MINDFRACK

  Logan noticed iSense offering a local cloud announcing itself as Bowery Commune Media Services or BCMS.

  “Yes,” confirmed Shala, “it’s a secure system. You can contact the outside via the Bowery cloud – when you’re ready. Now, if there’s anything you need, contact me on the cloud, there’s only one Ssshala.”

  “I’m sure there is,” said Logan.

  “We will meet again, Mark, there is much to talk about.”

  Before he could question her remark, Shala left them and merged into the flow of Xenos threading past their accommodation. Logan shut the door and wedged a chair up behind it.

  “It’s safe here,” said Wanda, observing his efforts.

  They went through into the back room.

  “You can take the bunk. I’ll take the floor,” offered Logan, while shifting boxes and sacks into a corner to give them more space.

  “Can’t sleep … not yet,” said Wanda. The tell-tale signs of deep emotional turmoil had resurfaced upon her face.

  “So where do you think Carrie has gone?” he asked, attempting to distract her.

  “I really don’t know. You didn’t sound hopeful about her state of mind – back at the iTatt shop.”

  Logan nodded. “She’s probably traumatised again. I’ve never seen a non-com 6thgen behave like she did at the iTatt shop. She saved us. I’ve no idea how, but she overrode all her programmed fail-safes. She’s going to need our help more than ever now.”

  “Agreed. Not good.”

  They were quiet for a few minutes.

  An idea came to him. “I think she’s gone looking for Dexy.”

  “The hospital?”

  “That’s what we told her – and if she contacts them or goes there …”

  “She’s going to find out the truth. Shit ... What do you think she’ll do? Go back to Dexy’s home.”

  “No …” said Logan, thinking deeply, “she’ll probably seek her roots.”

  “Her roots?” repeated Wanda, failing to understand his logic.

  “I don’t think there’ll be a sufficient anchor there for her. Because she’s suffered a severe trauma, she’ll be trying to reset her herself, psychologically speaking. It’s analogous to what we would do – more at a child’s level.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In many ways they’re like us, they continually reference a memory-root as part of their ego function – even if it’s buried in their version of the subconscious. Has she ever talked about her past?”

  “Yes, she did. More so after I repaired her.”

  Logan stopped what he was doing. “Go on – this could be important.”

  “Well, she kept talking about when she played with Dexy when she was a child, in their old home – which I took as Dexy’s foster home.”

  “Some of that agrees with what Dexy told me. She mentioned that she was brought up in a foster home – on Staten Island. And she mentioned that Carrie went with her, after she was parted from her brother. But I don’t see how that was possible. There weren’t any 6thgens around at that time.”

  “I think Carrie was a 5thgen – a Bestie-doll. She was upgraded during Dexy’s teens – but not by me. I was still in seventh grade back then, with no idea what I wanted to be.”

  “Now that’s rare – a 5thgen upgraded to 6thgen?”

  “Yeah, must have retained her 5thgen linear memories. Became an ‘adult’ 6thgen.”

  “And expensive,” said Logan. “Any idea who funded that?”

  “None … Maybe Grist?”

  “Doubt it. He had no idea he had a daughter – or a son – according to Dexy.”

  Wanda sighed. “Another mystery …”

  “I guess so. Look, why don’t you lie down for a while, you look beat.”

  “What I look like is crap – no need to be so kind. I’d love to get out of these clothes and take a wash in that basin out there.”

  “Yeah, me too. You go first, I can lie here.”

  She moved into the corner of the room and pulled off the topmost layer of her cheap street clothes.

  Logan busied himself creating a space on the floor. As he did so he became aware that Wanda was watching him. She looked broken and sad, but her hair was slowly picking itself up and turning a deeper violet with strands of bright pink moving through it. He knew it was a mixed message of sorts, and responded by taking a tentative stride towards her. She fell into his arms and sobbed into his chest. He pulled back.

  Wanda picked up on his expression. “I know what you’re thinking. Kath …?”

  “I understand. I don’t mind if you just need closeness right now, I’m –”

  She put her fingers against his lips. “Look, we don’t have to do this right now. I’m dealing with this. There are much bigger things at stake here than me or you.”

  For Logan the impossibility of his situation hit home. Outwardly, he’d been keeping it together for Wanda, but inside he was a train wreck. He’d been manipulated, turned into a killer, framed, chased, confronted with “truths” he had no idea about, and now he was hiding out in a Xeno commune.

  As soon as Wanda was asleep, he quietly pulled out his nano-popper and took a blue-purple combo and lay back staring at the ceiling. But their synthetic chemistry failed and when he fell asleep his mind cooked up an absurd set of storylines.

  Caught up in his nightmares, he didn’t feel the gentle pressure build within the front of his head.

  He found himself standing at the edge of a precipice. Below was a tropical haze of azure seas and silver beaches. He willingly stepped forward ...

  For the first time in days he slept deeply and without anxiety.

  Somewhere nearby, a set of bright green eyes opened and nictitated with satisfaction.

  33

  Salvatore re-checked the clock on the wall. It was 21:45.

  He watched Ade with a weary and long-suffering expression, restricted mostly to the upper half of his face, as the scientist continued to work through his checklist. The mien of his eyes perked up as Ade moved on to the emergency back-up systems, which meant he was finishing up. Salvatore brought his expression back to one of sleepy repose as the young scientist turned to him.

  “John Six, my friend, great things will be happening very soon, for both of us. I want you to know how proud I am of you.” A spark of excitement ran through his eyes as he spoke.

  Salvatore thought-spoke: What do you mean, Ade? But no voice came out of the speaker since the speech app was disabled.

  “I’ll be back later with more information. For now, John, get your rest.”

  What information, you cruel son-of-bitch? When are you coming back?

  Salvatore could have enabled the speech app himself and asked Ade what he meant by his statements, but he knew better than to give away his secret abilities.

  Ade performed the familiar combination of touches and swipes at his hand tablet, which Salvatore knew would begin the administration of the various meds he received every evening, including the sedatives that would send him off to sleep.

  Salvatore closed his eyes and invaded the larger tablet Ade had set up permanently on the table to his front. He overrode Ade’s commands, but did not interfere with the neural nutrients and enhancers. Lastly, he created the necessary sleep signatures upon the EEG displays.

  Ade finally left the room.

  Salvatore resisted the urge to peek with his real eyes and instead transferred his attention to the tablet and then the room cams.

  Satisfied that he was alone, he fled the confines of the laboratory and sought the GNG cloud servers. From there he negotiated the GNG firewall and left the building through its main communication hub and followed his preferred route into the infinite Cloud proper.

  He emerged into a vast shoal of metallic-coloured fish, as he thought-visualized the complex weave of messages and media packages, but pulled up short, confused by what appeared to be an enormous opaque object blocking his path. It was similar to the 3D Rubic-like encryption puz
zles used to protect some of the media accounts of GNG employees, but much bigger, with many more geometric faces that shifted randomly. He was reminded of another type of geometric puzzle called a Megaminx. He found the effect mesmerizing and wanted to solve the puzzle it represented. But he reminded himself that Mark and his friends needed him; he would come back to it later.

  He took a path around it, and the object moved with him, pulsing as it did so.

  He tried alternative routes, following the silvery fish as they swam around the barrier unhindered.

  No, it blocked him again. And again. And every time, with pulses of light, as though the object was sending a message. But to who, or what?

  What are you? he thought-projected at the Megaminx.

  Nothing returned.

  He repeated his question-request.

  A message stream arrived at the object.

  Each of the object’s geometric components bifurcated simultaneously, making it appear more complex by a factor of two, and each of those new components repeated the operation. This organic-like activity continued until the object became an even, featureless mass. The surface rippled. Smoothly and quickly a face pushed out of it – technically, he’d learned during his trips into the Cloud, like a biometric profile or e-signature. Salvatore recognised it from previous encounters, only this time it was as if its owner was present, here within the Cloud, and with him.

  It was the hacker called Pic.

  The mouth of the likeness opened.

  Who are you? it said back at him.

  Salvatore thought it wise not to tell Pic anything about himself.

  I’m no one – you’re Pic. What do you want?

  The Pic entity paused. Then it said, How do you know my name?

  I just do.

  What sort of friggin’ answer is that?

  Salvatore didn’t respond as he was absorbed by the puzzle before him. He needed to find a way to pass it. He looked closer at the surface of the Pic-image and realised it was not solid after all. More like a membrane that could be popped if he had a giant pin.

  Okay, no matter, I’ll call you Pisswit. Do you know what that means, Pisswit?

  No.

  It means your brain is seventy-five percent piss, ha ha!

  I need to pass.

  Unlikely! This is a fractal-morphing-spybot. Or Goku to you, Pisswit.

  What’s that?

  What? You’re a blackhat like me and you don’t know?

  I’m not a blackhat, I’m not anything.

  As Salvatore watched the silvery data-fish circumnavigate the huge head floating before him, he realised everything was conforming to rules. Those rules were not universal like gravity or temperature or the speed of light – he knew these things through his voracious exploration of Google as a child; rather, they were man-made to ensure there weren’t crashes of data within the Cloud. They were enforced so that all the Internet traffic could move smoothly and without interruption, in the intended manner, not unlike taxi cabs on New York’s road network, he thought. What would happen if those rules were ignored?

  Stop playing games with me, microbe. Now, tell me who you are. I know your location – it’s somewhere in the GNG building. I’ll get past the GNG firewall soon, so you may as well tell me.

  I need to pass.

  Little baby … I need to pass, I need to pass, please let me pass ... Pathetic little Pisswit. Try – you won’t get around me ...

  Salvatore again moved this way and that, but the object anticipated his moves, so preventing him.

  Told you so.

  Salvatore found this person called Pic to be malevolent and childish and it concerned him greatly that he almost knew his exact location. Could he get past the GNG firewall and discover his identity? Salvatore knew GNG’s digital defence systems were immensely complicated since the GNG’s R and D facility had many secrets, including him. But he had little doubt Pic could get through.

  He realised the object before him was like any other puzzle and any other app, albeit contained within a big, semi-opaque balloon. If he could see its internal workings …

  This is boring, said Pic. I thought you’d be a worthy opponent, but you’re – What are you doing?

  He wanted to look at the app from the inside. The only way to do that was to disregard the rules.

  Salvatore moved as fast as he could in a straight line, on a collision course with the amorphous mass rather than around it.

  You can’t do that …

  He closed his mind's eye as he approached the Pic-object’s surface at speed, expecting something to happen when they collided. He felt nothing, so he reopened his mind’s eye and checked his surroundings.

  He found himself floating inside a vast chamber, engulfed by strings of letters and strange symbols that may as well have been ancient hieroglyphics. He continued to look on in awe and wonder. This was the largest puzzle he’d ever seen.

  No way … you can’t break into my app. No one can do that!

  Salvatore considered he had options. He could simply disregard the rules again and fly on through the Pic-object and then, he guessed, exit the other side and continue his journey through the Cloud to his friends. But that would leave the giant fractal-spybot-Goku-puzzle-thing here and he knew Pic would use it to get into the GNG cloud.

  Alternatively, he could stay and solve the puzzle whatever that would achieve – but it was vast and could take him years. Tempting ...

  Or, he could try and stop it from getting any further.

  But how?

  Salvatore focused on the dense code that floated around him and reached out, probing it. He selected a group of symbols with his thought-fingers and pulled them out and away before discarding them. He continued until the entire string of symbols he’d isolated fell apart before him, drifting away, its link with the app severed. He repeated this simple action for other code-strings and watched as the structure of the spybot called “Goku” began to come apart.

  You can’t edit my code – that’s … impossible ... Stop it! STOP IT!!

  The app’s structure wavered and collapsed around him. It dissolved into the background of the Cloud, and where it had left a hole, the shoals of metallic fish quickly filled the space.

  Pic had gone.

  34

  Pic was beside himself, his overweight body lurching from side to side making his blackhat lounger squeak and groan, threatening to collapse – like his spybot app.

  Pisswit had destroyed his most prized, fully autonomous, 5thgen hunter-trojan fractal-morphing spybot he’d lovingly named Goku, after Manga’s most historically powerful character. He’d designed and programmed it himself and knew its every intricate detail and ability. It was supposed to be impregnable and effectively invisible. It could roam all of cyberspace with impunity, learning, breaking through firewalls, reporting back, yet never giving away its owner’s identity or location in the Cloud. Yet Pisswit had immediately spotted it and then pulled it apart as easily and with as little regard as a child pulling the legs off a spider.

  Pic had little choice but to deactivate what was left of it and make it self-destruct, since he didn’t want his adversary to learn any more about him.

  His stomach hurt so he pulled himself up and farted with the stone-cold realisation that he’d been outwitted and forced to retreat. For the first time in his life he was unnerved by another of his kind, the idea that there was a blackhat out there that could be a threat to him.

  He wanted to know everything about Pisswit: how long he’d been out there, where he came from, what he knew, his programming methods – those most of all – and how he became so good. Only then would he tell Turkey how to find him.

  A darker realisation crept up on him and he stopped bouncing around on his lounger and sucked his thumb instead.

  If Turkey knew that there was someone better than him, or even his equal, then where would that put him?

  Because of the iTatt shop fuck-up, Turkey already knew there was another hacker o
ut there, possibly his equal …

  And, in Turkey’s eyes, he feared, he had contributed to – if not caused – Crusoe’s death.

  What did all that mean?

  It meant that if he failed to deliver the playmate or Logan soon, Turkey would consider him a liability.

  Then Turkey would send the command, the one that would turn him into shredded meat wallpaper. He knew Turkey would have no hesitation if he thought he had outlived his usefulness. He’d practically all but put a bullet in his head years back, when Turkey’s ops team tracked him to the farm. It was only his quick thinking that saved him – offering his hacking services. Turkey stashed him away in this apartment. Told him he was now one of his “undisclosed assets”.

  Pic became still, like a possum, one of his favourite animals, since they could be completely motionless for long periods. He could last like this for thirty seconds, maybe forty-five, by holding his breath and making his body rigid and by tensing every muscle until he cramped up. It took a great deal of energy and he felt like his head would burst. Only his eyes moved, flicking about nervously as though all his unruly nervous energy was being projected through them.

  Forty seconds ...

  He exhaled explosively.

  Another thought-train started up, one that turned his stomach.

  He writhed in sync to the metronome cadence of the words endlessly rounding in his head. This activity went on for a full ten minutes. Sometimes he had to hit himself hard to break out of the internal repetition. But on this occasion, the obsessive momentum of his thoughts gave him focus, like a mantra.

  He looked down to his leg, his expression fearful but resolute.

  It was time for preparations; just in case.

  If he found Logan or the playmate, or better, both, then he might regain Turkey’s confidence.

  If not, then …

  He winced and rocked back and forth in rhythm to his chant.

  “I can do this ... I can do this ... I can do this …”