by Sean Platt
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m stuck in a hole,” he said.
But instead of calling for support help, the screen blipped back to the same information he’d been staring at for…well, it might have been days.
“Shit. Shit shit shit!” Sam blurted.
“I’m sorry,” the console replied, “I didn’t catch that.”
The animated paperclip on Sam’s screen said, Looks like you’re fucked. Can I help?
Leo couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
He looked around the room full of Organas, feeling out of time. He’d seen something like this before, a long time ago. Most of the people in the room didn’t even know Gaia’s Hammer had ever existed, but right now they were all doing a fantastic impression of the troupe Leo had led into the Appalachian Mountains all those years ago without realizing it.
The prison, being a prison, hadn’t boasted a lot of old hardware designed to let people read academic journals faster or appreciate art more fully. Leah had told him about wetchips intended to enhance creativity — but even though there was a large, lumbering, and apparently functional Autodoc in the small prison hospital capable of removing and implanting all sorts of things, confiscated creativity wetchips hadn’t been among the options.
No. Instead, the contraband they’d managed to scavenge was more on the spectrum of carbon-fiber warriors’ fists. They’d found spotters capable of hijacking a Fi signal, accessing the local Internet of Things, and plotting the exact locations of people in the vicinity. They’d found bone reinforcements, private communication chips, heat-sensitive HUD corneal layers, guns, and improvised projectile weapons. There’d even been an add-on that Leo back in the day would have very much wanted to try. It was based on a comic book and movie Leo remembered seeing: a fist that shot long blades through the knuckles, like a cat’s claws. Nanobots would repair the blades’ damage, over and over again.
The Organas around Leo had become neutered versions of the militants who’d come to prison loaded and hit their cells as ordinary humans. Anything with a Fi chip would help soothe the vacancy left by Lunis, so Leo and the Autodoc, overseen by Leah and Dominic in shifts, had installed whatever they could while removing the sharp edges. Toys like the claw fist had no use and were left in inventory, but even many of the bone reinforcements had Fi capability that could, with Leah’s help, be converted to provide something Leah called “Beam white noise.” Most add-ons were designed to communicate with The Beam even if only to let it know they were there — another way of adding to the information-hungry network’s dataset. Leah configured those chips to do little more than feed the Organas a never-ending stream of connectivity candy, while de-weaponizing all that was dangerous.
The Organas, once suited up, received constant updates on all the other Organas in the room with them — where so-and-so was, if anyone nearby had entered any new statuses into their feeds, paths to all sorts of social pages that none of the Organas had claimed or filled with personal info. They received news bulletins. They saw public status updates from just about everyone within a five-block radius.
To Leo, Leah’s configurations sounded awful — exactly what Organa stood against, and the opposite of the quiet Leo had gone into the mountains to find once his more pressing needs to lie low on NPS orders had been fulfilled. The constant noise flowing through his brain now felt like an intrusion. Why did anyone need to know all of this trivial information about everyone else? Why did a person need constant access to mail, and to know the second a new message came in? Why would anyone want to open channels to everyone they’d ever connected to on any network whatsoever…so their old college roommate’s sister’s brother’s band member could break in without notice to ask where you got the fabulous socks that your personal inventory told him you were wearing?
But once Leah turned that white noise on for all of them, Leo had to admit it felt very, very good. It was as if the longing, empty feeling of moondust withdrawal had left millions of tiny cracks inside them — and the stream of voices in all their heads was like liquid cement, percolating into all those cracks to heal them.
Within seconds of hooking back up to the network, Leo felt better than normal.
The same seemed true for the others. Once the add-ons were installed and the Fi chips were opened for business, the group could have been the old Organas again. Some of them had cybertronic eyes now, sure. Others had unloaded and permanently safetied weapons on their arms. Thanks to nanobot enhancements, others were now extraordinarily powerful, remarkably fast, or able to do things like climb walls with only tiny fingertip indentations for grip — if, again, Leah hadn’t installed safeties. They could all hear each other in their heads, and they were all as hopelessly wired into The Beam as the people they’d always scorned and pitied.
But seeing them now, Leo couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Maybe the problem was that his abstainers had become addicts of a different kind, or perhaps what bothered him was a feeling of failure. Maybe it was a conviction that however necessary this plan had been, it made his life’s work useless — and proved that nobody could truly fight The Man, and decide for himself.
But no, he thought, the uneasy feeling ran even deeper than that.
Leo didn’t like being underground. He didn’t like not being able to head out into the city and finding…well, whatever was out there awaiting discovery. The drive to leave the flat was almost a compulsion. A feeling that if he didn’t get out into the world and down to business, he’d go crazy.
And maybe that’s what ultimately made his failure complete. Leo wasn’t merely okay with being wired and connected. He was finding he rather enjoyed it. They were all part of the city now, and Organa, as an idealistic concept, was only a memory.
Dominic entered the room, looking around as if wary. Leo could sense his hesitation.
“What is it, Dom?”
“This isn’t the Organa I know.”
“It’s not the Organa I intended, either.” Still watching Dominic’s eyes, he added, “What?”
“I don’t like them being jacked into all this criminal hardware, Leo.”
“It’s neutered. Every bit of it.”
“But Scooter is strong. I saw him break a brick earlier.” Dominic’s eyes flicked toward the gentle giant. “By crushing it in his fist.”
“He was playing around. You know Scooter.”
“I don’t know Scooter with ten cc’s of illegal nanobots in his system.”
“He’s still just Scooter.”
“Last time I saw Scooter awake, he about killed us.”
Dominic’s eyes flicked over Leo’s body. Leo hadn’t added anything to himself because it wasn’t necessary. Some old program had coughed to life when he’d still been on his way into the city in the back of Agent Smith’s hover then lit like fire once they’d come under the flat’s Fi signal. Leo could hear the noise without adding new enhancements, though curiously the same wasn’t true for the group’s other old Gaias.
“And the last time you saw me awake, I about killed you, too,” Leo said, speaking the words Dominic seemed unwilling to repeat.
“Right.”
“Actually, the last time you saw me awake, I was in a cell listening to you tell me that I’d tried to kill you. So we’ve already been through this.” Leo tried to smile, but it only came halfway onto his lips. Dominic wasn’t a child. He deserved a real answer, not a joke.
“All right, Dom,” Leo said, fighting his impulse to hurry and get this over with so he could get out of this place. “Let’s just face it, shall we? You’re worried we’ll cause trouble. Bunch of wild maniacs, now armed and dangerous. Is that it?”
Dominic shrugged, not saying yes or no. Although the look was clearly the first.
“Look around. Ignore all the new hardware. What do you see?”
“Armed Organas.”
“Enhanced Organas. But still Organas.”
“Just like the ones that came at me with bared
teeth.”
Leo sighed then put an arm around Dominic’s shoulder. The police captain flinched. It was a bold move, but calculated. Leo had probably been more of a father to Dominic than his real father. He’d certainly taught him more practical lessons — such as when to be skeptical, when to investigate, and when not to trust. They were skills for societal fringe dwellers and cops alike.
“Moondust heals the damage technology does,” Leo said. “Then it gets its hooks in you like any drug. I knew it back then, and it was a mistake. But it felt like the only way.”
Dominic looked over, his stoic face now interested.
“I knew all about the problems with Lunis back then, yes,” he said. “Introducing it was one of the many hard choices I had to make, and I was alone in the decision. When we made our deal with NPS to disarm and go underground — and here I’m talking about old Gaia, not new Organa — we had to make a home in the mountains, away from it all. There’s no good connectivity up there and never has been, which is why we went. If we couldn’t be disruptors, we’d be secessionists. But there was just one problem: When we got up there and could no longer hear each other on our implants, the air seemed too quiet. Gaia wired up as much as it did with the idea of using technology to fight technology, but we all enjoyed the benefits. My people were used to seeing new mail the second it came in. They were used to constant pings, to shared POV vidstreams, to meeting virtually, to knowing anything they’d ever want to know without having to consciously ask the question. They’d all offloaded memory to the cloud. They all crowdsourced mental work and opinion.” Leo laughed. “None of us could choose a restaurant without dipping into the pool of experience about every eatery in the area.”
Dominic said nothing. Leo went on.
“When all of that was gone, the group that wanted to become Organa — sincerely wanted it, after all our fighting and struggling — had a hard time. Same for the city dwellers who came to Organa after we were established, wanting a simpler life but unsure how to pull it off. You don’t get violent when you disconnect like you do when you pull from Lunis, but you do get Beamsick. You can’t focus. You get hyperactive and highly distractible. You get depressed. Despondent. Even suicidal. So I made my hard choice, and I laced our water supply with moondust provided to me by the NPS itself. And because that wasn’t sustainable, I began making it part of our culture. We took our drug just like fringe groups always seem to take something, and it became ritual. So it’s my fault, Dom. I did this. I made them this way. It’s because of me that we’re in this situation, and because of me that all of us have had to betray all we thought we stood for.”
Dominic’s lips pursed, reluctantly seeming to relax. To see the situation for what it was. To feel sorry for Leo and the burden he had to bear.
“So, Dominic, I’d like you to relax about all of this,” Leo said, sweeping his arm around the room and its occupants. “I’d take it as a personal favor. Because as badly as you want us not to be unstable or dangerous, I want the same thing ten times as badly.” He shook his head. “I haven’t just ruined these people’s lives. I’ve done it twice, at least.”
Around them, the Organas were beginning to rise and file through the door. Leah stood by it, looking as uneasy as Dominic, waving them forward and out — where Leo, thanks to that irresistible compulsion, very much wanted and needed to go.
“None of what we’ve added to the Organas today — and I’ll remind you, Leah oversaw it all, policing the Autodoc’s settings as faithfully as you would, but with a tech-adept’s eye — is more than a bunch of Beam chips. They have hardware that makes the host body aware of itself and makes The Beam aware of the flesh. Their minds, too. When we are out and after we acclimate, we will all visit dealers and pay from the Organa coffers to have our old, neutered prison enhancements swapped for proper ones. I promise you, Dominic. This is just another patch, to get us through. You’ve trusted me before. I won’t disappoint you again.”
A flicker of emotion crossed Dominic’s features. The captain had never been a soft man, but Leo saw softness now. This hard cop had once been little Dom Long, and he’d believed Mr. Booker back when Booker had been a two-faced liar, doing his best between a rock and a hard place.
The Organas were mostly out of the room, so Leo and Dominic rose to follow. Leah was in the doorway, one hand on a modified body scanner that had been installed in the portal’s frame. She’d explained that the scanner wouldn’t just categorize each add-on the Organas carried, but would deactivate any potentially harmful functions in all of them. Leah didn’t trust them, and Leo could hardly blame her. Until they visited dealers as Leo had promised, they’d all have limiters in their bodies. Thanks to the scan and its modifications on the add-ons’ software, Leah would be able to freeze any of their enhancements if she felt it was necessary.
Leo stopped short of the scanner. The others were already through, waiting for their leader. Then Leo walked through the doorway. The machine beeped, and a screen beside Leah displayed a list of all the non-native hardware and software now in his body. Not just Leo old Warrior’s Fist and reinforced bones, but the AI that ran it, electrifying his nerves like a dance.
“Now I’m leashed,” Leo said, looking back at Dominic with a smile.
Something seemed to be bothering Dominic. He shook his head and said, “So you’re not Organas anymore? You’ll get new add-ons and try to hide from NPS if you can, but you can’t ever go back?”
“Maybe you’ll find us more moondust,” Leo said. It was almost a joke…or maybe not.
“All right,” Dominic said. “Then let’s get out of this shithole.”
He followed the Organas through the doorway. Leah turned to follow, but they both stopped short when something beeped behind them.
The screen beside Leah read, LONG, DOMINIC. ONE RESULT, RESTRICTED. SECTOR 7 ACCESS REQUIRED.
Leo looked at Dominic. Dominic looked at Leah.
“I thought you didn’t have any enhancements, Dom?” Leo said.
Dominic’s handheld trilled. His flustered attention went to the noisy thing, and in a moment the confusion on his face turned to urgency.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered, “it’s Omar, and something’s gone wrong.”
While Omar was in the other room, calling Dominic to panic about Carter Vale’s appearance at Braemon’s and the consequent increase in security, Kate sneaked into the closed office, booted up the Doc Stahl shell, and slipped it on like a glove.
Nicolai picked up the call without friction, as if his channel had been left open. That immediately put Kate on guard. Nicolai never left his connection open.
Kate’s screen lit with Nicolai’s face. His almond eyes were shocked behind his only-for-show spectacles. He jabbed at something until the screen blanked.
“Oh, come on, sugar,” Kate said. “Don’t you hide those baby browns from me.”
There was a pause on the other end of the now audio-only connection. Slowly, Kate heard Nicolai say, “Who are you?”
“Don’t you recognize my sweet, sweet voice?”
“It says this call is coming from someone…someone it can’t be coming from.” But Nicolai wasn’t stupid. Surely, he’d put two and two together; he just didn’t want to be the first to say it.
“It’s me, Sancho. It’s…Kate.”
“Kate.” Flat, without inflection.
“We talked yesterday. You know.”
“Doc?”
Kate closed her eyes and sighed. “You suck at espionage, Nicolai.”
“You’re calling me from Doc’s ID. How are you doing that?”
“I told you how I’m doing it.”
“But last time you called from DZPD. On a secure line. Is this line secure?”
“Probably. It’s Omar’s”
“The guy you don’t trust? That’s whose line you’re using?” Then: “Wait. You said we wouldn’t talk before today’s event. Is something wrong?”
“Listen, hotshot,” Kate said, now sitting behind
Omar’s huge desk. “This is dicey enough. First time I try Doc back on, it ain’t gonna be inside the hornet’s nest, so you get to be my trial run. If this thing with Doc’s ghost isn’t gonna work, maybe I should know before my dick’s in the wind at the fundraiser.”
Kate looked down, noting her current lack of a dick, but Nicolai said nothing.
“You’re not doing a great job of maintaining your cover,” Nicolai finally said.
“I’m calling you through Doc. Did his ID come up for you?”
Nicolai paused. “Yes.”
“So, someone wants to come for Doc, they’ll come for Doc. Good to know it works. Do I look like Doc across the board?”
“Actually, you look like a supermodel.”
“Thanks, sexy. I meant on the traceroute. The meta. You see anything there that says I’m not Doc, other than my voice, my face, and my fine set of tits?”
“No. I’d believe you were Doc.”
Kate nodded, satisfied. She’d sent the call through Doc’s old apartment, too, through Ryu’s still-connected router, then out through another two anonymous proxies. She’d already decided to do the same at Braemon’s, if they could get in. If Doc’s non-status truly opened the doors that Omar thought they would, she should be able to fool the system into believing the request was coming from the outside as well as sliding under on-site permissions.
“Hey,” she said, “how’s your access been lately? Spotty at all?”
Nicolai’s voice seemed to shrug. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Why?”
“My connection hung a long time before finding yours. Had a few glitches before I got through. For a while, I couldn’t get you at all, and now you’re…well, I don’t know what the shit you are.” She looked down at the open screen on Omar’s desk. It showed the call’s duration, but if she toggled for additional info, her connected party didn’t read as Nicolai Costa.
“It’s hard to explain,” Nicolai said.
“I’m curious.”
“I was sort of offline for a while. In a…a restricted place.”