by Sean Platt
The room was small and white. Inside, two Quark cops were interrogating their subject at a rather clichéd wooden table. One stood. The other sat at the table’s edge. Dominic assumed the standing one was supposed to be the bad cop, and the seated one was the friendly good cop.
Across the table was a woman who appeared to be in her twenties (though who could say these days?) who gave Dominic a tiny smile when he entered. Her hair was matted in giant dreadlocks that were dyed a bright, almost luminescent pink. She had a small silver ring through the right side of her lower lip and another in her eyebrow. The ear on her other side had two piercings connected by a short silver chain. Her index fingers were both tattooed with swirls of black ink.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Dominic.
The bad cop wasted no pleasantries and handed him a small tablet with a look of resentment. Quark cops didn’t like the regular cops any more than the regular cops liked the Quarks. Dominic was only here because he was the captain, and because this was a high-level inquiry.
“Leah,” said Dominic, reading from the tablet. “That’s it. No last name. No Beam ID.”
“It’s not a crime to not have a Beam ID,” said the young woman. “Nor to not have a last name.”
The standing cop gave her a look then addressed Dominic. “She’s been arrested before. We have her code on file. She really does seem to have no last name. Registered simply as Leah, a student at QuarkTechnic. She was flagged trying to access a classified section of The Beam nowhere near her access level.”
Dominic handed the tablet back to the Quark cop, looked at the girl, and waited for her response.
“It was an accident,” she said. “I was trying to order lunch.” She looked at the Quark cops. “Donuts.”
The standing cop moved toward her, but Dominic held up a hand.
“She was in Quark’s server. Got through the Blanket, which in itself requires a 128-bit encryption key.”
“You can’t hold that against me,” Leah said. “Who still uses 128-bit encryption? I was composing a nursery rhyme and accidentally accessed the server. Luckily, some citizen scouts stopped me before I accidentally went any further. I hear the next level of security was a velvet rope.”
Dominic stared at her.
“A thick one,” she added then circled her fingers to show the rope’s girth.
Dominic shifted his gaze to the seated cop. He was the only one who hadn’t spoken, and was thereby Dominic’s final hope of learning something useful.
“What’s she talking about?”
“All you need to know is that she was where she wasn’t supposed to be, getting at stuff she wasn’t supposed to get.”
“Cake recipes,” said Leah. “Quark’s are the best.”
“One-twenty-eight-bit is old technology, but the Blanket still blunts brute-force hacks enough to give us time to cut off people who try to get in,” said the seated cop. “There’s data there not suitable for public consumption, but it’s fairly innocuous. She burned through it so fast, we couldn’t stop her. Naturally. she was traced, and Quark on-site at Technic brought her in. She was transferring terras of data from one lane to another. Not even to a slip drive for the road. She won’t tell us why.”
“It was an accident,” said Leah. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, but she still managed to tip her chair back on its rear legs. She hadn’t yet nursed the gall to put her legs up on the table.
“So she didn’t remove anything from the server?” asked Dominic.
“No.”
“And she didn’t breach your inner security?”
“No…”
“So what’s the crime?”
“Digital trespassing,” said the standing cop.
“You brought her in here for that?” said Dominic. “Aren’t there jaywalkers you should be hunting?”
Dominic was annoyed. Hacking was a multi-tiered thing, and the lines between modification and true hacking were gray at best. Most kids could break the security on their canvases to access porn, and the ability required to do it, back in the early computing age, would have sent them to jail for life. But in a world where encryption could be enhanced with conscious choices made by Beam-resident AI codemakers, using a brute-force algorithm was a lot more like hopping a fence and entering a neighbor’s yard than breaking into a house. Sometimes, people out on The Beam couldn’t resist taking shortcuts. It was technically illegal, but only barely.
“Digital trespassing at Quark,” said the cop sitting on the desk.
Dominic actually laughed. These pompous assholes.
“We want to hold her and check out her known associates,” said the other cop.
“The associates from my file?” said Leah. “Oh sure, call Binky. Tell him I said hi. I haven’t seen him since we burned the preschool firewall so our naptimes could coincide.”
“Shut it,” the cop snapped, turning.
Dominic met the cop’s eyes and shook his head.
“You’re just going to let her go? This is Organa shit. Just look at her.”
“That’s not fair,” said Leah. “I haven’t judged you based on the way you look.” Dominic watched the woman’s eyes, willing her not to continue. But then her will broke, and she added, “So, which enhancement did you order to make your jagger bigger and longer?”
The cop moved toward her again, but Dominic held up his hands.
“Ms.…” Dominic began then remembered that she didn’t have a last name. “Leah,” he said instead. “What were you trying to do at QuarkTechnic?”
The girl brought her chair down to four legs and leaned forward, elbows to knees. Her green eyes settled on Dominic’s with a smile. “Okay, I’ll tell you the truth. I was trying to change my grades. Satisfied?”
“You were at Quark,” said the standing cop.
“A mistake.” She gave the cop a look. “Your encryption looks the same, and you’d know that if you’d look for yourself. And frankly, you share a lot of the same back doors.”
“There are no back doors at Quark.”
Leah laughed.
The cops turned to Dominic. The standing one said, “Look. I don’t want to pull rank because you’ll bluster and pretend you outrank me, but we both know that what Quark says goes in the end. If you let her go…”
The Quark cop was right; you didn’t step into a state-run institution like the police and build yourself a new wing staffed by superior forces if you didn’t have a lot of power. So to counter, Dominic went on the offensive.
“I’m not going to let her go, you idiot,” he snapped. “I’m going to interrogate her. Properly. She needs to be in the public police system, not your proprietary one. If the Organas found out that Quark booked someone without going through proper channels and released that information to the world, it’d look like a conspiracy. And believe me, those hippies have the hackers to release whatever they want.”
The standing cop looked at Leah and said, “That’s what I’ve heard.”
After a small bluster, the cops relented. Dominic used the Quark station’s canvas to transfer Leah’s records to the DZPD Beam sector and cleared her for access through the outer corridor. During the walk, Noah’s deep, soothing voice expressed a concern for Dominic’s blood pressure and urged him to see a physician for an injection of diagnostic and scavenger nanos. Then it complimented Leah on her hair color and admonished her to stay out of trouble. He added that her shoes, which were little more than canvas with individual toes, were better for her back than Dominic’s synthetic leather clodhoppers. Dominic swore.
Once they’d exited the Quark hallway, Dominic marched Leah straight-faced through the DZPD station, past the desk clerk, and through the front door. Officers and detectives watched him pass with the pink-haired girl. He said nothing to answer their stares. It was amazing what you could get away with if you acted like you were allowed to do it, and if you were the captain.
They walked outside then skirted the corner and stopped in front of an Amino stand
. The stand was unoccupied, the vendor apparently off at the bathroom or stoned somewhere on moondust. The second seemed likely. Dominic walked by the stand every day after parking his hover in the subterranean garage, and the guy who ran it was as Organa-looking as Leah.
Dominic unlocked her cuffs. Leah looked up at him, rubbing her wrists.
“Stupid, Leah,” he said.
“I had a man on the inside who I knew could spring me,” she answered, giving Dominic a satirical salute.
“Sloppy, too. I thought you were better than that.”
“I’m not sloppy. I’m freewheeling.” When Dominic continued to stare at her, her serious glare finally broke, and she groaned — a gesture that said, Fine!
She held her tattooed fingers in front of Dominic’s face.
“You’re not seeing the whole picture, Dom. Those cops were both Beam clerics. Did I not tell you about my new enhancements?”
“You’ve had those since I met you.”
“Not the tattoos, shitter.”
“What? Did you add some nano reservoirs?”
“Nano fabricators,” she clarified. “Under my nails. Problem with Quark security is that the encryption can only be bypassed from the inside. Once these — ” she wiggled her index fingers again, “ — saw what kind of nanos the clerics had filled those meat sack bodies of theirs with, they fabricated cloned soldiers to match. So I spoofed them and left a few dozen on that table. Now my nanos are inside the clerics, and they’ll never know.”
“Behind the firewall?”
“Right.”
“You wanted to get caught.”
Leah shrugged. “I needed something to handshake with. Not that this makes things any easier. Hax0r encryption has evolved to ridiculous levels. One of the advantages of having computers doing all of the computer development in The Beam.”
Dominic closed his eyes and shook his head. “Dangerous. They could find out.”
“They won’t.”
“They’ll trace you. And then they’ll wonder why you weren’t questioned further. They’ll look into the records and notice that all trace of your visit today was purged. Then maybe a few people will remember who took you in for that supposed further questioning.” He made a fist and planted his thumb in his chest.
Leah extended her hand and slapped Dominic lightly a few times on the cheek. She had to strain to reach him. She was probably five-five, and Dominic was over six feet tall, at least fifty pounds too heavy. Being a captain, he could afford fat scavenger treatment, but he didn’t give a big enough shit about his potbelly to put machines in his body.
“I’ll see you around, Dom,” she said.
“Fuck you, Leah,” he said. But of course he didn’t mean it.
“I’ll say hi to Crumb for you,” she said, and was gone.
Doc Stahl was grinding like hell down the A05, the airborne avenue that roughly followed Broadway from above. All of the autocops stationed by the buoy lines marking the skyroad’s sides should have been lighting up and following, but Doc’s hover had a jammer — a good one, too, bought from the same crooked son of a bitch who’d sold him his anonymous router. Doc had another anonymous router in the car, but given what had happened back at his apartment, he was afraid to use it. Luckily, he knew where to go without Beam guidance. That was unusual these days. Most people couldn’t find their asses without The Beam showing them where to wipe. Doc saw both sides of the tech coin. Selling add-ons — some of questionable legality — had made him rich, but dependence on machines was fucking society six ways from Sunday. The Enterprise, at least, still had a work ethic. But the Directorate? If their Beam connections blitzed out for a day, a handful would be despondent and panicked enough to commit suicide. You could set your nano-tattoo watch by it.
Doc exited at A14, then banked like a maniac down toward the AP41. Noah Fucking West, was the air map complicated. No wonder people couldn’t find shit up here.
The AP41 was packed. Autocops were patrolling a stopped line of hovers jammed in tight as if they might catch the dead line of vehicles for speeding. Doc almost rear-ended a Daimler Sport, veered to the side, and crossed the buoy line. The car behind him, which he’d just cut off, laid on the horn. The line inched up, and he jockeyed back into the column of cars. Doc swore. Back when hovers were new, they were few enough that District Zero had let them simply float up and go where they wanted. But after hovers went from novelty to seeming necessity and there were enough midair accidents, the skyroads were built. Now there was barely an advantage to driving above the ground. Gridlock was officially everywhere, even on a Saturday.
Duly halted, Doc looked down at his dashboard’s small screen, where his guidance map would normally be. He had to get onto The Beam, if for no other reason than to figure out who might have broken into his apartment. It had to be because of what he’d seen at Xenia. He remembered Vanessa’s and Killian’s reactions when they’d realized that Doc was where he wasn’t supposed to be. He remembered how the guards had moved to block the door. He remembered the implication that he was going to have his mind wiped whether he was willing or not. Doc wondered what people so paranoid might do if they knew about his wipe-blocking implant.
Of course, it now seemed likely that they did know.
He put himself in Killian’s shoes, or the shoes of whomever Killian reported to. Would they simply let a man leave after having seen classified wares and chalk it up as a mistake? Would that be enough? Or would they do some research to find out if the man might be a problem? Doc knew he would, and Xenia had deeper access to The Beam than Doc’s official level — maybe even deeper than Doc’s actual level. Xenia could probably find out that Doc sometimes bought wholesale from a man in Little Harajuku named Ryu. They might be able to find the rumors that Ryu dealt in illegal wares…such as autocop jammers, anonymous routers, and implants that could deflect handheld memory wipers.
If they knew that, they’d know that Doc hadn’t forgotten the upgrades he’d seen. Doc knew that biological enhancement ability had far, far, far surpassed public awareness. What might the people in charge of that dangerous secret do to preserve it? And how good might their own tracking ability be, given their superior technology? Might they be able to trace a connection even through one of Ryu’s routers?
Doc looked down at his dark screen and resisted the urge to log on. He took a deep breath, telling himself that he wasn’t like the fools who couldn’t be disconnected from The Beam for more than a few hours without their worlds crumbling. He was able to walk to the wall and flip his own manual light switch. He could use a match to start a fire in his apartment’s fireplace. He knew how to write letters with a pen, on real fucking paper.
And he didn’t need to know who’d broken into his apartment. He only needed to know that they hadn’t been coming to say hi, that they had the ability to hack (or force) their way into a highly secure building and an even more secure penthouse apartment. And, of course, that they were surely still somewhere behind him.
Doc swore at the line of traffic then made a decision.
He decreased altitude, submerging below the line of hovers. The car behind him honked, as did several others. But Doc was already gone, speeding through the open air off the skyroad like a land car crashing through a barricaded highway median. Several autocop cars broke from the buoys and descended after him. They were behind; he could outrun them. His destination was nearly directly below him, so he dove, nearly nose-down. His back pressed into his seat like an astronaut in a centrifuge. The gap between Doc and the autocops widened as they shied from his reckless dive, taking a more level approach. Official-sounding entreaties to stop where he was blasted around him, but even if Doc stopped now, he’d end up being fined half a year’s profits just to retrieve his license — if, that was, he was lucky enough to remain undiscovered by his pursuers.
Doc’s hover dove between the buildings below. He banked hard right, nearly striking a large glass office spire. You weren’t allowed to fly this low, and Do
c caught sight of several shocked faces staring out at him. He slipped down a street he didn’t recognize then darted down a smaller one lined with quaint-looking shops and parked with a lot of wheeled vehicles. Pedestrians looked up, and hoverbikes braked hard as drivers rubbernecked at him. He heard at least one accident, and hoped no one was hurt.
Doc sped through a residential neighborhood, eventually flying out near Houston, by the old bomb crater that had been kept as a themed tourist district.
Shops. Spires. People still watched him, aghast. So he slowed down, dipped into a line of traffic, and continued at street level. After a few more blocks, people stopped looking. The autocops were long gone. They’d communicate his car’s description along The Beam, and every traffic light would be looking for him, but Doc drove a Ford Magnum, powder blue — the most popular hovercar and color on the market. And thanks to his jammer, they’d only gotten the car’s spoofed Auto ID, which he’d already toggled to a new value.
His heart still thumping, Doc pulled the car to the side of the road, engaged the security, and half walked, half jogged the remaining five blocks on foot.
It was noon. Doc knew he’d wake Kai when he rang her buzzer because she worked at night. And he knew she’d be pissed.
But Kai was also the only person in the world Doc could trust to help him.
Isaac swiped his connection closed by raking his hand in front of his kitchen wall. In its place, his projection of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon reappeared. This was bullshit. Nicolai earned an incredible living, placing him just below Isaac and Natasha in the Directorate. A few more notches up, and Nicolai would be in the Beau Monde, the top 1 percent of the wealthiest NAU citizens, where life truly got interesting…not that anyone in the lower 99 had any idea about that, of course.
And what was Nicolai paid so well for? Not just for being Isaac’s speechwriter, but his right fucking hand. The person Isaac bitched at. The person who, when he was fired up about something, made it all better — just like he’d done when that riot erupted at Natasha’s concert. Isaac was supposed to be able to reach Nicolai 24/7, and right now he needed a sounding board: someone to make the bullshit disappear.