Isonation

by In Churl Yo

  “That was brilliant,” Nox said. “Er, sorry about that little misunderstanding back there.” Caleb nodded back, too winded to respond otherwise.

  “Frankly,” a voice growled, “I’m surprised you two haven’t already killed each other, or me, yet."

  Nox looked at Caleb, who only shook his head as Theodore Ogden began thrashing at his bindings trying to break free. “What is the point of this? Please explain to me why I am trussed up like some…some snout-nosed pig?!” Ogden hissed. “And why does my back hurt so much?”

  “Terrific,” said Caleb, untangling his body from the agitated CEO.

  “Free me now and I might possibly be persuaded to let you live,” demanded Ogden. “Although an admittedly low possibility...”

  “Sir, I apologize in advance for this,” said Nox as he aimed his stun rifle at their prisoner and pulled the trigger—but the gun did not fire.

  Half a beat later the Ceres chief announced: “You should know I’m terminating your employment, Nox, effective immediately.” The man with white hair could only sigh.

  “Drag him,” said Caleb. “I have a feeling we’re going to have visitors soon. Let’s get my rifle and get the hell out of here.”

  Meanwhile, the calm on the plaza grounds beyond the main doors of the Ceres headquarters building was not reflected by the drone ship that was circling overhead.

  # # #

  Alarms were sounding from several consoles inside the cockpit, most caused by the erratic flying of its inexperienced pilot, and the aircraft came close to crashing several times.

  “I know,” Zoah said annoyed. “I can see the readouts too, Heelo. Give me a second to stabilize the gyroscopes, okay?”

  As it hovered in place, the stealth craft leveled out. Before she could even allow herself a small congratulatory smile, an even louder, more insistent alarm took over the moment, and Zoah rolled her eyes. Heelo began chirping.

  “Drones?” she asked. “What drones? Where?” Zoah’s visor lit up and revealed two blips on a detailed map of Ravendale traveling toward her position. “How long until they reach us?”

  Before Heelo could respond, the front doors of the Ceres building flew open as Nox and Caleb, lugging a kicking and writhing Ogden between them, came running outside. A series of flash bangs thundered from inside the lobby, and Zoah watched as they threw smoke bombs over their shoulders while they ran.

  “So, I guess that means we have to land this thing now. That’s the easiest part, right?” Heelo gave her a low whistle as she took the controls and began a fitful descent toward the far end of the plaza. Along the way, the stealth ship proceeded to clip a series of neglected flag poles, then overcompensated its recovery and almost drug the drone’s right propeller housings into the ground.

  “Easy, girl, that’s my ship!” said Nox over the communication link.

  “Can’t talk, must fly,” she responded. “Heelo, lower the hatch. Oh, and the landing gear, too!”

  The rear door came down and then around as the craft spun wildly in mid-air. Wheeled struts lowered from underneath the carriage just as the drone ship fell the final few meters out of the air and hit the ground with a thud.

  “Let me know when you’re aboard,” Zoah said.

  “Almost there,” answered Caleb. The too-familiar report of semi-automatic gunfire filled the plaza as several security guards made it outside and opened fire on the stealth ship through the smoky haze. Before their first step even hit the ramp, Caleb screamed, “Go, go, go!”

  Zoah pulled back on the yoke and hit the throttle. She banked the ship away from the approaching enemy drones and proceeded to travel down the main thoroughfare at near street level.

  “I think I’m getting the hang of this,” she said and nodded at Heelo.

  Nox and Caleb secured Ogden to a chair in the rear section, then made their way forward. “What’s our status?” Caleb said when they reached the cockpit.

  “The ship is still in one piece if that’s what you’re asking,” Zoah said. “We’ve also got two drones coming up on us fast.”

  “Military patrol,” said Nox. “They mean to shoot us out of the sky.”

  “You want the stick?” Zoah asked him.

  “No, you seem to have a pretty good handle on it now,” he answered and watched as a grin stretched itself across Zoah’s face. “Take a left here.”

  “What’s the plan?” asked Caleb as the ship took a hard turn.

  “We can outrun the drones easily enough, however missiles pose a different problem altogether.”

  “You think they’d fire one at us with the CEO aboard?”

  Nox laughed. “If I were in charge, or even Ogden, no. But my confidence wanes the further down the chain of command we fall. It’s possible some idiot would give the order to kill the most powerful man on the planet and claim ignorance after the fact. The next right, Ms. Lightsea.”

  Zoah commanded the ship to turn, then eyed the readouts on the center console panel. “They’re staying with us,” she said. “I’m going to open her up a little bit—try and gain some distance. You should strap in.”

  Caleb and Nox both sat down and clipped their harnesses in place.

  The man with white hair accessed the controls in front of him and pulled his visor down for a visual display of the pursuing drones. A flashing message and solid tone caught his attention. “They’ve got a missile lock on us!” he yelled.

  “Hang on,” said Zoah. She gunned the accelerator and turned the ship at the next available corner.

  “Missile coming in hot!” Nox said.

  A small opening on their left came up, and Zoah banked the stealth ship and flew inside the concrete parking garage. The tiny warhead impacted just above the entrance and exploded in a ball of flame, compromising the integrity of the structure by destroying a nearby load-bearing column.

  Chunks of concrete fell around them as they flew through the parking level. The available airspace was dwindling the farther in they flew. Behind them whole sections began shifting and falling in as the garage grew closer to collapsing. Ahead Zoah saw daylight at the far end of the tiered lot—but a half wall made the opening too small for their ship to clear. She looked over at Nox, who gritted his teeth and nodded.

  “Do it,” he said.

  Zoah punched the controls, and the engine’s whine increased. Dust and gravel crackled through the propellers as they turned. Cracks and great fissures appeared all along their path, threatening to come apart and unravel around them, crushing them under tons of heavy concrete slab. The aircraft fought through the debris, shifting left and right around the fallen wreckage, then revved up and battered into the wall, flying out in a spectacular spray of broken rock and dust. The garage imploded behind them, disappearing into a gray suffocating cloud.

  “Lucky,” said Nox. “We can’t do that again.”

  Caleb unbuckled his restraints. “When I give the word, find a nice straight path and keep the ship steady.”

  “Where are you going?” Zoah asked.

  “I have to make sure those security guards didn’t mess up the scope on my dad’s rifle. There’ll be hell to pay if they did.” He got up and walked toward the back of the ship.

  “You want to tell me what’s happening?” Ogden asked when he saw Caleb approaching.

  “Not really.”

  “Do you believe you can trust Nox? You’re mistaken.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time. If I only had more time to visit…” Caleb said while closing the door to the cargo area behind him, leaving Ogden once again bound to his chair, alone with his thoughts.

  Caleb pressed the hatch release button and held it down as the rear ramp lowered until the opening reached just two-thirds of the way beyond the threshold. He found a bit of rope used to secure cargo in place and tied one end off to the wall and the other around his waist, then laid down on the hatch and crawled up to the top end of it where he had an unobstructed view behind them.

  “I’m here. Level it out,”
he said.

  “Hurry,” Nox replied. “They’re about to get another lock on us.”

  Caleb lifted his father’s long gun into firing position and exhaled. He saw them—two unmanned military drones in formation following at their rear, and adjusted the distance on his scope, dialing them in for a shot. They were highly maneuverable and well-armored, so it wasn’t going to be easy. When he found a weak point between two sections of plating, Caleb took a shot at the lead drone.

  The bullet ricocheted off, causing the ship to wobble for a briefly before recovering.

  “Missile lock!” Nox announced.

  He looked through his scope again and found the nose cone of an explosive rocket as it was lowered from its housing inside the military drone’s wing. Caleb didn’t hesitate. He reloaded, then put the small warhead at the center of his crosshairs and pulled the trigger again. Just as the missile ignited its fuel to launch itself, Caleb’s round pierced the ordinance, and it exploded, taking the drone with it.

  The other drone then advanced to take its place.

  “Nice shooting, Tex,” squealed Zoah.

  “The other one’s about to acquire us,” Nox warned.

  Caleb cleared the spent round from his father’s rifle and loaded another one into the chamber. “Not today,” he said and put the next shot exactly where he wanted it. “Not ever again.”

  CHAPTER 23

  There’s no such thing as a perfect hack. Because once you acknowledge and observe it, give the hack existence and truth, it becomes imperfect in the knowing.

  Like astronomical phenomena too far away for our earthbound instruments to see, where we infer many of our celestial discoveries by the effects they have on the objects around them, so it is with elite computer infiltration and data appropriation. When large amounts of government or corporate secrets get dumped onto the global network, when certain aircraft or shipments disappear into thin air or when people cease to exist, we presume often after the fact and in passing that a hack was involved. We are distracted by result, when the thing we should be paying attention to, the thing we should in fact admire more, was the eloquent, sophisticated and maybe even (perish the thought!) perfect hack behind it all. The hack that never existed.

  This was not going to be that kind of hack.

  Neema and Milton had arrived at the designated coordinates only to find a box on a table in an empty field in the middle of nowhere. It was an unexpected result after hours of anticipation, and Milton couldn’t help but to have felt disappointed by the mundane turn of events.

  He had expected—well, he hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t every day the Kiter Five granted you an audience. He had hoped for some pomp to accompany these rather unusual circumstances. Instead there was only a box. Under its lid, on a bed of red velvet lining, sat a red pill and a blue pill.

  “This seems oddly familiar,” Milton had said, acknowledging the scene from The Matrix, a film that was practically required viewing to hackers everywhere. The Kiters definitely had a twisted sense of humor.

  “They’re for you,” Neema had responded.

  “And what do you know about all of this?”

  “I know that if you want to join us, you’ll have to choose.”

  He’d chosen the red pill. Soon thereafter Milton had blacked out for an indeterminate amount of time—long enough to have to worry about his current whereabouts in relation to that empty field back in the middle of nowhere and to still harbor some lingering drowsiness and after effects, as if someone had spun the tint and brightness knobs on his video feed filters in opposite directions. But then, he was the one who wanted to see how deep the rabbit hole went. It turned out the answer was not long in coming. It went deep.

  “I am sorry about that.”

  Milton could have sworn he had been alone a moment ago, but Neema had appeared behind him out of nowhere. “Where am I?” he had asked.

  “Right where you wanted to be. Look, you’ve been begging to become a Kiter almost since the moment we met, and now here’s your chance. Consider this your induction—a series of challenges you’ll have to pass for membership.”

  “A test. How does this work then?”

  “I don’t know,” Neema had to admit. “You’re the first one we’ve tested. Plus, they’re not saying. As your sponsor, I’ve been kept out of the loop. Keep in mind the rest of the Five won’t even listen to me about what’s happening at Ceres or give us their help unless you complete these tasks they’ve designed for you. I don’t have to tell you how important this is, do I?”

  Milton had looked around the room, which was different a moment ago, maybe even smaller, when the realization had hit him: “I’m in the Virt, aren’t I? Damn, I really hate waking up in here.”

  “Do what you do best,” she had said before fading away.

  “I’m a hacker. That’s all I do. Is that what this is about, Neema?”

  Which was how Milton got here, standing in the center of a large dojo, contemplating the meaning of the nonexistent, perfect hack, talking to no one.

  A gong sounded somewhere overhead, and two immense shoji room dividers slid apart to reveal a giant, eight-foot tall behemoth in traditional all-black martial arts clothing (who to Milton seemed about as equal in breadth as he was in height) come lurching into the room. If there had to be a physical battle between them, it was going to be a short, painful one.

  Milton accessed his cufflink. His fingers danced on the controls as he ascertained what he had to work with. During the last several weeks, since his incarceration in Taiwan, he’d been working hard to find ways to break into the Virt’s code and uncover how Taan (now Nox) had played with its parameters. For the average user, most of those parameters were locked out and regulated to prevent the kind of thing that happened then and was again happening to him now.

  Imagine if people could create any kind of reality they wanted, pervert the very laws of nature, it would become a simple thing to torture, maim or even murder someone. Black market Virt simulations did exist on the global network that offered distorted realities for fun, but Ceres always shut them down as soon as they were discovered. Such things never interested Milton, but now after recent events both here and in Taiwan, he wished he’d paid them more attention.

  Tapping out was not an option, and the emergency log outs had all been disabled. The Kiter Five wouldn’t have made the solution so easy. I certainly wouldn’t. Milton scrolled past the rest of the top-level command tree and began to dig deeper.

  A hand as big as a leather recliner came out of nowhere at him, and Milton jumped at the last moment to avoid the crushing blow.

  “Oh. Right. Kung Fu hulk. Hello!”

  He rolled away, then ran across the room to put some distance between them. The good news was his opponent was slow. The bad news was everything else.

  Milton tried to delete the character, but those commands were frozen. He attempted to alter the hulk’s size and strength but couldn’t access those parameters either. His foe got close enough to take another swipe at Milton, and he ducked under the hand as it attempted to grab him. This time before he ran, Milton stomped on the creature’s foot with his boot as hard as he could, and it wailed in pain.

  At least you’re not invulnerable. That’s something.

  The giant seemed to awaken some, no doubt aggravated by Milton’s attack, and began to pursue him with a bit more gusto. Now he had to try to find a solution on the fly, writing lines of code as he scurried around the room avoiding the beast.

  Environment controls were inaccessible.

  Atmospheric regulators? No.

  Virt power interface and battery systems? No.

  sHD visor and hap suit interface? Forget it.

  Milton was running out of options. Unless he figured out a way to subdue the creature soon, this was going to end badly for him. He could do nothing to affect the creature with coding, and the only thing he’d been able to inflict so far was a stubbed toe. Maybe if he could replicate that, d
ole out some kind of death by a thousand cuts…

  Maybe.

  The Kiter Five initiate backed out of the command tree he was in, then flipped through the various subsystems looking for the right one. For a split second, Milton caught some movement in the periphery of his visor and as he turned to look received a blinding blow that threw him several meters across the room.

  The hit sapped all the air from his chest, and Milton gasped as he rolled over on the floor. His right arm grew from numb to a throbbing pain by the awkward landing he took. It was all he could do to sit up and shake his limb back into submission. As the monster roared in satisfaction, Milton stumbled upright, stood and hobbled away, working his cufflink again.

  At first it hadn’t occurred to him to change his own profile. His initial instinct was to focus his attention on the creature, but that turned into a quick dead end. Milton sent a layer of obfuscated commands to bypass the security guarding his profile database. When that confused the system, he initiated a remote admin tool and accessed his physics parameters, changing the timing and synchronization protocols to something a tad more robust. That should do the trick. He hoped it would be enough to tilt the odds.

  Only Milton didn’t feel any different. When he took his first few steps on the run however, he knew everything had changed. Milton was fast now, ridiculously so, and he crossed the room several times in seconds, running circles around the brute who now seemed to be moving in slow motion.

  Milton caught himself laughing out loud but couldn’t help it—the feeling that his body was reacting as fast as his thoughts was exhilarating, but there wasn’t nearly enough time to enjoy it. He still had work to do.

  The hacker began pummeling the giant, dealing blow after blow in rapid succession. The fight now one of speed countering power like David against Goliath or Ali versus Foreman. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see. Rumble, young man, rumble!