“Jacob!” Ivan greeted him as he entered Commie Cup. “How did your meeting with the capitalist oppressor go, comrade?”
“You know, that might sound better with a Russian accent,” Jacob said.
“Maybe, but I can’t keep one going for long,” Ivan said in his best bad Russian accent. “Are you finally, what do they say, off-paper?’”
Jacob leaned on the counter. “I am. It hasn’t completely sunk in yet, but it sure as hell feels good.”
“I am happy for you.” He reached under the counter and brought out Jacob’s code deck. “I guess I will not be giving this a temporary home any longer?”
“No, you won’t. And it will be nice to not have to be so careful when I use it.”
Ivan placed the deck on the counter and pushed it to Jacob. “Can I get you a celebratory drink on the house?” he asked.
“On the house? Unheard of.”
Ivan smiled. “We are supposed to be Commie Cup. What better way to stick it to the capitalist overlord than to give your product away?”
“I don’t think it works that way, but I’ll take the usual,” Jacob said, placing his deck in his pocket.
“So what now?” Ivan asked, looking up from preparing an iced coffee.
“Retro Media for now. And the side jobs. Which reminds me, I should be done with the code for you soon. I’ve just got to tweak a few lines, and it will be good to go. I’m thinking three days, tops.”
“Excellent.” He handed Jacob the coffee.
“After that, I was thinking about leaving the city. Maybe the country. Starting over sounds good right about now.”
A customer stepped in line behind Jacob.
“I better head out. Thanks for the drink and for babysitting my deck,” Jacob said.
“Anytime, my friend. I will see you in a few days.”
◆◆◆
On the bus, he half-watched the city go by and half-watched the screen on the seat in front of him showing highlights of The Democratic Party Primary Show from the night before. Instructions explaining how to vote a candidate out of the race flashed across the screen. Several passengers bent over their phones, tapping away, taking part in the democratic process.
“Have you voted?” the woman next to him asked.
“No, not yet.” He didn’t want to tell her he, and anyone committing a crime against a corporation, had a life-long ban from voting in any political race.
“Well, don’t wait too long. You only have until 7 PM. I voted to get rid of Suarez. He’s sponsored by Helios Incorporated, and a pair of their shoes gave me blisters,” she said, pointing to her feet as if the blisters were still there. “Horrible product.”
“I guess that’s as good a reason as any,” Jacob said.
“Greyson is my candidate. United Energy Drinks is her sponsor, and I love their Triple B BlueBerry Blaster.” She pulled one of the drinks from her purse. “I take one with me everywhere I go. Have you tried it?”
Jacob shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”
“Have this one,” she said, pushing the drink on him.
“Oh, that’s…”
“Don’t worry, I have another.”
The bus came to a stop. Jacob looked up. “This is my stop,” he lied and stood to exit.
“Don’t forget your Triple B BlueBerry Blaster,” the woman said, handing him the drink.
“Thanks.”
On the street, he tossed the Triple B into the recycle bin at the bus stop and got his bearings. He was still two miles away from The Galleria and home. “A walk will do me good,” he said to no one. He adjusted his backpack and started walking.
Chapter 3
He stepped from the cool January air into the warm inviting air of The Galleria. This had once been a Mecca of consumerism, but the ever-shifting forces of economics had transformed it into a backwater part of the city, housing shops and people on the fringe of the new economy. Former big brand stores were replaced by cybernetic shops, sex shops, hangouts for hackers, and endless ethnic restaurants. If someone in the city wanted a product or a life without a corporate logo, they came to The Galleria. Some, like Jacob’s friend, Gomez, came by choice. Others, like Jacob, came because it was the only place that would have them. As with any place on the edges of society, there was a good and bad side to the place. Subderm junkies and high-minded, anti-corporate idealists rubbed elbows with new immigrants and sex workers; hackers and Low Tech Luddites rubbed elbows with artists, criminals, and Steamers, cyborgs who tricked out their cybernetics in steampunk fashion. And while Jacob was not entirely happy with the life he had at the moment, he had to admit he loved the place. When he worked for Your Better Life, he lived in their corporate zone, several city blocks of corporate-owned housing and corporate-owned shops with everything anyone needed, but it always felt sterile. The Galleria felt like it was teaming with life.
He headed to the food court, a term leftover from the mall’s past, to get something to eat. Gomez didn’t expect him to come into work today, and he hadn’t eaten since leaving his apartment in the morning, so he headed to The Chaat Spot for an order of samosa chaat. He’d been on an Indian food kick lately, so why not keep it up?
He sat eating, watching people working in the community garden that filled what was once a skating rink. The rink had been converted into an indoor aquaponic garden that supplied vegetables and fish to the residents who, like Jacob, occupied the former hotels attached to the Galleria. It amazed him that most people honored the garden and didn’t take from it unless they helped work it.
A young Steamer couple stumbled out of a corner of the garden. Both of them looked to be in their mid-teens, and both had crude, low-level cybernetics attached in a haphazard, done-in-a-back-alley-for-cheap manner. The couple laughed and stumbled their way to the food court. High on some code, Jacob figured. They neared his table, and he started to wonder if it was code he wrote when the boy stopped, going rigid. The girl took a few more steps before she realized the boy was no longer at her side. By the time she turned around, the boy fell to the floor and began convulsing, a stream of blood and drool coming from the corner of his mouth.
Jacob moved quickly, taking his code deck out of his pocket and turning it on. By the time he reached the boy, the girl stood over his twisting body, screaming for help.
“Calm down,” Jacob said. “I can help him.”
“He’s going to die! Help him! Don’t die, Aaron!”
A small crowd began to gather. Jacob tried to grab the boy’s flailing arm.
“Don’t die don’t die don’t die,” the girl repeated.
“Somebody help me with his arm,” Jacob demanded.
One of the employees of The Chaat Spot helped grab the boy’s arm. They rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, exposing the QR code tattoo on his forearm.
“Try to hold him still while I scan and link up,” Jacob said.
“Don’t die don’t die don’t die...”
He scanned the tattoo with his code deck and linked it to the boy’s subdermal chip. The code that popped up on the deck’s display was not like any he had seen before. It was a mix of neuro instructions that didn’t make sense. What could make code fail like this? Jacob quickly started trying to make corrections in code, trying to find what he thought might be the original commands, but it was hard to think with that girl going on and on.
“Can someone get her to shut up? I can’t think.”
He didn’t turn to see how, but the girl stopped. He refocused on the code. It had the boy going from an amphetamine high to an opioid low cycle almost instantaneously.
A speedball.
Jacob created a speedball code for someone once, so he knew a little about what the code should look like and what it should do. But this code was out of control. He had to get one step ahead of it, but he couldn’t do that by hand. Jacob needed to directly link with the boy’s chip, but his chip was disabled because of…
Then the thought hit him, he was not on probation. He’d
gotten so used to not using his chip, he forgot it was active, and like most hackers, his chip was modified to allow him to link with the net and with other subdermal chips.
He quickly scanned his own tattoo and tapped his code deck, sending a command linking his chip to the boy’s chip.
A rush came over him. It had been more than three years since he was directly linked to an external source. It was exhilarating. His awareness floated in code and white noise. He was everywhere and nowhere at once. The sensation was like losing a feeling and remembering it at the same time. He wanted to float and ride the sensation.
He took a calming breath. He was doing this for a reason.
The code around him danced a chaotic dance, and he tried to find a rhythm. For him, all code moved in rhythm, and finding the rhythm was always the answer to getting on top of it.
He cleared his mind and listened to the white noise. It droned in his mind, filling it with static. But deep in the static was rhythm. He just had to let it come to him. A polyphonic swirl began to envelop him, and his mind moved with it. When he found the groove in each part of the code, he began to manipulate it, slowing it down, coaxing harmony from noise. The notes of dissonance came together, modulating in a comprehensible beat. His mind moved with the beat, taking the code from its erratic jumps to a slow, pulsating series of notes.
He severed the link.
The boy lay on the ground, blinking, his breath shallow but regular.
Jacob stood, readjusting to the external world.
The girl knelt beside the boy. “Is he all right?” she asked.
“He will be,” Jacob said, walking back to his table.
His chaat sat cold on his plate. He got a to-go box and headed to Retro Media and to work.
Chapter 4
Gomez leaned against the railing, looking down on the community garden three floors below. Something was going on over by the food court. Leaning out as far as he dared, he tried to get a clear view. He blinked his left eye, kicking in its cybernetic telescopic sight. He zoomed in on the scene, but plants and the backs of people blocked his view. Someone convulsed on the floor, but that was the extent of what he could see.
“Can you see what’s going on?” Two-Step asked from the entrance of Retro Media.
“No,” he said, pulling his large frame back over the railing, “too many people in the way. We’ve got to get that surveillance system working. It’s been out for a week. I don’t like not knowing what’s going on. Is Kat working on it?”
“She was when I last checked,” Two-Step said. He moved aside to let Gomez in the store, following after.
“Well, she needs to work faster,” Gomez said.
“I’ll let you tell her that.”
Gomez stopped, thinking about how that conversation would go. “On second thought,” he said, “she can finish at her own pace.”
Two-Step laughed. “Not afraid of her are you?”
Gomez shot Two-Step a look. “Kid, don’t you have something you should be doing?”
“Kid? I’m almost twenty-one,” Two-Step said.
“I’ll say it again. Kid, don’t you have something you should be doing?”
Two-Step cast his eyes downward. “I’ve got that Tandy TRS-80 I’m modifying.”
Gomez smiled. “Go do that then. Or help Kat with the surveillance system.”
“Fine,” Two-step said, defeated. Turning to go, he ran into a rack of cassette tapes, knocking it to the floor. Tapes flew out of their cases and skid across the floor.
Gomez took a slow, deep breath and exhaled. “After you clean up this mess, of course.”
“Of course.”
Gomez made his way past the antique computers, gaming consoles, and other electronics and media lining the aisles and went to the workshop in the back of the store. Kat sat hunched over an old-style keyboard. She typed, then checked the screens on the panel in front of her. The screens showed the same static they had been showing for the last week. She shook her head, took a drink of coffee, and went back to typing.
“Not going well?”
Kat jumped, knocking the coffee cup, spilling a small amount on the keyboard.
“Jesus! Don’t sneak up on me like that, you made me spill my coffee,” she said without turning. “And get me a towel or something.”
He went to another workbench, grabbed a towel, and tossed it to her. She still hadn’t turned and the towel landed on her shoulder. She took it and wiped the few drops of coffee from the keyboard.
Finally, she turned. “To answer your question, no, it is not going well. I’m almost there, but the system keeps dropping the feed. I can get one camera at a time,” she said, punching a few keys, bringing one of the screens to life, showing the exterior of one of the sex shops. She punched another key. A second screen showed a level of one of the parking garages. A small group of pre-teens stood in the corner, passing around a nic-stem. “However, if I try more than one, this happens.” Her fingers punched a series of keys. Every screen flashed the familiar visual static.
Gomez sighed. “Well, at least you’ve made some progress.”
“Not enough. I leave for New Orleans tonight, and I don’t know if I can get this up and running before I leave. I can set it to rotate through the cameras. I think I have enough time for that.”
“Do you have to leave tonight?”
“The seventh is in four days. I had to book a room a few days early to make sure I got one. I just wish you were going with me,” she said.
“I’ve got too much to do here. Besides, it’s not my thing. You know that. I don’t mind going to the church services with you, but going to the guy’s tomb on his birthday is a bit more than I can handle.”
“He’s not just any guy. He’s Nicolas fucking Cage,” Kat said, tossing her hands in the air, a look of disbelief on her face.
“I’m just not a religious person. I go to the services because I love you. And they’re fun.” He moved to her, taking her hands, his hands enveloping hers, gently. “But mostly because I love you.”
He bent down and kissed her.
“Damn kids, get a room,” Jacob said from the workroom doorway. He put his backpack, code deck, and a to-go box on his desk.
“How did it go this morning?” Kat asked.
“Some crazy on the bus gave me an energy drink and a speech about the state of the Democratic party.”
“You know what I mean.”
Jacob sat. “I’m free.”
“Hell yeah,” Gomez said. “I’m happy for you, man.” He pulled up a chair and sat. “You got some food earlier? Did you happen to see what went down in the food court?” He gestured to screens behind him. “The system is still acting up, and I couldn’t get a view.”
“Oh, just some kid using code had an overload. I had to help him out of it,” Jacob said, opening the to-go box. “I got to direct link for the first in time years.”
“That’s right,” Gomez said. “Your chip got reactivated.”
“Nice,” Kat said.
“It was.” He took a bite and offered some to Kat and Gomez. When they passed, he set the box back on the desk.
“So, what was up with the overload?” Gomez asked.
Jacob relayed the story.
“It’s a good thing you were there,” Kat said.
“Yeah. But the strange thing is how that code acted. It was so unrefined. It was as if the coder didn’t know what they were doing, or it was in the early stages of development,” Jacob said.
Gomez leaned back. “We know almost every subderm hacker out there. None of them would put something like that on the streets. You think it’s someone new we?”
Jacob shook his head. “No clue. But whoever it is, they need to clean up their shit. That kid would’ve died if I wasn’t there, and my chip wasn’t unlocked.”
“God looks after sailors, junkies, and fools,” Gomez said.
“I thought you said you weren’t religious,” Kat said.
“I’m not. It�
�s just something my mom used to say.”
Later, after Kat left for New Orleans, Gomez pulled down the gate covering the entrance to the shop.
“How long is she going to be gone?” Jacob asked.
“A week or so. I think I’m going to miss her. We haven’t been apart that long in a while,” Gomez replied, locking the gate.
“Oh, how cute.”
“Shut up and help me get the lights.”
“We had a good day,” Two-Step called from the register terminal.
“You mean we didn’t lose money?” Gomez asked.
“I finally sold that Game Cube and complete game catalog. That should get us through a few days at least.”
“Who bought it?”
“Some young corporate,” Two-Step said.
“I can’t stand them, but I love their credits. Finish up,” Gomez said to Two-Step, “we’re going in the back and have a beer.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I’m done,” Two-Step replied.
“You’re too young to drink.”
“Screw you.”
In the backroom, Gomez opened the refrigerator and took out two beers, twisted off the caps, and handed one to Jacob.
“So,” he said, “how’s the code for Ivan coming along?”
“I should be done in a day or two. I saw him today and let him know,” Jacob said.
“That will be a good payout.”
“I just need to run one more simulation. Maybe test it myself. I haven’t done code in three years, and it might be nice. You want to give it a run?”
Gomez shook his head. “No, I promised Kat I would stay away from code while she’s gone.”
“Man, this sounds more serious every day.”
Gomez turned the beer bottle in his hand. He picked at the corner of the label. He had known Kat for a long time. They met in Berlin five years ago, and he didn’t know if he was in love with her from the start, but he knew he was now. They had been through a lot together, both when they were working corporate security and after she moved to Houston three years ago. Through most of that, there didn’t seem to be room to be in love, just room for fun with each other. That changed when she moved in with him. They were different together after that. After a moment he said, “I think I might pop the question when she gets back.”
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