MINDFRACK

by S G King

  It was approaching ten p.m. and he decided to check in on Salvatore and see how he was holding up. According to Wanda, they now had the means to message him, upon which he would establish a call back as soon as he could. Only late evenings permitted Salvatore his freedom, as the lab was vacated by the technicians and Ade.

  Logan rendered a smartlense and sent the message …

  ***

  On his third beer, Logan had an anonymous call.

  “That really you, Salvatore?” he said, staring at a male avatar in his mid-thirties with an oval face dominated by inquisitive dark mocha eyes and topped off with full and thick dark hair. Altogether handsome in a South American way.

  “Yes, but unfortunately not the way I look now. It’s another app I found on the Cloud. I found a picture of myself at my old job, when I was much younger, and utilised that to create my avatar. It approximates to how I would have looked in 3V, thirty years ago. I’ve also found a way to improve the emotional content of my voice.”

  Salvatore was full of surprises, even in the face of such dire adversity.

  “Hold on, I’ll set up my selfie,” said Logan, knowing Salvatore’s need to see faces. It flew to a spot directly in front of him and hovered. “There.”

  “Thank you, that is much better.”

  “Wanda told me what happened to you. Words are insufficient … but I’m so sorry – and I’m so angry for you.”

  Salvatore’s avatar stared at him. “It’s okay, Mark. I think I may have found a solution.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m in a different laboratory now. There are mechanical arms, surgical arms I think they call them, that hang from the ceiling. I might be able to use one to-“

  “Stop there a moment, Salvatore – there’s something that might change things …” An impression of Xeno medical research had suddenly revealed itself to Logan’s mind. “Hang on ...”

  “I know you want to help end this for me, and I thank you for that.” Salvatore placed a hand on his avatar’s heart as he spoke. “But it would be too dangerous, and in any case, as I said, I think I have found a way.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Friend, you are talking in riddles.”

  Logan shifted on his bar seat. “I don’t want to get your hopes up too much, but – I think they can help you.”

  “Who? How? Please explain …”

  “All right, I’ll try.” Logan was actively pulling info from his new memories as he spoke. Had Shala anticipated this specific requirement for Salvatore, or was it just general Xeno data that they thought he might be able to use somehow against Grist? He realised it didn’t matter, and continued, excitedly. “The Xeno scientists here are way ahead of GNG’s research,” he said, pausing to process the details, “and, for that matter, legalised mainstream research … It’s because of their years of experience of bodymod. And we’re not just talking iTatts, I’m talking about genetics, tissue modelling, tissue alteration and sustainability. And other stuff I don’t even begin to understand … But what I do know is they might be able to help you, and perhaps slow up your brain’s deterioration. Exactly how they could do that I’m not sure. But it can’t be any worse than what you’re going through now.”

  Salvatore’s avatar leant in towards him. “You think I can trust them?”

  “They are a weird bunch – but yes, I believe so.”

  “Then, yes, I’m interested. I have nothing to lose.”

  “I’ll talk to them.”

  “But then you will have to get me out of here, won’t you?”

  Logan slumped back; he was getting carried away with the idea of saving Salvatore but forgetting the logistics. “Yes,” he muttered to himself, “and that’s not going to happen is it, dammit ...”

  Salvatore didn’t pick up on his remark. Instead, he said, “I have access to all of GNG’s security – it happened when I was trying to find a way to disrupt them, to get the authorities in here …”

  “Wait – you’re telling me that you can get me in there?” said Logan, his eyes narrowing as he grasped the implications. “And the both of us out again …?”

  “I think so, yes. But I need to check on their security some more.”

  Logan thought back to the remarkable way Salvatore helped him evade the polibot at his apartment, and again, when they fought off the assassin at the iTatt shop. And he could move through the Cloud at will. Hell, he was breaching their firewall to be out here talking to him at this very moment. What if …

  “Mark?”

  “Sorry, I was just trying to take stock of what we know about the GNG Tower and George Grist. I think you’ve just opened a whole new world of possibilities.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t have the details worked out just yet, but we’re coming for you – and maybe we’ll change the course of history along the way.”

  49

  Emmett looked back at Jennifer with a heart so heavy that its workings could have been forged from cast iron. She looked serene, ethereal even, her skin’s porcelain quality due to the endless months confined to her bed and the static regularity of her regime.

  To her side sat a medibot. It had infinite patience, always watching and ready to act should it be needed.

  Emmett closed the bedroom door carefully, so as not to disturb her sleep. While he walked the short length of a cedar-lined hallway to his study, his gait stiff, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, his mind again raked over recent events.

  Pic was not yielding results regarding the playmate and was becoming increasingly distracted and unreliable, despite the little “motivator” strapped to his ankle. Emmett began to wonder if he had miscalculated his usefulness. There was always a risk in using sociopaths to do critical jobs.

  He eased into his leather chair while casting his eyes across the framed photos stacked high and wide in pride of place above the study’s decorative log fireplace. His eyes settled on a picture of himself standing front-centre of an ops team hidden within a camouflaged wadi in the Middle East. Staring at it, he worked his jaw. Most of his crew had died out there due to incorrect intel. He swore he’d never repeat the debacle again, in any form.

  Accept the losses and abort the mission.

  Yes, forget the playmate, he told himself. Pic was not going to find it, or even find the detective for that matter; his other assets had concluded that they’d gone to ground, or maybe underground, harboured by the Xenos. Short of a swat raid and an unacceptably invasive sweep of the Xeno communes, or maybe long-term infiltration by a planted operative, they would be impossible to find. Either method wasn’t going to yield the result he needed right now.

  He looked up to the ceiling and sighed lengthily knowing he was going to inform Grist that he had failed to find and bring him Carrie.

  He traced a circle with the tip of a finger around the edges of a slice of polished Martian rock that Jennifer had given him for his sixtieth birthday. It was part of a batch that had been picked up by the first human foray onto Mars’ surface. It’d been fashioned into an ashtray. Only she could have thought of such a winsome use for such a priceless artefact. God only knew how she managed to obtain it so soon after the return of the mission. It made him smile and set his jaw in the same moment. He would not let her down.

  Grist would stomp, pour scathing criticism and threaten in no uncertain terms, but Emmett would placate him and endure the humiliation of doing so. Jennifer gave him all the strength he needed; he would grit his teeth, hold back the bile and manage Grist as always.

  Grist was also a pragmatist – he wouldn’t have been as successful as he was, if not. Rhetoric and masterful negotiation were his tools of business, not pointless violence. Though Emmett knew what Grist was capable of if pushed to his limit.

  And he would know through his own resources that Emmett was telling the truth. Logan had been the curve ball from the start. No one had expected that, including Grist.

  All
was not lost, however, as Emmett had made other headway in his search for Grist’s son that didn’t rely upon finding the 6thgen, Carrie. He’d taken a different course of investigation by going back to the route of Grist’s problems. Once he’d learned that Grist had had children, he’d primed his investigators anew, ensuring they moved with the utmost care; it was imperative that Grist have not the slightest inklin of what he was up to. The stakes were too high.

  He’d begun to form questions, like, how could Grist even have children? Surely not possible given his media visibility and endless microscopic examination of his life, present and past. And he had no intention of continuing his bloodline. Time Magazine had reported that he fully intended to live for ever; and Emmett realised now that it was not a blasé or wistful statement, if upon dying he chose cryogenic preservation, to be revived at a future date. Not implausible, no, especially for a man with incalculable wealth and resources. And somehow he had ensured there was a legal mechanism that enabled him to return to the head of the GNG table on return from his faire le mort.

  It made sense, therefore, that Grist would not have left himself exposed to the risks of having offspring. Something untoward must have happened during the early years of his marriage with his wife Mireille. Whether the children were hers or not was another question, one that might not be answered easily, since she had died tragically in a fire and there was no DNA record taken while she was alive or of her remains, which he found strange.

  Thus far, then, his investigators’ efforts in prying into Grist’s past were yielding tantalising results, albeit at a painfully slow pace. Like a dog pawing at a bin, he had the scent but not the meat. There was, however, another way to accelerate the results he craved. Use Pic: only he could drill down through the layers of electronic deception and misdirection without leaving any trace of his activities, and at a faster pace. Working together with his investigators and his loyal internal resources at the CIA, it was only a matter of time before he would have the results he craved.

  The boy genius, however, had been avoiding him. Failing to answer his calls and only responding briefly to his messages. Emmett knew why. The boy was complicated. But he must have known he was playing a dangerous game.

  Pic needed a reminder, something to refocus him. He sent the wake-up command to his ankle bracelet and followed with a text message.

  He smiled coldly at the thought of Pic’s reaction.

  Probably shit himself.

  50

  It took Pic a few seconds to register the odd buzzing sensation at the side of his ankle. It’d been years since Turkey had freaked him out with the demo. He jumped off the lounger and bent his bulk over to try and make out the small display on the device:

  1:52 … 1:51 … 1:50 …

  He shrieked like an animal caught in a trap.

  There wasn’t any time to put his escape plan into effect.

  He promptly threw up.

  A text arrived seconds later.

  Emmett: Call me now, or the only thing you’ll be good for is being picked up on the bottom of my boot…

  Their conversation was brief. Pic didn’t mess with Turkey as he sounded don’t-fuck-with-me angry. He knew why, of course; it was precisely the reason he’d been avoiding face-to-face comms. So he said yes to everything, including dropping his search for Logan, Carrie and the mysterious blackhat, and taking up work, fully, on finding “dirt” on Grist.

  He hadn’t spent much time looking for Case-Closed anyway, or the fuckbot.

  There was simply no coming back from his failure in the warehouse. He knew Emmett had found out about it. And to his frustration, he knew that Logan had taken the fuckbot down into the Xeno commune. Annoyingly, the Cloud ended at the Xeno door and he couldn’t make much sense out of their local network. They had someone down there who was freakishly shit-hot regarding firewalls and security. It would take him too long to break through. And even then he wouldn’t know what he was looking for. To make matters worse, there were no drones or bots or surveillance cams, of any sort, permitted in the commune. If Logan wanted to lose himself down there, he’d probably be impossible to find.

  Instead, Pic had turned his attention back to Pisswit. Now he was utterly focused on ways of defeating the anonymous blackhat.

  Didn’t Turkey realise what was at stake?

  Pic’s obsession with being the undisputed best blackhat ever, and always, had reached a new urgency. He could no more curtail his efforts in showing that Pisswit he was his inferior than he could change Manga history or make his heart beat to the rhythm of Darth Vader’s imperial march.

  Once he’d collected himself, he decided to give Turkey’s cause twenty percent of his time – max. That was sufficient. And in any case, he’d already found damning information on George Grist that would make Turkey sit up. Stuff that involved the death of his wife. The stupid-rich antique-shop dummy was certainly full of surprises. Definitely immoral – or was it amoral?

  He’d be clever on that front. Wouldn’t give Turkey all the sordid details on Grist just yet. Hold back enough information until he could finish with Pisswit – then he’d put his escape plan into action.

  He looked sidelong to the box that was sitting where he’d left it, on the table by the front door.

  He shuddered, putting those thoughts out of his mind, and turned back to his 3Vs.

  Back to Pisswit.

  If past history was anything to go by, the hacker would be coming out after dark.

  A good time to get even …

  51

  Making it up to Grist’s penthouse level was proving to be a breeze.

  Almost.

  Logan had followed the plan that they’d all agreed on to the letter. It hinged on Salvatore’s ability to control key aspects of the GNG Tower’s security systems. And for that reason they had to move at night.

  There were a couple of unforeseen minor problems, one of which involved a run-in with a 5thgen uniwheeled securitybot belonging to a private security company that guarded a linking fire corridor between towers. Salvatore had resolved the “misunderstanding”, but only after Logan had been held in its rubbery grip for five unnerving minutes.

  The GNG Tower wasn’t a single structure as such, but rather a vast base of hi-rise sub-structures extending over a couple of blocks or so, out of which the main curved and organic design sprouted multi-tiered pillars that geometrically twisted and intertwined while pushing endlessly upward, cutting back at certain heights and so giving rise to terrace opportunities where restaurants, entertainment areas and viewing platforms could exist.

  Logan had entered via the public entrance, made his way up to the GNG mall and restaurant/club level. Despite it being after midnight, human traffic was heavy here. He’d crossed over to the “Grist Tower” at that level – courtesy of Salvatore and the fire corridors. That was where Logan had met Mr Wheely.

  Now he was riding Grist’s personal elevator car, heart thumping and seconds away from stepping into the penthouse corridor entrance with all the security henchmen and gizmos. Salvatore had assured him he’d dealt with those obstacles, but Logan was still nervous as hell.

  “Salvatore, is everything done as we planned?”

  “Yes, Mark, good luck.”

  The elevator car came to an imperceptible stop. The doors slid open and Logan braced himself for projectiles, angry robots, lethal bodyguards and a swarm of flying security drones.

  Instead, it was eerily quiet and still.

  He stepped through the doors into the corridor, and spotted the only human member of his welcome party slumped over a desk in front of the main penthouse entrance. As Logan moved forward, he spotted a hornet-like drone on the desk’s surface doing the insect world’s version of a breakdance, spinning in tiny stilted circles. Logan guessed what had happened.

  “He’s okay, isn’t he?” he asked.

  “Just unconscious.”

  “Uh, good,” said Logan, while giving wide berth to the oversized security sentinel th
at was standing in its alcove, inert.

  The entrance door clicked and opened before him. Tentatively, he stepped through.

  “Mark, something’s happening here …”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure – wait.”

  “Not a good time for cold feet... What’s going on?”

  A full minute went by.

  “Salvatore?” whispered Logan, becoming increasingly anxious.

  “It’s Pic – I need to deal with him …”

  “What? Damn, not now, Salvatore… Salvatore?”

  A sound behind him made him flinch. The door had shut and locked automatically. He pulled at the handle. “You’ve got to be kidding me …”

  He stood still and listened. It was as quiet as a morgue … until a voice whispered urgently in his ear.

  “Mark …”

  “Wanda. You okay?” They’d agreed on avoiding comms unless necessary – or an emergency.

  “What’s going on? What’s happened to Salvatore?”

  “I don’t know? Where are you now?”

  “We’re in the shaft about two levels up from the R and D floor. We only just got in – and we’re stuck. The lights went out and the maintenance hatch won’t open. But I’ve got a torch. Carrie’s somewhere below me.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I’m in a similar position. Can’t go back.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I’m carrying on as planned. You’ll have to wait it out, until Salvatore comes back.”

  “What if he doesn’t? This shaft is freaking me.”

  “He will,” said Logan hiding his concern. “Show me.”

  Wanda fed him her iSense view.

  It was dim but smartlenses were adaptive. She looked around for his benefit. The space was like an upturned submarine, with pipes, cables, electrical boxes, and all manner of extruded shapes that he didn’t understand. Amongst the shapes he noticed the occasional odd-looking dome with finger-sized appendages that radiated out. They looked like inert crabs or giant spiders.