by A. Omukai
“Who made this idiot the team lead?”, she asked.
I tried not to smile, but my eyes might have betrayed me, because she did.
***
I was completely out of ideas. Even stabilized, this system wouldn’t make me happy, if I was Uehara. I’d want more than just a faster version of the chip we carried around in accessories, and for the price of being too big and unwieldy to have with me at all times. What good was a system if it sat on your desk at home? That would depend wholly on how you’d use it - so that was that. We had to make a difference.
I went in once again, using my own system, the newest, most powerful chip available on the market, upgraded to the limit. As it were, we could achieve a twenty percent increase in performance over mobile equipment, but we’d take a violent hit in reliability by going with the positronic, and a loss of mobility.
This was a failure, and we all knew it. Ishida knew it. Uehara must have known, too, so why didn’t he intervene?
I went through the source code. We pushed and pulled modules around and had the coder-AI write the lines. Maybe that was the problem? We couldn’t ask the program. It was a savant, only able to perform one function, even though with superhuman speed and precision.
I scrolled through the jungle of strings and looked for an answer, for undue loops, irrelevant checks and expensive structures.
I didn’t see anything that alarmed me. It all looked and felt alright, but then again… I couldn’t fix the crashes, that was what the debug specialists did, Inoue among others. I was a hard- and software designer, part of the team, that had put this thing together. I was also a programmer with a talent to understand code like a language, which came with my genes. My natural understanding of magic was remarkably useful in reading code. Magic was code, in a weird sense. Reprogramming reality worked in much the same way writing a program did. Nobody in this company was allowed to know about this. There was no internal ally.
I needed fresh air to clear my mind. My system cut the connection to the coding server, pulled out of the positronic, and I stood up.
“I’ll go home in time today. Sorry to leave you alone here.”
Inoue turned around in her chair and looked up.
“Don’t worry about it, and don’t let that guy push you around.” She showed me a small smile, but couldn’t hide the exhaustion from me.
“Do you want to come with me? I’ll meet with a friend of mine, I need a change of scenery.”
She shook her head. “Can’t go yet. Close to getting this one hole plugged. The thing is still leaky, but one problem at a time.”
I showed her a little bow and turned to the door. One, two, three steps. One, two, three. One, two… the distance wasn’t quite large enough, but I stepped shorter and made it fit. The doors opened with a small hiss, I bowed again and left.
***
The beat of the music in the bar went through the air directly into my bones. The back of the bar was a mirror, but I couldn’t see my face well in the dimmed, reddish light, which was a good thing. I didn’t need to look myself in the eyes today.
It was too hot, and the room was extremely humid.
I would meet with Daisuke. He was my contact from the Summer Court, a well-connected Ellyll, shape-shifted into a Japanese-looking male in his thirties. Officially, he was a childhood friend.
Now we’d meet here to exchange information, like every Friday, only that I was an hour early. I sent him a call, but he didn’t answer.
“What do you want to drink?” The bartender, a slim man with few hairs leaned in on me over the bar.
“Give me a water,” I answered.
He nodded and disappeared to the other end of the bar. I checked the news channels, but the only topic was typhoon thirty-seven, right now hitting Okinawa, on its way to Kyushu, arriving here over the weekend. I wasn’t particularly interested. Weather wasn’t relevant if you didn’t live on the surface, which few did anymore, unless they couldn’t afford housing.
My water arrived, I grabbed the glass and stood up. The bar wasn’t very busy yet, but would fill up shortly. I’d have to sit at a table soon if I wanted one, and I didn’t feel like sharing my conversation with Daisuke with the bartender or other people sitting at the counter.
The table I chose was meant for two, small but clean, and secluded enough. It was at the back wall where even the music wasn’t as loud, but still noisy enough to make listening in difficult. My system scanned the immediate environment, but couldn’t make out listening devices. This was the right place to sit and wait.
I took off my jacket, hung it over the back of my chair and checked in on Inoue, but she didn’t answer my call either. 20:35, I had left an hour ago. Maybe she was getting ready to go home. If she was still working in the lab, she’d have taken the call. I sent her a quick text instead.
“Thanks for the support today. Don’t work too long,” and closed the line.
I didn’t expect a reply, but a few minutes later a simple “Thanks” arrived.
The beat stopped when whoever had kept the music running had either left or given up on feeding the program credits. It would start again soon enough.
I connected with the bar’s system and called the menu. The Booze Exchange served not only drinks, it also had food. Not high cuisine, but serviceable enough, and of a lot better quality than their system, which had considerable input lags. Going to the food section took way too long already, scrolling through it felt sluggish. What a fitting analogy to our positronic. I picked a simple dish of sushi with some seaweed salad. The fish and the seaweed were the cheap part. Rice was costly, but I wasn’t a glutton. Just when a small robot brought me the plate, a message arrived. “Be there in a few minutes”.
My finger tapped on the table, one, two, three times. I noticed, but didn’t mind—I was alone here, surrounded by people, but nobody would watch me being me.
Daisuke’s message clocked in at exactly 21:00, the time we’d usually meet here on Fridays.
He was never on time, which was part of his cover. It surely fit his personality, too. He worked for the Summer Court, in the role of the owner of a server farm that had gotten pretty big in the past few years.
I closed the message, and the music restarted. The bar had filled up a little, was now at more than half its capacity, and this wasn’t the peak yet.
A group sat around one of the bigger tables close by. It looked like a nomikai, colleagues going out together to get drunk after work, but really a social get together for networking within the company. A relic of the past that refused to die out. I couldn’t make out who their boss was, they all looked pretty young to me, my age or younger. I counted them, but only got to nine.
“There you are!”
I jumped a little when I heard the voice. Daisuke laughed. He sat down on the other chair and took off his jacket.
“Jittery, as always. What’s up?” he asked and gazed through me.
“I’m tired.”
“Work?” His face took on a strained expression. Was he fighting through the menu?
“We can’t make it work. I knew this would happen, but they didn’t listen.”
“I told you, Makoto. You’re too gentle with that guy. Team lead or not, you can’t let him have too much control over the project.”
I picked up a piece of sushi from my plate and looked at it for a moment, then stuffed it in my mouth.
His transaction seemed done, as his eyes returned to reality.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I think the debugging OS will fail. We have to start this from scratch.”
Daisuke eyeballed me. “So things are progressing as planned?”
I hesitated for a moment. Was it going well? I hoped, but there was no guarantee, and my official role had been in the hardware’s design. My word wouldn’t count as much when it came to the making of the actual operating system.
“I don’t think this current software will do the job. We will have t
o write a new system from scratch. No way we can update it to a version that does what Uehara would want, so this is going to take a while longer, anyway.”
Daisuke’s order arrived, a plate of curry and a glass of beer. It was obvious his business was going well. The beer smelled genuine.
“Get in touch if they want to transfer you. Or if you get separated from development otherwise. I told you—”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks. Let me try to get through this alone first, please.”
Daisuke raised his glass, I raised mine, and we sat silent for a moment.
By now the bar was full, all tables taken, and no empty seats left at the bar. The air had gotten worse. It had already been bad enough, but it was so humid here, I started to sweat.
“Heard about the typhoon?” He asked.
“What about it?”
“They say this might be the biggest this year. Probably gonna go up all the way to China after it’s done with us.”
The storms had gotten to a point where moving underground had gotten cheaper than building resilient infrastructure, but this was not news. Why did he mention it? As if he had guessed my thoughts, he continued. “I was thinking, maybe I’ll get some real estate up there. It’s dirt cheap now.”
“What for?”
“The servers. They won’t need air, or windows, or sanitary installations. Just cooling. A sturdy bunker with electricity connected to the underground.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. How would you handle security up there? It’s a dangerous place.”
Daisuke swallowed the curry he had scooped up and took another sip of his beer.
“To be honest, I already made the purchase. The construction of the bunker has been underway since two weeks ago.”
He saw my look and laughed. “And you, my friend, let your boss know—I mean Uehara, not that walking fungus—what you think about your project. You can’t always sit everything out.”
I knew he was right, but he didn’t understand. He was his own boss, nobody told him what to do. I hung on strings.
I took three small sips, then cleared my throat.
“Maybe.”
I didn’t mean it.
7
Daniel
The tunnel ahead led to one of Memphis’s biggest slums near the surface. It still counted as a fine neighbourhood, compared to above ground. These people were working jobs. Not always legit jobs, but jobs.
The capsule pathway was five minutes of brisk walking away, and the leather jacket started to make Daniel feel even hotter than he already was. This close to the ground, the air took on strange qualities. It was extremely dry and carried sharp chemical smells, mostly ozone. This hadn’t originally been a residential district. The disenfranchised had taken over these abandoned industrial complexes years ago, after the church had moved all industry above ground and reserved the space below for residences.
Daniel’s steps were long and fast, as he strode through a narrow pathway up the ramp to the clinics. ‘Clinics’ were the euphemism that had stuck with the people inhabiting this part of the city.
He closed in on a steel door that was covered in rust and graffiti. It didn’t look inviting at all, even though it had been left ajar by whoever had entered or left before him, and the automatic shutting mechanism didn’t seem to work anymore.
He pulled the door open fully. The light inside the clean reception room was bright, and the pristine white walls and ground amplified his impression. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“Welcome to the Blue Pill Drug Store. Please step on the blue plate for a scan,” a synthetic voice said.
He wouldn’t follow the instructions. Instead, he strode out to the door on the opposite side of the room, past plastic plants and a white fake leather couch. The door was closed, but he hadn’t expected it to open. The scan was there for a reason.
“Please step on the blue plate for a scan.”
Daniel opened a menu and picked from a selection of anti-sec tools. He waited for a second or two, following the non-existent progress, then picked a different one. He didn’t want to use the big guns just yet.
Fortunately, this one worked, and the door opened with a clicking sound.
“What’s the meaning of… oh!”
The speaker in the room fell silent as Daniel stepped through the door.
“You could just have the scanner identify you, you know.” The short, fat heretic on the small chair in front of a desk full of paper documents coughed.
Daniel closed the door and made sure the lock was active again.
“Then we wouldn’t be here to talk now,” he said.
“At least I know now why the cameras stopped working.”
A small display in front of the desk flickered, then restored the scenery in front of the entrance.
“Happy?” Daniel asked.
The man straightened his scrub and turned around to his obviously unwelcome visitor.
“So the church found me. What do you want from me?”
The agent looked him over. The informant data had been correct, this was indeed a legit place.
“My interest in you is personal. That could change, but for now…”
The man fidgeted with a pen he had held in his hands, then slowly put it in a chest pocket, as if to gain time to think. He pointed at the patient’s chair next to his table and sighed. Daniel nodded and sat down.
“So what can I do for you, Mister…?”
“John Doe. I need drugs.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow. “A man of the church doesn’t need to come to a place like this for a simple prescription. What’s the matter?”
“The less you know, the less reason there is for me to get back to you later.”
“Listen, I don’t want to—”
Daniel made a calming gesture.
“Relax, doctor. I’m not trying to scare you. We have known your little enterprise for years. You’re serving a purpose for the church.”
A shadow of anger appeared on the doctor’s face for just a brief moment, then he nodded.
“So, what do you need?”
Daniel sat silent for a moment, collecting his thoughts before he opened his mouth to speak.
“I need a neurofeedback suppressant. It has to kick in immediately and last no longer than a few minutes, if even that long.”
The doctor’s expression changed. He pulled the pen out of his pocket again and played with it, while his eyes turned cloudy.
“This sort of drug is dangerous. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can do actual damage to—”
“I know,” Daniel said. He took a deep breath. Sitting here, wasting time with private matters, when he really should work, made him restless. He also knew the next episode would come eventually, and he needed the meds to eliminate any risks. Any risks he had control over, anyway.
“Don’t waste my time. I have a busy schedule.”
The doctor frowned and kept going.
“There’s something you could try, a drug named Amdir. It’s experimental though, a combat drug developed in Europe.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Explaining this to you won’t help, unless you’re into neuroscience?”
Daniel didn’t like the tone in the heretic’s voice, but would let it slip this time.
“Explain like I’m five,” he insisted.
“What this does is, it caps out the peaks your brain waves can achieve and slows down transmission speed inside your neural pathways. This will dampen emotions, but also perception and reaction times. The plan was to use it in situations of extreme stress, like on the battlefield, but not during moments of action, if you know what I mean.”
“Why didn’t they make this available to the market?”
“Because it doesn’t work.” The doctor grinned and leaned back. His eyes regained its focus, and he regarded Daniel with a thoughtful look.
“It dumbs you down, and it gets you killed
in combat. There’s no real scenario where a drug like this would do anything meaningful, but you asked specifically for a neurofeedback suppressant. I won’t ask you what you need it for. Just letting you know.”
“How do you use it?”
“Gas pressure, intravenous.”
Daniel was sure he’d regret his choice, but his situation was unique. He couldn’t let the doctor know he ran two chips with compatibility problems. Some things weren’t safe to put in words.
“Can you synthesize it here?” he asked.
The doctor noticed the pen in his hands and put it back into the chest pocket for the second time. He nodded.
“This won’t be cheap though.”
“Lucky you.” Now the one grinning was Daniel.
The doctor narrowed his eyes, but went to work immediately.
***
Daniel entered his capsule and programmed the course to his next destination. So far, this day had been a success.
He zoomed in and out of the hi-speed tunnel plan to get an idea which route to take. The job Fisher had given him was simple and easy, and he intended to get it done as fast as possible. He didn’t know when his actual mission would begin, but he knew he’d need some time to recuperate from his last one. His right arm still hurt from time to time after the regrowth. The skin was pink and sensitive.
“Destination set,” his system let him know and sealed the capsule.
Daniel leaned back and listened to the barely audible hum of the engine. The acceleration didn’t change the sound, but put pressure on his body.
He went through the briefing one more time. Sending a message to certain parts of those terrorists from Cascadia and the traitors working with them might or might not have the desired outcome, but that wouldn’t be his problem. His job was to let them know the church was aware of their plans and would step in. It also meant it would give them the chance to reconsider and get in touch, to buy their way out of the whole resistance idea.