Lesser Gods

by Duncan Long

  “Swarm’s coming up,” the foreman warned needlessly as our probes overtook the tiny asteroids and bits of frozen ice.

  I kicked my probe’s thruster to head in closer to my designated chunk of ice and rock. Then I eased on the braking rocket to match the asteroid’s speed. Gently, gently, I warned myself as I extended my/probe’s clawed hand. I didn’t want to be docked for the cost of another bent claw. I was paid well, but not that well.

  I eased the claw forward and after a few false starts, I grasped the lump of gold and ice. Then I hit the “auto load” button in front of my android self and the claw smoothly inserted the stone into the probe’s interior storage compartment without my help. I focused my attention on my secondary targets, and jetted toward the nearest one.

  Abruptly my eyes glowed brightly and then went pitch black. “Hey!” I yelled. “I’ve lost my —”

  I didn’t say more, because the cursing and shouting over the intercom let me know that the others were experiencing the same problem. Swearing under my breath, I pulled out of the probe into my android self, and saw that the probe’s view screen was dead.

  I glanced out the port, but the intense light was almost blinding. For a moment I tried to regain control of my probe. But I could tell from the limpness in my probe claw that the connection had been lost. My hand felt as if it was rolling out of control. I was unsure what to do and finally switched back out of the probe once more so my claw again became my hand. Or, more correctly, the hand of my mechanical body far out in space — though it seemed I was there rather than back on Earth.

  “Abandon your probes,” the foreman ordered. “Everyone stay in your cubicles. The captain’s trying to take us out of this. We’re keeping you in your remote bodies for the time being so you can stow yourselves in your crypts if we get free.”

  All I heard was “out of this” and “if we get free.” Out of what? I wondered.

  The light was bright enough that we might have been inside Venus’s orbit looking toward the Sun instead of almost to Jupiter.

  I craned my head around, squinting as I tried to discover the light source. Finally I quit, the glare from the metal trim on my port making the light unbearably bright.

  The engines of our ship rumbled ominously and I felt a chill, even though it was impossible for the body I occupied to feel any such thing. The hyperdrives continued powering, whipped to a feverish pitch unlike any I’d heard during my last four missions on the ship.

  How much more could the engines take without melting down? I wondered. I didn’t know the first thing about the engines that powered the ship, but the noise coming through the bulkhead didn’t sound safe to my untrained ear.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Sam yelled over the intercom.

  “Evasive maneuvers,” the foreman replied. “Everyone sit tight and shut up. We need to keep the comm channel clear. Just in case.”

  I tightened the straps holding me in place, uncomfortably aware that we sat in the nose of the craft with only a few inches of glass between us and nothingness. Miles — light days — of nothingness, I thought, gazing toward the brightly shining porthole. Even though my eyes had had time to adjust, the light was still so intense that it was painful to look at it.

  “Thirty seconds to impact,” the foreman warned.

  Impact? I thought.

  “All emergency hatches are to remain sealed,” the captain’s voice announced.

  The intercom erupted in chaos as miners demanded to know what was headed toward them while others swore. I wondered what would happen if our mechanical bodies were destroyed while we were still connected to them via our quantum entanglement machine.

  We’d been told it was perfectly safe.

  But I’d never trusted a corporation to tell the truth, and I had a feeling we weren’t nearly as safe as we had been told.

  “Three seconds ‘til impact,” the captain warned.

  Two…

  One.

  The ship shuddered. There was a massive rending of metal and plastic, with the thunder of air escaping from ruptured compartments, the hissing conducted through the frame of the vessel. My compartment lurched to the side and my head slammed against the side of the couch.

  Somehow I felt the pain of the impact, even though such a thing should have been impossible with my android self….

  Blackness.

  Ralph Crocker

  After what seemed long enough for a glacier to race by, the mechocab finally came and whisked me away from the sporting goods store without further incident. But I couldn’t get the taxi to take me closer than a block from my apartment. It had received some updates about Snipe’s activities and apparently the cab’s circuits wouldn’t allow it to proceed any closer — which seemed odd since it had gone into Demon TTS territory to pick me up. Sometimes there’s just no telling for the logical insanity of AI circuitry.

  After paying the vehicle with my charge card — I was now down to a hundred creds after settling up with the vehicle and the sporting goods store owner — the cab’s doors unlocked so I could get out.

  “How’s it going?” I asked Quaker, the local gang’s toll taker as I stepped over to his plastic booth. His gang only took old coins since they didn’t want any chance of their transactions being traced; I fished a silver coin from a hidden pocket in my vest and tossed the quarter to him.

  “Everything’s cool,” Quaker said, taking the coin in his trembling hand for a moment as if savoring its feel before handing it back. “No charge today. Heard about your acing the head of the Demon TTSs.”

  “You what?”

  “Yeah. The store owner sold his security video to stations. You’re on the top ten chans at least. Big download. That store owner can retire. And you? Celebrity. Man, you better be ready to dive anytime you hear the clink clank of Harvies. They’re gonna be sorer than hell ‘bout what you done to their head man.”

  I tried to push the Harvies out of my thoughts for the moment to concentrate on the danger at hand. “Snipe still around?”

  “Maybe nappin’. But best be careful. She only bagged five so far today. Under quota.”

  “Thanks.” I rounded the corner and started toward my apartment, moving cautiously and hoping Snipe was asleep or, if awake, wouldn’t decide I was a prime target. She seldom fired at locals. But when she had a slow day, anything became fair game. Five kills wasn’t much for her, so it looked like it might be a slow day, meaning I could be fair game as far as she was concerned.

  I clinched my teeth as I crept along the street, sticking to the shadowed side of the avenue, planning to cross only when I neared my apartment. If nothing else, Snipe usually was a creature of habit, keeping the sun to her back so she’d be harder for victims to spot. My usual tactic was to stay out of sight in the shadows.

  Reaching the ancient theater across from my apartment, I stood in the shade for a few seconds, sizing up the area while screwing up my courage for a mad dash across the street.

  Still no sign of Snipe.

  Holding my breath, I sprinted across the narrow street, jumping over Snipe’s latest victim, a subvertiser who still had his compubrush in hand, handiwork half done on the wall of my apartment behind him.

  Snipe’s shot had been clean, right between the subvertiser’s eyes and out the back with a big chunk of scalp missing — without any damage to the ad display. Now the malcontent lay in the dark pool that had flowed from his wound. A syrupy way to go; but I found it hard to feel sorry for any subvertiser, especially one who’d obviously been defacing the ads that helped keep my rent low. After all, advertising pays the bills and subvertisers were the enemy, as far as I was concerned.

  Perhaps that was the reason the local gang and the rest of the hood never vigilanted Snipe. Sudden death on subvertisers, salesmen, and bill collectors in an area where the police were generally too afraid to enter helped keep the neighborhood clean of vermin in a way that local government officials never could.

  Only being perhaps partly hu
man, sometimes she made mistakes and targeted the locals. Like a doctor, her mistakes were buried.

  Or at least carted off for parts.

  Nearing the entrance to my apartment, I dodged around the Moravecs who pretended to be alive, dancing like jerky sprites to unheard, nebulous muzak. I’ve never understood why Snipe didn’t target the Moravecs that roamed our streets — but for some reason she treated the mechanical invaders as if they were invisible specters.

  Some in the neighborhood thought perhaps Snipe was a Moravec, and thus didn’t target her own. But those who claimed to have caught a glimpse of her on the roofs said most of her body and all her head was flesh and blood. If they were right, then she wasn’t a Moravec, even if she let them roam unmolested.

  The front door to my apartment fortress was charged so I approached it gingerly, placing my hand on the I-dent pad when I neared. “My name’s baloney,” I told the computer, eyeing the door guns that had automatically trained themselves on my chest.

  “Welcome home, Ralph,” the computer said in a low, feminine voice. “I didn’t bother calling the police when you were kidnapped since I figured the goons that took you were either friends or would have aced you by the time the cops came. If and when.”

  “Thanks for the consideration.” I pushed my way through the armored door as it buzzed opened. “You might want to make a call for recycle. Looks like Snipe got another subby out front.”

  “Already did. Third subvertiser she’s nailed today. Getting to be a better shot as of late. No wingings, just righteous kills. We should open a parts franchise.”

  “Don’t joke about selling body parts.”

  “Who’s kidding?”

  I shook my head, shuddering at the thought of how close I’d come to becoming cryogenic meat, and climbed the creaking stairs leading to my room. Once there, I tapped my code into the door lock, double-checking the small paper match I always placed below the hinge so I could tell if someone had circumvented the lock. It’s a thread-worn trick, but usually worked.

  The match was in place so I entered without drawing my pistol. Once in, I closed and barred the door behind me, addressing my MC. “Security, mail, and news.”

  “Alarm and defense activated,” the computer told me as it let sunlight stream in from the pipe to the roof. “No attempts to enter while you were gone. All e-mail’s junk and spams except for a note from Death asking that you pay him a visit.”

  “Dated hours ago, I hope.”

  “Yes. Nine-twenty AM.”

  “Been there, done that, didn’t wet my pants. Hey, I need a new subphone.”

  “Waste of money. Service unlikely to be reestablished anytime soon. Ecofreaks fried the main ground hub this morning.”

  I swore under my breath. Already I was feeling cellphone withdrawal; the anti-tech terrorists were intent to bring the world to its knees one phone tower at a time, and they couldn’t have picked a better way to do it in a world swollen with gossip. Fortunately, the wire net was still operational, and had enough redundancy to remain so for some time. The catch was whether it would have the capacity to carry the additional traffic, especially if more and more corporations switched to it as a replacement system for the wireless and air laser systems they’d lost.

  The computer continued, “Voice mail includes three second notices and threats to shut down your electrical and solar relays.”

  “Use this to pay the bills,” I said, jabbing the smart card Death had given me into the MC’s slot. I’d hoped to use the creds for some other purchases, but having the power and daylight down would be a bummer and hacking utility computers was often iffy at best. Sure, I had the talent to hit some ATMs now and then, but not the will; no matter how many times I told myself I was just stealing from some rich corp that had done its best to screw little old ladies, I still felt too guilty to hit ATMs unless things were really desperate, which they had been that morning.

  Today, when I’d finally struggled with my conscience and prevailed, Death’s goons had caught me in the act. That was a bad omen. Or maybe a lucky break, given that I would be facing a capital charge had it been the police rather than Death who had nabbed me. I didn’t pursue that train of thought.

  I retrieved a can of wine from the cupboard. If I only had two days left to live — which seemed very likely at this point since Death didn’t make idle threats and locating Huntington quickly seemed a doubtful proposition — I wasn’t going to hold back on the vices my last few hours.

  I retrieved my PA from my wrist and popped it into its MC dock on the computer access panel at the wall. “I have a new data dot in here I want you to check out.”

  “I’ve located it.”

  “Authenticate everything. Put an agent on the web and see if you can find any new leads. If you do, follow those, too.” I figured it didn’t hurt to double-check the data to be sure someone hadn’t given Death some fake input. The last thing I needed with a two-day deadline hanging over me was to flame on jet pursuing erroneous leads.

  “It will take about five to fifteen minutes. Section four has a net-split and the alternate re-route is down again today due to a Wicca/Majik clash. I’ll have to use cable — it may take a few minutes.”

  “Whatever. I’ll read the news while I’m waiting.” I slipped my goggle screens over my face. Call me paranoid but I preferred to be able to see screens by myself without worrying about a police bug or visitor overseeing what I was viewing. No wall screens for me thank you — even if I could afford one. I put my money into a high-def VG and let it go at that.

  I hated keyboards, too. So the MC voice-inputted, eye leaded, and brainwaved from my VG for the most part, while the keyboard collected dust next to the mains. On the other hand, I could read a lot faster than I could hear, and hated the tiny sound of speech compression, so I preferred my news on the goggles rather than via earphones.

  I adjusted the headset and sensors over my temple plates. The screens came up in front of my eyes as I settled into my threadbare easy chair. I popped open the can of wine and waited for its cooling unit to kick in, checking the first story that my computer automatically chose for me according to my specs, stripping ads and sub-channeling the 3D graphics since both were generally useless bandwidth as far as I was concerned.

  A flat accompanied the first story video clip that ran at its side:

  National Data News 08/01/2046 - 10:01 AM UT

  Killer executed after 14 minutes on death row

  ANGOLA, NVA - After 14 minutes on death row, James Franklin was executed by lethal injection early Friday for killing prized police mech DR562937AW during a neodrug raid on Franklin’s amphetamine lab. Authorities claim —

  “Next,” I ordered, shuddering at the 3D graphic of the killer’s cold eyes which had somehow sneaked through the filtering. Death would envy that guy’s face, I thought as the next story appeared.

  Fugitive forgotten for century turns self in

  DALLAS, NT. - Friends and family of the man known as “The Popsicle” have begun a letter-writing campaign, hoping to persuade New Texas’s Prime Minister not to extradite the criminal to Washington, DC.

  The Popsicle, Frank Inman, was a fugitive from the law and, for a time, on TV’s Most Wanted list. What the authorities didn’t know was that he had been frozen for 97 years. Sources close to the case say Inman underwent a sex change operation before secretly paying a cryogenic lab to freeze her body for nearly a century —

  “Next,” I ordered.

  Pseudo Frank Synattra Tapes Released ($00.005 Surcharge for Download)

  Episodic Records announced its new algorithm that perfectly duplicates the voice of the singer it’s named after. In the ground-breaking release of an all-new set of eight-four —

  An ad! Three curses later I asked my computer, “What happened to your filter? Isn’t it still installed?”

  “It seems to be non-functional,” the MC answered.

  Nothing ever works right for long, I thought, shaking my head. “Let’s see th
e next news story.”

  Panicked crowd stampedes — twenty crushed

  TOPEKA, NK - A panicked crowd raced through a downtown shopping center early this morning. When the hysterical shoppers emerged from the mall, many claimed that a helicopter, firing rockets and machine guns, had been chasing them. The Vietnamese owner of the restaurant where the stampede originated was mystified as to what had sparked the frenzy. “We don’t have a high enough ceiling for a chopper — even if we would allow such a thing to fly in — which we did not.”

  “Cut,” I ordered. This bit of loony news did happen close to home, right downtown from me in fact, but it was the last thing I wanted to hear about now and there didn’t seem to be any money making angle to it that might be exploited, though I toyed for a money with an extortion scheme that would threaten restaurant owners with helicopters if they didn’t leave a bag of money outside the back door of their business.

  “Next.”

  Fatality rates continue to climb in SupeR-Gs

  Redmond, NW - The Supreme Investigation Council announced today that the drug commonly known as “jet” was to blame for the high numbers of unexpected deaths in several web sites that cater to players of the so-called Super Roll Playing Games (SupeR-Gs). Experts say the use of jet is tempting for many young people because the drug adds a layer of reality to the games, fueled by the side code most SupeR-G designers add to their sites. A spokesman for the Supreme Investigation Council demanded that an investigation be started immediately to —