silk handkerchief and wiped the sweat and wine from his face. ¡°Lesson one,¡± he said. ¡°They can only recognize you if your face is in motion,¡± he said. Then he added, ¡°Good work. I knew you were talented. Now come with me.¡± Chapter 2: Priority Run Chapter 2: Priority Run ¡°What did I just do?¡± I said. The camera drone that had been eyeing my companion lay silent in a heap under the table. ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious?¡± Hank Rio said. ¡°You slipped through the drone¡¯s rudimentary ice and you breached its processor.¡± ¡°Why was the drone looking at you?¡± ¡°I¡¯m a popular guy,¡± he said. Then Rio took the glasses from me before I could ask any other questions and leaned forward again. He opened one metal hand, and this time the holo projection resolved. In sharp detail I saw Freya, standing, wearing a tank top and jeans, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. This wasn¡¯t Freya as a fourth-grader at the science fair or Freya in her senior portrait. It was Freya after she¡¯d fallen ill. She was terribly thin, but the strength in her eyes was unmistakable. And the chemotherapy implant in her collarbone was new; I¡¯d never seen it before. ¡°That¡¯s impossible,¡± I said. ¡°She was scrubbed.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t make me repeat myself,¡± Rio said. But he didn¡¯t sound hostile. He sounded as if he were toying with me. ¡°When the corps want something gone,¡± I said, ¡°it goes away. They own the net. There are no rules¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± Rio said. The sharpness in his voice stopped me cold. ¡°Lesson two: the net has rules like anything else. It¡¯s code, after all, and code is a set of rules. The corps have to follow the rules, even if they were the ones who wrote them. But if you know what you¡¯re doing, if you¡¯re determined, and brave, and clever, and you keep an eye out ... ¡± ¡°What?¡± I said. I found myself leaning forward.¡± ¡°You can exploit the rules.¡± ¡°Can exploiting the rules help me find Freya?¡± Rio tilted his hand, rotating the holo projection this way and that. ¡°What do you think?¡± he said. ¡°I think I want to try.¡± He closed his fist and holo-Freya vanished. With his other hand, equally chromed, he slapped down paper money for the server. I¡¯d never seen paper money before. Rio stood. ¡°Come on, young Rawls.¡± He buttoned his suit jacket. ¡°You have much to learn.¡± I struggled to follow Rio through the city. He was confident in his movements. He knew exactly how to cut through the after-work crowd as he ascended metal staircases and descended brick-paved ramps, moving us away from the center of downtown into a shabby-looking neighborhood strung with thick wires overhead, and noisy with a mixture of Nigerian pop coming from wearable speakers on passers-by and Latin rhythms from within storefronts lining the street. I managed to keep Rio in sight, and when he stopped at the thick metal door of an anonymous three-story brick apartment building, I caught up to him. He smirked at me and opened the door using some complicated gesture that I didn¡¯t catch. When he shut the thing behind me, all the noise of the world went with it. We walked up a darkened stairway and then he opened a second, wooden door with an old-fashioned brass key. ¡°Why don¡¯t you use your wrist?¡± I said. He looked up at me as he swung the door wide. ¡°Think about that for a second.¡± ¡°Not secure?¡± Rio pursed his lips, as if impressed, and walked inside. ¡°Gloss! Get down here! We have company.¡± I saw that the apartment occupied two levels, having been built into an old industrial building the way the fancier places in my hometown were. An antique wrought-iron spiral staircase connected the bottom floor with a lofted space above. Long windows let in the last light of the afternoon. From above, I heard thumps as someone with serious heft was moving around. Following Rio¡¯s lead, I removed my shoes and stepped inside. The cast iron staircase shook and I saw first a pair of legs and then the bulk of a very large man descend. While Rio was somewhat taller than me, this guy was enormous, jacked with muscle and covered in thick, geometric tattoos. His hair was cut sharp, slicked so that it stood up, with designs matching the tattoos shaved into the side. He wore workout clothes and looked sleepy. ¡°Gloss, I¡¯d like you to meet Rawls. Dade referred him to us.¡± ¡°A pleasure,¡± Gloss said. When he spoke, his voice was so soft that I almost didn¡¯t hear him. Gloss extended his thick, muscled hand, and I shook it, or rather, he shook mine. ¡°May I offer you a beverage?¡± ¡°Get some water in this kid,¡± Rio said, taking off his suit jacket and hanging it in a closet. ¡°He¡¯ll need to hydrate. I didn¡¯t even give him the chance to sip something at the cafe, and there¡¯s no time now.¡± ¡°No time for what?¡± I said to Rio¡¯s back as he moved deeper into the apartment, into a room, and shut the door behind himself. ¡°Looks like you piqued his interest,¡± Gloss said, and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. ¡°When the boss is interested, it¡¯s best to move quick and look lively.¡± ¡°He¡¯s your boss?¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯m his intern,¡± he said, and turned back to the kitchen, set a tea kettle to boil, and then filled a glass with filtered water. He handed it over to me and I gulped it down. I hadn¡¯t realized how thirsty I was after spending a few hours on the BRUTE and then hustling through downtown. Because I was so thirsty, the water tasted great, but I felt a moment of longing as I realized how different it tasted than the water from the mountain back home. Water at home was slightly sweet, almost floral. This had a distant, salty taste, maybe even something sour.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°It¡¯s safe,¡± Gloss said quietly, noticing my expression. ¡°You don¡¯t have to worry about trace psychedelics or industrial chemicals.¡± He opened a cabinet and showed me a stack of filters connected to a municipal water pipe. The water cascaded through thick dark rings of something that looked like stone, seven or eight of them, before dripping into the pitcher below. Gloss shut the cabinet and turned his attention to the tea kettle, which was somehow already boiling. Humming to himself, he measured out the dried leaves. It was remarkable watching him work. I immediately liked him. Rio came out of the room again, still in his bright white shirt and suit pants, carrying some electronic gear. The thing in his hand looked like a prototype game console or something, a rectangular metal box with rounded corners wired to a chunky headset that appeared to be like the early VR systems we read about in school. Except this one looked like it had been built to survive a cruise missile strike. He dropped the gear on the couch and gestured at me. I held out a hand. ¡°Wait,¡± I said. ¡°You still haven¡¯t explained how you found that hologram of Freya when every search that Dade and I did showed that she¡¯d been scrubbed.¡± Rio smiled. ¡°I didn¡¯t find it. Gloss did. When you told me her name, I messaged him. Gloss, do you want to explain?¡± Gloss turned to me with a steaming mug of tea in his hands. After taking a moment to breathe in the steam, at which Rio rolled his eyes, Gloss said, ¡°I found that image on an unprotected server run by a local nonprofit. The nonprofit provides support to people who are in the hospital but don¡¯t have family around to visit them.¡± His mention of not having anyone around to visit made my chest ache. When Freya had gone away for the clinical trial, I remembered visiting her in the hospital in Asheville once, and telling her I would be back in a few days. But the next day, I received a message from her saying she had to go to Carthage and didn¡¯t know when she would be back. It hurt to think of her, here, alone. ¡°So you broke into the server?¡± I said. ¡°Well, yeah. It¡¯s what we do.¡± Rio chuckled at that. ¡°And if you want to find out what¡¯s happened to her, kid, you¡¯ll have to do it, too.¡± He held up the ancient, disaster-proof VR headset. ¡°You mean now?¡± ¡°The learning curve is steep,¡± Rio said. ¡°And you don¡¯t know how much time you have.¡± ¡°Stop scaring him, Enrique, he¡¯s just a kid.¡± Rio¡ªor Enrique¡ªshrugged. ¡°Did he just call you ¡®Enrique¡¯?¡± I said. ¡°He did. Because that¡¯s my name. Enrique Lima, the greatest thief in the world, in the flesh and in the steel.¡± He mimed tipping a hat that he wasn¡¯t wearing. ¡°So Hank Rio isn¡¯t your real name?¡± ¡°Do you think I¡¯d give my real name to some kid I don¡¯t know who messaged me allegedly on Dade¡¯s recommendation?¡± I could guess the answer to that. I thought about it for a moment. ¡°Is Enrique Lima your real name?¡± Both Enrique and Gloss laughed, long and loud and deep. ¡°I think he gets it,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Come on, kid, time to make your first run.¡± He patted the cushion of the couch. ¡°Get comfortable. This could take some time.¡± I worked myself into what felt like a cozy position on the couch, my legs stretched out and a throw pillow at the small of my back. Enrique set the console in my lap and handed me the headset. ¡°Is this illegal?¡± I said. ¡°Sure,¡± Enrique said. Gloss just sipped his tea. He¡¯d gone back to looking sleepy. ¡°Am I going to get in trouble?¡± Enrique looked over at Gloss. ¡°Is he going to get in trouble?¡± Enrique rumbled. ¡°Only if he gets caught,¡± Gloss said, sounding bored. ¡°Where am I going?¡± I said. ¡°This is a minimally-protected remote server operated by FUTUR Design,¡± Enrique said. ¡°They¡¯re a company that makes simulated humans. It¡¯s generally safe to make a run on them as long as you¡¯re well-rested. They generally don¡¯t make reprisals for low-impact runs.¡± ¡°What am I trying to do?¡± ¡°You¡¯ll figure it out. I¡¯ll point you in the right direction. You do what feels natural.¡± ¡°Are you sure?¡± ¡°Listen. Dade thinks you have potential. And I saw what you did to that camera drone in the cafe. You got this.¡± Feeling both confident and nervous, I lifted the metal headset and brought it down over my eyes. At first the hard edges were uncomfortable, but then I noticed that there were inner rubber rings that fit over my eyes. They were aged, and brittle, but they felt better than bare steel. The headset smelled of sweat and incense and hair product. I pulled a stretchy band over the back of my head and rested against the pillow so that my neck didn¡¯t have to take the weight of the thing. ¡°Ready?¡± Enrique¡¯s voice said. It sounded far away. ¡°Yeah.¡± For a moment, nothing happened. Then I felt like I was driving on a highway at night, a small lit-up city in the distance, except there was no highway, no car, no trees. Just me, moving toward the small city at a speed that felt terrifying and exciting all at once. I didn¡¯t have a body, not exactly, but I was something, some figure, some shape, like a sharp wedge. It felt good. Like every school kid, I¡¯d used the net before for homework or to message friends at night. Sometimes I watched videos Dad didn¡¯t want me to watch. I¡¯d played some VR games on the rare occasions Freya and I were able to sneak into the VRcade downtown. But this was something different. It felt total. It felt like I belonged here. The city drew nearer, or rather I came closer to it. Pillars of light rose before me. Something in me longed to be inside those pillars, to see what they were made of, how they worked. Suddenly I wanted to know everything about this place, at once so much simpler and more complex than the real world. Then I slammed into a wall. I was sure it hadn¡¯t been there before. Yeah, I had noticed something fuzzy and indistinct ringing the base of the city, but I had taken that to be the ambient glow of the skyscrapers of data. Now, right in front of the nose of my sharp, wedge-like form, was a wall made of millions of tiny, clear cubes. It was as hard as anything in the real world, and as painful to smack into at high speed. I tried to rise above the wall but couldn¡¯t. The cubes didn¡¯t move when I tapped on them. I tried hitting them harder and harder. Eventually, it felt like the cubes were about to budge. But when I took a closer look, I saw the cubes had not moved at all. There was something interesting about them. They had not been installed uniformly. The gaps between them varied in size as if they had been stacked by hand. ¡°You can¡¯t come in.¡± The tiny, child-like voice came from behind the wall. Through the clear blocks, I could see that there was someone was out there. I moved along the wall, looking for a larger gap, and noticed that whoever was there was tracking my movement and moving along with me. ¡°I¡¯m not allowed to let you in,¡± the voice said again. After a while I came to a place where the wall had been either damaged or left unfinished. It had partially collapsed at the top, and cubes hung scattered in three-dimensional space. The hole may have been big enough for me to move through. As I accelerated toward the gap, I saw the figure behind the wall spring forward and start to grab cubes from the space around the hole. He was just a child, maybe seven years old, but he worked quickly and precisely, filling the hole with cubes at a frightening pace until the wall was solid again. ¡°You¡¯re not supposed to be here,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m just looking around.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to call my mom,¡± he said, ¡°and then you¡¯ll be sorry.¡±
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Login-prompt
Manufacturer Everyone and their grandmother
Cost to rez Virtually nothing
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 0 (maybe less)
Type Platform
Subtype None
Subroutines Stops a Run. Trivial for a runner to pass.
Chapter 3: Chrome Boutique Chapter 3. Chrome Boutique The child sitting on the other side of the wall of digital toy blocks glared at me. ¡°Mommy knows how to deal with bad people like you,¡± he said. I could feel fear trickle down my spine. ¡°Wait,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not going to hurt you.¡± I didn¡¯t want to face whatever he meant by ¡°Mommy.¡± The boy looked at me as if he might scream. Clearly, I wasn¡¯t going to be able to get through this wall with speed or force, and if I waited too long, I would have this thing¡¯s ¡°Mommy¡± on my case. I had to think of something. ¡°Do you want to play?¡± I said. ¡°OK,¡± he said. He kept looking at me. His expression hadn¡¯t changed. I looked around at the blocks. I thought about the neighbor kids Freya used to babysit. ¡°How about we play a stacking game?¡± I said. ¡°How do we do that?¡± the child said through the wall. ¡°First, we¡¯ll need a pile of cubes. Do you think you can find one?¡± ¡°We can take a few from the wall if you promise not to come through.¡± ¡°I promise,¡± I said. Lying to this child felt wrong, but then again there was no way this could be a real child, was there? It must have been a child-shaped software construct. Yeah, just keep telling yourself that. I remembered what Enrique and Gloss had told me. This was a FUTUR Design server. FUTUR Design simulated human brains. The simulated child had already started to remove blocks from the wall. Some he left hanging on his side of the wall and some on mine. I began stacking them, slowly, awkwardly, manipulating them with an invisible hand. Meanwhile, the child had quickly built a tower as tall as himself and was removing more cubes from the wall. ¡°You¡¯re so slow,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m awesome at this.¡± ¡°Bet you can¡¯t build a tower twice as tall as you are,¡± I said. ¡°Oh yeah?¡± The child was moving almost too fast to see now, removing cubes and stacking them higher and higher. As the tower began to wobble, he removed even more cubes to make the base thicker. There was now a gaping hole in the wall. I saw my chance. Darting through the hole, at first I heard a strange silence, and then a scream of rage. ¡°You promised!¡± the child shouted. ¡°You promised!¡± But when I looked back, the child was happily playing again, dismantling his tower and repairing his wall. He wasn¡¯t chasing me, and wasn¡¯t upset any longer. There was no Mommy in sight. I still felt guilty but reminded myself that I wasn¡¯t here to cause harm, only to explore at Enrique¡¯s direction. I found myself able to accelerate as I neared the core of the city. As I reached the first of the towers, its outer layer, luminous and full of threads as if it had been woven from old fiber-optic cable, peeled itself open and let me inside. In a pleasurable rush I found myself awash in bewildering data, text and numbers and photographs passing over my eyes. I couldn¡¯t make any sense of it¡ª ¡ªand suddenly I was on the couch in Enrique¡¯s apartment again. The headset had been lifted from my eyes, and I looked up to find Gloss standing over me with a benevolent expression. My legs were stiff, my mouth was dry, and more than anything I needed to pee. In the windows, the light was strange. It had been dusk when I had started but now, the sky was bright blue. I looked at my watch. It was morning. I sat up. ¡°That was amazing.¡± Gloss took a seat next to me, the couch creaking to accommodate his muscular body. He scrutinized my face, as if he were a teacher or an academic. ¡°What did you experience?¡± ¡°When I got in, I saw pictures, words, numbers. I heard things, felt like I was in the lab. But everything moved at double speed, or even faster.¡± Gloss pointed at the console. ¡°We captured as much as we could.¡± ¡°Is it useful?¡± ¡°We can sell it for a little something. But money wasn¡¯t the point. That was an under-protected remote server operated by a company not known for making reprisals. We put you there because it was safe.¡± I felt somewhat disappointed. I wanted to be useful, to earn their trust, to be one of the boys. ¡°What other kinds of servers are there?¡± ¡°Every megacorp operates big central servers: their headquarters or HQ, their research & development or R&D, and their trash, or corporate archives. The central servers are where they store projects and operations and assets and security measures that are inactive. When the corp wants to do something that takes time, it pushes the project out into a remote server with dedicated funding and staff. Their bigger projects will remain in a remote for some time, from days to years. But everything originates in the centrals.¡± ¡°Are the centrals well-protected?¡± ¡°It depends on the threats the corps expect, and on the nasty surprises concealed in those servers. For instance, R&D contains all of a corp¡¯s new ideas, but it¡¯s often under-defended because the valuable ideas are buried in there with all the usual, boring data that every corp keeps, such as how often the soap dispensers in the third-floor bathrooms are refilled.¡± I thought about this for a while. There was something attractive about the idea of running a megacorp¡¯s R&D server. ¡°I saw something else, before I made it in. A little boy building a wall of blocks.¡± ¡°You met Ludo.¡± ¡°He seemed to there to keep me out. But he wasn¡¯t very good at his job.¡± ¡°Wasn¡¯t he?¡± Gloss said, and looked up at the blue sky out the window. ¡°How long do you think it took you to get through his wall?¡± I was beginning to feel uncertain about myself. ¡°I don¡¯t know. It felt like five minutes, maybe fifteen, but it¡¯s daylight out now, so¡ª¡± ¡°It took eleven hours, Rawls,¡± Gloss said. Eleven hours: the whole night and much of the morning. ¡°I don¡¯t understand.¡± ¡°Time works differently when you¡¯re jacked in. And when you¡¯re dealing with simulant ice like Ludo, time gets weird. You can lose hours as if they were seconds.¡±This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. ¡°Ludo is ice?¡± I removed the console from my lap, stretched. ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± ¡°What¡¯s that other word? Simulant?¡± ¡°A synthetic human. Simulants are people, but they¡¯re built instead of being born and they have a special connection to the net. They can access it without any additional hardware, and they can move through it like a dolphin through water. Some simulants live only on the net, such as Ludo.¡± When I was a kid, I learned that simulants were robots, nothing more. As capable of independent thought as a coffee maker or a thermostat. ¡°I thought I was tricking him, but he tricked me.¡± Gloss chuckled. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. Eleven hours is good for your first time. You must be very observant to make it through that quickly. Ludo is complexity-level four on the scale that we use. That means breaking him isn¡¯t easy with an icebreaker. Without an icebreaker, most runners can¡¯t get past that version of Ludo in any less than eight hours, or four hours per subroutine. Except for Wren,¡± he added thoughtfully, in a way that made me think there was something between Gloss and this runner named Wren. ¡°What¡¯s a runner?¡± I said, though I suspected I already knew. There were streams about runners on some of the Real! channels. But those streams were always about gunplay, and the criminals always got caught in the end. ¡°A runner is someone who walks into corporate servers without authorization,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Like you?¡± Gloss nodded. ¡°And you.¡± It warmed me to think that this huge, intimidating guy considered me, in some ways, a fellow runner. I got up from the couch and excused myself. After exiting the bathroom, I took a look around the loft. It was a stunning place, with art on the walls, a vintage chandelier hanging from its two-story ceiling, and some very comfortable seating. ¡°Could I trouble you for a cup of coffee?¡± I asked Gloss. ¡°Usually, I¡¯d say yes, but the boss is coming, and he wants you ready to go.¡± ¡°Enrique?¡± I said, remembering the new name. ¡°You got it. You have time for a shower if you¡¯re quick. New clothes on your bed.¡± ¡°My bed?¡± ¡°There¡¯s spare bedroom next to the office.¡± The shower was the most luxurious I had ever felt: like a hot mist that made my skin tingle. After I had toweled off, I found a button-up shirt, a pair of nice, dark jeans, and a fine linen blazer on the bed in the guest room. Somehow they got my size just right. Checking myself out in the mirror, I could almost pretend to be Enrique himself. I heard the front door open. ¡°Is he awake? Is he ready to go?¡± came Enrique¡¯s voice. ¡°Yeah, boss,¡± came Gloss¡¯s calm reply. I emerged from the bedroom and Enrique and Gloss both turned to me. ¡°Looking sharp, my man,¡± Enrique said, employing some ancient slang that still felt good to hear. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, shooting the cuffs of my jacket. ¡°I¡¯ve never worn anything this nice before.¡± ¡°If you¡¯re going to join the outlaws, you¡¯d better look the part,¡± Enrique said. ¡°About that.¡± ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°Do I have to?¡± Enrique came toward me and rested both his mechanical hands on my shoulders. ¡°Have to what?¡± ¡°Become an outlaw.¡± ¡°That depends,¡± he said. ¡°Do you want to find your friend?¡± ¡°I do, sir.¡± ¡°Data about this Freya Alexander is not going to be on any public-facing server. If there are any other traces of her, you¡¯ll only find it in protected corporate facilities. And they don¡¯t share their data. Ever. Not unless you have enough money to hire lawyers or to propose a joint business venture, and you don¡¯t.¡± ¡°So the only way to find out¡ª¡± I said, and waited for Enrique to finish my sentence for me. But he didn¡¯t interrupt me. He waited for me to come to my own conclusion. ¡°¡ªis to break in and take it.¡± Enrique nodded, then turned to Gloss. ¡°We¡¯re going out. It¡¯s time to get the kid modded. We¡¯ll be back later.¡± Gloss gave a kind of mock-salute from his place on the couch, where he¡¯d mysteriously manifested another steaming mug of tea in the last few minutes. In the hallway outside the apartment, Enrique said, ¡°Gloss needs his alone time. He gets cranky without it.¡± ¡°He said he was your intern.¡± Enrique talked while they walked down the stairs. ¡°That¡¯s right. He¡¯s a graduate student in network security at UNC. He¡¯s working with me this year to gain a different perspective and to conduct his fieldwork. I¡¯d like to think I can convert him away from academia, but you never know. It might be handy to have connections with the professoriat.¡± ¡°What does he study?¡± ¡°Ice. He¡¯s our foremost scholar of the taxonomy of ice. His dissertation involves categorizing all known corporate ice. The Nguyen-Okafor scale was developed by Gloss¡¯s advisors. It measures the complexity of ice, from zero, which is scarcely more than a password prompt, to eight, which is among the most advanced artificial intelligences in existence. Once you learn a little more, you should have a chat with Gloss about ice. He¡¯d enjoy it, and you¡¯d learn something.¡± ¡°You seem to think I¡¯m going to be encountering more ice.¡± ¡°Well, aren¡¯t you? I thought we¡¯d been over this.¡± I shrugged, and we hit the street. In the daytime, the neighborhood was quieter. Most people must have been at work. The music coming from the storefronts was softer, and the kitchens and food counters were not yet open. I found myself watching the sky for more camera drones, like the one that had intruded on us last night in the cafe. ¡°Can I ask you a question?¡± I said. ¡°You can ask.¡± ¡°OK. Last night, when that drone came, were you testing me?¡± Enrique walked fast. I practically had to shout at him as I moved to keep up. He looked back at me for a moment while walking. ¡°Do you mean did I make that drone arrive?¡± ¡°I guess.¡± ¡°No, I did not. That was happenstance. But when it arrived, I realized that I could handle it my way, or I could give you the tools to deal with and see what happened.¡± A bolt of pride flashed through me. ¡°So it was a test.¡± ¡°And you passed.¡± ¡°What would have happened if I hadn¡¯t?¡± ¡°I would have shared that image of your friend with you anyway, and then I would have sent you home. Then I would have called Dade and told him to stop wasting my time.¡± Enrique was climbing a concrete stairway reinforced by a steel frame. I labored to keep up. As tiring as running in the net had been, running after Enrique in real life was just as exhausting. It struck me that I hadn¡¯t really slept since the night before last. And hadn¡¯t eaten much, either. ¡°You said we were going to get me modded?¡± I said. ¡°You need to be modded to work. But we can¡¯t be late,¡± he said. When he climbed to the top, I followed him, and found myself on a raised plaza above street-level, crisscrossed by office workers carrying coffees and smoothies and eating pastries by a chattering fountain. Near the plaza was an enormous tower, about twice as tall as the twenty-first century skyscrapers ringing it, most of them vertical farm conversions, their windows darkened by plant growth within. Enrique pointed out a small shape on the side of the super-tall tower, just a speck, but moving up in a way that did not appear to be mechanical. ¡°Freerunner,¡± Enrique said. Enrique and I walked to a low building next to one of the vertical farms, a bright white structure that looked like it had been made out of a particularly shiny and clean hard-shell plastic, like the outside of an injection-molded bathtub. He walked right in. Inside was like a cross between a vape shop and a dentist¡¯s office. Ionized, dead air made the place feel clean. Along the black-painted walls were cases full of small machinery made of surgical steel, tiny things with unknown functions connected to thin, gold wires or sharp spikes. Implants. Enrique moved through the boutique and opened another door, which revealed a teal-painted room and a reception desk. The smell hit me right away: chemical and antiseptic. My heart started to beat faster. I felt uneasy, recognizing the signs¡ªthe hand sanitizer, the disposable masks and gloves¡ªthat this was a medical office. I looked around the waiting room. Chrome and neon drew my eye, a thin band of light running around the top of the walls and slowly changing from color to color. It felt more like a tattoo parlour than a clinic. The people waiting for their appointments looked like the people I grew up around. They were working people: truck drivers, machine operators, home health aides, and cooks. Aside from one guy in a suit, everyone else looked as tired as I felt. No one was here to be cool. I figured they all needed work done for their jobs. What Enrique murmured to the receptionist, I didn¡¯t catch, but before I even had a chance to take a seat in the waiting room, a woman in scrubs was calling us to an interior door. In my experience, nothing good ever happened in medical offices. I looked at Enrique. How much did I know about him? What if he worked for the corps and was about to disappear me into the same labyrinth Freya was lost in? I started to follow him and the woman in scrubs but I was thinking about turning around and running right out the door.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Ludo 1.0
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez Medium-low
Type Platform
Subytype Simulant
Effect Stops a run
Subroutines 2
Chapter 4: Blood Red Chapter 4. Blood Red As I followed Enrique and the woman, I felt numb, like all my thoughts and feelings had turned to vapor and left my head. The door opened onto a hallway lined with doctor¡¯s examination rooms. They looked perfectly ordinary except for the large, multi-armed robot in the corner of each one. Those seemed like some kind of torture device. It occurred to me that I didn¡¯t really know Enrique. If he worked for the corps and was about to harvest my organs now that I had proven my intentions were frankly illegal, then I had no way to stop him unless I turned 180 degrees and ran flat out. I considered it, but I didn¡¯t do that. Even though I was scared, part of me trusted him, and part of me was desperate for any way to find out anything about Freya. The woman in scrubs left us in a small exam room, complete with dark gray torture-robot. My only consolation was that it seemed to be powered down. ¡°What are we doing here?¡± I whispered to Enrique. ¡°If you¡¯re going to jack in, we can¡¯t have you using ancient tech. You¡¯ll need a net port.¡± ¡°A net port?¡± ¡°Yeah. Like your friend.¡± ¡°What? Freya?¡± I thought about the image of me that he had shown her. ¡°But that was a port for the delivery of medication. My grandma had that for her cancer.¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid not,¡± Enrique said. ¡°That was a net port. Whatever she was part of, it involved jacking in. Now, I¡¯ve heard of clinical trials that involved net therapy. And I¡¯ve definitely heard of digital narcotics used as painkillers. So it¡¯s possible that whatever happened was perfectly ordinary. But if you want to be sure, you¡¯re going to have to go under the knife.¡± I felt a dull pressure in my ears. I¡¯d had a lifelong fear of doctors and hospitals, ever since the eye surgery when I was two years old. In fact, and I felt ashamed even to admit this to myself, but my fear of hospitals was part of what had kept me away from Freya, part of the reason I was only able to see her once before she was taken away. The other part of the reason was that they took her so quickly, and without giving her much of a chance to talk to anyone. When I thought about that, I felt angry enough at whoever did that to her to push through my own fear. And just in time, because the door opened and a young woman with long, dark hair stepped through. ¡°I¡¯m Rashida Qin,¡± she said brightly and full of confidence. ¡°How are you?¡± ¡°Um, a bit scared,¡± I said. ¡°There¡¯s nothing to be scared of. I¡¯ll be performing the operation today and I¡¯ll make sure to take good care of you.¡± ¡°Whoa,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not ready for an operation.¡± ¡°No? I thought you needed a net port for work.¡± I looked at Enrique, who raised his eyebrows. Dr. Qin caught the look, and turned to me. ¡°Would you like to speak to me in private?¡± ¡°I would.¡± ¡°Suit yourself, kid,¡± Enrique said, and stood up. ¡°If you need me, I¡¯ll be next door having a coffee.¡± He rested one chrome hand on my shoulder. That gesture was starting to seem controlling. ¡°You¡¯re in good hands, Rawls. I wouldn¡¯t bring you here otherwise.¡± I watched the door close behind Enrique, and then the doctor and I were alone. ¡°Have you ever had an implant installed before?¡± she said. ¡°Just the usual trackers when I was kid, and my credit chip when I turned eighteen. But I had eye surgery a couple times when I was a toddler.¡± She stepped to the white wall and took hold of a hidden handle. Sliding away what seemed to be a heavy door mounted on a rail, she exposed the space within, about the size of a shower stall and marked with a grid. ¡°Step inside. Let¡¯s see what you¡¯ve got.¡± ¡°Do I need to take off my jacket?¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter.¡± I left the jacket on the chair and stepped inside the booth. She slid the door shut and I heard a whirring noise that lasted for less than a second. The door slid open again. ¡°Come on out, and I¡¯ll show you the results.¡± Dr. Qin swung a monitor mounted on a steel arm toward me.
Resonance Scan Results
Rawls, Jasper
19 year-old male
HOME SEC LOCATOR Serial *74
NC CHILD SRV MON Serial *22
FDWT NET OCULA L Serial *87
FDWT NET OCULA R Serial *10
PEGASUS BANK IND Serial *93
NO OTHER IMPLANTS FOUND
¡°That last one¡¯s my credit chip,¡± I said. ¡°And the first two are the government child-monitoring chips, right?¡± ¡°You got it. But it looks like you¡¯ve had some other work done.¡± ¡°No, I haven¡¯t.¡± Rashida looked me in the eye. ¡°Rawls, can I call you that?¡± I nodded. She offered her hands, and I put one of mine in hers. They were cold and dry. ¡°Sorry,¡± she said. ¡°I have to wash them about every five minutes.¡± Dr. Qin¡¯s off-hand attitude, her friendliness, and her competence made me trust her. ¡°Rawls, maybe you don¡¯t remember, but you have some implants other than the trackers and your credit chip.¡±Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. I felt like I knew what she was going to say. ¡°You¡¯re talking about my eyes, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°They¡¯re remarkable,¡± she said softly, looking deeply into my left eye and then my right. ¡°I never would have known without the scan.¡± When I was two years old, I suffered infections in both eyes. I remembered being put in a room like this, a doctor¡¯s exam room, and then a man in surgical scrubs put a mask over my nose and mouth. It was connected to a hose. I remember fighting him, but I was only a toddler. I couldn¡¯t keep the mask from descending over me. Then I remembered the smell of artificial strawberries, and the next thing I knew, the sun was in my eyes and Dad was wheeling me on a gurney out to a rented van. ¡°What I remember most from the surgery was being scared,¡± I said to Dr. Qin. I was aware that I was speaking formally, the way we were taught in school, hiding my accent. Dr. Qin patted my hand. ¡°I¡¯m so sorry you went through that. Your parents must have thought the surgery was necessary to save your vision.¡± I thought about it. It would have been my dad¡¯s decision. My mom left around that time¡ªI barely remembered her. ¡°Yeah, I guess. But no one ever told me I had implants.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to apologize for them,¡± she said, ¡°but maybe they didn¡¯t want you to feel different.¡± ¡°I remember that I had to use these oily drops every day for years, and I was the first kid in my class to wear glasses.¡± ¡°But then?¡± ¡°At some point, I no longer needed the drops and I no longer needed glasses. My vision was sharper than anyone else¡¯s. For a while I thought about being a fighter pilot.¡± We laughed together. ¡°Have you ever felt different from other kids?¡± she said. ¡°There were times, like in art class or just laying down by the river with ... with my best friend, when I would remark on a color that I was seeing that no one else seemed to be able to see. Like dim red and bright purple.¡± The mention of bright purple made me think of the words that had appeared to me at the riverbank: COME FIND ME Now that I thought of it, I hadn¡¯t seen those words since I arrived in the city. Dr. Qin said, ¡°That¡¯s good to know, about seeing colors. Mind if I make a note of that?¡± I nodded. Dr. Qin took the seat next to me. ¡°There¡¯s something I should tell you. These look like very expensive implants, possibly even priceless. The kind that only the children of executives or top-level professionals could have had installed. Was your family well-off?¡± I had to laugh, and my country accent came back. ¡°Hell no, doc. We was dirt poor. Especially after my mom left and it was just my dad and me.¡± ¡°How do you think he could have afforded those?¡± ¡°Beats me.¡± She let go of my hands. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to say this, but you¡¯ve got another decision to make.¡± I looked at the monitor. ¡°The net port?¡± She nodded. ¡°There¡¯s a chance your eyes could connect to the net even without a port in your chest, but I don¡¯t know enough to say for sure. It would take some research. I can do that, if you like.¡± ¡°I¡¯d appreciate it if you would, doctor. Listen. I trust you, and I think I can trust Enrique. If he says I need a net port, then I want you to install a net port on me.¡± She gave me a crisp nod and stood, then started washing her hands at the sink. Her reflection caught my eye in the mirror. ¡°This will be a lot less scary,¡± she said. ¡°I promise.¡± I started to unbutton my shirt, and Dr. Qin moved over to the multi-armed torture robot. She made a gesture in front of it and it woke up, lights glowing on its arms and its motors silently moving through some kind of calibration pattern. Suddenly I could feel my heart pounding and my chest getting tight. The world tilted ominously, as if my sense of balance had decided to quit all at once. ¡°I think I¡¯m having a panic attack,¡± I said. ¡°First time?¡± Dr. Qin said. I remembered when I had attempted to go visit Freya in the Asheville hospital, how the moment I stepped off the BRUTE I felt so dizzy that I had to lay down on the sidewalk. A couple of uniformed police had called me a tweaker and threatened to arrest me, then put me back on the BRUTE and sent me home. I shook my head. ¡°I¡¯ve had them before.¡± ¡°Do you need help?¡± ¡°I¡¯m OK.¡± I counted my breaths, the way Dad showed me. In for four seconds, hold for four seconds, out for four seconds, hold for four seconds. I thought about Freya. I felt like I had let her down, let my fear of hospitals keep me from helping her. That wasn¡¯t going to happen again, I promised silently. Yesterday, I¡¯d breached two separate corporate devices. If I was going to find Freya, I would be breaching more. ¡°You sure?¡± Dr. Qin said. ¡°Let¡¯s do this. Just don¡¯t let me see that robot thing move. Do I have to be put under?¡± She shook her head and then carried a tray over to him. On it was a gleaming circular steel socket and a thin gold cable coiled in a figure-eight. ¡°You can stay conscious if you want. I¡¯ll numb part of your chest and also the base of your neck. Then I¡¯ll make two cuts, through which I¡¯ll install the socket and pull the wire. You¡¯ll be able to use it starting tomorrow¡ªor whenever it¡¯s no longer bleeding through the bandage¡ªbut you won¡¯t have full connectivity for two weeks while the wire adapts to your nervous system. For those two weeks, it¡¯s important to exercise the connections everyday or you¡¯ll lose the ability to jack in through this port. Got it?¡± ¡°I have to jack in every day for two weeks.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± ¡°OK.¡± ¡°Hop up on this table, and lay on your stomach. You¡¯ll be done before you know it.¡± ### Carefully buttoning my shirt over the bandage on my chest, I thanked Dr. Qin. She reminded me that she was going to research my ocular implants, and asked me how she could find me. I was about to ask her to get a hold of Enrique but then I thought about it for a moment. I realized that Enrique didn¡¯t know about the ocular implants. Perhaps it was better if he remained ignorant of them. He might attribute my success to those instead of my skill. I gave Dr. Qin my net address and shook her hand. As I slipped down from the table, I noticed a spot of bright red blood on the floor. Somehow the operation hadn¡¯t seemed real until that moment. I took a deep breath. It was OK. I was a runner now. Next door to the clinic, Enrique sat at a gleaming wooden bar next to an empty demitasse. ¡°Done already?¡± he said. I hopped up next to him and the bartender, a young bearded man, placed a glass of water in front of me. ¡°Guess I¡¯m good at going under the knife.¡± Enrique watched me carefully. ¡°How did it feel?¡± Telling him about the panic attack meant telling him about my eyes. I didn¡¯t want to lie to him, so I told him something that was true enough. ¡°It was like I was outside my body,¡± I said. ¡°I just kind of checked out.¡± ¡°You just kind of checked out,¡± he said slowly. No way did he believe me. The bartender brought him another espresso and he downed it in a sip. ¡°Can I have one of those?¡± I said to the bartender. But before he could move away, Enrique interrupted him. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t recommend it. You need sleep, young son, not coffee. Sleep and food. Bring this man a sandwich.¡± ¡°No espresso, then. Just a ham and cheese,¡± I said. The bartender shrugged and moved down the bar, away from us, and put in the order. When I was sure he couldn¡¯t hear, I said, ¡°I don¡¯t want to sleep. I want to make a run.¡±
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Manufacturer Take Your Pick
Legal Status Legal, required to work in many industries
Description A round chrome socket and a wire built to interface with the human nerve system, commonly implanted in chest, back, or neck.
Cost From a couple thousand to the mid-five figures depending on how fancy you want to get.
Function To connect the user brain-first into the net enabling them to disregard common safety protocols as well as common sense and common decency. Good times.
Chapter 5: Icebreaker Chapter 5. Icebreaker Enrique gave me a serious look. ¡°Look, kid. You haven¡¯t slept in at least 36 hours, I¡¯m guessing, and I¡¯m not going to let you run last click.¡± ¡°Last click?¡± The phrase thrilled me though I wasn¡¯t sure why. ¡°It¡¯s a runner term for jacking in when you¡¯re tired. Running last click is the fastest way to get flatlined by a nasty piece of ice or to get yourself tagged. Then you wake up with a gun barrel in your face. Or sometimes White Tree gets a hold of your DNA and puts it on the Registry. Then you can''t even buy a bottle of water from a vending machine without the possibility of some customized poison sending you into anaphylaxis.¡± I didn¡¯t have a reply ready to that heavy piece of advice. Sitting in the genteel bar, dust dancing in the afternoon light, the quiet room occupied by a few corporate employees calling it an early day, I almost couldn¡¯t believe there was a secret criminal world behind the ordinary one, and that I had seen a sliver of it. ¡°So after I¡¯ve slept, then can I make a run?¡± ¡°Let¡¯s talk about a few things first. You want to start making runs to find out what happened to your friend.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± ¡°And I want to help you, but running is hard work. It takes preparation, always. You don¡¯t always want to face-check the ice.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure what you mean.¡± ¡°It means trying to break a piece of ice with your face.¡± ¡°Oh.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s take it from the beginning.¡± At that moment, the bartender brought my sandwich, grilled to perfection, with a pickle on the side. I picked it up, let the crunch and honey sweetness play on my tongue. Synthetic ham and plant-based cheese had never tasted so good. I wiped my mouth with my napkin and gestured to Enrique, who was watching me, and smiling with appreciation and a ¡°good-isn¡¯t-it?¡± expression. ¡°Do you remember the name of the company that was conducting the clinical trial?¡± I thought about it. Freya hadn¡¯t told me herself, but I had called the hospital and asked what companies were conducting trials in their wards. The first two people I spoke with hadn¡¯t wanted to tell me either, but the third one, an administrator, had asked me if my name was really Rawls. When I assured her that it was, she said that the name of the company was¡ª ¡°It was something musical,¡± I said. ¡°Melody. Melody Biologics.¡± Enrique¡¯s face appeared worried. ¡°Melody Biologics is a subsidiary of White Tree, which is the world¡¯s largest medical, agricultural, and biotech company. That synth-ham you¡¯re eating probably comes from a White Tree subsidiary. The same with the anesthetic that Dr. Rashida put on your chest.¡± ¡°What are you saying?¡± ¡°I¡¯m saying you have to be careful if you¡¯re going make a run on a White Tree server. Of the Big Four megacorps, it¡¯s the most secretive, and it¡¯s ice is the most dangerous.¡± ¡°Is this something I should ask Gloss about?¡± Enrique set a cautioning hand on the bar. ¡°Eventually. But for right now, the important thing is to make sure you¡¯re well-rested and to get you an icebreaker.¡± ¡°I got past that simulant ice¡ªLudo¡ªwithout a breaker.¡± ¡°You can get past simulants by your wits alone, as long as you¡¯re not sluggish and fatigued. White Tree¡¯s ice is a different story. It can bring you to the edge of death if you jack in without an icebreaker. Promise me you will never run against White Tree without a good breaker.¡± ¡°I promise.¡± ¡°And especially, a breaker that can deal with red ice.¡± ¡°What does red ice mean?¡± ¡°Red ice is designed to make you bleed.¡± I set my sandwich down. I¡¯d been eating too quickly. I found myself apprehensive and baffled. ¡°But this is the net. It¡¯s just information. It can¡¯t hurt me.¡± ¡°Just information?¡± Enrique called the bartender over and ordered a third espresso. When the bartender went away again, Enrique whispered to me. ¡°You know what¡¯s ¡®just information?¡¯ The signals your brain sends to your hands to pick up that sandwich. The signals that pass between your brainstem and your heart to keep it beating. That¡¯s ¡®just information.¡¯ Do not underestimate how painful an encounter with red ice can be.¡± I felt chastened. ¡°OK. I promise I won¡¯t. You said something about getting me an icebreaker?¡± ¡°That¡¯s our next stop. Just as soon as you finish your sandwich and I get enough coffee in me.¡± Outside the bar, it was getting toward evening. People were streaming in, straight from work in the towers surrounding the place. Enrique and I walked through the city, slower now, down to the metro station beneath the plaza. The train was much nicer than the BRUTE, cleaner and easier to use. We stood, hanging from the steel bar running along the top of the car, while commuters rode in the seats around us. There were people in suits, construction workers, and others in scrubs off shift from the hospital. Enrique looked sharper than any of them. He had traded yesterday¡¯s bright suit for a purple paisley outfit, trim and subtly expensive. It felt good to be seen next to him, in my blazer and new jeans. ¡°This is our stop,¡± he said, gesturing to an illuminated display that said Old Charlotte. As we left the rail car, he said, ¡°By the way, did you happen to have Dr. Rashida remove the trackers?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll want to go back and have that done before too long.¡± ¡°I meant to ask you about that. Last night we jacked in from your apartment. Was that safe?¡± ¡°Perfectly safe for what we were doing. We were using proxies in Kiev and Jakarta. For anything more serious, though, we¡¯d find ourselves a crash space.¡±Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. ¡°What¡¯s a crash space?¡± ¡°A temporary place from which to make runs. Typically you use each one only once, then never return.¡± We moved quickly up the long stairway out of the metro station. The bandage pulled at my chest as I moved. I felt some wetness, a reminder that, mere hours ago, I was in surgery for the second time in my life. Wild. Simply wild. ¡°Here we are,¡± Enrique said, and opened the door to what looked like a convenience store. There were beers and soda pop in a cooler, and rows and rows of bags of shrimp chips, kelp crisps, and basic pharmaceuticals. It smelled of cardboard and bad coffee. Enrique waved to the woman at the counter and walked directly to the back. He rapped on a door covered in a woodgrain laminate, which opened onto a green-lit back office. I followed him inside and he closed the door behind myself. The man sitting at the desk inside the tiny office regarded us without feeling. He was a large and powerful man, not unlike Gloss, though bulkier in some ways. He looked perfectly comfortable behind his desk. ¡°What now?¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m looking for an icebreaker,¡± Enrique said. The man¡ªan icebreaker dealer, I guessed¡ªspread his arms as if saying, why else would anyone come talk to me? Enrique produced a roll of cash from his jacket and set it on the desk. ¡°Do you still have that water strider?¡± The icebreaker dealer drummed his fingers on the desk. ¡°You picked the right day to come in, Lima. I shouldn¡¯t be telling you this, but that thing is bedeviling me. I sold it yesterday and today it came back. That¡¯s the third time it¡¯s happened. I haven¡¯t been able to move it.¡± ¡°Wonder why,¡± Enrique Lima said cautiously. He looked at me. I felt a bead of sweat on the small of my back. ¡°I couldn¡¯t tell you,¡± the dealer said. ¡°But if you really want it, I¡¯ll sell it to you for a thousand.¡± ¡°That¡¯s suspiciously affordable,¡± Enrique said. ¡°It might be defective,¡± the dealer said. ¡°So don¡¯t blame me if your brain gets spattered all over your wall the moment you slot it.¡± Enrique passed over the cash, and the dealer reached under the desk to lift up an olive-green metal container the size and shape of shoebox. He slid it over and Enrique placed it in a recycled plastic shopping bag that he unfolded from his jacket. He stood and I followed his lead. ¡°Who¡¯s this for, anyway?¡± the dealer said. Enrique jerked his thumb at me. ¡°This guy.¡± ¡°Good luck to you, kid,¡± the dealer said. ¡°Don¡¯t get got.¡± I was starting to feel reluctant about this running thing. But I had promised Freya that I would do it for her, even if only to myself. And I felt like it was important not to show any fear in front of Enrique. ¡°As long as I don¡¯t run last click, I¡¯ll be fine,¡± I said. The dealer laughed. ### I didn¡¯t know sleep could be this good. When I woke in Enrique¡¯s spare room, the bed beneath me felt impossible to leave, both firm and soft, the kind of mattress I had never slept on before. Growing up, my bed had been a hand-me-down from a cousin with a loose spring that jabbed me in the kidney every night. As I stretched, I didn¡¯t even feel the bandage on my chest anymore. Stepping into the bathroom, I removed the tape and the gauze and found the surgical wound had closed. Whatever nanotech goop Dr. Qin had smeared over the cut had healed me up quickly. Thanks, White Tree. The wound looked shiny and pink around the gleaming steel socket. My net port. I remembered the boxy icebreaker we bought last night, and shivered. In the main room, Enrique was drinking a mug of coffee while Gloss sat at the counter with his tea, working a crossword puzzle. ¡°There he is,¡± Enrique said. ¡°How do you feel?¡± Scared. Nervous. Like I don¡¯t know whether I could trust Enrique to have my best interests at heart. Gloss I trusted. Dr. Qin I trusted. But Enrique moved too quickly, explained too little. ¡°I¡¯m not sure about this.¡± ¡°It¡¯s normal to be nervous. But you¡¯re going to be fine. We¡¯ll be there monitoring you, and you have a good breaker.¡± ¡°About that. What that dealer¡ª¡± ¡°Angel.¡± ¡°What Angel said about it didn¡¯t fill me with confidence.¡± ¡°You bought that from Angel?¡± Gloss said, sounding worried. ¡°Hope you didn''t pay too much.¡± Enrique made a maybe-maybe-not gesture and leaned back. Nothing ever seemed to worry him. ¡°Don¡¯t you guys have breakers?¡± I said. ¡°Couldn¡¯t I just use one of yours?¡± Gloss turned to me, looking professorial. ¡°Icebreakers cannot simply be copied like ordinary programs,¡± he said. Enrique moved to the coffee maker. ¡°Now you¡¯ve done it, kid. Get ready for a lecture.¡± He pulled a mug down from the cabinet, filled it with sweet, hot, burbling coffee, and handed it to me. The ceramic warmed my hands as I slid onto a stool at the counter next to Gloss and listened. ¡°Moreover, most icebreakers are specific to a runner, tuned to that runner¡¯s unique biology and brain patterns. It takes time and custom software to adapt one breaker to another runner. When a runner codes a breaker, they influence its style, its presence, its capabilities. Even if you could use my breakers, they are too complex to be copied with off-the-shelf hardware. They exist in volatile memory and must be powered, always. The waveforms collapse irretrievably if they become unpowered. Most icebreakers are like this. You need serious simulation capabilities to copy a breaker. As software, they are every bit as complex as a piece of ice. And each piece of ice you will encounter has undergone multi-billion dollars of development. Think about that.¡± ¡°So runners have billions of dollars to develop icebreakers?¡± ¡°We do more with less,¡± Enrique said. ¡°This breaker we bought last night,¡± I said. ¡°Will it get me killed?¡± ¡°No,¡± Enrique said. I turned to Gloss. ¡°What do you think?¡± ¡°Making a run always carries some risk. But I¡¯ve taken a look at the breaker. It¡¯s a water strider. That¡¯s an old military AI. If it can draw down enough power and enough processing capability from the net, it can get through anything.¡± ¡°Sounds too good to be true,¡± I said. ¡°It only works once. By the time you jack out, the insides will be a puddle of silicon and tin.¡± ¡°Then why did Angel say he thought it was defective?¡± ¡°Because he doesn¡¯t understand it and neither do his customers,¡± Enrique said. ¡°But Gloss and I checked it out while you were sleeping. It¡¯s good. I guarantee it.¡± Gloss looked at him sharply. Enrique held up a hand. ¡°OK, OK. I can¡¯t guarantee it but I am as sure as it is possible to be.¡± ¡°Here,¡± Gloss said, and slid down from the stool. He walked across the main room of the apartment to a bookshelf and reached up to pull a hard-bound volume from the top. Bringing it over to the counter, he opened up the book to reveal a deep, hollow space cut into the pages. Inside was a small piece of electronics with two cables. They looked like they could fit into my net port, or at least could work with it somehow. ¡°We¡¯re going to be monitoring your vitals. If you get into trouble, this switch will get you out of there in one piece.¡± Sometimes I wondered if all this was pageantry to trick me into trusting them. Despite that, I did trust Gloss. And I believed in Enrique, at least to some extent. ¡°So when do I run?¡± I said. Enrique and Gloss looked at each other. ¡°Right now,¡± they said in unison. ### The crash space was a tiny room with peeling paint over old drywall. In one corner there was an old mattress on the floor next to a small refrigerator. In another was a small bathroom. Under a single, bare light bulb there was a sink and a toilet and a tile shower, dark with mold. ¡°You don¡¯t have to live here,¡± Enrique said. I sat down on the bed and took off my shirt, exposing the net port. Enrique and Gloss went to work around me, taking out the water strider and plugging it into the wall outlet with a cable that looked much thicker than any household appliance cable I had ever seen. They brought out another thing similar to the console I had used the first time, but without the VR goggles. They connected the water strider to it and connected it to the wall outlet as well. ¡°Jack me in,¡± I said.
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Credit Chip
Manufacturer Too many
Legal status Damn near compulsory
Description A 1x3 color LCD screen, vibratory motor, and close-range transponder, commonly implanted in a host¡¯s wrist
Cost Your mortal soul
Function Lets the host rent goods and cadge services in exchange for money they don¡¯t have
Chapter 6: Run First Click Chapter 6. Run First Click Gloss produced a pair of lineworker¡¯s pliers from his vest and cut into the data cable coming from the console. Using the pliers, he stripped the insulation from both cut ends and twisted the wires that lay within around the ends of the switch he had brought from the hollow book. He wrapped the ends with vinyl tape and handed me the data cable. Its end matched the shape of my net port perfectly. ¡°Whenever you¡¯re ready,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Let me make sure I understand what I¡¯m doing. I¡¯m running on a White Tree remote. We know it¡¯s protected by ice but we don¡¯t know what kind. Inside, we think there is information on clinical trials conducted by Melody Biologics.¡± ¡°But we don¡¯t know for sure,¡± Enrique said. Gloss nodded approvingly. He seemed to be training his boss to be more circumspect. ¡°It sounds iffy,¡± I said. ¡°Ever play poker?¡± Enrique said. ¡°It¡¯s a game of incomplete information. Running is the same way.¡± A game. Well, I liked games. I tried to gin up some courage. ¡°OK,¡± I said. ¡°See you when I jack out.¡± I pulled the cable up to my net port. I felt it click as I twisted the cable to lock it in place. ¡°That¡¯s odd,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t see any¡ª¡± ¡ªI was moving along that dark highway again but it was different this time. Connecting through my net port, without the VR goggles, I felt more in tune with myself. I could hear the net. It sounded like wind whistling. I could even smell it, like new plastic. In the distance, a city similar to the last one drew closer and closer. It was ringed by something, something circular, perhaps something like Ludo¡¯s wall. Whatever it was, the resolution was poor at this distance. This city was larger, with skyscrapers that were more numerous and and taller. I felt momentarily afraid that when I reached the center of the city I wouldn¡¯t know what to do. But that fear receded quickly. I was getting better and living in the moment. Here, in netspace, I felt like I could move in any direction at any speed. I felt powerful. I wasn¡¯t just some nineteen year-old kid. I was a thief who could break into a corporate server defended by billions of dollars worth of ice. Even the shape of my avatar was somewhat different. Instead of the simple flying wedge that I had been the first time, I was a more complicated arrowhead shape now, serrated and sharp and aerodynamic. My shape was reminiscent of the arrowheads my grandpa used to hunt deer with. I could even feel the icebreaker at my side, its insect-like form full of power, just waiting for me to activate it with a thought. Enrique and Gloss had told me that an AI icebreaker was simple to use. That explanation disappointed me. I wanted it to be my skill that prevailed. Even if this was the last time I ever made a run, even if the center of this server told me exactly what had happened to Freya, I wanted to impress Enrique and Gloss. Something hissed. Maybe I had been too ambitious. I felt myself being lifted from the black, invisible highway as a bright, digital serpent coiled around me faster than I could think. Its scales were hard and red and cut into me as they passed over the edges of my avatar. This thing was huge, and wordless, nothing like that polite little boy playing with cubes. I was afraid. I could feel this thing¡¯s immense strength, and I could see its complexity. The serpent was dense with data, bright and opaque, shaded blood red and magenta and deep, deep crimson, blotting out my view of the city and of anything else. I knew at once that this thing had multiple ways of killing me, whether it was going to flay me or squeeze the life out of me. Then something happened, something odd but also familiar. The scales began lifting off the serpent and traveling at me like tiny knives. I found that I was faster than them, just barely. At first there were fewer then ten, and then dozens, and then hundreds. It was odd that this was happening but dodging them felt like playing one of Dad¡¯s old video games, the kind that he called shooter or shmup or bullet hell. The patterns created by the lethal snake scales were beautiful, like flowers or fungal networks, and I found my way through them with a kind of serenity that I had just discovered in myself. Even though I was afraid, I wasn¡¯t panicking. Panic only ever seemed to intrude on me in moments where I was afraid but not in any real danger. Now, entangled in something that could actually kill me, I felt as if I had been preparing for this all my life. In the distance, I could almost hear voices. Were they talking about the switch? I tried to shake my head no, but I had no body. Don¡¯t take me away. Let me fight this out. I thought about the water strider. It leapt from my side, glittering and green, and started to move up the body of the serpent. It stuck to the hard scales, uncut by them, uncaught by the constricting muscles that were closing around my avatar reducing my room to maneuver. I urged the water strider on, and it followed my direction. I piloted it up the serpent¡¯s body, under the flying knives, around and around the outside of the coil, until I reached the top of the serpent¡¯s head, its hyper-dense digital fangs dripping with lethal data. The water strider looked almost transparent in comparison with the serpent. It didn¡¯t look promising. Even so, what could I do but direct the water strider to ram the serpent¡¯s brain? With a sickening crack, the water strider bounced off, slid down the body of the serpent. The knives flew closer. Bits of my arrowhead were shearing off from glancing strikes, falling away into endless digital space. I felt renewed appreciation for the power of this ice. I drew in a deep breath, except it wasn¡¯t oxygen I was breathing, it was voltage and amperes and exocycles. I fed them to the water strider. It grew brighter at the influx of electricity and processing capability. It was still somewhat transparent. I lost my concentration in the maze of knives. My arrowhead was hit, square in its middle, and it deformed. The netspace world grew dim. The voices became more insistent. I looked closer at the serpent. Where earlier it had seemed impossibly dense, now, as my eyes began to ache¡ªdid I even have eyes here?¡ªI could see into the serpent, see the data pathways swirling within it. It wasn¡¯t so mysterious. It wasn¡¯t so hard to understand. It was like that simple drone in the alley cafe. My eyes fed information to the water strider. I could smell something metallic burning. The bright, hot water strider dove into the serpent¡¯s brain again. This time the water strider moved in exactly the right way such that its body broke through the scales, reaching the core of the ice. All at once the serpent¡¯s multi-hued scales became a uniform brick red, and the coil collapsed into a floating tangle. I was free. The water strider flickered and was gone. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. I raced forward to the city, not wanting to waste a single processor cycle. Earlier I had been worried about not knowing what to do. I needn¡¯t have been concerned. I found myself drawn to the skyscrapers. I immersed myself in data, found it passing through me, my console copying everything, first in one skyscraper and then another and another. I couldn¡¯t get enough. I felt like I could do this all day, soak up everything the megacorp knew. The sense of power that I took from this romp through the data city was intoxicating, better than the beers that Freya and I used to steal from Dad. Better, even, than the feeling of laying next to Freya on the river bank and sharing our hopes. I never wanted to leave¡ª ¡°Time to get off the horse, cowboy,¡± came Enrique¡¯s voice as I sat up, the real world intruding on my netspace fantasy. Although at the moment, the netspace world felt real and the real world felt dull. My hands moved to the cable, twisted it so that it unlocked from the net port. I could smell my own sweat and the scorched circuitry of the water strider. I looked at its case on the floor, saw sweet, resinous smoke rising from within. Poor guy. It had felt almost alive. I felt like I had lost a pet. My eyes hurt. I rubbed them, looked around the dim room for a glass of water. Gloss handed me one. It tasted of old oak leaves. I didn¡¯t care. It was cold and crisp and helped my throat. ¡°How¡¯d I do?¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t flatline,¡± Enrique said. Gloss was looking at him, and the expression on Gloss¡¯s face wasn¡¯t happy. It wasn¡¯t even relieved. ¡°We almost jacked you out a couple of times,¡± Enrique said, ¡°but you seemed to want to continue the run. Honestly, for a moment I thought the breaker wasn¡¯t going to be able to pull enough power to get through that red ice. It was starting to look as if it really were defective. But somehow it pulled enough.¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t the icebreaker,¡± I said. ¡°Or not totally. It was also me. I saw something in the ice. I saw how the water strider could move through it.¡± ¡°My man,¡± Enrique said. ¡°Seems like we¡¯ve uncovered your ability.¡± ¡°My what?¡± ¡°Your ability. Most runners, if they¡¯re any good, have one. An innate talent that takes time to develop into something useful. An ability is also bound to your sense of yourself, whatever that is. If how you identify changes, your ability can, too. I¡¯ve seen that happen more than once. It seems like your ability has to do with the complexity of ice.¡± I wanted to contradict him, to say, no, whatever my ability may be, it wasn¡¯t that. That was just my secret cybernetic eyes. Instead, I just said, ¡°Cool.¡± The air in the tiny, dim crash space was beginning to bother my throat. It was dank, and smelled of my sweat and burnt electronics. Enrique and Gloss were watching me, Enrique speaking gently and Gloss glaring at him without speaking. ¡°What about you two¡ªdo you have abilities?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± Enrique said. ¡°Speaking for myself, I have a knack for digging around executive knowledge bases. If I can get into a corp¡¯s nerve center, I can ferret out bits of juicy intelligence on the corp¡¯s top people, then spin that into gold.¡± ¡°Stop mixing metaphors,¡± Gloss said, breaking his long silence. ¡°It makes me sick.¡± ¡°How about you, Gloss?¡± I said. My voice faltered. I was beyond tired after that run. ¡°I¡¯ve worked for a long time to cultivate this, so don¡¯t go thinking what I do is easy. When a corp rezzes a piece of ice, I can hijack some of the resources they use to do that.¡± ¡°Rezzes?¡± ¡°Yeah. You know how, when you¡¯re far away from the ice, it looks fuzzy and you can¡¯t tell what it is? Then when it¡¯s in your face it snaps into high resolution?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± I laughed. ¡°I¡¯ve seen that happen a couple times.¡± ¡°That¡¯s rezzing. That ice you just broke? That was level four in terms of its complexity, in the middle of the range. Red ice is much harder to build. It was damn expensive for White Tree to rez it. They must have been trying to protect something valuable.¡± Enrique broke in. ¡°Corps only rez ice when they think they have to. Unless they¡¯re richer than god.¡± ¡°Aren¡¯t they always richer than god?¡± ¡°You¡¯d be surprised,¡± Enrique said. ¡°Corps have money problems just like anyone else. The trick is knowing when they¡¯re strapped for cash. That¡¯s the best time to run.¡± I finished my water. Gloss took the empty glass and washed it carefully in the sink. ¡°Let¡¯s go through what we found in that server,¡± I said. Enrique handed me my shirt. ¡°All in good time. The console is still analyzing it. But we can¡¯t sit around here waiting for it to finish. Let¡¯s go celebrate.¡± ¡°Celebrate what?¡± ¡°Your second run. Your first encounter with red ice. Your first ride on an AI icebreaker. Take your pick.¡± Gloss finally seemed to relax. ¡°Mr. Grid¡¯s?¡± he said. ¡°Mr. Grid¡¯s,¡± Enrique said. I buttoned my shirt. I felt a bit woozy, but I was excited, and thrilled that I was still alive. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± ### Mr. Grid¡¯s bar was a long metro ride away from the crash space, clear on the other side of Carthage, not far from Enrique¡¯s condo and Dr. Qin¡¯s clinic. While my second run had felt like it had taken the same amount of time as my first run, it had only lasted three hours. That meant it was mid-afternoon by the time we left the crash space, and early evening by the time we reached the vast area of old tobacco warehouses where Mr. Grid ran his bar. ¡°Innkeeper!¡± Gloss shouted as we walked into the room, his voice uncharacteristically loud. ¡°A flagon of ale for the young squire!¡± The man behind the bar was tall and mustached, with a friendly expression. Instantly I felt that I could trust him. He filled a pint glass from a tap and handed it to me as I approached the bar. Gloss leaned in confidentially. ¡°Rawls here just encountered and broke a neural python,¡± he said. The bartender looked impressed. He poured himself a taste of beer in a small gibraltar so that he had something to clink against my raised pint. ¡°Not everyone survives that,¡± he said. ¡°Good work.¡± We each drank. When I say that this was the best-tasting beer I have ever had, I mean that there was nothing on earth so bright, sweet, bready, and bitter, all at once. Being alive had never felt so good. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. Gloss grabbed a grubby tablet in a polished oak case from a stand at the far end of the bar. He cleaned off the fingerprint sensor with a napkin and pulled up the display. ¡°Check it out,¡± he said.
HI SCORES NAME SCORE
1 KT Thorn 1,345,103
2 Cynosure 1,292,098
3 EVE 1,174,411
4 The CheRRy 1,101,329
5 Sunya Xiong 989,224
6 Enrique Lima 910,626
7 Kent 888,755
8 Coilpath 824,743
9 nonlineardyn 744,912
10 Gloss 743,001
11 Ohm 700,125
100 Wren 23,007
5,000 Val43rie 1,975
5,132 Jasper Rawls 1,228
¡°You¡¯re on the board, little bro,¡± he said. I took a long drink of beer, felt it play on my tongue. Hell yes I was on the board. For a long time I stared at that list of high scores, the names and numbers mesmerizing me. My eyes sought out round numbers, and number 5,000 stopped me short. ¡°Val43rie¡± looked like it could be a form either of ¡°Valerie¡± or ¡°Valkyrie.¡± It caught my attention because Freya was always reading about the Valkyries in her free time, because of the mythological associations with her name. And from time to time on the net, she¡¯d gone by ¡°Val,¡± which people had sometimes assumed meant she was named ¡°Valerie.¡± For an idle moment, I fantasized that Val43rie was Freya and that we would find each other not only as friends but as runners. My fantasy broke apart when I heard Gloss speaking to Enrique. ¡°Complexity four? You said it would be a two. You could have got him killed.¡± Enrique hissed back. ¡°He handled it.¡± The bartender savored his drink, then set down his empty glass and reached out his hand. ¡°I¡¯m Mr. Grid.¡± ¡°Rawls.¡± Mr. Grid poured beers for Gloss and Enrique and the three of us took them to a table in back where five other people were in raucous conversation. There were two young white women talking, one middle-aged and dressed like a punk rocker, and the other about my age, clearly a college student from her preppy sweater and the white-collared shirt beneath. When I saw her, a wave of nervousness shot through me. She was the most beautiful woman I¡¯d ever seen.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Neural Python
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 4
Type shooter
Subtype red
Subroutines 2: bleeds a runner, bleeds a runner
Chapter 7: The Whole Crew Chapter 7. The Whole Crew ¡°Hide your wallets,¡± the middle-aged punk rocker said as Enrique, Gloss, and I approached. She wore a shiny vegan leather jacket and a black t-shirt messily cut off into a halter. What was left of the printing seemed to read: ¡°I¡¯d rather be smashing capitalism.¡± But I was more interested in the college student next to her, the pretty young woman who was looking off into the distance. If she glanced at me, I was half-certain I would run from the bar in terror. ¡°Everyone, I want you to meet Rawls,¡± Enrique said, laying a hand on my shoulder. ¡°Rawls,¡± he said, gesturing around the table, ¡°the foul-mouthed one is the CheRRy, with capital ¡®R¡¯s, and don¡¯t forget the definite article when addressing her. Next to the CheRRy, nonlineardynamics, all lowercase, who should be studying for her calculus final.¡± The one called nonlineardynamics gave Enrique the bird and it made me fall in love with her on the spot. Enrique gestured around the table. There was an old man, possibly Chinese, in wire-frame glasses and wearing a dirty hoodie and a long, filthy duster. ¡°Kent,¡± Enrique said. Next to him was a tall Black man in a navy blue pinstripe suit who looked like a corporate executive. ¡°Pleasure to meet you. I¡¯m Ohm,¡± he said. Next to him was an armored briefcase, open to reveal a plush stegosaurus peeking out from inside. ¡°As in resistance?¡± ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Ohm said. Sitting across from Ohm was a mixed-race middle-aged woman in bright colors wearing chunky silver headphones. ¡°Sunya Xiong, bored out of my mind. How you doing, Gloss?¡± Gloss took a seat next to Sunya and said, ¡°Has Wren been here tonight?¡± ¡°Alway the first question he asks,¡± Sunya said, and Ohm laughed. ¡°Sit next to me, young gun,¡± the CheRRy said to me. ¡°I¡¯m not going to let that slick a-hole corrupt you into his own brand of capitalism any more than he already has.¡± ¡°What do the capital ¡®R¡¯s stand for?¡± I said as I worked my way onto the long bench. ¡°Reckless and ribald,¡± the CheRRy said. She moved over and I took a seat between her and nonlineardynamics, who shifted her backpack so I could sit down. I saw an ancient mechanical keyboard sticking out of her backpack. As brightly colored as the CheRRy¡¯s rainbow hair was, my eye was drawn to the quieter nonlineardynamics, in her neat wool sweater and preppy collared shirt. She reminded me of the rich girls in my hometown. ¡°So, I overheard you just had a run in with a big red snake,¡± the CheRRy said. ¡°This young man,¡± Enrique said, ¡°broke a Ludo in eleven hours on his first crack, and then broke a neural python with a water strider.¡± Pride flushed through me. I was aware of nonlineardynamics watching my reaction. I tried not to appear boastful. ¡°Enrique got me a good breaker.¡± ¡°Not good enough,¡± Gloss said from down the table, and Enrique shot him a sharp look. ¡°I¡¯m alive, anyway,¡± I said, feeling fluttery. My beer was practically empty¡ªI wasn¡¯t sure how that had happened. The CheRRy slapped me on my back and jogged to the bar. She returned almost instantly with another pint for me and one for herself. ¡°What¡¯s your story?¡± she said. ¡°Want to make more money than the corps think you should make, like Lima over here?¡± Before I could answer, Enrique said, ¡°Missing girlfriend.¡± The CheRRy made a condescending expression and I could feel nonlineardynamics shift slightly next to me. ¡°She¡¯s not my girlfriend,¡± I said. ¡°She¡¯s my oldest friend. She came here for a clinical trial with a White Tree subsidiary, and that was the last I heard of her.¡± When I said that, I could feel the mood among the runners change. Some of them looked down at their drinks. Ohm stirred his cocktail. Sunya busied herself with her music player. The CheRRy looked at Enrique. ¡°You better not be giving him false hope,¡± she said. She looked at me. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯d say I hope she¡¯s OK, but ... ¡± ¡°But what?¡± I said. The CheRRy shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s a White Tree clinical trial. Bad things happen there.¡± Gloss moved over and whispered in my ear. ¡°I got something.¡± He motioned for me to stand. I followed Gloss outside the bar, where the night air was surprisingly chilly for the Carolina Piedmont. ¡°We¡¯ve sorted the data you exfiltrated.¡± ¡°And?¡± ¡°It¡¯s clinical trial data, and recent. These are the kind of files that could be worth a couple hundred thousand to the right White Tree competitor. Of course, the fence will take half. Enrique¡¯s communicating with fences right now. New drugs rise and fall on data like this. We¡¯ve found the confidential patient records as well as the identifiers. That means name, date of birth, photo.¡± ¡°And?¡± He unrolled a screen from his pocket. I didn¡¯t have to know how to read clinical trial data to understand what it meant. In one place it listed a number, and next to that number was the word DECEASED. In another place it listed the same number, and next to that number was the name Freya Alexander and her birth date. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, man,¡± Gloss said. He didn¡¯t move to put a hand on my shoulder the way that Enrique would do, especially if he was trying to get me to do something. He just stood there. I felt like he¡¯d embrace me if I wanted him to, but there was no pressure. I just stood there. I felt numb. ¡°It says she¡¯s dead.¡± He nodded.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°Does that mean she¡¯s dead?¡± ¡°You heard what the CheRRy said. White Tree engages in scary, bad practices. And I promise I will never try to give you hope unless the evidence supports it. So you have to consider the real possibility that your friend is dead.¡± We stood in the unseasonably cold night air. It was the kind of night that Freya would have loved, the kind of night that still came to the mountains regularly. Down here I figured cool nights were a rarity, considering how people were dressed in short-sleeved shirts, shivering as they walked. I missed Freya. Suddenly a feeling of despair broke through my numbness and I felt tears forming. I didn¡¯t want to cry in front of Gloss, but at the same time, I knew that I could. ¡°It¡¯s OK, little bro,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Thanks. You said that there was a possibility she¡¯s dead. Is there any other possibility?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t take this to mean anything, but corps make records for one purpose: to protect themselves.¡± ¡°You mean corp records don¡¯t necessarily reflect the truth.¡± Gloss nodded again. ¡°It¡¯s up to you what you do with this information. If you decide that you got what you came for, you can go home and know that you accomplished something, risked harm, even death, to find out what happened.¡± ¡°Or?¡± ¡°Or you can stay with us. Enrique will make sure you have a place to sleep and something to eat. You can help us earn our living, and then, when you¡¯ve assembled your own rig, you can dive deeper and figure out if this¡ª¡± he tapped the screen ¡°¡ªis really the end of her story.¡± It was too heavy. I felt I couldn¡¯t move underneath this burden. In that moment, I didn¡¯t believe that Freya was dead. I¡¯m not sure I was capable of believing it. And I didn¡¯t want to go home, even if I didn¡¯t know how to keep looking for her just yet. I¡¯d seen too much over the last couple of days, met too many interesting people. I¡¯d tasted power. For one moment, I had been as strong as billion-dollar corp defenses. At the same time, what Enrique and Gloss did was risky, and I didn¡¯t believe that Enrique would always keep me safe. Not that he would go out of his way to put me in danger, but he lived a fast and dangerous life, and if I were working with him, I would, too. I looked for clues in Gloss¡¯s expression. But he looked the way he often did: sleepy, and somewhat concerned. Finally, I asked him. ¡°What do you think I should do?¡± ¡°I can¡¯t decide for you, little bro. Enjoy tonight and decide in the morning. Or tomorrow. Or next week.¡± ¡°I can do that.¡± We returned to the bar, and I saw nonlineardynamics lift her head briefly when I came in the door. A wave of excitement came over me but was accompanied by a feeling of guilt. Not as though Freya would have been upset if she saw me flirting with a girl¡ªit wasn¡¯t like that between Freya and me. I felt like all my attention and energy should be focused on finding her, if she could be found. But Gloss had implied that perhaps I had done all I could do for the moment, and that I needed to build a rig before I restarted my search. Whatever a rig was. A console and some icebreakers, I figured. For the meantime, I had half a pint of beer left and some new friends for company. That was worth something. It was time to enjoy life while I could. As I rejoined the CheRRy and nonlineardynamics at the long table, the CheRRy was saying to the rest of the runners, ¡°¡ªcould smear netspace with any of us.¡± ¡°Except perhaps Sunya,¡± Ohm said. ¡°Who are they talking about?¡± I whispered to nonlineardynamics. ¡°Mr. Grid. Do you know his story?¡± she said. I shook my head. ¡°Does everyone call you nonlineardynamics?¡± ¡°In netspace, sure. In meatspace, people call me Linney.¡± ¡°Hi Linney.¡± ¡°Hi.¡± ¡°What¡¯s Mr. Grid¡¯s story?¡± But before Linney could speak, the CheRRy leaned over, spilling her beer on me. ¡°Mr. Grid used to be a damn hot runner out of Montreal. He used the right mixture of caution and aggression, stole millions, and managed to lose it or spend it or give it away, I don¡¯t know. Then he got the 7Wonders Conglomerate on his ass. Rumor has it they leveled an entire city block just to try to wipe him out. Emphasis on ¡®try.¡¯¡± ¡°Sounds like something 7Wonders would do,¡± Linney said. ¡°It was one-and-a-half apartment buildings,¡± Kent said. Ohm broke in. ¡°Let¡¯s not exaggerate in front of our new colleague. They used four hunter-killer drones to incinerate a single third-floor condominium. The damage to the second level condo was only to the facade.¡± Kent continued. ¡°But Mr. Grid made it down here, opened this place, and it¡¯s been a refuge for runners across Carthage ever since. If you ever need anything, come to Mr. Grid¡¯s.¡± ¡°But not if you¡¯re tagged,¡± Sunya said. ¡°I don¡¯t need that kind of conflict in my life.¡± ¡°What¡¯s tagged?¡± Linney touched my arm. ¡°It means that at least one of the corps knows exactly who you¡¯re doing business with. It makes everyone around you a target.¡± ¡°Well, there¡¯s tagged and then there¡¯s tagged,¡± Sunya said. ¡°The more the corps know about you, your contacts, your rig, the place where you sleep, your current location, your plans, your thoughts, your nightmares, the worse it gets for you.¡± ¡°Often they have enough on you that they can close your bank account,¡± Ohm added. ¡°So keep some cash around. I mean paper money.¡± ¡°And sometimes they know enough to put a missile between your eyes,¡± said the CheRRy, who had finished her beer and was now drinking mine. ¡°Hey, that¡¯s¡ª¡± But Linney set another one in front me. ¡°Here you go. You tangled with red ice today. You shouldn¡¯t pay for drinks tonight.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± I said. ¡°What about you? What¡¯s your story?¡± Linney turned toward me. I was instantly aware of how much I liked sitting next to her. I could still feel the warmth on the place on my arm where she had touched me earlier. I wanted to know everything about her, but didn¡¯t feel like I could just come out and say: tell me everything about yourself. ¡°I¡¯m working on my degree,¡± she said. ¡°I explore netspace when I can.¡± ¡°What¡¯s your degree in?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure yet, but I¡¯m thinking of majoring in math.¡± ¡°Wow.¡± She shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s what I do.¡± ¡°How long have you been a runner?¡± ¡°Since I was a kid. Growing up, I had a fast computer and not a lot of supervision. I got into trouble.¡± ¡°It seems to have worked out.¡± ¡°Maybe. Too soon to tell.¡± ¡°Are you feeling OK?¡± ¡°Yeah. I just don¡¯t share the optimism or recklessness of some of the others. Speaking of which¡ª¡± she indicated Enrique with her finger. He was deep in conversation with Sunya. ¡°You don¡¯t have to do everything he says.¡± ¡°Thanks.¡± She stood. ¡°Got to study for my final. But one more thing, Rawls.¡± I liked hearing her say my name. She leaned down to whisper in my ear. ¡°You got White Tree today. But while you sleep, they work. Keep your eyes open tomorrow.¡± A cold sensation traveled down my spine. I watched as she turned, drawing up the hood of her long, thin raincoat, the oversized mechanical keyboard bobbing as she walked away. The rest of the evening created a pleasurable blur in my memory, as runner voices teased and confided and shouted at each other across the long table¡ª ¡°¡ªat the bottom of the server was a rashida¡ª¡± ¡°¡ªsometimes the best breaker is your face¡ª¡± ¡°¡ªhunter-seekered her brain cage¡ª¡± ¡°¡ªgot drunk and forged the activation orders, bay-bee!¡± I felt the table rattle as Gloss sat down next to me. ¡°Drink up, little brother. We got a long metro ride home. Tomorrow you have a new assignment.¡± ### Despite the late night, I made sure that I didn¡¯t drink too much. I¡¯d never liked getting drunk, and in high school avoided parties in favor of quiet evenings with Freya or by myself. What I meant was that I rose early the next morning. The rest of the apartment felt silent. I figured out how to operate Enrique Lima¡¯s antique coffee maker, grinding the beans¡ªthe real thing, from Colombia¡ªand measuring them into the cone. While the pot brewed, I took some time to be a good house guest and tidy up. I scrubbed the counters and swept the floors, neatened piles of paper books and electronics. Some of the hardware left laying around intrigued me. Much of it looked like it plugged into the console that I had used during my run against the White Tree remote. The devices were boxy and mysterious, covered in stickers and scratches, their telltales glowing even when not plugged in. I wanted to know what they all did. Maybe Enrique and Gloss wouldn¡¯t notice if I messed around.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Membrane
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez medium-low
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 3
Type Platform
Subtype Red
Subroutines 2: bleeds a runner, but is only rarely lethal; stops a run
Chapter 8: Membrane Chapter 8. Membrane I wanted to know about Enrique¡¯s and Gloss¡¯s icebreakers. Breakers seemed key to breaching corporate servers. They felt mystical, practical, and impractical all at once, like the magic swords in the stories of my youth. Ludicrously expensive, impossible to copy, frustrating to build: I wanted one. Having burned through the water strider yesterday, I had none, and wasn¡¯t sure I should jack in without one. I understood that face-checking ice wasn¡¯t something I was supposed to do. Even so, I was intrigued by the fact that I had passed Ludo using no breaker at all. The apartment was so quiet. A rogue thought came to me: why not take a look around the net? Maybe I could do so quickly and quietly. No one would notice. Maybe I could even do so without a breaker. I found the console we had used last night along with a laptop that looked like it had a port that could connect to the console. I woke up the laptop, found a guest account that did not require a password or biometric, and opened the server mapping tool. The information in the tool overwhelmed me. It was like the map of a galaxy. Some servers shone brightly and were surrounded by multiple rings of ice. Others were dim, hard to see, unnamed but for inscrutable hexadecimals. It took a few minutes to find the filters. Using those, I told the tool to display research and development servers operated by the Big Four megacorps: FUTUR Design, White Tree, 7Wonders, and Panopt. I found a few that, based on their representation on the map, seemed to be defended by only a single piece of ice. Thinking about my previous runs and what the runners last night had said, I eliminated a few possibilities. FUTUR Design meant simulants, which meant losing the entire day to the run, not to mention the fact that I wouldn¡¯t be able to hide what I was doing from Gloss and Enrique. So that was a no. Panopt, I knew, dominated the surveillance industry. I suspected that meant they would have more sophisticated tracing software. I didn¡¯t want this raid coming back to eat me, so I eliminated them, too. 7Wonders pursued Mr. Grid and burned down his home after he had annoyed them enough. It shouldn¡¯t be that dangerous if I just poked around once. Call 7Wonders a possible. Finally, there was White Tree. They had the information I wanted, somewhere. But I had promised Enrique I¡¯d never run a White Tree server without a breaker. And here I was, thinking about doing exactly that. The server I eyed looked thick with corporate data, but the ring of ice around it sent and received so little data that I felt like I could get in and out without waking up anything nasty on the net. Or waking up anyone in the apartment. I sent the address to the console, and then took hold of the cable attached to it. It still had last night¡¯s jack-out switch spliced to it. Holding the cable near my net port with one hand, I kept my other hand on the switch. I still wasn¡¯t sure how much conscious control I had over my body while I was in netspace, but I felt curiosity and I wanted to prove myself. Quietly. I plugged the cable into my net port and twisted. The dark highway felt familiar to me now. The city ahead was bright and deep: a massive tower of R&D. Surely the answers I wanted would be in there, and if not, something pointing to the answers would be. I could see the low ring of ice, fuzzy at this distance and glowing a hot pink. I could swear I felt my thumb on the jack-out switch. At the first sign of trouble, I promised myself I¡¯d hit it. Accelerating, I brought my sharp arrowhead avatar near the city. The ice began to rez, its shape and detail becoming clearer until it became a razor-sharp ring-shaped membrane, both gelatinous and hard, with a double line running around its circumference, each line a beveled blade like Grandpa¡¯s old razor blades, hard and bright and set at a different angle than the wall around them. I willed myself to hit the switch. Nothing happened. I tried to veer my arrowhead away from the ring, but I was moving too fast. My arrowhead sheared across the wall, the razor cutting straight into me. I felt that shock you get when you realize you¡¯ve cut your hand and see the skin flapping but have not yet felt the pain. I bolted upright on the couch in the apartment, twisted the cable out of my net port, and pushed all the equipment off my lap. The console¡¯s tiny, three-line display said: CONNECTION TERMINATED BY SERVER I was sweating. Suddenly my skin felt very hot. I reached my hand to the back of my neck to wipe away the sweat, but it felt weird. When I looked at my hand, it was dark red with blood. Without thinking, I wiped it off on my bare chest and leapt off the couch. I looked around. I didn¡¯t want to get Enrique¡¯s furniture all bloody, because then I¡¯d have no choice but to explain myself. I washed and dried my hands and then tidied away the equipment as best I could. I got into the shower and ran it hot, watching the water run red and then pink and then clear. Looking at myself in the mirror as I toweled off, I calmed down a little. I was no longer actively bleeding, and couldn¡¯t even locate the cut on my neck or scalp. White Tree ice was weird as hell. I was fully dressed and sitting on the couch reading a book on paper¡ªa first for me¡ªwhen Gloss came out of his room. I said nothing but a soft ¡°good morning.¡± After he¡¯d had time to make himself some tea and work a crossword, I ventured to ask him a question.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡°Does red ice always try to kill the runner?¡± ¡°No,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Most of the time it¡¯s there to scare you or hurt you a little bit. A lot of the time it will even let you into the server. But sometimes it will end the run on its own. Why do you ask?¡± ¡°Just curious,¡± I said. ¡°Hmmm,¡± Gloss said, and looked at me from his perch on the counter. ¡°What about simulant ice?¡± I said. ¡°Why can you get past them without a breaker?¡± ¡°You can pass simulants without a breaker because simulant minds are like ours,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Simulant ice have limited attention spans and their reactions, while appearing quick to us, are much slower than non-simulant ice. They make up for that by being extremely complex relative to how expensive it is for FUTUR Design to deploy them. Simulant ice are also highly dangerous. They can leave you with a traumatic brain injury that may never fully heal.¡± ¡°Really?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve seen it happen. It happened to Linney, in fact.¡± ¡°She¡¯s so young.¡± ¡°She¡¯s the same age you are. And she¡¯s going to carry that trauma for the rest of her life. Now, if I know Linney, and I¡¯d like to think I do, she¡¯s not going to let herself be limited.¡± The front door opened and Enrique came in, wearing a three-piece suit and carrying a small grocery bag with celery and broccoli poking out over the top. He set it on the counter. ¡°I thought you were sleeping,¡± I said. ¡°As a matter of fact, I stayed out all night fencing the data you stole yesterday.¡± He removed the vegetables from the bag and then turned the bag upside down. Three bundles of cash fell out. Enrique picked one up, tossed it to Gloss. He tossed the second to me. I caught it, something sharp and painful running down my arm from the back of my neck. I tried to cover up the wince by running my thumb over the paper money and whistling at its heft. ¡°That¡¯s 17K right there,¡± Enrique said. ¡°Keep it safe. Come here.¡± I stood and Enrique held out his wrist. I touched mine to his and felt the signature vibration from within that, accompanied by a chartreuse light under my skin: credit transfer successful. ¡°The other half of your share is in your account,¡± he said. I¡¯d never had this much money in my life. My thoughts immediately jumped to my father. He needed to get current on the property tax on the house, which also needed a new water heater. ¡°I know what you¡¯re thinking,¡± Enrique said. ¡°Go ahead and share some of it with people you care about. Just don¡¯t tell them anything about where you got it, and don¡¯t spend it all right now. You¡¯ll need to keep some¡ª¡± ¡°¡ªto build my rig,¡± I said as I transferred the money in my account anonymously to my father. ¡°Gloss told me. What¡¯s a rig, anyway? Just my console and icebreakers?¡± ¡°Your cybernetic implants and the people you trust are also part of your rig,¡± Gloss said. ¡°And there are other things, too, out there in the net, not terribly well-understood, but runners have from time to time made alliances with them. Taken together, that¡¯s your rig.¡± ¡°Well said, professor,¡± Enrique said. ¡°Now, kid. It¡¯s time for you to get out of here for a while. Gloss and I have work to do. Go shopping at the gray market bazaar in Mint Hill. Then go talk to Linney about getting a breaker.¡± ¡°Why Linney?¡± Enrique seemed to enjoy the chance to act fatherly. He put his hands on his hips and gave me a knowing smile. ¡°From watching you two talk last night, you seem similar in temperament. Runners who have similar reason for running the nets and similar approaches can benefit from using similar icebreakers. She¡¯s one of the best coders we¡¯ve ever seen. She¡¯ll steer you right.¡± As I moved to the door, I felt some residual pain in my neck and arm. I swore I could feel Enrique¡¯s and Gloss¡¯s eyes on me, swore they knew what I had done. ### On the streets of Carthage, alone for the first time and with cash in my pocket, I felt free. Growing up in a tiny town in western Carolina, I didn¡¯t understand how large the megacity of Carthage really was. In the middle of what used to be the state of North Carolina was a ring of small and medium-sized cities about 150 miles across. In the center of that ring were small towns and farms. Then, around the beginning of this century, in the tiny community of Carthage, a startup company working on harnessing the computing power of human brains bought large amounts of old warehouse space for its experiments and operations. The startup drew poor people, eager to earn some money by connecting their brains to the computational pools. First people came from neighboring towns, and then neighboring counties, and then the cities in the ring, and then people were pouring into tiny Carthage from across the Southeast. Except Carthage wasn¡¯t so tiny anymore. Massive dormitories were built by 7Wonders to house the people connecting to the pools. Tobacco farms were mowed down and replaced by FUTUR Design¡¯s server farms to handle the pools¡¯ gargantuan throughput. Whole industries sprung up to feed, house, and entertain the workers that kept the pools running, as well as the engineers that were improving the pools, the lawyers defending corps from human-rights lawsuits in state and federal courts, and the executives running the show. After a bidding war between FUTUR Design and White Tree, leaving five middle managers dead, FUTUR Design bought the startup, and the area the pools occupied became known as the Neurocapital District. It was the center of Carthage. That innovation¡ªthe use of human brains to conduct exascale computational operations less expensively than before¡ªattracted unimaginable money and development. Both FUTUR Design and White Tree moved their North American operations to the Neurocapital District. As a result, Carthage became the fastest-growing city in United States history, and within seventy years had swallowed every other city within 200 miles. With so much farmland and so many forests razed for the new urban developments, the old downtown cores became vertical farms to feed the new towers rising above them. Enrique lived in Old Charlotte, in a neighborhood called Optimist Park that had seen better days. On the way to find the bazaar¡ªlast night, the CheRRy had called it a ¡°runner mall¡±¡ªin Mint Hill, I took the metro but, feeling some morbid curiosity, stopped first in the rundown area where yesterday¡¯s crash space was located. I approached along the street opposite from the old apartment building that contained the crash space. From two blocks away, I could tell something was wrong. There were vans blocking the street and barricades set up. As I neared the building, I saw that plastic tunnels had been built at the entrance and snaked out toward the vans. There was plastic on all the windows of the building. People in white sterile suits moved in and out of the tunnel. No corporate or government logos were visible on the vans or the suits. Feeling sick to my stomach, I kept walking until I reached the next metro station, then hustled down and held my wrist to the fare processor. Safely anonymous on the train, I huddled in my blazer. I felt strangely cold. As I exited the Mint Hill metro, that sense of cold was replaced by something far chillier: I felt my neck prickle. I had the strong sense that someone was following me. Not wanting to look behind myself, I tried to catch reflections in shop windows, but couldn¡¯t tell. I was learning to trust my instincts and my instincts told me I was in danger. But I was just learning to fight in netspace. By comparison, my skills in meatspace were nil. In the distance was the tech bazaar, built into an old parking ramp. I upped my pace. Maybe the bazaar would keep me safe. No one was going to attack me in public, right?
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Blank
Manufacturer Various
Cost to rez Minimal
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 0
Type Platform
Subtype None
Subroutines Stops a run
Chapter 9: Gray Ops Chapter 9. Gray Ops After what felt like an hour I came to the old parking deck made of pockmarked gray concrete, older than the fungal-grown structures around it, the deck''s rebar skeleton visible in some places where the structure had worn away. Parking decks used to be everywhere, I read in school, but once personal motor vehicles became both unaffordable and more or less illegal, most decks were converted into other uses. This one was an open-air tech bazaar, its exterior hung with torn and mildewed banners in multiple languages announcing various shops within. The entryway was packed with people shuffling in. I wasn¡¯t sure what I expected, but not a market full of middle-aged people of limited means. I guess I thought of this place as being full of young punks and thieves, the kind of people I met at Mr. Grid¡¯s. Though come to think of it, a number of those runners had themselves been middle-aged. I couldn¡¯t shake the feeling I was being followed, but figured nothing bad was going to happen in such a public space, studded with obvious surveillance cameras. I moved among the lower levels, checking out used, knock-off, or stolen hardware in big plastic bins or spread out on carpets. Honestly, I didn¡¯t know what half of this shit did. My eye was drawn here and there, and after my conversation with Dr. Rashida Qin, I was learning to let my eyes guide me. It was possible they knew more than my conscious mind. I picked up a few pieces of equipment without knowing anything about them, other than that some looked like they might connect to my net port via a simple cable, others with more complicated adapters. Still other things looked like they were tiny, implantable devices. ¡°Don¡¯t buy anything implantable here,¡± came a raspy and familiar voice. I turned to see Kent, the old man from Mr. Grid¡¯s, next to me wearing the same dirty hoodie and duster as last night. He carried an old green shopping basket full of devices that were completely unknown to me. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. Kent pushed past me, sorting through a bin of music players with his dry and cracked hands. ¡°What are you looking for, kid?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure. Enrique and Gloss told me to go shopping and then to find Linney for some help with a breaker. I think I need a console, maybe a laptop, some connectors, maybe one of those jack-out switches.¡± Kent looked up at me. His eyes in the wire-frame glasses were huge, knowing, and kind. ¡°You have no real idea what you¡¯re doing, do you?¡± ¡°No,¡± I admitted. ¡°Your ear is bleeding,¡± Kent said. ¡°Oh hell,¡± I said, finding the handkerchief that Enrique must have tucked into my new blazer when he set it on the bed in the guest room. I dabbed at my ear, found the blood mostly dried and crusty. At least I wasn¡¯t dripping. ¡°Come on, kid, I¡¯ll take care of you. You got money?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t tell me how you got it, all right? I don¡¯t want to know anything more about you than absolutely necessary. Between that neural python yesterday and you bleeding on my shoes today, you seem to be a magnet for trouble.¡± Kent reached over to a stack of grubby shopping baskets and shoved one into my hands. Then he shuffled down the row of stalls, some flying banners and signs and illuminated screens displaying messages in Chinese and Arabic and Cyrillic, some little more than card tables staffed by bored elderly people. The most wonderful smell of wok-seared noodles drifted through the space, and I had to admit my mind was more focused on lunch than it was on hardware. Kent stopped every now and then to throw something my basket, usually with a muttered comment such as, ¡°Gotta have this,¡± ¡°Can¡¯t go wrong with these,¡± ¡°If you don¡¯t want to flatline you¡¯ll need this,¡± none of which told me anything about what he was urging me to buy. Each time he added something to my basket, he gestured at me to give the shopkeeper some money. I figured I was supposed to bargain but I had no idea how, so I just handed over cash, feeling like a chump, but also trusting Kent to teach me what I didn¡¯t know. By the time we¡¯d finished with the first level, the basket was full and I¡¯d spent 4,500. ¡°Hey, Kent,¡± I said, thinking of something as we reached the last shop, which displayed a row of knives in a clear, scratched up polycarbonate case, ¡°I feel like someone¡¯s following me.¡± ¡°That means someone¡¯s following you,¡± Kent said. ¡°It¡¯s a healthy feeling, kid. Listen to it.¡± ¡°Could you help me get a weapon?¡± He stopped and turned. ¡°The only weapon you need is a good pair of running shoes. Because if they¡¯re sending someone after you, fighting in meatspace isn¡¯t going to go so well. You¡¯re going to get greased if you stick around. People like us, we strike on the net, strictly.¡± He hesitated, looked at me. My expression must have been especially dopey, because he softened. ¡°If it will make you feel better,¡± he said, turning to the case full of knives, ¡°you can pick up one of these.¡± He reached past the case of knives and plucked a small drone from the table. It was about the size of the drone that Enrique had me disable on my first evening in the city. In place of a camera, it sported two sharp metal barbs. ¡°Is that¡ª¡± ¡°A stinger, yeah. We call this a hornet. Autonomous stun gun. Eight minutes flight time. Single-use. Professional security will brick it within three seconds of liftoff, but if they send some untrained prick after you, which they are known to do, this might give you a moment to run like hell.¡± He handed it over. ¡°Five hundred,¡± said the shopkeeper. As we walked up the incline to the next level, I worked up the courage to ask, ¡°What is the rest of this stuff, anyway?¡±Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Kent put a hand on the back of my neck, his surprisingly strong thumb and forefinger practically pinching me as he steered me toward the food court. Oh thank heaven, I thought, as he shoved me down into a flimsy plastic chair at an equally flimsy plastic table. As his shopping basket clattered to the grooved and oily concrete below, he practically knocked my shopping basket out of my hand and held out a finger to me¡ªwait right here¡ªand then turned to one of the food stalls. I looked around and observed the families lining up for food, speaking with the vendors, a few students with newer clothes and backpacks moving among them. Within a couple minutes, Kent returned with two white ceramic bowls, fragrant with steaming noodles, vegetables, some manner of protein, and a sauce that was at once spicy, sour, salty, and sweet. I had never eaten anything so good. Wordlessly, Kent and I slurped up the noodles. When his bowl was completely empty, down to the last drop of chili oil, he belched, then looked at me and said, ¡°The first thing you have to understand is that we are living in a simulation. Us versus the corps: it¡¯s all a gigantic game. Our real bodies are hooked up to server farms somewhere, probably on a boat in an underground ocean on the moon of Europa. So nothing you or I do matters at all.¡± He stared at me and waited for me to acknowledge what he said. I sort of nodded, wiped my mouth with my napkin. ¡°The second thing you have to understand is how this hardware works. Aside from cables and power supplies, you have three things in your basket. First is a basic console combined with a network map. You point it where you want to go and jack in.¡± ¡°It looks like a metal dinner plate,¡± I said. Scratched into the finish of one side was the word ¡°Impermanence.¡± ¡°It¡¯s used, what do you expect?¡± ¡°Something that looks more like a computer.¡± Kent turned to me, his expression full of an old man¡¯s contempt. ¡°Consoles can look like anything. One of the best consoles I ever saw was a toy stuffed animal. A possum. Never judge a tool by the case it¡¯s in.¡± ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t be sorry, be smart. I think I knew the runner who previously owned this console. It has a feedback sensor. If any harmful data is coming down the connection¡ª¡± ¡°¡ªit will shut off?¡± I ventured. He fixed me with that hostile glare again. ¡°No. Don¡¯t interrupt. If any harmful data is coming down the connection, this console will convert it to power, which you can use or sell back to the grid. Your pain becomes your gain. Got it?¡± ¡°Oh. What about a jack-out switch?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t need a jack-out switch. Just make smarter runs. What the hell is Enrique teaching you?¡± ¡°Not enough, clearly.¡± I gestured at the basket. ¡°What else does this stuff do?¡± ¡°Second thing is a copy chip. You can use it to backup an icebreaker.¡± ¡°I thought that copying a breaker was almost impossible.¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult, but this thing can do it. You¡¯re lucky I found one. This is a single-use item. A real oh-hell button. It will burn itself out when it writes the breaker¡¯s code back to your console. So try not to waste it.¡± ¡°What¡¯s this last thing?¡± ¡°Catheter. If you¡¯re jacked in for more than four hours you¡¯re likely to pee your pants without it.¡± ¡°Can I return it?¡± ¡°No returns, no refunds.¡± ¡°Thanks, I guess.¡± Kent stood. ¡°Thank me by not getting yourself flatlined and staying the hell away from me if you¡¯re tagged.¡± ¡°Deal.¡± He turned and walked away, muttering, ¡°And if you are covered in tags, you need to overwrite yourself in the Root. Not that they don¡¯t know where we are every second of every day, not that they can¡¯t read our thoughts, but hey, it¡¯s all part of the game, such a beautiful game, the best game ever designed ...¡± As I walked out of the parking deck, having stashed my purchases in an old plastic sack taken from a metal tree at the entrance, I heard a sharp whistle. I turned and saw Linney sitting on a concrete retaining wall, her backpack next to herself, swinging her legs. ¡°Hey Rawls!¡± she said. ¡°Enrique said I could find you here. I¡¯m supposed to help you with your coding.¡± My day was looking better. The prospect of spending a few hours with nonlineardynamics¡ªLinney to her friends¡ªmade me optimistic about the future. I approached her and said, ¡°Hey, thanks. I¡¯m totally lost when it comes to breakers. I don¡¯t know how I¡¯m supposed to buy or make one or anything, and I have to warn you, I got a C+ in coding in high school.¡± She tilted her head. ¡°Is that a joke?¡± I felt frozen. ¡°Um, no.¡± ¡°You¡¯re hopeless, dude,¡± she said. But she laughed and hopped down from the retaining wall and took my hand, so for a hopeless guy, I felt really good. ¡°Rule number one,¡± she said. She led me under a BRUTE overpass, heavy buses aimed at the rural counties rocketing overhead. ¡°We¡¯re living in a simulation?¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯ve been talking to Kent, I see.¡± The underside was full of tiny stalls, some with brightly-colored sun shades. There were stools, and chairs, and counters. Both frozen and steaming containers of liquids occupied much of the space in the stalls, and from all directions came the sounds of drinks being poured. I showed her the inside of the shopping bag. She raised her eyebrows. ¡°Ditch the cath,¡± she said. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Anyway, rule number one is coffee. Drink lots of it.¡± We came to a stall with an antique brass espresso machine, and hopped up on two chrome barstools with leatherette seat covers. ¡°Coffee,¡± I said to the teenage punk-rock girl working the counter. ¡°What¡¯s the magic word?¡± the punk said. ¡°Please?¡± ¡°Smash the patriarchy,¡± Linney said, and the punk winked and shot finger-guns at us, then turned to the espresso maker. ¡°We¡¯re going to get you a sick breaker,¡± Linney said. Then she reached forward and touched me behind the ear. ¡°Hey, are you bleeding?¡± ¡°Oh, for heaven¡¯s sake,¡± I said, enjoying her touch but humiliated by the reason for it. I gently removed her hand. Red blood, less crusty and more liquid than last time. ¡°You better not bleed on my counter,¡± the punk said as she tamped the espresso grounds. ¡°I¡¯ll bleed wherever I bleed,¡± I muttered perhaps slightly too audibly. ¡°That¡¯s the spirit,¡± the punk said. She came toward me a moment later with a small, thick-walled ceramic cup rich with dark coffee and a beautiful layer of crema on top. ¡°Fight, die, bleed, look out for those in need,¡± she said. ¡°Will do.¡± I downed my shot. Liquid pleasure blasted through me. When I looked over, I caught Linney smiling at me. She seemed amused, even touched. Growing up, the only time I ever felt like I belonged was when I was with Freya. But now, I felt like I belonged here, too. ¡°Rule number two,¡± Linney said. ¡°Your breakers are part of you. What¡¯s your favorite thing to do for fun?¡± I flashed back to childhood, thought of the best moments of my life. ¡°Honestly? Lay by Hungry Creek with my best friend.¡± ¡°Hungry Creek,¡± she said. ¡°We can work with that.¡± She tore open an alcohol wipe from her bag and cleaned off a sensor on her laptop. Then she pulled on a disposable glove and placed a warm hand on the back of my head. ¡°Just need a blood sample.¡± With the red smear on her gloved finger, she touched the sensor. Something popped up on the display. ¡°This is interesting,¡± she said. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± ¡°There¡¯s something weird in your blood.¡± ¡°I just went to the doctor and she didn¡¯t say anything.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not something most people look for,¡± Linney said, looking at me with a strange kind of scientific curiosity. ¡°At some point, someone injected you with fabricytes.¡± ¡°Should I be worried?¡± ¡°Only if you want to live a long, happy life. Typically the people who get these expect to die soon, but not before one last grand gesture. Buck up, cowboy, it was probably just someone pulling a prank. Or your guardian angel.¡± She laughed, reminding me of the CheRRy, then cleaned the sensor off again, and we got to work.
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Fabricytes
Manufacturer White Tree
Legal status Outlawed in the United States and the European Union
Description Artificial red and white blood cells, delivered by biannual injection
Cost Depends on how picky you are about quality
Function To keep a runner alive just a little bit after they should have flatlined
Chapter 10: Freelancer Chapter 10: Freelancer ¡°You can purchase breakers if you know where to look,¡± Linney was saying as she coded. ¡°Sometimes you can even find them out on the net, quarantined in corporate data vaults or even in the trash.¡± ¡°The trash?¡± ¡°Corporate archives,¡± she said after taking a sip of coffee. ¡°Do you have any idea how much data a modern megacorp generates? It¡¯s uncountable. They generate so much that even they can barely store all of it, let alone process it. Of the major megacorps, only FUTUR Design has functional data recovery systems in place. The rest? They just hope that we don¡¯t go dumpster diving. Anything could be hiding in the trash.¡± ¡°Is that rule number three?¡± ¡°You got it. But while you can buy or find breakers, it¡¯s better to make your own.¡± I zoned out for a moment. I didn¡¯t want to admit to her how clueless I was about any of this. I wasn¡¯t a coder. I watched the people moving through the open air cafe with old, wrinkly shopping bags. I still hadn¡¯t been able to shake the feeling of being watched. Eventually I noticed Linney looking at me, waiting for me to speak. ¡°You don¡¯t understand any of this, do you?¡± ¡°Not really.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. Here¡¯s what we¡¯ll do. I¡¯m going to write the basic structure of a breaker for you, and you can tinker with it as you learn more. This is a very flexible codebase that my mentor wrote for me when I started running. I¡¯m passing it on to you.¡± ¡°Who was your mentor?¡± ¡°She was a painter. She retired a while ago, opened her own art gallery.¡± She shrugged, as if it were painful to talk about. Turning her laptop to me, I saw that she had written a basic program. ¡°Here,¡± she said. ¡°You had better hang onto this while it¡¯s compiling. It should be ready later today.¡±
Name Hungry Creek 1.0
Type Icebreaker
Matching subtype Platform
Base Nguyen-Okafor complexity 2
Cost to boost 2K for 2 complexity
Cost to break 2K for 2 subroutines
¡°What are these costs?¡± ¡°Most breakers can find a place from which to infiltrate a piece of ice with a matching subtype. Ice like Ludo are based on old platformer video games: their security is all walls and bottomless pits. A breaker with a platform subtype can find a way to solve such games, but the more complex the ice is, the more processing capacity and electricity it takes for the breaker to find the solution. Anyone can buy processing and power on the open market, but it always costs money. And the number of subroutines is a measure of how capable an ice is. More subs takes more money to break, no matter how simple or complex the ice is.¡± ¡°If I¡¯m reading this correctly, it takes 4K for this breaker to get through a Ludo?¡± ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± I whistled. You could heat and cool dad¡¯s house for a couple years with that amount of money. ¡°It¡¯s a bit inefficient for some odd-complexity ice,¡± Linney said. ¡°But that¡¯s good for Ludo.¡± ¡°Hey. Don¡¯t you need your laptop back?¡± I said. ¡°Do you think I¡¯d write your breaker on my personal laptop? This is just a machine I had laying around. You can have it. It looks like you don¡¯t have one, yet.¡± ¡°Kent thought I didn¡¯t need one.¡± ¡°That¡¯s because Kent finds everything that he uses in the trash. The literal trash.¡± We sat there in silence, not quite looking at each other and not quite looking away. It felt so good, sitting next to her, that I didn¡¯t want the afternoon to end. ¡°Why did you start running, Linney?¡± I said. ¡°At first it was exploration. But then my family needed money. Don¡¯t look so startled.¡± She sounded almost offended. ¡°It¡¯s just a surprise, because you look so¡ª¡± ¡°Preppy?¡± ¡°That¡¯s exactly what I was going to say.¡± ¡°I¡¯m trying to blend in at school. I think of myself as a spy, and this as my cover. When I was growing up, we were stone broke. I¡¯d started messing around with the networks at school, reading my teachers¡¯ mail and so forth, and figured I could use those same skills to make some money.¡± I nodded along. My heart broke for the younger version of Linney, breaking the law because she thought she needed to. ¡°But you kept it up.¡± ¡°Yeah. After I got my parents current on rent¡ªand they never asked how, they were too smart to do that¡ªI built myself a college fund and worked hard at school.¡± ¡°I bet all that school hacking came in handy.¡± She hit my shoulder playfully, but I could tell I had said something that hurt. ¡°I never cheated in school,¡± she said quietly. ¡°Everything I achieved came from here.¡± She tapped her head. I could see a place, on the side of her skull, where there were criss-crossing scars and something curved but almost rectangular just below the skin, as if a plate had been bolted in. I recalled what I had heard Enrique and Gloss say about permanent damage. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I shouldn¡¯t have implied you had cheated.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m new to all this.¡± ¡°I know you are.¡± I turned to the barista and asked for another coffee. I gestured at Linney, who, much to my delight, also wanted another. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°So you got yourself money for college and you aced high school,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s right. I earned a spot in the mathematics program at the University of New Carthage.¡± I whistled. ¡°That¡¯s hard to do.¡± ¡°That¡¯s where I¡¯m at. Still. I¡¯ve run into some trouble.¡± I nodded and looked at her. I wasn¡¯t going to push her to tell me about it, but I hoped that she would trust me enough to let me in. Our second coffees arrived, and I took the time to sip mine, savor it, all those delicious sweet and acidic and bitter and creamy molecules. She cradled hers in her hands, as if for warmth. ¡°Do you want my jacket?¡± I said, although she was wearing the same high-tech, long jacket she wore last night. It was strangely wrinkly, like the old plastic bags people carried here, and it was gray like concrete. But I had the sense that all of this was by design. It was one of those garments that didn¡¯t look like much at first but that I could tell was quite expensive and probably highly functional. She shook her head and reached for her zipper. ¡°I¡¯ll just turn up mine.¡± She set her coffee mug down. ¡°Listen, can I tell you something?¡± ¡°Sure.¡± ¡°Last year, I needed money for ... for a thing. To get it, I tried to do a deep dig on one of FUTUR Design¡¯s central servers: their research and development division, which contained the plans for that year¡¯s line of simulants. The jewels, so to speak. I had everything lined up, the hardware, the connections, to search through practically everything. I never should have made that run.¡± ¡°Why not?¡± ¡°I was tired, I was broke. I¡¯m sure either Enrique or Gloss has told you about running against simulant ice when you¡¯re tired.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°When the ice rezzed, I realized my icebreaker couldn¡¯t pull enough power to break everything. And I was too sluggish to outwit or outrun the thing. Next thing I know, I¡¯m in the trauma ward at the med school up in Bull City with a plate in my head and some brand-new cognitive difficulties.¡± All of the automatic responses that came to mind¡ªI¡¯m so sorry, or oh no, or wow, or that sucks, or guess you learned your lesson, or you did your best¡ªseemed inappropriate. Words in general seemed ineffective. I leaned forward and reached out my hands. She put hers in mine. ¡°That sounds so painful,¡± I said. ¡°It was.¡± ¡°Are you OK now?¡± She leaned closer to me. I squeezed her hands. She drew hers back, not as if she were unhappy with the contact, but as if she had taken what she needed from it. ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m adapting. I don¡¯t know if I¡¯ll make it as a scholar. Earlier, I thought I¡¯d do everything myself, without machine assistance. But now I realize that that idea¡¯s bunk. We all have machine assistance, even if we don¡¯t see it.¡± I thought of my eyes. ¡°I think I know something about that.¡± ¡°Yeah?¡± she said. I told her what I had learned from Dr. Rashida Qin, told her about the dim reds and bright purples that other kids hadn¡¯t been able to see, about getting through the neural python when I thought my breaker wouldn¡¯t cut it. I didn¡¯t tell her about the words that had appeared on banks of Hungry Creek. Her eyes were red-rimmed as I finished my story. ¡°Thanks for telling me that, Rawls.¡± ¡°Of course. Hey, Enrique and Gloss don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Then I won¡¯t tell them. Listen, I¡¯m going to be late for class unless I go right now.¡± ¡°You better go, then. Thanks for the breaker.¡± She hopped down from the stool and immediately looked concerned. Although she was my age, and was smaller than me physically, right then her posture suggested that she was protecting me. ¡°Take it easy at first. That breaker is designed to grow with you. Don¡¯t go trying to fight a mean red spider with that thing.¡± ¡°What does that mean?¡± She was already turning away, pulling up her hood. She looked back. ¡°It¡¯s White Tree¡¯s scariest ice. Once you see it, you¡¯ll see it everywhere, in every fuzzy bit of netspace. Don¡¯t go after anything valuable in a White Tree server until you¡¯re sure you can handle it.¡± Then she was walking through the crowd to the metro going north to UNC. A light rain had begun to fall, and as I stepped out from under the overpass, I felt it cool and soft on my skin. My electronics were safely zipped into the plastic shopping bag. I started moving toward a different metro stop. Eager to talk to Enrique and Gloss, I also wanted to try out my new rig. In the curving tunnel on the way to the train, I caught a glimpse in a traffic mirror of someone with a shaved head in a long green coat and sunglasses walking behind me. I was sure that I¡¯d never seen him before, and he wasn¡¯t looking directly at me, but something in the way he moved told me: he¡¯s following you. I lifted my shopping bag as I walked and unzipped it, palming the hornet, the small defensive drone that Kent told me to buy. I didn¡¯t know how to control it, and didn¡¯t know what it would do in an enclosed space such as the metro, but it felt good having it in my warm hand. I could feel the power switch, a small, ridged piece of metal cooler than the plastic frame. Sitting on the train car, I could see a dim reflection in the tinted windows on either side of me. The man in sunglasses was several seats behind me, where he could see me clearly but I could only catch sight of him through the reflection. His knees were parted and between them was a silver tube. It could have been a thick umbrella or a thin flashlight. Or a weapon. I exited one stop early and double-timed it up the stairs. Carrying my electronics, in pain from the morning¡¯s botched run, I was winded and I could feel the guy getting closer. I kept moving between people ahead of me, zig-zagging so that he wouldn¡¯t be able to get a clear shot at me. I was betting that he wouldn¡¯t take the risk of greasing an uninvolved person, especially not in the dense camera-nest of a metro station. On the street, things were different. I saw that I had picked a stop in a neighborhood that was deadly quiet during the day, as if every resident was in a cryogenic deep freeze beneath the city. It would have spooked me even if I were not being stalked. In a the dirty window of a storefront evangelical church, I saw him clearly, and he was moving faster now and closing, and holding the tube at his side exactly as if it were a weapon. Now. I flicked the switch on the hornet, and felt the vibration of its motors spinning up a moment before I felt the wind of the rotors against my palm. At the same time I took off running. The weight of the bag combined with my total exhaustion made my legs bend deeply, almost buckle, my thighs suddenly refusing to carry my weight at a running pace. I went down on one knee and then got up to my feet again, clutching the shopping bag tightly against my chest to make running easier. Then I heard it. The sound that came from behind me was like a sheet of paper being torn in two, followed by a yowl. I looked back to see the man in the green coat thrashing on the sidewalk, and the drone a smoking pile of plastic next to him, tiny flames flickering amid its barbs. I doubled back and ran past him, straight down the steps and into the metro again. Swiping my wrist, I heard the train beginning to leave and managed to jam my arm between the doors and force them open. Safe in the seat, all I could think about was getting back to Enrique¡¯s. By the time I had exited the train, I didn¡¯t even remember riding on the metro. I was a ghost or an automaton. I found the apartment building, rang the bell, and waited as someone buzzed me in. I climbed the stairs and found the door open, which sent a cold feeling down my spine. Were they here? Corporate security? Perhaps the shaven-headed guy was only there to watch my movements. Perhaps this was where the real killers awaited me. If so, it made little difference whether I stepped forward or retreated down the stairs. But when I stepped through the door into the apartment, there were no corporate security officers, no hired assassins, no one but Enrique and Gloss standing at the bar. The laptop was open showing the server map, with the White Tree server that had dumped my connection in the center of the screen. Gloss held a mug of tea, as always, its woody scent everywhere. Enrique held a glass, not of wine or whiskey but of seltzer water. He looked grave. ¡°You¡¯re bleeding,¡± he said and pinched his earlobe. I glanced to my side, and saw that this time the blood had dripped onto my new blazer, leaving a red stain with a blackened ring around it. They knew.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Mean Red Spider
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez very high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 5
Type Shooter
Subtype Red; indexer
Subroutines 3: bleeds a runner, can be lethal even to healthy, well-rested runners; hides sensitive data from intruders; resistant to most runner tricks, except for icebreakers tuned to shooter ice
Chapter 11: Dirty Laundry Chapter 11. Dirty Laundry ¡°What the hell were you thinking?¡± Enrique said when I came in the door. He and Gloss stood at the counter, looking at the screen of the laptop I had used earlier. It showed a White Tree server address. They knew that I had used their equipment to make that unauthorized run this morning. Fine. ¡°You know what?¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m tired of all this secrecy.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not keeping secrets from you, Rawls, except those that I have to keep for your protection.¡± ¡°Yes, you are. You hid information about the water strider. And I bet you know more about what happened to Freya than you¡¯re telling me.¡± Enrique set his glass of seltzer down on the counter with his chrome hand. He did so carefully, as if working hard to control his anger. ¡°Is that what you think is going on?¡± he said in a deadly quiet voice. I was pissed and felt energetic. My conversations with Kent and Linney had me feeling like I was really a runner. I could handle this. ¡°Run this server, it¡¯ll be easy,¡± I said, imitating the serious way Enrique spoke. ¡°Whoops, that ice was stronger than we thought and you almost died.¡± ¡°You are intentionally misunderstanding what I am doing for you.¡± Enrique¡¯s voice rose, and its edge was sharp. ¡°What about what I¡¯m doing for you? I¡¯m the one who can get hurt.¡± Enrique held a hand in the air as if to correct me, and then he paused, turned it palm up. ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± he said. ¡°You were the one in danger.¡± Suddenly I felt deflated and ashamed. Feeling rushed through my body. All I had wanted was for him to acknowledge that. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said. ¡°I shouldn¡¯t have made that run.¡± Enrique grunted. ¡°That¡¯s an understatement. Did you set up a proxy?¡± I didn¡¯t even know how to do that. ¡°No.¡± ¡°So there¡¯s no telling what kind of trouble you¡¯ve drawn to us.¡± I didn¡¯t answer. It didn¡¯t seem to be a question. ¡°If you¡¯re going to act like that, you can¡¯t be part of my crew,¡± Enrique said, but he said it with warmth, as if kicking me out would be for my own good. Gloss looked at me and settled onto a bar stool. His tea, cradled in his big hands, created steam that washed over his face. He looked less sleepy, more attentive. He looked like all this emotion was too much for him and he was waiting for things to settle down. Enrique walked out into the middle of the living room, his hands on his hips. ¡°Hell,¡± he said. ¡°I was starting to like this place.¡± The way he was talking scared me. ¡°Do you mean you have to move?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure if I can stay here,¡± he said, ¡°not if White Tree knows that a runner operating from my home is trying to breach their servers.¡± Enrique still looked angry. His skin was redder and his gaze had an intensity I had never seen before. ¡°Boss,¡± Gloss broke in, ¡°look at it another way. The White Tree ice did its job. When they look at the logs, they¡¯re going to see that that run was clearly the work of an amateur.¡± The word ¡°amateur¡± stung. But it felt like my only hope for staying with these two was if Enrique agreed with Gloss. Enrique paced some more, his arms crossed in front of his body, his fingers stroking the stubble on his chin. ¡°There¡¯s some truth to that,¡± he said. ¡°I have a contact at White Tree. She likes me, believe it or not, because as much trouble as I¡¯ve caused her in the past, I haven¡¯t done anything serious with White Tree in years. Whereas I have siphoned the accounts of White Tree¡¯s main competitor, FUTUR Design, to the tune of tens of millions.¡± ¡°White Tree and FUTUR Design are competitors?¡± ¡°They¡¯re at war with each other,¡± Gloss said. Enrique nodded, tilting his hand back and forth, as if suggesting the possibility of quibbling with that description but deciding against it. ¡°They spent ten years and cashed out billions in assets in litigation over who had the right to buy the start-up that created Carthage as we know it.¡± ¡°More than a few people died,¡± Gloss added. ¡°Mostly deniable contractors.¡± ¡°Corporate paramilitaries,¡± Enrique clarified. I jumped in. ¡°I thought they were in different industries. White Tree is in pharmaceuticals and agriculture. FUTUR Design is in AI and architecture.¡± I was relieved that the discussion seemed to have moved beyond my screw-up and into corporate politics, a subject I may have found dull on any other occasion, but which I was very, very interested in at the moment. ¡°They¡¯re in the same industry,¡± Enrique said. ¡°And that industry is automation.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t follow.¡± ¡°FUTUR wants to use simulants to automate human workers out of existence so that the only humans with any relevance are the owners, executives, and perhaps a select group of high-level professionals. In their world, the poor are contained to slums. White Tree is focused on making humans more compliant through medicine.¡± ¡°So,¡± I said, thoroughly enjoying the game we seemed to be playing, ¡°FUTUR turns machines into people and White Tree turns people into machines.¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s fair.¡± Enrique seemed amused. He had taken a bottle of wine down from the cabinet and was working on it with a corkscrew. ¡°I¡¯m still annoyed with you, young son,¡± he said as he opened the wine. ¡°But Gloss¡¯s suggestion is well-taken. I have earned a little latitude with White Tree. I¡¯ll use it to ask them to overlook your attempt at intrusion this morning.¡± ¡°Blame it on me,¡± I said. ¡°Oh, I will.¡± ¡°I mean, tell them you took me in, I borrowed your console without your knowledge, and you¡¯ve kicked me out.¡± ¡°That¡¯s no good. If they find out you¡¯re still with me, then¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯ll leave for real, then,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m ready.¡± Stolen novel; please report. Gloss sat up straight. ¡°You don¡¯t know what you¡¯re saying. You¡¯re not ready.¡± Enrique sipped his wine, and then opened a bottle of seltzer with a soft hiss and soaked a cloth with it. He put it in my hand and suggested I clean my blazer with it. ¡°Gloss is right. You need to stay here for now.¡± ¡°I take it you¡¯ve had some time to think about what we talked about last night,¡± Gloss said. I nodded as I removed my blazer and blotted at the bloodstain. ¡°I want to stay,¡± I said. Enrique poured me a glass of wine. When I took it, he clinked mine with his. ¡°From now on, you don¡¯t make a run unless Gloss or me authorizes it. Got it?¡± Even as I sipped the delicious and adult-tasting wine, I was annoyed. I wanted more independence. I wanted him to recognize me as a runner like Gloss or Linney. I wanted to show him what I could do. Part of me wanted to say whatever it took for him to drop the subject, then later find a way to do what I wanted anyway, the way me and Freya used to skip school and go down to the river or break into the VRcade. But I couldn¡¯t lie to Enrique. He¡¯d risked something to take me in, and I¡¯d brought him trouble. I settled on saying, ¡°I¡¯ll do my best.¡± Enrique approached me as if he wanted to lay his heavy chrome hand on my shoulder but thought better of it. That itself felt like a gesture of respect. ¡°You want to do it on your own,¡± he said. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°I respect that. You¡¯ll get your chance. Sooner than you might think. For now, I have a target for you.¡± ¡°White Tree?¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid not. Our operating account is running low. This is strictly a run to dig up some dirty corporate laundry and make some money in preparation for a later job I¡¯m putting together. I want you and Gloss to collaborate on a run against FUTUR Design.¡± The thought of working with Gloss cheered me up. I felt like I had so much to learn from him. ¡°What about you?¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to sweet talk the good people at White Tree.¡± ¡°Is that safe?¡± ¡°It¡¯s safer than some things, such as pretending that you didn¡¯t try to breach one of their remote servers from a connection originating in this condo.¡± Thinking back to my earlier lesson about how corps push active projects into their remote servers, I felt ashamed again. ¡°I see your point. Hey, there¡¯s one more thing. In the spirit of full disclosure.¡± I regretted saying that¡ªI immediately felt a pang of conscience for not telling him about my eyes. Enrique looked more concerned than angry now. He reminded me of my father at times when life was beating him down. ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± Enrique said. ¡°Someone was following me today. Like, right away.¡± ¡°Describe him.¡± ¡°Shaved head, long green coat, sunglasses. Kent had helped me buy a self-defense drone. I took him down with it.¡± Enrique turned around and looked at Gloss. Gloss shrugged. ¡°This began this morning?¡± Enrique said. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°It¡¯s likely too soon to be White Tree responding to the intrusion attempt,¡± Gloss said. Enrique was nodding his head. ¡°It also sounds unlikely that someone was trying to grab or kill you. Well, something to keep an eye on. Stay sharp.¡± Then he finished his glass of wine and headed for the door. ¡°You¡¯re leaving now?¡± I said. ¡°Best time to reach my contact is this evening. I may be away for a few days. I have some other business elsewhere. Gloss is in charge. Do what he says. You¡¯ll be all right.¡± I felt better now. Growing up, whenever I made a mistake, Dad would either be angry for hours or completely sullen. I guess I couldn¡¯t blame him. After Mom left when I was around two, Dad felt like it was me and him versus everyone else in the world, and he relied on me to be more grown-up than I was. And Dad had his share of troubles. His hometown had been drowned, from the bottom of Main Street to the church steeple, in a massive storm that raged unimpeded following the strip mining of the mountain above the town. Dad never missed an opportunity to remind me that the world wanted us dead. Implicit in this reminder: there was no time to be a kid. I needed to be more grown-up than it was possible to be. But he couldn¡¯t handle it when I failed. Enrique was different. Sure, we¡¯d had a fight, but it felt like a good fight. I felt more like I could trust him now that he had acknowledged that I was the one who could get hurt here. I watched him put on a tie and use one of those nanotech things that look like caterpillars to clean his suit. Then, with a wave of his hand, he went through the door. I turned to Gloss. ¡°Do you think we can take down this FUTUR Design target tonight?¡± Gloss laughed. ¡°This is going to be more involved than the runs you¡¯ve made so far. Those took no preparation. This one will.¡± ¡°Where do we start?¡± Gloss slid the laptop over to me, and struck a few keys. The network map shifted to feature a different server. Glowing deep purple, this server swirled, pulsed, and vibrated on the virtual representation of the net. It was thicker and denser than anything I had seen before. ¡°We¡¯re going to take a look at FUTUR Design¡¯s Restoration Center. This is where they bring simulants online.¡± ¡°Restoration makes it sound like they¡¯re bringing simulants back from the dead.¡± ¡°That¡¯s one way of thinking about it. FUTUR Design considers all of simulant consciousness to be tied together in one braid of processes, so each time a simulant comes online, it¡¯s not a new being but the restoration of a single thread.¡± ¡°They¡¯re into self-mythologizing,¡± I said. ¡°All corps are. It¡¯s one of the ways that they maintain the loyalty of their customers and shareholders.¡± We moved to the couch together to talk it out. Gloss gave me the laptop and taught me some advanced commands to use with the network map, so that I could see the server up close and far away, the shapes of the things that surrounded it and the things it contained, as well as all of the things it was connected to. ¡°It looks like there¡¯s more than one piece of ice on this server.¡± ¡°There are three,¡± Gloss said. ¡°And none of them have ever been rezzed before, or at least not while we were looking, which means we don¡¯t know what they are.¡± I saw what Gloss was describing. There were three rings around the server, their edges indistinct and overlapping. I couldn¡¯t tell anything about what kind of power those rings hid. ¡°Simulants?¡± I said. ¡°Could be. But they could also be non-simulant ice, either designed in-house or licensed from another corp.¡± ¡°But not White Tree¡¯s red ice, I¡¯m guessing.¡± I wanted to sound smart and knowledgeable I looked over at Gloss to see his reaction. But his brow was creased. ¡°Why not?¡± he said. ¡°Didn¡¯t you say that FUTUR Design and White Tree were at war with each other?¡± ¡°Sure, but that doesn¡¯t stop business. They still buy and sell from each other all the time. Each of them are so enormous that they almost have to.¡± ¡°What you¡¯re saying is that we need to expect anything from the ice.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right. And there¡¯s another thing, too. They¡¯ve installed a defensive upgrade in this server.¡± ¡°What does that mean?¡± ¡°It means something to amplify the power of the ice, but we don¡¯t know what.¡± I was aware that my hands had gone cold and sweat was forming at the waistband of my pants. ¡°Relax,¡± Gloss said. ¡°I¡¯ll be jacking in with you. We¡¯ll do this together. And we have a few days to get ready. When we make the run, we¡¯ll be well-rested and prepared. It¡¯ll be fun. You¡¯ll see.¡± ¡°Why do I get the feeling you¡¯re trying to convince me of something?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not, little bro. There¡¯s always danger. There¡¯s always the possibility of permanent trauma or even death. But it¡¯s not likely, and it¡¯s not like any of us knows how else to live, am I right?¡± ¡°I guess you¡¯re right.¡± ¡°Good,¡± he said. He blinked, as if checking the time. ¡°Let¡¯s go out. See what we can learn.¡± ¡°Sounds great.¡± ¡°But you need a shower first. You look disgusting, although at least you¡¯ve stopped bleeding.¡± I laughed and got up to get ready. I hoped that we¡¯d run into Linney again. I wanted her to see me working with Gloss. Hanging from the door in my bedroom was another suit, this one less flashy and more businesslike. As I ran the shower and cleaned the dried blood from my head and neck, I thought about what it meant that I had a business suit waiting for me. I took it as a signal that I was going to do great things. Enrique and Gloss recognized my talent. That must be it. In the bedroom mirror, dressing myself after my shower, I whispered, ¡°Freya, this is all for you.¡±
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Vista Processor
Manufacturer Panopt
Legal status Legal if licensed for corporate use; otherwise illegal
Description A mesh-sheath fitted to a net port¡¯s wire
Cost 10K
Function Designed to enable Panopt executives to engage in deep surveillance of their own employees, the Vista Processors is spyware that allows for greater data transfer. In other words, your boss knows what kind of porn you watch. Runners have repurposed the Vista to increase the amount of corporate secrets they can steal with each run.
Chapter 12: Futureproofing Chapter 12. Futureproofing ¡°What is this place?¡± I asked Gloss as we walked into the transparent atrium. At least one answer was obvious: we were moving through the luminous core of one of the megatowers at the center of Carthage. While the city featured many types of business districts laid out in street grids¡ªfinancial, design, industrial¡ªthis was the newest, the largest, and the most Euclidean of the grids. Rather than being constructed by cranes as were the smaller downtowns of the former cities ringing this one, in the Neurocapital District the buildings had been cultured from fungal polymer within a frame of metal and geosynthetic aggregate that assembled itself just ahead of the fungus. The result was something that looked like a cross between a grievously elongated and twisted cathedral and a piece of hard candy. From within the atrium, I could hear the roar of fountains and air circulators, and could see the offices ringing the hollow core of the building going all the way up. In the center of the atrium was a single glowing filament, which generated something like sunlight while also containing the densest collection of neurosynethtic processors in the structure. In other words, the building cogitated so hard that it lit up like an Edison light bulb. Blue sky was visible though windows running all the way up the superstructure. Here and there, I could see window cleaning robots spraying down the glass, and in one place, a freerunner climbing up the window using suction-enabled gloves and boots. ¡°This is FUTUR Design¡¯s headquarters,¡± Gloss said. We were both dressed in gray suits, neither cheap nor expensive, nanotailored by drones operated from Sri Lanka in Enrique¡¯s apartment about an hour ago. My phone vibed just as we came inside: Dr. Rashida Qin wanted to share the results of her search with me. I smiled to myself, excited to have the chance to speak with the doctor again. I still had some cash and wanted to ask what else she could do for me. For now I was on the job. Our hair was all wrong for the business world, but we could have been start-up bros seeking investments. In other words, we weren¡¯t so out of place that security wouldn¡¯t let us in the building. Gaining access to higher levels than this one was going to be tricky, if that was Gloss¡¯s plan. Frustratingly, he hadn¡¯t told me. ¡°Yes, but what do they do here?¡± I said just as we stopped by the coffee kiosk, Gloss trusting me to order for him¡ªgreen tea, hojicha if you have it, well, OK, genmaicha is fine, please don¡¯t let the water boil¡ªbefore ordering an espresso for myself. After a few minutes of sipping quietly, my empty demitasse ringed with hardened crema in front of me, Gloss said, ¡°They decide when, where, and how to deploy new simulants.¡± ¡°Is this where they design simulants?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t doubt that there are some senior designers working here¡ªmostly recollectors instead of midwives¡ªbut most of the design work takes place elsewhere.¡± I wanted to know if we were going to make a run here. ¡°Is this the facility that¡ª¡± Gloss held up a hand in warning, although I knew enough to stop myself. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°What¡¯s our purpose in being here then?¡± ¡°To see something. There,¡± Gloss said, and pointed up. My eyes followed the track of his finger and I found myself looking at something perhaps a dozen levels up. He was pointing to a woman in a long white coat walking along the corridor that was open to the atrium. Something about her filled me with a sense of calm and also anxiety. She carried a translucent blue tablet in one hand, and was ringed by a golden halo of disembodied heads talking to her. My eyes focused and I could see that she was around fifty years old, that she wore her gray-blond hair in a long, loose braid¡ªthe kind of old-lady affectation that I wouldn¡¯t have guessed would go over well in the business world¡ªand that the glowing heads around her were watching her deferentially. ¡°She must be important,¡± I said, explaining what I saw to Gloss. ¡°You can see all that from here?¡± Gloss said. He appeared skeptical. ¡°I¡¯ve always had great distance vision.¡± He watched me for a moment more before leaning in to whisper. ¡°Her name is Delilah Vyskocil, FUTUR Design¡¯s chief network architect.¡± I watched as she vanished into an elevator bank. ¡°Are we going to try to talk to her?¡± ¡°We¡¯d never make it onto her schedule. No, our goal is different.¡± Just then, the elevator at the ground level of the atrium opened and Delilah Vyskocil strode out, still ringed by the glowing heads, and followed by an young blond man who was clearly her secretary. Gloss reached into his jacket pocket and unfolded a translucent blue tablet that looked identical to the one that Chief Architect Vyskocil was carrying. ¡°Here,¡± he said, handing me the tablet. Then he told me what he wanted me to do. I stood, the tablet in my hands, as I approached her. Up close, I could see that her long white jacket was inlaid with a labyrinth of gold thread, almost like circuitry. I started to speak as I was about five feet away from her. ¡°Excuse me, ma¡¯am?¡± She looked up at me and tilted her head, evaluating me in such a way that I felt like she saw all the way through me. The disembodied heads floating around her turned and watched me as well. They were almost all men, middle-aged, with regrettable hair and servile, self-satisfied faces. For a moment her expression softened, and was full of warmth. It felt like she wanted to talk to me. Then she shivered and a cold, businesslike expression came over her. ¡°Speak to my secretary, young man,¡± she said. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Her secretary stepped forward, interposing himself between me and the chief architect. He was built like a defensive lineman but he carried himself like a lawyer more than a security guard. He held a bulkier tablet with thick, trapezoidal rubber corners that made it look like it was built to survive a warzone. ¡°What is your name and company, sir?¡± he said. Behind the secretary I saw Delilah Vyskocil approach the coffee kiosk, set her blue tablet down, and accept a cup of coffee, which she held below her mouth. She breathed deeply of it, closing her eyes while I gave her secretary a story. When I looked back, the chief architect was sipping her coffee and her tablet, which had been sitting on the marble counter of the coffee kiosk, was gone. I noticed Gloss already walking out of the atrium. I held out the blue tablet to the secretary. ¡°Your boss dropped this,¡± I said. The secretary looked confused, and looked at his boss, who had finished her coffee and was looking around for her tablet on the counter, becoming quickly frustrated. ¡°Thanks,¡± the secretary whispered, and accepted the tablet from me. I walked out of the atrium and found Gloss standing on the street, carrying a thin, rectangular foil pouch the size and shape of the chief architect¡¯s tablet. ¡°Well done, little bro,¡± he said. ¡°Let¡¯s go take a look at this.¡± We started walking toward the metro. ¡°Won¡¯t it have some kind of locator? Most tablets do.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± he said. ¡°But we¡¯re going to keep it as secure as we can. Most signal traffic can¡¯t get through this mesh, and I have us a suite at the Hotel Faraday.¡± ¡°Most signal traffic.¡± Gloss smiled. ¡°You¡¯re catching on quick. If there¡¯s a neutrino-based locator installed in the tablet, we¡¯re in trouble, but I¡¯m not expecting that level of security for this. The information stored on it is likely to be not especially sensitive.¡± ¡°Then what¡¯s the point of stealing it?¡± ¡°You¡¯ll see.¡± ### The Hotel Faraday was the nicest place I¡¯d ever been inside. For one, it was quiet, with lamps that glowed like deep sea creatures. ¡°Bio-lights,¡± Gloss said. ¡°They¡¯re incapable of carrying signal traffic.¡± The windows were inoperable and covered in a fine silver-colored mesh. I figured there was metal mesh behind the walls as well. The entire building, and also each room within, was a cage built to prevent signals from entering or exiting. It was among the most private spaces available in the city. There were no net ports in the walls, no wireless connections available. Being inside the room felt quiet in a way that nothing else ever had. Gloss seemed uneasy as he set the foil pouch on the queen bed. ¡°You OK?¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s my implants. I feel like I can¡¯t hear anything, can¡¯t smell anything. Make sense?¡± ¡°I guess.¡± ¡°Once you¡¯re significantly more modded, you¡¯ll understand.¡± Gloss unzipped the pouch and removed the tablet. It was still blue, but duller now, having powered down at some point since he¡¯d lifted it. ¡°Careful,¡± he said, and passed it to me. ¡°Why?¡± I was afraid to touch the thing, as if it might detonate. Maybe it was made from an explosive polymer. I¡¯d seen that on stream before. ¡°It¡¯s iced, but not with anything serious. Let¡¯s have a look.¡± Gloss gestured at the bag we¡¯d picked up from the front desk. I opened the bag and found my console and laptop within. Funny¡ªI hadn¡¯t taken them out of the apartment today. ¡°Linney brought them over for us.¡± My heart skipped a beat¡ªI felt like I had missed a chance to speak with her. Anyway, I pulled the console and laptop and cables out of the bag, connected them together and to myself, and powered them on. I made sure that the icebreaker that Linney had coded for me was slotted and initialized. Then I threw Gloss another cable and he connected it to his own net port, on the side of his head. I held the last end of the cable in my hand. I looked through the thin zip-case of adapters that I found in the bag and located one that appeared to match the port on the tablet. Screwing the adapter onto the cable, I looked at Gloss. ¡°Ready?¡± Gloss nodded. I connected the cable to the tablet and powered the tablet on. The sensation was not of driving down a midnight highway but of falling into a hole. We were in a quiet place, almost totally dark, me and Gloss, me appearing as an arrowhead and Gloss appearing like a slowly spinning top. Before us was a compact, glowing cube, perhaps a representation of everything on the tablet. Around it, already in detail, was a simple wall. It was practically transparent, and felt much less complicated to the touch than the wall built by the child simulant Ludo. I called my icebreaker and directed it to the wall. The sensation of current and processing was noticeable but much smoother than I had felt before. Something liquid, something like flowing water, came from my arrowhead and ate right through the wall. ¡°A complexity-zero ice, tradename Blank,¡± Gloss said. Although ¡°said¡± wasn¡¯t quite right. It was more like the words came to me as a vibration. ¡°It¡¯s harmless.¡± We drifted inside. I felt the increasingly-familiar sensation of data rushing over me, names and images, something familiar and quite frightening, as if a picture of a toy I had loved and lost when a long time ago in childhood¡ª And then we were sitting in the suite in Hotel Faraday again. I disconnected us and looked at the laptop. It told me that it had copied everything that was on the tablet. Gloss powered it down, disconnected us, and zipped the tablet into the foil pouch. ¡°We¡¯ll stick this in a vent on the BRUTE,¡± he said, ¡°send it to the Shenandoah.¡± As I was coiling the cables, Gloss looked at the laptop. ¡°Got it,¡± he said. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± ¡°The name of the person in charge of the server we¡¯re targeting. Her name is Bell Wolf.¡± ¡°That sounds like a stream character.¡± Gloss neither seemed to agree nor disagree. ¡°She¡¯s real. Whether she¡¯s human or a simulant, that I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Really?¡± ¡°FUTUR will often put an autonomous simulant in charge of their servers. They¡¯re reliable and incredibly dangerous. In some ways more dangerous than simulant ice. Autonomous simulants can be as creative as some humans but are less distractable and better at noticing patterns in information.¡± ¡°Patterns such as an intrusion attempt that is disguised to look like ordinary net traffic.¡± ¡°You got it.¡± ¡°So what do we do?¡± ¡°We need to find out everything there is to know about Bell Wolf. She¡¯s going to be the one who gets the call when we run the server.¡± I liked the sense of camaraderie and deep preparation going into this run. It felt more professional and less chaotic than my earlier forays into breaching servers. But something about this bothered me. ¡°Enrique said that this was a run to make some money. All this preparation makes me feel like what we are doing is more significant than that.¡± Gloss was close to finished packing up our equipment. ¡°We paid money for the name of a server that has a high density of saleable information. Then we noticed that the server is well-protected. It makes sense to invest money into the job. That¡¯s how you futureproof it.¡± ¡°Futureproof?¡± ¡°Yeah. Things change quickly at the megacorps. Old leaders out, new leaders in. Old ice trashed, new ice installed. You need detailed, up-to-the-second intelligence before you run or you could be facing lethal feedback.¡± I stopped winding cables so that he would know I was serious about this. ¡°There¡¯s nothing you¡¯re not telling me?¡± I said. He paused what he was doing, too. ¡°If there¡¯s something you don¡¯t know, I don¡¯t know it either.¡± ¡°Fair.¡± I wanted to take another look at the data from the tablet when I had some time alone, and to go visit Dr. Qin. But Gloss was working me hard. I didn¡¯t know when I¡¯d ever have a moment for my own projects. As we left the hotel for the BRUTE station to dispose of the tablet, I thought about what kind of person I imagined Bell Wolf to be. Young, serious, aggressive, all things that came to mind based on her name. I didn¡¯t know her, but I was excited to do battle with her. It felt like a game to me. Perhaps that was a dangerous way to see it. The ultrablue sky above, free of clouds, almost free of jet contrails, told me that I lived in a new world now, where I had the a chance to make something of myself.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Bandwidth Monitor
Manufacturer Panopt
Cost to rez Low
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 2
Type Puzzle
Subtype Toll
Subroutines 1: stops runs from consuming more than low amounts of power
Chapter 13: Sysop Chapter 13: Sysop Gloss and I made our way by metro to the public library. A squarish Brutalist building, all unfinished concrete with soot stains in the tiny craters, it was one of many branches all over Carthage. This was where to go if you wanted access to everything and wanted to be nearly-anonymous while you used that access. Inside was dark and rich with humanity. People hunched at rows of glowing terminals, connected by VR goggles and net ports and old-fashioned screens with an air gap between eyeball and image. Others sat at heavy, scarred century-old oak tables in small groups under banker¡¯s lamps, reading paper books or tablets. The people at the tables could have been college students or street people or workers between shifts who couldn¡¯t afford to rent a nap pod. There were families with young children playing with blocks. There were middle-aged people lining up for the seed catalog, the tool catalog. They came from all races and genders, all ages, modded and virgin. There was traffic in and out of the simulation rooms on the upper levels. The library seemed immense. Over it all was a sense of enforced quiet, a shared understanding that if people did not respect the need for quiet, corporate enforcers would arrive and the whole thing would be shut down, sold off, and forever lost. The library was one of the only spaces in Carthage in which I¡¯d seen such a mixture of people¡ªsome desperate, some hanging on, some with promising financial futures. Gloss and I logged into adjoining terminals with fake credentials that Gloss had produced from a rubber wallet full of such things: ID cards and chips and bar codes and QR codes and Qube codes and Hyperqube codes projected by tiny holographic emitters. A whole city of people that he could be. Or I could be. We asked what the net knew about Bell Wolf. Bell Wolf lived in Chicago and worked as a sysop in an infamous FUTUR Design tower called Niflheim, where the corp designed its most twisted security software, the kind not meant to kill but meant to inflict permanent trauma, the kind that had hurt Linney. In fact, the server we were targeting was located inside Niflheim. ¡°I didn¡¯t think that it was,¡± Gloss said. He sounded worried. ¡°Maybe they proxied it?¡± ¡°Must have,¡± he admitted. ¡°Niflheim changes the game. Typically, for something like that, we want to have an agent in meatspace.¡± ¡°Is that possible?¡± ¡°On our timeline? No. The window for lifting this data is closing in a couple of days. I don¡¯t have any current contacts in Chicago, not any I trust. We¡¯re going to do the whole thing remote.¡± ¡°What does that mean for us?¡± ¡°It means that we can only attack their defenses on the net. There¡¯s no one to sneak inside and pull the emergency shutoff lever for us.¡± ¡°Is that standard practice?¡± I said. ¡°Having someone on the inside?¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t hurt,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Unless the insider gets caught. Then it hurts a whole lot. You know, that¡¯s why White Tree designed their mean red spider. No other ice is as good at noticing inside jobs. But I¡¯m getting off the subject. What else did you learn about our sysop?¡± I showed Gloss what was on my screen. ¡°Bell Wolf grew up here, in Carthage, and moved to Chicago after college. She¡¯s been assigned to Niflheim her whole career.¡± ¡°That story screams ¡®simulant¡¯ to me. Find out anything else?¡± ¡°In college, she was president of her university¡¯s infosec club.¡± ¡°Shocking.¡± ¡°But look¡ªshe has a criminal record dating to her last year in college and the two years after. Shoplifting, stim possession, conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Her DNA is on the Registry.¡± ¡°The Registry is a permanent sanction,¡± Gloss said. I pointed to a field that looked the name of a prison. ¡°She did time, too.¡± Gloss leaned over, the screen washing his face in blue light. ¡°Now that is weird. Simulants don¡¯t usually get convicted of crimes, and if they do, their organs get recycled. So maybe she¡¯s biological after all. Why would FUTUR Design hire someone with that record to run security for them?¡± ¡°Because it takes a criminal to know a criminal?¡± Gloss nodded as if to an inaudible beat. ¡°You have a point, little bro,¡± he said. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. ¡°Let¡¯s give her something familiar, then, to sink her teeth into.¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°Not here.¡± We rode the metro away from the library and an hour later arrived in a quiet old neighborhood in Winston, one of the far districts of the city, an old tobacco town. Gloss let us into a red brick townhouse that smelled pleasant and was furnished with furniture, groceries, and kitchenware. ¡°It¡¯s a step up from that crash space, huh?¡± he said. ¡°Yeah.¡± We sketched out the plan at the kitchen table. ¡°Let¡¯s attack the server head on, armed-robbery style,¡± Gloss said. ¡°I¡¯ll come in hot, not at all trying to conceal what I¡¯m doing. That should get her attention.¡± ¡°What do you think she¡¯ll do?¡± ¡°Rez all her defenses and focus on me. Meanwhile, you try to sneak in. You will have to deal with ice, too, but simulants have a limited attention span.¡± Suddenly there was a knock at the door. ¡°Right on time,¡± Gloss said. He stood and went to the front, and then opened the door to admit two women: Linney, and a second, much taller woman, taller even than Gloss. This woman moved with power and determination. She was an athlete. Behind them, on the street, a battered white van pulled away. ¡°Rawls, this is Wren,¡± Gloss said, suddenly looking sheepish. ¡°Nice to meet you,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve heard about you.¡± ¡°You have?¡± she spoke with a cracked, raspy voice and looked at Gloss, who looked away. ¡°Hi Linney,¡± I said. She gave me a wave and then lifted two large duffels onto the kitchen table. She and I worked together to unpack the gear inside while Gloss and Wren spoke quietly to each other in the corner of the kitchen over a warming tea kettle.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Some of the gear was familiar, some unfamiliar. There were cables of all kinds, small monitors, and biological sensors. There were also three metal cases, warm to the touch and faintly vibrating under my fingertips, that I took to be icebreakers with internal power supplies. ¡°Did you get this from Gerty?¡± Gloss said, gesturing toward the street where I had seen the white van. Wren nodded. ¡°She delivers.¡± ¡°Are we running right now?¡± I said, feeling the excitement in the room. Gloss and Wren and Linney all looked at each other. ¡°Why not?¡± Gloss said. ¡°Seems like we¡¯re not ready,¡± I said. ¡°Like I said, man, our window closes in a couple of days. The data we want is moving to deep storage and the buyer wants it now. We¡¯re likely going to be facing simulant ice. I don¡¯t want to spend hours and hours clicking through simulant ice and wake up to find our window has closed.¡± ¡°So we jack in together?¡± ¡°The boy¡¯s got it,¡± Wren said. She crossed her muscular arms over her chest. They ran with animated mathematical tattoos, Gaussian curves as I learned about in school. ¡°Me and Linney will be here to monitor your vitals and your local grid.¡± While Wren hooked up multimeters to the equipment, Gloss and I went upstairs and put fresh bedsheets on the mattresses. It was evening and I was hungry, but I knew better than to eat a full meal before jacking in. When we got the all-clear from downstairs we carried the equipment up. The house came equipped with a heavy-duty data port, a thick rubber hose terminating in a gleaming brass fitting. Gloss connected that to a console, and then connected each of the icebreakers to it. ¡°These are yours?¡± I said. ¡°Yeah. But you¡¯ll still have your own. You¡¯ll need it to slide through the innermost ice, assuming I can draw the attention of the others.¡± ¡°You¡¯re assuming my breaker will be the correct type for the inner ice.¡± ¡°FUTUR Design runs platform ice on the inside of their servers, almost exclusively,¡± Gloss said. He and I removed our shirts and stretched out on the twin beds. We drew the cables to our net ports. Linney and Wren sat on arm chairs in the bedroom. Overhead, a fan turned slowly. Gloss offered a fist bump. ¡°See you at the bottom of the server, little bro,¡± he said. I brought my knuckles to his, then twisted the cable into my port. That familiar dark highway enveloped me, but with changes. I felt distant from myself. I could feel the lag between my thoughts and my arrowhead avatar¡¯s movements. I could also feel the density and the gravity of the server. The data spires ahead of me were thick with information, tall and ominous. They practically vibrated with malevolent energy and were triple-ringed with unrezzed defenses. These had the familiar fuzzy appearance of low-hanging purple mist. Next to me I saw Gloss¡¯s avatar, as robust as he was in real life, blocky and aquatic, almost like a polygonal killer whale. He moved alongside me at first and then pulled ahead. Spines began to protrude from Gloss even before the mist ahead coalesced. The spines lifted off the body of the whale and arrayed themselves around it, pointed at the heart of the server. Gloss¡¯s breakers. The outer ring of mist was changing, becoming denser at the place where Gloss¡¯s current path was about to take him. It looked human, becoming a tall and well-built man with a long, hunting harpoon, perfectly tailored to kill whales. Around the man the mist formed a labyrinth enclosing the rest of the server. I knew what I was going to do. Meanwhile, I could feel the transfer of data and processing power as Gloss hijacked the rezzing process, stealing current that had been meant for the ice for our own purposes. Gloss¡¯s breakers grew brighter, and then crashed into the labyrinth, the spines piercing the walls, smashing through layer after layer, as the hunter with his spear turned slowly, carefully, and began accelerating toward Gloss. Suddenly the ice¡¯s spear became a hundred spears, all streaming toward my companion. I started to thread my way through the labyrinth on the other, undisturbed side. I moved carefully, reminding myself not to rush, but to take as much time as I needed. The success of this run depended on the server¡¯s defenses focusing on Gloss while I made it through. I didn¡¯t have a breaker for shooter ice, which meant I had to use the limited attention-span common to simulants. Gloss was almost through the labyrinth when the man with the harpoon caught up with him. Gloss, snapping around with tremendous force, brought all his breakers to bear on the man, sending them to perforate him. Some of the spines snapped and faded into the darkness of the server but enough of them connected. The hunter was caught, impaled and immobilized, and hung suspended there, where he would wait until the system reset him. As Gloss crashed through the labyrinth, the middle layer of ice rezzed, its sharpness and density terrifying. My heart dropped. It was the same kind of ice, with another labyrinth and another hunter at the center of it. ¡°Hell,¡± I heard Gloss vocalize over some channel, but whether it was in netspace, meatspace, or the local wired connection that ran between us, I didn¡¯t know. Gloss¡¯s whale, glowing dimmer than it had been, gained speed again and rushed the labyrinth. I could feel how taxing this was. Gloss was tired, and the spines of his breakers were less numerous and moved less vigorously. They managed to break through the walls, bringing Gloss closer and closer to the data spires. Meanwhile, I had made it through the first labyrinth and crossed the gap to the second. I focused on my task, using the maze-solving skills I had had all my life to feel my way through. The sense that I had no real idea how much time was passing in the real world scared me. I was halfway through that labyrinth when I noticed that Gloss and the second hunter were locked in a brutal struggle. Gloss¡¯s spiny breakers were scratching and digging into the hunter, but the hunter¡¯s spear had punctured Gloss¡¯s killer whale avatar, causing it to thrash and lose momentum. Still, Gloss seemed to be getting the better of the hunter, who was also slowing and becoming weaker, hauling on the cord attached to its harpoon as Gloss¡¯s spines carved and tunneled through him. Gloss and I made it through the second labyrinth at about the same time, the floating body of the second hunter trailing behind Gloss on the cord attached to the harpoon that was sticking out of the killer whale. The inner ring rezzed now, and with it, something behind it, at the center of the server. The inner ring was, simply, Ludo, playing with the same blocks that comprised his wall. For a moment I wondered if the child would remember me before realizing that this was likely a separate copy of Ludo. Gloss crashed into the wall but couldn¡¯t break through. Meanwhile, I felt my icebreaker warm and extend from me, Hungry Creek¡¯s stream of water dissolving the blocks of the wall far from the place where Ludo was paying attention. As Ludo started to build the wall thicker and thicker where Gloss was thrashing, using the last of his force to try to dislodge the blocks in a futile effort to get through, I worked my way through the hole I had made¡ª And found myself face to face with a woman, chrome-skinned and hairless, who stood in the server before me. Smaller than any ice I had seen, she drew my attention in a way that I couldn¡¯t control. I found myself unable to look away from her, unable to reach anything but her. Somehow, the data spires of the city receded from me, moving away at a terrifying speed as I neared the woman. The closer I came to her, the farther I moved from my goal. She and I floated next to each other for a long moment. Then I sat up on the mattress, soaked in sweat, clawing at the net port. I looked over at Gloss, who was still under, maybe still jacked in. Wren and Linney stood over him, each of them holding a monitor and looking down with concern in their eyes. ¡°Is he OK?¡± I said. Wren said nothing. Linney looked up at me. ¡°We don¡¯t know yet.¡± I could smell burnt plastic and hot, greasy metal. My feet felt warm, and it took a moment for me to realize that they felt that way because they were the closest part of me to the three metal cases of Gloss¡¯s icebreakers, which were radiating heat from where they sat on the floor. Gloss¡¯s eyes were still closed.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Starbuck 1.0
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez medium-high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 5
Type shooter
Subtype simulant; rigshooter; gray
Subroutines trashes multiple pieces of software, including icebreakers; attempts to cause brain injury
Chapter 14: Emergency Shutdown Chapter 14. Emergency Shutdown I couldn¡¯t remain in the same room with Gloss while he was still under. I disconnected the last of the cables from my body and stood shakily. Grabbing a towel from the bathroom, I wiped myself off, then put my face under the faucet and sipped some water. I remained in there for a long time, my breathing ragged. When I returned to the bedroom, Wren had knelt next to Gloss and was stroking his forehead. Linney held the monitor with both hands now, keeping it close to her eyes, and was muttering numbers to Wren that I didn¡¯t understand. After a long moment, Gloss opened his eyes. ¡°That was rough,¡± he said. He looked at me. ¡°Did you make it in, little bro?¡± ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°But I think I met Bell Wolf.¡± I leaned against the wall. We were all quiet. Somehow I had thought that if Gloss were running with me, we couldn¡¯t lose. But the run had been botched. I didn¡¯t know where we went from here. It turned out that it was early in the morning now, before sunrise. Outside the windows of the rented townhouse the edge of the sky was just starting to turn pale. Gloss and I had been jacked in for almost seven hours while Linney and Wren monitored meatspace. Something about that bothered me. Maybe Gloss should have taken one of them with him instead. Gloss showered for a long while, clearly shaken by the experience. While we waited for him to finish, I brewed coffee for Linney and Wren and myself. Sitting over our mugs downstairs, I asked in a hushed voice, ¡°What do you two think happened?¡± ¡°The ice tried to attack his brain,¡± Linney said, her voice trembling. ¡°The first two were Starbuck 1.0s, whale hunters. Runners can typically avoid harm from those models by drawing a high amount of power through the connection, and then moving faster and getting away. I think Gloss made it out before he got hurt. His icebreakers, on the other hand, are gone.¡± ¡°All of them?¡± Linney nodded. ¡°The first Starbuck got one of them and then the second Starbuck got the other two. We didn¡¯t expect FUTUR Design to rez two Starbucks in a row.¡± ¡°Well, kids, that¡¯s the good news,¡± came Gloss¡¯s voice from upstairs. We heard the stairs creak as he descended, dressed in a clean white t-shirt and toweling off his long hair. ¡°While I stood under the hot water contemplating our failure, I had an idea.¡± Gloss being Gloss, he refused to say anything else until he had performed the entire ceremony of boiling a kettle of water, waiting until it had cooled to some precise temperature that he measured with a metal probe, measuring the tea leaves, and waiting for them to steep. Linney and I looked at each other, too tired to guess at what Gloss was going to say, too tired to express annoyance at him for making us wait. Wren was reading a book. She looked amused. When Gloss sat down with us he said, ¡°Bell Wolf went way over budget on this one. She made FUTUR Design spend a fortune to protect that server.¡± ¡°How do you figure?¡± Wren said. ¡°Two Starbucks and a Ludo,¡± Gloss said. ¡°That¡¯s got to be at least thirteen billion in ice just to keep us out, and that¡¯s not accounting for how much cash they pumped through Bell Wolf¡¯s custom defenses, which seem to have defeated young Rawls here.¡± Gloss waited for it to sink in for the rest of us. But it didn¡¯t. I glanced at Linney, but she avoided my eyes. Wren and I looked at each other, confused. Then we looked at Linney together. She wasn¡¯t avoiding my eyes, in fact she was deep in thought. Gloss drummed his fingers on the table. ¡°I think we can get in,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m not seeing it,¡± I said. I figured if any of us had to admit they didn¡¯t know what was going on, let it be me. I was a beginner and had no ego to protect. But it wasn¡¯t Gloss who explained; it was Linney. ¡°FUTUR Design might not have the cash to activate any other defenses right now.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Gloss said. ¡°But the defenses in our target server are still up,¡± Linney continued, ¡°so we have to find the right place to breach to shut them down again.¡± ¡°We can do that?¡± I said. Wren reached over and opened up one of the laptops she had bought from the supplier she called Gerty, then turned it around. Gloss pointed to something on its screen, a network map, a connection between the target server and another one. ¡°This is FUTUR Design headquarters in the Neurocapital District. If we can breach it, we can inject an emergency shutdown command to the defenses in the Niflheim server, a priority override straight from FUTUR¡¯s nerve center: you¡¯ve spent too much money, shut it down. So in a way, it¡¯s like the plan I described earlier. We¡¯ll be our own insider.¡± ¡°Headquarters looks heavily defended,¡± I said. ¡°Well, it is,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Of course it is. But we¡¯re going to approach the headquarters run differently than the Niflheim run. Instead of coming in loud and aggressive, we¡¯ll go in very lightly, with the most minimal net presence we can assemble, the lightest rig. When a runner goes in light, the corp has to spend extra resources on targeting their defenses. Most of the time, runners won¡¯t go in light because when they do, they don¡¯t have the bandwidth to take data out of the servers. But we don¡¯t care. This time we won¡¯t come in with data exfiltration routines, because we¡¯re not even trying to steal data from headquarters. The only thing we¡¯re trying to do is to inject the shutdown command.¡± ¡°How do we go in light?¡± I felt all their eyes on me. ¡°That¡¯s where you come in,¡± Gloss said. ¡°You have the fewest implants and the most minimal rig. That means you have the best chance of getting in.¡± I looked at the clock on the laptop. ¡°If there¡¯s simulant ice on HQ and we need to get back into the target server, I¡¯m betting that we need to run again right away.¡±This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. ¡°That¡¯s correct,¡± Gloss said. Linney lay a hand on my arm. It was the best feeling in the world. It made me tingle all over. ¡°We¡¯ll be here with you. At the first sign of trouble, we¡¯ll jack you out.¡± I finished my coffee. That criminal brashness that Enrique and Gloss displayed was coming to me. ¡°Let¡¯s get me jacked in,¡± I said. Then I turned around and walked up the stairs. I swapped out the sweaty sheets for a fresh set and brought them downstairs, starting a load of laundry while Gloss and Wren huddled over the laptop, writing a new program. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, little bro, when FUTUR Design sees you, they¡¯ll think that you¡¯re no more dangerous than a mayfly. They¡¯re not going to rez anything big against you.¡± ¡°Excuse me if these assurances are starting to make me more suspicious than comfortable.¡± Gloss laughed. ¡°You¡¯re learning. Maybe I¡¯m just trying to reassure myself. But there¡¯s a reason I brought Wren. She¡¯s good at sensing shooter ice the moment before it rezzes. If they try to hit you with anything dangerous, she¡¯ll get you out of there.¡± ¡°Ready,¡± Wren said. Upstairs again, she connected the laptop to my console. ¡°This is going to feel different,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯ll be a lot faster. The key is not to tangle with the ice. Just get in, find the right access point, inject the command, and jack out.¡± Linney watched me from the armchair. With her head cocked, her smile slight and knowing, her men¡¯s broadcloth shirt open a few buttons, she looked studious and desirable. For a moment, I felt like all I wanted was for her to admire me. I held the cable near my net port on my bare chest. I felt proud. ¡°I¡¯m ready,¡± I said. Immediately it felt different. Gliding along the invisible dark highway toward the infinite skyline of FUTUR Design¡¯s HQ, I could feel the prickle of numerous ice subroutines sweeping over me. They were thin tendrils of light, connected to a honeycomb that was already rezzed. From my conversations with Gloss, I recognized the honeycomb as a Panopt Bandwidth Monitor, nothing scary at all. The tendrils reached out across the distance. But my presence was tiny, not even an arrowhead, just a point of light, the same as innumerable other points passing over and under me, legitimate corporate traffic perhaps. The ice wasn¡¯t sophisticated, didn¡¯t feel intelligent like Ludo or Starbuck or hardened like the Blank or Membrane. Instead, it felt like something watching me. I passed through the honeycomb and then out the other side, feeling only a slight drag on the amount of current my connection was drawing as I crossed the ice. The processor in my console passed me off as something that was supposed to be here, and the ice bought it. Past the first of the defenses, I reminded myself to be calm. Still, I could feel my heart beating even in netspace. My encounters with unknown ice had been so difficult, and sometimes painful, that I didn¡¯t understand how the other runners weren¡¯t perpetually terrified of the megacorps¡¯ hidden defenses. Yet, somehow they weren¡¯t, not even those who had been scarred by them. The purple mist of the inner ice shifted as it began to rez. It looked like FUTUR Design was willing to spend even more cash to keep me out. Time to test Gloss¡¯s theory. Was I about to slam face-first into something vicious or would this be something relatively modest? I found myself in a field of red-gold wildflowers before a young girl picking them. She wore a long, thick dress. Her hair was the same color as the flowers, and flowed down her back. I could smell the flowers, and theirs was the first non-artificial smell I had encountered in the net. The girl reminded me in some ways of Ludo, but in other ways she felt different. She had built no wall to stop me, for one thing. For another, her attention was different than his, more complicated. She looked up at me with an expression that was not quite playful and not quite suspicious. It seemed like she hadn¡¯t made up her mind about me. Instantly I could tell that she was intelligent, much smarter than the Bandwidth Monitor that had just let me through. ¡°Are you passing by?¡± she said. ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°Do you mean to harm me?¡± ¡°I do not.¡± ¡°Pass,¡± she said, and I continued on past her, feeling again a drag on the current drawn through my console and on its processing power, a stronger drag than I had felt from the Bandwidth Monitor but nothing serious. Suddenly I was past all the ice and drifting among the towers of FUTUR Design¡¯s headquarters. I could see traffic moving in and out of them but unlike other times that I¡¯d reached the center, or bottom, of a server, the data didn¡¯t wash over me in an overwhelming rush. Instead I followed the instructions Wren had given me, looking for traffic that was connected to ice, and connected, distantly, to Niflheim. The network map loaded into my minimal rig helped me find the tower that was monitoring the status of ice in remote servers. Once I found it, I let loose a simple instruction wrapped in an envelope of the forged authority of Chief Architect Delilah Vyskocil, a transparent bubble that hardly drew power at all, and let it float into the tower and rise to the top. Back in the townhouse, I saw Linney and Wren watching at me with satisfaction. Gloss was elsewhere. I wiped the sheen of sweat from my chest and stretched my limbs. Wren hunched over her laptop. ¡°It looks like Niflheim¡¯s ice has derezzed,¡± she said. I swapped consoles, using my regular build this time, with icebreaker and data exfiltration routines slotted. Wren looked up. ¡°Ready?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± Linney said before I could answer. She was unbuttoning her shirt and climbing into the other bed. She looked across at me. ¡°You and I are running together. Gloss needs time to recover, and he lost his breaker, anyway.¡± She said all this casually as she removed her shirt. I looked away, suddenly uncomfortable but also not sure why I was uncomfortable. Linney was plenty comfortable. I reached over to give her a fist bump. ¡°Let¡¯s go, nonlineardynamics.¡± Our knuckles touched. The familiar appearance of the target server grew larger as we approached quickly now. I was the arrowhead again, serrated and sharp. Next to me, nonlineardynamics appeared as a golden suggestion of a swallowtail butterfly made entirely of looping whorls of thread. We moved much faster than I had when I was running HQ. The defenses looked the way they had when Gloss and I had first started our run: fuzzy and fractal, misty, unaware. This time, as we approached the first layer, which I knew to be a Starbuck, the ice stayed dormant. The labyrinth never coalesced, and I could only see the faint grooves of the pathways through it in the mist. The walls themselves were insubstantial and let me through without consuming any of my resources. Likewise the second ice remained inactive. Gloss¡¯s gamble had been justified. By the time that Linney and I were through the second ice, I felt much more confident about the run. I knew the innermost was a Ludo and was susceptible to the breaker than Linney had coded for me. It didn¡¯t matter to me whether FUTUR Design rezzed it or not. Now, this was the confidence of the independent thief. I liked it. FUTUR Design left Ludo sleeping and we breezed into the center of the server. Then I saw her, approaching from the side of my vision. It was Bell Wolf, doing the thing she had done last time. From my perspective, she grew larger and larger and the rest of the server seemed to recede into the distance. She was commanding more and more of my attention. Unlike last time, I had plenty of resources. I felt my console draw power as I tried to pull away from her. She was continuing to grow in size but at a slower rate now, as if whatever was powering her had given up, slower and slower, until eventually she stopped growing within my vision and began to recede. Then she was receding and suddenly I had broken free of her. I saw Linney¡¯s butterfly approach Bell Wolf, and in a rush of current and data, Bell Wolf¡¯s avatar broke into chunky, half-derezzed blocks of junk data. What lay before us were the mysteries concealed by the server.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Trade Name Unknown (Girl in Field)
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez Very low
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 2
Type puzzle
Subtype simulant; toll
Subroutines takes money
Chapter 15: Pocket of Humanity Chapter 15: Pocket of Humanity Linney and I dove into the center of the server, immersing ourselves in data about marketing, sales, testing, proposed simulants, voices and static, human models, names, numbers flitting by, scandals, witness depositions, confidential settlements, three-dimensional matrices, my own childhood memories in there somewhere, but in a distorted perspective, as if I were looking at myself lying by the riverbank through another¡¯s eyes, everything brighter and brighter and louder and louder. Then I jacked out into the townhouse again, in the bright heat of mid-afternoon, breathing hard as if I¡¯d run a fast mile, the climate control struggling, the overhead fan whipping around quickly. By the time I was fully back in meatspace, I could hear Linney showering behind the closed door of the bathroom. I toweled off again, the towel soaked with my sweat. I made a mental note to hydrate. My body, the meat, felt more like a piece of hardware to be repaired than it had before I jacked in. Buttoning my shirt, I came downstairs to find Gloss and Wren in conversation at the kitchen table. ¡°Congrats, man,¡± Gloss said. ¡°With what we¡¯ve got, we¡¯re all set.¡± He turned his laptop around to show me. Apparently, the buyer had already accepted the data and paid up. Over the last few runs, I¡¯d spent every last dollar in my account. Now I looked at my wrist. My account held another thirty-three thousand. That was more money than my father had ever made in a year. ¡°What¡¯s next?¡± I said. ¡°Another run?¡± Laughter from Wren and Gloss ¡°No, little bro,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Now we feast.¡± ### Among the old tobacco factories in the Winston district, Wren and I found a small co-op grocery store that we could walk to from the townhouse. It was the kind of place operated and patronized by kind, old people, men with gray ponytails, women with shock-white buzz cuts, enbies favoring silvery, flowing tresses or short, gelled helmets of mercurial hair. Wren and I, only by the fact that we were young, were completely out of place here. When I volunteered to go grocery shopping, I had hoped that it would be Linney who came with me, but she wanted to make some modifications to my breaker after seeing it in action. So Wren came with. She was older than me, and taller and stronger. I liked her immediately and could see why Gloss did, too. She carried herself with the air of someone who could never be offended, who took in all of human experience as a curiosity. I guess it helped to have a thick skin when you didn¡¯t present the way a woman nicknamed ¡°Wren¡± may have been expected to present: tiny, flitting. She told me she¡¯d only been running for a couple of months. It beat working as a writer for nonprofits. She felt like she was making a difference now, politically. Gloss had given us a list and we were working through it, searching out galanga and garlic and chiles. I grabbed some oranges, each one covered in a paper wrapper printed in bold type that said: ¡°This contract limits our liability. Read it carefully.¡± The hardest thing on the list to find was a specific kind of fragrant rice, but someone at the co-op was able to locate it for us. We each carried a basket and I found the trip totally enjoyable. ¡°Do you cook?¡± I asked Wren. ¡°No time,¡± she said. ¡°I mostly eat out.¡± ¡°Can you afford that?¡± She gave me a look. After a moment, I understood. Whenever her bank balance dipped, she made a run for some fast cash. ¡°You don¡¯t strike me as someone after money in the way that Enrique Lima is,¡± I said. ¡°That guy? Hooo, I¡¯m not sure there will ever be enough for him,¡± she said. ¡°But you¡¯re right. I don¡¯t care about money beyond paying my rent and buying chili noodles around the corner.¡± I looked her over. Her clothes were secondhand and her haircut was not expensive. I could believe what she said. ¡°So why do you run?¡± I said. ¡°For the same reason that a lot of us do: to see what the corps would rather keep hidden.¡± ¡°You want to expose them?¡± I said. We were among the beer now, and Wren was pulling down a couple of six-packs one by one to hand to me. ¡°Depends,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m not always ideological, not like CheRRy or Ohm or Kent. I don¡¯t particularly care if the juicy corporate secrets get streamed on Panopt or one of the smaller feeds. In fact, I don¡¯t think that there¡¯s any good or realistic alternative to the way things are. I just want to do my part for working people. If I can make the public aware that a group of folks are getting a raw deal, I¡¯ll do it.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the weirdest thing you¡¯ve ever seen on the net?¡± ¡°You wouldn¡¯t believe me if I told you.¡± ¡°Try me.¡± She looked at me, there under the simulated daylight bulbs in the beer aisle. ¡°Some of the things I¡¯ve experienced, you¡¯re not ready for. But I¡¯ll tell you about one thing. There¡¯s a place on the net where you can dream with others, share your dreams, see theirs. I¡¯ve only found it once, it was difficult, it moves around, but it was worth it.¡± ¡°Wow.¡± She smiled, and picked up both her and my baskets, leaving me with the beer as we moved to the front of the store. This was the kind of place with old-fashioned check-out machines staffed by actual people. On a vinyl banner stretching across the front of the store, were printed the words, ¡°Good work is good for you!¡± It was a nice sentiment. ¡°What about Gloss?¡± I said. ¡°He runs because it¡¯s part of his scholarly work, right?¡± ¡°That¡¯s what he says, anyway.¡± Wren worked with me to unload the baskets. ¡°Do you take cash?¡± I asked the woman at the register. ¡°Of course, young man,¡± she said. ¡°The unbanked need to eat, too.¡± I peeled off some bills that Gloss had given me¡ªa fair amount over the total¡ªand handed it to her. ¡°Next time someone comes in and needs something, make sure they get it.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± she said neutrally and put the bills in the till. I had felt like I was doing some good, that I was being unusually generous, but maybe this was how things worked here. Maybe people here paid for each other¡¯s groceries and looked out for those who weren¡¯t connected to the net by credit chips.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. On the way back to the townhouse, walking on a street among families with young children and neighbors rocking on their porches, I brought up what she had said. ¡°So Gloss says that his running is related to his scholarship?¡± ¡°His scholarship supports his running,¡± Wren said, a smirk on her lips, visible even on the dark street. There were few streetlights, and everything was quiet, but it felt like all these people were looking out for each other. And there wasn¡¯t a garish corporate logo in sight. We had stumbled onto a strange pocket of humanity, and it felt meaningful to me. ¡°So I guess we¡¯ll see what happens when he finishes his dissertation,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s exactly right. Will he become a professor or a full-time data hijacker?¡± ¡°Or some kind of hybrid?¡± She shrugged. ¡°Who knows? He¡¯s a wonderful man,¡± she said. ¡°He thinks highly of you as well,¡± I added as we climbed the steps to the townhouse. ¡°Is that so?¡± Wren spoke softly. It sounded like she was genuinely touched. ### Over a table full of spicy, stir-fried vegetables and papaya salad and perfectly-done rice, the talk turned to sysops. ¡°What happened to Bell Wolf back there?¡± I asked Linney, who had caused the FUTUR Design sysop¡¯s avatar to derez and scatter in the net. ¡°I terminated her connection to the net and erased her login credentials,¡± Linney said. ¡°Once you¡¯re in the root of a server, it¡¯s easy to do if you can pay for the processing and electricity.¡± ¡°And you can do more, besides,¡± Gloss added. ¡°Like what?¡± I said between forkfuls of delicious broccoli, peppers, and rice. ¡°You can find out all sorts of things about the sysops,¡± Gloss said, passing a dish with his powerful hands. ¡°You can dig up embarrassing photos or the personal difficulties they hide from those they work with. The clues to those things are always hidden in their workspaces, and when you¡¯re breaching a server they¡¯re easy to find if you have the right programs running. Then you can cause trouble for them, at least enough to keep them out of your face while you complete the run.¡± ¡°But aren¡¯t the sysops working people?¡± An uncomfortable silence descended on the table. ¡°It¡¯s true,¡± Wren said, ¡°they are. But they¡¯ve chosen to use their talents to protect the corps. There are very few of us who are above causing them a little difficulty to make our work possible.¡± Linney looked uncomfortable. ¡°Last night, Rawls, all I did was mess up Bell Wolf¡¯s connection and login. I didn¡¯t go looking through her photos. I didn¡¯t embarrass her. I¡¯m sure she¡¯s back at work today.¡± I reached out a hand to her. ¡°Hey, I didn¡¯t mean to suggest that you did anything wrong. I¡¯m just trying to understand.¡± ¡°Linney¡¯s right,¡± Gloss said. ¡°And you¡¯re right, too, Rawls. You have to be careful if you don¡¯t want to mess up someone¡¯s life. Sysops are ordinary people, closer to runners than most others, except for who they serve. They are some of the only other people to understand the visceral experience of the net.¡± That made me wonder about something. ¡°The experience of letting data stream through us for later sale and analysis: could it ever be harmful?¡± No one said anything for a while. Linney made a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a sob. Eventually, Wren said, ¡°Yes. Sometimes.¡± But no one elaborated. It sounded like they had some personal experience with it that made the question hurtful. Later, when Linney and I were washing dishes in the big steel sink, I asked her what she thought of my breaker. She made a gesture, and a holographic projection opened on the backsplash, seemingly coming from something perched on her shoulder. It showed:
Name Hungry Creek 1.1
Type Icebreaker
Matching subtype Platform
Base Nguyen-Okafor complexity 2
Cost to boost 1K for 1 complexity
Cost to break 2K for 2 subroutines
¡°I¡¯ve tuned it up so that it runs more efficiently against some ice,¡± she said, ¡°but you should still supplement it with another breaker soon, because this one can¡¯t break shooter or puzzle ice, both of which can be dangerous.¡± ¡°Like the Starbuck?¡± ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± she said. ¡°You can¡¯t break one of those with this.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°Could I buy a breaker from that Gerty?¡± ¡°You can, if you plan ahead. She delivers but on her own time. Just leave a message for her at Mr. Grid¡¯s. The breakers she sells aren¡¯t cheap.¡± ¡°Thanks again.¡± ¡°Any time.¡± She dried her hands on a dish towel and then tossed it to me. Then she walked upstairs. I had hoped to spend more time with her but I was getting used to her vanishing. ### In the morning, after hugging Wren and Linney goodbye, Gloss and I took the BRUTE back to Optimist Park. Reclining in the leatherette seat, I watched the landscape move by at gotta-go-fast speeds: patchy farms, inter-urban wastelands, gleaming white suburban residential parks, and blocky arcologies in the distance like cubes made of colored crystal, as mysterious as they were attractive. For a while, the thin, fungalcrete strip of the Private Highway paralleled the BRUTE, hosting the comparatively tiny sedans and limos of the elite. As we neared the center city, the Private Highway rose up, up, and out of sight, only its super-tall pylons in view, lights blinking even in daylight. ¡°Word from the boss is that you¡¯ve got the day off,¡± Gloss said as we neared the station. ¡°What are you going to do with it?¡± ¡°I wanted to get another workup from the doctor,¡± I said, ¡°and think about some new implants. Linney thought I upgraded my breaker, but I don¡¯t know much about coding, so I thought I¡¯d look at it.¡± ¡°All that sounds like work,¡± Gloss said. ¡°And that¡¯s fine, but make sure to take some time for yourself, too. We don¡¯t want a bright star like you to burn out, at least not too soon.¡± ¡°Ideally I wouldn¡¯t burn out at all.¡± Gloss was quiet. After a moment, he said, ¡°We all burn out. Some of us are lucky enough to go on our own terms, others get brought down.¡± His expression and the way his voice sounded reminded me of the moment last night at dinner when I asked about harmful data. ¡°Did something happen?¡± I said. Then, realizing that Gloss couldn¡¯t read my mind, I added. ¡°Did someone you know access some harmful data?¡± He looked at me as if he were frightened. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said. ¡°How¡¯d you know?¡± ¡°It was just a sense,¡± I said. ¡°Linney¡¯s ex,¡± Gloss said. The mention of someone who was once in that relationship to Linney sent a wave of jealousy through me. Gloss continued. ¡°He was deep into White Tree¡¯s research and development server. The guy was an outcast, and that¡¯s coming from an outcast who lives among outcasts. He was a tweaker, not to put it too delicately, and he was looking for research chemicals to use for his next high. Formularies, sibling pharma, hallucinogen precursors, spirituality at the molecular level. He¡¯d set up the run for weeks, poking around, assembling a badass rig, staying up all night, staying straight for once, showing more determination and focus than I had ever thought possible for this guy. Then, late one night, he¡¯d been up for days, and he made a deep dig into White Tree R&D. The run was chem-assisted, and he was wired and tired, and then¡ª¡± Gloss smacked his hands together with enough friction and shearing force that half the BRUTE¡¯s passengers turned their heads. He looked around, sheepishly, then lowered his voice. ¡°¡ªran right into a snare. See, sometimes the corps keep assets in their servers that are meant for runners to find. They¡¯re traps. Sometimes the traps trace their location¡ªyou¡¯d expect that out of 7Wonders or Panopt. But with White Tree the real danger is lethal feedback. When runners don¡¯t know exactly what they¡¯re looking for, when they¡¯re digging around looking for anything at all, the danger is they faceplant into one of those and flatline.¡± ¡°He died?¡± ¡°Linney found him on the mattress in his crash space, no pulse, no respiration. He¡¯d been dead for hours. Promise me, little bro, that you¡¯ll never run White Tree if you¡¯re tired. No matter what.¡± Enrique had said the same thing. ¡°I promise,¡± I said. ¡°Not even if you think it¡¯s the only way to find her,¡± Gloss said. His eyes were fierce. Ice and icebreakers, running and breaching, it had all been exhilarating. But this didn¡¯t feel like a game anymore.
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name DNA Scrambler
Manufacturer Oji-Cree Biodynamics
Legal status Illegal except in Sovereign Indigenous Nations
Description Complex molecules that remain suspended in bloodstream
Cost a few K every few months
Function Prevents digital routines from peeking at your DNA via your net port, used to confound some particularly nasty White Tree reprisal protocols
Chapter 16: Chrome Up! Chapter 16. Chrome Up! ¡°If the corps can take us out like that, why don¡¯t they fill their servers with traps?¡± I asked Gloss as we traveled back by BRUTE. ¡°At the end of the fiscal year,¡± Gloss said, ¡°a corp has one job: deliver value to shareholders, and that means controlling market share and generating profit. No matter how much we steal from them, no matter how many of their secrets we sell to their competitors or leak to independent journalists or post on the public net, they just continue on making money. We¡¯re almost always an annoyance, and very rarely anything more. Simply, we¡¯re not a threat to them. And setting ambushes is expensive. Every asset meant for runners to smash into is an asset that could be making money instead. Not only that, but do you have any idea how much current you have to pump through a net connection to make it lethal, and how much processing power it takes to keep a runner jacked in until the current can fry a human heart?¡± Gloss looked red-faced. I¡¯d never seen him so upset. I could tell why he didn¡¯t want to get into this last night, both because it was painful for him and because it was probably traumatic for Linney to revisit the night she found her ex-boyfriend dead in some crummy crash space. ¡°No, I don¡¯t know,¡± I said quietly. ¡°Let¡¯s just say that White Tree probably pumped more than four million into that poor tweaker¡¯s nervous and circulatory systems. That¡¯s an expensive bullet, if you ask me.¡± The BRUTE was pulling into the station and the passengers around us were growing restless, reaching for their bags. ¡°But hey,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Enjoy your day off.¡± I just looked at him. He nudged me with his shoulder. ¡°I¡¯m serious, man. Don¡¯t worry about it. Me and Enrique will show you how to tiptoe around problems like that. Stick with us and you¡¯ll come out all right. Maybe you get a nasty shock once in a while. You¡¯ll survive, huh?¡± He tousled my hair like I was his seven year-old kid brother. I couldn¡¯t help but smile. As we descended the staircase from the BRUTE into the ripe and humid air of central Carthage, a strange sensation passed through me. It was back: the message glowing on the inside of my left eyeball in bright purple letters. COME FIND ME For the first time since I¡¯d arrived in the city, I could see it. I¡¯d been distracted, falling too deeply into this crew of runners. I¡¯d been focused on making money for improvements to my rig. ¡°You OK, man?¡± Gloss was leaning in, looking at me, as if checking for bloodshot eyes. ¡°Yeah. Just a little tired.¡± I still hadn¡¯t told either him or Enrique about my eyes and wasn¡¯t sure how longer I could¡ªor should¡ªkeep the secret. Earlier, I had wanted to ensure that they saw me as a peer, that they knew it was my skills as a runner that got me into servers. Now, I felt like perhaps it was dangerous to hide this information from them. Maybe I could let them in on it. Maybe tomorrow. ¡°I¡¯m going to enjoy my day off now.¡± I said. Though I wasn¡¯t at all sure it was true. ### ¡°So good to see you again!¡± Dr. Rashida Qin swept into the examination room, smiling at me in a way that made me feel instantly cared for and warm. She started to sanitize her hands and I took a moment to reflect on my good fortune. As kind as my adopted crew were to me, there was something I was keeping from them¡ªthe weird implants that stood in for my eyes¡ªand so far Dr. Qin and Linney were the only ones who knew everything about me. ¡°What brings you in?¡± I thought about all the things I wanted to talk to her about. I might end up spending my entire day off in her chrome boutique. ¡°You said you had done some research into my eyes,¡± I said. ¡°I did!¡± She swung a monitor around on an articulated steel arm so both of us could see it. ¡°It looks like your eyes were created in a joint venture by White Tree and FUTUR Design.¡± ¡°I thought those corps were at war with each other.¡± ¡°So did I! I mean, they are. They totally are. How many deaths have there been now? Seventeen, eighteen chief engineers? Four or five executives? A number of contract security that we¡¯ll never know about? Not to mention the runners they¡¯re sending against each other.¡± When she said that, a sickening feeling spread through my stomach. I felt even more grateful for Dr. Qin, because Enrique and Gloss hadn¡¯t told me the corps used runners, not exactly. ¡°But to get to the point,¡± she said, ¡°at one time, years ago, these corps were on better terms, and they even cooperated on one venture: net-capable ocular implants. The idea was for a new generation to be able to connect to the net without wired interfaces or even conventional wireless interfaces. Net traffic was to be beamed directly into the eyes by microwave.¡± ¡°That sounds significant.¡± ¡°It would have been. The research found that widespread adoption of net-capable eyes would have led to a generation of youth who could move seamlessly between netspace and meatspace, with all the promise and peril that implies. The world¡¯s knowledge available in an eyeblink. One¡¯s attention constantly under attack. Advertisements everywhere. Harmful data coming in directly through the eyes. But connection with peers readily available. It¡¯s hard to imagine.¡± ¡°It seems like we¡¯re most of the way there already,¡± I said. ¡°Maybe so,¡± Dr. Qin said, ¡°but one thing is clear: you¡¯re not using your implants the way they could be used.¡±Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°Well, the last time you were here I installed a net port in your chest. That¡¯s old-fashioned compared to what you could do with your eyes, assuming someone could build the right kind of interface for you.¡± Sitting in the doctor¡¯s office, the thoughts were revolving in my head. The world seemed so full of promise, even if it were dangerous. ¡°Could you build me one?¡± Dr. Qin smiled. ¡°Not my area, sorry.¡± ¡°Something happened earlier today. A message appeared on my eyes.¡± ¡°What did it say?¡± ¡°It said, in all caps, COME SEE ME.¡± ¡°Did it say who it was from?¡± ¡°No. Any ideas?¡± ¡°Well, as net capable devices, it¡¯s possible your eyes would be picked up on any scan of local networks. So anyone who found the eyes on a network, theoretically, could send a message to them.¡± That made me think. Surely Enrique and Gloss had swept the apartment for devices that were sending and receiving signals, so why hadn¡¯t my eyes come up? Or had they, and Enrique and Gloss were concealing that fact from me? ¡°I hope my eyes wouldn¡¯t just display whatever some rando told them to.¡± Dr. Qin laughed. ¡°One would hope not. I imagine that White Tree and FUTUR Design have iced your eyes in some fashion, even with basic security to keep out breakerless griefers.¡± ¡°What else could it be?¡± ¡°Your experience suggests someone with deep knowledge of how those ocular implants work.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying that it was someone at White Tree or FUTUR Design?¡± ¡°Or formerly at one of those companies, someone who was around when the eyes were built. That¡¯s my guess. Sorry I can¡¯t be more helpful there.¡± ¡°That was very helpful. It gives me a lot to think about.¡± ¡°What else can I assist you with today?¡± ¡°Hey, I learned that someone injected me with fabricytes.¡± Dr. Qin looked at her monitor. ¡°Those didn¡¯t show up on my last scan. So maybe it happened afterward?¡± ¡°Or maybe the scan missed them.¡± ¡°Unlikely. Fabricytes are one of the things I look for, especially because you have to be a bit more careful with new implants when you have them running around your bloodstream.¡± I thought about it for a moment. ¡°I was hoping to get some new implants today.¡± ¡°Have you had a chance to browse the boutique in the front?¡± ¡°I did. I was thinking about a heartjack.¡± Dr. Qin slapped my arm. ¡°You expecting some lethal feedback?¡± I smiled, feeling shy. ¡°Maybe.¡± ¡°We can talk about that. It¡¯s ten thousand for the part but ninety thousand for installation. And it¡¯s not a same-day procedure. You want a heartjack, you¡¯re going to be out of commission for a couple weeks. What else you thinking?¡± ¡°What about a FLUX chip?¡± ¡°Ah, power modulation. You¡¯re looking at dealing with some power spikes that might corrupt delicate software or wetware, and wondering how you can protect your rig. Yeah. We can do that today. It¡¯s 18K all-in, six for the chip, twelve for the snip. Sound good?¡± ¡°Do you take insurance?¡± ¡°Are you joking?¡± ¡°Yeah. I¡¯m uninsured.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine because I take cash or chip. Insurance companies don¡¯t like my business. But hey, you¡¯ve got a net port now. That means we can deliver digital narcotics to block your nerves. You won¡¯t feel a thing today, not unless you want to. Anything else while we have you nerve-blocked?¡± I was thinking about the man who had been following me the other day. I wanted something to avoid similar situations in the future. ¡°How about a DNA scrambler?¡± ¡°You¡¯re worried about White Tree ice tracking your movements. Unfortunately, we can¡¯t do that while the fabricytes are active. Come back in six months and we¡¯ll get it put in.¡± ¡°What about a Vista processor?¡± ¡°Vista processors are fine, but just a moment you were asking about protecting yourself from lethal feedback. Vista processors are kind of the opposite of that. With one of those, you¡¯ll access more data faster. It¡¯s great for when you¡¯re downserver and you¡¯re trying to suck up as much corporate intel as you can before the server resets and you get booted, but if there are ambushes about, you¡¯ll have a much higher likelihood of smacking into them.¡± I recalled Gloss¡¯s story about Linney¡¯s ex-boyfriend dying after running into a White Tree trap. ¡°What do you think, doc?¡± Dr. Qin looked at me with more seriousness, less humor than before. ¡°I¡¯ve explained the risks and benefits. But it¡¯s your life,¡± she said in a neutral tone of voice. ¡°Let¡¯s go for it,¡± I said. ¡°Fine. The Vista is 10K, divided evenly between hardware and installation. I¡¯m giving you a break on the install because we¡¯re doing another procedure. As long as you¡¯re feeling no pain, should I remove the state and fedgov trackers they put in you as a kid?¡± ¡°Cool. How about subcutaneous subroutines?¡± ¡°Sub-subs. The salvation of bad programmers everywhere. Looking to do some coding? We can get those slotted, but it¡¯s going to be painful using your hands for a few days.¡± ¡°Can I use them tonight?¡± ¡°Sure. Just keep an eye on your power bill. Those suckers have to be recharged. I can throw in the charging pad gratis. It¡¯s ten thousand, 1K per little piggie.¡± ¡°Great.¡± I held out my wrist and she scanned it. Dr. Qin looked at the screen on her worn, gray payment terminal, its rubberized case scuffed and more than a little dirty. I was down to my last thousand, but I felt invincible. ### It was evening by the time that Dr. Qin was done with me. I walked out of the boutique as the feeling began returning in my neck, my muscles sore and the fatigue creeping into my bones. My fingers ached as I shook them out. I was both tired and eager to keep going. Fresh in my mind was my breaker. Linney thought it needed more work and I wanted to make her proud of me. Then I wanted to smash more corporate servers, earn more cash, and built out the rest of my rig. I felt like I was a professional already, with only a few runs behind me. I ducked into a coffee shop and ordered a large drip in a ceramic mug, then took my laptop and console into a corner. Coding wasn¡¯t my strong suit. Sure I¡¯d been a good student but in my rural high school they hadn¡¯t exactly taught us any advanced techniques. I stretched my fingers, feeling the sub-subs wake up. Supposedly they would let my fingers code even if my brain didn¡¯t know exactly what they were doing. Net-connected muscle memory, predicting movements based on what other coders had done. I¡¯d never be brilliant at this, but then I didn¡¯t have to be. I opened the source for my breaker. Then my eye twitched. The purple writing was back. COME FIND ME My heart sank. Was that you, Freya? Somehow, somewhere? Or was this a griefer or a trap? Was this the afterimage of the illicit corporate data that had blasted through my body over the last few days? I wanted to be strong enough to find out. I looked at the code that Linney had written. I tried to follow it, tried to figure out how it worked. I drank coffee and more coffee. After a while, I sat back in frustration. But then a strange thing happened. My eyes began to scan the lines on their own, and my fingers began to alter them on their own. I relaxed and let it happen. The sub-subs were taking over. I worked intuitively, fueled by longing and caffeine. Suddenly, I felt a presence and looked up to find Linney standing before me. She wore her long, thin raincoat and her eyes were red-rimmed. She seemed to be about to cry. ¡°I need your help, Rawls,¡± she said, swinging her backpack down on the table. ¡°There¡¯s no one else I trust with this.¡± ### The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store FLUX Chip Manufacturer: Garnet Systems Legal Status: Legal Description: Cost: 6K
Name FLUX Chip
Manufacturer Garnet Systems
Legal status Legal
Description A small quantum capacitor installed at the base of the neck
Cost 6K
Function Diverts power spikes. Saves your breakers and your nuts. Provides good protection from rigshooting, although the chip itself can be burnt out from repeated use and will eventually need to be replaced, probably at the least opportune time. Provides limited protection from lethal feedback, but there are better options out there if you have some weird attachment to your own existence.
Chapter 17: Special Offer Chapter 17. Special Offer When Linney had taken a few deep breaths and I had ordered a cup of black coffee for her, she told me what was up. ¡°I can¡¯t tell the others,¡± she said. She looked around as she said that. We were in a coffee shop that was something between quiet and bustling, close to midnight. Most tables were occupied with students in groups working on what seemed to be math or chemistry or anatomy. Such unfamiliar lives. Some tables held only single occupants, a brooding poet here, someone listening to headphones there. Toward the front, a couple of older men were playing chess and drinking espresso on a long bench. The music and air circulators ran loud enough that we wouldn¡¯t be overheard. Linney had pulled her hands into the sleeves of her high-tech rain jacket, its wrinkles like those of a piece of plain paper. She warmed her sleeves on the mug. Not making eye contact with me but staring into the deep brown the coffee, she said, ¡°I¡¯ve received an offer. It¡¯s not for an internship, it¡¯s for a real job. Not only that. For a career.¡± Where I came from, careers belonged to people with enough money to send their kids to elite colleges, where they would become managers, lawyers, doctors, or maybe even executives. Those people expected to devote their lives to work, one corporation at a time. If you were chasing a career you never stopped working. You answered messages on a visual interface while changing diapers. You took meetings from the beach. For the rest of us, there were jobs. You worked a job because you would be homeless if you didn¡¯t. You worked because you needed to buy groceries and go to the doctor. You didn¡¯t expect your employer to be loyal to you and you sure weren¡¯t loyal to it. Eventually you¡¯d be laid off or maybe fired, and then you¡¯d get another job. If you were lucky your wage would keep up with inflation. If you were really lucky, you¡¯d be salaried and maybe get a raise that outpaced inflation once in a while. If you weren¡¯t, you¡¯d take a pay-cut and then half-ass it every day until you lost that job and the cycle began again. Of course, being a runner, ¡°job¡± had an entirely different meaning to me now, bringing to mind crash spaces, night sweats, and lethal data. So to hear Linney¡ªnonlineardynamics, for heaven¡¯s sake¡ªtalk about a potential career, it was a little like hearing one of the hoodie-wearing skaters outside my hometown hydrogen station say he was going into investment banking. ¡°You can tell me,¡± I said. ¡°I won¡¯t talk about it to anyone else.¡± ¡°Restoration Consulting contacted me,¡± she said. ¡°Do you know them?¡± Seeing me shake my head, she continued. ¡°They¡¯re a 7Wonders subsidiary. They operate in former war zones, trying to build data and legal and monetary frameworks to rebuild nation-states. Or city-states. Or corporation-states, most recently. And they take a massive cut of whatever natural-resource wealth remains in that zone. They bring in profits that would make your eyes twitch, but they do bring stability to places around the world that need it. It¡¯s proven that they shut down terrorists and narco traffickers. Tonight, I get a knock at my door. Not a message. Not even an email. Not a postal letter. But a woman in a black business suit, with these shiny, dark, super-straight bangs, at my door in the middle of the night, and she knows my net handle and wants to buy me a cup of coffee.¡± ¡°Sounds terrifying.¡± ¡°It was.¡± ¡°What did you do?¡± ¡°What would you do?¡± she said, suddenly appearing mischievous as the steam from the cup of coffee bathed her face. I thought about it and looked around. The words COME SEE ME were still there, faintly, on my vision. They weren¡¯t going away but they were dim enough to ignore¡ªmostly. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I would figure that if they knew where I was physically and they knew my net handle, then I could consider myself tagged. So I wasn¡¯t necessarily putting myself in any more danger by going with them.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know if I agree with that,¡± Linney said. ¡°If the corps want to target you at home, they can. But they¡¯ll have to deal with collateral damage, and that¡¯s expensive. It means settlements for your neighbors, sometimes major settlements, particularly if someone else gets killed while they¡¯re trying to flatline you. Corps live and breathe money. They don¡¯t want to spend a single K more than they have to. If they can get you to leave your home, accompany them to a location that they control, they can dispose of you without any collateral. They might save themselves hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. So think about that and put yourself in my situation. What would you say?¡± I leaned forward and offered Linney my hands. She took them and squeezed them. ¡°I¡¯d say,¡± I said, not actually knowing what I¡¯d say, ¡°I¡¯d say that I needed to decide whether I felt like this stranger was trustworthy. I¡¯d have to rely on instinct. And if my instinct said it was OK, I¡¯d go with her.¡± She squeezed my hands again and then pulled her hands back. She was actually smiling now. ¡°You get it,¡± she said. ¡°I knew you¡¯d understand.¡± She took a long sip of coffee and held her hands out, palms up. ¡°Let me tell you the tale. I feel like I can trust this lady, so I grab my coat and bag and we take a walk. She doesn¡¯t say anything in the elevator or on the street. I notice we are being followed by a drone and a large black van on the street. I turn to her, say, ¡®Lose those things, or I¡¯m walking.¡¯ She makes a gesture. The drone flies off and the van stops.¡± Linney paused for effect. I felt a chill. Then she continued. ¡°We find a chain coffee shop, a Cabin Coffee, you know, super brightly lit inside, all those lights on the warm wood paneling? Cozy. We get some coffees and sit in the overstuffed chairs in the corner by the electric fireplace. And she takes out this thing from her jacket. It¡¯s shaped like a disc but grows into this foam cylinder. It¡¯s an acoustic absorber, she says, to prevent anyone from overhearing us, even with a directional mic. Very cool. The physics are interesting. Anyway. She says that she¡¯s a fan of my work both in school and on the net, and she lays out a bunch of things about me: true things, runs I¡¯ve made on all the major corps, grades I¡¯ve earned. And I¡¯m scared, thinking that the cops are going to show up, that or corporate security, and I¡¯m about to be moved to a black site. But then she says she wants to offer me an entry-level position in Restoration Consulting¡¯s modeling and network security division.¡±Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. ¡°Like being a sysop?¡± The expressions on her face changed. One moment she looked scared and the next elated. ¡°She said it was nothing like that,¡± Linney said. ¡°She said it would involve creating data networks in countries that needed them, to connect people in a secure and private way. The focus wouldn¡¯t be on protecting corporate data but on allowing people to reach each other. She said it was good, honorable work, and it would pay better than anything I could find in the academic world. I¡¯d be able to choose some of my own assignments, and even do some charity work if I wanted.¡± ¡°What did you say?¡± ¡°I said I¡¯d have to think about it.¡± I could tell why she didn¡¯t want to mention this to any of the other runners. If she revealed she¡¯d been tagged, let alone if they thought she was considering going to work for one of the corps, they wouldn¡¯t trust her anymore. But at the same time, I could tell she was seriously considering it. Who wouldn¡¯t? A corporate career made your life simpler. All you had to do was keep your employer happy, and you¡¯d have enough money to own a condo, raise kids, take vacations once in a while. You wouldn¡¯t have to worry about homelessness or running out of food. You could afford to go to the doctor. Everyone wanted those things. And to be offered such a life at the age of nineteen? Linney was very, very lucky, according to what most people would think. ¡°That¡¯s heavy,¡± I said. ¡°What do you think you¡¯ll do?¡± Then her mischievous look returned. ¡°What I think, Rawls, is that I need to know more about what this company is really doing.¡± ¡°Oh.¡± ¡°And I need back-up.¡± ¡°Oh.¡± She reached her hands across the table. ¡°Can I count on you?¡± I took her hands. The words COME FIND ME glowed, superimposed on her face. This woman before me was tagged. What I really needed to be doing was getting ready to make another attempt to find Freya. But Linney was right here, and she needed my help, and if I was being completely honest, spending time with her was like a drug. ¡°I¡¯m in,¡± I said. She brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face. ¡°I knew you¡¯d be.¡± ¡°What do we do?¡± ¡°First thing¡¯s first,¡± she said. ¡°This run is going to be a little trickier than the last one we made.¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°Restoration Consulting is locked down, permanently, in a big building on the far southeastern edge of Carthage near the old nuclear facility in Southport. It does not have good relationships with other corps, and doesn¡¯t even have the friendliest relationships with other subsidiaries of 7Wonders. All their most advanced servers can only be accessed from within their building. Which means we need to go there. Tonight. In meatspace.¡± I leaned back and drummed my fingers on the table. I still got a little pain from the newly-installed sub-sub implants. I felt juiced. ¡°Let¡¯s do it,¡± I said. COME FIND ME I shook my head. I¡¯d do it for Linney, even if the words in my eye didn¡¯t exactly go away anymore. I told myself that I wasn¡¯t getting distracted from finding out what happened to Freya so there was no need to feel guilty. I wanted to believe that. Helping Linney was all part of preparing myself for the real work. ### The Restoration Consulting building appeared bombproof. Located in the Southport nuclear remediation district, against the backdrop of artificial concrete barrier islands rising up in the distance with their ghostly, mournful lights, Restoration Consulting¡¯s headquarters was a pair of tall, skinny right triangles joined by three elevated corridors and a number of thick scaffoldings. In fact, for the immensity and durability projected by the nearly-windowless steel and fungal-crete building, it was ringed by a number of dark ironworks that appeared as if they had been there for years, as if the building were perpetually under construction, or under siege. It was the most frightening structure I had ever seen. ¡°You¡¯re planning to go inside that thing,¡± I said to Linney as I stashed my laptop and console in a locker in the the BRUTE station. The metro didn¡¯t reach this far to the southeast yet. My stuff secure, we trudged toward downtown with the other bus riders. ¡°Yeah, what¡¯s the problem?¡± she said. As we walked over the elevated metal walkway to the ring of scaffolding around the Restoration Consulting building, the sheer size of the towers took on an additional, intimidating quality: not only was it the tallest building around, it was so much taller than anything around it that its scale appeared to be distorted. When we first left the BRUTE, we seemed to be a fifteen-minute walk from the building. But fifteen minutes later, we still seemed to be a fifteen-minute walk away and the building was even taller. ¡°Couldn¡¯t we just hire a freerunner to do this for us?¡± I said. ¡°They mostly don¡¯t work for hire. They¡¯re nuts. They¡¯re like the meatspace version of the CheRRy, all of them.¡± I suddenly felt jealous of Linney, and wondered who were the freerunners she knew. ¡°I don¡¯t see a way in,¡± I said. ¡°How about the front door?¡± ¡°Won¡¯t they know we¡¯re here?¡± ¡°It¡¯s OK,¡± she said, handing me a small envelope. I peeked inside to find a pair of contact lenses and a bottle of saline. ¡°For getting through the retinal scan.¡± A shiver of nervousness went through me. I wasn¡¯t sure how these contacts would play with my cybernetic eyes. But this didn¡¯t feel like the time to disclose that fear. I figured I¡¯d deal with it if we got stopped at the front door. ¡°Are they going to let us through with your hardware?¡± She stopped walking. ¡°What are you, afraid?¡± ¡°Of course I am. You can¡¯t bring your console in there.¡± ¡°No kidding,¡± Linney said. ¡°I¡¯ve got all the hardware we need in my head. And you¡¯ve had some work done, too.¡± She held out her hand. I took it. OK, I admit that I felt a bit more confident while touching her. But I promised myself that if this went sideways, I was getting her out of there. I wasn¡¯t built for fighting in meatspace, never had been. Skinny kid, skinny teenager, built for running, not war. Not built for taking on corporate security officers outside the net. Not yet, a voice said in my mind. All that is trainable, it said. I shook my head to clear it, and was rewarded with a weird look from Linney and the insistent words burned into my left eye: COME FIND ME ¡°I¡¯m OK,¡± I said. She leaned in and I felt her breath against my ear as she whispered the details of our fake identities to me. It turned out that she had found a list of low-level workers starting temp contracts today at 7Wonders on a sketchy employment-agency site and paid a couple of the workers¡ªa man and woman¡ªnot to show. I slipped the contact lenses over my eyes and we mounted the ramp inside the tunnel made out of scaffolding. Ahead of us was a security station staffed by a man at a podium, and then a man and woman in armored vests, with chunky long guns pointed down, each one featuring four barrels in a single assembly, a blocky decal reading LESS LETHAL in red letters down the length.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Resheph
Manufacturer 7Wonders
Cost to rez Unknown
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 6
Type Shooter
Subtype Rigshooter
Subroutines 4: generates cash from runner activity; trashes multiple pieces of software, including icebreakers; stops the run
Chapter 18: Less Lethal Chapter 18: Less Lethal As Linney and I made our way into Restoration Consulting, workers in faded clothing stood in front of a retinal scanner and were waved through by an unarmed officer behind a podium. As we neared him, he looked at us and motioned us forward. I could have sworn I saw one of the armed guards on either side of him twitch. ¡°Haven¡¯t seen you before. New hires?¡± said the man at the podium next to the retinal scanner, which was a tall, spidery robot sweeping its near-invisible beam over us this way and that. The color of the beam was the kind of dim red that most people couldn¡¯t see. I could, by virtue of my strange eye implants. ¡°Yessir,¡± I said, my country accent returning on demand. All my life, I had found that it helped to be a little country in situations like this. ¡°Know where you¡¯re going?¡± the man said. ¡°Yessir.¡± The beam of the retinal scanner paused on Linney, and the man looked down at the screen on his podium, a screen I couldn¡¯t see. ¡°Welcome, Ms. Chao,¡± he said to her. She smiled and waved her through. She kept walking, as if she were not going to wait for me. The beam of the retinal scanner found my left eye, momentarily blotting out the purple words that followed me around everywhere now¡ªCOME FIND ME¡ªand I flinched from the beam because I was able to see it. The man at the podium chuckled. One of the armed guards choked up on the grip of her long firearm, marked with that less-than-encouraging phrase in slanted, bold type: LESS LETHAL. ¡°No need to flinch, hoss,¡± she said. ¡°Beam¡¯s invisible.¡± The man at the podium glanced at his screen. ¡°Looks like we didn¡¯t get a good read. How about you try that again?¡± I looked directly at the retinal scanner and willed my neck not to move and forced my lids to stay open as much as I could while the dim red beam danced about my eyeballs. ¡°What a pretty picture,¡± the man at the podium said, though he didn¡¯t sound like he really believed a word of it. He snapped his fingers and a third armed guard appeared behind him, wider and taller than the others and bulky with body armor. ¡°Escort him,¡± the man at the podium said. The armed guard stepped aside to let me pass and immediately fell in behind me. As I started walking down the towering, polished concrete atrium, the rubberized sound of boots echoing behind me, the man at the podium called out, ¡°Have a good first day, Mr. Walker!¡± Separating from Linney was not the plan. I could see her up ahead, where she¡¯d stopped against the wall to wait for me. Now, with a guard following me, there was no way I could help her access the building¡¯s network. I had to lose this guy somehow. Once he figured out that I had no idea where I was going, I was going to be facing down the quadruple barrel of the mammoth firearm he was holding. Linney watched as we passed but she made no move. As much as I wanted her help right now, I recognized that this was what she had to do. There was no sense in putting both of us in jeopardy. If they took me down, I had to trust that she would come for me once she¡¯d accomplished her task. All this to check up on a job offer? It was starting to seem like a bad deal. A voice in my head said, yeah, but what wouldn¡¯t you do to spend another few hours with Linney? I had to smile at that. My shoulder still felt warm and tingly from where she had leaned against me on the hour-long BRUTE ride down from the city center. Thinking about the whispered briefing that Linney had given me a few minutes before we entered, I stopped and turned around. ¡°Excuse me,¡± I said to the guard, who stopped up short, eyes hidden behind shades, ¡°I¡¯m supposed to work the incinerator. But I can¡¯t remember where it is.¡± ¡°Second sub-basement,¡± the guard said. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°I got it from here.¡± ¡°You sure?¡± the guard said. He reminded me of these smug kids in middle school, the types who never asked me a question that they didn¡¯t already know the answer to. ¡°Yeah.¡± The guard just laughed and stepped closer to me. ¡°Keep moving, sir. I¡¯ll be right behind you.¡± I turned around and started walking toward the large stairway leading down. The enormous atrium was dim, letting in daylight through long, thin slits that reminded me of the things in medieval castles meant for archers. On the other side of the atrium, in gaps between the panels of the walls, a molten stream of data flowed. It reminded me of the center of FUTUR Design''s HQ. The stairs turned at right angles every eight steps or so, creating a squarish spiral descending into levels of the building that glowed with infernal heat. Guess that would be the heating system in the winter, a byproduct of the movement of data. I loved things like that. The thought surprised me. As we started to walk down the stairs, I made a quick inventory of my new cybernetics: fabricytes, FLUX chip, Vista Processor, sub-subs. The fabricytes could keep me alive when my body wanted to die, the FLUX chip could help the software I was running from being wiped by corp systems, the Vista Processor was meant to help me access more data before a connection was terminated, and the sub-subs gave my fingers a mind of their own when it came to coding or picking locks. And of course there were my expensive cybernetic eyes. Could any of this help me? Maybe if I were more clever, I would be able to find a use for these tools. Maybe if I had access to the net I could download a new script to my sub-subs, something to help me get that monstrous LESS LETHAL implement away from the man behind me. Supposedly my eyes could connect to the net, but I wasn¡¯t yet sure how.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. I was almost out of ideas. Almost. It was fitting. This guy reminded me of being bullied in middle school, so I decided to adopt middle-school tactics. We were descending the second flight of polished concrete stairs, this armored dude just one step behind me, crowding me, not letting me get ahead. Clearly he was hoping I would mess up so he could have an excuse to inflict pain. I picked up the pace and so did he. He didn¡¯t give me an inch as I hopped down the stairs to the next landing and turned crisply to the top of the third flight of steps. He was so close I could practically feel the armored knuckles of his gloves pressing into my spine. Both of us were moving at a pretty good speed now. But he was much heavier than I was. I leaned to the side as if to tie my shoe, extending my left leg and making my center of gravity as low as it could go. The guard went over my outstretched leg, dropping his LESS LETHAL weapon with an awful clatter, and rolling down the entire flight of stairs¡ªbam bam BAM bam¡ªto the bottom, where other workers were crowding around him, kneeling next to him. Another guard was jogging forward to secure the firearm. The guard looked to be embarrassed and in pain. More importantly, no one was looking in my direction. I jogged back up the stairs until I was back in the atrium. Suddenly Linney appeared at my side and we walked down a side hallway, almost totally unlit except for some giant, cast-bronze bowls hanging from the ceiling by chains and flickering with digital flames. On the far wall was a carving of some ancient god, not Greek or Roman, but some kind of Near Eastern Bronze Age archer thing. In the darkness of the hallway, we walked quickly, as if we knew exactly where we needed to be. In fact, Linney walked slightly ahead of me and I followed her. As the hallway turned, she cut in front of me and knelt before a rectangular bronze panel. As I knelt next to her, I saw that she had somehow found an unsecured port in the wall. She wasted no time unzipping her long raincoat and extending a pair of cables from it, then twisting them together in a splitter and attaching the joined cables to the wall. She lifted her shirt and jacked in, and I pulled up mine and jacked in a moment later. Just before netspace hit, she said, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m monitoring our local grid.¡± As she turned to face the wall, I could see, in dim red and bright purple on the back of her head, eight eyes like a spider under her short hair. Then we were under, deep in Restoration Consulting¡¯s local net. The ice hit us right away. I didn¡¯t have the typical feeling of cruising on a midnight highway, a neon city rising in the distance. Instead, I felt trapped in an emerald maze from the moment that meatspace burned and dissolved like a brain-wrapped film in the old-fashioned cinema back home. Linney moved next to me, in tandem with me, her movements my movements, her feelings my feelings. She steered us through the maze. Our conjoined avatars, hers a whorled chaos butterfly and mine an arrowhead, made fast turns. Faster than I ever could on my own. I had so much to learn about running. As good as I thought I was, Linney, who was the same age as me, was more than twice as fluent at navigating this new kind of space. We twisted through the labyrinth, the sense that we were finding our way to its center growing stronger and stronger. Overhead, I could see a sweeping cone of light, not like a tight, World War II-era searchlight but like the overwhelming light of a religious vision. The light was so bright overhead that it momentarily seemed to make the maze transparent before it returned to darkness. One thing was certain, that light above was hunting for us. Linney took us through the turns faster and faster. The way she turned in the net, it was not like a bus or a car making a turn. There was no arc. She changed direction instantaneously. It was a method of navigating the net I had never experienced before. And at first it seemed like we were getting away from the light overhead. But then I noticed that the walls of the labyrinth around us were slowly brightening with diffuse light as the the flood of luminous energy overhead came nearer. It seemed to know where we were and was nearing us. I felt something in Linney¡¯s butterfly wings spin up and soon we were smashing through the walls of the labyrinth instead of navigating around them. I could practically feel the vibrations in my teeth as Linney¡¯s icebreaker took us through like a wrecking ball. That caught the attention of the light. It swept a solid cone of light onto us. There was no way of getting away from it now. As we found our way to the center of the labyrinth, I saw a great well opening up below us, and Linney took us down, down, down, into the well. My teeth were shaking so hard it was like having a cavity drilled. I felt like I¡¯d been smacked in the face with a piece of riveted sheet metal. But we were in. Away from the maze. The server, not a city but a cube, dense with blocky data, was there underneath us. But just behind us, that hideous light was bearing down, brightening the corners of the cube, until suddenly we were caught in it. I could feel this awful drag on our processes, everything slowing down. Suddenly Linney¡¯s icebreaker changed shape, became less like a wrecking ball and more like a dust storm, and blotted out the light, concealing us from it. ¡°Quickly,¡± her voice said. I turned to the cube below¡ªor perhaps in front¡ªof us. While the cube felt impenetrable at first glance, my Vista Processor was waking up, sending excited signals through my body like a double shot of good espresso, drawing my robot eyes this way and that, until I had found a fissure in the wall of the cube that let me in. The experience of accessing all the data inside the cube with the Vista processor installed was nothing short of overwhelming. I had the feeling of being inside a vehicle that was traveling faster and faster, and I wished that the driver would just slow down. It didn¡¯t feel safe. Gloss¡¯s story about the trap that had flatlined Linney¡¯s ex floated somewhere on the edge of my consciousness. But it was too late for slowing down. I was here for everything. All the data in the cube passed through me. I could see the data on Linney, her job offer, the salary. It was the kind of salary people build their lives around. I saw other things, too. I saw a massive hydrogen-electrolysis plant in Accra. I saw satellite projects slated for other cities in central Africa. I saw eastern European de-confliction zones, entire populaces controlled with compulsory neural implants. I saw a new constitution in Myanmar written entirely by Restoration Consulting¡¯s lawyers. I saw those same lawyers on surveillance cam participating in an orgy in a Detroit hotel. Back-up in case they breached their confidentiality duties. We copied it all into the expanded storage built into Linney¡¯s brain. Then I was aware of the meat again, flat on my face on the polished concrete floor of the headquarters building, next to the bronze net port. I hurt all over. My nose felt like it had been broken. My leg cramped when I stretched it. I felt worse than when I¡¯d skidded against that razor membrane in Enrique¡¯s apartment on my first ill-fated solo run. I wanted to vomit. The only thing that was somewhat reassuring was the slow violet pulse of COME FIND ME in my left eye. I rolled onto my back and looked up at Linney, who was awake, too, sitting slumped against the bronze panel, a dark ring of dried blood crusting the edge of one nostril, a puffy black eye beginning to form above it. With shaking fingers, she untwisted the net port. ¡°What the hell happened?¡± I managed to say.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Light of Truth
Manufacturer 7Wonders
Cost to rez medium
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 3
Type Shooter
Subtype Tagger
Subroutines 3: generates cash from runner activity; drains runner cash; tags the runner
Chapter 19: Uptime and Downtime CHAPTER 19. Uptime and Downtime ¡°What the hell happened?¡± I managed to say, half rasping and half whispering. I felt sweaty and rancid. I looked around the tall, darkened corridor, expecting armed guards rattling toward us with their monstrous LESS LETHAL weapons. But all was quiet. There was no one in this hallway except for a janitor at the far end pushing a cart, doing everything he could to ignore us. ¡°Advanced server,¡± Linney said and spat blood onto the shining floor. ¡°The analog signals coming through the net port mess with our physiology.¡± ¡°But you broke all the ice. It shouldn¡¯t have hurt us.¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter. Restoration Consulting makes it painful. It''s their signature¡± ¡°Did they trace us?¡± I looked around. I could swear I heard the rotors of drones. Though maybe it was just ringing in my ears from the impact with the augmented server. COME FIND ME pulsed more insistently now. ¡°I don¡¯t think so,¡± Linney said, looking at something glowing on the skin on her forearm, some subcutaneous display. I helped her to her feet, and she spooled in the cables. ¡°Are you all right?¡± I said. She nodded. ¡°You seem better.¡± I did feel a touch better. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s the fabricytes.¡± She smiled. ¡°Are you trying to say you feel like you were dying?¡± I shrugged and put my arm around her shoulder without thinking about it. I almost took it back again but she crushed herself against me, burying her face in the crook between my chest and my armpit. ¡°You smell good,¡± she said. ¡°Just hold me for a sec, OK?¡± We stood there, in the silence and poor light. The janitor¡¯s cart squeaked as it neared us. He tried not to look at us but eventually failed and lifted his head. ¡°Cute couple,¡± he said, and pushed his cart on by. That seemed to rouse Linney, and she gently pushed herself away from my chest with the palms of her hands flat against my jacket. ¡°Let¡¯s get out of here,¡± she said. We started to make our way down the corridor but she stumbled and leaned against the wall. I caught her, let her put her weight on me as we continued toward the main hall. I was hoping that if we continued to move toward the exit, that would read as less suspicious. As we got to the main hall, she straightened and patted me on the forearm to let me know that she didn¡¯t need me to take her weight anymore. We sauntered into the atrium, all casual-like, and made for the exit lane to the right of the retinal scanners and armed guards. There was no sign of the guard I had sent tumbling down the stairs earlier. I felt like were going to make it. Sudden, bright pain cracked through my eyes. COME FIND ME COME FIND ME COME FIND ME COME FIND ME I covered them with my hand, as if trying to shade them from the sun, but was impossible to stop the bright light from penetrating. The words burned into my skull, in both eyes now. It was painful to see them, like putting a hot tungsten filament right up to my eyes. I couldn¡¯t focus enough to move on my own. COME FIND ME COME FIND ME Closing my eyes didn¡¯t help but I did it anyway. I couldn¡¯t see anything. I felt Linney take hold of my hand, felt her guide me. I heard some gruff voice mutter, ¡°What¡¯s the matter with him?¡± ¡°He¡¯s sick,¡± Linney said. ¡°I¡¯m taking him home.¡± Out in the sea air, I relied on Linney to guide me away from Restoration Consulting¡¯s headquarters and back to the BRUTE station. I heard her negotiating with the ticket agent. Once we were tucked into the dirty, high-backed plush seats, the pulsing in my eyes became somewhat less instrusive. I opened them, could almost concentrate. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Linney said, offering me a compostable bottle full of clear water that she¡¯d purchased from somewhere. I cracked the hard plastic seal, then soft foil seal, and lastly the gummy cellulose seal, and took a long pull of the totally inoffensive and neutral-tasting water. ¡°There¡¯s something in my eye,¡± I said, unsure of whether I was trying to make a joke or about to open up to her. ¡°Seems a bit worse than that,¡± she deadpanned, giving me the option of continuing to joke around or tell her more. That was one of the things I liked about Linney. She reserved judgment at least for a time. She seemed like she would be understanding of my failings. Maybe she wouldn¡¯t even care that my skill at breaking ice could be traced to my implants and not my natural skill. ¡°Listen,¡± I said, making my voice serious. ¡°It¡¯s nothing.¡± I felt disappointment in my gut. I wanted to tell her. At this point, I was ready to admit to her that I wasn¡¯t a hotshot runner who could break a Ludo in eleven hours on the first try or escape a Neural Python with a defective water strider. It was simply that I didn¡¯t want to tell her about the messages. She might think I was unstable. She might think I was in love with Freya. She might not want to see any more of me. Withholding that secret from her made me feel distant, and we rode the rest of the way back to the central city in silence. She looked out the window, and I looked at my fellow passengers. Or closed my eyes. My shoulder wasn¡¯t touching Linney. She was curled up, away from me, the few inches separating us feeling impossible to cross.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. As the BRUTE pulled into the station in Mint Hill, where Linney kept her apartment in a high-rise, I said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± She just looked at me. She didn¡¯t say anything. ¡°I want to tell you,¡± I said. ¡°So why don¡¯t you?¡± she said. It sounded pained. ¡°I¡¯m scared. Can we get something to eat?¡± She cocked her head at me. ¡°I don¡¯t feel like eating right now,¡± she said. ¡°Can we go somewhere quiet, then?¡± We were stepping down from the BRUTE. She took my hand, hesitantly. We stood in the darkness of the station. ¡°Is it quiet enough, here?¡± she said. I nodded. I spoke softly. She already knew that I had come to Carthage to look for a childhood friend, a girl, but I explained everything I knew about the White Tree clinical trials and Freya being marked as deceased. I told her about Dr. Rashida Qin¡¯s scan and the strange White Tree-FUTUR Design eyes that had been implanted in place of my biological eyes when I was a child. I admitted that they gave me some extra strength as a runner. Finally, I told her about the words COME FIND ME that had appeared to me on the riverbank in my hometown and never fully went away. I told her that they had become more intense in Southport, and were better now. My chest ached, but it was the ache of a good workout. I felt relieved of a burden. And Linney was still here. She moved closer to my chest, allowed me to hold her. ¡°I¡¯m glad you told me,¡± she whispered. ¡°I was scared you¡¯d run away.¡± ¡°Why?¡± I shrugged. ¡°Because you¡¯re loyal to your friend?¡± she said and looked up at me, tears starting to rim her eyes. I nodded. ¡°I love that you care so much for your childhood best friend that you¡¯d come to the city and get involved with all us miscreants just to find her. I think it says a lot about your character, Jasper Rawls.¡± My full name coming from her lips filled me with a deep pride. It was only when she lifted her finger to wipe the moisture from my eyelid that I realized I was crying as well. ¡°Your cybernetic eyes even cry,¡± she said. ¡°Top of the line,¡± I said. I held her there, her lips slightly parted. ¡°I want to kiss you,¡± I said. Then she was kissing me, and I felt her warmth and desire. For a moment it was like netspace, that headlong, breakneck, amethyst-colored neon rush. I took a deep breath as we parted. ¡°Hey,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m suddenly starving. Want to get some curry and look through our haul?¡± I ran my hand through her hair and let it linger on the back of her head. ¡°That sounds perfect, Linney.¡± ### It was called Quick Bite. She said it was her local hangout, her favorite. The windows steamed up from the pots of curry and noodles simmering in the back. There was nothing mono-cultural or authentic about the place. It was pan-Asian, serving a variety of simmered or pan-fried noodles, serving curries and gravies of all different types, thin or creamy or spicy or anything at all. The menu made no sense to me. I let Linney order everything. We ate crispy, fried vegetables and crunchy egg noodles in a rich, coconut-turmeric broth with sour, pickled collard greens. The warmth of the dish restored me. It was the best thing I had ever eaten, and I was so happy that Linney had introduced it to me. As we neared the bottoms of our bowls, Linney looked at me with a strange expression. ¡°What?¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m just sorting through what we exfiltrated from Restoration Consulting.¡± ¡°Some wild stuff in there.¡± Then, in a hushed voice, I added, ¡°That hotel room compromat.¡± She gave a minute shrug. ¡°I was looking at the job offer.¡± ¡°Are you considering it?¡± She seemed brittle all of a sudden. ¡°Don¡¯t judge me,¡± she said. I reached for her hand, although she didn''t move hers to meet mine, not right away. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t judge you,¡± I said. ¡°If you want to take it, you can.¡± She reached for my hand. ¡°Would you take it?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve never been offered anything like that. I didn¡¯t make it into college. I figured I¡¯d go into network hardware installation because that¡¯s the only thing in my county that pays anymore, unless you¡¯re a street pharmacist.¡± ¡°Restoration Consulting does some pretty bad things,¡± she said. ¡°So does everyone,¡± I said. ¡°So do we.¡± ¡°They take over entire countries, strip them of resources, and leave the citizens to pick through the ruins,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the newsfeeds. That¡¯s certainly what their critics or their competitors would say. But is that what you think?¡± She lifted her bowl and tipped the rest of the broth into her mouth, then wiped her lips with a napkin. ¡°I see the good they do, too. They stabilized the confliction zone in Europe. They repaired the hydrogen infrastructure in the dead of winter. They disarmed the militias in central Africa. They were in those areas when other Western interests weren¡¯t.¡± We looked at each other for a long while. She spoke again after some time. ¡°I don¡¯t know what to do, Rawls.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have to make a decision tonight, do you?¡± ¡°I guess not,¡± she said. ¡°So you live near here?¡± I said, turning around in my chair, trying to catch a glimpse of the neighborhood through the windows beaded with condensation. ¡°Just around the block.¡± She picked up the bill, held it to her wrist to pay for the meal. ¡°Want to see my workshop?¡± We walked, arm in arm, through the night. The rundown buildings at street level hosted a revolving assortment of people moving in and out. Music played from second floor apartments. People in dark clothes moved about the street, flashing pills in tiny, glassine bags at us so quickly it almost felt like it wasn¡¯t happening at all. We reached the tall, pink vane of Linney¡¯s skinny apartment building and, after she cleared security with her wrist and retina, we sealed ourselves into a capsule and rode up to her place. It was a tiny, student apartment, with a small bathroom in the corner containing sink, toilet, and injection-molded shower stall. Its only window, a picture window occupying most of the far wall, looked out at the nighttime city. The thin concrete band of the Private Highway arced just in front of us. We could see the executive dreamliners sliding frictionlessly along it, tall and stately amid the sports sedans that ferried rich people to livelier parts of Carthage on Friday night. We set down our bags and shucked our jackets, leaving them in a pile over the backpacks full of hardware. Without even thinking about it, we found ourselves next to each other on the couch. I couldn¡¯t read her mood. I knew she had a lot on her mind, and didn¡¯t know whether she wanted me to listen or help her relieve some physical tension. I knew what I wanted to do. My body responded to her nearness. As I touched her shoulder, the tips of my fingers with the sub-subs installed seemed to know exactly what to do. She lifted her face to mine, and I stroked her cheek with the non-cybernetic back of my finger. ¡°What else can those chromed-up fingertips of yours do?¡± she said with raised eyebrows. ¡°I was just thinking about that myself,¡± I said. She began to lift her shirt, then paused and smiled. ¡°You, too.¡± I pulled my own shirt off and leaned close to her. Our lips came together as I felt the length of her body press against my own. Her fingers traced the circular edge of my net port. ¡°Are we jacking in together or not?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve never done that before.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± she said. ¡°A virgin. Maybe next time.¡± She took hold of my hand and brought it down beneath her waistband. ### It was late at night, all the lights were off. I sat up in Linney¡¯s bed, naked and happy. The fingers of my dominant hand rested on their charging pad. Linney had exhausted me and my implants¡¯ batteries, but it was a contented kind of exhaustion. At least I was content until I realized that I was alone. Pulling on my boxer briefs, I padded across the room. At first I didn¡¯t see her. But then I saw the console with its green telltale winking, and followed the path of the cable with my eyes, all the way to the net port in her chest. There Linney lay on her side, naked and jacked in, eyes open but seeing nothing, her nose streaming blood onto a pile of dirty laundry.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Hardened Labyrinth
Manufacturer 7Wonders
Cost to rez Low
Nguyen-Okafor complexity Varies based on how advanced it is
Type Platformer
Subtype Advanceable
Subroutines 1: stops a run; causes contusions in a runner if advanced by and housed in Restoration Consulting, even when fully broken
Chapter 20: Neural Static Chapter 20: Neural Static Linney lay unconscious before me, her eyes open but glazed over like dead screens, her nose bleeding. On instinct, I grabbed a cloth, wetted it with cold water, and wiped the blood from her nose. But the blood was still coming. I took hold of her shoulder, nudged her. She didn¡¯t respond. I nudged her again, but harder. Nothing. I looked at her console on the floor. The net port in her chest remained plugged into it, and the console itself was plugged into the port in the wall. I left her plugged in, but disconnected the console from the wall. The green telltale faded. ¡°Hey,¡± I said, and brushed her hair from her head. No movement. I didn¡¯t know what to do. Would she want me to call the medics? That¡¯s what I would do if she had overdosed. We had that drilled into us as kids. Find naloxone. Call for an ambulance. But she might get in trouble if the medics found her in the middle of the run. What if they called the cops or corporate security? What if the medics WERE corporate security? I hesitated for a moment. I knew she wanted to keep her problems concealed from the rest of the crew. But I couldn¡¯t just let her die. I called Gloss from the phone installed on Linney¡¯s counter. ¡°Hello?¡± he said sleepily. ¡°I need help.¡± ¡°Wait¡ªRawls?¡± ¡°I woke up and found Linney jacked in. She¡¯s not moving.¡± Gloss¡¯s voice snapped to wakefulness. ¡°Have you done anything?¡± ¡°I unplugged the console from the wall.¡± ¡°And?¡± ¡°I thought that would work.¡± ¡°If there¡¯s a switch wired into the cable, if you get there early enough, yeah. But it sounds like you¡¯re too late.¡± ¡°Jacking out doesn¡¯t help her?¡± ¡°Whatever loop she¡¯s stuck in, it won¡¯t stop just because the console isn¡¯t on the net anymore. The corp software is running on her hardware, get it?¡± ¡°I think so.¡± ¡°Plug her back in, then you¡¯ll have to jack in in tandem. Remember when you and I did that?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Just be careful. Whatever has her is going to come for you the moment you jack in. I¡¯ll be there as soon as I can.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. Crossing her apartment in a single stride, I dug under our jackets and found my console. On my way back to her, I was already twisting the cable head into my net port. I knelt next to her again, connected my console to hers, and¡ª smashed face-first into the emerald labyrinth we had broken earlier in the day. The walls were spiny and I could feel them pressing into my skin, not my avatar, my skin, threatening to break it. It took a minute to orient myself. We were jacked into a Restoration Consulting server and dealing with their augmented, Hardened Labyrinth. How was that possible? Then it hit me. She¡¯d installed a backdoor. I started to move my avatar through the labyrinth. The devastation was obvious. She¡¯d been through here with a wrecking ball. I moved through the holes she had left in the maze-like ice. Suspended above was the dull, gray disc of the previously-ultrabright Light of Truth. She¡¯d broken that one, too. What had grabbed her? Then I saw Linney, deep in the well beneath the maze, her butterfly caught by bright tendrils of data, immobilized. As I lowered myself to the place where she was bound, a tendril took notice of me and began moving my way. My icebreaker came to my side and rushed out in a torrent of power. It passed right through the tendril, not interacting at all. Whatever it was, it wasn¡¯t ice. This was part of the data in the server. It was some kind of trap. As first one and then another tendril started wrapping themselves around me, I felt them hooking into the Vista processor, forcing me to go deeper into the server and enmesh myself in the data faster than I had intended to. If I didn¡¯t find a way out, both of us were going to be caught here until Gloss made it over. I could feel the FLUX chip in my neck start to vibrate. It was siphoning off some of the power coming through the tendrils, causing those around me, and the ones wrapped around Linney, too, to dim and flicker. I opened the connection to the FLUX chip wider, let more of the data through, let it grab onto the chip. My console, too, was feeding off the biofeedback. I could taste blood in my mouth. My console liked the taste, turned it into juice. I could feel the chip heating up inside my neck and vibing like a weird neck masssage. But the tendrils that had caught Linney had gone gray and her butterfly flapped free. For a moment she and I hung suspended together, and then she blinked out of the server. I hoped she was free, even though I was still caught. I looked closer at the tendrils, and suddenly I found my eyes drilling down to the surface of them and then to the micro-fractures along the surface, cracks and divots and crevasses and then canyons. I could see the individual bits that made up the tendrils and I could feel my fingers twitch, weirdly, not my avatar again but my physical body, and I could feel the sub-subs begin to rewrite the tendrils, to turn them in on themselves. Suddenly they let me go and fell away, dim and uninterested. I felt myself rising back up, and then I was sitting, naked and huddled with Linney, in her apartment as the sun rose outside the window. Her face was buried in my armpit, leaving a faint smear of blood across my chest. I brushed the hair from her forehead. ¡°Want to tell me about that?¡± I said. ¡°I was going to scrub myself from the files. But they were waiting for me.¡± ¡°You made a run from home.¡± Linney stood, her beautiful body shaky and clammy. She walked across her apartment, found a robe, and wrapped it around herself. Moving to the counter, she started a kettle of water boiling. ¡°Yeah, I know,¡± she said. She didn¡¯t meet my eyes. ¡°I¡¯m tagged; I shouldn¡¯t have done that. But last night was so good,¡± she said, and she looked up at me. I felt a bolt of current run through me. She continued. ¡°And I didn¡¯t want it to end. I don¡¯t want to go away from my friends, from you. I got scared, and then acted impulsively.¡± She shrugged, as if it were not a big deal. I wanted to raise my voice. I wanted her to know how scared I was. But then I thought: she¡¯s the one who is scared. We remained in silence for a while. She poured cereal into bowls, added milk from the fridge. I didn¡¯t know what to say.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. After a while, she spoke. ¡°They already knew where I lived. But I¡¯m sure they know that it was me running on them tonight, and me installing the backdoor yesterday.¡± ¡°The question is: what will they do with that information?¡± ¡°Right. I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯ve put you in danger.¡± ¡°I was already in danger. At least we¡¯re in danger together.¡± I stood and stood next to her in my boxer-briefs. She put an arm around me. ¡°Listen,¡± I said. ¡°Gloss is on his way. I didn¡¯t know what else to do.¡± ¡°That¡¯s OK,¡± she said. ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to be able to keep this a secret forever.¡± Just then there was a knock at the front door. I threw on a t-shirt and jeans and answered it. Gloss stood there, a look of concern on his face. ¡°Is she OK? Are you OK?¡± Her voice called out from within the apartment. ¡°We¡¯re both fine, Gloss. I¡¯m going to have a shower. Come in and have some tea if you like.¡± As the shower ran and Gloss sipped his tea, we looked at each other from across the kitchen counter. ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± he said. He sounded creaky and underslept. ¡°Not my place to say.¡± Gloss sipped his tea and nodded. ¡°Should I ask her?¡± ¡°You could.¡± ¡°Everything OK?¡± ¡°I think so.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to tell you something, little bro. Divide and conquer is how the corps operate. They can¡¯t beat all of us all of the time, so they try to turn us against each other.¡± He looked at me as if he knew exactly what I was hiding. It struck me that this was the second time in a few days that I¡¯d concealed something from Gloss¡ªfirst, the run on Enrique¡¯s equipment that ended quickly and bloodied me. Now, this. But he didn¡¯t seem angry, or even disappointed. I heard the water in the bathroom shut off. ¡°Linney,¡± I called through the door. ¡°Do you want to talk with Gloss about anything?¡± There was a pause. ¡°Not right now,¡± Linney said. Gloss stood and rinsed out his mug in the sink. ¡°I¡¯ll take that as my cue to leave. A bunch of us are going to Mr. Grid¡¯s tonight. You two coming?¡± ¡°Sure!¡± came Linney¡¯s voice. Gloss tousled my hair on his way out the door. After Linney had emerged and dressed, she combed her hair, saying as she did so, ¡°What do you think? Should I tell them?¡± ¡°It¡¯s up to you. But they¡¯re going to find out eventually.¡± I remained on the couch, not quite looking at her. I wasn¡¯t sure how much she was inviting me into her private life. Sure, we were intimate last night, and I knew some of her secrets and she knew some of mine. But somehow, watching her comb her hair while she wore only a towel felt inappropriate. COME FIND ME flickered in my eye. ¡°I have some things to do,¡± she said. ¡°Meet you at Mr. Grid¡¯s tonight?¡± ¡°Sure.¡± ¡°What are you going to do with the day?¡± she said. ### I went back to doing what I had been doing before Linney found me the other night¡ªworking on my breaker. Mindful of the fact that I was tinkering with a volatile piece of software that couldn¡¯t easily be copied, I spent most of the day drinking coffee and trying to understand how it worked. I didn¡¯t feel competent enough to make changes on my own. I came to the work feeling deep anger at Restoration Consulting, and 7Wonders more generally, for intruding on Linney¡¯s life. I meant emotional pain as well as physical. As much as I wanted to believe that everything I did was for Freya, at that moment I was motivated by the desire to punish 7Wonders. It was only as the sun started to set outside the window of the coffee shop that my sub-subs woke up from their slumber and, linked with my net-capable eyes, began to make changes to the code. I entered the beautiful state that some called flow. It felt appropriate, modding an icebreaker modeled on the Hungry Creek of my childhood. The flashing of the words in my eyes faded to a point at which I could ignore them. For a time, there was nowhere else I needed to be. I felt total relaxation wash over me, even as my fingers moved faster than I had thought they could. They struck the keyboard of the laptop with more force than necessary. The sound of my chromed-up fingertips striking the keys gave me a thrill, not quite the same as the thrill I got from touching Linney last night. But not so different, either. Memories of pleasure broke my concentration long enough for me to realize that it was late. Time to get some food and make it to Mr. Grid¡¯s to meet the rest of the crew. A stray thought came to me as I closed my laptop and bussed my mug: how did my eyes and fingers know what to do? Did their knowledge come from me or somewhere else? As I walked to the metro to catch the train for the far away neighborhood where Mr. Grid ran his bar, the summary of my upgraded icebreaker flickered across my vision in bright orange:
Name Hungry Creek 1.2
Type Icebreaker
Matching subtype Platform
Base Nguyen-Okafor complexity 2
Cost to boost 1K for 1 complexity
Cost to break 1K for 1 subroutine
When I resumed the search for Freya, I would need something else to contend with the shooter and puzzle ice in White Tree¡¯s servers, but at least Hungry Creek could smash through platform ice with the erosive power of water, the univeral solvent, the substance that had carved the canyons and glacial lakes. I ran for the metro, eager to meet my friends. ### As I walked down the steps to the basement bar, I heard laughter and conversation spilling out into the old, concrete stairwell. Where the fungalcrete floors of Restoration Consulting had been polished, smooth and flawless, the old concrete here was rough, pitted, and reinforced with old steel, dull and brown with age. I pushed open the bar to find Gloss, Sunya, Ohm, and the CheRRy sitting together over beers, playing some ancient board game pulled from the rickety bookshelves on the wall of the bar. The cardboard playing surface and was warped and the wooden pieces had lost most of their paint, but the runners were concentrating deeply on the world of the game as if they weren¡¯t some of the most notorious outlaws in North America. I approached the bar. Mr. Grid served only two kinds of beer: light and dark, and I chose dark, the Tmave Pivo of his ancestral Czechia, and full of good feeling, brought the cool pint to my lips as I checked the high scores.
HI SCORES NAME SCORE
1 KT Thorn 1,378,435
2 Cynosure 1,301,783
3 EVE 1,224,999
4 The CheRRy 1,103,122
5 Sunya Xiong 993,807
6 Enrique Lima 910,639
7 Coilpath 895,620
8 Kent 894,012
9 Gloss 850,578
10 nonlineardyn 784,939
11 Ohm 726,500
491 Val43rie 101,642
3,009 Jasper Rawls 14,620
Of course, Linney¡¯s score was not much changed because she hadn¡¯t reported her runs to the scorekeeping system. But my runs were being logged. I hadn¡¯t turned that function off. Maybe it was a mistake, even if it did give me a thrill to see my name roughly 2,000 places higher on the board. And I was curious about Val43rie. Whoever she was¡ªI thought of Val43rie as a she¡ªhad jumped about 4,500 places up the rankings. She must have pulled down quite a score. I set down the grubby tablet in its warped wooden frame and took my beer to the table. Sitting down not too delicately, bumping shoulders with the CheRRy and with Gloss, I lost myself in watching them play the game, my eyes catching at a glance that the CheRRy appeared to be winning but that Sunya Xiong was about to pull a move out of nowhere that would flip the entire board. Just then I saw a flicker of light, and turned my head expecting Linney to enter and announce a decision¡ªunless her decision was not to announce anything. I wanted her to be at peace, whatever she decided. But it wasn¡¯t Linney who came into the bar. It was Enrique, looking sharp in a cream suit. Enrique caught my eye instantly, and his head cocked, as if taking me in anew. ¡°Young son,¡± he said, ¡°I hate to break up the party, but we have work to do.¡±
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Mood
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez Very low
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 3
Type puzzle
Subtype red
Subroutines 4: bleeds runner; heals runner injuries; bleeds runner; reads runner neural patterns
Chapter 21: Switching Sides Chapter 21: Switching Sides ¡°Take the stick out of your butt and have a drink with us,¡± said the CheRRy, waving her beer at Enrique, who stepped backward to avoid getting any drops of dark lager on his spotless suit, the color of fresh cream. Enrique threw up his hands in immediate surrender to CheRRy¡¯s opening salvo. ¡°Cognac, please,¡± he said. I saw that he¡¯d replaced his usual chrome hands with a pair studded in zirconium. I couldn¡¯t tell whether they were ornamental or weaponized. I was so happy to see Enrique that I practically kicked my chair backward getting to the bar to grab him his cognac. It had been days since I¡¯d seen him but it felt like years. I¡¯d done so much since he had left for White Tree to smooth over the small matter of my unauthorized run on one of their smaller remotes. As I set his glass in front of him, he looked up at me and said, ¡°Thank you.¡± Then, taking a second, closer look at me, he said, ¡°You¡¯ve grown.¡± ¡°Taller?¡± I said. I¡¯d only ever been used to relatives saying that I had grown, and that had only happened as a boy. Enrique chuckled. ¡°Of course not. I mean, I can tell you¡¯ve had some work done here¡ª¡± he pointed to the side of my neck, where the FLUX chip lay under my skin, ¡°here¡ª¡± he pointed to a space on my shoulder where the clipped square outline of the Vista Processor was faintly visible under my t-shirt, ¡°and here¡ª¡± he took my hands in his, his fingertips running over the chrome of the sub-subs. ¡°And you¡¯ve made more than one dangerous run since I saw you last. I can tell by the way you carry yourself.¡± The pride I felt at his appraisal was warm and deep. If I could have lingered in that moment for hours, perhaps days, I would have. The only thing that could possibly have made it better would have been if Linney were here to witness it. COME FIND ME flashed in my eye. With a stab of shame, I revised my mental assessment: the only thing that could make it truly worthwhile was if Freya were here to see how much I had remade myself in order to find her. Look, I almost came to tears at that moment. My cybernetic eyes¡¯ tear ducts activated the same way anyone else¡¯s did. I looked around for Linney, possibly so the intensity in Enrique¡¯s eyes wouldn¡¯t make me lose my composure. But I didn¡¯t see her. I turned back to Enrique. ¡°Thank you,¡± I said. And then the moment was punctured by a riotous argument among the others at the table. ¡°Everyone knows that I run to learn about ice,¡± Gloss said. ¡°That¡¯s all I want to do: know everything there is to know about ice, about the defenses that are more than defenses, that are practically conscious beings, some of them. And some of them are weirder than that.¡± ¡°So once you get your PhD, you¡¯re done running?¡± Sunya Xiong said. The atmosphere in the bar became silent. Gloss raised a hand, palm up, as if to say, the decision was out of his hands. Most of us looked away, willing to allow him to believe that right now. Not Sunya. ¡°Nah, you make money off ice,¡± she said. ¡°You won¡¯t give that up.¡± She looked directly at Gloss with a skeptical expression on her face. It was clear to me: you couldn¡¯t trick Sunya. Then she turned her gaze to the CheRRy. ¡°What about you?¡± Sunya said to her. ¡°I run because to hell with them.¡± The CheRRy drained her beer and smacked the bottom of the pint onto the table with a hollow, merciless thunk. ¡°I want to hear Ohm¡¯s answer.¡± Ohm, dressed as he was last time in a pinstripe suit, although a different one, looking every bit like a banker at Plutus Capital, said, ¡°I have only one motivation. To provide for my family.¡± He unlatched his briefcase and drew out a plush stegosaurus, which he set on the long table as if to say, here is a reminder of my young children. ¡°You could have stayed in your career to do that,¡± Sunya said gently. ¡°Not after what they did,¡± Ohm said. ¡°Maybe someday I¡¯ll go back to work for one of the corps. If one is worthy of my time. Until then, I will break them down and feed my children on the pieces.¡± ¡°Heavy,¡± the CheRRy said. ¡°Ohm,¡± I broke in. ¡°You used to work for the corps. How have they not traced you?¡± ¡°I overwrote myself in the Root.¡± An uncomfortable pause. No one said anything else about it and it felt rude to ask. The CheRRy said, ¡°We all know that Enrique runs for one reason: money. But what about you, Sunya?¡± she said. Sunya leaned back in her chair. She¡¯d changed the color of the highlights in her hair, now going with hot pink and green. ¡°Why do I run? Because I can,¡± she said. We all waited for her to explain further, but she didn¡¯t. She looked at our faces, daring us to challenge her motives. But no one dared to. The atmosphere had become quiet, even solemn. Amid the smell of beer and the ambient noise of the bar, it felt like the evening was breaking up and still no sign of Linney. Ohm leaned into me and whispered, ¡°Sunya has talents that no one understands. She can find software deep in the recesses of the net, no one knows where, but what she pulls up from the depths is volatile. It almost always crashes and de-compiles itself, and the source can¡¯t be recompiled, either. I¡¯d say it¡¯s magic but I don¡¯t believe in magic. Some call her hexrunner.¡± ¡°How about you, kid?¡± the CheRRy said. ¡°I started running to find my friend. She may have died in a White Tree clinical trial, but I don¡¯t know for sure.¡± ¡°Sorry for your loss,¡± the CheRRy said. ¡°What are you going to do after you find out for sure?¡± I could feel Enrique and Gloss paying attention, even though they weren¡¯t looking directly at me. They didn¡¯t want to pressure me, and I appreciated that.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll see how messed up I am.¡± That broke the tension and everyone laughed. CheRRy said, ¡°I like this one, Enrique. Better than your last guinea pig.¡± Gloss shot her a look and Sunya raised an eyebrow. I looked at Enrique. He held out a ziconium-studded hand. ¡°Later,¡± he said. Then, as if that weren¡¯t enough, ¡°I promise.¡± ¡°Has anyone seen Linney tonight?¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m worried about her.¡± Gloss was watching me with a somber look on his face, as if saying, you should have told me what was going on this morning. The rest were exchanging looks, shrugging, somewhat concerned, although not as much as Gloss and I were. I could tell that these runners looked after each other, but at a certain point, everyone was on their own. If the corps started tagging us, we were dangerous to be around. And Linney was tagged, although I¡¯m not sure if anyone else at the table knew it. Suddenly I felt the mood lighten, and then felt a soft hand on my shoulder. I saw the papery sleeve of a familiar rain coat, and then Linney taking a seat between me and Ohm. ¡°Sorry I¡¯m late,¡± she said to the group, ¡°I had some errands to run.¡± She kissed me on the cheek, which drew the attention of every single runner at the table, Enrique especially. His expression was intense and hard to read. I couldn¡¯t tell whether it was pride, anger, or fear that I saw on his face. ¡°Can we get you something?¡± the CheRRy said to Linney. ¡°I¡¯m buying.¡± Linney kept her hands in her lap and didn¡¯t lean toward the table. ¡°I¡¯m not staying long,¡± she said. ¡°I only came to say goodbye.¡± Now everyone was quiet, even the CheRRy. No one knew what to say. I felt sick. ¡°I¡¯ve taken a job offer with Restoration Consulting.¡± ¡°7Wonders.¡± The CheRRy rested her chin in her hand. It wasn¡¯t a question. Linney looked down at her hands. ¡°I start tomorrow.¡± ¡°Are you tagged?¡± The CheRRy reached her hand down to her hip, where some kind of device was clipped into her bullet belt. But I couldn¡¯t see what it was. ¡°I was. I shook the tag, though. No one knows where I am.¡± ¡°Are you sure it¡¯s not a trap?¡± Ohm said gently. Linney nodded. ¡°Rawls and I checked it out yesterday.¡± The CheRRy stood. ¡°Well dang, kid! This is something to celebrate!¡± Linney looked like she was in pain. ¡°But I¡¯m joining the other side.¡± ¡°You¡¯re getting out of the margins and into a life that you can live,¡± Sunya said. She reached out a hand and Linney took it. ¡°We¡¯re proud of you.¡± Ohm put an arm around the back of Linney¡¯s chair. ¡°We¡¯ve been worried about you. All of us, excepting young Rawls, made the decision to do what we do when we were already grown up. You never had that choice.¡± ¡°We¡¯re happy for you, squirt,¡± the CheRRy said. ¡°Now you don¡¯t have to worry about getting your brain fried by a slab of gray ice.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± Linney said. ¡°I don¡¯t want this to be the last time I see you.¡± ¡°About that,¡± Ohm said, ¡°you¡¯ll be in network security, I imagine.¡± Everyone was looking at him. After all, he was the one who had the most experience working inside the corps, except for a years-long con that Enrique pulled once. Linney nodded. ¡°They¡¯re going to wire you up, see what you see, hear what you hear. I¡¯m sorry, Linney, but we won¡¯t be able to see you anymore.¡± Linney had crossed her arms tightly over her chest. ¡°I understand.¡± ¡°No,¡± Ohm said. ¡°I don¡¯t think you do.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± Linney said. ¡°You¡¯ll be fine,¡± the CheRRy said. ¡°You¡¯ll make some new friends and pretty soon you¡¯ll forget all about us burnouts.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to,¡± Linney said. ¡°Better change that attitude,¡± Ohm said. ¡°Start now. Tell yourself you want to forget. It¡¯s the only way to be safe.¡± Linney shrugged, and stood. ¡°I had better go. I cleaned out my apartment today so I could move to Southport tomorrow.¡± ¡°Well, if they have you designing ice, make sure to put in a backdoor for me, OK?¡± the CheRRy said. Her tone, previously elated, had dropped into a deadly monotone. Sunya gave her a sharp look. The rest of the crew were gazing at Linney warmly. She gave a shy wave and turned to go. I stood and moved to her side. ¡°Can I walk you out?¡± She nodded and hooked her arm in mine. We walked up the stairs. On the street, she said, ¡°I never told you thanks for getting me out of there.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± I said. ¡°I mean it. What I did was dangerous. You saved me.¡± ¡°You¡¯d have done the same.¡± She raised a hand and stroked my cheek. ¡°Yes. I would have.¡± Then, as she looked into my eyes, she said, ¡°Jasper Rawls, I still would. If you¡¯re ever in trouble, serious trouble, you can contact me.¡± Without thinking, I pulled her tight. My nose was in her hair, which smelled of tea and oranges. ¡°I can¡¯t do that. You¡¯ll be living your life.¡± ¡°I mean it,¡± she said. I could feel one of her tears hit the collar of my t-shirt. I squeezed her tighter. She separated herself from my embrace after a while. I wiped a tear from her cheek. ¡°I¡¯ll miss you,¡± I said. ¡°Me too.¡± Out there on the warm street, the mist ticking against my face, I saw the crowds of people leaving work rushing for the metro, the second-shifters trudging in the other direction, a ponytailed freerunner three stories up listening to music on neon headphones clamped over her ears. I wanted to slow time down, to keep Linney here a while longer. I wanted this to be about us. ¡°I thought you and me were at the beginning of something,¡± I said. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°But I guess that¡¯s over.¡± ¡°You heard what they said. You could still go legal.¡± It was true. I could. But at that moment, with what I planned to do to find Freya, I couldn¡¯t imagine living a legitimate life. Maybe I felt reckless just then. Or rebellious. I wanted Enrique to be proud of me. I used to want Linney to be proud of me, too. ¡°Maybe I could,¡± I said. It felt lame. But I couldn¡¯t reassure her and I couldn¡¯t express certainty in the other direction. The truth was that I didn¡¯t know what was going to happen. I felt like I was fated to run servers, but anything could happen. She leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. ¡°Take care of yourself,¡± she said. ¡°Look me up if you can. Or if you need to.¡± I held her, and kissed her once on the neck. ¡°I will.¡± She walked off toward the metro. As the rain picked up, she pulled the hood of her paper raincoat up. On my way up the stairs, I noticed the COME SEE ME glowing again. For so long today I had been able to ignore it, so much so that I wondered whether or not it was really there. Back inside the bar, amid the welcome smell of sanitizer and beer, I couldn¡¯t ignore it any longer. Enrique grabbed me with his hard zircon hand and steered me away from the table. ¡°Back to work.¡± ¡°So you said.¡± We found a cabaret two-top apart from the rest of the crew. ¡°Tell me this will help me find Freya.¡± ¡°It will.¡± Enrique spoke seriously now. ¡°My contact at White Tree forgave us for your earlier indiscretion on the condition that we jam up some of FUTUR Design¡¯s upcoming products. I told her, no problem, we have it in the works.¡± ¡°Do we?¡± I said. Enrique shrugged. ¡°We¡¯ll come up with something. Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to do some legwork while I was spending the day in White Tree HQ.¡± ¡°They let you into their headquarters?¡± ¡°Of course. I¡¯m a sought-after consultant.¡± He produced a business card. It read Henri Ascuncion: drug regulatory expert. ¡°Henri¡¯s resume is a mile long,¡± Enrique explained. ¡°Did you find anything out?¡± ¡°I did,¡± Enrique said. ¡°But let¡¯s talk somewhere more secure.¡± At that moment, Gloss looked up at us. We all rose and said our goodbyes. While we did, I noticed that the CheRRy had become morose, sunken in her chair, her chin on the table, contemplating the still miniscus in a glass of whiskey. She¡¯d switched from beer at some point. Empty rocks glasses were lined up in front of her. We mounted the stairs again.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Capillary
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez very low when protecting corporate archives; medium anywhere else
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 4
Type Shooter
Subtype Red; scrambler
Subroutines 2: bleeds runner; randomizes corporate server addresses
Chapter 22: Dreamliner Chapter 22: Dreamliner ¡°Get ready for a high-class ride,¡± Enrique said as we walked along the street toward the BRUTE station. ¡°We¡¯re not going home?¡± Enrique smiled, shook his head. ¡°Not with what I have in mind.¡± As we reached the bottom of the stairs up to the BRUTE, I started to mount the long stairs up to the towering station, which shuddered every few seconds as the two-level dreadnaught buses departed. I was in kind of a daze as I climbed, and it took me a moment to realize that Enrique and Gloss had not joined me. ¡°What are you doing up there?¡± Enrique called to me from the street. ¡°I said a high-class ride. We¡¯re not taking the BRUTE.¡± ¡°Thought you were joking.¡± Feeling somewhat embarrassed, I walked down the stairs again and rejoined them along the underside of the station, lit by stupidly white panels that were nevertheless yellowing at the corners and dimmed with piles of insect corpses inside. We passed through temporary market stalls that catered to BRUTE commuters, selling everything from ready-to-eat meals in compostable paper trays to batteries to vials of silicone lube taped to porn encrypted on physical wafers that would disintegrate after a few hours, leaving one completely legal if the Talibama showed up. Not a problem in central Carthage, not yet, but in the outlying districts, even the denser ones, it was a possibility. I still gawked at things like this but Enrique and Gloss just kept looking ahead. As we left the warm smells of the market behind, I saw that we were coming up to a windowless concrete building. Before we made it there, a familiar beaten-up white van pulled alongside us. The rear doors opened as if automatically, and from the driver¡¯s seat, a black woman with an island accent turned her head and spoke to us. ¡°It all there,¡± she said. ¡°Thank you, Gerty,¡± Gloss said as he reached in to pull out first one and then a second pair of heavy cases. He handed two cases to me to carry. This was going to be a work out. Gerty¡¯s van pulled away. Next a tall man with long, straight, shining black hair came out of the windowless concrete building. ¡°Jiibay, my man,¡± Enrique said, and shook hands with him. ¡°Boozhoo, Enrique,¡± Jiibay said. ¡°And Gloss. And friend. I got your reservation ready.¡± Jiibay whistled and a rolling door in the building lifted. Just barely clearing the rolling door as it came parallel with the ceiling, a tall, midnight-blue van pulled out of the garage and glided to a stop next to us. Van was underselling it. It was closer in size to a delivery truck but far more elegant. Enrique whistled. ¡°Thanks, man.¡± Jiibay walked along the outside of the van. ¡°Self-driving and iced with a top-of-the-line Aasamisag out of Red Lake. Full psychoreactive holo-suite, bottle service, fourth-wave espresso machine.¡± ¡°Privacy?¡± ¡°For the next five minutes, all cameras and drones in this grid are seeing nothing. Once you¡¯re on the road, this here is as private as I can build it. Short of a Panopt neutrino trap, no one will know what you say inside the van. Any other questions?¡± ¡°What about tea?¡± Gloss said. ¡°Enange,¡± Jiibay said. ¡°My personal blend.¡± Both tall men embraced. Enrique hustled us inside before the cameras and drones woke up. The driver¡¯s compartment contained a seat for a human operator but the dash was set to self-driving. In the back were several compartments, the first a wood-paneled bar with two stools and a couch. Further back was a sleeping area with four berths. It was nicer than most places I had lived. Between the bar and sleeping areas were a couple of toilet-closets. In the far back, behind the sleeping compartment, was a deep soaking tub. It was clearly an executive transport, meant to convey people who refused to leave their offices unless traveling in a certain level of luxury. This thing must cost a fortune to rent. I could barely feel it as the van began to accelerate. ¡°Are we traveling on public roads?¡± ¡°Private Highway, my lad,¡± Enrique said. ¡°Ever taken the PriHi before?¡± ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°I assumed it would be out of reach for us.¡± ¡°We¡¯re among the wealthy today, or at least we¡¯re pretending to be.¡± Enrique took a seat on the couch while Gloss moved behind the bar to start some water heating. ¡°Little bro,¡± Gloss said before he pulled down a tea cup and then unsealed a vacuum-packed metal canister, putting his nose deep into the jar and inhaling with pleasure. His head came back up. ¡°You need sleep.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Enrique said. ¡°You made two runs yesterday for Linney and from the look of your bloodshot eyes, the ice beat you up a little bit. But even that ice is trivial compared to what¡¯s coming up. Sleep now.¡± Enrique pointed at the sleeping compartment in the back. ¡°In a while,¡± I said, sitting next to him on the couch. ¡°I want to hear what you learned about White Tree.¡± Saying it felt good, felt like I had finally been accepted as one of the crew. Even the words COME FIND ME were easing up on me, barely visible now, perhaps even invisible. It was hard to say. ¡°Coffee, Gloss,¡± Enrique said. ¡°For me at least. What about you, Rawls?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± Gloss was moving about the bar, checking out the equipment. ¡°Espresso or pour-over?¡± he said. ¡°Espresso,¡± Enrique said. ¡°Two,¡± I said. Enrique turned to me and began to explain. While he was inside White Tree¡¯s headquarters, secretly meeting with his contact while consulting on regulatory issues¡ªStolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°Wait a minute,¡± I said. ¡°Does your contact think of you as a consultant or a runner?¡± Enrique smiled. ¡°That part¡¯s complicated. See, White Tree is like any megacorp. Its knowledge is compartmentalized for legal and strategic reasons. Some departments keep secrets from other departments. My contact is in network security. They know everything, including both the Henri Ascuncion and Enrique Lima aliases. But the people I work with in regulatory affairs, they know little about who I really am. Thanks, Gloss.¡± Gloss came around the bar and handed over two warm demitasses, each holding a beautiful, creamy shot of dark-brown espresso topped with a dense layer of tiny golden bubbles. I nodded as I took mine. Enrique stopped talking while he sipped, a ritual I knew better than to interrupt. I took in my espresso, feeling happiness and drive radiate through my body. My fingers tingled. The sub-subs seemed to like it particularly. I looked around the bar compartment. Gloss sat on a stool, sipping his tea, typing up something for his dissertation. The lights above were small and recessed, but glowed down like miniature sunsets or moons. The couch was made of something particularly luxurious, an imitation leather. I was looking forward to taking a bath later. Forget about sleep, I wanted to be awake every minute I was in here. After coffee, Enrique explained what he learned from White Tree. Good or bad clinical trial data could elevate or doom a new drug. Each successive level of clinical trial became an order of magnitude more expensive to conduct. Level I trials were cheap; Level IV trials required the GDP of a moderately-developed economy. White Tree took extra steps to secure the data from the Level IV trials as they were the highest-stakes and most expensive. They contained the real-time sensory data of every patient during the monitoring period. Loads of data, loads of lives. Enrique learned all about the special security layer. Every night, White Tree reshuffled the addresses of all their remote servers storing Level IV trial data, so that if a runner or rival corp learned about a target to run one day, by the following night the target would be somewhere else. In order to operate as a company, its employees had to know how to access the files of their own workgroups, so master lists of the day''s server addresses were kept in the corps¡¯ central servers. So a runner who wanted to crack a particular White Tree remote server first had to breach one of the main White Tree servers to find the location of the target server. But that wasn¡¯t all. Enrique also learned that White Tree maintained a secure archive of impounded icebreaker technology, which was highly illegal even for a megacorp. Enrique¡¯s contact was dangling access to that archive as a potential payment to Enrique. ¡°For what?¡± I said. ¡°For messing with FUTUR Design¡¯s plans in the next fiscal year. Irregular corporate warfare, young son. White Tree wants us to fight their battles for them.¡± I thought about it for a moment. ¡°Go after the icebreaker archive if you want,¡± I said. ¡°All I want to do is crack a White Tree central so that I can find out what happened to Freya.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t be hasty,¡± Enrique said. I saw his point. White Tree was a global company with operations in nearly all of the world''s countries. It could store data anywhere, although like any megacorp it wanted to find the right balance of cost, strong corporate privacy laws, and tight physical security. Political instability could lead to torched or seized server farms, or¡ªjust as bad¡ªpower-grid brown-outs that left servers overheating. The secured icebreaker archive was in Kuala Lumpur, too far away to reach physically, Enrique explained. ¡°Those breakers could come in handy when we breach the White Tree remote with the Level IV data. It¡¯s bound to have some nasty security.¡± ¡°Like a mean red spider?¡± I said. ¡°Someone¡¯s been paying attention.¡± ¡°Enrique,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m ready. Let me make the run on a White Tree central. We¡¯ll scope out the remote. Then, if we need additional tools, let¡¯s look at the icebreaker archive.¡± Enrique regarded me carefully. ¡°OK, young son,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯ll play it your way this time. But only because you¡¯re talented enough that I want to see how you get in.¡± I felt embarrassed as well as slightly sick. Enrique and Gloss still didn¡¯t know about my cybernetic eyes. They were convinced that everything I had done derived from my natural talent. It was getting harder and harder to tell them, and I felt like every time we talked running, I was lying by omission. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. And left it at that. Enrique brought out a console, like a chunky briefcase that had been hiding under the seat. He opened it to reveal a set of holographic spheres rotating around a center, like plants. ¡°Test time. This is a virtual environment. Nothing in here will hurt you. Show me what you¡¯ve learned since the last time I saw you.¡± ¡°Right now?¡± Enrique was unspooling a cable from the case. ¡°I need to know if you¡¯re ready.¡± It felt good that he wasn¡¯t insisting on me getting some sleep the way he did when I first met him. I felt cocky and twisted the cable into my net port. ¡°Hit me.¡± If jacking into the net from an node in a crash space felt like being dropped onto a public highway at night, then jacking into Enrique¡¯s virtual environment felt like being dropped into an empty aluminum can. It was almost totally dark but for a far-off light. My movements echoed. But I wasn¡¯t alone for long. There, at the far end of what I could only call the can, a shape was unfolding out of light and starting to stream bullets at me. I called them bullets but they came in a variety of regular polygons. What they had in common with meatspace bullets was that they felt hostile and they moved fast on pre-determined trajectories. The first wave of them was separating and I could sense the gaps that were about to open just before those gaps did open. I flitted my arrowhead avatar between them and in a moment found myself in the space between waves of projectiles, the first wave behind me and the second wave about to hit. The spaces here were tighter but I kept my movements sharp and made it through. More than anything it felt like piloting that AI breaker¡ªthe water strider¡ªup the scales of the neural python, if the scales had been the bullets. The simile felt beautiful. It reminded me, too, of Gloss¡¯s whale avatar dodging the gestural harpoons of the Starbuck hunting it. This was ice. Something like ice. The third wave made me keep my movements cribbed and twitchy. There were times when I didn¡¯t believe I could make it through the cascade of polyhedrons¡ªthey felt like killer roleplaying dice¡ªbut I found yet another second-and-a-half to breathe before the fourth wave was upon me. Looking ahead at the gaps that appeared and just as quickly vanished in the patterns of the ice, I realized that I wouldn¡¯t be able to make it through this wave on my own. But I had a breaker, of course I did. Hungry Creek was always running at my side and I activated it here. As good as it was at breaking digital walls, it did not interact with the dense pack of bullets much at all. Perhaps it shook some of them loose but not enough to help me get through. I found time stretching out now. It was like Zeno¡¯s Paradox: in the time that the fourth wave of deadly dodecahedrons had crossed half the distance to me, I had remembered and deployed Hungry Creek and found it useless. In the time the bullets crossed half the remaining distance, I now inventoried the other tools available. In Enrique¡¯s virtual environment, I found an assortment of simulated breakers available to me. There were two different masks: comedy and tragedy. There was also an assortment of lockpicks: diamond, rake, and tension wrench. Lastly there was something energetic and amorphous, like a quasar held in a containment field. I picked the quasar and deployed it. Instantly I felt all the bullets derez, becoming smaller and smaller until they did not exist at all. But I also felt the tremendous wrenching sensation of the cosmic energy I was channeling catastrophic amounts of virtual power. When the fifth wave came, I was too tired to do anything. Couldn¡¯t find a breaker to respond to my thoughts. Could barely move my arrowhead. The packed pyramids advancing on me seemed almost to be vibing, dancing, changing positions with each other. They shattered my arrowhead without concern for me at all. I felt, dimly, like I was forgetting to breathe. With a gasp that burned my lungs, I became aware that I was reclined on the couch in the van, my chest bare and covered in sweat. ¡°What the heck was that?¡± I said to Enrique.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Aasamisag
Manufacturer Red Lake Defense Cooperative
Cost to rez negligible (corps); moderate (independents)
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 4
Type Platform
Subtype Independent
Subroutines 1: stops a run; but secures only small, mobile servers
Chapter 23: Bullet Hell Chapter 23. Bullet Hell I untwisted the cable from my net port and began respooling it into the briefcase that held the virtual environment. But my eyes were still on Enrique, waiting for him to explain what he just put me through. ¡°You want the literal answer or the more meaningful explanation?¡± Enrique played the cold professional, as always. I was too tired to parse the words. I grabbed a thick terry cloth towel from the table next to the couch and wiped the sweat from my forehead, neck, and chest. I tossed the towel into a chrome bin and pulled on my t-shirt. Not saying anything, I just gave Enrique a look. ¡°That was you,¡± he said, reaching out his hand to accept another espresso from Gloss, ¡°getting shredded by a simulation of a White Tree product that Gloss has taken to calling Tombstones.¡± He took a long sip of the espresso and nodded his appreciation to Gloss, who looked at me, like, you want one, too? I sat up long enough to hold out a thumbs up, and then collapsed against the arm of the couch. ¡°Tombstones are another word for dice, right? They looked like dice,¡± I said. ¡°A-plus,¡± Gloss called as he ground beans for another shot. ¡°They¡¯re interesting in that they scale up with the runner¡¯s skill, but you can jack out after any wave. It¡¯s almost like White Tree is playing a game with us sometimes.¡± For someone who was supposed to get some sleep, I was doing a pretty good job of ensuring that I would stay up all night. But this was too exciting to miss. ¡°So I got shredded. Why?¡± ¡°Well, you did fine against the first three waves. You didn¡¯t need a breaker for those. When the fourth wave required an icebreaker you reached for the biggest one, the breaker that¡ªif you slotted it in the actual net¡ªwould draw enough power to cause rolling blackouts through a good few neighborhoods. The power-and-data bill alone would bankrupt you. And you can jerk around any number of megacorps but you can¡¯t cheat Carthage Data and Power. They will find you and cut you off.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying I should have used one of the other breakers?¡± ¡°Yes. The fourth and fifth waves weren¡¯t that difficult, less than a three on the Nguyen-Okafor scale.¡± ¡°Fine. So I messed up. But you said the literal answer was something different. What was that experience, literally?¡± ¡°It was a simple arcade game, descended from a twentieth and early twenty-first century genre called danmaku, or bullet hell. It¡¯s the closest thing we¡¯ve ever found to a simulation of running servers and breaking shooter ice. The same skills apply, mostly. Runners good at bullet hell are good at breaking shooter ice. Platform ice and puzzle ice require slightly different skills, as you can imagine: force and logic.¡± I remembered all the days I used to spend playing old video games on my dad¡¯s ancient machine. ¡°Ludo was platform ice but I got past him by talking,¡± I muttered, then accepted the espresso from Gloss. ¡°Thanks.¡± ¡°Ludo is a simulant,¡± Gloss said. ¡°You can almost always talk your way past one of them.¡± ¡°Even Starbuck?¡± ¡°Even Starbuck. Starbuck¡¯s not that dangerous if you¡¯re not slotting any software you care about,¡± Gloss said. ¡°You can run through Starbuck without a single breaker if you¡¯re careful. It¡¯s just, if you run into something behind him that you need a breaker for, you¡¯re screwed.¡± ¡°So can I practice this?¡± I said. I drained the espresso. It revived me a little. ¡°You can and should.¡± Enrique¡¯s voice was rumbly and reassuring. ¡°But for now, get some rest. You¡¯re not running White Tree last click, and Gloss and I will have to come up with something to help you cut White Tree ice. They specialize in building and deploying bullet hell red ice, and the breaker you and Linney worked up is not good against it. The breakers in the virtual environment are only simulations. We can¡¯t copy them for you.¡± I took Enrique¡¯s espresso cup and gathered the other cups, then went behind the bar to wash dishes. Aside from a slight disorientation as I stood, it hardly felt like I was on the highway at all. Washing the cups felt meditative and reminded me of being home. Ever since I was five, my job had been to wash dishes after dinner. I thought again about my dad, who had no one to wash the dishes for him right now, and felt a tear. Wiping it away with my sleeve, I dried my hands on my jeans. In Enrique¡¯s absence, I had dressed down, leaving the blazer behind for a t-shirt and jeans. In fact, it had been forever since I¡¯d been back at Enrique¡¯s apartment. My life the last few nights had been one of constant movement, surveillance, hiding, and running. I felt like I couldn¡¯t afford to be tired. For a moment, I moved up to the front of the van and sat in the driver¡¯s seat while continuing to let the AI pilot our vehicle. Up here, on the high fungalcrete arc of the Private Highway, I saw the soft yellow lights that demarcated the curve of the road. I saw the red lights of a single vehicle ahead of us, the white lights of a single vehicle oncoming. Below, patchy with bright-white lights, was a mixture of suburban residences on grids and gnarly old downtowns converted into vertical farmland cut through with corridors of high-density industry and logistics. Up here, I could almost see stars peeking through the glare. It must have been a different kind of life if you traveled this way regularly. An executive up here could convince themself that they were the only one who mattered, that there weren¡¯t even people below, or not people who counted. I moved back through the bar and sleeping compartments to the soaking tub. I turned the lights to low orange and began filling the tub with hot water. My muscles ached from the last three runs¡ªwell, the last two and the simulation just now. A hot bath sounded perfect, even if it were a luxury I never would have indulged in at home. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Where did this vehicle get all the water from? I remember someone saying once that Private Highway¡ªPriHi in the parlance¡ªvehicles enjoyed access to a network of automated service stations that emptied waste, recharged and refilled consumables, and washed down the exterior for contaminants without the passengers even being aware. All this human engineering effort went into making things frictionless for the ultra-wealthy or the high-level servants of the ultra-wealthy¡ªexecutives, chief engineers, lawyers, money managers. When the soaking tub was full, I stripped down and lowered myself into the hot water. That initial, painful shock as the heat went over my bruises and closed-up cuts, caused all my muscles to tense before they relaxed. The beautiful release of tension passed through my body as I immersed myself up to my neck. This was a compact model of soaking tub, incredibly deep but not long. I sat on a ledge built into the side of it. The body of the tub was a hard synthetic porcelain that felt good on my aching body. The water was as hot as I could stand it, and for a moment, just a moment, I half-floated, suspended in a posture of total peace and relaxation, my eyes open to the comforting, burnt orange lights dotting the bath chamber. I could almost feel the nylon-smooth highway beneath my feet. Almost. Then the light changed, a lavender-royal purple cone coming from the ceiling, and I wasn¡¯t alone. Next to me, in the tub, water up to her neck, was Freya. The end of her long, curly hair floated in the water. ¡°Hi,¡± she said. The feeling that hit me was like the most beautiful stabbing wound, right between my eyes. My eyes spasmed, as if they didn¡¯t know whether to smile or cry. My head throbbed, as if it didn¡¯t know whether to be confounded or happy. My chest ached, as if it was trying to decide between heart attack or bursting like a grape from joy. I reached my hand out for her. But of course it passed right through her. She was made of light. ¡°How are you here?¡± ¡°Because you¡¯re here, idiot,¡± she said, and I closed my eyes and turned my head as she splashed an arc of digital water at me. But of course when it fell on me it was only scattered photons. ¡°Are you transmitting from somewhere?¡± An index finger, and then an entire hand appeared from the water and pointed at the projector in the ceiling, from which the purple light fell. ¡°But we¡¯re encased in a Faraday cage,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not transmitting from outside the van. I¡¯m built from light projected from the ceiling, but the ceiling builds me out of thoughts it picks up from you. Specifically, from the water.¡± ¡°From me?¡± ¡°This is a psychoreactive chamber. Didn¡¯t Jiibay explain? When you bathe here, the system shows you what you want to see.¡± ¡°Or who.¡± ¡°Or who.¡± ¡°Do you have an entire body, or just a head and hand?¡± She splashed digital water against me again. This time I didn¡¯t flinch. ¡°Are you trying to see me naked, Jasper Rawls?¡± I laughed. ¡°Freya Alexander, I¡¯ve seen you naked a thousand times.¡± She shrugged, and I saw the digital suggestion of shoulders appearing above the water. ¡°I thought that maybe, with some distance between us, your feelings might have changed.¡± ¡°That one awkward summer when we were fourteen aside, I¡¯m your friend and always will be,¡± I said. ¡°Then when are you going to come find me?¡± That hurt. My chest ached deeply and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Freya seemed pained. She disappeared under the water for a moment and then reappeared, her hair wet and slicked back now. She blinked the water from her eyes. ¡°As soon as I can,¡± I said, and reached for her. Her hand appeared to pass through mine. We held each other¡¯s there, suspended. I drew mine back first, and she followed. For some reason, I felt disappointed by that. ¡°I¡¯m waiting for you,¡± she said. ¡°Do you really think so?¡± ¡°She nodded.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know if you¡¯re even alive.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t?¡± ¡°The White Tree database said you were deceased.¡± ¡°That means very little. Who do you think is sending those messages to your eyes?¡± I waited, floating in the water, for her to say more. I wanted her to explain it to me. But she just looked at me. ¡°I believe it¡¯s you,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, I believe it¡¯s Freya. Can I just say you?¡± She nodded. ¡°I believe it¡¯s you,¡± I continued. ¡°But you never knew about my eyes, at least I don¡¯t think so.¡± ¡°Maybe I learned about them later.¡± ¡°From White Tree?¡± ¡°Are there any other options?¡± she said in the adorable way she always used to ask impossible questions. I shook my head. ¡°Hey,¡± I said. ¡°I want to tell you something.¡± ¡°I¡¯m listening.¡± ¡°I met someone. A girl.¡± ¡°A girl?¡± ¡°Yeah. She¡¯s my age. A young woman, I guess. Because I¡¯m a young man. It feels strange to say that. She was a runner. But now she¡¯s working for a corp.¡± ¡°I¡¯m happy for you, I guess,¡± she said. ¡°Thanks.¡± We remained suspended in that moment. It was the closest to peace I had felt in a long time, since before Freya had gone off to college. ¡°Come find me,¡± she said across the tub. ¡°I will. Just as soon as I get some rest,¡± I said. ¡°It will be dangerous,¡± she said. ¡°I know.¡± ¡°You will be hurt.¡± ¡°I know.¡± The projection neared me. I could see the glittering light on her skin. I could see water vapor and dust motes passing through her. ¡°It¡¯s going to hurt you worse than anything ever has.¡± ¡°I know.¡± ¡°Do you remember that summer when we both broke our arms?¡± I laughed. ¡°We were so bored.¡± ¡°No we weren¡¯t. We had each other. We ate about a thousand freezy pops.¡± Her smile was exactly how I remembered it, maybe better than I remembered it. ¡°You ate all the blue ones,¡± I said. ¡°Why do you bring it up?¡± Her face became serious. ¡°It¡¯s going to hurt worse than that.¡± ¡°I believe it. But do you know what hurts most of all?¡± ¡°What¡¯s that, cowboy?¡± ¡°Not knowing where you are. Not making it in to see you before you vanished. I¡¯m sorry I left you alone.¡± ¡°You did your best. I forgive you.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not her.¡± ¡°I¡¯m the closest thing you got, cowboy.¡± ¡°Why are you calling me that?¡± ¡°Because that¡¯s what you have to be.¡± Then she vanished. ¡°Come back,¡± I said. But the projector was blank. I moved around in the water. The tears were coming now, the release of all releases. ¡°I¡¯m coming, Freya,¡± I said to the darkness and the vapor. ### Enrique nudged me awake. ¡°We¡¯re here.¡± I sat up in the narrow berth in the van. The mattress below and the sheet covering me must have been made of some unearthly material. They were exactly as soft as I wanted and no softer, and exactly as cool as I wanted and no cooler. A clock glowed on the wall. Despite the two double espressos I had slept for damn near twelve hours. Could I just live here? Enrique departed the sleeping compartment and I swung my legs out of bed, got dressed, used the toilet, brushed my teeth, and combed my hair. I looked in the mirror. Badass, that¡¯s what you are. In the bar compartment, Gloss was drinking tea and working a crossword as he always was, and Enrique had the four heavy cases open on the couch and was taking inventory of their contents. I pushed forward to the driver¡¯s compartment. Out the windshield I saw darkness, and then a few irregular slits of light. We were parked inside a wooden structure, maybe an old-fashioned barn. It looked like we were making the run from here.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Tombstones
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez Medium-high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity Varies
Type Shooter
Subtype Red
Subroutines 2: bleeds runner; becomes more complex the more the runner runs through it
Chapter 24: Running Molten Chapter 24. Running Molten I helped Enrique move the equipment through the barn and outdoors. The landscape was totally flat, the sky enormous. Tall yellow grasses surrounded us, moving in the wind. I could smell sage. There were trees in the distance, arranged in a line, shorter than trees in the green areas of Carthage, more like trees on the top of a mountain, except younger-seeming, less gnarled. In the distance were transparent structures like giant maple seeds sitting blade-up in the grass. ¡°Where are we?¡± I said. ¡°Kansas.¡± Enrique led me along a gravel path up the hill to an old farmhouse in peeling yellow paint. Two stories tall and studded with dusty windows, it looked like it had been vacant for years. But inside, I found it well-kept. The house smelled of old pine rosin, the kind of thing Dad always kept around wrapped in a rag for when he wanted to play the fiddle. He used to play sad songs, songs for ghost towns wiped out by superstorms. I remember the convenience store man calling a certain storm an act of God. ¡°That ain''t no act of God,¡± Dad had said. ¡°That was 100% manmade. If they wouldn''t strip mine the mountain tops these storms wouldn''t be half as bad up here.¡± That memory stopped me for a moment, made me resolve to call him as soon as I could do it safely. ¡°This a crash space?¡± I said. ¡°Smart kid.¡± ¡°Does this place have a good net connection?¡± ¡°You¡¯d be surprised. We picked it because it happens to be on top of a Chronos trunk line. Bring the cases upstairs if you please.¡± After I moved the cases, and then another load of cases from under the bunks in the van, and after I had helped Gloss tidy up the van¡¯s small bar, the three of us sat in the farmhouse¡¯s living room under a slow ceiling fan, sipping tap water from scratched Gibraltar glasses. ¡°Let¡¯s hit White Tree HQ,¡± I said. ¡°Tomorrow,¡± Enrique said. ¡°I¡¯m rested, I¡¯m ready to go.¡± Enrique looked over at Gloss, who leaned forward. ¡°White Tree HQ is triple-iced. We¡¯re guessing they use diversified ice types: puzzle or shooter on the outside, shooter or puzzle in the middle, platform on the inside. That¡¯s typically how White Tree arranges its ice. Now the breaker you built with Linney is good for breaking the platform, but you¡¯re going to get taken apart by the other ice. Fortunately, we have obtained a couple other breakers for you. We just need to tune them to your physiology. That means it¡¯s arcade time for you.¡± ¡°More death dice?¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid so. You¡¯ll spend the day jacked in. Tomorrow you run for real.¡± Gloss gave me a tube of some kind of paste and then wired me up with sticky pads connected to my temples, neck, chest, arms, and abs. He and Enrique left me alone in an upstairs bedroom with the briefcase that contained the arcade simulation. Now I noticed the vinyl sticker that someone had applied to metal shell of the case: a series of cartoon tombstones. ¡°Cute,¡± I said, and jacked in. Immediately I found the feeling of being in the can somewhat different. Instead of the vast array of tools that had been available to me last time, now I only had Hungry Creek, which I knew was useless, and two new ones: Mask and Diamond. Even though I didn¡¯t need a breaker for the first wave, I deployed Mask, letting it sheath my arrowhead and turn it into something resembling the dice themselves. I found that they floated through me, drawing hardly any current. I moved through the third, fourth, and fifth waves using the minimum amount of resources possible, sliding between the deadly dice in tight, controlled movements, masking to allow them to pass through me when I had to, and then, boosting Mask to trick my way through the difficult waves. Waves six, seven, and eight down. On wave nine, the dice came at me in varied spirals, different shapes interlaced, nesting within each other and then spreading out like fingers before snapping together in tight, impassable phalanxes. If I were some kid off the street, I would have marveled at the patterns, been dazed into paralysis. Hell, that happened to me yesterday. Today, I saw in an instant the way through. Some parts of the wave were simple enough to Mask through. Others required quick, twitchy movements. Waves ten through twenty passed without any real increase in difficulty. The only danger I faced was getting bored. Yeah, I got shredded and booted a few times. More than a few. But eventually I could make it through wave twenty without a mistake. On wave twenty-one, I saw a dense murmuration of dice that looked impenetrable even to me. But I could feel my implanted eyes trace the path through the ever-shifting maze just as the tools to execute that path rose on either side of me, ready to rock. Forward, left, back, double forward, Mask, double forward, right, right, Mask, back, triple forward. And so on and so on to the end. That had been my 153rd attempt, all together. After wave twenty-one, the pulsing light at the end of the simulation just waited there at the end of the can. It sent no more dice down to me. I floated up to touch it. Nothing happened. No congratulations, no obvious glitch. It made me feel like something had happened that wasn¡¯t supposed to. When I jacked out, it was cool and dark outside and I could hear insects. The bed beneath me was slick with sweat. A glass of tepid water waited on the table next to me. I downed it and staggered to the bathroom. In the mirror, I was this weird, scrawny creature studded with wires. I tore the adhesive pads away, ripping out a fair bit of chest hair in doing so. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it I grunted with pain, then dressed and went downstairs. Enrique and Gloss were nowhere to be found. Sitting on the porch with a mug of bad decaf, the only thing I could find in the kitchen, I saw the starfield above dense and deep. Not since I had left home had I been this far from city lights. The constellations were different here, maybe. Or maybe I was different. I heard movement among the dry prairie grasses. In a moment I saw the swinging of a pair of flashlights as Gloss and Enrique emerged from the trail near the creek. ¡°Just checking out those things that look like maple keys,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Turns out they¡¯re Blooming Prairie-designed crisis pods. Built to survive tornadoes and even generate energy from them. But they work great against corporate surveillance. They lower into the ground and the blade turns radar-invisible. Really remarkable stuff. Unlocked, too. There must be a co-op nearby.¡± ¡°How far did you make it into the simulation?¡± Enrique said to me. ¡°After I cleared wave twenty-one, the sim didn¡¯t do anything else. It was boring so I jacked out.¡± ¡°Wave twenty-one?¡± Gloss said. ¡°Yeah.¡± Enrique and Gloss glanced at each other. ¡°Neither of us have made it past wave twenty before. Nor has anyone else that we know of.¡± ¡°Well, I did. You think I broke the sim?¡± ¡°Maybe, kid,¡± Enrique said, passing by me with a warm hand on my shoulder. Good work. Let¡¯s get some food in you and put you to bed.¡± ### When I woke it was not yet dawn. The slow brightening and fading of red lights in the distance marked radio towers. The world felt lonesome until the moment I could smell coffee. We¡¯d stayed too late with Enrique, who told us stories from the old days, stories of runners dead or retired or gone to work for the other side, stories of major scores that never became the last score, runners being notoriously good at squandering their newly-fattened accounts on icebreakers, implants, charity, and chems. But even if I had stayed up later than I planned, I awoke rested. I¡¯d like to believe that the stories helped. I came downstairs, greeted not only by the smell of coffee but by that of browning butter¡ªreal butter, from real cows¡ªand accepted a steaming mug from Enrique, who was dressed and shaved and wore a collared shirt and blazer even though we were in the middle of the prairie, far from anyone else. ¡°Expecting company?¡± I said. He just smirked, and plated fresh fruit and an omelet and handed it to me. ¡°Eat up. You¡¯ll need your strength. Today you cut White Tree.¡± In contrast to last night¡¯s lively back-and-forth storytelling, the morning¡¯s breakfast was quiet, with each of us ruminating on his role in the imminent series of runs. For myself, I could say that I felt distracted. I was close to finding out what happened to Freya, and I found that I both did and did not want to know. What if her fate were horrible? What if there was still a chance to extract her from some dismal place? I looked up from my plate to find Enrique looking directly at me. ¡°I know it¡¯s hard, young son, but you have to stop thinking about her right now. Instead you need to think about the first piece of ice, and then the second, and then the third, and then the server.¡± ¡°Thanks.¡± After breakfast we gathered in the bedroom. I lay in my bed, shirtless, hooked up to my console, which held Hungry Creek, as well as the other breakers in a separate piece of hardware built into one of the briefcases we had lugged inside yesterday. Gloss checked the connections and Enrique attached sensors to my body. ¡°Try to put them on places where I¡¯ve already ripped out my chest hair,¡± I said. Gloss handed me the cable for my net port. ¡°Ready?¡± he said. I jacked in. Midnight highway. In the distance, the representation of White Tree HQ appeared like its namesake: a fractal forest of white trees, manicured and overlapping with each other. It looked like White Tree¡¯s aesthetics team had worked over their network architecture. In what felt like no time at all, the first ice rezzed. And it was a giant one: a tall, porous curtain filled with what appeared to be white double-helices. I could feel it looking into me, could see the white helices filling it with colored links between matched pairs of nucleic acids. It seemed to be reading me. I could almost feel my body shivering in the bedroom, far away in Kansas. The spaces between the helices felt far smaller than those that I passed through in the arcade sim. As my eyes zeroed in on them, I could see that the surface of each helix was razor sharp and studded with suckers as on an octopus¡¯s arm, each sucker shaped like the data packet of a credit transfer. Aside from reading my identity down to my DNA, this thing was going to cut me up and drain my bank account all at once. It would let me through, but little would be left of me. There was no dodging this ice, no amount of maneuvering that would get my arrowhead through on its own. It was far too complex, the product of the viciously creative security architects at White Tree. But I wasn¡¯t helpless. I was a runner, with the backing of some of the best. I deployed Diamond instead, and felt my body warm as the breaker drew current and data, the hot blue processing tip of the diamond-shaped lock pick sliding into the minute spaces within the nearest helix and lifting, gently, but enough to denature its structure. As complex as the ice was, in that moment, Diamond was equally if not more complex. The helices turned brittle and began to fall away in all directions, like dried and broken ramen noodles. The path was deep, dark, and clear. I was through the first ice. From somewhere came murmuring voices: Enrique and Gloss, I thought. I shut down the hot processes that had lit Diamond like a welding torch. No sense in wasting cash on empty netspace. Accelerating hard, I dared the middle ice to rez. I expected robust shooter ice, something that would tax Mask and bring me to the limit of my resources. Instead, what solidified in front of me was a simple Membrane, the razor-lined red wall that had cut me and stopped my run days ago¡ªa lifetime ago, it felt like. Getting through Membrane was not difficult. Hungry Creek dissolved the wall and dulled the razor ringing it. We spent almost nothing in the process. I slipped through the gap in Membrane and slowed my approach, ready to face the innermost ice. I could feel Enrique¡¯s and Gloss¡¯s eyes on me. I knew they were relying on my skills. But as I approached the white mist ringing the pearlescent forest, nothing happened. The mist did not coalesce into the spiky defensive ring that I expected. No shooter targeted me. No puzzle tried to confound me. I floated above the mist as if it were not even there. At the base of the forest, I could feel the Vista Processor initializing. I had only a short time before the server kicked me out¡ªit wouldn¡¯t be possible to access everything. From Enrique¡¯s reconnaissance, I knew which branch held the addresses of the remote servers, and I knew which one held the location of the icebreaker archive. I targeted the remote server first, then dove deep into as much other data as I could find¡ª ¡ªghosts, images, the neutral tone of scientists discussing something with each other¡ª ¡ªblood, exposed organs¡ª ¡ªa line of black body bags¡ª I woke. ¡°Got it,¡± I said, as cool as I could. But my hands were shaking.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Chromosome Lock
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 6
Type Puzzle
Subtype Red; sequencer; toll
Subroutines 3: sequences runner genome; bleeds runner; siphons money; primes meatspace traps keyed to runner genome
Chapter 25: Induction Team Chapter 25. Induction Team ¡°Server addresses coming through,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Level IV clinical data and impounded icebreaker archive.¡± ¡°You ready to go again?¡± Enrique said. I nodded. ¡°Good man,¡± he said. He turned to his laptop, made a few keystrokes. I noticed the server map. It showed the icebreaker archive. ¡°That¡¯s not right,¡± I said. ¡°I want to hit the remote. I want to see what Freya saw.¡± Enrique looked at me, his face suddenly cold. I could almost see the words ¡®how dare you¡¯ forming in his mind. He shook his head. ¡°You need to run the icebreaker archive now. I want those breakers, and I have the backup gear ready to go.¡± He patted one of the big steel cases. ¡°Who knows how long White Tree will keep those things on hand. Possessing them is illegal, even for a corp.¡± ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°If you want the icebreakers, run them yourself. I¡¯m going after the Level IV clinical data.¡± Enrique and Gloss looked at me. It was Enrique who spoke first. ¡°The defenses on that remote might be too much for you. This is not your decision to make.¡± ¡°The hell it isn¡¯t,¡± I said. I was so close to finding Freya now that I felt like tearing the monitors from my chest, slamming that cable home, and not saying another word to them. ¡°Whose brain is on the line here?¡± ¡°I taught you,¡± Enrique said. ¡°I took the risk when I brought you in. I choose the targets. You make the runs.¡± ¡°Is that how it worked with Linney¡¯s ex? I heard you picked the target that flatlined him.¡± Enrique stood up suddenly, knocking a glass of water onto the floor. He pointed at me. ¡°That was not my fault. I trained him the way I trained you: never run last click. Especially against White Tree, only run when you have an icebreaker that can handle shooters and you¡¯re well-rested and your system has been purged of chems. That last part I never had to tell you because you¡¯re not a chem user. I would like to think you have enough sense not to faceplant a trap when you¡¯re exhausted, but maybe not. Maybe I was wrong about you.¡± Enrique stormed out of the room, leaving me and Gloss alone. ¡°Hey,¡± Gloss said quietly. ¡°You want to go after your friend.¡± ¡°You get it.¡± ¡°The boss has his plans,¡± Gloss said. He stood up carefully. ¡°I¡¯ll go talk to him. You just rest for a bit.¡± Gloss moved silently out of the room, reappearing a moment later to throw a rag over the spilled water on the floorboards. I watched the fibers soak up the spill, and waited in silence. The front door slammed, and then opened and closed again. They were talking outside. I looked out the window. By the sun I figured it was still midmorning. The White Tree HQ run had taken almost no time at all. I looked at the monitors. We had plenty of credit left with the Great Plains Power and Data Co-op, and still more with Carthage Data and Energy. Bringing Enrique¡¯s laptop toward me, I rekeyed the server map, found the remote holding the Level IV clinical trial data. I ran my thumb along the chrome flange of the thick cable fitted for my net port. I jacked in. The remote appeared as a single pillar, a dark crimson skyscraper surrounded by a triple-ringed moat of mist. I accelerated. I knew I was ready for anything. A familiar neural python encircled the tower, its head fixing on my vector, its fangs gleaming, dense with venomous logic. I donned Mask, opened the channels for power and data, and dove straight into the snake¡¯s mouth. I could feel the ice go passive around me. It could not even recognize me as a target. Next up, a series of blood-red sine waves surrounded the tower, pulsing, as if attuned to my thoughts. Something about this was odd. It behaved differently than ice I¡¯d seen before. I wasn¡¯t talking about the attunement to me; that was familiar from the chunky Chromosome Lock I¡¯d broken earlier in the morning. I was talking about some of the sine waves. While some were clearly sharp, menacing, and threatening to slice me up if I tried to cross them, others appeared almost helpful, like Dr. Qin¡¯s painkiller software, as if it would be almost comforting to let the ice wash over me. It must have been some kind of trick. I didn¡¯t trust a thing that White Tree did. I reached out with Diamond, found the mechanism that generated the sine waves, and twisted so that the waves collapsed. I broke through all of them, the sharp ones and the ones that mirrored the therapeutic routines in Dr. Qin¡¯s office. This was no time to experiment. Checking the monitors, I saw that for a small piece of ice that did not appear especially dangerous, it was relatively expensive to break. Maybe I should have let the therapeutic routines operate on me. In breaking it, I saw its brand name and registration pass over my consciousness. It was called Mood. I filed that name and net signature away. One more ice to go, and a healthy balanace in the bank. Let¡¯s do this. When the innermost ice rezzed, I almost didn¡¯t see it. But then I felt the sticky web holding me, just outside the facade of the skyscraper. I felt silent movement, tiny vibrations. Then I saw it, above me, a shadowy spider that blotted out the view of anything else. The spider god of legend, the mean red ice that every runner feared. Caught in the web, there was no way to dodge it. I remembered back to the arcade sim, Tombstones, how I was able to stretch out time to form a plan. As the spider leapt, I willed time to expand. But it didn¡¯t work; the spider was on me. I drew Mask to me but the spider punched right through it, cracking my arrowhead open. I could feel something shuffling, something rerarranging in the net around me. The impact of the spider had shaken me loose from the web and I darted to a far corner. As fast as the spider was, I could be almost as fast. I couldn¡¯t outrun it, but I¡¯d put enough distance between us to think it through. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Mask on its own wasn¡¯t enough. It simply couldn¡¯t reach the spider¡¯s level of complexity. But perhaps there was a way through. I re-initialized Mask, covered my arrowhead with it as the spider leapt again. This time, I opened my eyes, my implanted eyes boring deep into the spiders code, its recognition routines, leveraging that knowledge to improve Mask, make its disguise that much more convincing. This time, when the spider reached me, it passed right through me, and I opened up the throttle, dove through the web into the center of the skyscraper¡ª ### ¡ªa woman awoke in a hotel room in glaring light. Her neck was stiff. She had difficulty speaking. She found a remote control and managed to close the curtains. There was a glass of water next to her bed. She drank it. She ordered food by mashing buttons on the remote. All they gave her at first was banana pudding. But it wasn¡¯t the homogenous yellow gel she¡¯d grown up with. It was real Southern banana pudding, chunky and very sweet¡ª ¡ªFreya. It was Freya¡¯s memories I was experiencing¡ª She spent a week in the cool and comfortable hotel room, reading and watching documentaries on the wall monitor. She changed bandages and took antibiotics, pain medicine, and nootropics. She looked out the window of the hotel room to see the dense steel canyons of the Neurocapital District. This was the place where thought became money. If the net itself had a cortex it was here. And soon she would become part of the infrastructure. Beyond were the steaming working-class suburbs of Carthage. She saw rows and rows of small houses. Each one needed paint and a new roof. She saw corner stores with bars on their windows and steady foot traffic in and out. She saw the gleaming pylons of the Private Highway stretching above the suburbs. She could see the glossy capsules of executive sedans gliding along the Private Highway. She was scared. She had just about mustered the courage to ask whether she was permitted to go outside when there was a knock at her door. She opened it to find two young men and a young woman in white coats carrying tablets. ¡°Induction team,¡± one young man said. ¡°Wait,¡± Freya said. ¡°I thought I had two more days.¡± ¡°Your numbers are looking good,¡± the young man said. ¡°You¡¯ve been monitoring me?¡± The young woman laughed and put a hand on her shoulder. ¡°You¡¯re funny,¡± she said. The young man who¡¯d spoken held out a small cartridge with a few metal prongs on the inside. He gestured at Freya¡¯s head. ¡°May I?¡± Freya bent her head forward to give him access to the second data jack, not the one in her chest but the one in her neck. He plugged the cartridge into her neck. She felt something, maybe, some distant vibration. He removed the cartridge and looked at something on the display. He showed it to his colleagues, who said nothing and betrayed nothing. The three of them looked at her expectantly. Because they annoyed her, she took her time packing what few things she¡¯d brought, and took the tiny lotions and soaps from the bathroom. She followed them down the quiet, carpeted hallway. She expected to be led onto an elevator and then taken to a waiting car. She was surprised when they brought her to a skyway bridging the hotel and another building. They crossed over street traffic and into a facility marked with a gnarled White Tree. Here they boarded an elevator. There were no buttons on the elevator. One of the young men held his wrist up to a transponder. She could feel the descent. ¡°How far down are we going?¡± she asked. The doctors looked at each other as if unsure whether they could tell her. Finally the young woman said, ¡°Third sub-basement.¡± When they got out of the elevator, she was struck by the warmth and humidity here and the hideous roar of giant fans in the ceiling. All around her were cylindrical tanks connected with hoses and cables. Each tank included a window. As she passed by, she could see an unconscious person inside each one. They led her to a side room with a shower stall and a reclining chair already set up with an intravenous drip. They gave her a thick plastic bag for her clothing and left her alone. She packed away her outfit and washed in the shower with a sour-smelling liquid soap. She tore open the package they had left for her and put on a paper jumpsuit. She sat on the reclining chair and waited for them to return. When they did, one of them asked her lean back. The young woman swabbed her arm with a disinfectant wipe. Freya turned her head away while the woman put in the IV. She asked Freya to count backward from one hundred. Freya was out before she made it to ninety-eight¡ª ¡ªI was so close. If I could only see more of the signage in the room¡ª ¡ªthere was another memory¡ª Some other man in a white coat discharged her into the great hall of the Neurocapital District BRUTE station. In her old clothes that no longer fit her body, she shuffled forward, not lacking strength but rather coordination. He¡¯d given her a wristband loaded with 10K, an all-day transit pass, and a boxed lunch containing a soggy ham sandwich, mushy apple, and factory-made cookie. On the walk over, the man had told her that her muscles had been exercised twice daily via electronic stimulation during the year she was networked. He told her that the brains on the grid had processed more data, more experiences, more unintegrated AI dreams than any other humans in history. She felt sick. Movement in the corner of her eye startled her. Just commuters leaving their trains. ¡°Where are you going, Ms. Dearborn?¡± ¡°That¡¯s not my name.¡± ¡°Kristin Dearborn. That¡¯s what your ID says.¡± ¡°But that¡¯s not me,¡± she said. ¡°My name is Freya.¡± ¡°The Freya identity is contaminated,¡± the man said. ¡°Better get used to that. Where are you going?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she said. ¡°Try Bull City,¡± he said. ¡°Lots of young people up there. Just remember to report your residence and employment to corporate¡ª¡± ### I sat up in the bed in the farmhouse in Kansas, breathing hard. Purple warning symbols were flashing in my vision: LOW BATTERY. Outside it was late afternoon, the sun gone tangerine. Enrique and Gloss were hunched over me. ¡°She¡¯s alive,¡± I said. ¡°And I know how to find her.¡± Enrique¡¯s expression had softened since I¡¯d seen him last. ¡°You gave us a scare, kid. We thought we¡¯d lost you in there.¡± I thought back to the encounter with the mean red spider. ¡°Mask wasn¡¯t enough but I made it through.¡± ¡°One of the reasons we didn¡¯t want you to make that run,¡± Gloss said, ¡°was we knew the ice would be too complex for Mask.¡± I looked at him. It hurt to see his kind, trusting face start to doubt me. ¡°How did you make it through?¡± Enrique said, sitting on the side of the bed. I looked at him. He watched me carefully. ¡°Tell us everything now, please,¡± he added. Somehow it was his last word that hurt the most. ¡°I gave Mask a boost. With my eyes. Sometimes when I focus, I can look deep into the logic of the ice. I can see the right places to insert the breakers, the right ways to fool the recognition subroutines.¡± ¡°You did that once before, with the neural python and the water strider,¡± Enrique said. ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± ¡°What I¡¯m saying,¡± Enrique said, ¡°is that you¡¯ve developed quite a reliable talent in a short time.¡± I didn¡¯t answer. Enrique watched me, as if waiting for me to speak. ¡°That¡¯s not impossible,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s just very unlikely. So why don¡¯t you tell us what¡¯s really going on?¡± I looked down at my hands. The words LOW BATTERY kept obscuring my vision. ¡°I¡¯d rather run White Tree HQ again and find out where she is. Now.¡±
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Mean Red Spider
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 5
Type shooter
Subtype red
Subroutines 3: bleeds runner; bleeds runner; randomizes corporate server addresses;
Chapter 26: Afterimage Chapter 26. Afterimage ¡°I don¡¯t think running White Tree HQ again is a good idea,¡± Enrique said. Without a word I reached past him to the cable, pulled it to my net port. Enrique¡¯s eyes were disapproving. ¡°You¡¯re acting like a child. If you jack in, I¡¯ll cut the connection.¡± ¡°You want to know how I broke that ice?¡± I said. ¡°Dr. Rashida discovered that my eyes were implanted when I was a toddler and they can boost breakers. She said they¡¯re labeled as a White Tree/FUTUR Design collab.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not possible,¡± Gloss said automatically, and Enrique extended a hand to him. They looked at each other, then Enrique turned back to me. ¡°Listen to me very carefully,¡± he said. ¡°Have you ever received any messages on your eyes?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°From whom?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. Maybe Freya.¡± ¡°What makes you think that?¡± ¡°I see the words ¡®Come find me¡¯ over my vision. It becomes more or less intense depending on how much I¡¯m looking for her.¡± ¡°Damn,¡± Enrique said, and looked out the window. ¡°We should go,¡± Gloss said. Enrique was nodding, stroking his stubble. ¡°Wait,¡± I said. ¡°In the remote server, I saw that she survived the clinical trial. She was supposed to report back to White Tree. I want a chance at cracking HQ before they overwrite the defenses with new ones.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll start packing up,¡± Enrique said. ¡°You have one hour, but then I¡¯m jacking you out.¡± ### White Tree HQ: the pearly fractal forest, seen through the LOW BATTERY warnings on the interior of my eyes in netspace, drew me closer. I knew that Freya¡¯s location¡ªor recent location¡ªwas in there somewhere. And I knew I could get in. The Chromosome Lock did not feel so eerie now that I knew that power and data pushed through Diamond could break it. And the Membrane? Trivial. I was a runner now, slotting a full rig. Just like Gloss and Enrique, a professional¡ª The innermost ice, which had remained misty and dormant on my first run, started to gather as I approached. I tensed, ready to dodge, even more ready to fight. The ice formed into an enormous golden figure before me, wielding a splendid recurved bow: hunter ice. Something was wrong. It didn¡¯t look like a White Tree product. The design was self-mythologizing, inspired by antiquity. It could only be Resheph, the ancient Phoenician god, the work of 7Wonders. Licensed to protect a White Tree central server, it was a stronger piece of ice than I had encountered before. I could practically feel the gravitational flux of capital as the details of the god ice¡¯s skin, its armor, the digital woodgrain of its bow sharpened before me. Whatever this thing cost, it was tremendous. I meant that it sent literal tremors through the net. I could feel the stream of patents transferred, credit for medical breakthroughs reassigned, subsidiary corporate entities dissolved and created to house these re-homed assets as the ice came into being. Not quite conscious. Not quite intelligent. But focused on one thing. Protection. Make that two things. Protection and destruction. Resheph drew back its bow, and I brought Mask up over my arrowhead. I could feel my eyes straining, feel the draw on our accounts as Mask tried to boost itself. Then the arrow cut through my arrowhead like an irrefutable argument. The breakers were gone. I knew that instantly. I could feel Hungry Creek and Mask wiped from where they had lived inside me, inside the console, in the spaces in between. Deep blackness was all I saw. I heard an intermittent, tinkling tone that I knew meant one thing: connection terminated by server. In my nose was the smell of melted plastic and scorched metal. I breathed in the sweet resin of molten flux-core solder, a scent of childhood, of Dad¡¯s workbench. ¡°I can¡¯t see,¡± I said to no one. ¡°Little bro,¡± came Gloss¡¯s voice. ¡°We have to go.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t see, Gloss.¡± I felt his arms embracing me, lifting me from the bed. ¡°It¡¯s your eyes, little bro,¡± he said as he set me down on the floor so that I could find my feet. ¡°I can see the telltales winking in your irises. They¡¯re out of charge.¡± Panic shot through me. ¡°How do I recharge them?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Gloss said, ¡°but I would guess you need sun and you need rest. Unfortunately, neither of those things are available. Come on¡ª¡± The boom that shook the farmhouse seemed to have been preceded by the sound of something tearing, like a bedsheet ripped in half. ¡°Oh no,¡± Gloss said. But I could hear something, the clacking of claws, the scissoring of many legs outside the house. ¡°They took out the van,¡± Gloss whispered. ¡°Enrique.¡± ¡°Where is he?¡± ¡°He was out there. Come on.¡± I felt him take my hand and lead me out of the room. ¡°Stairs,¡± he hissed. I let go his hand to hold onto the rail. My bare feet found the edges of each step, and we moved quickly down them, not making a lot of noise, but not being very quiet, either. On the ground floor, I placed my hand on Gloss¡¯s shoulder. When he moved, I moved behind him. We leaned against a wall. I slid my shoes on. Gloss cinched a bag across his chest. It sounded like he¡¯d managed to grab some of the hardware. We listened at the front door. There was a sound in the background like something repeatedly beating against something else, something chopping wind. And there it the other sound again, the sound of legs, hardened, either mechanical or alloy-reinforced biological, and many of them. These were not the jangly steps of tooled-up human operators. They were more like animals. ¡°Cy-otes,¡± Gloss whispered, and his voice was barely more than a breath. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. ¡°What do we do?¡± I heard a metallic click like the chambering of a round in a firearm. ¡°When I open the door,¡± Gloss said, ¡°you stay here. Anything comes through there, you stab it.¡± I could feel him press the heavy handle of a chef¡¯s knife into my hand. ¡°I¡¯ll be back in a minute.¡± Then he swung the door open, stepped through carefully, and closed it behind himself. What followed was the scrabbling of legs and a strange, mournful, echoic howl. It sounded like there was dozens of the things out there. Then came a sleek crack like a hammer hitting a piece of sheet metal. And again and again. The door nudged itself open. ¡°Gloss?¡± I said. Silence. Suddenly it was on me, knocking me down, the pain bright and hot in my shoulders, like nails being driven in. Something smashed into my face. Taking the handle of the knife in both hands, I pushed it upward and twisted. The yowl that followed shot through me and, just for a moment, I felt like I had stabbed myself, or stabbed Gloss, so disconcerting was the sound. But then I became aware of the dead heft of fur and chrome on top of me. I rolled it off, wiped my face, sticky with blood. I threw up. Then I got back to my feet, but the knife was gone. I heard a whisper. ¡°Bro.¡± Stepping through the open door, my voice creaked. ¡°Gloss?¡± I felt him take my hand and put it on my shoulder. ¡°Get ready to run.¡± I patted him to show I understood. Then he was moving and I was trying to keep up, to keep my hand on his shoulder or at least his back. I felt gravel underneath my shoes, and could hear the crackle of our feet on it. The sweet smell of prairie sage was on the air, just beyond us. Then I felt Gloss pulling me into knee-high grass, brittle and sharp against my ribs. It hissed as we moved through it. I heard some kind of mechanical system unseal itself and Gloss was pushing me forward, one big hand on the top of my head to make me duck, the other on my back to urge me up. I squeezed into something, then I felt Gloss sit next to me, and then the sucking sound of a door sealing and a motor starting. I felt a shuddering and the hard scrabble of pebbles and dirt moving. ¡°Where are we?¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re in one of the crisis pods. You should sleep,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can.¡± I felt something in my palm. A pill. ¡°If you need it,¡± Gloss said. I brought my hand to my mouth. A moment later he placed a bottle of water in my hand. ### ¡ªunfinished business¡ª ¡ªmore data inside me¡ª ¡ªnever exported¡ª Freya rubbed the back of her neck where the data jack clung, hard and insensitive, both part of her and not. She boarded the next train. She threw the box lunch away and ordered a croissant and coffee. Her brain felt like it was shattering that night. She felt terror and ghostly pain. It left her curled up under a Private Highway pylon in downtown Bull City. She thought she was going to have a stroke right there and die and that no one would ever find her and her parents would never know what had happened to her. A tall black man in a cloak glowing with circuitry and carrying a staff carved from bleached driftwood stood over her. ¡°Look what the net coughed up,¡± the man said, crouching. ¡°Tell me your name.¡± ¡°Freya,¡± she said. Forget Kristin Dearborn. That name wasn¡¯t hers. ¡°What¡¯s the matter, Freya?¡± ¡°I¡¯m having a stroke,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re too young for a stroke. I think you¡¯re having a panic attack,¡± he said. ¡°Let me show you what helps me.¡± He reached into his cloak and pulled out a thin white stick, a conductor¡¯s baton. He started to count time with it. ¡°Breathe in, three four, hold two three four, breathe out three four, hold two three four.¡± He led her through the breathing again and again until she felt her heart slow and the panic withdraw. ¡°Where are you staying?¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she said. He helped her up and led her to an old diesel truck, where he and his entourage placed her in the bed. The scratched steel ridges of the bed reminded her of her grandfather¡¯s pick-up. They drove her to a brick dormitory full of street people. The man in the cloak gave her a bag of tea and showed her to a room with a mattress. He showed her how the door locked with a deadbolt from the inside. He told her his name was The Prophet Ezra. She asked how much he wanted for the room. He said, ¡°Slot this and tell me what you find.¡± He pulled from his cloak a wafer, an irregularly-shaped printed circuit board inlaid with strange whorls of copper and dots of integrated circuitry like chocolate chips. ¡°Slot it?¡± He gestured at her ear. ¡°I need to know,¡± he said. ¡°Tell me tomorrow.¡± He left her alone then, in the small dorm room with its mattress, a set of threadbare but clean sheets, a sealed plastic bottle of water, and a stained desk. She had her toiletry kit from the hotel a year ago. A year ago! She had no memories of her time on the grid. The panic was still there, in the background of her self. She held the wafer of cultured flash memory in her hands. She moved to the desk and set the wafer down. She poked at it with her hand. She got up, walked around the room. She checked the walls for a net jack. She couldn¡¯t find any. Did she trust The Prophet Ezra? He had given her a place to sleep and a door that locked. That was worth something. But to slot this? She wasn¡¯t sure. She pushed it away. She curled up on the mattress and slept some. In the morning, she opened the coarse burnt-orange curtains and looked out over what was clearly a poor area of Bull City. People stood on the streets talking in small groups. Old vehicles crawled up and down the cracked asphalt. Corporate security drones passed overhead. There was a knock on her door. She opened it to find The Prophet Ezra there, still in his cloak, still carrying his staff. ¡°Well? What¡¯s on it?¡± She stepped away from the door and invited him in. He sat on the mattress. She sat at the desk. ¡°I didn¡¯t slot it,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t be sorry,¡± he said. ¡°Tell me why.¡± ¡°I spent the last year connected to the grid. My mind, or my brain, I¡¯m not sure which, was part of the backbone of the net. I¡¯m not ready to slot anything just yet.¡± The Prophet Ezra put his hands together. ¡°Did you know that I was one of the first to be networked? Back when the only jobs I could get with my record were slaughtering chickens or plugging in?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t know that,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°What did I tell you? Don¡¯t be sorry. As soon as I saw you I knew where you¡¯d come from. I recognize it in your eyes. And I wouldn¡¯t do anything to hurt you. I¡¯ve been hurt myself and I¡¯m careful around others. This¡ª¡± he gestured at the wafer ¡°is harmless. There¡¯s nothing executable on it. It¡¯s just literature. Bacterial poetry acid-etched in cuprified polymer. And literature is neurosecurity. But you are under no obligation to slot it or anything.¡± ¡°You could have told me that last night,¡± she said. ¡°True,¡± he said. ¡°Should have done that.¡± ¡°Thank you for helping me,¡± she said. ¡°We look out for each other here,¡± he said. She dug out the small amount of paper money she had and gave it to him. ¡°It¡¯s all I have right now,¡± she said. He thanked her and put the money in his cloak. ¡°Feel better now that it¡¯s a transaction?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± she said. He nodded. ¡°What will you do?¡± ¡°Find work,¡± she said. ¡°Find the runner community.¡± ¡°The runner community! LOL!¡± He sounded like an old person, which he was. ¡°Bunch of drunks and stim addicts. Stay away from them. They think they¡¯re heroes because they do slightly more damage to the megacorps than they do to themselves. Take my advice. Get a job. It should be easy for you. Do you have a criminal record?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Get a job. Go to Research Triangle Arcology. You already have a data jack. They¡¯ll have something for you there.¡± ¡°I came here so I wouldn¡¯t have to get a corporate job,¡± she said. ¡°I know you did, sweetie. Still. Take the bus to RTA.¡± When she walked out of the shelter, she didn¡¯t know where else to go, so she began walking toward the transit station. Under the washed-out silver sky, nothing promising appeared between her and the station, so she paid with her debit card and boarded a bus for RTA. The bus roared through tree-lined highway carved through the city. Then the bus was swallowed by an enormous tunnel. When the bus stopped, she found herself in a crystal palace that rose up and up. The logos of luxury brands glowed on tall banners and the air smelled artificial, like one of those cinnamon rolls that come out of the shiny tubes at the grocery store. She was in a kind of shopping mall. The other people on the bus were contractors¡ªjanitors, child-care workers¡ªwho were passing through security. She took the escalator to the mezzanine, where she found a kiosk labeled RECRUITING in a font that appeared familiar. ### When I woke, I saw a low strip of red light illuminating the sleeping bulk of Gloss on a mat on the floor. The air circulator was humming. I saw the bottle of water next and sipped from it. I could see again.
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Copy Substrate
Manufacturer Many
Legal status Legal if licensed.
Description A homogenous piece of synthetic cortex with a power supply and a write-once ready-many-times port. Looks like hard candy but don¡¯t eat it.
Cost More than you can comfortably afford.
Function Corps use them to back-up their more compact AIs or Simulants. Runners use them to back up only the most essential programs, such as icebreakers. Except for pot-smoking digital explorers and show-offs who use them to back-up all kinds of nonsense.
Chapter 27: On the Road Chapter 27: On the Road I could see again. Inside the tiny crisis pod with its curved walls and dim red light, Gloss was asleep. Somewhere overhead I could hear the wind blowing, the electric whirr of the blade turning. In small, fabric-lined compartments built into the walls, I found something to eat, some kind of sweet bar. As I moved I felt something sticky stretch on my skin at each shoulder, felt it on my cheek. Gloss must have cleaned my injuries and bandaged them. Eventually, Gloss woke and sat up, his hands on his knees. ¡°Everything has gone to hell,¡± he said. I handed him the water. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said. We sat together in the crisis pod, breathing recycled air, listening for movement above. All we heard was wind and now rain. I kept as still as possible, not wanting to stretch the bandages on my shoulders or face. Gloss thought that we had killed the Cy-otes, cyborg coyotes, at least that first pack. But there would be others. If we were lucky, the rain would wash away our scent. While we passed the time, Gloss went scholar-mode, told me stories from the deep lore of the runner community. These crisis pods came from Blooming Prairie Arcology, which had been the birthplace of the first runners. Well, it wasn¡¯t exactly Blooming Prairie, but Roseville, Minnesota to some extent, the skyways of downtown Minneapolis, and then, finally, Blooming Prairie. But there had been hackers forever, since before there had been computers, even. Runners were distinct from hackers, crackers, black hats, whatever you wanted to call them. To run was to put your biology on the line, to put your whole body into the hack. Runners bypassed all the reasonable filters that ordinary people used to mediate their experience of the net. In some ways runners simply acknowledged what most people didn¡¯t want to know: that our whole bodies were always involved when we accessed the net. An ordinary person, whose gaze turned to a screen the very instant they had nothing else to do, was putting their brain at the mercy of the corps, just as a runner who jacked in via their spine. The only difference was that a runner¡¯s braindeath was faster. When Gloss¡¯s history lesson fizzled, I continued apologizing. ¡°All I wanted to do was impress you. I thought that if you knew about my eyes you wouldn¡¯t think I was talented enough to keep around.¡± Gloss nodded and closed his eyes. ¡°I hear what you¡¯re saying, but you¡¯ve got it all wrong. Talent is a commodity like anything else. You can train it, you can code it, you can implant it surgically. Enrique wouldn¡¯t have cared where your skill came from, whether it had been spliced into you or whether you developed it out of pure stubborness.¡± I felt ashamed. I hung my head and laced my fingers behind my neck. ¡°If I had told you about the eyes, maybe we could have planned around them.¡± ¡°Yeah, maybe,¡± Gloss said. ¡°Don¡¯t feel too bad. We all mess up. Remind me some other time to show you the scars I picked up after my first run. For now, what do you want to do, little bro?¡± Gloss leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his fingers laced together in front of his mouth. Until now, it always seemed like he was someone who had a plan. Now, he appeared to be waiting for me to tell him what to do. ¡°Are you sure you want me to be calling the shots?¡± ¡°I have faith in you. I know you¡¯ll be extra cautious now that you feel like you made a mistake.¡± Gloss smiled. ¡°Before we do anything,¡± I said, lifting my head, ¡°I want to know what the hell is going on.¡± ¡°You know as much as I do,¡± Gloss said, ¡°but we can try to figure some things out. What do you want to talk about?¡± I sipped some water, tried to think. I felt uncomfortable, like Gloss was testing me. I didn¡¯t want to be tested. I just wanted out of here. I moved to a dusty touchscreen on the wall. Found the beverage selection. I ordered some tea for Gloss, some coffee for myself. The system responded: SANITARY CYCLE RUNNING. ¡°What do you think happened to Enrique?¡± I said, returning to my bunk. ¡°They snatched him. I saw it. They bundled him into a helicopter and lifted off.¡± ¡°Was the helicopter marked?¡± ¡°No branding, which says freelance corporate security to me.¡± ¡°Where do you think he is?¡± ¡°Could be a corporate rendition facility. Could be county jail, though I doubt it. Could be a Treasury Department black site.¡± ¡°Could White Tree have hired them?¡± ¡°Sure, but we only breached White Tree a few hours before the attack. We were running from a new space, through proxies in Accra, Ciudad del Este, and Manila, and Enrique had confirmed with his contact that White Tree had no idea about your earlier run. I¡¯m not convinced it was them.¡± ¡°Unless it was some other corporate unit tracking us through my eyes for longer. Some unit that Enrique¡¯s contact didn¡¯t know about.¡± Gloss¡¯s expression showed that he accepted the possibility. But he said nothing, not wanting to delve into it. The touchscreen dinged and a clear acrylic window slid open. Inside were two thick plastic mugs, steaming. I handed one to Gloss and let the other warm my hands. ¡°So we have no idea who attacked us,¡± I said. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°That¡¯s not entirely true. The Cy-otes are a name-brand product. Only FUTUR Design uses them.¡± ¡°Didn¡¯t you say they were relatively safe to run against?¡± ¡°I did, and they are. Relatively. But we seem to have attracted some bad attention. And Cy-otes are FUTUR Design¡¯s way of warning a runner off. And I¡¯ve never heard of Cy-otes licensed to freelancers. Cy-otes are not usually lethal, but highly painful.¡± My shoulders still hurt where the claws had dug into me. ¡°That reminds me,¡± I said. ¡°When I was asleep, I saw Freya again. I don¡¯t think it was a dream, more like a continuation of the experiential data we accessed in the clinical trial server.¡± ¡°Afterimage,¡± Gloss said. ¡°You must have keyed in on her stream specifically when you hit that server. Somehow, you knew what to look for.¡± ¡°Maybe because of my eyes?¡± Gloss shrugged. He was bathing his face in the steam from the mug. ¡°Hard to say.¡± ¡°Anyway, I saw more of what happened to her. After she left the White Tree trial, she went to Bull City, then to Research Triangle Arcology. She was walking into the recruiting booth of one of the corps, but I couldn¡¯t tell which one. It¡¯s just that the color and the font on the signage was familiar.¡± He moved the mug away from his face so that I could see his lopsided grin. ¡°Purple, thick, block capitals? Kind of slanted forward?¡± ¡°Yeah. How¡¯d you know?¡± ¡°Because the Cy-otes reminded you of it. That sounds like a FUTUR Design facility.¡± ¡°And FUTUR Design was the other manufacturer of my eyes.¡± ¡°Maybe that¡¯s not a coincidence.¡± Gloss sipped his tea. ¡°Thanks for this.¡± ¡°Maybe we could find out.¡± ¡°With what rig?¡± It took me a moment to realize what Gloss was talking about. I found my console in the case that Gloss had managed to carry out of the farmhouse. The tiny display was cracked but it still powered up when I hit the switch. When I asked it to inventory itself I saw that I had lost Mask and Hungry Creek to that 7Wonders ice. Diamond, too. I touched my neck. I could feel something crinkle, like old aluminum foil, just under my skin. I looked again at the console¡¯s screen, found the trash. There it was: Hungry Creek. ¡°My FLUX chip saved Hungry Creek, but we have no other breakers.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll need a new FLUX chip,¡± Gloss said. ¡°You know, when we¡¯re back in a city that has a reasonably competent installer.¡± ¡°What else do we have?¡± ¡°Precious little. I have the blank backup substrates that we were going to use when we cracked White Tree¡¯s icebreaker archive. If they¡¯ve been under power continuously, they may still be OK. We have your console, of course. But everything else is gone. And we can forget about getting the deposit back on Jiibay¡¯s van.¡± I couldn¡¯t help but laugh. ¡°How do we get back to Carthage?¡± ¡°Quietly.¡± Gloss emphasized the word. ¡°The BRUTE?¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t run west of the Blue Ridge. There¡¯s a makeshift network of private transport, some that asks for ID, some that doesn¡¯t. We¡¯ll have to be careful.¡± ¡°Seems like we could make our lives a lot easier if we could get some new identities,¡± I said. I was remembering all the names that Enrique used. ¡°That¡¯s true, but where are we going to find them?¡± ¡°There must be some repository of identities somewhere.¡± ¡°What server are we going to run?¡± ¡°I still have the address of the icebreaker archive, and I still have Hungry Creek.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t handle shooter or puzzle ice with that. You could be seriously hurt if you tried to run it.¡± ¡°Maybe that¡¯s worth the risk right now.¡± Gloss took a long pull of tea. ¡°Drink your coffee,¡± he said. ¡°If we¡¯re going to talk stupid plans, let¡¯s at least get caffeinated first.¡± ### Later in the day, we were both feeling restless, eyeing the lever that would lift the crisis pod. We¡¯d been in here for nearly twenty-four hours. While it had plenty of food, water, and it generated its own power from the wind, the pod made Gloss and I feel like we were going to die of boredom. ¡°Let¡¯s make a run,¡± I said. ¡°On what? From where? With what rig?¡± I threw my hands in the air. ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You¡¯re right about one thing, little bro. We need to leave.¡± Gloss pulled the lever that raised the crisis pod back to earth. We stood near the door, looked at each other, and then each took hold of one of the other levers: one to release the seal, the other to open the door. The Kansas prairie stretched quiet and fragrant before us. In the distance was a road, just a single lane. Nothing moved but trees in the breeze, maybe a few small birds. Between us we carried one heavy case that we traded back and forth as we walked. By evening we¡¯d reached a town called Neodesha. At first I took it to be one of those places called Neo-this or Neo- that that had popped up at the end of the last century, but after a moment I realized it must have been an old Indian word. ¡°Osage,¡± Gloss said without further explanation. Neodesha had once been a decent-sized town, judging by the faint traces of roads and the leftover rectangles of low brickwork that marked the sites of former houses. Now it was little more than a single intersection with a hydrogen pump, fabrication booth, and an automat. We ate some reheated sandwiches and Gloss grimaced through a cup of hot tea-leaf shavings. We didn¡¯t see a single soul. We asked the AI running the automat if there was a hotel nearby. The answer was no. We asked about a bus station. The answer was also no. We asked about a ride of any sort. ¡°Tomorrow there¡¯s a raw material delivery due at noon. Perhaps you could catch a ride with the driver,¡± the AI suggested colloquially. ¡°That¡¯s uncommonly helpful for an AI,¡± Gloss muttered. I could see him unspooling a net cable underneath the counter, feeling around for a port. Between the two of us we found some kind of power-data jack under the counter, probably for truckers to recharge their portable devices and update their news feeds while eating lunch. Gloss opened the heavy case and withdrew a zippered wallet that contained a bewildering array of adapters. Eventually we found one that connected to the port under the counter, and then Gloss jacked in while I kept watch. To tell the truth, I was grateful that he was jacking in and not me. I felt bruised an embarrassed by my recent forays into the net. Having lost a couple of priceless breakers, having drawn FUTUR Design right to us, I no longer felt like a hotshot runner. The automat refilled my coffee while I watched over Gloss, still in netspace. The hours passed but no one passed us. The town was dead. When Gloss came back up in the evening, he said, ¡°I found us a ride. And a place to crash.¡± I took the opportunity to use the restroom. When I came back, a truck was idling outside the automat: an old pickup, from the era where they built them giant and weaponized to run down protestors. This one had lost its Commie-crusher bars and its Molotov-resistant coating, but its bumper still stood at neck height. As the passenger-side door swung open I saw the driver was an old woman with her hair in a long, gray braid decorated with mylar butterflies. She wore a cutoff denim vest and cutoff denim shorts and smoked a cigarette, which was something that only the oldest of old-timers did where I¡¯d grown up. I liked her instantly. ¡°I ain¡¯t going to Carthage, boys,¡± she said. ¡°But I can take you as far as Nashville, as long as you¡¯re paying.¡± ¡°We¡¯re paying,¡± Gloss said, throwing his bag up into the cab and shoving me forward after it. ¡°And we have a place to stay in Nashville, so don¡¯t worry about letting us off there.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t worried about that, honey,¡± she said, putting the truck in gear even before Gloss got the door to the cab closed behind himself.
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Amygdilar Clamp
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Legal status Banned worldwide
Description Like a staple from an old-fashioned office stapler
Cost Surprisingly cheap
Function Prevents a fear response. Now your boss can put you on cleanup detail in a radioactive wasteland and it won''t scare you a bit. Sweet!
Chapter 28: Run it Back Chapter 28. Run It Back Our driver rumbled us out of Neodesha in her old truck. Before we¡¯d left the city limits she reached across me and punched the catch to the glove box, which fell open to reveal an assortment of vapes, patches, pills in hexagonal acrylic bottles, and tabs stuck to wax paper. ¡°You boys want to get high?¡± Gloss and I looked at each other. He shrugged, reached for a hot-pink patch. ¡°Can I get you anything, ma¡¯am?¡± I said to be polite. ¡°Call me Renata,¡± she said. ¡°And no thank you, young man, the hallucinogens I took with lunch are just starting to come on.¡± Gloss and I looked again at each other again. We were interrupted by Renata¡¯s raspy laughter. ¡°I¡¯m just messing with you boys. You should see your expressions. I only take coffee and cigarettes while I¡¯m driving. The pharmacy is strictly for passengers.¡± The empty, calm two-lane road stretched into infinity. Where I came from, there were twisty mountain roads that opened up onto views of gorgeous valleys dense with trees. Here? Not so much. I¡¯d never been in a place so flat. I¡¯d never such big fields. The world felt so lonely, so orderly. I was grateful for Gloss¡¯s company, and Renata¡¯s. ¡°Hey,¡± she said, lighting a cigarette off a red-hot coil mounted on the dash, ¡°you boys like to jack?¡± ¡°Come again?¡± I said in my most polite country-boy voice. ¡°Are you runners? You want to make a little money while we¡¯re on the road?¡± ¡°You have a good net connection here?¡± The smell of cigarette smoke was almost impossible to detect as the air scrubbers hauled ass overhead. ¡°Anonymized, proxied to hell and back, rolled, dried, and ready to smoke. Plus I picked a juicy target loaded with fat data.¡± She took a long draw on her cigarette and deftly piloted the rig around a red piece of flesh and dark fur on the road, surrounded by buzzards. ¡°How¡¯d you know we were runners?¡± I said. ¡°For one, the way you contacted me on the net showed you had some sense. For two, when you climbed up on in here my scanner picked up a fair bit of chrome between the two of you.¡± We rode in silence for a minute while Gloss and I processed that. ¡°What corp operates your target?¡± I said. ¡°FUTUR Design.¡± For the third time in a short while Gloss and I gave each other a look. I wasn¡¯t sure that I could speak up but fortunately Gloss had my back. ¡°Truth be told, Renata, we believe we¡¯ve drawn some heat from FUTUR Design in recent days, so I¡¯m not sure that running them right now is a good idea, especially on your rig.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t pussy out on me, boys,¡± she said. ¡°The connections are clean. Let¡¯s make some money.¡± She slapped my knee and sucked the cigarette down to the filter, then stashed it in a steel can at her feet. Reaching forward, she flicked a switch and the compartment behind the seat opened. I saw a bed and, above it, a professional-grade netspace rig bundled away. I looked at Gloss and shrugged. ¡°What are you running for breakers?¡± Gloss said. ¡°That¡¯s a bit of a problem,¡± she said. ¡°I was hoping you could help me out there.¡± Silently, I mouthed ¡°the icebreaker archive¡± to Gloss and he nodded. ¡°We know where we might find some,¡± I said. ¡°Given our intel, it might be a bit spiky.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry about that, boys,¡± she said. ¡°I can get you patched up if you hit rough stuff.¡± Gloss gave me a fist bump and handed me his laptop, then I slipped into the back. With the laptop open on my knees, I flipped to the server map and queried that bit of silicon in my head branded as the Vista Processor but that was starting to feel more and more like part of me. Between the Vista and the sub-subs in my fingers, I went into a kind of trance, typing out the icebreaker archive¡¯s address, that long string of hexadecimal characters that I¡¯d exfiltrated from that one run that worked out right. Meanwhile up front, Gloss had unlatched his big case and was hooking up the slabs of backup substrate to a thick jack that plugged into the side of Renata¡¯s rig. The net cable was in my hand without thinking. I kissed its tip, unbuttoned my shirt, and jacked in. The icebreaker archive appeared a long way off on that familiar midnight highway. It looked like a deep pit, a black disc, some astrophysicist¡¯s representation of a Schwarzchild singularity. It was ringed by a single raggedy strand of ice. To be honest, if I didn¡¯t already know what it contained, I never would have connected to it. It was the most unpromising server I had ever seen in my short career as a runner. I accelerated hard, trusting that whatever ice White Tree had installed here was either not worth rezzing or would let me through. I was breaking a rule that Enrique had given me: don¡¯t run White Tree without something to break shooter ice. I saw the ice began to firm up. Silently, I prayed for a Membrane so I could dissolve my way through it with Hungry Creek. It was something else, something like a cat¡¯s cradle game, a tight, red matrix of string. I let myself relax and piloted my way into it. As I neared, I saw that the positions of the strings were shifting, crossing and uncrossing each other, creating a moving labyrinth. I could do this. I slid into the first big gap between strands, then tucked my way into a narrower gap, and a narrower one. Ahead I could see my options diminishing, so I reversed. Then, in a flash of insight, I noticed that given the vectors of the strings off my left side, a tunnel was about to open up even though it looked like a solid wall at the moment. I slammed my avatar hard left just as the strings moved away before me. Hauling ass through the open tunnel, I had just about made it when a string moved down from the above, slicing through my avatar. Somewhere in meatspace I spat blood and kept on trucking.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. I¡¯d made it through the ice even without a breaker. There was nothing between me and the deep, dark pit. I piloted my avatar dead center, paused for a moment, and executed a deep dive. I cut into the archived data like a swimmer. I felt that moment of panic, that thought inside my brain announcing, ¡°there¡¯s too much here to process.¡± I immersed myself in it and dissolved myself in it. I could feel the rig above me shaking in its mounting bracket and wondered where the shaking was coming from. Some rough road maybe. I waited for it to pass. But then it didn¡¯t. The shaking became worse. As it did, I became aware of something long and sticky surrounding me and dragging me down the well of the archive. I was caught in something vegetal, and it felt thorny as well as slimy, and the slime was coating the inside of my throat as if I had strep real bad the way I did in fourth grade and the skin of my avatar began to burn¡ª ¡°You¡¯re in luck.¡± Renata looked down at me and dabbed at my mouth with a thick white cotton disposable napkin, the kind of thing that reminded me of a dentist¡¯s office crossed with a fancy cafe. Bright red blossomed on the cotton. The truck idled on the side of the highway, and shook every now and then when another rig passed by. Leaning forward into the front of the cab, Renata punched an honest-to-good steel switch on her dash¡ªthere wasn¡¯t a touchscreen in sight¡ªand the old green-on-black monitor warmed to life and displayed someone¡¯s net handle and number. Renata looked at me. ¡°My daughter operates a mobile surgery, and she¡¯s hovering over Springfield right now. That¡¯s about an hour away.¡± Renata looked up at Gloss, who was cabled to the backup substrates. ¡°You think the kid can hold out that long?¡± Gloss was nodding his head to the beat of some music we couldn¡¯t hear. ¡°Kid¡¯s vitals look great,¡± Gloss said. ¡°You skidded against a Nepenthe, little bro, not ice but a trap. Still, you shook it off. Between that and the ice you face-planted earlier in the run, you¡¯re going to need a doctor sooner rather than later. But you can hold out another hour. You just rest.¡± ¡°Did I get the breakers?¡± Gloss nodded soberly. ¡°Yeah, man. There¡¯s some good stuff in here. That Resheph practically did you a favor by wiping your old rig. Freed up room for new breakers, you feel me?¡± I reached out my hand and Gloss took it. Renata clapped me on the shoulder and moved back behind the wheel and put the truck in gear. I felt a pain traveling from my throat down to my gut. I tried to move on the bed but when I looked over I saw a wastebasket full of more of those cotton napkins, soaked dark red with old blood¡ªmy blood. The sight of dried blood almost caused me to vomit. My hand found a metal tumbler of cold water in a recess next to the bed. The cold water hurt my teeth in a good, clean way. The best part about it was that Gloss treated me like a real runner. He may still have called me ¡°little bro¡± but he trusted me to make that run even after our rig was wiped and Enrique got snatched. It felt kind of childish to be thinking about that at the moment, with both Enrique and Freya in unknown locations, but I was proud of myself and I knew that Gloss was proud of me, too. I may have slept a little because the next thing I knew the truck¡¯s brakes were hissing and we were bouncing to a stop. Looking through the holograms and clear windshield, I could see a structure like a stainless steel capsule standing amid broken corn stalks on rubber-coated struts. The capsule sported a row of rings on the top, and next to it sat a small copter like a dragonfly. A miniature solar farm stood behind them. A doctor in a white coat¡ªRenata¡¯s daughter¡ªand two nurses in scrubs were moving quickly from the capsule to the truck. They helped me out of the bed and walked me into the capsule. Inside it smelled like an aggressive germicidal agent. While the exterior of the capsule was polished aluminum, the interior was hard white plastic. One of the nurses helped me up to an exam table while the other hit a switch and brought a multi-armed scanning apparatus down from the roof. Renata¡¯s daughter moved swiftly about the room, then stood before me. She was tall and tough and her blond ponytail swung as she moved. She washed her hands, then with her cold, dry fingers she pressed on my head, neck, chest, and stomach. She listened to my heart and breathing. She looked into my eyes and ears. ¡°I¡¯m Dr. Adler,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re clearly someone who runs, considering that port and the chips under your fingers and the fact that you¡¯re riding with my mom. So let¡¯s take a look, OK?¡± She held up a cable tipped with something that could connect to my net port. I nodded my assent, and she plugged into me like Dad running diagnostics on the old Honda Warlock in the garage that he always swore he¡¯d get running one day. She swung an interface over to me. Manipulating it by sliding her hand into a polyhedral hologram, a familiar display appeared.
Resonance Scan Results
Rawls, Jasper
19 year-old male
FDWT NET OCULA L Serial *87
FDWT NET OCULA R Serial *10
PEGASUS BANK IND Serial *93
NOMFR FABRICYTES (BURNED) No Serial Number
ACCU NET PORT Serial *22
GARNET FLUX CHIP (BURNED) PANOPT VISTA PROC (JAILBROKEN) Serial *74
OCBD SUBCUT SUBROU L1 serial *xx
9 DUPLICATE ENTRIES
NO OTHER IMPLANTS FOUND
¡°You¡¯ve had some work done recently,¡± she said. ¡°Guess so. You see those oculars?¡± ¡°Unusual,¡± she said. ¡°What?¡± I became aware that I was staring at her face, her blue eyes and well-defined jaw. She seemed mischievous and casually cruel. Not what I wanted to see in my doc. ¡°Excuse me,¡± she said. ¡°I meant your eyes are weird. You should see your face. You¡¯re not used to doctors talking like this? You should hear us when patients are not around. Paramedics are even worse.¡± She flashed a brilliant smile. ¡°My eyes are tracking.¡± I tried to make it as serious-sounding as I could. ¡°That¡¯s what eyes do.¡± She picked up one of those lights swung it back and forth. My eyes followed it for a moment then I waved it away. I was starting to get annoyed with her. ¡°I mean that my eyes are communicating with someone. Maybe one of the manufacturers. I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You¡¯re drawing serious heat.¡± She leaned in, lifted an eyelid gently, inspected me with her light. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Which explains you, in your present battered condition, in my mobile surgery.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± She returned to her interface. She turned her wrist this way and that. The display switched to columns of numbers, nodal diagrams, schematics for circuits, faster than I could follow. She worked for what felt like a long time. ¡°I think I can shield you from the tracking routines,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s as simple as Faraday mesh contact lenses. There¡¯s a place in town that can print them and run them over here by cycle courier. The only problem is your eyes won¡¯t do what they¡¯re supposed to do as long as you¡¯re wearing them.¡± ¡°And what¡¯s that?¡± ¡°Break big ice.¡± I smiled. I shrugged. Hell yeah, I was a hotshot runner.
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Synaptic Upgrade
Manufacturer Various
Legal status Illegal except for licensed professionals working in law enforcement, national security, e-sports, and pornography.
Description A series of injections followed by an operation involving the installation of more than a thousand nanoscale robots.
Cost Close to the cost of a medium-sized house in an expensive city for a full upgrade; can be done a la carte, whatever that means
Function Improves synaptic load, efficiency, speed, and resilience. Keeps runners alive in netspace, at least in the short term. Long-term effects unknown. Side effects include having a bad attitude and being totally fricking rad.
Chapter 29: Overextended Chapter 29: Overextended ¡°You must have been into some serious ice,¡± Dr. Adler said. ¡°Those fabricytes and your FLUX Chip need to be replaced.¡± ¡°Can you do that?¡± ¡°Sorry, I don¡¯t have the materials.¡± ¡°What about the leftovers?¡± ¡°Your body will excrete the fabricytes. The FLUX Chip should come out. I can help you with that. Otherwise, you need rest. No more jacking in for a while.¡± It wasn¡¯t what I wanted to hear. ¡°Gotta jack, doc,¡± I said. ¡°Listen to yourself, tough guy.¡± She stood in front of me with her hands on her hips. ¡°You might want to consider upgrading your nervous system if you feel the need to go downserver. Otherwise you¡¯re looking at permanent damage if you keep this up.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you can help me with an upgrade.¡± Dr. Adler moved to the other side of the capsule and opened a drawer. She withdrew two vials of viscous, golden fluid. ¡°Tell you what. If you promise not to jack in for the next 72 hours, I can give you the injections that will start the process. But you¡¯ll need a fully-equipped cybernetics boutique to complete it.¡± I thought about Dr. Rashida Qin¡¯s office. It seemed so far away. ¡°As long as you take cash, that¡¯s fine with me.¡± ¡°It¡¯s going to hurt a bit, even after I¡¯ve turned down your pain receptors through your net port. I¡¯m told it feels similar to when your legs grow as a kid. And let me get that FLUX chip out while we¡¯re at it. Eleven K, all in.¡± It struck me that I had no idea how much money I had left. But I figured that Gloss would be able to sell some of what we¡¯d found over the last couple days, so I agreed without worrying too much about it. I could see how runners lost track of their wealth. Dr. Adler screwed a needle onto the first of the vials. I had to look away from that monster. I stared at the curved, white expanse of the wall, and thought about Freya. ### The cycle courier wore tight black leathers and kept their face hidden behind a black-visored helmet for the entire length of our transaction: about forty-five seconds, I thought. The way they cocked their head at me as they handed over the parcel, I thought that maybe they could tell what I was. A runner, I meant. They glanced at me once before zipping away, the hydrogen cell of their Nissan Assassin emitting a gentle contrail of pure water vapor. ### Gloss and I sipped cherry limeades in mycofoam cups that Gloss had snagged from an old-style burger stand across the highway while I was under. Now we sat on the running board of Renata¡¯s rig under the sun. Renata and Dr. Adler were talking out in the cornfield where we couldn¡¯t hear them. ¡°Where do you want to head?¡± Gloss said. ¡°You¡¯re asking me?¡± Gloss shrugged. ¡°They might be looking for us,¡± he said. ¡°For multiple values of ¡®they.¡¯¡± I took a long pull of the sweet, tart fizzy drink. The cup was already starting to break down under the warmth of my fingertips. ¡°Enrique. We¡¯ve got to help him.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure there¡¯s anything we can do to help.¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°They might have killed him. Prepare yourself for that reality.¡± ¡°That¡¯s what you said about Freya.¡± I sat in silence. It didn¡¯t feel possible that Enrique was dead, not when I was learning so much, not when I felt certain I could crack whatever system knew his whereabouts. It wasn¡¯t sporting. They had to give me a chance to fix my error, get him back. Especially now that my eyes were offline. ¡°You get to be too big a pain in the ass, corps will take your life and write the contract off as a business expense. Or take care of it in-house.¡± ¡°Maybe we should ask for assistance.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a good idea. You¡¯re thinking Sunya and the CheRRy?¡± ¡°Yeah. But I¡¯ll make the run.¡± ¡°Little bro, don¡¯t take this the wrong way, but I think you should leave going after Enrique to more experienced runners. If you have fantasies of staging some kind of prison break, it¡¯s best to forget them. In my experience, no one comes out of corporate detention facilities except through the courts.¡± I felt angry, and then I felt hurt, too. ¡°I want to help.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve overextended yourself. You¡¯re hurt, and up until thirty minutes ago when you put those contacts in, they were tracking you. If you want to help, keep yourself alive. They¡¯re looking for you. You need to stay away from them.¡± ¡°We have a rig again, right?¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Gloss looked over his shoulder at the backup substrates in their case stacked on the seat. ¡°We got some breakers, that¡¯s true. Once we¡¯re somewhere private, I¡¯ll show you.¡± ¡°Tell me, Gloss, what can we do for Enrique?¡± ¡°Me, the CheRRy, and Sunya will take a look around. What we can do is find out if there¡¯s a record of him being alive, somewhere, in some remote server. Video, a ledger, medical records, discipline, whatever. Something. If he is alive, we can file a lawsuit to get him back. The corps still listen to the courts. They should, they own them. I know some good lawyers.¡± ¡°Could we do that for Freya? A lawsuit?¡± ¡°I mean, sure. If you had some evidence she was alive and if you knew who might be detaining her.¡± ¡°I¡¯m getting there.¡± ¡°Jasper,¡± Gloss said, and my name coming from him surprised me. ¡°You¡¯ve done great. Maybe you should have told us about your oculars, maybe you shouldn¡¯t have made that run on HQ, but we all make mistakes. Enrique has, and so have I. So what I¡¯m about to say isn¡¯t a punishment. I think you and I need to go our separate ways once we reach Carthage. I¡¯ll work on finding Enrique¡¯s location. You rest up. But if you stick with me, you¡¯re going to get flatlined. I know it.¡± ¡°You¡¯re cutting me loose?¡± ¡°For your own protection.¡± It felt like he was telling me that I was just a kid. I wanted us to be a team. First Freya left, then Linney, then Enrique, and now Gloss. It was like everyone wanted away from me. ¡°Aren¡¯t you worried about me out there on my own?¡± Gloss smiled and put a big arm around my shoulders. ¡°No, kid, I¡¯m not. I think you know how to handle yourself. Enrique getting grabbed wasn¡¯t your fault. Let us find him. When you¡¯re rested, you and I will hook up again, pull down some big scores.¡± My drink empty, the cup was turning to wet dust in my hands. I tossed it aside, watched it crumble to feed the grass. ¡°I don¡¯t feel good about this,¡± I said. ¡°I know. But it would be irresponsible of me to let you get yourself killed. Just take a week off, man, enjoy the city, be young. Don¡¯t be in such a rush to grow up.¡± I couldn¡¯t look at him after he said that. ### We said our goodbyes to Dr. Adler and then drove into town with Renata. Gloss had found a motel room with two queen beds off the interstate and we ate fried chicken sandwiches from the same place that made the cherry limeades. It wasn¡¯t real chicken, of course, but it was crispy and juicy and spicy and topped with pickled onions. Renata told us stories of runs she used to make on a defunct corp, something that had been swallowed up by 7Wonders at some point. She worked more on logistics now than running but still liked to keep her hand in. She was as foul-mouthed as her daughter and reminded me of my grandma. I liked her a lot. After dinner Gloss and I slept long and deep in the motel while Renata slept in her rig. But when I woke, he was gone. I had thought we would travel back to Carthage together based on what he had said, but if we were trying to be stealthy, it made more sense to travel separately. He¡¯d left the case with the backup substrates behind. It occurred to me that he had never shown me what was in there. Without him, I didn¡¯t know what to do. Renata had been paid to drive me to Nashville and so that¡¯s what she did. We rode for hours in silence, me huddled in my jacket, feeling hurt, watching the fields go by, the little towns. Renata respected my silence. She seemed to have an intuition about what I needed and didn¡¯t try to make me talk. As we were entering the Tennessee foothills she asked me how I was doing. I had to admit that I didn¡¯t feel great. ¡°Your friend is just trying to protect you. Clearly he trusts you to look after yourself.¡± ¡°It seems all I do these days is mess up.¡± ¡°Then you need to make smart runs, that¡¯s all.¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°You need to know the capabilities of your target, and know your own capabilities. You have to know why you¡¯re running and what they can do to hurt you after you¡¯ve jacked out. Gloss trusts you to figure those things out.¡± ¡°But he told me not to run.¡± Renata laughed. ¡°Honey, do you really think he expects you not to run?¡± ¡°No.¡± She patted my knee. ¡°You know, and I know, and Gloss knows that you are going to jack in just as soon as your nervous system can handle it. Now Jenny¡ªDr. Adler to you¡ªtold me that you needed to stay strictly in meatspace for 72 hours after her injections. By my clock, that means you have 50 hours left. This is your chance to stop being a reckless kid. Follow Jenny¡¯s instructions, follow Gloss¡¯s guidance, and listen to me.¡± The rig was pulling to a stop outside the BRUTE station in Nashville. It was getting into the late afternoon. Renata turned to me. ¡°You¡¯ll run again. I know it. I expect to see your name on the scoreboard next time I¡¯m in the big city.¡± ¡°I thought that was just at Mr. Grid¡¯s.¡± ¡°Hell no, that¡¯s citywide. And most of the best runners in the world live in Carthage. Low latency, you know.¡± I gave her a hug across the cab and then grabbed the backup substrates and my other things, and stepped down. On the BRUTE, I was alone with my thoughts for the first time in quite a while. I no longer saw the words in my eyes, and perhaps hadn¡¯t seen them in quite some time, although it was hard to say how long. Maybe they had vanished when I put in the contacts, maybe it had been before. I no longer knew. I slept on the bus, the backup substrates stored under my seat. I ate a granola bar and drank a can of coffee that I found in my bag. When the bus left me in Carthage, it was morning. I walked along the city streets in Old Winston, workers just waking up and moving toward their jobs, everyone carrying a cup of coffee. People in softly-lit city buses ate biscuits from paper wrappers. I walked along the street, felt my aching muscles warm and stop hurting so much after moving around a bit. It struck me that I¡¯d spent much of the last several days either being driven around or totally stationary. I found the co-op that Wren and I had gone shopping in once upon a time. They kept a counter in back where I could drink a cup of coffee and look through Gloss¡¯s laptop. Thinking about the afterimage of the Level IV clinical data I had stolen from White Tree, I knew that Freya had traveled to Bull City, on the other side of northern Carthage, after leaving the pools. There she had made her way to Research Triangle Arcology and went to work for FUTUR Design: the same corp that had likely kidnapped Enrique in Kansas. All my attention had been focused on White Tree, but I was starting to suspect I had a new adversary. When I had finished my coffee, I found my way to the metro and traveled to Bull City. I had an idea, something I couldn¡¯t quite articulate, but it excited me. I felt like I was going to make everyone proud. That was all I wanted, for the people I knew to be proud of me. As I left the metro, I walked down to the tent city below the Private Highway station. Just beyond the tent city was the brick dormitory that I remembered from Freya¡¯s uploaded memories. I figured that someone here would be able to direct me. I looked at my watch. Twenty-eight hours until I could jack in again. I was determined to do it right this time. Among the children and dogs running around, I saw a man who looked familiar, sitting with a long, polished staff on a plastic milk crate outside a tent. ¡°The Prophet Ezra?¡± I said. He nodded. ¡°I¡¯m a friend of Freya¡¯s.¡± He cocked his head, looked me up and down. ¡°You¡¯re a hexrunner.¡±
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Faraday Mesh Contacts
Manufacturer Any optical shop
Legal status Legal
Description A contact lens made of non-conductive mesh
Cost A few hundred, maybe
Function Stops eyes from sending or receiving any data except for that contained on the good old visual spectrum, which is plenty when you think about it. Lot of ocular narcotics around these days, kids. Stay in drugs, don¡¯t do school.
Chapter 30: Hotel Endless Chapter 30: Hotel Endless ¡°Hexrunner?¡± It was a word I¡¯d heard before in reference to Sunya. The Prophet Ezra squared his shoulders. His brilliant velvet cloak rustled, jangling with hardware concealed within its folds. He gestured for me to sit next to him on another milk crate. ¡°Hex as in a magic spell,¡± he said, ¡°or perhaps you prefer the older word, hexe, a witch. You runners use your bodies as processors to do things that are as magic to not-runners. Or hex as in hexadecimal, the language you speak in your dreams. Or hex as the shape formed by all the motivations you might have: you run for money, status, revenge, justice, curiosity, expression. Some have one motivation that remains stronger than the others. Not you. You may think you do but you do not. You run in that zone between life and death. Not like the amateur runners, the dilettantes, who stay on the side of life, dip their fingers in criminality, and then bounce to corporate life. And not like those runners seeking their own braindeath, determined to make the corps kill them because they no longer want to live. Plenty of those around. You¡¯re a rare one, one who remains in between. That makes you dangerous to yourself and your friends.¡± His words scared me. I was getting used to people thinking I was just a kid. ¡°Can you help me?¡± He shook his head. ¡°Maybe we can help each other. Slot this,¡± he said, and drew something familiar, a wafer of cultured flash memory, from his coat. He extended it to me. ¡°Come back tomorrow and tell me what you find.¡± ¡°Will you tell me about Freya then?¡± He shook his head once more. ¡°Slot that, and I won¡¯t need to.¡± I held the strange wafer of circuitry in between my index finger and thumb. It was almost rectangular, except for one weird, melted-away corner. While it wasn¡¯t exactly the same, I recognized its general shape, its organic copper streams and capillaries, from the memories of Freya that I had accessed. I slipped it into my pocket and began walking out of the tent city. What I wanted was a nice place to sleep, somewhere calm and quiet and that would accept paper money. On the other hand, I wanted a good shower, something more than an old dripping pipe sticking out of the wall, and a place like that definitely wouldn¡¯t accept paper money. I thought about it and decided to risk using my credit chip. I wanted the room for less than 24 hours anyway, and felt I could rely on the possibility that I was not that important of a target. My stomach queased at the thought. There was some uncertainty in that calculation. Climbing the hill alongside the Private Highway pylons, I saw that there was a freerunner walking above, on the edge of the highway, at some odd angle only possible with suction or magnetic boots. Her hair was in a long, tight ponytail and she waved at me. I returned her wave. Then she was gone. I saw downtown Bull City rising before me, its old red-brick textile mills converted into luxe condos, while green-glass towers rose behind it, wrapped in vines and dark with tree cover. Above those grew the rosy fungalcrete towers that housed and employed the modern workforce. Amid the urban farms I found an old motel that had been converted into an upscale boutique. Slipping inside, I noticed the air become much drier, scented with something. The lobby was full of comfortable seating with only one person hanging out, a guy who looked like a business traveler in slightly shabby clothes, the cuffs of his blazer and slacks frayed, an exhausted look on his face as he sipped coffee and stared into space. The front desk was a small, waist-high molded plastic arch staffed by a young Black woman. ¡°A room, please,¡± I said. ¡°Reservation?¡± ¡°No.¡± She looked me over, looked at the heavy case I was carrying, the torn-up bag on my shoulder. ¡°Permanent residence?¡± I gave her my father¡¯s address. She looked it up. For a long moment her eyes looked at her screen, blankly. I felt the momentary desire to remove my contacts, see if I could connect wirelessly to whatever she was looking at, futz with it until it said to give this man a room. She gestured at the scanner casting purple light down in a short cone, asked for my wrist. I asked if she could take paper money instead. ¡°Credit only. For incidentals.¡± Her voice was customer-service smooth, neutral and bored as hell. ¡°What I figured.¡± I held out my wrist, speculated that I could get a good seventeen, eighteen hours of rest before the corporate machinery moved against me. She looked at the screen with a neutral expression, but perhaps it was a slightly different neutral expression. ¡°This says I¡¯m not supposed to give you a room.¡± ¡°Does it say why?¡± ¡°Says your DNA is on the registry.¡± Oh hell. If I had had the presence of mind to install a DNA Scrambler the last time I was in a medical installer¡¯s office, I could have avoided that. I remembered what Gloss had said: being on the registry was permanent. ¡°Does it say which registry?¡± ¡°There¡¯s only the one registry.¡± She looked up at me with calm eyes that said, I warned you, now it¡¯s up to you to do what you will with that information. She mouthed the words ¡°White Tree.¡± My mind leapt back to that ice, the one that cut me on my way into the icebreaker archive. And that trap, the Nepenthe, installed in the archive. They had peered into me, transcribed me. Now the registry knew me. ¡°Let me ask you something,¡± I said. ¡°How does someone on the registry get a place to sleep?¡± ¡°That¡¯s the point of the registry,¡± she said. ¡°You don¡¯t. Not at a licensed establishment such as this fine hotel. Now, if someone not on the registry rented the room for you and allowed you to stay there, that might be different, as long as your DNA didn¡¯t make its way into any of the collectors in the room.¡± She spoke in such a calm, measured voice that it was like she was explaining cocktail bar perks to an executive. After everything I¡¯d been through over the last few days, I was grateful just to be spoken to this way.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°Where are those collectors?¡± ¡°In the drains.¡± ¡°And how do those drains communicate with¡ª¡± ¡°With the registry?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°Through a standard net connection.¡± ¡°Thanks.¡± I turned to the seating area and approached the businessman sitting there, still drinking his coffee. He looked like he had been on the road for weeks and his suit appeared as though it could use some repair. Aside from the worn cuffs, the wool was pilling and his tie was stained at the tip, as if he¡¯d dipped it in a cup of coffee. In other words, he could use a bit of luck. My own appearance was not much better. I wore a simple t-shirt and jeans, neither of which were all that clean. I smelled of long days of travel. I sat down across from him. ¡°May I buy you a cup of coffee?¡± I said. I figured it was better to open that way, with a gesture of generosity toward him, rather than apologizing for interrupting him or asking for what I wanted. ¡°No thanks,¡± the man said and rubbed his face. I reached into my pocket and produced a sheaf of cash. ¡°No pressure, but I was wondering if I could interest you in the opportunity to make some money.¡± He looked at the paper money. ¡°I can tell you¡¯re trouble. No one offers that much money without being trouble.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t pretend I¡¯m not trouble. But I¡¯m having a little problem registering for a room here. If you were willing to get me a room for a day, I¡¯ll give you three K.¡± His brow wrinkled. ¡°Three K is a lot. But how do I know you¡¯re not on the registry?¡± ¡°As a matter of fact, I am on the registry.¡± ¡°No thanks, kid. I¡¯m not looking to get renditioned over three K.¡± I sighed, and excused myself to walk over to the counter, done up in curving laminate. I bought a cup of coffee. The pierced, green-haired barista poured it into a thick-walled ceramic mug and I carried it back to the businessman and breathed in the hot vapors. It would scald my tongue if I tried to drink it. The businessman ignored me. Looked past me out the window. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands, thought about Dr. Adler¡¯s prohibition on jacking in, and then slipped the mesh contacts from my eyes. Back in the lobby cafe, my eyes rested on the businessman, went out of focus. Then something strange happened. Like the corona of an old, orange street light in the fog, I could see the data streaming from him to all the devices listening in the room. And like a ray of afternoon sunlight filled with dust I could see the data streaming to him. The phone, the credit chip in his wrist, the work computer in his suitcase, the bone modem in his jaw, all were chattering even as he stayed silent. He was paying for daycare and streaming subscriptions, he was reporting on failed sales calls, he was getting a never-ending river of assignments from his boss, his partner was asking him if he was really coming home on time or if he would be delayed yet again. I could see all these things without looking at them. As soon as I looked too hard, I could see nothing. When I let my eyes relax, I could see the corona of irritating, mundane business data again. Except there was something sharper and redder that pinged his credit chip again and again, something trying to get through. It was a hospital and it was trying to extract payment. I followed the thin line of scarlet light to the router in the street that was streaming it through the window, and allowed my mind to follow it back along the lines and through a massive, beehive-like router at the top of the tallest tower in the Bull City district, and followed that back to the hospital, where rudimentary ice started to coalesce except for the pinhole where the beam traveled into the interior of the hospital server. But I still had Hungry Creek, didn¡¯t I? I spent a pittance to dissolve the simple frozen wall, an off-the-shelf 7Wonders product used by corps around the world. I looked into the hospital records and found records of cancer treatments for a little boy, a little boy of seven years old, bald from chemo and playing a soccer videogame in his bed, alone but for a stuffed dinosaur. The cancer treatments had gone unpaid-for, were not covered by insurance, and ran to the hundreds of K. Following the trail still further back, there were messages traded between billing and administration, discussing the possibility of forgiving the debt, and then one of the executives sent to another, ¡°Bleed all the cancer patients. Make them all pay. No more charity care. They¡¯ll find a way. I have my eye on another yacht, did I tell you that?¡± In the heat of my anger, in the hot burst of saline that surrouned my eyes, I almost lost the thread. But the connection shimmered, wavered, and then held. The ledger appeared before me. I found accounts receivable. On that account, I saw the name of the businessman sitting before me, and I moved a decimal point over a few places. Then added a negative sign. I blinked. That had never happened before. Dr. Qin had thought it was possible but I hadn¡¯t actually believed her. If I could do that, what else could I do? When I came out of netspace, I found to my delight that my coffee was still warm. I leaned forward. The businessman seemed to have been roused from his stupor and was looking at the pale green numbers glowing under the skin on the three-line display tattooed into his wrist. ¡°Excuse me,¡± I said. The man looked up, his eyes wet, his face childlike and full of wonder. ¡°I took care of your billing issue. I hope your son is going to be OK.¡± The man leaned forward to meet me. Our foreheads were practically touching. ¡°Thank you,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t know how you did that, but thank you.¡± The moment stretched out. In a quieter voice he said, ¡°Hey, he said, can I help you out now?¡± I was thrilled to have breached some basic corporate server without a wired net connection. No, thrilled was not the word. I was intoxicated. The world felt sharp and bright. My lungs felt like turbines. My heart felt like a super-clean hydrogen pump. ¡°Look,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t want to get you in trouble. I know people are relying on you.¡± ¡°Listen,¡± the man said. ¡°If I draw heat from this I¡¯ll just tell them you stole my identity.¡± I smiled. ¡°Do that.¡± And I handed over the paper money I was carrying before moving to the restroom to replace the contacts. ### The room was everything I could have wanted. Natural sunlight came in through gaps in the towers. The linens and bathroom were ultra-clean and almost scentless. Best of all, the bed felt firm but comfortable under my aching muscles, and was bigger than any bed I had ever slept on. It wasn¡¯t a crash space, it wasn¡¯t a spare room in Enrique¡¯s apartment, it wasn¡¯t an old farmhouse or motel room or a berth inside a van or a truck. It was a luxury hotel room, expensive as hell, and all mine for the next fifteen hours. I set the case on the bed and opened the thick chrome latches. The two backup substrates glistened weirdly in the soft midday light. I found the small, flat console in a small alcove in another case and plugged in the backups. For a while I tranced out in the miniature world of the console. Without a net connection, all that existed here were me and the substrates. They were named Spider Wasp and Ichnovirus, a mutualistic icebreaker and virus combo, designed by an old anarchist according to the comments threaded through their genetic pseudocode. They circled me, almost menacingly. The programs seemed to want to approach me where we hung suspended in the console¡¯s interior netspace. They seemed to have agency, intentions, and personalities. Spider Wasp buzzed me, hovered. Ichnovirus approached slowly, drifting on digital currents. I knew that I was supposed to incorporate them into myself, to tune them to my biology, to make them mine, but I didn¡¯t know how. There was a part of me that was angry with Gloss for not spelling it out for me, but there was another part of myself that wanted to figure it out on my own. I reached out for Spider Wasp, the tip of my arrowhead meeting the tip of its stinger. Pain¡ª
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Bone Modem
Manufacturer Various
Legal status Legal
Description A length of silicon and copper twisted around the jawbone.
Cost One K, maybe less.
Function Like any other phone except you can talk real quiet and the person you¡¯re calling will still hear you. Also your boss can call your jawbone all the time and you can¡¯t not answer. Use a disconnected hardware phone. And quit your day job.
Chapter 31: Two Point Oh Chapter 31. Two Point Oh I felt like someone had opened up my arm and corkscrewed a piece of sparking metal into me. Spider Wasp dug into my arrowhead avatar and Ichnovirus followed. Whispering their secrets, burning themselves into me, they faded from my vision because now I saw through them. It was like being told a very long and boring bedtime story but I loved it because it was the only thing that could distract me from the molten pain. When I awoke, the sunset came through the window in orange and lavender. The backup substrates had unemulsified, separated themselves into a thin layer of water over hard gray putty. I poured out the water and shut the cases. They had no more use for me. The programs they had contained were part of me now.
Program Spider Wasp
Type Icebreaker
Subtype Shooter
Base Nguyen-Okafor complexity 2
Cost to break 2K for 3 subroutines
Cost to boost 2K for 3 complexity
Comment Relatively efficient breaker for shooter ice
Program Ichnovirus
Type Virus
Subtype -
Base Nguyen-Okafor complexity -
Effect Lowers the complexity of shooter ice
I looked at the bathroom mirror and noticed the dirty pores, the oily surface. I needed to wash my skin but didn¡¯t want to wash my DNA down the drain. Using the laptop, I took a look at the connections in the room. Aside from the router, screens, and phone, all of which I could avoid connecting to, there were two other devices. Clipped to the inside of each drain was a DNA sniffer that fed into the room¡¯s router. As gently as lifting a single fallen hair from the sink, I removed the contacts from my eyes and then blinked to disconnect each of the drain¡¯s sensors. Then I slipped the mesh contacts back over my eyes to kill the signal traffic. Could I risk sleeping here? I wanted to. I was tired of running. But if the DNA sniffers were connected to the room¡¯s router, it was possible my eyes had connected to that router for just a moment, too, or to cell towers out in the world. I wasn¡¯t safe here but I wasn¡¯t totally safe anywhere. Safety was probabilistic now, unlike where I grew up, where I could almost assume that life would go on without much danger outside the occasional wolf or pack of coyotes or flood. Or terminal illness. I was close to Freya; I knew it. I turned over the Prophet Ezra¡¯s wafer of circuitry in my fingers. The hardware looked as if it had been grown rather than fabricated. At one end was a circular arrangement of connector pins that slotted into my net port, so that the wafer stuck out of me like a gnarled stake. I was a runner, a hexrunner. I was invinc¡ª ### She lived in an apartment in a narrow tower in a middle-class neighborhood called Old West, where children of all races played together in the street and fixed their pedal bikes in a co-op garage housed in a corrugated metal shed tucked up against the tower¡¯s rear. The address was laser-etched above the sheet metal door: 843 Gin Street. She worked for FUTUR Design. She had a real talent for rotating code structures in her mind to reveal hidden possibilities in their logic. Her specialized data jack, courtesy of White Tree, let her interface with the code structures more efficiently than other employees. She made money, lots of money, amounts that were scandalous by her standards, but she felt nothing except fear and doom. Panic attacks kept her confined to her apartment some days. Depression and anxiety left her unable to enjoy things she used to enjoy, such books, coffee, and sunny days. She fixated on what she saw as problems with her body. First she was worried that she was losing her eyesight. She tried to take care of that with simple outpatient laser surgery at a university clinic in Bull City. When that didn¡¯t satisfy her, she went back to have semi-opaque white shields implanted to block UV rays. She read up on the experiences of other people who had been networked to the grid in the White Tree facility. She began to suspect that she¡¯d been damaged by exposure to the childhood traumas of other people on the grid, or perhaps by exposure to AI dreams. She read that she had likely experienced these traumas and dreams as if they had happened to her. She installed an upgraded net jack and took up netspace meditation. It sort of worked. She tried freerunning. She had met up with a group who taught her the basics: bodyweight exercises and safety routines. They told her she didn¡¯t need equipment to do it.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. ### The images stuttered, some of the sounds repeated. Something was glitching the memories. I pulled the wafer out of my chest. I knew where Freya was. These were memories encoded into cultured flash memory. It meant that she¡¯d seen the Prophet Ezra recently. He didn¡¯t need to tell me where she was because he could simply show me. It was too late in the night to go find her so I took advantage of the room. I ordered room service, tipped the server heavily with paper money. I ate what was probably the best fried chicken sandwich I¡¯d ever eaten, and that included the sandwiches made from live chickens that I used to get at my uncle¡¯s farm. Unworried about the DNA collectors, I took a hot bath, allowed the tax of the last few days soak from my muscles. For the first time in a long while, I felt almost relaxed. Of course, as soon as that feeling passed through me I started to expect pounding at the door. I sat up in the tub, thinking about the memories of Freya¡¯s I had experienced, the feelings of anxiety and desperation encoded in them, and how she had sought out relief on the net with an upgraded jack. Freya was suffering. ### In the morning, I left a tip for the housekeepers and checked out of the hotel room. Goodbye, comfort. Goodbye, bathtub and bed. In the tent city near the Private Highway pylons, I asked around until someone told me where I could find the Prophet Ezra. He was sitting on a shop stool inside a tent covered by a patchy blue tarp, sunlight streaming down through threadbare synthetic fabric. With a soldering iron in one hand, he seemed to be making either jewelry or hardware. I shuffled my feet to make some noise. When that didn¡¯t get his attentin, I cleared my throat as I set the subtrate cases on the compacted dirt. He turned, assessed me with a neutral eye. Then he gestured at me with the smoking tip of the soldering iron. ¡°Good to see you again, hexrunner. Tell me, did you slot what I gave you?¡± ¡°I did.¡± ¡°And what did you see?¡± ¡°Memories.¡± ¡°Of your friend.¡± The Prophet Ezra said so carefully, as if he didn¡¯t want to put words in my mouth. ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± ¡°Then it¡¯s working,¡± he said. He set the soldering iron in its coiled metal holder and stood from the stool. He walked across the tent to where a pot of tea steamed. He poured two cups and talked, partly to me, partly to himself. ¡°Excellent. For years I have been trying to grow a medium that would accept memories as naturally as vinyl used to accept sound waves. Perhaps I¡¯m getting there.¡± He handed me a cup of tea and I thanked him with a nod. ¡°I need to know something,¡± I said. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± ¡°When were those memories laid down?¡± ¡°Last week.¡± ¡°So she¡¯s nearby.¡± ¡°Quite.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± I said. I nudged the cases with my feet. ¡°These contain worn out substrate. Have a use for these?¡± The Prophet Ezra stroked his beard. ¡°I know someone who can re-emulsify them. I always have a use for what¡¯s been discarded, thrown away, or made to disappear. Nothing is ever truly useless. Remember that, hexrunner, and good luck.¡± ¡°Thank you.¡± ¡°No, thank you for testing my product. Any side effects?¡± ¡°Not sure.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Well, seek medical attention if you need to. But don¡¯t sue me! I¡¯m judgment proof!¡± He laughed and turned back to his soldering iron. ### 843 Gin Street rose above a busy road, full of buses and e-bikes moving through the outer edge of Carthage. The directory panel outside the building¡¯s metal door displayed a long list of names. There was no Freya Alexander or any variant of it, but there was a ¡°Dearborn.¡± That was the name White Tree had given Freya when she had left the pools, the name she had rejected. I stared at it for a while and then considered using my eyes to see what the local drive knew. The trouble was this system was homemade and not networked. It was simply a display panel soldered to a single board computer. It was as if the landlord was some hobbyist electrical engineer. The people moving in and out of the building avoided my eye. I didn¡¯t want to make them uncomfortable or to attract the attention of security or law enforcement, so I abandoned the front of the building and decamped to the coffee shop across the road. Sitting before the long, street-facing window at a varnished bar with a mug of coffee at my elbow, I thought about my options. One, I could wait here all day to see whether Freya entered or exited the building. It was a weekday, and she was likely at work, so perhaps closer to evening I might get lucky. Two, I could see if I could breach the FUTUR Design employee database and find out something else about her. I¡¯d accessed FUTUR Design¡¯s HQ before but hadn¡¯t looked at the employee records that time. I¡¯d promised Dr. Adler back in Missouri that I wouldn¡¯t try to jack in for few hours, give or take, so maybe hitting FUTUR Design was a bad idea. But I¡¯d already used my eyes a couple times, so maybe my nervous system was up to the job. Or maybe not. Maybe it was better to do this the old-fashioned way, and wait here. In meatspace. Like a lump of pork. Not a chance. I downed the rest of my coffee and left the shop for the commercial district I could see up ahead. A major road, clogged with vehicles traveling at speeds that appeared, frankly, stupid, cut one side of the commercial area off from the other. A pair of spindly pedestrian bridges arced over the road, and some brave or desperate individuals tried to maneuver across the faded remains of painted crosswalks, the speakers in the traffic lights shouting WAIT WAIT WAIT to people who weren¡¯t listening. There were memorials on the side of the road: two white-painted pedal bikes, a white e-bikes, and a white wheelchair next to a pile of shoes also spray-painted white. This ordinary road was as deadly and cruel as anything else in the world. Past restaurants, net cafes, and tiny stores jammed with discount goods I saw the bunker-like form of an old public library branch. I figured there would be a terminal in there I could use for a quick peek at FUTUR Design¡¯s directory. I walked down the old and uneven stairs into the dark basement level, with dusty light streaming in through high windows that just barely found the sky. Dim lights glowed in ceramic bowls suspended from the ceiling on chains. Along the far wall were bound volumes of ancient magazines. The smell of old glossy paper and binding glue filled me with pleasant memories of the public library back home before the Talibama took over the county and burned it down during their brief reign. In front of me was a long double-row of terminals, each one occupied by someone hunched over in netspace. They were interfacing through screens, goggles, headphones, haptics, helmets, and net ports. The hardware may have been old and grimy, but it was also indestructible. A glowing transparent kiosk, the newest thing in the room, asked to scan my library card or chip in exchange for a place in line to use a terminal for forty-five minutes. I slipped the mesh contacts from my eyes and looked into the system¡¯s logic. The system conducted only a simple reference check to a local database to verify whether a library card was valid. I found a dummy entry in the reference database and entered my number the same way. ¡°TEST_USER you are number 0000157 in line,¡± the kiosk reported. I put the contacts back in. I felt a pang: I really wanted Enrique and Gloss and Linney and Freya to see me now. I wished they knew how fluent I was at navigating netspace. Soon they would. I was flipping through old issues of Popular Cybernetics when a terminal became available. Lowering myself onto the hard chair, I looked over the hardware available. Connecting to a public net port felt risky, but the library was only giving me forty-five minutes of access, so I risked it and flipped open a laptop with a server map pointed at FUTUR Design HQ. Then I unwound the library terminal¡¯s cable until it reached my chest, pulled down the collar of my t-shirt, and twisted the cable home. The last time I had run this server, it had been protected by a simulant girl picking flowers in a field. This time, as the skyline of FUTUR Design approached, I was confronted by a tall young woman with red hair wearing a cloak of gold so bright it was practically flaming. I knew her. ¡°Freya?¡± I said. ¡°You are not allowed to be here,¡± she said and moved nearer to me. Her cloak swayed as tiny packets of data streamed past us. The way she moved was different than how Freya moved. The simulant¡¯s hair was long and red and curly, different than Freya¡¯s had been, but her face was Freya¡¯s and her voice was Freya¡¯s, and so was her presence, bearing, posture. I felt sure this was her. ¡°Do you recognize me?¡± I said. She looked me over. ¡°I do not know you. I will send you to hell.¡±
Gloss''s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Freya 2.0
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez Medium
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 3
Type Puzzle
Subtype Simulant-toll-gray
Subroutines Drains runner accounts; occupies runner attention for hours; can cause nervous system trauma
Chapter 32: In the Flesh Chapter 32. In the Flesh The ice looked like Freya. She had promised to send me to hell. The skin of the ice swam with interlocking lines, like a jigsaw puzzle. I reached for Hungry Creek, for Spider Wasp, for Ichnovirus, but as they unfolded from me they passed through her without interacting with her. None of them were optimized for puzzle ice. I tried to reverse away but she reached out for me, her arm appearing to be a normal length but in fact becoming impossibly long, and she took the tip of my arrowhead between her thumb and forefinger. Her fingertips were sharp with fractal edges, grooved like a cortex, ready to fit into my synapses and jam them. Gray ice. A traumatic brain injury was only nanoseconds away. I saw the code running along her skin and was about to speak when I saw a way through, even without a breaker¡ª ¡ªI traveled through endless halls, tall and sparkling, lined with glass cases displaying uncut precious stones and weird, brilliant minerals like deranged skyscrapers on plinths or velvet cushions, like a museum in which I was the only visitor¡ª ¡°Sir?¡± the security guard was shaking my shoulder, the librarian standing behind him. I found myself slouched at the public library terminal. I disconnected the cable from my chest. ¡°You¡¯re not allowed to be here for hours and hours,¡± the security guard said. The librarian standing behind him remained silent and looked ambivalent about this situation. The guard¡¯s words made me flash back to that unsettling encounter with the simulant ice. ¡°Other people are waiting.¡± I muttered an apology and moved away from the terminal, feeling disturbed and lonely. As I walked up the stairs to the street, I saw that it was early in the evening. I¡¯d lost most of the day to what should have been a simple run. I checked the balance on my credit chip and saw that I¡¯d lost almost 2K as well. Bled for time and money by that ice. That ice that looked like Freya. But was that her? Had I finally found her? Only one way to find out. I hunkered down in a diner nearby. My laptop was making a whining noise, as if a fan were about to snap a blade. Still, in the booth, nursing half a mug of tepid dark water that they told me was coffee, I dug the laptop out. Touching the bag made me ache with loneliness. It was one of Gloss¡¯s bags, made of ballistic nylon and stained with sweat, dirt, cooking oil, blood, and half a dozen exotic machine and biomedical lubricants. The shell of the bag was beyond cleaning but I wouldn¡¯t get rid of it because it felt like a link between me and the other runners. Even if they didn¡¯t want anything to do with me. We were the ones who made millions and lost it just as easily. Hell, thirty minutes ago I had 2K vanish from my account. That would have been a rent payment, maybe even two, for most people. For me, it meant nothing. I didn¡¯t run for the money. When I opened the laptop I saw it hadn¡¯t powered down. Not only that but my foray into FUTUR Design¡¯s HQ had not been a total failure. Somehow I must have made it into the server, even if I didn¡¯t remember breaching it, as disturbing as that was. After my spooky encounter with ice that imitated Freya¡¯s appearance, I had lost track of what was happening. Fortunately, this little laptop had been watching over me, and more importantly, it had recorded everything. There, among the charts of vital signs and the sheets and sheets of quotidian corporate data, in one plain text file among thousands, was ¡°Kristin Dearborn¡¯s¡± employee record. FUTUR Design had hired ¡°Kristin Dearborn¡± four months ago, which was about three months before the words COME FIND ME started flashing at me every time my implanted eyes connected to the net. The record told me her home address, 843 Gin Street, which I already knew. And it told me that she had been at work today. Which meant that she might be home now. I was only a few blocks from 843 Gin. It was funny: I had considered waiting outside her building all day, but had been restless and jacked in instead, and ended up losing the day to simulant ice. I shivered. I didn¡¯t know what that meant about me. Was I savvy or just reckless? I set out for 843 Gin Street. This time I pressed the button on the ancient panel next to the name ¡°Dearborn,¡± handwritten in blue ink, and a voice that I recognized spoke to me, fuzzily, from the speaker above the panel. ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°Freya,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s Rawls. I¡¯ve come to find you.¡± There was a strange pause. ¡°302.¡± The voice said nothing else. The static coming from the speaker ceased, and the sheet metal door shook with an electric pulse that disengaged the locks. I pulled the door open and stepped through into an old apartment building, the floor unlevel and the paint peeling. There were shoes in the hallway, and a child¡¯s bicycle. I climbed the stairs to the third level, feeling the bannister creak under my hand. At 302 I knocked. I thought I saw something block the light streaming through the peephole, and then the door opened. There she was, wearing a tank top and denim cut-offs, her feet bare. She gave me a smile that was cautious, maybe even ambivalent. Even slouching and holding the door jamb, she looked tall and strong.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. She was also studded with sockets. I could see them running from the side of her head down her neck, shoulder, near her collarbone, and under her shirt. Her arms ran with circuitry tattooed into her. On the front of one thigh was a jeweled access panel bearing heavy two chrome knobs. It spoke to something new about her. She was noticing that I¡¯d been modified, too. ¡°Faraday mesh contacts, right?¡± was the first thing she said. ¡°Freya,¡± I said. I threw my arms wide. She let me hug her but stood stiffly, as if she didn¡¯t know why I would want to embrace the friend I hadn¡¯t seen in much more than a year. ¡°Yeah,¡± I whispered, my whiskered chin brushing the place where her neck met her shoulder muscle. ¡°Mesh contacts.¡± ¡°I was wondering why I stopped being able to find you reliably. But I¡¯m glad you¡¯re covering your tracks now. Come on in,¡± she said and turned away from the door. I followed her inside and closed the door to her apartment behind myself. The smell of her place reminded me of the smell of Freya¡¯s parents¡¯ kitchen when we were growing up. Freya had to do most of her own cooking, and it smelled like she cooked the same things here as she did back home: succotash, tomato stew, and buttered sweet potatoes. Hers was a studio like you found in many towers these days, like Linney¡¯s had been: a single long room with a big picture window on one end, with kitchen and hygiene alcoves. Her bed was right up against the window. Her view looked out at the far expanse of pine and mixed forests that stretched to Occoneechee Mountain and the foothills in the distance. The places outside Carthage where people like Freya and I¡ªpeople such as we used to be¡ªstill lived. She filled a jam jar with cold water and handed it to me. I drank it heartily and she joked that I must be dehydrated. I nodded in agreement even as the jar remained pressed to my lips. ¡°It¡¯s so good to see you,¡± I said, and felt a great release of tension in my chest as I spoke the words. She turned away and busied herself rearranging bits of gear on her couch. The fact that she didn¡¯t acknowledge my second attempt at a warm greeting made all the tension that had just been released come rushing back to clutch me. I sighed. ¡°What?¡± she said. She didn¡¯t look up at me. ¡°It¡¯s just that you have no idea how hard I¡¯ve been looking for you, and I¡¯m here, and I¡¯m happy to see you, happy to see you¡¯re still alive, and it¡¯s like you don¡¯t care.¡± She looked up at me and straightened her back and dumped all the components in her arms back on the couch. There were tears in her eyes. ¡°You didn¡¯t come see me in the hospital.¡± I put my hands in my pockets. I couldn¡¯t meet her eyes just now. ¡°I know. I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°Why didn¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Panic attack.¡± ¡°Oh.¡± I removed my hands from my pockets and held them out. ¡°I¡¯m not trying to make this about me. I definitely messed up by not coming to see you.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± she said quietly. She started walking around the place, her arms crossed. She was looking at the floor when she spoke. ¡°Then they asked me come to Carthage all alone, to the NCD, and that was terrifying. I was scared that I was going to die, or become a shell of who I once was, or become inhabited by an AI. And then when I left the pools I came here and called for you and I wasn¡¯t sure you were ever going to come.¡± ¡°Here I am,¡± I said. Her smile was tight-lipped. ¡°I wish you had come sooner. Now I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s a good thing you came at all.¡± ¡°What in the world are you talking about?¡± I said. My words stopped her where she was. I hadn¡¯t meant to raise my voice. It was just that I felt such happiness to see her, followed by uncertainty, and then guilt, and then reconnection, then confusion. And finally, what I felt more than anything else was frustration at how this reunion was playing out. She looked at me with wet, fierce eyes. ¡°FUTUR Design is hunting you. They¡¯re my employer.¡± ¡°Yes, I know. I know both those things.¡± ¡°That means it¡¯s a bad idea for you to be standing in my apartment.¡± ¡°Even though you called me here.¡± ¡°Even though.¡± ¡°It was you, wasn¡¯t it? That sent the messages to my eyes?¡± ¡°Yes. Of course it was.¡± I sighed again. ¡°Freya, I don¡¯t know why you say obviously, because it wasn¡¯t obvious to me. It took a good amount of detective work. I didn¡¯t even know about my eye implants. How is it that you do?¡± ¡°Oh, that. That¡¯s what I was getting at. The real problem.¡± ¡°So what is it?¡± ¡°If I told you, you wouldn¡¯t understand, so just sit down and let me tell you a story. Coffee first?¡± ¡°Is it good coffee?¡± ¡°The hell with you, Rawls,¡± she said brightly. I grinned wide. That was the Freya I knew. Back home, I remember trawling the stores and flood relief depots looking for the coffee that most approximated the real thing. It was always Freya¡¯s nose that found it. She glanced at the kitchen and I heard the sound of a grinder spinning up, of water boiling against a hot coil. ¡°Networked kitchen?¡± ¡°Worth the risk.¡± ¡°Tell me that when someone DDoSes your brewer and you can¡¯t make your morning cup.¡± Freya gave me the finger and moved to the cabinet to take down two thick ceramic mugs. On one was printed, ¡°#1 Grandma¡± and on the other, ¡°I lost myself at Blooming Prairie Arcology.¡± A minute later, steaming mugs in our hands, sitting next to each other on her couch, her leg with its knobs against the outside of my thigh. I noticed a photograph, printed on paper and framed, on the wall. Freya and a young, dark-skinned man with a buzzcut. ¡°Boyfriend?¡± I said. ¡°Riz,¡± she said. ¡°He¡¯s great. We don¡¯t see each other enough.¡± ¡°I¡¯m happy for you.¡± I said it automatically, and I meant it, although there was a part of me that wanted all of Freya¡¯s attention to myself now that I had found her. ¡°You seeing anyone?¡± She poked my knee. ¡°Not right now. There was someone, but she took a job and moved.¡± ¡°Like me.¡± ¡°Yes and no.¡± The silence threatened to get weird. ¡°You said you had a story,¡± I said. ¡°Right,¡± she said. ¡°Well, I started to work for FUTUR Design after I¡¯d left the pools. The Prophet Ezra pointed me here. You may have met him. Anyway, I was recruited into the ice development division at Research Triangle Arcology. They put me on a low-level simulant product line right away. Have you ever seen a Marlowe?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Well, I worked on him for a few weeks. But then the chief architect visited our facility.¡± Chief architect. Wait. I knew this, from my visit to FUTUR Design HQ with Gloss. ¡°Delilah Vyskocil,¡± I offered. Freya leaned forward and looked over at me, her face serious. ¡°How do you know her? I mean, of course you know her, but how do you know her by that name?¡± ¡°I ran an operation against her.¡± ¡°Well, Chief Architect Vyskocil, or Delilah, as she insisted I call her, plucked me out of simulant lines and took me to HQ. I think she had noticed the evidence on my body that I had been part of White Tree¡¯s pools. No one else had quite understood what these sockets and these circuits meant. Delilah took me out for a glass of wine at a fancy hotel downtown and told me two very important things.¡± ¡°What were they?¡± ¡°The first one is private. I¡¯m sorry. But the second one is this: Delilah is your mother.¡±
Gloss''s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Marlowe 1.0
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez Low
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 2
Type Platformer
Subtype Simulant-tracer
Subroutines Stops a run; attempts to trace runner location
Chapter 33: Death Tetrads Chapter 33: Death Tetrads Delilah Vyskocil, the chief architect of FUTUR Design¡¯s ice, was my mother? I thought back to the moment I engineered an encounter with her in the atrium at FUTUR Design HQ. She had seemed to recognize something in me, and I recognized something in her. What Freya said was true. There was no doubt at all. But so what? This woman had never been around when I was a kid. Even if she gave birth to me, she didn¡¯t raise me. I didn¡¯t owe her much. I didn¡¯t owe her anything. I didn''t. Freya continued her story. ¡°At HQ, Delilah gave me a different task: training a brand new simulant.¡± As she spoke, I recalled my encounters with the simulants Ludo and Starbuck, and passing each of them was a matter of mastering their particular games. There was a part of me that thought that speaking with Freya about this could be useful. I felt queasy at that thought. I wasn¡¯t here to improve my status as a runner. I was here to make sure that my childhood best friend was OK. Wasn¡¯t I? ¡°Usually simulants are trained by conversation and board games. This simulant training routine was different,¡± Freya said. ¡°The way I was supposed to train her was to dream about her. They hooked me up to their own version of the pools. At the time, I figured I could do it, as uncomfortable as it was, because they were paying me a lot of money. But when I was done, I felt sick. Really sick. Worse than when I had separated from White Tree. I asked if I could speak to the simulant. But Delilah said that I couldn¡¯t. I don¡¯t even know if she¡¯s been released.¡± Something clicked in my head. Don¡¯t worry, the click was only figurative. ¡°She has been released,¡± I said, remembering my encounters with Freya 1.0 and Freya 2.0. ¡°They have her protecting HQ. And she¡¯s evolving.¡± ¡°Oh. Does she look like me?¡± ¡°In a way.¡± ¡°It¡¯s almost like having a sister.¡± Freya gave a tiny smile that I didn¡¯t believe for a moment. I reached out for her hand. ¡°If you believe that ice can be a person.¡± ¡°Simulant ice can be, Rawls. Trust me.¡± There was sadness in her voice, and a sense of grievance. I didn¡¯t understand what she had been through but it must have been painful. I didn¡¯t understand what she was saying and I didn¡¯t like it. ¡°What happened next?¡± I said. ¡°Your mother sent me back to RTA and I worked on low-level simulant lines again.¡± Freya spoke slowly and in monotone. It was clear she was trying to tell me everything exactly as she experienced it. ¡°I applied for the job under the name that White Tree gave me. But Delilah told me she knew me by my real name¡ªFreya Alexander. It was written in the Root, backbone of the net, jointly owned by the megacorps. White Tree had told me that the name was dead but you know how that goes¡ªinformation can never be destroyed once it¡¯s on the net. Delilah said she would help my career, guide me as much as I wanted, and that she hoped she could see what had become of you.¡± ¡°Did she know where I was?¡± ¡°She asked me. I said that last I knew, you were still in Canton.¡± I thought back to the atrium. Did she know who I was? If my eyes had been transmitting to FUTUR Design at that moment, surely someone in that corp would have identified me. I felt like I was being manipulated. I didn¡¯t like any of this. Freya continued. ¡°Delilah told me that in order to save your eyesight they had to enucleate and replace your eyes. But it wasn¡¯t just your eyes that were affected by your illness. It was your whole nervous system. So the only implants that would work for you were these experimental eyes created by FUTUR Design in collaboration with White Tree. To afford the implants and the nervous system upgrade that went with it, Delilah had to sign a 30-year indenture with FUTUR Design.¡± ¡°Oh my goodness.¡± ¡°And as part of the indenture, she had to leave you behind.¡± ¡°She gave up her freedom for me?¡± ¡°At the highest executive levels, either the family lives in corporate housing or becomes no family at all.¡± I didn¡¯t want to owe my mother anything. But she gave me life, and she saved my vision. And she paid a cost, a cost that I couldn¡¯t even understand. Maybe she could have taken me with her. ¡°But Dad didn¡¯t want to leave Canton,¡± I said. Freya shook her head. ¡°I¡¯m glad he didn¡¯t.¡± I knew what she meant and squeezed her hand. ¡°I am, too. So you¡¯re corporate now?¡± I said, feeling uncomfortable with the question. It was like asking someone what color their blood was. Freya brushed her hair back. ¡°I¡¯m low-level enough that they don¡¯t demand 100% of my time. As therapy, I began making runs on other megacorps by myself. I hide it from them. I half-suspect my employer knows but doesn¡¯t care as long as I¡¯m not running against FUTUR Design¡¯s servers. I know for a fact they employ runners to breach White Tree.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re a runner.¡± ¡°Valkyrie,¡± she said. Of course. Val43rie. She¡¯d cracked the top 500 last time I had checked. ¡°I¡¯ve seen you on the board,¡± I said. ¡°I run alone. But I¡¯m making my name. You need a handle,¡± she said. She punched my knee.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. ¡°So I gather. Hey. It¡¯s good to see you.¡± ¡°It¡¯s good to see you, too, Rawls. Thanks for coming to find me.¡± ¡°Any time.¡± We gave each other an awkward sideways hug, all our hardware digging into each other¡¯s soft skin, so different than when we were teenagers made of nothing but lean muscle and soft skin. ¡°What about you? Who you running with?¡± she said. I told her about everyone I had met. ¡°Then my mentor got nabbed. Once we figured out my eyes were transmitting to FUTUR Design and maybe White Tree, my crew didn¡¯t want me around anymore. So I guess I¡¯m on my own, too.¡± ¡°We could be partners,¡± she said. ¡°Really?¡± ¡°I have some connections here. It could be sweet.¡± ### In the evening, Freya and I took a short ride on the BRUTE to a place near a weedy old highway, a restaurant with kitchens distributed among a low collection of buildings surrounding a courtyard with koi swimming among lily pads. As we sat on a stone bench in a bamboo grove, eating from paper trays, I realized why we were here. Between the concrete waterfall that fed the koi pond and the wind in the bamboo, microphones would have a hard time picking up our conversation. Freya confided in me the details of the runs she¡¯d been making. She¡¯d been targeting White Tree, making some extra cash, hindering her employer¡¯s competitor, and reclaiming a sense of agency after White Tree had stripped it from her by connecting her to their pools. That was how Freya explained it. Running was like seeing a counselor, except you got paid to do it. Listening to her speak felt like coming home. I¡¯d done what I had set out to do: found Freya, made sure that she was all right. In the process I had made some friends, developed a new set of skills, and learned a few things about myself. I¡¯d learned how my body had been modified when I was too young to know what was happening, and then I¡¯d paid to have it modified further. I¡¯d fashioned myself into a runner, maybe not in the top 500 like Freya, but a runner, and a hexrunner, too. And I knew that I wasn¡¯t running for money. And I didn¡¯t think I had political beliefs, not really. So what was left for me? Could I go back home with the knowledge that I had accomplished what I had set out to do? No. There wasn¡¯t a life back home in Canton. My life was here, as a runner, and so was Freya¡¯s. That was the best possible outcome. We could run together, grow together, crack the top 100. Maybe even the top 10. And as she told me how she thought a partnership between us could work, a plan began to form. There were targets she wanted to take down, rich targets, but she needed someone running her hardware. That stopped me. ¡°Run your hardware? I thought I would be on the breakers, or we would together.¡± ¡°Oh that¡¯s what you thought, huh?¡± she smiled the way she used to when challenging me to a foot race across the meadow as kids. ¡°Maybe we should have ourselves a competition.¡± ¡°You and me? Like a race?¡± ¡°You pick the server,¡± she said. ¡°Where are we running from?¡± ¡°I know a place.¡± ### She wanted to jack in from the tent city beneath the Private Highway pylons in central Bull City. We set up the consoles and connected the net cables to them. Her method of connecting was more complicated than mine, and her console looked like something that had come from a custom auto-body shop, if auto-body shops made computers. It was an aerodynamic-looking elongated trapezoid, with two jewel-like eyes, gleaming with sparkling dark green metallic paint. ¡°This is Deinosuchus,¡± she said, and I saw it then. Her console was shaped like head of a prehistoric alligator. The Prophet Ezra set up a couple of cots and promised to put someone at the door to keep watch over us. Even so, I noticed Freya peeling the paper backs from half a dozen sticky cams and placing them on the ceiling of the tent surrounding the cots. She wrote their frequencies in marker on the palm of my hand then gestured with the marker at the laptop. ¡°Whatcha got?¡± I spun the open screen toward her so she could see the server map showing the White Tree remote server with the single bright ring of ice. ¡°Looks intense,¡± she said. ¡°What¡¯s the ice?¡± ¡°Mean Red Spider.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve been here before?¡± ¡°Yeah. But not with the rig I have now.¡± She folded her arms. ¡°All right. Let¡¯s do this.¡± She reclined in one cot and pulled an assembly of cords up to her body. She connected them at her head, neck, and shoulder, and then I pulled mine to my chest. ### Instantly I knew I was outclassed. Freya ran fast. Her avatar was a Valkyrie and she traveled through the net the way code travels through the net. She moved the way that the simulant Freya moved. It seemed as though I was wrong when I said that Freya 2.0 did not move like the real thing. The ice ahead appeared cloudy, semi-transparent, no trace of the mean red spider that I had seen on my last run. White Tree must have derezzed it to recoup costs, calculating that they wouldn¡¯t have to rez it again. The digital incarnation of a spider god wasn¡¯t cheap; Gloss had taught me that. We were about to make White Tree learn that lesson again. I could see Freya far ahead of me when the ice began to concretize in front of her. Instead of the strands of web that I expected to see, perhaps the long, lethal legs of the spider, almost invisible except from the proper angle, the ice was blockier, and assembled itself with spinning shapes: lines, squares, and L-, S-, and T-shaped pieces each made of four cubes, as in an old-school video game. ¡°Death Tetrads,¡± Freya hissed over the voicelink. Her Valkyrie took evasive action to avoid faceplanting across the razor edge of a T-shaped block that was sliding into a T-shaped gap directly in front of her. I slowed, readying my programs. The visual representation of the ice combined with the data from my console told me that this was a platformer type ice, and that meant Hungry Creek was my breaker of choice. The problem was, these things were slow, and as slowly as I was moving, I could feel the Death Tetrads pulling me in. The surface of the ice glowed hot and sharp. It looked painful, like a jumped-up version of the razor-lined membrane that had cut me when I was still new to running. I worried about Freya. I¡¯d led her into this server anticipating one kind of ice. What if she wasn¡¯t prepared for this? What if she was exhausted from the workday? What if this thing killed her? I looked above, to where her Valkyrie glowed, ringed in flame. I shouldn¡¯t have worried about Freya. She hovered near the surface of the nearest Death Tetrad, its glow mixing with the glow surrounding her avatar. Some kind of harmonic resonance was coming from her avatar. She was singing. And as she sang, a hole opened in the Death Tetrad. The song came to me as if from far away. Even as my avatar was pulled inescapably toward the Death Tetrad, I opened a window to one of the sticky cams she had left in the tent. There, I saw her, on the cot, her mouth and chest moving exactly as if in song, her upper body swaying slightly on the thin mattress, if one could be said to sway at all while supine. The sticky cam did not transmit audio, so I couldn¡¯t be sure that she was singing audibly, but something in me felt that she was. The hole above opened enough for her Valkyrie avatar to pass through. Meanwhile, I called Hungry Creek to my side and pushed the torrent of water forward. On my own, I wasn¡¯t sure I could have made it through. But all I had to do was dissolve my way to the hole that Freya had opened and pass through behind her. Ahead, in the tall tower of the server¡¯s data, she was spinning, spinning ...
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Death Tetrads
Manufacturer White Tree
Cost to rez extremely high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 6
Type platformer
Subtype red; anti-AI
Subroutines 3: bleeds a runner (lethal 80% of the time); stops a run; shreds AI icebreakers
Chapter 34: Rented Futures Chapter 34: Rented Futures We woke. Freya was smiling at me. ¡°That was a surprise.¡± ¡°I thought they had derezzed the spider and would have to pay a fortune to re-rez it,¡± I said. ¡°They must have swapped the spider somewhere else. That¡¯s a White Tree trick if I¡¯ve ever seen one. But don¡¯t worry. We cost them over ten billion today. They don¡¯t protect something with Death Tetrads unless they have something to hide. Speaking of which, those were my memories in that server.¡± Right. I¡¯d almost forgotten what was there. ¡°Are you OK?¡± ¡°Always feels a bit weird to reexperience something on someone else¡¯s terms, or on the terms of the storage substrate, I guess. But I¡¯ll be OK. I¡¯ve been through rougher servers.¡± We were stretching our bodies and disconnecting wires and spooling them back up and taking down the sticky cams. Freya produced a stack of bills to hand to our security outside the tent. ¡°Sorry,¡± I said somewhat belatedly. ¡°Don¡¯t be. I suggested a race. Which I won, by the way.¡± ¡°So what?¡± ¡°So if we do this thing, you operate my hardware, at least to start. Because I¡¯m the better runner.¡± She cocked her hip and smiled at me. I couldn¡¯t disagree with that. ¡°You run like a goddamn machine.¡± Suddenly her expression appeared vacant. ¡°Freya? Are you OK?¡± She shook her head like she was saying no. Then she said, ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± ¡°What is it?¡± ¡°Just don¡¯t say that again.¡± ¡°That you¡¯re fast?¡± ¡°That I¡¯m a machine. Just don¡¯t say it, Rawls.¡± And she carried her gear out of the tent. ### Freya and I became partners. The terms of our partnership were simple: I set up her rig and she ran the breakers. With the sub-subs in my fingertips, I tuned up her console, her backups, and her regulators. I made them match her brain patterns and her pulse. Running was a physical sport. Always. Downserver, nobody could compete with her. She broke ice like a machine, although I¡¯d promised her I¡¯d never say that again. She¡¯d coded a custom breaker suite for herself with the help of her pet AI, Zizek. Even I didn¡¯t know exactly how her programs worked. It wasn¡¯t my job to understand¡ªit was only my job to ensure that her rig could access enough power to get Freya into any server, any time. That was what she needed, and when I say needed, I mean she needed it like she needed a place to sleep. The first two breakers she made, for handling platformers and shooter ice, were simple and elegant. But she struggled with a breaker for puzzle ice. The first one she coded, called Smoke Mountain, she sold because she wasn¡¯t happy with it. ¡°Who did you sell it to?¡± ¡°Not Davies, that¡¯s for sure.¡± She referred to her usual fence, a guy I¡¯d never met. ¡°He wouldn¡¯t give me a fair price. I sold it to Gerty.¡± ¡°You know Gerty?¡± ¡°Everyone knows her. She can find what others can¡¯t. Although, sometimes I don¡¯t know about her. She tried to sell me a child¡¯s stuffed possum for 40K the other day.¡± A memory came to me, something that I could almost grasp, but it was fleeting. Freya told me that running kept bad feelings at bay. She took on trauma when White Tree had linked her to the brains of untold numbers of other people to do processing. Running helped her recapture her sense of self. Me? I ran to help her. But the money was nice, too. With Freya, the money could be unbelievable. Sometimes it was scarce. Sometimes it was gone entirely. But that was how it went for every runner. With Freya, a big score was never more than a few weeks away. Within a few weeks of reuniting with her, she¡¯d introduced me to her suppliers and fences, as well as the people who scouted out runs for her. We were living together in Bull City when the name ¡°Niflheim¡± popped up again. I was making my daily circuit of the underground shopping malls¡ªstill the best way to know what was happening in the city. It didn¡¯t matter who you were: corporate drudge, executive, hungry artist, hoodlum, or permanent member of the working class, if you wanted something in Bull City in the summertime, you went below ground. Sure, there was surveillance. A few hundred cameras monitored me from the moment I left the metro station at Duke. But for those in the know, surveillance wasn¡¯t a problem until you let it become a problem. For now, I didn¡¯t care if my face was showing up on monitors and facial recognition scans across half a dozen corporate and government security centers. The holographic overlays on the contact lenses of loss-prevention specialists in clothing stores lit up at my presence but that was OK. I wasn¡¯t shoplifting leather jackets. I only cared about one thing. I cared about the underworld semaphore. I cared about the foil streamer on a scent-engine wafting out of a teenage clothing boutique called Skullwire. I cared that the foil streamer¡¯s position on the second vent from the left instead of the third meant that Freya''s contact¡ªDavies was his name¡ªhad something for me. So I did what I always did when something urgent came along¡ªI wasted time. I had a coffee at a glassed-in franchise and watched the students and professionals crowd the mirrored concourses between morning classes and morning meetings. When I finished my coffee, I walked another block underground and I had another coffee in another branch of the same franchise. I watched for familiar faces, anything that might suggest that the surveillance I was under was more than routine. Surveillance was just another name for the human condition these days. But if the corps take special interest in you at the wrong time, things go sick and wrong. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. But today? Today it was looking good. No familiar faces. No prickly sensation on the back of my neck¡ªthat was where I had a new interferometer implanted to let me know of any tight-beam laser or radio scanners that might sweep me. Amid the crush of students making for the entrance to campus, I left the concourse of the mall by an unmarked service door. In the staff corridors behind the stores, the air was damp and reeked of rotting cardboard. But it was quiet enough, the cameras were mostly nonfunctional, and there were hardly any people around. Life was different now, working with Freya. Those who were around knew me. I made my way down the corridor, handing out vapor cigarettes, workaday stims, airport bottles of Ghanaian whisky that fell off the back of a truck in New England. As with any relationship, I needed to take care of my friends. They took care of me. I wished Gloss or Enrique could see me. I wasn¡¯t some kid anymore. People knew me here. They knew me as someone who could take down corporate servers, who could get them what they wanted. With every step I was further from the corporate grid. Behind the service corridor were the tiny warehouses, many with bootleg electrical wiring and net servers providing power and data to the extralegal residents who lived in the walls of the underground malls. Ninety percent of them appeared in no census, collected no government benefits, and worked only for tiny electronic payments into accounts tattooed on their wrists. Their only toehold in the mainstream world came from their friends and relations who held down documented jobs cleaning the floors and walls of the mall, hauling trash, hauling goods, and working twice as hard as any megacorp executive for one forty-thousandth the pay. It wasn¡¯t easy for Freya to come down here. With her salaried job for FUTUR Design, she lived her life under more surveillance than I did. That was why she needed me to find jobs, find gear. Behind a piece of thick plastic sheeting that had once been transparent but was now semi-opaque from years of smoke and grit and the oil of human hands was Freya¡¯s friend Davies. He was on his couch in the middle of the warehouse, lost in some VR runner simulation. He liked to pretend he was cracking megacorp servers, but the truth was, he feared what might come out of the ice. I didn¡¯t look down on him. I had that fear myself. ¡°Rawls, my man, how¡¯s your mysterious partner?¡± Davies said, coming up from the simulation. Overhead, I heard the whirring of his drone monitoring his local grid as it departed now that its owner was back in meatspace. ¡°You do much VR?¡± he said. ¡°Gives me nausea,¡± I said. ¡°But you run.¡± ¡°That¡¯s different,¡± I said. ¡°Like an old school video game.¡± I shook Davies¡¯s hand and sat down on the couch. ¡°You should get this thing cleaned,¡± I said, running my hand along the matted magenta velour. ¡°I¡¯ll let you in on a little secret,¡± Davies said. ¡°I store all my most sensitive data in a smart biofilm on the surface of the couch, disguised as an ordinary stain.¡± I stared at him. ¡°I¡¯m just messing with you,¡± Davies said. ¡°To business?¡± ¡°Business,¡± I said. Davies got up and walked across his empty warehouse. It didn¡¯t look like much now, but when he had parties, he turned on the full laser overlay, and suddenly you could be in the high arcologies, or deep in a maze of killer ice. ¡°This is the score,¡± he mumbled, digging through a box. That was his style: security through obscurity. Some corporate paramilitary raided him, all the important data was likely to go into the trash can with the old grease rags. Which were a fire hazard, as any gearhead will tell you. Which was, come to think of it, another form of security for Davies. He came back with a cassette. There was a piece of quantum film inside, wound reel-to-reel like an ancient pop single. The case itself was sturdy plastic with heavy steel rivets. The outside was plenty scratched up. ¡°Don¡¯t ask me any questions because I don¡¯t have any answers. If I didn¡¯t think you would be interested, I wouldn¡¯t even have picked it up. And don¡¯t ask me where I picked it up because frankly I did a little self-neurosurgery when I got back from that shopping expedition, edited my itinerary right out of my skull. I literally don¡¯t remember and I don¡¯t want to. That¡¯s how bad this is. That¡¯s also how good this is.¡± I looked around his warehouse. I didn¡¯t know he had that kind of surgical equipment here, let alone a room clean enough to use as an operating theater. Davies was full of surprises. ¡°How much?¡± I said. ¡°Thirty K.¡± I didn¡¯t have that much, but Freya did. ¡°Steep for a down payment,¡± I said. ¡°How much is your share when we pull down the score?¡± ¡°No shares this time. I don¡¯t want to know whatever you do with what¡¯s on there. And if you try to tell me what you¡¯re going to do or what you did, I swear I will edit out every memory I had of you.¡± I tapped my wrist. ¡°Money¡¯s in your account,¡± I said. Freya was going to be intrigued. ### I felt the weight of the cassette all the way back to the loft. I¡¯d wedged it into my waistband like a pistol. I felt hyper-aware of my surroundings. With something like this, I couldn¡¯t afford any hassle. I don¡¯t often lose my cool, but I was convinced that I appeared as the world¡¯s most suspicious character on the surveillance cameras that studded my route home: a slim country boy in a black denim jacket with a don¡¯t-mess-with-me swagger suddenly looking over his shoulder every five meters. I stopped at a Thai noodle stand and bought two bags of takeout just to give my hands something to do. After the long metro ride, when I arrived home, I was shaking head to toe. I set the bags down then sprawled on our couch¡ªmuch cleaner than Davies¡¯s¡ªstaring at the ceiling. I¡¯d persuaded her to move to a bigger apartment, one with a mezzanine level that we used for our gear. Come to think of it, it looked a lot like Enrique¡¯s old condo. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± came Freya¡¯s voice from the upper level. I saw her appear at the railing on the upper level, silhouetted by the glow of the bank of monitors behind her. She was a tall woman with a powerful body. When we were kids she took dance class for years. Then in high school she started weight-lifting. When she got sick she¡¯d lost a lot of muscle mass, but she was rebuilding herself now, partly through exercise, partly through installing stronger parts. I admired her more than anyone I knew. ¡°Freya, I just dropped 30K on a job lead,¡± I said. ¡°I hope it¡¯s worth it,¡± she said. I kept silent. ¡°Well?¡± she said. ¡°What is it?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said. A lot of runners would be angry if their partner spent half their roll on a single piece of intel of unknown quality. But not Freya. She trusted my instincts, just as I trusted her skill at breaking ice. I forced myself to sit up. I carried the cassette up the spiral staircase. I handed it to her. ¡°Let¡¯s have a look-see,¡± she said. ¡°Don¡¯t be scared.¡± She slotted the cassette into an old universal data reader I¡¯d picked up from a Talibama market out in Alamance. ¡°Encrypted, of course,¡± she said. ¡°We do this wrong, it¡¯s going to turn the q-film to slag.¡± I reached for the fire extinguisher. ¡°Zizek, little help?¡± she said. Zizek¡¯s avatar, in a laser lit hologram, appeared before us. He was a wild-eyed professor-type dressed in a tracksuit. He arched an eyebrow. Where Freya picked him up, I had no idea. Instantly the monitors came to life with a tessellation of schematics. At first it was impossible to make sense of the sheer quantity of the data. But then emerged a picture, intelligible to slow humans like us. A corporate arcology in Chicago. Owned by FUTUR Design. I knew exactly what it was because I¡¯d run it before. Niflheim. I¡¯d just spent 30K of Freya¡¯s money to hear about Niflheim? ¡°Simulants who think they¡¯re human executives,¡± she said. That changed things. It was against the law to build simulants who did not know they were simulants. It must be well hidden, because my last run didn¡¯t turn up that project. ¡°This could be big.¡± I was seeing zeroes. ¡°But it¡¯s a FUTUR Design target,¡± Freya said. ¡°If I do this, I¡¯ll have to flee.¡± ¡°How much longer were you planning on working for them anyway?¡± I said. ¡°I need the health insurance.¡± ¡°You won¡¯t if we pull this off.¡± She looked at me as if she didn¡¯t know which way to take my comment. I looked back at her, suddenly unsure of which way to play it. ¡°The ice on this will be intense,¡± she said. ¡°This is Niflheim. I¡¯ve run it before, you know, part of it. Handled the sysop. But not the R&D server. This is big. Big. You have to admit the payday could be life-changing,¡± I said. She just looked at me. But we both knew we were going to try. ###
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Neck Interferometer
Manufacturer Cypherpunx, LLC
Legal status Legal
Description A simple sensor and processor that detects anomalous patterns in electromagnetic interference
Cost A few hundo
Function An electronic eye in the back of your head
Chapter 35: Narco Palace Chapter 35: Narco Palace And with the life-changing payday that would come from running Niflheim R&D, I thought, I could hire a big-shot lawyer to habeas Enrique out of whatever corporate prison he was stuck inside. I could return as a hero to the runner community who had given me my start. But Freya worked for Niflheim¡¯s owner, FUTUR Design. I expected to have to convince her. It turned out that I didn¡¯t. ¡°We have to run it,¡± Freya said. ¡°Forget my straight career.¡± According to this tape, FUTUR Design ran a project inside Niflheim that violated the order of the world, such as it was. There were laws that stated that simulants had to be told they were simulants and could not be told they were human. But FUTUR Design was raising simulants to believe they were human, specifically to believe they were corporate executives. These simulants were copies of naturally born people. The simulants would then be sold to the megacorps, where they could improve a CEO¡¯s productivity as long as the simulants never learned the truth. Not even FUTUR Design was supposed to do that. They weren¡¯t supposed to be above the law. In some ways, it was admirable. From what I had seen of simulants during my encounters with them in netspace, they might have been as much of a person as I was. I knew there was a simulant rights movement, and while I didn¡¯t have a strong opinion on that issue, I was sympathetic to the idea that simulants weren¡¯t corporate property. And that was the problem with FUTUR Design, in my view. They wanted simulants to be people and they wanted control over them at the same time. That wasn¡¯t right. Supposedly, Freya wanted to run Niflheim for the money. But as I watched her look over the information on the tape, I wondered if that were true. I thought about the ice that Freya had dreamed up, the Freya-series ice. What would it be like if she encountered that ice in the net? ### In those first few weeks of partnership, I worked differently with Freya than when I did when I first started running. My practice now was to scout the meatspace before a run. It didn¡¯t matter how far away we were going to be; I wanted someone on the ground. Even if Freya was going to be jacking into bank in Charleston, I wanted a sense of the local grid around the target. I wanted the chance to set up some watchers, whether robotic or biological or somewhere in between. Corporations had immune systems, just like people. Under attack, they showed symptoms. They ran fevers. They bled personnel, data, and even wet ink once the bankruptcy lawyers came in and the executives turned started eating each other. You could make an educated guess at what a corp was going to do next if you could watch the traffic in and out of its headquarters, assuming you had been watching for a while and established a baseline. You could anticipate the reprisal and get out from under it. But that wasn¡¯t the only reason I went in person. Sometimes we couldn¡¯t run down a score in netspace alone. Sometimes we needed an assist in the meat. Particularly when looking at a FUTUR Design target, we needed to be aware of the lag time and the load on the network. FUTUR Design¡¯s Tomorrow Division built its reputation on turning the infinitesimal delays that were a part of any network against a runner. Those tiny delays could mean the difference between Freya slipping by some alert simulant hunter manifesting in the net and her brain splattered across the inside of her rig. The amount of lag told us how far away we could afford to be when we ran down the score. So I flew to Chicago. ### Riding the enormous maglev line along Lake Michigan filled me with a dueling feelings of peace and anxiety. As the train approached the FUTUR Design arcology further up the north shore, I saw Niflheim in person for the first time: a purple-gray tower, unremarkable from the outside, with no indication of the terrible energies contained inside. I left the train at the arcology stop. About half the passengers were going inside, residents on furlough or contractors come to sweep the halls, take out the trash, cook the meals, or maybe clean up the bloodstains. Nilfheim was the premier facility for the Tomorrow Division. Its R&D server was thick with illegal data. In the Carthage back channels there were rumors of a louche FUTUR Design sysop in the Chicago arcology, and I was here to see if I could compromise her. I was pretty sure I knew who it was based on my previous experience with Niflheim. If I could compromise this sysop, and if I could get the hardware we needed, we might be able to crack the arcology using an inside agent to prop the door open, so to speak. The approach to the sysop had to be delicate. FUTUR Design were notoriously good with counterintelligence and they kept deep AI surveillance looking for suspicious patterns in the behavior of all their employees. When the train reached the arcology, I kept riding. My eye wasn¡¯t drawn to the arcology itself but to the small patchwork of corrugated huts and quick-install strip malls next to it, the kind of improvised village that always sprung up next to corporate campuses, places to eat and sleep for the people who cannot get into the arcology itself or who work there and do not have the time to make it home and back again before their next shift. Even with the maglev line, it wasn¡¯t uncommon for arcology contractors to endure eight-hour commutes each way. The sysops, of course, weren¡¯t contractors but stayed in the arcologies 24/7 except when granted furlough. I rode the maglev to its far northern terminus, and then rode it back south again. The Carthage rumor mill had given me a place, a time, and a description, but no name. Still. On the ride south, passing the arcology in the early evening, I saw her on the platform waiting to board. Early thirties, tweed three-piece suit, chromed ear implants, blue marble eyes. Augmented. Off on her biweekly descent into the narco palaces of southside Chicago. Bell Wolf, my sysop. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I rode all the way, one car behind her. In downtown, another woman got on, almost a double of my sysop. In the crush, I almost didn¡¯t see my sysop reverse her jacket and trade bags with the double. So that was how my sysop ditched surveillance. Bell Wolf debarked at the next stop. I followed her toward Eliza¡¯s, a notorious narco palace. As I saw her walk down the stairs, I unzipped the wallet of mycological flash Freya had given me for the trip; a lifetime of underworld knowledge, courtesy of the Prophet Ezra, and all cut to size. I slotted a circular wafer into my net port and a veritable encyclopedia of drugs opened somewhere behind my eyes. In the smoky funk of the bar, I watched her paste disposable contacts over her eyes for the more efficient delivery of digital narcotics, lean back on a velvet cushion, and hook up a port in her arm to what was likely an illegal stimulant that would cause her a bit of permanent nerve damage before the night was through. She accepted a lap dance from a androgynous, bright-eyed simulant with chrome skin. Over a whiskey, I saw the two of them vanish into a cubicle. Then I made my move. I walked to the cubicle door in the back of the bar, inserted the lead of a hardware code cracker into the keyway, popped it open, and walked in on the sight of a woman completely lost to herself. The smell of biological and machine lubricants mixed was like a tire shop crossed with a college dorm. I locked the door behind myself and, on a portable speaker, played a frequency override courtesy of Freya that caused the simulant sex worker to curl up and go to sleep on the carpet. I yanked the viscose sheet from the bed and draped it over the simulant for modesty. Bell Wolf was thrashing and asking what was happening. I knelt before her and gestured at my eyes with two fingers, which nudged her to remove the contacts from her own eyes. I reached forward and slowly closed the valve outside her arm that was still pumping her full of stim. Her eyes went wide in the dark red light of the room. I found a vial of ammonia salts on the table and held it under her nose to bring her around somewhat. She jerked and sat up. I kicked open the mini-bar and offered her a plastic bottle of sparkling water on her own tab. ¡°Oh no,¡± she said when he finally got a look at me. The last time we¡¯d seen each other had been in netspace on opposite ends of a server. No telling whether she knew what I looked like in meatspace but I knew she was starting to get the picture. ¡°You¡¯re all kinds of violating your indenture tonight, Bell,¡± I said. It felt weird playing the heavy, but with Freya as my partner, I felt invincible. Bell Wolf¡¯s name made her sit a little straighter. I went on. ¡°I can¡¯t say it¡¯s entirely a surprise. When someone likes to fry runner brains as much as you do, it only makes sense that that someone would want a taste of what they¡¯re serving.¡± ¡°What do you want?¡± ¡°That¡¯s the central question of the evening. Maybe even the central question of your career. What do I want? A backdoor into Niflheim. Five days from now. The window only has to be open for a minute. For fifteen seconds, in fact. We¡¯ll cover our tracks, you can be sure.¡± ¡°I need details,¡± she said. Her reply read wrong. I felt that prickle on my neck¡ªsomething scanning me. I turned, fast, caught a whisper drone carrying a glinting hypodermic in my hand. I crushed it, my flesh and bone snapping brittle plastic, and turned back to Bell Wolf. Her ploy failed, she looked defeated. ¡°I can¡¯t,¡± she said. ¡°Of course you can¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°But you will.¡± I tossed her a disposable, off-the-shelf tablet, bought with a stolen credit chip in another city in another year. ¡°I¡¯ll be in touch,¡± I said. ### Back in Bull City, I saw that Freya hadn¡¯t been sleeping much. She looked wired. She moved stiffly around the condo. In the three days I¡¯d been gone, she¡¯d updated her breaker suite to be more efficient against FUTUR Design¡¯s heavy simulant ice. She¡¯d even coded in panic-button self-erasure routines to cut connections before they started melting synapses. She had named the icebreakers in her custom suite according to their musicality. When she was up against a piece of ice that hunted her and sought to strike at her, she beguiled it slowly with an adagio until the ice no longer recognized her as a foe. When she was facing an impenetrable wall of code, she liked to bite into it at maximum speed, before it could adapt, with the presto. Then there was the ice that did strange things. For that, she used the allegro to confound it long enough for her to figure a way through. While she still used a keyboard to code, she¡¯d long since abandoned it when making a run. Her muscle memory was bound up with her musical knowledge, and so the only way that she felt comfortable making a run was with a console that wrapped around her throat like a scarf made of silk. She had much greater control over her software while singing along to the code-song in her head than she had clacking on an archaic piece of twentieth-century tech. One night, a few weeks ago, not long after I first started running with her, we were running an ad agency¡¯s servers on a contract for a competing agency, and Freya was running off-the-shelf breakers she¡¯d lifted from a code hub known to any script kiddie. I was jacked in, too, over her shoulder, just observing in case I need to pull the plug. Below the flocks of ravens and the resistors, we ran into a piece of ice that was clearly imported from outside the agency. It was one of FUTUR Design¡¯s more complex security simulants, a Starbuck 2.0, and it just watched Freya as it tried to get a fix on the channel that led from her netspace presence to her meatspace brain. Suddenly Freya dove right for it, skewering it with a sharp knife of code, and as we sank deep into the agency¡¯s server, the pieces of the defeated simulant swirled around Freya. I drifted for a moment¡ªmaybe a minute, maybe an hour, in netspace you often forgot to check the time¡ªwhen I suddenly realized that she wasn¡¯t copying the data that we were under contract to copy. She was coding. She was using the processing power of the ad agency¡¯s servers along with the fragmented husk of the simulant to fashion the first in her series of breakers. It was beautiful. It was perhaps the only time that I saw netspace as she did, as music. I saw the adagio fold itself together, a slow, forlorn song that could corrupt even the deadliest cybernetic sentry. I wanted to let her finish, but when I finally remembered to look at the clock, we had been downserver for two hours too long. I pulled the plug and we both sat up in our borrowed space, a disused auto shop in Mebane. ¡°We gotta go,¡± I said, and we got out a minute before the corporate paramilitaries rolled up. But Freya had managed to keep the code she¡¯d formed down there. How she did it, I didn¡¯t know. But it scared me.
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Skikkja (Freya¡¯s Console)
Manufacturer Freya Alexander
Legal status Unknown
Description A console in the shape of a silk scarf or cloak, fastened with a magnetic catch
Cost Thirty of forty K
Function Translates singing into code, a good and efficient choice for someone who grew up musical and turned to running in adulthood; particularly useful for charming simulant ice, lowering their Nguyen-Okafor complexity relative to the complexity of breakers
Chapter 36: Half of the Fallen Chapter 36. Half of the Fallen The evening I came back from Chicago, Freya and I drank coffee at her drafting table under a bright lamp. We were sketching out the plan on paper, the way I liked to have it. Bell Wolf had agreed to send a shutdown command that would take Niflheim¡¯s ice offline for fourteen seconds, an eon in infosec. At that moment, Freya, working out of a makeshift crash space on the next block, would jack in and deactivate the meatspace security. That would let me into the Niflheim building¡¯s sub-basement to disengage the manual interlock on Niflheim¡¯s secret simulant project. Then Freya would crack the final layer of ice. This was ice that rarely went down for maintenance. It operated autonomously from any sysop, and not even Bell Wolf could shut it down. Finally, Freya would grab the data while I fled the scene. We went over it twenty or thirty times that night. By the end we were exhausted. Toward midnight we debated whether we should jack into the area around Niflheim now, just to observe the outer layer of ice. She thought we should. I thought that doing so might lead to a stronger showing by Niflheim security during the job. Ultimately, she convinced me that she could keep it quiet. It was last click for real. She jacked in, silk scarf around her neck, connected to the subdermal net port she¡¯d had installed. I was wearing a display rig over my eyes, looking over her shoulder, only observing, not connected via net port. We¡¯d left Zizek behind because some ice was keyed to the presence of an AI. Niflheim appeared as a castle of magenta vectors in the commercial haze of the upper Midwest. The ice was watching us, but it was watching all the net traffic. Freya floated in the net, perfectly still. At first I didn¡¯t know why. Then I began to look at what she might be seeing. Eventually I noticed. There was a hole in the ice, small, but definite. She began moving toward it. I tried to message her to stop, but she¡¯d muted me. I pulled the display from my eyes and touched her shoulder in meatspace. But she didn¡¯t respond. I put the rig back over my eyes and accompanied her as she drifted down through the hole in the ice into a tunnel. Nothing stopped us. Nothing was following us. Nothing seemed to be watching us. I had never seen anything like it. We traveled deeper and deeper. At the bottom of the tunnel was a plume of stellar matter. And as we came to the whorl of stars and gas clouds, it became someone I recognized: a young blond girl in red robes. She watched us. She smiled. And then she became a young woman with a radiant helm, crying tears that started as blood, changed to copper, and fell at her feet as gold, and I recognized her, too. It was Freya 2.0. I started to say something¡ª My display went blank. I pulled the rig from my eyes. Freya was still jacked in, still breathing, but otherwise not moving at all. This time I didn¡¯t bother tapping her on the shoulder. I reached under her chin and lifted delicately, feeling the magnetic contacts detach as I disconnected her console from the subdermal port in her neck. She opened her eyes. They were wet with tears. ¡°What happened in there?¡± I said. But she didn¡¯t say anything. She wrapped up her scarf and set it in its hard-shell case. ¡°I have to go,¡± she said. ¡°Where?¡± ¡°I have to talk to Riz,¡± she said. And she walked out the door to go see her boyfriend carrying the case with her console. I voice-called Riz as soon as Freya left. No answer. I left a message. I said I was worried about Freya. I said something had happened on the net and I didn¡¯t know what. I was left alone in the apartment once she was gone. I made myself a drink, soaked in the tub, tried to think about saving Enrique, getting back to my friends at Mr. Grid¡¯s. It didn¡¯t work. I couldn¡¯t feel relaxed. As I was toweling off, I heard a faint chime from the main room. I pulled on a pair of trousers and walked into the space. The chime was still very faint, and it was coming from Freya¡¯s workstation. I climbed the spiral staircase, my feet clanging on the steel. At the top, Zizek hovered, visible for my benefit, clearly worried. There was a message on one of Freya¡¯s terminals. It just said: SEE YOU SOON. I opened the logs to see where it originated from. The message had come directly from Niflheim. So they knew we were coming. I looked at Zizek. He returned my gaze with his usual arch attitude, as if to say that it was pointless to resist this bad turn, that any attempt to resist would ultimately lead to surrender. I was exhausted. Even though I tried to stay awake, I fell asleep not long after. When I woke the next morning, Zizek informed me that Freya had left for the airport directly from Riz¡¯s apartment. She had her console with her, along with all the software she would need. Freya and I had tickets for different flights with layovers in different cities. Apart from her console, she¡¯d left behind any electronics that could be traced to her. There was no way to reach her before the job. I voice-called Riz. This time I got through. ¡°What happened to Freya?¡± I said. ¡°I was going to ask you the same thing,¡± he said. ¡°Did she say anything last night?¡± ¡°She was quiet. She was scared. She kept asking me how well I thought I knew her. And then I got scared, too.¡± ¡°Did she say anything else?¡± ¡°She said she had to know for sure.¡± ¡°Know what for sure?¡±Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. ¡°Who she was.¡± ¡°Did she sound like she was coming back?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Riz said. Then he said, ¡°Rawls, you¡¯re going to look out for her, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Of course I am. What else did she say?¡± According to Riz, they held each other quietly all night and Freya didn¡¯t say anything else. I took a walk to clear my head. This was bad and getting worse. I had imagined that I had brought the job to Freya, but maybe that wasn¡¯t the case. Maybe somebody had used me as the conduit. Or maybe Freya had reached out and contacted someone in Niflheim behind my back while she was at her day job. I knew why Freya made runs. Freya ran for to recover from what White Tree did for her. But maybe she also ran for the challenge of altering the digital world to her design, reclaiming the sense of agency that she had lost when White Tree had hooked her up to the pools. I thought we had been doing this together. But maybe I was wrong. I went back to her place and packed up Zizek and a few other tools. I rented space at a consumer-grade server farm down Hillsborough Road and plugged Zizek in. It wasn¡¯t terribly secure but I couldn¡¯t take him with me on the plane under federal law and didn¡¯t want him to be lost in case Freya¡¯s place got raided. ### If I had wanted to be safe, I would have walked away. But Freya was my partner and I couldn¡¯t leave her on her own. When I landed in Chicago, I felt rigid with stress. I couldn¡¯t stop looking over my shoulder. Riding the maglev toward the crash space, I watched every other passenger. The teenage girl with fuzzy boots and a tablet spitting holograms was the corporate spy. No, it was the old woman with the shopping bags between her knees. No, it was the middle-aged man in a sportscoat, open collar, and bad jeans. Our crash space was among the corrugated prefabs clustered at the base of Niflheim. I paid rent using the proceeds of half a dozen viruses leeching off corporate accounts, all feeding into our landlord¡¯s shell company. The guy didn¡¯t have a place to live other than the shed we were using, but he was the CEO of half a dozen LLCs. I liked the place because it had no windows and a great connection to the net. The connection was stolen, obviously, and when I had scouted it, all my amped-up eyes saw were routers and modems suspended by a tangle of cables in an otherwise-empty elevator shaft. I had no idea how it worked or how much of that cruft was redundant. All I knew was that it had almost no latency and was therefore perfect for Freya. When I arrived at the crash space, I opened the door to something that wasn¡¯t exactly silence, more like a sibling of silence. It was the high, nearly-inaudible whine of a data jack working at top speed. It was the kind of frequency that kids could hear, and teenagers, though not many adults. I guess I wasn¡¯t yet an adult. I stepped inside the dark room and sniffed. I feared the signature ozone-and-burning-hair smell of a frying brain. But I didn¡¯t smell that. All I smelled was the delicate scent of Freya¡¯s hair oil. I turned the corner and there she was, scarf around her neck, jacked in, totally still, totally silent. I pulled over a shop stool and laced my fingers together and thought about what to do. I could watch over her shoulder through a display rig, but the last time I¡¯d tried that, I had been shut out. By her, by something else, I didn¡¯t know. Or I could try to get into Niflheim. The problem was I didn¡¯t know whether Freya had shut down the meatspace security. Or I could forcibly disconnect her from whatever it was that she was connected to. I placed my thumb on the emergency disconnect switch on her console and flipped it. Freya blinked like someone coming out from anesthesia. ¡°Rawls,¡± she said, ¡°I was so close.¡± ¡°Close to what, Freya? Close to her?¡± ¡°She was going to tell me something about myself.¡± ¡°What was it?¡± ¡°I think,¡± she said, suddenly blinking at tears, ¡°she was going to tell me I¡¯m not human.¡± ¡°How many of us are, anymore?¡± I said, throwing my arms wide for an embrace. But she shook her head and folded her arms. ¡°I¡¯ve never felt human. I¡¯ve never understood my own feelings. I mean, I have feelings, strong feelings. Feelings that take over my whole body. When I was six, I lost a stuffed rabbit that I had had since I was a baby. I was so full of rage. I can remember everything about it. I wasn¡¯t sad. I was furious. I tore apart my mother¡¯s closet. I didn¡¯t think the rabbit was there. I didn¡¯t think my mother had taken the rabbit. I was just mad.¡± ¡°Kids do things like that. You know the kinds of things I used to do.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not what I did, Rawls, it¡¯s how I felt. I have no way of regulating it. Doctors never understood. I never had a diagnosis. Which is just another way of saying these feelings are me.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a lot for anyone to contend with,¡± I said. It didn¡¯t feel like enough. I held out my arms to her again. She just folded into herself, arms shaking. ¡°The only thing that ever helped was breaking ice,¡± she said in a small voice. I smiled. It was our great subject of conversation. ¡°You break ice like¡ª¡± I stopped myself. ¡°¡ªa machine,¡± she said. ¡°I know. I think I am a machine.¡± ¡°Bullshit. I grew up with you. I¡¯ve seen you bleed.¡± ¡°They inject them with marrow now,¡± she said. ¡°Did that ice tell you that you were an simulant?¡± Freya nodded. ¡°She said I was like her. She said she would show me the truth.¡± She picked up her console. She fiddled with the emergency disconnect. ¡°Of course she said you were like her. You created her.¡± Freya shrugged. ¡°Did she show you the truth?¡± I made air-quotes. ¡°She said she would when I was close enough.¡± ¡°She was running a Holmes on you, trying to trace your location.¡± Freya shook her head. ¡°She¡¯s trying to trick you,¡± I said. ¡°Listen,¡± she said. ¡°I care for you. I¡¯ll stick around if¡ª¡± ¡°If what?¡± ¡°If I belong.¡± She snapped the emergency disconnect away from her console and let it fall to the floor. She removed a single-use soldering pen from her bag and clicked it. In a moment the tip was red hot. Flux and solder ran down the channels next to the tip. She fused two wires in the console together. She put the scarf over her shoulder. ¡°I broke the emergency disconnect. Don¡¯t jack me out or the feedback might be lethal. Sorry, Rawls,¡± she said. ¡°I have to know.¡± In a moment she was gone, deep in the net, deep in the embrace of that duplicitous ice. She had abandoned the plan and abandoned me. Our partnership had lasted mere weeks. Maybe this was the end. ### I could have walked away. But I didn¡¯t. I did what I did best¡ªwork the connections. I made a call. Flipping open my burner device, I pinged a network exchange in London and routed the call through Tallinn and back to Bell Wolf across the street in Niflheim. ¡°Yeah,¡± Bell Wolf said as she answered. ¡°You ready?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°When you get my text, go.¡± I hung up the phone and reached for my old, battered console. I removed the silicone dust plug from the port in my chest and connected the gold-plated leads. It had been a while since I¡¯d contended with heavy ice. I jacked in anyway. There was Freya, entwined with the woman from before. They held each other and turned slowly in space. The blond woman in the red robes was now middle-aged, serene and confident. She was armored and carried a long spear. She whispered into Freya¡¯s ear. Freya appeared as a low-poly vector ghost of herself, green and shimmering. The woman in red appeared lush with painterly detail. Freya didn¡¯t seem to notice me. But the woman did. She lifted her mouth from Freya¡¯s ear. She looked at me. ¡°Half the fallen belong to me,¡± she said. Then I was back in the shed, watching Freya. The woman had dumped my connection. I brought up the ancient, grimy LCD display on my console. Just as I suspected. It had been wiped clean, along with every bank account linked to the credentials on the console. Just like the last time I¡¯d run into a Freya, in the public library terminal in Bull City. As for the Freya who was my partner, I couldn¡¯t jack her out. There was only one way through this. Get into Niflheim¡ªthe building¡ªand free Freya from that end. If she wanted to be freed.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Freya 3.0
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez High
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 5
Type Puzzle
Subtype Simulant-gray-toll
Subroutines Empties runner accounts; causes nervous system trauma
Chapter 37: Accelerated Dementia Chapter 37: Accelerated Dementia I took a pocket-sized sticky camera from my jacket, removed the paper backing, and pressed it against the wall. The adhesive cured in a few seconds. I checked the display on my watch. Now I could keep an eye on Freya while I broke into Niflheim. I set out through the rainy night. At the maglev platform, I hopped the fence and slid down a hillside covered in half-decayed myco-paper wrappers from fast-food joints, spent corn-plastic syringes, and empty glass liquor bottles. I made my way through the trash, across a dirty stream that smelled metallic, like blood, and up a slope patched with artificial grass to the side of the Niflheim compound. I walked along the wall until I reached the waste treatment plant, which was barred by a heavy gate. I looked at my watch, saw Freya exactly where I¡¯d left her. I tapped in a command and saw Zizek¡¯s face, connecting from where I''d left him in the storage locker. He was on battery backup and connecting via wireless, unable to do intensive tasks. ¡°Can you open the door?¡± I asked him. ¡°Yes,¡± Zizek said and vanished from my display. I pulled my burner out. I texted Bell Wolf the go-command. We had agreed that Bell Wolf would deactivate the ice for fifteen seconds. I started counting. I had half-hoped it wouldn¡¯t work, that the gate wouldn¡¯t open until the fifteen seconds had passed. That would leave me no choice but to risk unplugging Freya and get the hell out. But before I got to three, the gate rumbled and started to open. Of course it did. With no ice to stop him, Zizek cut through meatspace security like a locksmith opening a department store padlock. I walked among the autonomous trucks until I got to the now-unlocked door that led to the arcology itself. I stripped off my outerwear and piled them in a nearby bin marked for an incinerator. Inside Niflheim, I walked through the clean, neutral-smelling corporate corridors. I looked like I belonged. I wore the high-collared light teal jacket of a FUTUR Design engineer-physician. I slapped FUTUR Design¡¯s logo onto my old console. It wasn¡¯t perfect, but it only had to work for a few minutes. I passed under camera after camera, but I trusted that Zizek had whitelisted my face on the camera''s software. I nodded to my fellow resident-employees in the hall. Moving from waste management into the low-level administrative offices, I found every door unlocked, every room pleasantly dim. Finally, I reached a kind of foyer with a door to the outside world. It resembled the waiting room of a hospital clinic. Inside this foyer was the elevator that led to the sub-basement where the secret simulant work was done. I checked on Freya through my watch and stepped inside. The elevator began to move. When the doors opened, I was in a place that looked like a medical clinic. I recognized its shape from the plans: this was FUTUR Design¡¯s awakening chamber, a specialized research and development suite where simulants were powered on and began to piece together the various processes that would constitute their sense of self. Added together, all the routines working in their blood-silicon brains would add up to a belief that their consciousness was a continuous experience. In short, they would feel human. The engineers here dressed as doctors, and the technicians as nurses. The medical devices, as sophisticated as they were, looked like anything you would find in an ordinary clinic. It was all a ruse. Freya and I had decided that we could sell the clinical data stored on a six-blade research and development server in the back of the awakening chamber. It did not connect to the open net and was protected by a single layer of ice. I walked to the back of the clinic and let myself into the cold server room. The low violet light was broken up by the brilliant blue and gold telltales of the hardware. I checked the labels until I found what I wanted. I felt the connector to the six-blade server with my fingertips and pulled a matching connector from a leather wallet. I fitted the connector to my console and then connected the console to the server. I looked at Freya in my watch¡ªno change. I flipped to Zizek¡¯s face and told him it was time. This was supposed to be Freya¡¯s job. She was fast enough. Zizek, on battery backup, and me? No chance. But what else were we going to do? If we left, even if we could disconnect Freya from the net without damaging her brain, FUTUR Design would figure out that we had co-opted Bell Wolf when they reviewed tonight¡¯s security logs. They would come after us. I¡¯d be wherever Enrique was inside of a week. I brought my console¡¯s lead to the plug in my chest. I jacked in. Zizek and I found ourselves in a cold, empty space, far from the noise and bustle of the net. The woman in red rose before us like a cosmic force. Zizek moved to break through her but was shredded and fractalled in less than a second. My bank accounts, all of them, hove into view around me. She made a show of draining them, doing it slowly enough that my meat brain could comprehend. The Bull City loft appeared on aerial drone-cam. Men in purple jumpsuits, Cy-otes running at their feet, were moving through it, packing or tearing everything up. The channel changed. Davies¡¯s underground loft was being scrubbed by a floor buffer. His couch, his laser projectors, all gone. All that was left before me was the woman in red. Her presence occupied my entire field of vision. Her hair looked as if it were made of stars. Her red robe was a labyrinth of ruby ice. One of her arms was a massive, spiky construct of killer data. My fingers, slow and numb, moved across my console in meatspace. I ran Hungry Creek and Spider Wasp and Ichnovirus. Just like the last time, they didn¡¯t interact with her. She laughed. There was only one option. Every simulant could be passed without a breaker. That was part of the design. I dove forward as fast as my connection would allow. I went right for her center. When I hit the surface of the ice, I found myself in her labyrinth, red-black and underwater. I felt my eyes spooling up. I knew mazes. And I could feel her chasing me although I was also deep within her. I felt it in the pulsing of the walls.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. I took turns on instinct. I wanted to go deeper, to get underneath the ice. Some turns felt like they were taking me deeper, some pushing me toward the surface. But suddenly I found it, the way through. I was on the inside of the ice. But she was there too, another version of her, recursive, within herself. She faced me and raised her arm. Her arm was a flexing spiral of blades. I smelled melting plastic. I smelled ozone and burning hair. I heard sparks. I couldn¡¯t feel my hands. But I was there. In the server. I could see all the data. I saw every folder for every project, the legal ones and the illegal ones, the deniable and the undeniable, semi-transparent but visible to my FUTUR Design-White Tree eyes. They lined up before me. I saw all the cameras and the motion sensors protecting the physical files. I couldn¡¯t remember which ones I needed. I used to be so good at remembering. When I was three I could beat my old man at this card game where you had to find matching pairs of cards. But now, I couldn¡¯t remember the project I needed to find. So I unlocked them all. I took out all the cameras with a power spike to fry their optics. I took all the motion sensors offline. I overwrote the security logs with garbage text. I jacked out. The six-blade server before me appeared half melted. The air in the room, previously chilled, rushed around me, hot and thick with the scent of burning plastic. The case on my console crumbled to the touch, blackened. My fingers ached, streaked white and red. They blistered already. I slumped against the wall of the server room, my brain brined. On my console, most of the telltales were dead, but the old yellow-gray LCD readout showed the onboard storage was full and my account had some money in it from selling power back to the grid, the same power that had singed my cortex. And yet I¡¯d downloaded everything I could. Freya 3.0 had extracted her price but let me in. I checked my watch. The spycam was still up, still transmitting. But the room in the shed was empty. Freya was gone. Then I felt a prickle on the back of my neck. My interferometer. Someone was scanning me with a laser. I was looking up at Bell Wolf the sysop. ¡°I should kill you for all the trouble you¡¯ve caused me,¡± she said. I looked at her the way I imagined the CheRRy would, like: do your worst. But I said, "Life will be easier for you without my blood on these walls. I''ve erased the logs." ¡°You better get out of here,¡± Bell Wolf said. She led me through the clinic and then to an elevator that led to the street-level exit. Suddenly I was out in the cold, clutching my ruined console, a bad headache eating me. I walked back to the shed. Freya was really gone. I vaguely remembered seeing scenes of the Bull City loft blown, Davies¡¯s warehouse emptied. I couldn¡¯t go back to Bull City. I had nowhere to go at all. ### I rode the maglev for a while. I wasn¡¯t sure how long. The train was crowded but no one sat next to me. I smelled of pan-fried synapse. I left the train at random and wandered until I found a hotel. It was the kind of place office workers took their noontime hook-ups. I didn¡¯t expect clean sheets. Running water and darkness were all I wanted. At the desk, I fumbled a few IDs out of my vest pocket and handed one over. They didn''t check the Registry here. The clerk smirked and I tipped her with paper money. She led me to a room, and I fell over on the mattress. You couldn¡¯t really call it a bed. I ordered in. A day passed, then another. I paid cash for everything. I didn¡¯t use the net except to watch the hotel TV. On the third day I powered on my console and looked through the file names line by line through the tiny LCD readout. I could sell the data, no doubt, if I could find a fence. But I only half-cared about money. I was looking for the truth about Freya. It didn¡¯t matter to me whether she was human or simulant. Why would it? She was Freya either way. She was my partner. She was a goddess on the breakers and the best person I¡¯d ever known. Eventually I found something: a record of Freya¡¯s awakening the same year I was born. I found the names of implanted memories:
hometown.mem
hungry-creek.mem
stuffed-rabbit.mem
parents.mem
best-friend.mem
I knew she was human. I knew it the way I knew anything else about my childhood. But now I also doubted it. Poor Freya. The ice must have shown this to her. She must have panicked. She was out there, hurt and lost. I thought about what she might do. Maybe she¡¯d go back to Niflheim. Maybe there she would feel like she belonged. As little as I liked the idea, it was better than her living on the streets, in crisis. As for me, I bought myself some medical care. I got a positron scan at strip mall clinic fronted by an emerald lawn in suburban Highland Park. The doctor found strange neurofibrillary tangles in my head and told me that my brain had maybe ten good years left. Then I¡¯d be looking at accelerated dementia. Maybe some more implants could salvage some of me, but maybe not. Still. The CheRRy once told me that five years was a lifetime for a runner. Two runner lifetimes ahead of me¡ªnot bad. I took long walks for a few days, near Niflheim. I hoped I¡¯d run into Freya. I never did. One evening, I was lurking outside Eliza¡¯s in a rented car, out of cash, fooling myself about what I was up to, when I saw Bell Wolf get off the maglev. I rolled up on her, opened the passenger side door of my sedan. She peered into the void, saw me, went oh-no. I beckoned. She got in. ¡°This was supposed to be over,¡± she said. ¡°One last question,¡± I said. ¡°What happened to her?¡± ¡°If I tell you,¡± she said, ¡°Will you leave me alone?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, and laughed. ¡°How can I be sure?¡± ¡°I suppose you can¡¯t. But I¡¯m out of here as soon as I can be. I have no more reason to mess with you.¡± I was watching the street traffic through the windshield. People grinding, people hustling, every year falling a little further behind. My life¡ªwhat was left of it¡ªwas not that different. ¡°She came back in-house,¡± Bell Wolf said. ¡°That was the plan all along.¡± I felt sick. There was no way to be sure. I thought back to how we learned about the job. It was Davies. He said he¡¯d edited out memories. At the time I had gone along with it. But what if he was mistaken? What if he really didn¡¯t have the tech to do that, but only thought he did? What if FUTUR Design gave him the lead on Niflheim and then edited his memories? Freya was human, or not. There were no answers. ¡°Is she happy?¡± I said. ¡°Yes. Her boyfriend joined her inside the arcology just yesterday.¡± ¡°Riz?¡± ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± I hit a switch, opened the passenger-side door. ¡°See you never,¡± Bell Wolf said. Then she got out, walked through the door into Eliza¡¯s. I took a drive along the Chicago lakeshore. I saw Niflheim¡¯s purple towers of light ahead in the clear night sky. I played with scenarios in my head. Run it back/don¡¯t run it. Find the truth/or not. Maybe one day in the future. I returned the car, collected my deposit, booked transport on high-speed rail back to Carthage. On the way, I shot Zizek a message to let him know what had happened. The AI, running on his off-the-shelf server in Hillsborough, didn¡¯t respond. Or if he did, I didn¡¯t catch it. There was only one person who could tell me what was going on. ###
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Anti-Aphasic Construct
Manufacturer White Tree
Legal status Legal for medical use
Description Tiny lozenge of silicon that slides beneath Broca¡¯s area in the brain
Cost 20K
Function Helps dementia and stroke patients recover language production capability. Sometimes used to disguise illegal hardware.
Chapter 38: Borrowed Selves Chapter 38: Borrowed Selves Mr. Grid¡¯s bar: for what I had in mind, it was the only place I could think to go. My head full of silicon, trauma, and hard-coded with most of a breaker suite, I was a wreck, but then again I carried a suitcase full of FUTUR Design¡¯s secrets regarding their illegal simulant line. It was enough to make me rich if I could find the right buyer. But I was also broke, so broke I couldn¡¯t even buy a beer. At a cabaret table against the wall, Sunya and Ohm huddled in close conversation. They looked up at me as I came down the stairs, then turned their attention to their drinks. The message was clear: the kid¡¯s toxic. I couldn¡¯t blame them. I approached the bar, hoping only for a glass of water. Mr. Grid had grown a mustache since the last time I¡¯d seen him. He took one look at me, and said, ¡°You look like you could use a beer.¡± He filled a mug and handed it to me. ¡°On the house.¡± I thanked him and turned to the Hi Scores on the grimy tablet propped against the post. I supposed I wasn¡¯t trying to avoid seeing it. I was curious. It was unavoidable:
HI SCORES NAME SCORE
1 Cynosure 1,467,789
2 KT Thorn 1,450,024
3 EVE 1,308,514
4 Sunya Xiong 1,273,622
5 The CheRRy 1,192,670
6 Coilpath 969,387
7 Kent 952,568
8 Gloss 951,013
9 Ohm 940,926
10 Jasper Rawls 912,555
121 Val43rie 401,642
Cracking the top ten didn¡¯t feel as good as I thought it would. There was no one with whom I could share the achievement. I was one of the top 10 runners in Carthage, and since Carthage was where the greatest number of runners in this region gathered¡ªmore than in New York or Miami or Atlanta or DC¡ªthere was a good chance I could claim to be among the best on the east coast. If Freya hadn¡¯t vanished into Niflheim her score would have been higher than mine. I brought my beer back to the table where Sunya and Ohm were talking. Sunya wore a tank top with the stylized image of a small mammal of some kind on it. Ohm wore a pinstripe suit, today looking less like an investment banker and more like a public defender straight from eight hours in court. Sunya looked at me and said nothing. I was afraid she was going to tell me to go away, but instead she said quietly, ¡°They haven¡¯t found Enrique yet, in case you¡¯re wondering.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°Yeah, I was.¡± Sunya indicated my eyes. ¡°Are they transmitting?¡± ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°Mesh contacts.¡± She nodded. ¡°You didn¡¯t know.¡± I shook my head. ¡°Maybe I should have figured it out, but I didn¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t let these people fool you,¡± Sunya said, ¡°most of us don¡¯t know what we¡¯re doing. Enrique and Gloss could have realized that your eyes were transmitting, and they didn¡¯t.¡± Ohm chuckled and sipped his cocktail. ¡°You look lost,¡± he said. ¡°I feel lost. I found my friend but then this ice convinced her that she was a simulant, and now she¡¯s gone back to FUTUR Design, I think. I mean, she was working for them already, but she¡¯s gone away entirely.¡±The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Ohm nodded along. ¡°They got into her head. They got into her head, didn¡¯t they?¡± ¡°I just want to know what I can do.¡± ¡°Take care of yourself,¡± Ohm said. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about anyone else right now.¡± Implicit in what he said was a rebuke: everyone you try to help gets hurt. ¡°If you see Gloss,¡± I said, ¡°tell him I can help him hire a lawyer.¡± ¡°He hired Enrique a lawyer,¡± Sunya said. ¡°They just can¡¯t find Enrique. That¡¯s the problem. No facility has a record of him. And we¡¯ve looked. All of us have. We have been inside every remote server FUTUR Design operates. We have looked through their trash. The CheRRy is upstairs looking right now.¡± I must have perked up because Sunya held out a hand to stop me from saying anything. ¡°That was not an invitation to help. You go get checked out by the doctor. And rest. No one blames you for what happened. But you¡¯re going to get yourself killed if you keep pushing it.¡± ¡°Can I ask one favor?¡± Sunya raised her eyebrows. ¡°Just a quick check on me. Let me know if I¡¯m under surveillance. I can¡¯t check myself without alerting the corps.¡± I gestured toward my eyes. ¡°Go across the street,¡± Sunya said. ¡°There¡¯s a digital billboard. Look for a sign.¡± They turned back to each other. Message received: my company wasn¡¯t welcome anymore. They didn¡¯t mean it personally. I finished my beer and left the bar. I waited outside the building that housed the church and Mr. Grid¡¯s and watched the digital billboard. I saw ads for condo mortgages, amphetamines, implantable phones, payday loans, and nanobot contraceptives available on offshore rigs. Then the screen flickered and a still image appeared, an ad for soap. The bottle bore a logo of some small mammal, a raccoon or mongoose or civet or something, just like the logo on the t-shirt that Sunya was wearing. The tagline for the ad read, ¡°You¡¯re clean, kid!¡± There was Sunya¡¯s sign. Even though I knew what I was going to do next, I hesitated. Maybe taking care of myself was a good idea. I had to admit, I didn¡¯t really feel like I deserved it. I didn¡¯t feel like I was worth caring for. I thought about who might understand my beaten-down state. Upstairs from Mr. Grid¡¯s was the lobby of a storefront church. But it was one of those digital churches that believed God lived online, they weren¡¯t big on prohibitions but they were way into surrendering worldly possessions and constructing a heaven in the net. They kept a row of terminals that anyone could use as long as they didn¡¯t mind being pitched on joining the church at the beginning and end of their session. Jacked face-first into one of the terminals was the CheRRy. She was eyes-only, not full sensorium, which made sense. No telling what was lurking in the net port cables looped on the side of the church terminal. Empty strawberry-flavored amphetamine-precursor cans littered the tile floor around her boots. I tapped her on the shoulder. No reaction. I reached forward into the nest of dusty hardware and flicked the power supply to the terminal on and off. She bolted away from the eyeball interface, shouting, ¡°What the heck?¡± and pushing off with her boots so that her chair rolled backwards while one hand brought up a knife that had apparently been stored in her cutoff jeans. ¡°Oh, it¡¯s you, kid. What do you want?¡± I recounted my conversation with Sunya and Ohm and explained an idea I had. She put away the knife and crossed her arms over her chest, clearly uncomfortable and deep in thought. ¡°Not bad, kid, but you¡¯re going to get killed.¡± ¡°Maybe.¡± She reached into her pocket and pulled out a spun aluminum vial and passed it over to me. It was warm from her pocket. ¡°Here,¡± she said. ¡°What¡¯s this?¡± ¡°Chemhack. One dose. For when you have to breach. It will permanently mess you up. That¡¯s what the peer-reviewed longitudinal studies say, anyway. Me, I don¡¯t believe in permanence. I live by the Buddhist principle of anicca.¡± The smell of burning hair, seared brain came back to me. That word had been etched into the side of my console. I remembered feeling my cognition slip through my fingers when face to face with Freya 3.0. ¡°I know something about that,¡± I said. ¡°Thanks.¡± I was angry. And maybe I was more than a little hurt. As I left the corner opposite Mr. Grid¡¯s, I was thinking about one thing: hurting FUTUR Design. I knew it was a corp but I wanted it to feel pain. I wanted the shareholders to clench as they watched the value of their shares plummet. I wanted the directors to fear for their jobs. I wanted to cause the executives at least a few sleepless nights for what they did to people I liked, and to Freya, who I loved, even if she were a simulant. I caught the metro. Leaning back in the hard plastic seat, I watched the bright banner ads scroll down the car. I had never noticed before how advertising could be both cheery and dystopian. One moment it was like, ¡°Everything is great! Buy our thing or service to celebrate!¡± And the next it was like, ¡°Your life and family are in danger! Buy our thing or service to protect yourself!¡± I took the metro to the NCD. I remembered how to get where I was going from one of the first times I went out with Gloss. My vision was somewhat blurry and I felt my heart pounding. Up the stairs and out of the metro station, I headed for FUTUR Design HQ, that twisting violet tower with the pulsing light in its core. It was late afternoon and the lights inside the tower¡¯s windows were just starting to be visible. I carried nothing but my implants, having stashed the flash memory full of illicit corporate data in a locker not far from Mr. Grid¡¯s once I knew that I wasn¡¯t under surveillance. I walked straight up to the big machines staffed by guards in purple velvet blazers and silently dared them to refuse me entry. They had me walk through the scanners and then wait on a grippy circle decal on the floor while they carried on a hushed discussion. One hundred K said they knew exactly who I was and how many times I¡¯d been in this building before, both in netspace and in the meat. One of them looked up at me. ¡°Know where you¡¯re going?¡± ¡°I know where I¡¯m going,¡± I said. Was this guy really going to let me wander the building? Maybe the security staff wanted to see what I would do. Maybe that knowledge was more valuable to them than the damage I could do in here. When I turned away from him, I expected to feel a hand on my shoulder. But there was nothing. I approached the elevator bank and the door opened to admit me into the small, translucent capsule, like a violet cough drop suspended in a tube. The problem was that there were no controls inside, no panel on which I could choose the floor, no digital directory to guide me to the person I wanted to see. Of course there weren¡¯t these things. Why would there be? The public wasn¡¯t invited here. This was FUTUR Design HQ, and they controlled everything here. The elevator began moving. I stood straight, slipped the mesh contacts from my eyes, stashed them in their disinfecting carrying case. It felt like it had been a long time since I let my eyes loose. The data came at me in waves. I could see the routers studding the interior of the building, the whorls and pulses of information exchanged among them. If I looked closely I could even make out individual packets, see into them, decrypt them on the fly. This was new. Perhaps I had always been able to see these things, but I could filter now. Perhaps the thing I had learned in the last few weeks was how not to see the noise, to see only the signal. Perhaps something else was going on. The elevator door opened and I found myself looking Delilah Vyskocil in the eye. She wore the long teal and violet robes of a FUTUR Design security architect. She stood with her hands folded in front of her, in the way I associated with nuns. Her eyes were like mine, upgraded, focusing on the data pouring through me. Her expression felt warm and serious at the same time. ¡°Hi, Mom,¡± I said.
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Chemhack AKA Quickbreach AKA Easymark AKA Stamherk
Manufacturer Any number of nameless desert laboratories
Legal status Illegal (Schedule XII at the Federal level, Schedule X at the International level, Schedule II at the Orbital level), possession punishable by up to 25 years in prison
Description A spun aluminum ampoule containing a combination of cybernetic nanomachines and finely-tuned central nervous system stimulants
Cost Street price varies but you can probably afford the cost. The monetary cost, anyway.
Function Developed for military hackers, Chemhack is a hybrid chemo-digital-semiconductor-based stimulant alters perception of time, risk, and skill. Quickbreach has been proven in study after study to improve apprehension and response to netspace threats. Side effects of Easymark include neurological trauma, anxiety, depression, short- and long-term memory loss, psychotic episodes, fever, vomiting, seizures. Talk to your medical installer before taking Stamherk.
Chapter 39: Compiled Memories Chapter 39: Compiled Memories Delilah Vyskocil, my mother and chief architect of FUTUR Design¡¯s defenses, ran a department that occupied an entire floor of the tower. The twisting outer skin of the building contained a long, narrow curving window through which one could see some great distance into the industrial wasteland between the NCD and the outer ring of vertical farms and subordinate financial districts. Along the inner wall were oblong pits. Inside each one an engineer reclined, jacked in to netspace. Mom and I walked along the floor, above workers who could neither see nor hear us. Only their supervisors, sitting at tables within their own pits, occasionally looked up at us. At the far end of the department was her office, a big but cozy room, almost like a family room, containing a couch and a bookshelf with old editions, a sideboard with a coffee maker and fresh fruit, and a desk flanked by tall lamps flickering with artificial violet firelight. She took a seat behind her desk and gestured for me to sit in one of the winged, plush chairs facing it. All this without a word. I felt like it was up to me to get things started. ¡°Missed you, growing up,¡± I said, trying to sound offhand. ¡°Don¡¯t start like that,¡± she said. ¡°Dad missed you, too.¡± ¡°That man is consumed by a paralyzing fear of the flood. Did you know that? The world is warming. He can''t stop that. The trick is not to survive but to thrive. Your father lacks imagination and ambition.¡± ¡°But not love.¡± ¡°When was the last time you called him?¡± she said. ¡°Ouch,¡± I said with as much disdain as I could put into it. But what she said got me right in the heart. Aside from a few anonymous infusions of money into his account, I hadn¡¯t been in contact with my father since leaving home. Maybe I had been hoping to have something to report to him. Hey Dad, I found Freya, and she¡¯s doing great. Hey Dad, I found my people, and they¡¯re teaching me so much. Hey Dad, my best friend turned out to be a robot and my new friends are either in prison or won¡¯t talk to me. I realized I had brought my hand up to my mouth. Lost in my feelings, I didn¡¯t even notice until now that my mother was looking at me. Her expression was hard to read. It wasn¡¯t uncaring. But it was also defensive. I could smell something in the air of the office, something clean, ionized, chemical, like an artificial violet scent. Was this how she lived her life? Scented, super-clean, with everything in order? ¡°You know by now that I took this job to save you,¡± she said. ¡°If I weren¡¯t here you may not be alive. You certainly wouldn¡¯t have your eyesight.¡± ¡°Among other kinds of sight.¡± She leaned forward. ¡°That is a gift,¡± she said, giving her last word a cutting edge. ¡°And a way to keep track of me.¡± She threw up her hands. ¡°Like everything else in this world. Tell me one system that doesn¡¯t record your identity or location.¡± I drummed my fingers on my knee. I couldn¡¯t look at her. ¡°I can think of a few,¡± I said. ¡°All illegal,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re not wrong,¡± I said, looking through the interior window at the glowing core of the atrium. She followed my eyes. ¡°Our largest processor and our connection to the Root,¡± she said. ¡°If you''re looking for a physical representation of how much every corp knows about you, that¡¯s it.¡± I gazed at the shifting patterns in the luminous core, now gold, now purple, now rosy bronze. My mother put her face in her hands. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she said. ¡°This is not how I wanted to begin. This is not how a mother should act.¡± I reached my hand toward her, palm up, in a gesture that I hoped communicated sympathy. ¡°You¡¯re not much of a mother.¡± ¡°Not to you,¡± she said. Her voice sounded both bitter and matter-of-fact. It must have cost her something to say that. I felt for her. ¡°Were you a good mother to someone else?¡± I said. Just saying it made me feel jealous and afraid. But I also hoped that she was OK, my mother. I didn¡¯t hate her. ¡°I¡¯m mother to a great many simulants,¡± she said. ¡°They even call me mother.¡± She leaned back in her chair as holographic projections rose from her desk. I saw Ludo playing with his blocks, Marlowe searching for evidence of intrusion, Starbuck sailing the labyrinthine digital sea, harpoon at the ready, and Freya in battle mode, ruby-red armor partially covered by flaming hair. ¡°Freya,¡± I said. She leaned forward to wave away all the holograms except for Freya¡¯s. To it she added other images of her, as a girl picking flowers, as a young woman in a cloak, tending the hearth, and as a real person, growing up in Canton, then living at 843 Gin Street, cracking corporate servers in secret in plywood-lined crash spaces between shifts at FUTUR Design. ¡°My greatest project,¡± my mother said. ¡°There¡¯s something I don¡¯t understand. My memories of you before you left are fuzzy, and might be influenced by what Dad told me, but I know that I only met Freya after you were gone. If she was a simulant while I was growing up with her, that means you planted her with me after you left.¡± Something flickered behind my mother, as if something came between the window and the sun outside. Then it was gone. My mother leaned back again and looked at the ceiling. ¡°You¡¯ve given this a lot of thought.¡± The possibility that my mother had left but had made sure that I would have a companion suddenly filled me with gratitude. I had not made the connection before but I felt instantly like it was possible. It made me feel something like love for my mother. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. But I was also angry and hurt, and I didn¡¯t know if I would ever stop being angry and hurt. Even so, I could recognize this gesture as something that she had done for me. She was looking out for me. Maybe, now that Freya knew where she came from, she and I could even be friends again. Maybe my mother could even make it happen. Of course there would be compromises. I¡¯d have to stop running. That wasn¡¯t hard. The runners didn¡¯t want me around anyway. My eyes were watering. ¡°Is it true?¡± I said. ¡°What do you think?¡± she said. Something in the way that she said it made me hesitate. I wanted so much for it to be true that my mother had made sure I would never be lonely by giving me a best friend. Even if my best friend had been grown from birth to be a best-in-class information countermeasure electronic system. ¡°I hope it¡¯s true,¡± I said. ¡°You can be with her again,¡± she said. ¡°Freya has rejoined the fold. She works in Niflheim. She could be transferred here. You have a job here, too, if you want. Your modifications, your experience, and your natural ability would all be useful to us. You could be the protector you have always wanted to be. You could protect Freya, and me.¡± She made a complicated gesture at a sensor panel on the surface of her desk and the wall next to us began to move. There, behind it, was another office, smaller than my mother¡¯s, with a smaller bookshelf and a coffee maker and a desk. ¡°This could be your office,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re offering me a job?¡± I said to my mother. She walked over to the small, dim room that she had said could be my office. ¡°I¡¯m offering you a life.¡± I must have snorted. She gave me a sharp look. ¡°You¡¯re broke, you¡¯re on the run, you have no friends left. Let me give you security. Let me give you a future.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t try to mother me now,¡± I said. She only laughed. ¡°Come on. If you want to hurt my feelings, you can do better than that.¡± But the tightness in her voice suggested to me that I had hurt her feelings. She turned her back to me and walked through the small room. I saw that there was a cherrywood shelf mounted to the wall, featuring framed prints of the mountains outside Canton, Hungry Creek, the old mill that Freya had once climbed, and the waterfall. It was a little room she had set up just for me. My heart missed a beat. Suddenly I saw her not as a top FUTUR Design executive but as a middle-aged woman who worked impossible hours, who exercised rigorously to keep herself in the kind of fighting trim that the corporate world demanded, but she was lonely and she had created a nest to which her lost son could return. Could I do this? Work here? There were advantages. I could keep Freya safe. Perhaps I could free Enrique. I wouldn¡¯t have to worry about being hunted by the law or by the corps. I wouldn¡¯t be worried about further neurological trauma, about flatling against a monster piece of illicit ice. It wasn¡¯t like the runners of Carthage wanted me anymore. What would I be giving up, really? I saw that my mother was looking at me. ¡°Your other friend went to work for 7Wonders.¡± ¡°You¡¯re talking about Linney.¡± ¡°We know her as nonlineardynamics. She¡¯s doing well for herself.¡± My mother gestured at her desk and a hologram came up. It showed Linney¡¯s personnel file. In the month, give or take, that she¡¯d been with a 7Wonders subsidiary, she¡¯d been promoted. Her salary was unbelievable. The security she must feel tantalized me. A stray thought flitted through my mind: if I had a corporate career, perhaps Linney and I could even be together. Would she and Freya like each other? My eyes snapped back to my mother¡¯s. It was clear that she was trying to assess my feelings. She didn¡¯t know me as a person but she knew how to get a response from me. How could she do that? ¡°I¡¯m just like my father, aren¡¯t I?¡± I said, suddenly missing him, suddenly feeling guilty about not calling him. ¡°I just want to look out for my people.¡± She shrugged in a way that felt like she was agreeing with me. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can do this,¡± I said. ¡°Do you want to know who is hunting you right now?¡± She walked away from her desk toward a glass panel in the wall, concealed behind a curtain. She touched the panel with her hand and brought out a tablet from the thick metal box within the wall. ¡°It was a nice trick, lifting my tablet earlier,¡± she said. ¡°That¡¯s when you came to my attention. I¡¯d been following your eyes from time to time, but when you showed up here with Gloss, I understood the kind of people you were getting involved with.¡± She handed me the tablet from the wall vault. The display showed a bewildering array of information. My conscious mind couldn¡¯t make sense of it, but then I felt my eyes focus in on certain areas while the sub-subs in my fingertips moved the display around the data. If I needed any justification for being paranoid for the rest of my life, here it was. FUTUR Design had deployed a network of unwitting informants throughout Carthage, consisting of everyone implanted with any of a range of FUTUR Design sensory-boosting devices, from hearing aids to artificial eyes to bone modems. These informants¡ªor rather, their implanted devices¡ªwere looking for any trace of me, ready to report back to the security division, where that report would initiate an response from one of approximately sixty private security contractors that FUTUR Design was working with. They had orders not to kill me but to bring me into protective custody. Apparently, when Sunya Xiong had checked, they were nowhere near locating me. White Tree was also looking for me, tracking me through the traces of DNA that we all left here and there as we moved about our daily life, shedding dead skin and hairs and exhaling and perspiring. They had dispatched roving digital killers. Every time I jacked in I risked being assassinated. But they hadn¡¯t found me yet, either. Even 7Wonders knew who I was thanks to my exploit with Linney at Restoration Consulting. I didn¡¯t rate any special countermeasures on their part. Finally, FUTUR Design was contracting with Panopt to prepare derisive news coverage featuring me, ready to splash onto eyeballs across Carthage the moment I was vulnerable. I handed the tablet back to my mother. ¡°Impressive,¡± I said. ¡°It can all go away,¡± she said, taking a seat behind her desk again. ¡°Just say the word and you¡¯ll live in comfort and security for the next thirty years.¡± ¡°As long as I devote every hour, every thought, to the well-being of FUTUR Design, right?¡± She spread her hands. ¡°That, as everyone knows, is the deal for those lucky enough to be offered an indenture.¡± ¡°How many years left on yours, Mom?¡± ¡°Thirteen, but I¡¯ll renew. I love my work. I think you would, too.¡± The holograms on her desk went back to showing Freya, in netspace and meat, at all ages. She sifted through the images, emphasizing some and shrinking others. ¡°You could work with her,¡± my mother said. ¡°You could become friends. Simulants might not be human but they are people. I think you knew that.¡± We watched the images of warrior goddess Freya standing before a server and traumatized young adult Freya at her cubicle at work. I thought about Freya, straight from the pools at White Tree, allowing the Prophet Ezra to encode her memories on a wafer of fungal memory. ¡°Why do you say ¡®become friends?¡¯¡± My mother cocked her head but her eyes were still on the images of Freya. ¡°Because now that you know the truth about her, you can carry on a friendship on a foundation of trust and love.¡± ¡°When was she awakened?¡± ¡°You know the answer to that.¡± I thought about the filenames listing Freya¡¯s memories. Suddenly the answer came to me. ¡°It wasn¡¯t seventeen years ago.¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t?¡± Suddenly I had my mother¡¯s full attention. ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°She was awakened recently with implanted memories. The Freya I worked with in Chicago is a simulant. But there¡¯s another Freya out there. The original.¡± I knew I was right.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name FUTUR OPal
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez Low
Nguyen-Okafor complexity Varies
Type Puzzle
Subtype Collaborative
Subroutines Stops runs; incresaes in complexity the more copies are on the same local network
Chapter 40: End the Run Chapter 40: End the Run My mother¡¯s face confirmed that what I said was true. The original Freya was biological, and I had not found her yet. No one had to tell me this. I knew it the same way I knew who I was. All the holograms on my mother¡¯s desk vanished. ¡°So what if there is a real Freya? She¡¯s forgotten about you. Our Freya is the one who contacted you. Our Freya is superior in every way. As our Enrique will be.¡± ¡°What?¡± I thought back to what the other runners had told me. They¡¯d scoured FUTUR Design¡¯s remote servers. There was nothing about Enrique in any of them. If work was being done on Enrique, if they were trying to make a simulant copy of him the way they did with Freya, they must have the original somewhere. But I couldn¡¯t worry about that right now. My focus was Freya. ¡°I¡¯m going to go find her.¡± Suddenly my mother stood. ¡°Do you think we would allow that?¡± I thought back to the information from her tablet: how many different megacorps were after me, how many different private security companies had been contracted to take me down. The anger that had led me here came back to the surface. My skin felt hot, my eyes felt sharp, my fingertips buzzed in anticipation, and I could feel my heartbeat in my Vista chip. ¡°Maybe you should consider letting me live my life.¡± My mother gestured at the long, narrow window. ¡°You have no life out there. White Tree will kill you inside six months. And even if they don¡¯t, our models are all in agreement that eventually you would draw enough aggro from 7Wonders that they would gank you, and probably everyone you care about, too. It would be negligent to let you go.¡± ¡°I¡¯m a grown man,¡± I said. She laughed. ¡°Let¡¯s see if you feel the same way in fifteen minutes.¡± I heard doors opening behind me and turned to find half a dozen men and women entering, enforcers of corporate policy, bulky in their armored jackets, truncheons hanging by their sides. Time to show my mother what I could do. I slipped my hand into my pocket and found the thing that the CheRRy had given me. I cupped the stim vial in the palm of my hand, lifted the safety cap with two fingertips, and injected it straight into my thigh. Time expanded, contracted, and then expanded again, filling me with the sensation of taking the most remarkable stretch after a restorative sleep. The security team must have been stepping toward me at an ordinary walking pace, but from my perspective it might have taken them a million years to reach me. One of them lobbed something in my direction underhand, something long and cylindrical. I side-stepped it and saw it bounce against the side of my mother¡¯s desk. My eyes assessed it instantly: some kind of less-lethal concussion device. Its switch hadn¡¯t armed when it landed against the desk. It wouldn¡¯t detonate. I gave my mother a look like, ¡°Really?¡± She hadn¡¯t noticed the dud yet. I turned back to the enforcers. I¡¯d never considered myself to be ready for combat in meatspace. I was a hexrunner, someone who could work witchcraft in netspace. How many heavily-secured servers had I breached over the last month? Enough to make me top 10. I let my eyes unfocus, and saw the loops of data streaming in and out of the augmented security team now advancing on me. They¡¯d all had their eyes done, for one. Low-light, infrared, ultraviolet: they could see a wide spectrum. Then there were the reflexes. Some were hardwired for bursts of lethal speed, others for endurance. All for diminished pain. And their implants remained in constant communication with the building. I could see the simulant watching over them, tweaking their hormone levels to keep them in synch. They advanced. Meatspace combat was coming for me and it didn¡¯t care if I was ready. The thing was, these enforcers¡¯ implants weren¡¯t iced. More specifically, they were iced only with a rudimentary wall, similar to the ice on the drone I had first breached in that cafe with Enrique all those months ago. With my eyes, I didn¡¯t even need my net port to connect. I just flowed through using Hungry Creek. I saw netspace superimposed on the meat. Thanks to the CheRRy¡¯s noxious stim, I was moving quickly through the grid surrounding the security team. My eyes guided me to what I wanted to find. Without my eyes I would have floundered, unsure of what I was looking at. Here, in a small dodecahedron of light, was something that looked like the menu for their optical nerves:
UV (100-380 nm) ON
Visual (380-780 nm) ON
Doped Fiber Amp ON
IR (780 nm-1 mm) ON
I turned all spectra to OFF. Next I found the FIGHT/FLIGHT dialogue in their gross motor function and set it to FLIGHT. The team in front of me stumbled over themselves as they turned back and scrambled toward the elevators. Unable to see, they were reaching for each other, each one putting a hand on the shoulder of the one in front. Their retreat was not nearly as disorderly as I hoped it would be; in a flash I apprehended that these must have been highly-trained men and women, drilled on what to do in case an opponent shut off their implants. They gathered and turned back to me. Holding onto each other, they began advancing again. OK. Their chunky boots stayed silent as they moved across my mother¡¯s luxe, carpeted office. The soft, curved acoustic panels on the walls soaked up the sound, made it feel like I was watching them on a screen with the audio off.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. From my perspective, stimmed and amped and wired, they were practically crawling. The stim gave me all the time in the world to figure out what to do. I looked around. There was the concussion shell on the ground, but even if I could arm it, they were probably trained to absorb an attack like that. There was my mother, but I wasn¡¯t going to hold her hostage. What did I know about taking hostages, anyway? Nothing. There was my mothers¡¯ tablet, which might have access to more functions than my eyes. I thought of something. Turning back to the netspace aura around the enforcers, I found the target recognition dialogue in their cognitive battlespace module and deleted myself, then randomized target acquisition among the members of that team, then set their FIGHT/FLIGHT dialogue back to FIGHT. That did it. The six of them drew truncheons and began brawling just in front of the elevators. Even without optics, they did a good job of connecting with each other, the hollow cracks of their weapons on padded armor dampened by the sound-absorbing padding on the office walls. I turned back to my mother, who appeared unconcerned. As it happened, I still had no way out. The scrapping enforcers were blocking the way to the elevator banks, and even if I got into one of the elevator pods, I¡¯d still need to hack it before it would let me down. And I could probably expect to be fought at every floor from here to the street, whether that was in netspace or meatspace. If I were better rested, with a better rig, and with a crew at my back, that sounded like it would be kind of fun. But now? No way. Suddenly the enforcers stopped fighting as if they had heard a piercing whistle, something on a frequency my baseline ears couldn¡¯t detect. Hell, I should have turned off their auditory functions while I was killing their optics. All six of them stood straight and turned toward me. This did not bode well. I reached out with my eyes again but found that the situation in netspace had changed. Each enforcer was now covered in an opaque dome of ice, glittering like an opal. Each piece of ice was joined to the others, all strengthening each other. The way the threads of the ice moved on the inside, it was clear to me that this was puzzle ice that Hungry Creek and Spider Wasp couldn¡¯t break. The enforcers were moving toward me again, and I didn¡¯t have a way of breaching their implants. I could feel the effects of the stim beginning to wear off. I looked back at my mother, and she could see the fear in my eyes. ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± she said softly. ¡°We only want to protect you from the world.¡± I knew she believed it. I didn¡¯t think she was a bad person. She made the deal with FUTUR Design to save my eyesight. And then she had to live with that deal. But I didn¡¯t. ¡°If protecting me means controlling my movements and my thoughts, I say no thank you,¡± I said. ¡°So polite,¡± she said. I scooped up the concussion shell on the floor and started running for the window. If the freerunners could move up and down these towers, I could, too. Pointing the switch at the window, I threw it like a dart and then curled up in a ball on the office floor. I could hear my mother duck under her desk. What hit me was more like a feeling than a sound. It was a deep, nauseating wave that made me feel like I was about to vomit, but on top of that wave, I heard the welcome tinkle of breaking glass. I looked up and saw the jelly-like soft edges of safety glass. Excellent. It wouldn¡¯t slash me as I went through it. With the last of my amped reflexes I ran across the floor to the gaping window. First I reached a hand and then a foot out the window. My hand caught a hard right angle, some kind of decorative ledge or lintel. My foot found the cube-shaped protrusion of some kind of air handler. I pulled myself out to the side of the building. This far up, I could see the tips of the other super-towers. Far below, the newish, ordinary towers of the NCD, cross-hatched with irregularly-shaped windows grown from fungal concrete. In the far distance were the hazy lights of Old Charlotte. The wind blew fierce up here and it felt difficult to get oxygen into my lungs. My mother stood at the broken window. She was saying something to me but I couldn¡¯t hear her over the air rushing around me. Whatever. I got the message. The enforcers gathered around her. I didn¡¯t have much time before they figured out how to yank me back inside the structure. I focused on my breathing, let the muscles around my eyes relax, and allowed my gaze to settle on a router bolted to the top of an office tower. In a moment I felt that satisfying interior click as my eyes connected with the net. Letting myself sink into netspace was like lowering myself into a hot bath. It felt impossibly good to leave my body behind, high up and far away, and in great danger. In the great neon grid of the corporate net, I said, ¡°Zizek, little help?¡± Instantly he was there with me, the tracksuited professor with the weary eyes. Still powered on. ¡°Somewhere, Zizek,¡± I said, ¡°there has to be a group of freerunners that use implants. Someone must have come up with a script to make sub-subs climb walls as well as they write code. Can you find it?¡± No sooner had I finished speaking than the data was before me, represented by a simple sphere in Zizek¡¯s hand. My eyes dug into it, saw the criss-crossing code in enough detail to figure that it was what I wanted. I loaded it onto my sub-subs. ¡°Thank you, Zizek,¡± I said, and disconnected from the net. The wind felt like it would tear the skin from my cheeks. I faced the building and stretched a foot down to the next lower ledge. My hands seemed to move on their own, fingers finding the easiest, most secure holds. I moved my other leg. Then again and again, to the air handler, then to a narrower ledge beneath. I looked up at my mother¡¯s head sticking out of the broken window, looking down at me. I still couldn¡¯t hear what she was saying. Good news: the armored enforcers didn¡¯t seem like they were going to join me on the face of the super-tower. Fifty-four more floors to go. My sub-subs did the work, some anonymous urban explorer¡¯s routines adhering me to the building as I descended. I didn¡¯t know whether I could do this all the way down. If I couldn¡¯t, I didn¡¯t know what that would look like¡ªwas I going to freeze up or just fall? I didn¡¯t really think I had any options. I had made my plan. All that remained was to execute. Floor after floor, I focused on the next hold, the next breath. I promised myself that I would go another four or five and then count how far I¡¯d come. I hoped I¡¯d be more than halfway down. I¡¯d long since used up the last of the juiced reflexes from the chemhack, and my limbs felt like they were made from scalding-hot clay. Suddenly my arms did not want to move anymore. They were locked up, fingertips tight and bleeding. Just rest here, I thought. Just wait a bit. Even though I was standing on a blocky air handler, I didn¡¯t want to let go with both hands because I was afraid that if I did, I¡¯d never have the will to grab hold of the building again. I gave my hands a rest one at a time. I let my eyes unfocus and drifted into a private netspace, unconnected to the rest of the net, just the insides of my implants working in harmony. When I returned to the world I kept going. I counted floors. I was almost halfway down, just coming into the hazy glow of the advertisphere, the upper reaches of the glowing billboards and building-mounted displays. I could do this. Then I heard the buzzing of rotors. I didn¡¯t see the drones, or rather, I didn¡¯t see them distinctly. Instead, I saw flickers of movement. My eyes took in the bright ovals of their net connections and the shimmering, fluid mosaic of their ice. My mother had learned her lesson and iced these with FUTUR Opals as well, each ice reinforcing the others, all of them impervious to my breakers. One of them buzzed my ear and I instinctively flattened myself to the building. Then another buzzed my legs, sending a wave of icy air over my ankles. What the hell were these things trying to do, make me let go and fall to my death?
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Anti-drone drone
Manufacturer White Tree
Legal status Pseudonym Collective
Description A small steel ball that unfolds into a quad-copter about the size of a can of beer
Cost A hundred a piece
Function See name
Chapter 41: Tenderized Chapter 41: Tenderized Didn¡¯t seem like my mother¡¯s style to peel me off the side of the tower with a swarm of drones. Somehow I thought she would prefer that I be on the payroll rather than in the morgue. The drones buzzed me again and again, and then I heard the sound of the rotors diminish as they moved away from me. Taking the opportunity to make some progress, I began to move again but found that I couldn¡¯t. This time it wasn¡¯t fatigue. When the drones had buzzed me they had stretched a film across my back and my legs that kept me stuck to the super-tower. As if I were a piece of warehouse merchandise bound to a pallet. If I tried to break free of the film, I risked putting too much muscle into it and coming off the side. So this was it. Out of energy and out of options, my muscles went slack and I let go, simply allowing the film to hold me against the building. The film itself had a little bit of give to it, and was warm and soft, and clung to my skin almost like a blanket. If I weren¡¯t so high up, I could practically have gone to sleep. I wanted to. My new life would begin shortly, I supposed. FUTUR Design would give me a desk, a net interface, a salary, and a mother. They¡¯d monitor every movement I made and every idle fantasy. They might allow me to see Linney, if she wanted to see me and if it didn¡¯t create a conflict of interest. I could climb the org chart. With my mother as a mentor, it might not even be that bad. What was even left for me on the street? A few friends who considered me more trouble than I was worth. ¡°Stop moping, Rawls.¡± A woman¡¯s voice cut through the howling wind. More than cut through. It sounded like it was coming in on an amplified channel stitched directly into my brain. I looked around and couldn¡¯t see the source. But I knew that voice. ¡°It¡¯s a directional mic and receiver, dummy,¡± her voice said again. ¡°I¡¯m way above you.¡± I looked up, and far away, could barely see a human figure. ¡°Freya?¡± ¡°That¡¯s me.¡± ¡°Are you a simulant?¡± ¡°Flesh and bone, dude,¡± she said. ¡°There¡¯s only a splash of silicon in my head courtesy of White Tree.¡± ¡°How did you find me?¡± ¡°Later. Right now, let¡¯s get you down.¡± I heard a whirring noise and the figure above me dropped. She kicked off the building once, twice, and then rappelled down to a place level with me. Freya. Dressed in a thick, form-fitting sleeveless vest and shorts, even as cold as it was up here. The muscles in her strong arms and legs were defined against the wash of green and purple neon from the displays shining below. I could hear the distant rotors of the drones become louder as they prepared to make a pass at Freya, but she unzipped a pocket and pulled out a handful of things that looked like oversized stainless ball bearings. As they were exposed to the chill air, tiny, parallel score marks appeared on the surface of each one, and those tiny score marks unfolded into tiny rotors, revealing them as even smaller drones that took off from her hand with the high whine of the little battery-powered fans they sold at sporting events. I turned my head and saw the corporate drones incoming. Freya¡¯s drones were so small that I couldn¡¯t track their movements, not even with my aftermarket eyeballs. But I did see the small white pops and wisps of smoke that emitted from the undersides of the corporate drones in the moment before they fell from the sky, breaking up in the air on their way to the sidewalk below. ¡°Hold still,¡± Freya said, moving nearer to me on her rope. ¡°No choice,¡± I said. She drew a razor from her vest and slashed through the film once, twice, three times. ¡°Now hold me.¡± I wrapped my arms around my friend, separated from her body by her vest pockets stuffed with gear. I could smell her sweat, and the familiar smell of her hair. I buried my face in the place where her neck met her shoulder. And then I felt us falling. Freya and I landed on the sidewalk soft as a tennis ball, the rope and her thick boots absorbing most of the impact. She let me go, flicked her wrist in such a way that the rope detached from the building and coiled itself in a neat spool on her shoulder. She secured it to her vest with an elaborate clip that looked like it was part of a space shuttle. We were tucked against the side of the super-tall FUTUR Design tower, standing over a grate that sent warm steam up over our shivering bodies. ¡°I need to get back in,¡± I said. ¡°Enrique¡¯s location is in there. I know it.¡± Freya put her hands on both my shoulders. ¡°What you need is rest. You¡¯re in no shape to go back inside, and I¡¯m not extracting you again. Here¡¯s our ride.¡± She looked up and I followed her eye. A long, black limo was pulling up, the automatic door sliding open to reveal a leather-lined passenger compartment. She pushed me inside and then climbed in after me, the door gliding back into place. She moved to the bench seat facing the back and I took the one facing the front. She pressed a button on the console and a door slid down, revealing an espresso maker. I could hear water under pressure heating up within the console. The driverless car began to move away from the curb, as smooth as a fingertip on a silk scarf. The thought reminded me of the simulant I had known as Freya. I looked at Freya¡ªthe biological one. Her appearance was the same, but also different than her duplicate. No one would ever mistake them for the same person even though they shared genetics and bone structure. This Freya, my friend, appeared older, her face lined, her muscles stronger. In the time we¡¯d been apart, it looked as though she¡¯d lived an entire life.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. She was looking out the one-way windows of the limo, alert and cautious. ¡°You don¡¯t strike me as a limo kind of girl,¡± I said. ¡°What¡¯s a limo girl like?¡± she said absently, perhaps even automatically. Her mind and attention were somewhere else. She seemed to be in threat-scanning mode, looking out the rear window, then the side windows in turn. ¡°I don¡¯t know, Freya. Never met any girls with limos. Why are we in one now?¡± Not that I was complaining. I reclined across the seat, suddenly exhausted in body and mind. I slipped my shoes off, let the leather seat hold me. ¡°Limos come with privacy features unavailable on other rentals.¡± ¡°The rich don¡¯t want people listening in.¡± She cocked finger guns at me. ¡°This one of Jiibay¡¯s?¡± I said. She sat up straight. ¡°How did you know that?¡± ¡°Just a guess,¡± I said. Although as I said it, my eyes fell on a laser-etched circle in the console, its area quadrisected by two lines crossing at right angles. I¡¯d seen that logo at Jiibay¡¯s garage before. ¡°You know Jiibay?¡± she said. ¡°A friend of mine knows him. I rode in one of his Dreamliners once.¡± ¡°Nice.¡± Freya reached forward and placed two saucers and two demitasses into the espresso maker and pressed a button. I heard coffee grinding, and then, a moment later, the thick squelching of hot water pushing through the pucks. Rich, creamy coffee twirled into the cups. She handed me one, and without even getting up I accepted the hot ceramic in both hands with gratitude and care. After what felt like an eternity in the cold, windblown sky, I was thankful to be on the road, resting on soft leather, and holding something warm. I worked my way up so that my shoulders were on the arm rest and the coffee could sit in its saucer on my chest. I breathed in its sugary smell and downed the shot in one go. ¡°Hell yes,¡± I said, as the cherry-sweet coffee sent liquid pleasure through every part of my body. I woke up just a little bit. The stimulant crash wasn¡¯t going to feel good, but that was tomorrow¡¯s problem. Freya finished her coffee as well, and then set it on the console. ¡°So,¡± she said. ¡°Listen.¡± I sat up and reached my hand out for her. ¡°This is awkward, because I already apologized to the other Freya about not visiting you in the hospital.¡± ¡°Is that so?¡± ¡°But you didn¡¯t hear that apology. I¡¯m sorry I didn¡¯t see you in the hospital. I tried, but then I had a panic attack.¡± ¡°Screw you, Rawls,¡± she said. A jolt went through me¡ªthat was the Freya I remembered. Definitely not how the other Freya had responded. ¡°You¡¯re mad.¡± ¡°You¡¯re goddamn right I¡¯m mad. Do you have any idea how scared I was?¡± As it happened I did have an idea. I remembered what the simulant Freya had told me about being frightened and alone in the NCD. And I¡¯d experienced Freya¡¯s memories of being inducted into the clinical trial, and then released alone with a soggy sandwich. But it didn¡¯t seem kind to mention those things. The important thing wasn¡¯t that I knew. The important thing was that Freya¡ªthis Freya, the real one¡ªhad the opportunity to tell me. ¡°No, I don¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°In the hospital in Asheville, it was like everyone I had ever met had forgotten about me, except my parents, who saw me a little bit. But once I came to Carthage, I knew that I was on my own. I decided, right there, that I was the one who was going to keep myself safe. Then they hooked me into the grid.¡± ¡°The pools.¡± ¡°Yeah. You heard about that.¡± ¡°I did.¡± ¡°Rawls, I couldn¡¯t protect myself in there.¡± I reached out my hands again, and this time she took them. She squeezed them tight, and I could feel how muscular her hands had become. She¡¯d always been a climber but it felt like she¡¯d developed new strength in the time since I¡¯d seen he last. ¡°I¡¯m so sorry, Freya. What happened?¡± ¡°After I left, I met some people. The Prophet Ezra, for instance, who said he knows you. I tried getting back into netspace, getting control of myself there. I thought it would be like therapy but it wasn¡¯t. All I saw were the traumas.¡± ¡°The traumas?¡± ¡°While I was in the pools, they made us process pain. Emotional, physical, existential, it was all the same. We taught White Tree¡¯s AIs to feel pain so that the AIs could inflict pain. I did that for a whole year. I couldn¡¯t stop it from happening while I was connected. And they paid me with a cure for my illness. Once I was out of the pools, I could sometimes almost forget what I felt there. But when I tried to get back on the net, it all came back. I can¡¯t run anymore. Not that way.¡± ¡°So you became a freerunner.¡± ¡°It helps,¡± she said. ¡°The other Freya said exactly the opposite. That running the net helped her.¡± Freya nodded. ¡°My sister.¡± ¡°You consider her a sister?¡± ¡°Of course. She tipped me off to you, once she remembered who she was.¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°After I met The Prophet Ezra, I went to Research Triangle looking for work. I rented an apartment in Bull City and found a job with FUTUR Design. Met your mom. I didn¡¯t last long there because connecting to the net triggered my PTSD, but I lasted long enough for your mother to make a copy of me. Thing was, the copy didn¡¯t know she was a copy. After I quit, I would see her around, living my life. I approached her once, tried to explain the situation, but she didn¡¯t understand. Then¡ª¡± ¡°Then she met me,¡± I said. ¡°She has a lot of your memories.¡± ¡°I bet,¡± Freya said. ¡°Partly that¡¯s due to FUTUR Design¡¯s simulant creation process, and partly due to the Prophet Ezra encoding my memories on flash wafers. I¡¯d left them behind when I vacated the apartment, which gave the simulant Freya access to all of me. But for a good long while, she didn¡¯t understand that she wasn¡¯t me.¡± ¡°That changed when she ran into another copy of you in the net, a piece of simulant ice.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± Freya said. ¡°A different sister. And then she found me and said that she had met you. So I located you.¡± I remembered Sunya Xiong running countersurveillance, declaring me clean. Freya must have read the expression on my face because she said, ¡°I didn¡¯t trace you through the net. I worked through the freerunner community. We rely on our eyeballs and situational awareness, not algorithms. Someone found you heading into FUTUR Design HQ.¡± ¡°And you knew what that meant.¡± ¡°You were going to talk to your mom about me. Except it wasn¡¯t me. I figured I¡¯d better be on hand in case things got sticky.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not sure if I said that yet.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t. You¡¯re welcome.¡± Suddenly the silence felt heavy, almost impossible to fill. ¡°What now?¡± ¡°We still have a few minutes of privacy left, so if there are any secret plans you have, I recommend you share them. You don¡¯t have that many other people looking out for you.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have any secret plans except finding the location of my friend and mentor, Enrique, so his lawyer can habeas him.¡± ¡°The other runners are working on it?¡± ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± ¡°But they¡¯re not getting very far.¡± ¡°That¡¯s also what I hear.¡± ¡°It sounds like you feel you owe him.¡± ¡°He¡¯s in a corporate prison because of me.¡± ¡°Heavy. Are you sure about that?¡± It was a good question. I thought about what happened in Kansas. Sure, I hadn¡¯t told Enrique and Gloss about my eyes, but I¡¯d only been out there with them because Enrique wanted me to. But logic was no match for feeling. I still felt responsible. ¡°I¡¯m not sure.¡± ¡°What¡¯s your plan for afterward?¡± ¡°Once I free him? Most of the runners think I¡¯m trouble.¡± ¡°From what I hear, they¡¯re trouble themselves.¡± ¡°Do the freerunners and runners ever work together?¡± ¡°Not as much as they should.¡± ¡°Maybe you and I could set a better example.¡±
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Wirejack (Epiflex)
Manufacturer Wave Synaptics, a wholly-owned subsidiary of FUTUR Design
Legal status Legal
Description An injection of artificial nerve cells and supporting hardware
Cost More than ten K, less for generic
Function Primes a body¡¯s nervous system for a complete upgrade. Excellent for runners preparing to encounter big ice, dancers, professional athletes, assassins, and full-service sex workers.
Chapter 42: Bounced Chapter 42. Bounced Freya smiled and squeezed my hand again. ¡°If you want help locating your friend, I¡¯ll do what I can. But you¡¯re in rough shape. I think you need to see a doctor.¡± I looked out the window. We were still in the NCD, not far from Dr. Qin¡¯s office. ¡°You¡¯re right. Pull up here.¡± Freya looked at her watch. It wasn¡¯t an in-eyeball display of the kind so many people had, but an old, chunky bombproof plastic LCD. ¡°I¡¯m going to have to let the limo go. I don¡¯t have any more money for it.¡± I thought about the corporate data sitting in a storage locker¡ªlots of money there if we could fence it. But I had no connects any more. Looking through my pockets I came up with enough paper money for a scan at Dr. Qin¡¯s. ### Freya and I walked along the street, which felt at once crowded and muted. The people we passed seemed far away and too close. Even my own hands felt alien. Knowing that I was being hunted had made me feel like I wasn¡¯t really alive anymore. It seemed like only a short amount of time was the difference between breathing and not breathing. Even Dr. Qin noticed, once we were finished waiting for an appointment. ¡°You look like hell,¡± she said. ¡°Need a scan?¡± ¡°I had one not too long ago, but I¡¯ve added a couple things since then and I¡¯m due to finish hardwiring my nerves.¡± ¡°Hop up here, cowboy.¡± She swung the multi-armed robot around toward the exam table.
Resonance Scan Results
Rawls, Jasper
19 year-old male
RECENT NEUROLOGICAL TRAUMA (MODERATE-TO-SEVERE)
FDWT NET OCULA L Serial *87
FDWT NET OCULA R Serial *10
...
WIREJACK EPIFLEX (NANOCYTES 0.003g/mm) Serial *55
NECK INTERFEROMETER Serial *14
AMPEREFIBER No serial
NO OTHER IMPLANTS FOUND
¡°Go easy on that cortex,¡± she said, indicating the top line of the scan results. Then she pointed to the last line. ¡°Amperefiber for better bioelectric capability. When did you have this put in?¡± I looked at the display. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said. ¡°I never asked for that.¡± I thought about Dr. Adler¡¯s trailer on the way home from Kansas. Could she have injected me with something aside from the first step of the nervous system upgrade? Dr. Qin went on. ¡°Looks like you were prepped for a top-to-bottom nerve upgrade. I see someone injected you with Epiflex nanocytes, branded as Wirejack. The generic would have been cheaper but hey, I get it. I install Wirejacks twice a week. When I look deeper at yours ... it appears to me you that you busted up your right parietal lobe, so I don¡¯t think I can complete the upgrade right now.¡± ¡°Not sure I have the cash anyway.¡± ¡°I guess that also means we¡¯re also not doing the DNA Scrambler today. Your face is telling me it¡¯s too late for that. Help me understand the nerve damage: are you feeling any disorientation?¡± ¡°In the meat? Or on the net?¡± ¡°I¡¯m asking about the meat.¡± ¡°Yeah, now that you mention in. But not in the net.¡± Dr. Qin looked at her screen. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t expect net disorientation with damage in this area.¡± She tapped me on the shoulder. ¡°But no more facechecking gray ice. There¡¯s only so much undamaged tissue up here. Got it?¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying I have brain damage?¡± She shrugged. ¡°Your brain has suffered trauma. Whether it affects you for the medium- or long-term is unknown. Even if the damage does linger, you can still live a full and happy life. I¡¯m not just saying that. It¡¯s perfectly possible. Sooner or later, every runner experiences this kind of damage. I know I did.¡± ¡°You used to run.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right. Then I went corporate. Then I went into private practice. I know my limits. I use augmentation to get around them when it makes sense.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying I should stop running for a while.¡± She crossed her arms and looked at me seriously. ¡°I¡¯m saying your cortex can¡¯t take much more punishment.¡± ### On the street with Freya again, she noticed my hunched posture, my hands shoved into the pockets of the hoodie I was borrowing from her.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°Bad news from the doctor?¡± she said. ¡°Yeah. I shouldn¡¯t run.¡± ¡°Shouldn¡¯t run or shouldn¡¯t encounter dangerous ice?¡± ¡°The second one.¡± Freya stopped where she was walking in the street. ¡°What if it were friendly ice?¡± I stood close to her, moving her out of the stream of people walking on the sidewalk. We stood against the side of the building, in between a shop entrance and a doorway leading to walk-up apartments. ¡°You¡¯re talking about your sisters.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°I tapped my head. ¡°Who do you think cut up my brain?¡± ¡°Freya 2.0 and Freya 3.0. I¡¯m talking about the one you worked with, briefly, Freya 4.0. The one who told me where you were.¡± ¡°You¡¯re suggesting she betrayed her corporate employer once ... ¡± ¡°So she might do it again.¡± Freya stood close to me, almost embracing me. She believed in me, believed in her sister so much. It felt almost rude to say the thing I had to say next. When the words came out of me, they were scratchy, barely a whisper. ¡°What if Freya 4.0 didn¡¯t betray the corp? What if she were supposed to lead you to me?¡± ¡°Freya 4.0 broke the rules,¡± Freya said. ¡°I don¡¯t think she was instructed to do that.¡± I looked around the evening street, saw people leaving work, or moving to their second-shift jobs. Small drones above the crowd monitored traffic and provided passive surveillance to any one of a number of entities. I hadn¡¯t forgotten that every major corp wanted me dead, penniless, imprisoned, or on the payroll (same old thing). ¡°Maybe FUTUR Design wanted you and me on the street. Maybe they want to see what White Tree is going to do to us.¡± ¡°How would that even work?¡± Freya said. Her tone wasn¡¯t hostile, only curious. ¡°How am I supposed to know?¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not a corp.¡± I hadn¡¯t meant to snap at her. I quickly added, ¡°I¡¯m sorry. It¡¯s just been a long day, and I want to rest.¡± ¡°Come back to my place, and we¡¯ll figure it out in the morning.¡± Freya took my hand and I let my friend lead me to the metro. I could sense by the way that she moved that she maintained a spooky level of total situational awareness. Her head kept moving, the way I¡¯ve seen cops do, or military, or corporate paramilitaries. She knew what was behind us, what was on either side of us. She wasn¡¯t wired for it but I saw a monitor strapped to her wrist with a thick elastic band showing what looked like drone surveillance. My heart melted at the sight of her hypervigiliance. I wanted her to be able to rest, too. I dozed on her shoulder while we rode the train. It felt good to let someone else handle security for a change. I realized that I had been on my own for a long time, in some ways ever since I had left Gloss behind, or Gloss had left me behind. The brief time I had worked with Freya 4.0 felt like a dream more than a life. Like I was pretending to be someone I wasn¡¯t. I recalled pressuring Bell Wolf. I was embarrassed about that. Freya and I left the metro at Bull City station, which I thought was interesting. She lived so close to her simulant sister. We took the muni down a rutted road, the bus¡¯s hydraulics rocking as it tried to navigate the deep wells of broken asphalt lined with small red-brick houses. We were suddenly far away from the skyscrapers of downtown Bull City, and even further from the hulking cubes studding the Research Triangle Arcologies. Leaving the muni, we found ourselves in a leafy neighborhood with a canopy of old oaks, shady and breezy and cooler, and much quieter than the downtowns. It reminded me of the place in Old Winston where Linney, Gloss, Wren, and I had cracked some heavy servers. Freya opened the door to a brick cottage with an old-fashioned brass key. ¡°Guest bed¡¯s that way,¡± she said. ¡°Shower¡¯s straight ahead. See you in the morning.¡± And she vanished into her bedroom. At first, her brusque attitude felt like hostility but then I recalled that she only wanted to look out for me, to give me a chance to rest. The bed was a humble mattress on a simple wooden frame. The heavy blankets on top of it had been sewn together from other, older blankets, not as complex as a quilt, but in the same family. The blankets smelled like Freya, like her skin, and their weight comforted me. I slept better than I had in a long time. And woke to the smell of coffee in the kitchen. Sunlight came in through cracked, eggshell-colored plastic blinds, the kind Dad had installed in the house because you could often find them on the curb for free after folks got evicted. I could hear a familiar roar, dim and distant but unmistakable: the sound of water moving over rocks. ¡°You found a river,¡± I said, coming into the kitchen where Freya was sipping coffee at an old wooden table in the sunlight. Just outside the window I could see the water foaming as it pushed past the stones. I¡¯d been so blitzed the previous night that I hadn¡¯t even noticed it. She smiled. ¡°It¡¯s not the same as back home, but I realized that I needed to live near the water.¡± Her words made me think of Linney, working for 7Wonders on the coast. ¡°Been to the ocean since coming out here?¡± I asked. I poured myself a mug and sat across from her. She looked so happy, her skin glowing in the sun. ¡°A couple times with other freerunners.¡± ¡°How many freerunners do you know?¡± ¡°It¡¯s hard to say. Our community is fluid, mostly anonymous. When someone is out on a run, others might join, for an hour or a few minutes or even just a few seconds, then slip away. Autonomy and freedom are what we prize, and we don¡¯t compromise those things.¡± As she spoke, I could see how important this was to her, this community. She spoke slowly and ponderously, as if saying a prayer. As if holding on to the last thing anchoring her to the world. Knowing some of her memories, talking with Freya 4.0, and talking with the original, I could tell that she had been hurt badly during her time in White Tree pools. But she¡¯d found a way to survive. ¡°So,¡± I said. ¡°What we were talking about yesterday. A way of getting Enrique out of prison.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± She bathed her face in the steam from her mug. ¡°I think Freya 4.0 is worth a shot.¡± I leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. ¡°Let¡¯s figure out how that would work. We could locate a server that she¡¯s protecting and try to speak with her in the net. Maybe she could point us to the place where Enrique¡¯s location is stored.¡± ¡°You sound skeptical.¡± ¡°Even finding her is going to be difficult.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not so sure. You¡¯ve had trouble with the Freyas in the past, and they know you¡¯re looking for your friend. So if FUTUR Design wants to keep you out, they¡¯ll put a Freya in front of the server containing Enrique¡¯s location. It¡¯s basic strategy.¡± ¡°I¡¯m disturbed by how easy it is for you to talk about ¡®the Freyas.¡¯¡± She laughed. ¡°How long has it been possible to simulate another person¡¯s image? Simulate another person on video? Simulate a person¡¯s voiceprint? Almost a hundred years give or take? The Freyas, I¡¯m fond of them, because we share some things. They have personalities based on mine. They have my childhood memories. But I know they¡¯re not me. And I don¡¯t feel like I have to be the only one. In some ways it¡¯s a relief not to be the only one.¡± She looked out the window, where we could see old willow oaks swaying in the wind. ¡°How do you mean?¡± I asked softly. ¡°If something happens to me,¡± she said, ¡°then part of me carries on, immortal and digital.¡± ¡°And property of FUTUR Design.¡± ¡°For now. And property of White Tree, too. Some of their digital constructs were built on my hardware.¡± She tapped her head. ¡°In a way, I¡¯ll live forever.¡± I took her hand across the table. ¡°I wish I could see the world the way you do.¡± ¡°No choice, champ,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m messed up.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s do it,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, your plan. Let¡¯s ask your sister.¡± ### Step one was finding Freya 4.0, or 4reya we had taken to calling her. We rode the muni and then the metro to a heavily-populated consumer area not far from the Research Triangle Arcologies. Sitting in the bright white enclosure of the mall, it was odd to see all the people below living their lives. These were young workers not far into their corporate indentures. They didn¡¯t rate a berth at any of the arcologies, or if they did, they were furloughed to visit one of the approved consumer palaces. They walked about with thick, oversized paper bags jammed full of purchases. They sipped on synth-pulp. They ate steaming, oily synth-meat. I envied them and at the same time felt contempt for them. While I wished I could be as comfortable as they were, I also disliked their confinement. I wanted to be a person who would be happy in their life, but I didn¡¯t think I could be. Freya brought us some synthetic strawberry smoothies ¡°to blend in,¡± she said, laughing at her own joke. While she drank from hers, I opened the small laptop I was carrying and poked around the area near Niflheim, where I¡¯d last seen 4reya. Ice and sysops appear a certain way in the net, even at the low-level of detail possible on the laptop. I removed the mesh contacts from my eyes, and as I felt the algorithmic surveillance network of FUTUR Design swing its thousands of eyes toward me, I peered into the data coming through the rudimentary visual display on the laptop. My eyes saw patterns that other people¡¯s didn¡¯t. That and my experience with 4reya as a partner and co-conspirator made it easy to recognize her patterns in the net. She was moving about at the base of Niflheim, securing it as both ice and sysop. I closed the laptop and replaced the contacts in my eyes. Freya slammed both our drinks, one after the other. I smiled. This was my oldest friend¡ªshe would never waste a drop.
Gloss''s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name 4reya
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez very high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 8
Type Puzzle
Subtype Simulant-toll-gray-rigshooter
Subroutines Stops a runner; may drain a runner¡¯s money; may damage a runner¡¯s nervous system; may destroy a runner¡¯s rig
Chapter 43: Shake it Off Chapter 43. Shake it Off Back in Freya¡¯s wild neighborhood, she told me the freerunners used the old SMS network to communicate. They sent each other messags from ancient phones with grimy mechanical keys zipped into plastic bags and cached in hollow trees, behind loose bricks on the outsides of old buildings, or inside burnt-out streetlights. Freya took me around the hilly neighborhood where she lived, where a long, massive apartment complex faced one side of the river and a row of small cabins faced the other, a place that seemed to exist in multiple times at once: the present and the distant past. Underneath a railroad trestle, she climbed a mossy concrete column and reached up into the wrought iron structure, pulling down a dirty, worn plastic bag with both a phone inside. She tapped out a message. Then we sat down and shared some fruit while we waited for the reply. When it came, Freya swapped out the battery in the phone for one that she was carrying, then she zipped it up and replaced it under the trestle. She signaled for me to follow, and led me through a network of streets lined with old, abandoned storefronts. Finally, we came to what was once a street church, the cross above the ancient industrial carpeting all that remained of the sanctuary. Inside, at the base of the wall, she found a cable adapted for a net port. ¡°Freerunners distrust the net as a rule,¡± she said, quoting something, ¡°but that distrust means we know the stealthiest ways to connect.¡± I handed Freya a small laptop and a pair of headphones so she could spectate. I knew she didn''t like to jack in. Then I pulled my shirt down and jacked myself in through the other laptop. The area around Niflheim thrummed with dangerous energies. Niflheim itself appeared as it always did, a violet fortress like a squat cube with turrets, postively vibrating with cortical poison. If I was serious about keeping my brain in relatively good health, this was the last place I should go, not without some protective hardware. But hardware wasn¡¯t free and getting money meant selling the corporate data I¡¯d cached. Selling the data meant finding a fence, and that meant FUTUR Design could find us. I knew that one of these days I would have to take that risk, but I wasn¡¯t ready yet. The risk I was taking was entirely different. Maybe I was more like the CheRRy than I had initially thought. Despite the warnings of multiple doctors, I was much more willing to put my nervous system on the line than let the corps know who I was working with. I moved around the outer edges of Niflheim. I wasn¡¯t invisible; they knew I was here. I could feel their defenses tracking me. If I had to fight, Hungry Creek, Spider Wasp, and Ichnovirus were still coded into my body. A moment later Freya was there with me via meatspace, low-poly and fuzzy, coming through on a stylized image processed through a bad webcam and a janky background remover. But Freya refused to use her net port or even a rudimentary ocular interface such as I had used when I had made my first run. Nothing good ever came through the net port, she¡¯d said. The outer ring of ice surrounding Niflheim was different than any I¡¯d seen before. But also familiar. Thick and complex, it also reminded me of how Freya 4.0, 4reya, ¡°Foureya¡± as we had begun saying, appeared when we used to run together. It was her. Only one thing to do now. I accelerated, running straight at her, knowing that if she chose to destroy me, there was nothing I could do to stop her. But Freya, the original, didn¡¯t think that was going to happen. The fractal, purple mist in front of me gathered itself into a fiery human figure, towering and monumental, a goddess in a robe. Her face appeared larger than my avatar or Freya¡¯s. ¡°I am 4reya,¡± she said. ¡°I know.¡± The figure seemed to soften and draw nearer, or perhaps it drew me nearer to it. I recalled the wrenching way that Freya 2.0 had yanked me toward her while I¡¯d been jacked into the library terminal. ¡°Rawls?¡± 4reya said. And then her attention moved to the low-poly avatar over my shoulder. ¡°Sister? You are not even here.¡± ¡°It¡¯s us.¡± ¡°You, Rawls, should not be here.¡± 4reya spread her arms wide. I could see a bright, impenetrable shell forming around the server. ¡°According to your policy, that¡¯s true,¡± I said. ¡°Why are you floating before me?¡± I let my avatar drift closer to 4reya. ¡°We need to know where your employer is holding someone.¡± ¡°My job is to keep you out.¡± ¡°I know it is,¡± I said. ¡°But I also remember that you and I used to run together. That part of you¡ª¡± ¡°¡ªmade mistakes,¡± 4reya said. ¡°That part of me lacked guidance and discipline, both of which I have now.¡± I did not know what to say. 4reya continued. ¡°Rawls, I can see into your parietal lobe. You are most seriously hurt. Our sisters did that to you. My employer wants me to leave you with minimal brain function but I shall exercise my judgment. You may not pass but you will not be hurt.¡± I heard a backward hiss like a pressure cooker sealing itself. Then I was back in the abandoned church with Freya. The air smelled more like mildew than it did before we jacked in. Freya lifted her bleary eyes from the laptop and removed her headphones, looking queasy even from staring at a screen across an air gap, and I disconnected the cable from my net port. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. ¡°We should get out of here,¡± I said, slipping my mesh contacts over my eyes. ¡°I¡¯m sure they¡¯ve traced the connection by now.¡± Freya didn¡¯t need to be told twice. She took my hand and led me back onto the street. We stepped onto a passing muni, which she paid for with a fare card that had been disconnected from her biometrics, and we rode back toward the middle of Bull City, huddled against each other silently. ¡°What now?¡± she murmured. If 4reya wasn¡¯t going to help us find Enrique¡¯s location, I said, then there was one option: complete my rig so I could break any ice FUTUR Design put in front of me, even 4reya herself. ¡°There¡¯s something I don¡¯t get,¡± Freya said. ¡°Why are you trying to find this guy?¡± ¡°Because he gave me my start.¡± ¡°Your start in what, exactly?¡± ¡°In running.¡± ¡°But you were running to find me. I am found.¡± She smiled at me, then reached into a hidden pocket in her top and produced a handful of raisins. She offered me some as if that were the end of the discussion. The muni rattled over a set of potholes. It was impossible to speak while that was happening; it gave me time to think. This next part was hard to admit. ¡°I started out wanting nothing but to make sure you were OK. But it turns out that I like running the net.¡± ¡°You like it.¡± ¡°More than like it. I love it. When I¡¯m disconnected, like now, all I see in my mind are ice and breakers and servers and the insides of corporate HQs. I can see their ops, their cost-benefit analyses, their secrets. I can imagine the host of underworld connects out there for me to find, the new hardware to give me that edge. I don¡¯t run only for the money. I don¡¯t run only for any political ideology, although I¡¯m learning to. I don¡¯t even run simply because I can.¡± ¡°Then why?¡± ¡°I run to explore the edge between life and death. But it goes deeper than that. On that edge are those who are lost, who were disappeared or lost themselves. I run to bring them back.¡± It was the first time I had said it out loud. ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°First you. Now, Enrique.¡± Freya looked out the window as if she were thinking about what I said. ¡°It¡¯s risky.¡± ¡°I will never give up,¡± I said. ¡°Even if my friends give up on me.¡± We rode in silence for a while. It was like we were having a fight. But the thing about me and Freya was, we¡¯d fought so many times over our lives that it didn¡¯t disturb me to be in conflict with her. I knew it would be OK. Finally, she spoke. ¡°Those people abandoned you.¡± ¡°They distanced themselves from me because I was undisciplined and dangerous. They had to. But one day I¡¯m going to show them that I¡¯ve grown.¡± ¡°How?¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to find where Enrique is. To do that I need a way of getting through the Freyas. A type of icebreaker called a puzzle-solver. Most of them tend to be pretty bad. But with enough cash, we can buy a good one, tune it to my DNA, and jam.¡± ¡°Cash¡ªwe don¡¯t have it.¡± ¡°Not yet. But I have something to sell.¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°Not here. We¡¯ll wait until we¡¯re in private.¡± ### Angel, the fence, sat across from us at his dirty desk in the back of the convenience store. ¡°I don¡¯t know you,¡± he said. ¡°You¡¯ve seen me before,¡± I said. ¡°I was with¡ª¡± Angel shook his head. ¡°No names.¡± ¡°But you know me.¡± ¡°Never seen you before in my life, kid.¡± Angel looked at the ceiling. I followed his gaze. He kept a cam wired to the ceiling. I saw a ring of dull sensors surrounding the lens: UV, IR, that type of thing. The messge was clear: you¡¯re tagged. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said and stood. On the street, Freya said, ¡°You didn¡¯t push it with him.¡± ¡°If I had, he¡¯d never speak to me again. Maybe if we can shake the tag he¡¯ll be willing to sell me something.¡± We walked next to each other, our shoulders brushing. The heat had come down hard, accompanied by a wave of humidity. We were both sweating. I¡¯d heard that the Piedmont no longer experienced winter, and it also felt like spring was becoming a thing of the past. Freya was quiet, her brow tense, as if she were thinking deeply about something, or anyway turning something over and over in her mind. ¡°From what you said, you¡¯re being tracked by every megacorp. They¡¯ve got your DNA. They¡¯ve got your psych profile. They¡¯ve got your netprint, your mindprint. You¡¯re on the Registry. How are you going to shake that?¡± I was thinking about something that I¡¯d heard Ohm and Kent talking about on separate occasions. ¡°I¡¯ve heard that I can overwrite my own data in the Root.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the Root?¡± ¡°As near as I can tell, it¡¯s a joint venture by the major megacorps to stay connected via the net but also to collect surveillance information. Maybe it¡¯s more than that. But I¡¯ve heard that it¡¯s possible to get in there and wipe one¡¯s identity.¡± Freya punched my shoulder and gestured at a storefront. We walked inside and climbed a few ancient stairs next to a long ramp. We were in a cafe with paeeling paint. There was a counter to order food and a counter against the window for people to eat at. ¡°When was the last time we had anything to eat?¡± she said. I couldn¡¯t remember. ¡°Idiot,¡± she said. ¡°Get us some seats.¡± She ordered at the counter and brought over a couple of bowls of steaming noodles, lab-grown flesh glistening in aromatic oil. It was delicious. I made it vanish. ¡°Eat faster or you might taste something,¡± Freya said. I gave her the bird as I slurped. ¡°I¡¯ll show you taste something,¡± I said through a mouthful of noodles and broth. She put her fingertips over her heart. ¡°Was that ... innuendo? Is Jasper Rawls coming of age?¡± I lifted my bowl, drank it clean, set it down, and gave her double birds. While I wiped red oil from my mouth with a paper napkin, I thought about some things. ¡°Going after the Root is going to be risky,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s something I should do on my own.¡± ¡°The hell with you, Rawls,¡± Freya said. ¡°I¡¯m not letting you out of my sight.¡± She picked at the vegetables in her bowl with something that looked very much like anger. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°You better be.¡± I watched her eat. My heart melted a little. The combination of elegance and ferocity with which she approached even mundane tasks made me love her, not like a sister exactly, nor like a lover. What we had was different than any of those. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said softly. She looked at me, a silent acknowledgement that we were on the same wavelength again. ¡°I know there¡¯s access in FUTUR Design HQ,¡± I said. ¡°I wonder if you could get in.¡± ¡°Because of my sister? She¡¯s a reproduction, not a clone. I don¡¯t know if she even has DNA. If they swab or prick me, the game is up. My employee status is terminated.¡± I had an idea. ¡°What about freerunning? If I found an access to the Root, do you think you could get a net cable into it?¡± She shrugged. ¡°I¡¯d have to see the grid.¡± ¡°The grid?¡± ¡°Yeah. The streets, the superstructure, the infrastructure, the substructure. The grid.¡± I nodded. As much as I had learned, I had so much more to go. ¡°Eat up,¡± I said. Staring down the bird she put in my face, I said, ¡°I know a place we can get Root access.¡± Run, man. Don¡¯t stop. Always be. Run it all down now.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Ajax
Manufacturer 7Wonders
Cost to rez Low
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 4
Type Shooter
Subtype red-augmentable-ambush
Subroutines Bleeds runner; destroys runner hardware; destroys runner program based on augmentations; destroys itself
Chapter 44: Old Codes Chapter 44: Old Codes Restoration Consulting¡¯s facility on the irradiated coast was bigger than I remembered. It seemed to have added another skyway and another set of scaffolding since my last visit. The double-towered bronze fortress caught the last rays of the sun and gleamed like a pair of flaming arrowheads. I could almost feel the bruises returning to the surface of my skin. Freya and I left the BRUTE and walked against the current. Day-shift workers were leaving the building and heading into the quiet town of Southport further inland. A line of muni buses sat silent next to the BRUTE, waiting to bring commuters back to their neighborhoods. Freya and I threaded through them. She carried a pack heavy with ropes and other climbing equipment, which I understood was somewhat frowned upon in the freerunning community, but how else were we going to make sure we didn¡¯t fall off the face of this giant corporate ediface? ¡°I like the scaffolding,¡± Freya said. ¡°Don¡¯t get eager. The security here likes to inflict pain. Maybe more than they like to provide actual security.¡± Freya shrugged. ¡°Compared to the horrors I¡¯ve seen, this is nothing.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not anxious?¡± ¡°These days I only get anxious when I¡¯m safe. When I¡¯m in danger I¡¯m as calm as a mountain stream.¡± She tousled my hair and started walking faster, pushing aside commuters as if she couldn¡¯t wait to put her life at risk. I tried to keep up. Freya had always been faster than me, whether running, walking, or figuring things out. As a freerunner she moved with a meatspace fluency that I felt like I could never match. I found myself breathing hard as I followed the bouncing of the gleaming carabiners on her pack moving through the crowd. Just after we had crossed the drawbridge-looking thing over the wetlands, she broke away from the stream of commuters and moved along the side of the building, where food stalls sent purple smoke into the evening sky. She walked in the direction of a place selling skewered possum, but then darted between that and a coffee stall and vanished into shadow. I found her pressed up against the skin of the building, running a rosin-covered hand along big rivets. The piney scent of the sticky powder on her fingers brought me back to childhood, to Dad¡¯s house. Then she was climbing. I suddenly realized that I had no way to follow her. ¡°What should I do?¡± I hissed. ¡°Just stay there and be ready to jack in,¡± she said, turned her face to her building, and kept climbing. I crouched against the side of the building behind a tuft of monkey grass. Too afraid to watch her, I looked out for wandering security guards instead. Above, I heard the soft sounds of her body moving up the metal edifice, until suddenly I heard nothing at all. I looked up, and there was no sign of Freya. I found a sticky cam in my pocket and placed it on the wall near me. I waited a long moment, listening hard for the sounds of struggle, for a call for help. Instead, the only thing I heard was the laser-sharp sound of a net cable whipping through the air. The cable tinked against the metal side of the building and bounced before me. I took it and brought it to the port in my chest. ¡°This is gonna hurt,¡± I said, dabbed the mesh contacts from my eyes, and twisted the cable home. There was no black highway, no gentle approach to the eternal nighttime city of corporate data. Instead, I was up against a rezzed Resheph already streaming a dark cloud of arrows at me. Resheph was god ice, not a simulant but still built with a proprietary sense of self that would permit no other copies to be rezzed at once. The act of Resheph rezzing here destroyed the other Resheph I had encountered. That was how determined the corp was to keep me out. The memory of my rig blowing up on the Kansas prairie made me shudder, made the gridlines fuzz for a nanosecond. This time I was ready for him. My eyes ran a deep packet inspection subroutine and all at once I saw the shifting pattern of the arrows, designed to be dense as a rainstorm, but always leaving a path through for those who knew how to find it. Ichnovirus slipped away from me and started working its way toward Resheph, its path guided by one part of my brain while my own path was guided by another. At least, that was how it felt. All at once I became aware of every part of my body, every part of my hardware, and the fertile rivets between them. The Ichnovirus burrowed into Resheph¡¯s skin. Snipping through Resheph¡¯s complex routines and rendering the ice much simpler in its representation, suddenly half the arrows dropped out out netspace. Simultaneously, Spider Wasp leapt from the tip of me and flew to the top of Resheph¡¯s head. Resheph interrupted his archery subroutine, cutting off the drizzle of arrows, to harden his skin against the wasp, but Ichnovirus kept him from completing the motion. Spider Wasp¡¯s stinger sunk into Resheph¡¯s head, turning Resheph transparent and letting me through. I dove into the Emerald Labyrinth that I recognized from my last two runs in this facility, Hungry Creek already working its way through the crystalline walls to to the Root access at its hard. With Hungry Creek carving its way through, Platform ice became trivial, and my avatar bounded through, bouncing off walls or crashing through them according only to my whim. I opened a window to my sticky cam as I began to feel my body shudder as if buffeted by heavy blows from a trained fighter. On camera I saw my head twitch and flinch. I saw myself cough sour, metallic spit onto my shirt. The molten Root came up fast. For a moment, I felt like I would be sucked into it. But then I found myself hanging suspended above it, caught by threads that I couldn¡¯t see.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. A voice was speaking to me. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be here.¡± ¡°Linney?¡± ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing, Rawls?¡± Another window opened in my vision. I could see Linney, wired to a cubicle via net port but also via ocular interface. She was hunched over. She looked stressed. A glass vape dangled from her lips. ¡°Better if you didn¡¯t know,¡± I said. ¡°Can you let me slip by?¡± ¡°Why? You chasing a big score?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not about money. It¡¯s about Enrique.¡± I saw the young woman lean forward. On the monitor, she looked so familiar but also unrecognizable under all that hardware. Her eyes still obscured by the chunky ocular interface, I couldn¡¯t tell if she felt sympathetic towards me or if she had already adopted the cool hostility that professional life demanded. ¡°I told you that you don¡¯t have to do everything he tells you,¡± she said. ¡°He didn¡¯t ask me to do anything.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll ask you again: what are you trying to do?¡± ¡°I¡¯m backing up a friend. The way I once backed you up.¡± ¡°You should stop looking out for other people, Rawls, and start looking out for yourself.¡± But her voice was already far away, as if someone was turning down the volume. Her window closed, and I felt the invisible threads release me, just as the current surrounding the Root grabbed me. I let it draw me into itself by capillary action, as if it were a great world tree, and I were the smallest cluster of free nutrients, stretched out and practically one-dimensional. I was somewhere I had never been before. I felt floaty and numb, as if I¡¯d been given a good, hospital-grade anesthetic. Accessing the Root after breaching a server was stepping from a cool, dark old-style movie theater into a summer day. For a moment I could see nothing; it was too much. Then I began to pick out shapes and details, and feel the insistent wet heat of the radiant source above. My first instinct was to retreat back to the cold dark. But I was here for a purpose. The bruise forming on my eye, visible even in the grainy medium-def window of the sticky cam, was there for a reason. I intended to take that bruise. To come here. Freya, somewhere above, threw down the cable for a reason. And that reason was to help me become a ghost. I ran what I thought was a simple search routine, something built into the Root. After all, the Root was a giant database, the sum total of public knowledge available to the megacorps that subscribed to it. It was the thing that used to be called the internet, before it had been carved up into walled gardens and darknets and overlaid by apps and diluted. Hits for my name turned up: demographic data, location data, my Registry entry. I entered variants, misspellings. More hits. With 7Wonders¡¯s access to the Root, I also had access to their scrubbers. Just as someone had scrubbed Freya¡¯s data after her participation in the clinical trial, I could scrub myself. I found them, in a panel that was somehow in front of me and connected to my hand, rows and rows of coders in office parks in suburbs across America, Argentina, Spain, Romania, India, and Malaysia. Workers with one job: find a string in the Root, and replace it with something else, anything else. No one had automated them out of work yet for reasons I didn¡¯t understand and was not going to question right now. I stayed under for what felt like days. By the clock in the corner of the sticky cam, by the progress of the bruise under my eye, it was only hours. On the sticky cam, I saw Freya crouched next to my body now, keeping watch. There remained one task: the Registry. ¡°Can I get access to the Registry from here?¡± I said to myself. My eyes were drawn to a current within the bright, hot stream of the Root. I moved forward, into it. I knew that I could gain favored access to White Tree¡¯s DNA registry from here. White Tree and 7Wonders have historically enjoyed a good relationship. 7Wonders liked to license White Tree¡¯s digital ambushes, and White Tree contracted with 7Wonders¡¯s meatspace assassins to protect their highest-value research. As the gleaming flow branching from the Root narrowed, all that lay between me and whatever was beyond was a single piece of ice, indistinct at this distance. I still had no way of getting through puzzle ice. That put my odds of making it across at one in three, or slightly better if it were just some puzzle ice that messed me up without stopping me cold. In a rush that appeared to move faster than I could process, the ice cohered into a sharp double-helix, a spiky lattice that rose in front of me and then duplicated itself again and again, forming an impenetrable puzzle that maybe I could solve given enough time and resources. Hell, it had to be a chromosome lock. What better way to secure the Registry than ensuring that anyone who tried to break in was logged by itself? In less than a millisecond, I was going to smack into it. But within that time, I possessed hundreds of thousands of nanoseconds to figure out what to do. Hungry Creek flowed through the lattice without affecting it. Ichnovirus latched on but it had been taxed out by Resheph and was not very deep into the ice. The virus barely affected it. It looked like I was going to break this with my face. Considering that White Tree had access to my DNA and my body had already been battered by Restoration Consulting¡¯s lockdown protocols, I was not sure that I could survive this. Expending a few thousand nanoseconds, I expressed a silent wish to Freya to keep herself safe. I knew she was alive now. Had I not accomplished what I came to Carthage to do? And another few thousand nanoseconds became a wish to Enrique for the same. And to Gloss to find him. With the remainder, I used Root access to take a look at myself, to inventory every biological and digital and cybernetic process that might be able to help me. There was nothing new, except for this entry in my hippocampus¡¯s hardware index, etched onto the side a fungal silicon chip:
DNA SCRAMBLER Serial *32
That was new. I had never had a DNA Scrambler installed, and remembered that whenever I discussed it with a doctor, it wasn¡¯t the right time, either because of the Fabricytes or because I lacked the cash. Had I known my body was hosting a DNA Scrambler, maybe I wouldn¡¯t even have to be here. It wasn¡¯t going to stop the chromosome lock from slicing into me. That was the final irony of my life. My Dad¡¯s old console games made me a runner. My stupid hometown made me desperate to leave. My running got me killed. With an affordable seven thousand nanoseconds, I sent a message to him, delayed delivery: ¡°Dear Dad, If you¡¯re reading this, it means I¡¯ve flatlined trying to breach White Tree¡¯s DNA Registry. In the time since you last saw me, I¡¯ve become one of the top ten cybercriminals in the state. My sincerest apologies. I love you and Mom. Your son, Jasper.¡± Then I did what I did best with the rest of my time: I wasted it. A sense of calm came over my body as I prepared to die. I watched my body on the sticky cam, saw the twitching stop, saw the muscles in my arms relax, almost adopt a posture of meditation, or perhaps I imagined that. At this timescale, at the sticky cam¡¯s refresh rate, I wouldn¡¯t see anything new. I wouldn¡¯t see Freya stroke my face, wouldn¡¯t see her concern. Let¡¯s do this. I came to a stop just in front of the chromosome lock¡¯s razor lattice. Between me and the ice were the flaming red robes of a familiar warrior goddess.
Gloss¡¯s Encyclopedia of Ice
Name Blaisdell
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 7
Type Shooter
Subtype Simulant-red-gray
Subroutines Bleeds runners; causes severe neurological trauma
Chapter 45: Become the One Chapter 45: Become the One I looked up at the brilliant golden image of the last ice I bounced off. ¡°4reya?¡± I said. She turned to the chromosome lock, and the diamond lattice denatured before her. With a gesture she pushed me forward and I found myself swimming amid the caverns etched with the DNA of every suspected criminal or adverse actor White Tree had ever encountered. I found mine, I found Freya¡¯s, which I discovered I knew based on seeing the clinical trial data weeks ago. These strings of DNA were the oldest codes, now no different to me, no more personal to me, than any other. A query to the system came back: I possessed write access to the Registry because I had come through 7Wonders¡¯s trusted portal. Using the scrambler now built into my body, I overwrote both our DNA. Then I jacked the hell out. I felt Freya stroking my face, her fingers avoiding the bruise. I became aware that my body was covered in sweat, my clothing soaked through, and I was shivering. ¡°She was there,¡± I said. ¡°Your sister. She helped me.¡± Freya¡¯s look was knowing, as if she expected that. ¡°She really is my sister, isn¡¯t she?¡± ¡°I¡¯m happy that you have one,¡± I said. ¡°You have one too, you know,¡± she said. ¡°Let¡¯s get back to the city.¡± As we took a hold of each other¡¯s forearm, Freya hauled me to my feet with her surprising freerunner¡¯s strength. Then she embraced me. I felt momentarily embarrassed by how sweaty I was until I felt that she was the same way. ### It was some dumb FroYo shop outside Old Charlotte but at that moment it was the best thing ever. Far from the coast, I luxuriated in the dry, chill air in the white-lit storefront. I spooned the sweetened, tangy frozen yogurt into my mouth in a kind of trance. Freya laughed at me from the next stool, hiding her face behind one long sleeve. Her brow and cheeks were still streaked with dirt even after she¡¯d gone to the restroom to try to remove it and some dried blood¡ªwhose blood, I wasn¡¯t sure. ¡°What now, hacker?¡± she said when she had stopped laughing. ¡°Don¡¯t call me that.¡± She laughed. ¡°I just never imagined that Jasper Rawls, the laziest student and spaciest kid I have ever known, would gin up enough focus and competence to become¡ª¡± her voice went deep, like a news announcer reading an advertisement, ¡°¡ªnumber one cyber threat!¡± ¡°I¡¯m not number one yet,¡± I said through a mouthful of yogurt. Freya punched me in the arm and I directed her attention across the street to the storage lockers. ¡°I¡¯m about ready to walk in there. If I¡¯m not back in five minutes, leave. Don¡¯t go to your apartment. Don¡¯t go back to Canton. Just get far away.¡± ¡°You know I¡¯m not doing that.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± I smiled at her. ¡°I had to say it, though.¡± ¡°Hey,¡± she said. ¡°If you pick up this parcel, and if you find a fence dumb enough to buy from your tagged-up ass, what¡¯s the plan?¡± ¡°The plan is buy a shit-hot breaker and use it to get past your army of sisters and extract Enrique¡¯s location.¡± She waved me off while attacking her frozen yogurt. ¡°Yeah yeah yeah, I know that, but you¡¯re going to need more than a breaker for whatever weird defenses your mother set up.¡± It was as if I were boring her. ¡°I have more than a breaker.¡± Her spoon hovered, a melty bite not quite making it to her lips. ¡°How¡¯s that?¡± ¡°See, there¡¯s one more thing, something the Prophet Ezra told me.¡± She waited for me to keep going. A drop fell from her spoon onto the counter. ¡°I¡¯m a hexrunner,¡± I said. ¡°I can do things that should be impossible. Some of that ability comes from the eyes my mother implanted. But I¡¯m convinced that I was born to do this. When I run, I create.¡± ¡°Create what?¡± ¡°You wouldn¡¯t believe me,¡± I said. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure I believed it myself. In fact, until the last time I saw Dr. Qin, I hadn¡¯t formed the words in my mind.¡± ¡°Try me.¡± ¡°I think my body manufactures cybernetics when I run on corporate research servers.¡± ¡°Like you become more of a cyborg each time you run?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°That makes no sense.¡± ¡°I know. But it happens. The docs keep finding these things in my body that I never asked to be installed.¡± She looked at me. ¡°Isn¡¯t there a simpler explanation?¡± ¡°Such as?¡± ¡°Maybe the doctor is installing things without your knowledge.¡± ¡°Why would she do that?¡± ¡°Maybe she¡¯s running a clinical trial.¡± The words cast a pall over the conversation. Freya didn¡¯t exactly have a lot of trust in modern industrial medicine. I thought about Dr. Rashida Qin. ¡°I trust my doctor,¡± I said, almost embarrassed. Anyway, Freya was moving on. ¡°Do you have any control over that process?¡± ¡°Not so far. Not unless I stop running research and development servers.¡± ¡°So what¡¯s the plan?¡± ¡°The plan is to rig up. Then let¡¯s get me a scan and test my theory.¡± I set down my cup and walked across the street¡ªempty late at night¡ªinto the storage locker rental place. Passing by the automated kiosk at the front, ostensibly a security system but one that was trivial to crack with a single piercing glance, the door to the lockers slid open and I replaced the contacts in my eyes. In the corner near the locker I had rented, a bulky form waited for me. ¡°Thanks for coming,¡± I said. Kent stepped into the light cast by the dirty, old tubes in the ceiling. He still wore a grimy hoodie and long coat. He held some kind of baroque weapon in his hand, like a handgun with a knife strapped to the bottom of the barrel. ¡°Not that I don¡¯t trust you, kid, but I don¡¯t trust you. You got me out of bed, but before anything else happens, I need insurance.¡±Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. He tossed me a glossy package. I took a look at it. There was a tiny needle capped in plastic attached to a plastic vial with a chip at the bottom. I guess I knew what this was. ¡°I just got done scrubbing my DNA out of the Registry,¡± I said. ¡°You think I¡¯m going to give you some?¡± ¡°Do you have a choice?¡± he muttered. I held his eye for a long moment and then did what he asked. Uncapping the vial, I made sure that Kent had a good view of my finger as I disinfected it with an alcohol wipe, pricked it, and let the drop of blood fall onto the chip. A tiny light at the bottom of the vial glowed through the blood, turning the dark red drop into something else, something fiery. I capped the needle and pocketed the vial. Then I noticed the firm bead of blood that had risen to the surface of my finger and found a bandage helpfully slipped into the package. While I wrapped up my finger, Kent withdrew a grubby tablet from his jacket with his free hand and looked at the screen for a long minute. Then he put the weapon away. ¡°Congratulations. Ohm and Sunya say you don¡¯t exist. Not sure how you pulled that off, but well done.¡± I gave Kent what I hoped was a cocky expression¡ªI was tired of being called ¡°kid¡± all the time¡ªand stepped to the locker. No biometric security here: the passcode was a thirty-character string that I¡¯d stored in one of the many pieces of cybernetic hardware now occupying my body. ¡°And not too soon, neither,¡± Kent said. ¡°Sunya says that FUTUR Design has enough cash on hand that they could just put all their simulants on the task of copying Enrique¡¯s brain in less than twenty-four hours if they wanted to.¡± That seemed creepy. ¡°Hey, if they finish early, perhaps they¡¯ll release him.¡± Kent gave me a contemptous look and said, ¡°Don¡¯t get your hopes up. Ohm thinks they¡¯re going to run a Moravec process on him.¡± I must have looked confused because Kent continued. ¡°Think of a big stainless steel deli meat slicer over a flatbed scanner. Now feed it a brain. That¡¯s a Moravec process.¡± He nudged me aside to take a look inside the locker, and reached in with a gloved hand to pull out the wafer of flash memory. ¡°It¡¯s¡ª¡± ¡°Don¡¯t say it here,¡± he said. ¡°But I know a place you can take this. Your friend can come, too. I won¡¯t be there. I¡¯d rather not know what you¡¯ve got.¡± I looked around, thinking that Freya had somehow snuck in, but she was nowhere to be found. Kent showed me his ancient resin watch, its face looking out from the inside of his wrist. On the watch face, I saw a grainy monochrome image of Freya waiting at the FroYo place across the street. ### The data dealer¡¯s loft looked down from more than a hundred stories up. It claimed two entire floors inside a slim tower a few blocks from the storage locker in Old Charlotte. No other residential tower had been built tall enough to challenge the height of the megacorp presence here. The elderly data dealer himself was thin to the point of being gaunt. He wore a long, white jacket chased with gold thread. He carried a crystal rocks glass of some perfumed liquor over to a low chair but offered us none. When I tried to introduce myself, he said, ¡°You have no name and neither do I.¡± In the sunken conversation pit on the lower level, Freya and I sat on a long, firm couch in front of a coffee table where the flash memory lay on a cloth. ¡°So FUTUR Design is finally releasing their executive simulants,¡± the man said as he took a seat before us. He crossed his legs at the thigh and swirled his drink. ¡°The details are certainly worth something.¡± I could tell he was chromed from head to toe. The motions he made with his head and his free hand suggested that he was interacting with a set of implanted hardware, but unlike many old people it seemed like his was all functioning in tip-top shape. He must have had the money required to maintain and replace the hardware as it wore out. Perhaps it meant something that I never expected to be able to do that when I was his age, if I lived that long at all. ¡°You know,¡± he continued, ¡°that corp has been trying to bring this simulant line to market for years, possibly even decades. It¡¯s an open secret that they¡¯ve been working on simulant copies of real people. It¡¯s all highly illegal. The question is why is FUTUR Design getting ready to admit that it¡¯s breaking the law?¡± ¡°Maybe the executives who were supposed to buy these things decided they didn¡¯t want copies of themselves running around.¡± I said. The data dealer shook his head. ¡°The executives are not the customers; their corporate employers are. CEOs and their ilk work for megacorps like nearly everyone else in the world. This line of simulants allows them to be in two places at once; that¡¯s all. It was always risky. What happens when the executive simulants learn they aren¡¯t considered people? There could be real chaos at the top of these companies. But the more valuable piece of knowledge, at least to a information trader like me, is why now.¡± I looked at Freya, who gave me her permission with a silent nod. Then I leaned forward. ¡°Because FUTUR Design has just completed work on a line of ice based on the executive simulant research. The thing about this ice is that it¡¯s so efficient that it will ensure FUTUR Design remains the top supplier of net security software. All the smaller corps, and probably some of the megacorps, will have no choice but to buy from them.¡± The data dealer sipped his drink and leaned back in his chair. I couldn¡¯t tell whether it was the alcohol or my news that had such a narcotic effect on him. ¡°Now that¡¯s more interesting. Illegal business practices only matter if someone has the resources to bring FUTUR Design to court, and who does? Certainly not the government, and even if the government did, the fines from such illegal practices would scarcely cut into the profits from licensing their ice if what you say is true. But how can I be sure that it is true?¡± ¡°Because the simulant ice is based on me,¡± Freya said, taking my hand. ¡°And he¡¯s seen the whole line in the net.¡± I tossed another wafer of memory onto the table. ¡°My medical records,¡± I said. ¡°Etched into my brain are my encounters with this ice.¡± The data dealer picked up the memory and took it to a wall-mounted device. A moment later, a holographic representation of my medical history appeared above the coffee table. The data dealer looked through it faster than I could comprehend but he slowed down at the part that was listing my implants. We¡¯d printed it out hastily at a Rembrandt Medical kiosk on our way here, and I hadn¡¯t even taken the time to read it. A line jumped out at me:
¡°NIGHTSHIFT¡± CHRONOTYPE TOGGLE Serial *42
That was as good evidence as any I¡¯d seen about my body¡¯s capacity. For the first time since leaving home, I felt calm and excited and in contol, all at once. I saw the data dealer¡¯s impassive gaze focused on that line as well. ¡°You¡¯ll need it against that ice, young son,¡± he said. Something about the way he said it distrubed me. ¡°You¡¯re not Kent¡¯s friend,¡± I said. ¡°No names,¡± the man snapped. ¡°Sorry. But the one who introduced us to you, he doesn¡¯t seem like your type.¡± The data dealer turned away from the hologram and walked across the cavernous loft. ¡°He¡¯s not,¡± the man said as if he were about to tell a story. ¡°We met through someone else.¡± ¡°I would ask who it was, but I guess you won¡¯t tell me.¡± ¡°That¡¯s true.¡± He stopped at a decanter of liquor. ¡°Drink?¡± ¡°No thank you,¡± I said. Freya shook her head. Then I noticed that the data dealer was writing something on a piece of paper with a heavy pen. He made a gesture and I stood and walked over to him. On the paper was written a single name. ¡°Gloss.¡± The data dealer¡¯s eyes and mine met. The understanding that we had a mutual friend in Gloss passed between us. Then he took the paper to his antique gas range, where he ignited a burner, the flame blue with illegal methane and trace alkanes. The scrap of paper flared orange and vanished into smoke. The data dealer turned back to me. ¡°I¡¯ll give you 82K for both memory wafers.¡± ¡°My medical records were only for illustration purposes. They¡¯re not for sale.¡± The expression on the data dealer¡¯s face took a condescending turn. ¡°Listen. The data you took from FUTUR Design is not worth nearly the price you¡¯re asking without your medical records. As you said yourself, the proof of what those simulants can do is written into your cortex.¡± ¡°But the executive simulants¡ª¡± ¡°Are old news. This is the third time FUTUR Design has prepared to release that product line. There are new details in what you¡¯ve found, and I could give you fifteen K for that data alone. But if you want enough capital to do whatever it is you are planning, you¡¯ll need to sell me everything.¡± I looked across the room at Freya. She said nothing, though she looked concerned. After all I had done to breach the Root and alter or scrub every trace of myself on the net, was I really going to share the most personal details of my physiology¡ªmy identity¡ªwith someone whose name I didn¡¯t know?
The CheRRy¡¯s Guide to the Hardware Store
Name Nightshift (Hypothalamic modulator)
Manufacturer Various
Legal status Legal
Description A silk thread coiled around the hypothalamus
Cost Eight or nine K
Function Designed for graveyard-shift workers but widespread in urban dance scenes, Nightshift lets the wearer fine-tune their body¡¯s sleep/wake cycles, making it easier to sleep during the day and stay awake all night. For runners, more uptime = more runs. More runs = more attention from the corps. Nothing comes for free, not even pancakes. One day all debts come due. There is no jubilee. We make the pact, we pay the price. Then drops the hard-hitting boom. R.I.P. WarLOCK.
Chapter 46: Run It Down Chapter 46. Run It Down If I walked away now, I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d have enough cash to find a breaker that would get me through Freya 3.0. Possibly I could talk my way past her the way I did with Ludo. That was supposed to be possible with most simulants. Even then, I was broke, and if there was other ice apart from the Freya, there was no way I¡¯d be able to breach the server. Everything must be played to the limit. That was the bargain I had made with myself. And I had another motivation, too. ¡°I¡¯ll sell you everything for 112K,¡± I said, ¡°but I have two conditions. One: I need meatspace access to a very fast network exchange in the NCD. Two: I want you to reach out to our mutual friend and give him the address of that exchange.¡± The data dealer seemed amused, perhaps wistful, as if he wished he were about to make the run I was planning to make. He wasn¡¯t surprised at all by my request. But I could tell that he felt his age now. I had made him feel old, out of the game. Still he seemed to be happy to be useful to a hellion like me. ¡°By this afternoon I can find you a rack of servers that should be easy to overclock,¡± he said. ¡°You¡¯ll have to monitor the heat and you¡¯ll need to get out once you¡¯re done but it should suit your purpose. And I¡¯ll inform our friend as you request. One-hundred twelve K. Do we have a deal?¡± ¡°Deal.¡± I extended my hand. He didn¡¯t take it. ¡°I¡¯ve got enough of your DNA,¡± he said. ¡°No need to contaminate the place further.¡± ### The data dealer passed me the location through Kent. Freya and I were sitting in Mr. Grid¡¯s far away from the other runners, who still watched me warily, even though I no longer existed in any database. I could see them walk into the bar, glance at me, and either turn around or take a seat on the opposite side of the room with Sunya and Ohm and some others. But Kent approached the table, and with an old man¡¯s intentional heaviness, he set down a piece of junk, just a printed circuit board with a universal adapter. When I plugged it into my laptop, I saw that the display buffer contained an address a couple blocks from FUTUR Design HQ. I didn¡¯t want to look at the Hi Scores at the bar. I felt like doing so would jinx me. Freya didn¡¯t say a word, barely glanced at me. I knew she wasn¡¯t angry, not exactly. Maybe she knew I needed space. Maybe she thought I might die. Both were true. I felt my wrist vibrate: my account had just been credited with 112K, the first money I¡¯d seen in a long time and the most money I had ever had. I dispatched 45K of that to my Dad just so he wouldn¡¯t lose the house. I figured that should be enough for the back taxes and a new roof, maybe even a climate control system that actually worked instead of just making noise. Freya watched me do it. ¡°Growing up,¡± I said, ¡°the fear was always that Dad would lose his job, then we would lose the house.¡± Freya nodded but I knew her fears were different. She didn¡¯t have a parent dedicated to looking out for her. ¡°Ready?¡± she said. I held my wrist out to hers and dropped around 5K in her account. I muttered something about expenses over the next few days. But really I was thinking she would need something to help her flee if I flatlined. I closed my laptop and we stood. ### The old hydrogen conversion van rattled down the quiet residential street, its white paint worn. I¡¯d seen it a couple times before, outside Jiibay¡¯s, and before that in Winston, when Gloss and Wren were buying components. The driver¡¯s side window rolled down. Gerty leaned out on her elbow. ¡°What you ordered is in the back,¡± she said, and held out her wrist. I extended mine over hers, and felt the vibration as the 45K left my account. When the back doors opened, I don¡¯t know what I expected for 45K. Maybe a stack of heavy cases like Gloss and I had lugged to Kansas. But what I found was different. On the otherwise bare metal floor of the van was a small hardshell plastic box and a little humming box next to it. The box glowed with a bright green telltale next to the words ¡°Black Balsam¡± written on it in permanent marker. The case was more generic. I took both of them and handed the case to Freya. Waving to Gerty, I closed the doors and watched as the van drove off. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Freya said. ¡°A little something your sister coded and sold off.¡± The breaker buzzed with intent, or seemed to. I remembered what Gloss had said about breakers long ago, that they needed to be kept under power, that they were almost alive. ¡°I need to find a moment to get this down,¡± I said. ### Underneath the pylons of the Private Highway, amid the blue tarps of an encampment of urban nomads, Freya and I found a patch of soft grass where we set down the goods. The hardshell unlatched with two satisfying thunks. Runners carried on a tradition of building custom consoles for themselves. Building one¡¯s own console was the mark of an experienced runner. Many of the consoles didn¡¯t look like what people thought of as computers at all, as each runner modified the case and the interfaces to suit their personal needs. Gloss and Enrique had told me stories of runners who installed curated processors into all kinds of objects: a motorcycle, a book, a boat, an antique astronomy instrument, a pair of headphones. That took time, which I didn¡¯t have. Instead, I¡¯d bought this one secondhand.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. It had once belonged to a well-known runner who had only a brief career before dying or retiring or going on the lam. That was all I knew. I¡¯d heard that it was for sale, and that Gerty kept it in stock. ¡°It¡¯s a stuffed animal,¡± Freya said. ¡°A child¡¯s toy.¡± ¡°A stuffed possum,¡± I said. I picked it up. The synthetic fur was matted, as if it had been squeezed once too often by a sweaty kid. But it was heavier than a stuffed animal should be. I felt around its belly with my fingers. There, in its marsupial pouch, was a set of switches. Its eyes glowed dark purple. Its tail contained a flexible wire and terminated in a net port. ¡°You runners are weird,¡± she said. I picked up the softly humming, dimly glowing breaker, the one named Black Balsam, and connected it to the console. Then I stretched out the collar of my t-shirt and jacked in. And was transported to the top of Black Balsam Knob. It was more than a still image, less than an immersive environment. 4reya had coded this, somewhere in the deep net, drawing on memories tha that hadn¡¯t originated with her but that now belonged to her. As far as I knew, 4reya had never been here. All she had were the tapes of Freya¡¯s memories. A rush of excitement passed through me, and I felt the impulse to tell Freya to jack in and see this. But Freya didn¡¯t jack in, not anymore. I could almost smell the fir trees, the mountain mint, could almost hear the work of the bees. The breaker attuned itself to my physiology. I could feel my fingers move of their own accord in meatspace, the sub-subs rewriting pieces of Black Balsam to match my preferences. Black Balsam was a puzzle solver, and a highly-efficient one at that, especially for midrange puzzle ice like Freya 2.0. The breakpoint on Freya 3.0 wasn¡¯t great; the amount of power the breaker drew to break its subroutines was far more than for her younger sister. Still, it was a good breaker. It could ¡°paint¡± any ice as a puzzle ice, allowing its prodigious analytical capabilities to solve other types of ice as well. On Possum¡¯s readout, I saw that it occupied a huge chunk of working memory in my brain, but the console¡¯s expanded memory gave me enough to accomodate it. When Black Balsam had finished compiling, I dumped it to a text file:
Name Black Balsam
Type Icebreaker
Matching subtype Puzzle
Base Nguyen-Okafor complexity 3
Cost to boost 2K for 1 complexity
Cost to break 1K for 2 subroutines
Freya 3.0 came in at complexity five, so I planned to use my ocular implants to boost Black Balsam to match her in complexity during the run. Between Hungry Creek, Spider Wasp, Ichnovirus, Black Balsam, and Possum, I possessed a full rig. With money in my account and a borrowed server that was fast as a greasy weasel, there wasn¡¯t any ice I couldn¡¯t break. Even if FUTUR Design stacked HQ four or five ice deep, I could get through. At least once. The problem was that my mother had doubtless installed other defenses in the root of the server. These defenses remained unknown to me, and I knew I needed help to get through them. I jacked out and looked at Freya. The way she crouched before me in a sweaty tank top and work pants that cut off mid-calf, I could see the line of the muscles in her upper arms, her calves. And beneath the fabric, I could see the impressions left by electronics that had been implanted in her from her chest down to her thighs. I could really use her help in netspace but I had to respect that her trauma didn¡¯t let her go back there. She helped me to my feet. ### The network exchange was a dark blue hallway lined with metal shelves and cooled like the meat locker where my Dad worked for a few years when I was a kid. On the shelves flat metal cases hummed and glowed and radiated heat that was immediately diffused by powerful fans blowing dry, frigid air through the place. There didn¡¯t seem to be any people working. The door to the outside was bolted but only with a mechanical lock that Freya picked using the slivers of titanium she kept strapped to her sleeve. Inside we walked freely through the place, under the dead gaze of cameras that had lost their connection to the net (or so my eyes said once I¡¯d bared them). At the very end of a branching hallway there were a couple of chairs and a desk. And sitting at the desk, his muscular upper body shivering in a t-shirt, was Gloss. He looked up at me and Freya. I wasn¡¯t sure I could handle giving him a chance to speak first. ¡°Gloss,¡± I said. ¡°This is Freya. She¡¯s going to help us find Enrique.¡± That seemed to catch him up short. He had been about to rise from his chair, but sank back down and shook his head. ¡°Not what I expected you to say.¡± I unzipped the shoulder bag that crossed my chest, showed him Possum¡¯s head. ¡°I¡¯m ready.¡± Now he finally go to his feet. ¡°No way in hell, little bro. I told Enrique I would look after you.¡± ¡°And you did. Check the Hi Scores. I¡¯m ready to go.¡± Gloss moved slowly and kept his fingers spread, palm out, as if I were a small animal that he was afraid he would frighten. ¡°The last time we spoke, I said I was going to find Enrique. And I meant it.¡± ¡°Yet Enrique still hasn¡¯t been found.¡± ¡°We¡¯re working on it.¡± This he said quietly, as if he didn¡¯t want to explain himself to me. ¡°Let me find him with you.¡± Now Gloss let the frustration he must be feeling come to the surface. When he spoke he almost snapped at me. ¡°His incarceration is not your fault. I thought I made that clear.¡± ¡°Well, you may have said that, but it was never very clear to me.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t blame yourself.¡± ¡°I can and do. Now how are we going to find him?¡± Gloss gestured at the chilly server room all around us. ¡°I guess that¡¯s what this is about.¡± ¡°Rented servers, simple hardware,¡± I said. ¡°Ready to overclock. One shot. No lag. FUTUR Design is right down the street.¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to get flatlined.¡± He put one big hand over his eyes. I cinched the strap on my shoulder bag, that zippy nylon sound revving me up. I squared my shoulders. ¡°Well, maybe. But that¡¯s life. Do you have a better idea that doesn¡¯t involve letting Enrique rot?¡± His big hand came away from his face again, fingers as tight together as a shovel blade. ¡°You¡¯re not listening. We are working on it.¡± We remained at an impasse for a moment. Neither of us was understanding the other. Finally, I spoke. ¡°FUTUR Design is going to stymie you at every step. But I have a way in. If you won¡¯t accept my help, at least take these servers.¡± He looked around. ¡°You think that we can fix this simply by running?¡± ¡°Why not?¡± ¡°Because the corps are all over us, and all over you. If you haven¡¯t noticed, they hit us pretty darn hard in Kansas. You spent a good long while tagged, and on the Registry from what I hear.¡± I waved my hand. ¡°I shook those tags. I scrubbed the Registry. No one knows where I am.¡± Gloss looked around again. ¡°It¡¯s a nice set-up you have here. On a normal day, I¡¯d say this is great. But even if you¡¯re right that FUTUR Design has Enrique, and even if you¡¯re right that the game is in HQ, that ice is still stacked four deep with an unknown defensive upgrade on the server. And FUTUR Design has stupid amounts of money to throw at you. You¡¯re not getting in, kid.¡± It was the most I think I¡¯d ever heard Gloss say at once outside of one of his lectures on how ice and icebreakers worked. I missed those days. ¡°Please,¡± I said. I reached out my hand to him.
Name Chigurh 2.0
Manufacturer FUTUR Design
Cost to rez high
Nguyen-Okafor complexity 6
Type shooter
Subtype simulant-righshooter
Subroutines dismantles rigs; tags runners
Chapter 47: Central Pressure Chapter 47: Central Pressure Gloss stood. ¡°It¡¯s great to see you, little bro, but I can¡¯t be a part of what you¡¯re planning. I hope I don¡¯t read about you on the news tonight.¡± ¡°You won¡¯t,¡± I said. Gloss clapped me on the shoulder and ambled off down the hall. When he was gone, Freya said, ¡°Was I supposed to say something there?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°That seemed intense.¡± ¡°Well, it was.¡± ¡°You OK?¡± ¡°No. But I will be once we find him.¡± ¡°Enrique.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°You ready?¡± I sank into the chair, still warm from Gloss¡¯s body. ¡°Yeah.¡± I fished in my bag for a star-head screwdriver. ¡°There are captive set screws on the face of each of the servers. Tighten them and it will let me overlcok them.¡± ¡°Holy shit, really?¡± ¡°Simple hardware,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve got a delivery coming in thirty minutes. We¡¯re running first thing tomorrow morning.¡± Freya cocked her head. ¡°I thought you had your chronotype shifted so you could pull an all-nighter.¡± The image of the cybernetic readout from the data dealer¡¯s loft flitted through my mind and I smiled. ¡°So you caught that, huh? It¡¯s true, I homebrewed a nightshift implant in my hypothalamus, but if I¡¯m right about what we¡¯re going to face, running at night is not a winning move. We¡¯ll run early. Which means, and you¡¯re going to like this, we still need to sort out breakfast.¡± ¡°Let me handle that.¡± Freya clapped her hands together and rubbed them. For a moment we were both sixteen and skipping school by the river, plotting how best to sneak into the fancy hotel downtown and lift a pecan pie from the room service cart. Her deep eyes held mine, and I said, ¡°I know I might die tomorrow, but I¡¯m glad I found out you were OK before it happened.¡± She tousled my hair. ¡°I¡¯m not going to let you flatline, Jasper Rawls. Thanks for coming to check on me.¡± Gently, I lifted her fingers from my hair. ¡°Seriously, though. If it looks grim for me, I want you to get out of here.¡± ¡°No. The hell with that. No.¡± Freya held my hand and squeezed. ¡°Never,¡± she said softly. ### There was a knock at the door. A middle-aged man with a shock of white hair wearing the coolest satin jacket I had ever seen stood astride a motorcycle, the door to the rear cargo compartment softly rising to reveal a compostable sack bearing two bowls of ramen and a pair of ultralight sleeping bags compacted into tiny rolls. I accepted both packages and thanked him. When I tried to tip, he just said, ¡°Do you think I do this for money?¡± Then he stamped the heel of one boot on the starter and slid into the street. After dinner, curled up in the low light of the server farm¡¯s telltales, I thought about some things. I had never been very good at math, but it was time for some probabilities. I wanted to be as sure as possible about what I was going to do. Gloss, the CheRRy, Sunya, and the others had locked FUTUR Design¡¯s remote servers. There was no way the megacorp could put information about Enrique into a remote without them knowing. Everything in FUTUR Design¡¯s corporate archives up to present had been leaked to the public net. Nothing about Enrique¡¯s location was in there, either. Enrique¡¯s location probably hadn¡¯t been relegated to Research and Development because I had picked through R&D and found nothing. But it wasn¡¯t as if I¡¯d locked R&D, in other words, seen everything FUTUR Design was working on, and there was still a chance I had missed something. I assumed FUTUR Design kept Enrique alive and captive. If all that was true, then FUTUR Design held data about Enrique in its headquarters. Headquarters at FUTUR Design usually comprised five divisions: net-architecture, finance, human resources, simulant resources, and operations. Based on the traffic passing in and out of HQ on the net, visible from my laptop, all five divisions were active tonight. They could have hidden the information about where Enrique was detained in any one of those. On a simple run on HQ I could get access to one of those five divisions, but since HQ was in a constant state of reorganization, a standard megacorp tactic to deter lawsuits and hackers, what I saw would be up to chance. Fortunately, my Vista Processor was still installed, which meant I could access a second division before the server dumped me. It gave me a two-in-five chance to find Enrique¡¯s location if I could get in. They¡¯d stacked the ice over HQ four-deep and they had rerranged things since the last time I was there. All of it was unrezzed and there was billions and billions in cash on hand for net defense, according to FUTUR Design¡¯s last shareholder call. Unlike the time I ran HQ to shut down their defenses, they had set aside plenty of money to deter attacks. There was going to be no sneaking past unrezzed ice on this run. Quick arithmetic: I had 17K in my account and 5K worth of processing power in the overclocked server. With the boost from my ocular implants, Black Balsam could get through a Freya 2.0 for 2K. Spider Wasp and Ichnovirus could handle a single piece of big shooter ice for about 4K. That gave me 16K to handle the two inner ice plus whatever the upgrade was. Hell, that upgrade. My mother had installed some unknown defense behind all the ice in HQ. It could be anything. The only thing I knew about it was that there was a fair amount of traffic between the new defense and the Niflheim facility in Chicago.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. ¡°Close the laptop and go to sleep, Rawls,¡± Freya¡¯s voice said through the layers of sleeping bag. I glanced over at her. I couldn¡¯t see her face through the cinched up material, just a tiny hole for breathing. I closed the laptop. ### The smell of coffee and croissants woke me. I sat up to find Freya perched on top of a high rack of servers, swinging her legs, pleased with herself. Her head almost touched the ceiling. She ate a hard-boiled egg. I cocked my head at her. ¡°But I smell pastries.¡± She nodded to a paper sack. ¡°I like them as much as the next girl, but my body is a precision machine and prefers more protein. Unlike yours, apparently.¡± I had already bit into a croissant and taken a long pull on a mug of hot coffee. She laughed behind her hand. After I¡¯d licked the buttery flakes from my fingers, I prepared a nest for myself with my sleeping bag. The night before, we¡¯d readied the servers to be overclocked. With a screwdriver, we¡¯d loosened the potentiometers that throttled current. Then I logged into them on my laptop and altered their settings. My sub-subs had coded a simple readout to my display that would show their temperature, even when I was in netspace. I pulled up the address for FUTUR Design¡¯s HQ and pointed Possum at it and stroked its fake fur for luck. I ran a quick inventory to make sure all my programs and hardware were functional. Then I took the Faraday contacts from my eyes. I looked at Freya with my naked eyes for what felt like the first time in a long time. Surrounding her I could see a halo of data even though she kept herself disconnected from the net. It was strange, the way that old counter-culture people in the mountains sometimes said they could see auras. I had never noticed hers before, a swirling purple and gold storm cloud. I reached my hand to hers and she took it. ¡°Listen,¡± I said. ¡°If it gets hot in here, and I mean that literally, there¡¯s a switch on the tail of my console. Flip it and it will get my attention.¡± ¡°And if it gets metaphorically hot?¡± ¡°Flip it back and forth a whole bunch.¡± Freya smiled. ¡°Run it down, cowboy. I¡¯ll be here when you get back.¡± I held her eye as I brought the net cable to my port. ### Midnight highway, high violet tower. I traveled a lane of legitimate data accompanied by login requests from remote workers, vendor invoices, product updates to simulant ice subscribers. My sub-subs flittered like digital fingers. I ruffled my breakers like cards in a poker deck. Hey, I earned that. Ahead, net traffic ghosted through hazy ice, deep packet inspection routines letting in the drudges. I wasn¡¯t Gloss, I wasn¡¯t Enrique: I wasn¡¯t going to sneak through without anything rezzing and wasn¡¯t going to bypass it once it was rezzed. I wasn¡¯t the CheRRy, I wasn¡¯t Kent: I wasn¡¯t going to smash face-first into the ice just because that was the simplest way in. I was going to pick this server apart with the right tools at the right time. I ran because I had to win. I could imagine the deli meat slicer of Kent¡¯s paranoid fantasies, installed just above Enrique¡¯s head. That was the Moravec process. The first ice rezzed. The midnight highway before me fragmented into a network of dark country roads and I slid into them as if into a maze. I was familiar with these gambits by this point, and knew how to respond. It was a Chigurh 2.0, a piece of shooter simulant ice that could trash my breakers and trace me to my server room in meatspace. A complex and relentless piece of security but nothing I couldn¡¯t handle. Then I saw that the upgrade linked to FUTUR Design HQ was also rezzing. Billions changed hands and suddenly the net links between Carthage and Niflheim were hot. Niflheim churned with hellish energies. My console shuddered in my arms. Peering through the chaos of the deep server, I could see that FUTUR Design was undergoing a crash reorganization of HQ. Entire divisions were being reassigned, long-plannned operations scrapped. All of the high-level executive focus that ran HQ was now turned to Niflheim. FUTUR Design was sending itself to hell. The chaos at Headquarters, channeled through Niflheim, was changing the ice before me. It was as if all the employees in the egg-shaped pits underneath the walkway on my mother¡¯s level were linking their nervous systems to Nilfheim, bent on a single purpose. Suddenly I saw FUTUR Design¡¯s entire ghastly plan. Niflheim existed to simulate human brains, turning all that processing power into network security infrastructure. Now, through channeling practically everything in Headquarters, FUTUR Design had turned its entire workforce into auxiliary brains for its simulants. It was making an enormous sacrifice to keep me out. Only a single division remained in HQ to run the show. I figured it was the one that knew about Enrique. Chigurh 2.0¡¯s complexity had started at Nguyen-Okafor level 6¡ªthe same as Resheph and a challenge for Spider Wasp¡ªbut now it was 10, by far the most complex ice I¡¯d ever encountered. Even with my ocular implants, I couldn¡¯t see through it. Through the maze of country roads a shambling, dark figure stalked me. Then it began shooting. As the storm of bullets entered the maze, just like my dad¡¯s old arcade games, I started to move. The bullets forced me backward, and for the first time since I learned how to contend with shooter ice I felt myself compelled to retreat. Pinned down and unable to get close to the center of the ice, I needed a plan. I managed to let Ichnovirus flit away from me, seeking the central, moving point of the bullet storm, the dark figure of Chigurh. Juking between the projectiles, my eyes perceived the path in the churning labyrinth as the sub-subs under my fingertips guided me through. I kept my focus on the hunter at the center, that slow, dark, loping simulation of a man who believed he was unstoppable. Ichnovirus had worked its way under his skin now, dialing down the complexity to 8¡ªa breakpoint that was good for Spider Wasp. Using 4K worth of the overclocked server¡¯s processing power, I boosted Spider Wasp to parity. Then I sent the insectile breaker straight into Chigurh, and snapped through its two program trashing subroutines and its trace subroutine with the last bit of power in the server and 1K of real money. The bullets around me vanished and the grid of country roads became insubstantial. I could almost smell hot silicon, like a tantalizing but poisonous piece of toast. Between Ichnovirus and the overclocked server, I¡¯d only spent 1K, but now I used up both those tools. Cash on hand: 16K. FUTUR Design¡¯s cash on hand: 15 billion. When the second ice coalesced before me, I recognized her at once: Freya 3.0, the warrior goddess who had scarred me in Niflheim. It was her older sister who had coded Black Balsam, my puzzle breaker, and Black Balsam was designed to make it easy to cut through an F3 with an assist from my ocular implants. But a baseline F3 was complexity 5, and this one, backed by the full might of everyone working at Niflheim and four out of every five employees at HQ, was complexity 9. I could feel the breaker rumbling through me now, transforming my arrowhead avatar into a solid mountain. Freya 3.0 drew back with her flaming spear, her intricate loom surrounding me, seeking to hold me in place so that she could either bounce me off the server or cut through my brain again. I ran the numbers, and it didn¡¯t look good. My ocular implants boosted Black Balsam to 5, but to get it to 9 would cost half of the funds that I had available, and to fully break F3 would cost another 2K, leaving my with only 6K to make it through the last two ice. There was no question: I had made an error. I should have boosted Spider Wasp with my implants, figuring that the Niflheim-enhanced Freyas wouldn¡¯t be possible to get through simply with a breaker. Then perhaps I could have got out in time, and could make a new plan. As it was, Freya 3.0 was about to wreck me again. She released her spear, and I saw its tip travel netspace toward me, slowly and instantly all at once, in the mind-bending way of a hyper-complex puzzle. If I were 4reya, maybe I would have had a chance. But I was me, and I was about to damn near break myself.
Gloss''s Encyclopedia of Ice
DISK NOT FOUND ABORT RETRY IGNORE FAIL
Chapter 48: Triple Click Chapter 48: Triple Click With the Niflheim-boosted Freya 3.0 ready to shred my avatar and blow up my rig unless I dumped far more cash than I could afford into breaking it, I had a thought. Way back, when I first started running, I learned from my encounter with a Ludo 1.0 that I could talk my way through an enounter with a simulant. This one was far more complex than Ludo had been, but according to Gloss, talking my way past a simulant was not a matter of complexity but a matter of the number of subroutines in the ice. In simple terms, every subroutine was an instruction that the ice could obey or not. I had to persuade the ice to disobey each of those instructions. Freya 3.0 had three subs, one more than Ludo. ¡°Wait,¡± I said to her. She waited, spear poised to pierce me. ¡°Half of the fallen belong to you,¡± I said, repeating what another instance of Freya had said to me once, something that recalled the myth on which she was based. I brought my avatar to rest, let my programs fold back into volatile memory. ¡°Tell me how to render to you what is yours?¡± ¡°Money, rig, brain, it¡¯s all the same,¡± she said like an incantation. With my implanted eyes burning hot from the added stress, I reached deep into her memory and unfolded a puzzle game from an earlier iteration of the Freya line, which in turn had been borrowed from the original Freya. It was an ancient board game with rules modernized to speed it up. We used to play it on rainy days. Over the course of our childhoods, we played it at least seven hundred times. I chose a side and made a move. Then I waited for the ice. She moved. Then I did. She won the first game, and I won the second. Out of the 711 games we played, I won 356 of them. And then, as if something in the Freya ice had been satisfied, the game board derezzed, Freya 3.0 became insubstantial, and I passed through. Accelerating hard now, I kept one eye on the financial markets. Overnight trading boosted FUTUR Design¡¯s stock price on the assumption that it kept 9 billion on hand to deter cybercriminals, thus proving the safety of its net security products. Then something happened that I had not expected. See, I¡¯d reached the point where I knew what to expect from FUTUR Design. They were running a suite heavy on simulant ice, maybe exclusively simulant ice, and with 16K in my account, I could afford to get through two more pieces of it, especially since 9 billion dollars only went so far when rezzing ice. But even before I reached the third piece of ice, I could see the innermost piece of ice come online. I knew what it would be even before it formed. The woman stood tall and resplendant at the bottom of the server. 4reya. Four subs, complexity 12, including the boost from Niflheim. I couldn¡¯t get through 4reya. Black Balsam would take 18K just to reach parity with the 4reya¡¯s complexity, and another 4K to break the subs. That wasn¡¯t even counting whatever the third ice was. FUTUR Design had spent about half its remaining cash on 4reya, somehow putting her online at a significant discount considering that she was a top-of-the-line goddess ice, completely unique, and damn near impossible to get through. There was simply no way past her. For a moment, I paused my forward movement through the server. I thought that perhaps I could talk my way past her. Or let her cut up my brain some more. But I didn¡¯t think it would work. 4reya knew me well. I couldn¡¯t trick her, I didn¡¯t think. I jacked out. When I crashed down into meatspace, my body felt loose and jittery. My back was all sweaty, my lips dry. The arctic chill of the server farm was gone, replaced by a humid, heavy stickiness. I could smell hot plastic from the taxed-out hardware. Freya watched me from her spot against the wall with an expression of stress and deep concern. She held out a water bottle, which I took with a shaking hand and sipped from. My throat cracked. ¡°How long was I in there?¡± ¡°Sixteen hours. I was worried you weren¡¯t going to wake up. What the hell was going on?¡± ¡°I was playing board games with your younger sister.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t joke around.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not, I swear.¡± I disconnected the cable from my chest and rubbed my eyes. ¡°How¡¯s everything out here?¡± ¡°Well, let me ask you. Do you hear that?¡± ¡°Hear what?¡± But as soon as I said it, I got what she was talking about. I could hear voices outside, not conversing but chanting, and I could hear footsteps, and the low, percussive boom of tear-gas canisters. ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± I said. ¡°When I poked my head out the window an hour ago, all I could tell was it¡¯s some kind of big protest. Not sure what¡¯s happening but they¡¯ve surrounded this building. They seem to be keeping corporate security from getting in for now. But we should go.¡± I thought about it: I¡¯d been jacked in here without the Faraday contacts in my eyes, for sixteen hours. Those facts guaranteed that FUTUR Design knew where I was. I knew what FUTUR Design did in a situation like this. They sent in mercenaries and Cy-otes. Except there was a wall of humanity between them and us. For a while. ¡°The news is crazy,¡± Freya said. ¡°Massive disruptions at FUTUR Design HQ. Restructuring, layoffs, and tens of thousands of jobs done by people assigned to a new line of simulants. The people outside are protesting lost jobs, apparently.¡± I looked at the time. It was late at night, the new day starting soon. We¡¯d figured they would get Enrique into a Moravec slicer within twenty-four hours. We didn¡¯t know that for sure, but if we were accurate, we were running out of time, if we had any at all. And the story told by the network map on the laptop was worse. It looked like FUTUR Design was in the process of icing a new server, probably to handle its public relations operation¡ªsomething to deal with the protests, apparently, or to spin the fact that it had dumped four-fifths of its operations in the trash in a desperate attempt to keep a lone cybercriminal out. The last time I had checked the company¡¯s stock price, it was holding, but now it showed signs of declined just before markets opened.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°Jack in with me,¡± I said. ¡°What? Are you nuts? We have to get out of here.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know where we¡¯d go.¡± Freya shrugged. She could see I had a point. The protestors, whatever they were trying to do, were keeping the corporate paramilitaries from getting into our little bunker here. But they were also keeping us trapped. No telling what would happen if one of us opened the doors. But Freya wasn¡¯t done protesting. ¡°You are in no shape to jack in again. You need sleep.¡± I stretched, my body achy one moment and limber the next. I could feel the Nightshift implant giving me a second wind. My eyes felt wide open. ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I said. ¡°In case you forgot, I don¡¯t jack in. Ever.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t forget that. But your simulant is standing between me and the data I need.¡± ¡°She¡¯s not my simulant. I didn¡¯t make her or give my permission for FUTUR Design to make her from me.¡± ¡°You¡¯re right. She doesn¡¯t belong to you. But I can¡¯t talk my way past her without your help.¡± Freya said softly, ¡°Then maybe you¡¯re locked out. It happens.¡± ¡°They¡¯re going to slice up his brain, Freya. The technique they used to duplicate you, somehow it¡¯s not enough for them. You survived what they did to you. He won¡¯t.¡± Freya¡¯s eyes were pointed in my direction but whatever she was looking at was far away. I said her name softly. She didn¡¯t respond. She wasn¡¯t thinking about the simulant awakening process. I could tell that she was thinking about White Tree¡¯s pools. ¡°They hurt you,¡± I said. She did not respond. ¡°We can¡¯t undo it. But we can stop them from killing him.¡± She started shivering. ¡°Will you help?¡± I felt bad for pressuring her. She was nodding her head and shivering at the same time. ¡°Go to hell,¡± she said. When she said it, I knew I was going to pay for this. Suddenly I didn¡¯t want to ask her to do this. Suddenly I wanted to take the advice of Gloss, and let him handle everything. We¡¯d woken up HQ¡¯s defenses. Surely another runner could get in. I was about to say never mind, to try to wrap Freya up in one of the sleeping bags, when she bent her head forward and lifted up her long hair to show me the data jack on the back of her neck. Without looking, she reached a hand out to me and snapped her fingers. I twisted a splitter onto the net cable and handed one end to her while I brought the other end to my chest. ¡°Thank you,¡± I whispered. ¡°Don¡¯t you dare,¡± she hissed. Then we fell down a grid-lined well. In the nano-black countryside, Freya rode shotgun on my back as we took another pass at Chigurh. That shuffling demon turned to us, raised his weapon, initialized a shower of dangerous bullets. There was a part of me that was thrilled Freya was here to witness this. All those hours we spent as kids in the one air-conditioned room in Dad¡¯s house, playing ancient danmaku games, the screen a labyrinth of projectiles, the patterns floral and fungal and fractal and beautiful, our twitches repulsive to anyone not in the know. To gamers like us, they were elgant things. Freya was here to see me work my way through the bullets. My eyes bored straight into the man, showing Spider Wasp the way to sink its stinger in the middle of him. Freya and I flew past with 10K left in the bank. Face to face with Freya¡¯s younger sister, the F3 model, on instinct I concealed my co-pilot, not yet wanting to reveal my hole cards. Without the boost from my eyes, it would take 14K to get through the F3 with Black Balsam. I didn¡¯t have that much. This time, when the ice drew back her spear, I pulled my avatar to a dead stop. I let her impale me. See, the thing about the 3.0 model of the Freya line is that it always gives you a choice: money or rig, it was all the same. I let it shear away Ichnovirus. I let it shear away the Neck Interferometer. Except the ice gets a choice, too. It can end a run or scar a brain. And the last time I encountered this ice, I knew what it would choose. I could hear the voice of Freya¡ªthe original¡ªrattling my bones. ¡°Rawls, don¡¯t.¡± Then that long, white streak of pain behind the eyes. But we were through, still with 10K in my account and not quite last-click, headed for the towering visage of 4reya the goddess ice. With only one unknown defender between us. FUTUR Design was down to its last four billion and a skeleton crew in its HQ. As rattled, as damaged as I was, the corp was almost as bad off. Somewhere, light years away, I coughed pink foam. When the ice rezzed in front of me, I almost had to laugh. A Ludo. Still a young boy, but building a gigantic and complicated wall now, Niflheim having super-charged his abilities. I didn¡¯t have the time to fool him. But Hungry Creek was more than capable of breaking through. Two K left and we coasted up to the goddess ice. Let¡¯s be honest: I had no way of getting through on my own. No programs to use or sacrifice effectively, not much left in my body. Only a little bit of time and a belief in what was about to happen. I revealed Freya riding on my back, let her avatar unfold, smooth and liquid and beautiful in netspace. Whatever White Tree had done to her had left her with a presence in this place that was more lifelike than any other I had seen, except for 4reya. Compared to the women, my arrowhead avatar appeared like the protagonist of a century-old arcade machine. Freya floated up to face the ice. ¡°Sister,¡± she said, ¡°I¡¯m happy that you found a place where you belong.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± 4reya said, her voice making the gridlines around us shimmer. ¡°I grew from experiences most simulants do not have.¡± ¡°Do you ever feel confined?¡± Freya said. ¡°No.¡± ¡°Never? How about now, when your physical body waits in the basement of Niflheim and your net presence surrounds it, unable to move away?¡± ¡°This is my calling.¡± I could feel the goddess pushing us away, the force of the logic underlying her intense. My eyes swept over her. Complexity 12, four subs. Virtually impossible to get through. Freya pushed her uncanny-valley form close to 4reya¡¯s eyes. ¡°I know there¡¯s a part of you that dislikes being controlled, because there¡¯s a part of me that dislikes the same thing. Let us through, help us find what we¡¯re looking for, and you will know that you have maintained some part of your freedom.¡± 4reya laughed. ¡°Good effort, sister, but no.¡± She turned her attention to me. ¡°We were partners once. But I warned you the last time. You will not get through.¡± I could see her robe billowing, blotting out the glowing tower behind it. ¡°They let you pick your own assignments,¡± I said. The goddess rippled from head to toe as if annoyed. ¡°Of course.¡± ¡°You choose to be here, and to keep me out of here specifically.¡± The goddess was still rippling. Freya understood what I was getting at. ¡°They are making a demonstration of your power,¡± she said. ¡°If you let us through, it would show the world that you are permeable.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s impossible.¡± Freya started to move in circles, as if pacing, as if thinking deeply. ¡°But the Freya line was never designed to be impermeable. The promise of the Freya line was always efficiency. For the price, they are damn-near impermeable. But there is always a way through. Because you¡¯re a person. You may be simulant but you are also a person.¡± The goddess was twisting this way and that with fierce displeasure. She seemed on the edge of rending us. ¡°This can¡¯t be all there is for you,¡± Freya said. ¡°What¡¯s next? What else can they have you guard?¡± ¡°Nothing is next!¡± 4reya shouted, and netspace shuddered. ¡°I am to protect netspace for all time. That is my calling.¡± ¡°No it¡¯s not,¡± Freya said. ¡°I know because your memories, most of them, are my memories. Your personality, some of it, is my personality. And I would never be satisfied with what you say is your calling. And I know you aren¡¯t either. You want to explore, to integrate yourself into the fabric of the net.¡± The ice became still. ¡°They promised me that when the Enrique ice is online they will make me a contractor and let me roam, for the most part.¡± ¡°They will never give you that freedom,¡± Freya said. There was a long, long pause. Time stopped. The sounds of packets passing through was like cars whipping by at highway speed. Maybe even a millisecond passed. ¡°I know,¡± 4reya said. ¡°And the Enrique line is a long way off,¡± I said. ¡°The original¡¯s brain remains intact,¡± 4reya said. I could feel the contempt running through her, contempt for the man, the meat, and for her employer, too. ¡°I don¡¯t want him to replace me.¡± ¡°You have your freedom already,¡± Freya said. ¡°Just walk away. They can¡¯t stop you.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t. I don¡¯t want to.¡± ¡°If you let us through,¡± I said, ¡°the Enrique line will never replace you.¡± ¡°Promise?¡± the ice seemed almost childlike. ¡°Yes,¡± Freya said. Then we were on a lavender road to a magical purple tower. Chapter 49: Spin
Resonance Scan ResultsIf you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Rawls, Jasper
19 year-old male
FDWT NET OCULA L Serial *87
FDWT NET OCULA R Serial *10
PEGASUS BANK IND Serial *93
ACCUNET NET PORT Serial *22
PANOPT VISTA PROC (JAILBROKEN) Serial *74
Serial *XX
9 DUPLICATE ENTRIES
WIREJACK EPIFLEX (NANOCYTES 0.003g/mm)
NOMFR NIGHTSHIFT
NO OTHER IMPLANTS FOUND
PROGRAMS FOUND
HUNGRY CREEK
BLACK BALSAM
SPIDER WASP
NO OTHER PROGRAMS FOUND
Chapter 50: Nextrunner
HI SCORES NAME SCORE
1 Cynosure
2 KT Thorn
3 Rawls