After that, they stuck an organic computer chip in Sparky’s brain, and sensors on his optic and auditory nerves. And then, once he and the other OACET Agents had healed up, they cut them loose and pretended they didn’t exist.
Think about that for a moment. You wake up from brain surgery, and all of your equipment—both your factory originals and the aftermarket add-ons—seems to work as promised. Sure, you’d like it if the buggy Artificial Intelligence unit would turn off, and you’re not really sure how to keep the other Agents out of your head, but at least you didn’t die.
Then you learn the same politicians who green-lit your conversion to cyborg status decided this top-secret experiment wasn’t working out as had planned. Too bad for the volunteers: they’re stuck dealing with an AI that won’t shut up, not to mention they’re permanently linked into the neuroses of four hundred and ninety-nine other people going through the exact same crap...forever! It wasn’t as though they could take the implant out—it was grafted to the cerebral cortex, and as collections of cells go, that particular one is fairly important.
Back when I first met Sparky, he was drugged out of his gourd and doing scut work. He had been like that for five whole years. Five years of living like a goddamned zombie, shuffling through the motions, unable to let himself think or feel. He turned out to be a really stellar guy under the antidepressants and the sleeping pills, and once he got himself back together, we decided to learn what we could about that chip in his head.
So Sparky and I, we got some friends together and we did a little digging. Turns out the implant does a lot more than allow Agents to talk to each other over distances. No, it’s the ultimate encryption breaker—if you’ve got a chip, you can access and control any networked machine.
If you just looked around to take an inventory of how many networked machines you own, or can access, or have heard of from a friend of a friend who works in That Place, and then immediately thought, “Well, that’s pretty fucking terrifying,” you are one bright cookie.
And that’s what we took public.
Now you know why the cop went all white knuckles on Sparky, and why a pack of moderately-armed morons breaking into our house isn’t a big thing. It’s better than it used to be, though: Sparky and the other surviving OACET Agents have been out for almost a year, and everybody is gradually getting used to the idea of near-omniscient cyborgs in their midst. Sparky was on the political A-list; yeah, I don’t quite know how that happened either, but everybody in Washington wants a piece of him. And tonight was the first time in over a month that I’ve wrecked the living room.
Our poor, much-abused living room… Oy.
I looked over in time to see our front door, which had been stuck in the drywall by its knob alone, come free and clatter to the ground.
March in D.C. is still too chilly to leave a gaping hole where a door used to be, so I shrugged out of Sparky’s arms, and went to get the tarps and duct tape. When I returned, the loveseat was empty.
“In here,” came a woman’s voice from the kitchen.
I dropped the tarp by the gaping hole where the door used to be, and headed for the kitchen. Rachel Peng had her hands wrapped around a fresh cup of coffee. I can usually keep myself from picking up emotions, but with every step I took towards her, the more exhausted I felt.
Rachel’s head came up, hard. She’s an empath, too, but her abilities come from her implant and are more developed than mine. She can tell you exactly what you’re feeling at any given moment, and has no problem asking questions which can peel your psyche open so she can pick through the bits. It’s extra-freaky.
I pretended not to see her reaction, and went to pour myself a cup of coffee. Exhaustion was normal; it was three in the morning, and anybody with good sense and a good schedule would be tired. Rachel’s head went back down.
Perfect. She doesn’t know about me, and I’d like to keep it that way.
“Hey Rachel,” I said as I went for the cream and sugar. “What’s going on?”
“Hope,” she said by way of greeting, and nodded towards Sparky. “I noticed Mulcahy was still up, so I asked if it was okay to drop by.”
Rachel doesn’t drive, but before I could open my mouth, she said, “Santino drove. He’s taking a nap in the car.” And then, when she saw that her throwaway comment had put me off, she added, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to read you like that. It’s been a long day.”
See what I mean by extra-freaky? This is the reason I’m the second-worst psychic in the world. My emotions should belong to me and me alone, and I’m not about to snatch anybody else’s straight out of their soul.
I dropped into the chair beside Sparky and threw my feet over his knees. “Everything okay?” I asked her.
Rachel shot a furtive glance at Sparky, and they did that too-silent thing that happened when they were talking through a link. I used it as a chance to give Rachel the once-over. She’s been out of the Army for close to seven years, but she’s usually as crisp and tidy as if she were still in uniform. Tonight, she had the look of a woman who was miles from her bed.
She sighed as she turned back to me. “Sorry,” Rachel said again. “National security. Secrets. You know how it goes. Had to check with the boss first.”
“The boss says it’s okay to tell his wife,” Sparky said.
Great. This had all the hallmarks of OACET drama, and now I was miles from my own bed, too.
AUTHOR
K.B. Spangler lives in North Carolina with her husband, and as many Rottweilers she can sneak into the house without him noticing. She is the author and artist of A Girl and Her Fed, where Patrick Mulcahy, Hope Blackwell, and the Agents of OACET are alive and well. Additional information about these and other projects can be found at kbspangler.com.
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