by Matt Cowper
There were plenty of bad apples here, and sometimes ordinary people got a little crazy with their teleportation apps or their dark-matter frisbees, but I wasn’t all that concerned – I had my God Arm, after all. As long as I kept my head up and my wits about me, I wouldn’t lose any digits or have half my memory erased.
As I turned onto Richards Street, Bootup’s main thoroughfare, I saw a cyborg beggar whose left forearm had been ripped or blasted off sitting on some moldy cardboard. Wires and twisted metal stuck out from his elbow, and there were scorch marks on the exterior plates. A cardboard sign that said “NEED MONEY FOR NEW ARM AND FOOD” sat beside him. He jiggled his cup as I walked closer, and I stopped and looked down at him.
“How’d that happen?” I said, pointing at his mangled arm.
“Got in a fight with another bum,” the beggar said. Half his face was robotic, and his voice came out in a metallic squawk. “Was a dumb move. Guy had better tech.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a few crumpled bills. Crushing debts or not, I could spare a few bucks for a maimed cyborg.
“It ain’t much,” I said, tossing the bills into the cup, “but here. I know what it’s like to lose a limb.”
“Thanks, buddy,” the cyborg said, grinning. “Every little bit helps. You say you got something whacked off too?”
“Yeah, my right arm,” I replied.
“What tech you got? Looks pretty smooth to me.”
“No tech, actually. I got a magical replacement – sort of.”
“Magic?” the cyborg said, his eyes widening. “I don’t trust that stuff. Too unpredictable. Tech, you can code it, alter it, augment it, troubleshoot it, whatever. Magic, it’s just a crapshoot.” He shrugged. “Well, to each his own, I guess.”
“Believe me, I know all about magic’s unpredictability,” I said, chuckling. “Have a good one, and don’t go fighting anyone with a bigger processor than you.”
“Alright, man. Thanks again for the dough.”
“You complain about this unpredictability of mine, John Wagner?” Dak thought-spoke. “You know nothing of the chaos and fury the God of Destruction has at his command. If I unleashed my full power, you would quiver in fear.”
“Whatever, Dakky,” I thought-spoke back. “Why don’t you try that fireball again?”
“Enough about the fireball!”
“Yeah, thought so.”
I walked down the block until I came to an old brick building: Netmaster’s Net-Pad. Most of the windows were shattered, and graffiti snaked up the decaying bricks. It looked like a flophouse, but that wasn’t exactly what it was – at least, its occupants weren’t your normal drug users.
As usual, Big-Eyed Baldwin was standing on the front steps. He was a tall, thin black man wearing cowboy boots, a leather jacket, and sunglasses. I’d never seen him take off his glasses, so I had no idea if he actually had big eyes. I also didn’t know if he was a superhuman, cybernetically enhanced, or just a normal guy. When I’d asked him about all this in the past, he’d just put a shit-eating grin on his face and changed the subject.
Whatever he was, he must be observant, because he’d been the watchdog for this place for years. Netmaster and his cohorts had all sorts of countermeasures and high-tech surveillance set up to protect their building, but they still wanted a human on the scene to keep a lookout and act as muscle.
The Z City Police and the superheroes generally left Bootup alone, so Big-Eyed Baldwin usually had it easy, but every so often some latte-sipping yuppie stumbled down here, gasped in horror, and scampered back to their pretentiously-minimalist apartment in Midtown and wrote what they considered a scathing email to some city official. Then the muckety-mucks organized a raid to clean up this “techno-anarchist ghetto,” and everyone here in Bootup scrambled around for a few days trying to hide their Kim Kardashian sexbots, apocalyptic malware, and flamingo porn collections. Things eventually calmed down, and everyone got back to their coding, laser-blasting, and deviant sexual escapades.
Big-Eyed Baldwin swiveled his head slowly as I approached. When I reached the bottom of the steps, he broke out in a grin, revealing his gold front teeth.
“Johnny Wagner,” he said, sticking out a hand. “Long time no see. Good to see you, too, Dak.”
“The feeling within Dakroth’gannith’formaz is similar to the emotions within your breast, Baldwin With The Big Eyes,” Dak rumbled.
“Yeah, the last few cases have been pretty simple,” I said, shaking Baldwin’s hand, “so I haven’t needed Netmaster to do any diving.”
“You can still stop by and shoot the shit, man,” Baldwin said. “Or are you too good for us peasants?”
“I didn’t know you all suffered from Johnny Wagner withdrawals,” I said. “I’ll be sure to come by more so everyone doesn’t collapse onto their beds and drench their pillows with tears.”
“Still a jester, I see,” Baldwin said, laughing. “Good to hear you ain’t gone all depressive. The last thing we need is another jackass moping around because The Man got him under his thumb. I tell you, I’m happy at the bottom. Those people up in Midtown and the Garden got everything to lose. Me, if the bottom falls out, my life’ll stay exactly the same.”
“Such inspiration,” I said. “Ever consider being a life coach?”
“You laugh, but I’d be a great one. I’d tell those drones to come down here where the action is. Once they had a few minutes with a Zoe Saldana sexbot or spent a night at Digital Dementia, they’d loosen up, sho’ nuff.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “Anytime a yuppie steps foot in Bootup, all of you howl about gentrification.”
“You ain’t lying,” Baldwin said, laughing. “I guess we’re all a bunch o’ damn hypocrites, ain’t we?”
“Everyone is,” I said. “It’s the human condition. Listen, I’d love to chat more, but I’ve got work to do. Is Netmaster here?”
“Is Netmaster here?” Baldwin echoed sarcastically. “Of course he’s here. Where else would he be? The man don’t go nowhere.”
“Yeah, stupid of me for asking,” I said. “Don’t exert yourself, I’ll show myself in.”
“Good, cuz I’m a lookout, not a doorman.”
“Yeah, yeah, fuck you too.”
Baldwin shot me the bird as I opened the grimy front door and stepped inside. The hallway was clogged with dust and cobwebs. A cockroach, seeing the light from the doorway, scurried back into a hole in the baseboard. It looked like a normal cockroach to me, but knowing this place, it was probably robotic.
At the end of the hall, another door opened, revealing a pale, vaguely Asiatic face. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but he already had a large cybernetic eye as well as a cranial jack; I could see wires trailing from the base of his skull. The eye flickered a few times, changing from dark blue to light red, and then the face disappeared back into the room and the door was slammed shut. Probably some hacker waiting for one of the Russians to stop by with his payment.
I climbed the creaky, scarred stairs and walked down another dark corridor on the second floor. At the end of the hall, I knocked three times on a door that had been spray-painted with “FASCIST PIGS DIE IN BLAZING TORMENT NOW.” I heard someone stomp to the door, and then I heard about a dozen locks being turned inside.
Finally the door opened, and the emaciated face of Netmaster (real name: erased from all known websites and databases) stared back at me.
“Johnny motherfucking Wagner,” he said. “I ain’t seen you since Gunslingerz was in beta.”
“Yeah, it’s been a while. Haven’t had any complicated cases, so haven’t needed a diver.”
“So what? You can still stop by and hang out sometime.”
“Big-Eyed Baldwin said the same thing. I’ll try to do better, so you guys don’t get all weepy and depressed.”
“Fuck you too, man,” Netmaster said, chuckling. “Dak, you still acting all destructive and shit?”
“Of course, Master of Net,” Dak rumbled. “W
ould I be Dakroth’gannith’formaz, God of Destruction, if I did not act in a destructive manner?”
“Nope, you sure wouldn’t,” Netmaster replied. “So, whatcha got goin’ on, Johnny? Come on in, make yourself comfortable, tell me what you need.”
I stepped into what Netmaster called his Net-Cave. It was actually an apt description. Thick curtains covered the windows; the only light came from the ten computer screens scattered around. Netmaster didn’t really need them, since he could connect directly to the Net via his cranial jack, but he liked to keep soothing imagery on the screens so he could relax whenever he took a break. I saw butterflies, waterfalls, a deserted beach, sunrise over a mountain range.
The room had a thick, funky smell; like most people in this building, Netmaster didn’t have time to wash his clothes or clean up the mountain of pizza boxes stacked by one of his workstations. Too much work to do. Too many secrets to find, too many “uptight asswads,” as he called them, to troll.
I brushed some dirty boxers off of a chair and sat down. Netmaster sat down beside me and reconnected his cranial jack to the nearest workstation.
“So, what’s up?” he asked.
“Got a job this morning, need you to check out some stuff.”
“Hooray. Gimme the deets.”
I told him about my case. I detailed the traffic video and talked about Julia’s concerns, keeping everything vague enough to maintain client confidentiality. I then told him about my chat with Burt Harrison, and the fact that the bomb was made of null-raxite. When I was done, Netmaster leaned back in his chair and whistled.
“This is a quirky one, Johnny,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
“First I want you to analyze that traffic video. I need to be sure it’s legit before I move forward. After all, if it’s fake, then we’re looking at this from an entirely wrong angle.”
“Alright,” Netmaster replied. “I’ll grab the original video from the Z City Department of Transportation – if there is an original video. They have some weak-ass security. Guess they don’t think they need to protect their freeway diagrams or traffic-sign location maps. I’ll be in and out in no time.”
Netmaster’s eyes glazed over and some lights on the data probe connected to his cranial jack started glowing a soft blue. He was in the Net, looking around for the original traffic video showing the death of Captain Neptune. Other hackers and net-runners measured their abilities down to the last megabyte and millisecond and then bragged about it in some nerdy dick-measuring contest, but Netmaster was on a whole other level. I had no idea how much information he could process at once; the few who knew him suspected his skill couldn’t be measured. After all, this was his superpower: he could absorb information like some superhumans could absorb energy.
I’d done some preliminary research before coming here, but I could browse through the Net for days and not find half of what Netmaster could dig up in five minutes. He can go in the Net, while all I can do is open up my Iceberg browser and click around on information that has been converted to an easily-readable visual form.
Netmaster sometimes bugged me to get a cranial jack installed (“The real Net is amazing, Johnny. One little taste and you’ll never want to leave”), but the last time I tried to “upgrade” myself, I ended up with a God Arm. A cranial jack would make me some weird techno-magical-human hybrid, and that wasn’t a step I wanted to take.
Netmaster could have his deep-sea diving; I’d stick to reality. There was a reason net-runners used that term; when you jumped into the Net, there were all sorts of wonders to behold. You might come across an online poker game between demi-gods, find a back-channel communique between two alien diplomats, or find an ex-superhero’s homemade porn.
Of course, like real-life diving, there were dangers. People put all sorts of shit in the dark corners of the Net: there were viruses that would erase your mind or, even worse, convince you that you’re Shirley Temple reincarnated; seemingly-authentic password-protected pages the government puts up to trap net-runners; and, of course, lolcats that have become sentient.
“OK, I’ve found the original video, and I’ve transferred it to my system,” Netmaster finally said. “Analyzing it now.”
Again Netmaster’s eyes glazed over and his data probe glowed. In less than thirty seconds, he was done with his analysis.
“Looks legit to me,” he said. “Trajectories are good, lighting is consistent, no one’s messed with the timecode. I also scanned all the bystanders whose faces were captured by the camera. They’re all random people who could reasonably be at that intersection at that time of day.”
“Alright, so Squirrel did lob that bomb,” I said. “OK, next up: the bomb itself. You can’t exactly find null-raxite on the supermarket shelves – or even in Evil-Doer’s Emporium of Villainry. Is there any whispering on the Net about the stuff?”
“I doubt it, but I’ll check anyway. People aren’t going to use the Net, even the hard-to-find areas of it, to buy and sell null-raxite. They know guys like me are always scouring.”
Netmaster dove in again, but this time he was back out in less than twenty seconds.
“Sorry, Johnny, nothing doing,” he said, shrugging. “You’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way on this one.”
“Intimidate people until they talk?” I said.
“Exactly,” Netmaster replied.
“That is what I have been saying this entire time,” Dak rumbled. “Let us break bones and vaporize limbs until we find the truth.”
“Always primed for action, ain’t ya, Dak?” Netmaster said. “By the way, how are you paying for this little consultation, Johnny? You already owe me a large chunk o’ change, and that’s with your discount. Sorry man, but I got bills to pay too.”
I thought about the massive sum I owed him and winced. Me and Netmaster used to be teammates, back when Alpha Guard existed, so he gave me fifty percent off his services for old times’ sake, but even with that discount, my tab was staggering.
Alpha Guard – those were interesting times. Hard to believe the man I was looking at now used to handle intel, logistics, and communications for Bootheel’s third- or fourth-best superteam – but I could say the same thing about myself. Superhero work burned you out quickly, unless you were one of those valedictorian/prom king/Eagle Scout types. We weren’t.
“Once I cash my retainer, I’ll send you some Pixel Bucks,” I said. “Won’t be enough to pay off the whole debt, but you know I’m not gonna flake out on you.”
“No, man, Pixel Bucks have depreciated too much. It’s Nom Nom Coins now, baby. So hot, they burn my processors.”
“Damn, you guys change cryptocurrencies every week.”
“As soon as the media gets wind of anything new, they start writing those gosh-wow error-filled articles of theirs, and everyone dogpiles on, including Uncle Sam, and they suck the life out of it. We gotta stay out there on the frontier, one step ahead of the yokels.”
“I prefer cold hard cash myself,” I said, “but I guess I’m just a doofus.”
“If you actually did the math on inflation, you’d change those archaic ways of yours.”
“Well, I suck at math, so inflation can do whatever it wants,” I said.
“You suck at everything,” Netmaster replied, “so don’t act like math is your one weak area.”
“Ha ha,” I fake-laughed. “Alright, if your evil, money-grubbing soul is satisfied, I’d like to see if Patrick Anderson – or his wife – had any dark secrets. Can you check out some email addresses and phone records?”
“You know, all this hacking is unethical,” Netmaster said. “I’m not bothered by it, of course, but someone like you, with your good-guy morals, may lose some sleep at night.”
I rubbed my chin. Yes, this may be unethical, but I’d been burned by clients before. Catching philanderers wasn’t all that complex, but a case like this was. There were a lot of motives, a lot of liars, and a lot of people who wanted to use me as a pawn. “I need to
know what I’m really getting into. Do it, but don’t waste time looking at pointless, gossipy emails or whatever. Focus on the important stuff.”
“Alright,” Netmaster said. “Do you have the email addresses?”
I gave him Patrick and Julia’s email addresses and phone numbers. “I don’t have Homer’s info; DSC hasn’t released it, and I haven’t talked to anyone who knew him yet.”
“Gimme a sec.”
This time he was back out in less than ten seconds.
“OK, that’s interesting.”
“What is?” I asked.
“That email address and those phone numbers are protected by Comfortable Fortress’s security suite. It looks like the Anderson household had everything encrypted six ways to Sunday.” Netmaster chewed his lip and shook his head. “I’m good, Johnny, but I’m not that good.”
“I thought you could hack that stuff,” I said. “Back in the Alpha Guard days, you melted right through it.”
“You’re right, but the company’s upgraded since then. This new version is beyond cutting edge, beyond bleeding edge – it’s like the cut has already healed over and scarred.” He reached back and stroked the data probe sticking out of his skull. “There may be evidence of a juicy affair somewhere in there, or a betrayal, or whatever, but I can’t get to it.”
“Comfortable Fortress…high priced tech.”
“How can they afford it?” Netmaster asked. “Something’s off here, Johnny. Is your client—”
“You let me worry about my client,” I said. Netmaster was an information addict; he was always trying to find out who my clients were, and I was always trying to keep his curiosity at bay.
“Yeah, but—” Netmaster began.
Suddenly the nearby monitor flicked to an image of a black man with glasses: Big-Eyed Baldwin. He looked concerned, and I’d never seen Baldwin so much as crack a knuckle out of nervousness.