Solar Singularity

by Peter J. Wacks

  With a clank of magnetic hinges and locks, the gate rolled upward, revealing the city beyond. For an instant, a renewed burst of HR overlays hammered at Anansi’s filters. He saw a well of fire, a sandy arena surrounded by a robed audience howling for blood, a bombed-out battlefield with ancient planes roaring overhead, and dozens of images layered over each other … his stomach threatened to turn again.

  Full strength filters! He desperately screamed inside his own mind, commanding his TAP’s neuralware to protect him. The images melted away, lingering in the corners of his eye and allowing him to truly view Chitown. Anansi tried to understand what he was seeing, and from the gasps of the others in his group, they hadn’t expected this either.

  Parts of the city were on fire. Not the dancing fractals of HR flame, or even the sound of sirens and a distant puff of smoke fire … no, there was a malevolent red iris from beyond the wall filling a third of the sky as the fire reflected off the smoke haze and clouds. Like a giant eye floating over the immigrant camps was watching the city burn. Had bombs gone off or something? His eyes drifted to the buildings of the cityscape.

  It didn’t look like any particular areas of the city were being blacked out. Towers and residential areas still had their lights on. Fliers of all sorts winged through the sky, passing between shafts of darkness and light as they wove among spotlights and searchlights. The mega-interstates looked intact, though crammed with traffic, and from this vantage point, he spotted at least a couple major snarls or accidents.

  He stepped forward to get a clearer look, but a guard thrust an arm out to block his way.

  “Hold position, please. We need to clear the area. Dissidents incoming.”

  “Sorry.” He stepped back as his attention snapped to a group of people who sprinted their way. Were they carrying swords? Yes. At least ten people were racing for the gate, waving katanas and screaming gibberish. What the hell? Swords were back in pop culture, and you saw them often enough, but they were usually more for ornamentation. The common thinking on the threads was that swords don’t kill people, people kill people, and guns were just far better suited for that particular job. So why the hell was there a mob of sword wielding attackers …

  Rushing …

  Guarded …

  Walls?

  Was this a damn fantasy game to them? Anansi felt his jaw go slack at the sheer ridiculousness of it. He was literally standing at the castle gates …

  His surreal moment shattered with the sputtering of the perimeter’s mounted assault rifles opening fire. The things were huge, more like mini-cannons than handheld had seen, the dead hadn’t looked to be part of any gang, just a gathering of civilians who acted like the corporation had become their mortal enemy … and that the arcology was a feudal holding. Perhaps not so random.

  Even as the echo of turret fire rolled into the distance, the guards urged them forward. “Proceed.”

  The guards followed them through the gate and a few yards beyond, their eyes sharp for any incoming attack. Whatever software was running under those visors, they weren’t showing any signs of being affected by the HR overload the way everyone else was.

  Their guards tapped their helmets in salute. One gave a flat “Good luck,” before they all retreated mechanically to the courtyard.

  Tom turned back and waved at the guards who had escorted them out. “Wait! I changed my mind! I thought I could do this. I can’t. I really can’t. It’s already starting to overload my filters!”

  Guards snapped their guns into position and turrets swiveled to aim at the man. A voice boomed over unseen speakers.

  “Step away, please. You are no longer authorized to access this facility.”

  “Please …” The man kept walking toward the entrance, while the other three in the group remained frozen, unwilling to continue, too afraid to oppose the order. Anansi slipped off to watch the exchange from the cover of a row of ferroconcrete benches. He could hear the shaking in the man’s voice.

  “This is your final warning. Your TAP has been infected by malware by your own admission. Back away from the gate.”

  “You can’t do this, it’s overwhelming me,” the young man cried now, still edging forward. “So many … so … I’ve … I’ve worked here for—”

  Chock!

  From his cover, Anansi stared at the former employee’s corpse in disbelief. This wasn’t happening. Optical and HR malware, even the worst of the viruses, just weren’t that much of a threat. Hard coded images essentially tricked the neural interface into sending false signals out, sure, but they weren’t contagious. They made people crazy, or do things they wouldn’t normally … but they were optically targeted, not spreadable. A person had to see the malware, or the image that hid the virus, in order to trigger the malignant code to compile inside a TAP.

  Why the hell were they doing this? He couldn’t spread an HR virus. No one could. One moment to the next, the man had turned from a resource into a threat. This, he realized with chilling perspective, was how the corporations viewed their personnel.

  Replaceable. Expendable. Cogs. The moment one stopped playing by their rules, you became the enemy, an obstacle to be trampled. Well, screw them. He was not like that. He believed in people, not in people’s things. It was why he was an HR artist, to touch people’s souls.

  The gate slammed shut, and the guards returned to their posts along the walls. With a low whistle, he got the attention of the other evacuees and motioned for them to join him. As the three gathered around him in the relative cover of the walkway’s overhang, he cut to the chase. “Hey. So, we aren’t getting back in, and I think I have something that can help you guys not have that degradation of your TAP happen to you. Shard, hold out your hand.” He reached into his gear belt and pulled out what looked like stubby giant needle.

  She nervously reached her hand forward. Anansi noticed the quiet tears running down her and Tailcatcher’s cheeks. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  Shard looked down at the hand she was holding out, avoiding his gaze. He could only imagine what she must be feeling.

  “It’s okay, Shard.” He gently took her hand. “This is just a microtech-powered airbrush. It lets me paint, that’s all.” Shard shook her head.

  Tash stared out at the red iris in the sky. “What do you have that can help with this insanity, Anansi?”

  Anansi pulled the trigger and painted a small dot on the back of Shard’s hand. The paint dried instantly. He smiled, and got to work on a pattern of lines and dots. He worked as quickly as he could, worried that the now-clear plaza that was the route all of them had to take to leave would not stay clear. “Tash, I’m a Hyper artist. I do visual effects for a local band in my time off work here. I’m painting a kill code onto the back of each of your hands.”

  He wrapped up with Shard and started on Tash. “If you start to get overwhelmed by too many layers getting past your optical and neural filters, use this.”

  “How?” Tailcatcher asked as Tash watched Anansi work and Shard gently rubbed at the paint tattoo on the back of her hand.

  “Well, erm, I guess just cup your other hand over the code, then get it really close to your face so you can’t see anything else. Reboot your filters, and in that instant, while they are cycling, this just dumps your cache and clears out any malicious HR generated code. I use something like this on a wide scale between songs at concerts. This is just a mini version of that.”

  Tailcatcher held out his hand and Anansi froze. He recovered quickly, taking the hybrid’s hand and getting to work, but the pause didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Do you dislike me, Anansi?” Tailcatcher asked.

  “It’s not that.” He focused on the work. “It’s that you’re a … never mind. I’m sorry.”

  “I am a hybrid.”

  Anansi gulped. “Yes. And I’m sorry. It’s the way my parents raised me. I try to be better than that and just keep it inside, but sometimes it shows. I hate that I’m prejudiced like this. I’m … trying …”
he finished lamely as he wrapped up painting the last of the pattern.

  He switched to his own hand as Tailcatcher replied, “You don’t need to apologize. At least you’re trying. A lot of the people that hate my kind just hate, and really loudly. You were given something you don’t want and are trying to change. That’s kinda cool.”

  “Thanks.” Anansi finished his own kill-code tattoo while the others tested theirs. He smiled to himself. They would be discovering that they were disoriented for about two seconds while they reset, then everything would be clearer. “So …”

  “Now we each go our own way to get to our homes,” Tailcatcher said. “I wish each of you luck. Anansi, after this is over, please come visit us in ads.” They each smiled and bade each other farewell before parting ways.

  Moving slow to avoid catching the attention of the turrets and snipers, Anansi eased down the street. He didn’t intend to head to his home cube. Instead, he oriented himself and started hiking for his band’s garage studio. If the city went to hell and the end of times was upon them, at least he could be among friends when the world ended.

  Chapter Ten

  Bob

  Bob took off his sweat-and-bloodstained jacket and folded it neatly over one arm as he walked. Pity about the mess, particularly since the jacket had been in his wardrobe for over fifteen years, but it was unavoidable at times. Planning ahead, he decided that once he completed this job, he’d break into a nice home and enjoy a long, relaxing shower. People these days took such little delight in nondigital creature comforts. Rather, they wrapped themselves in the smothering blanket of the Deep and let it siphon off all their fears and worries. Humanity had sacrificed any awareness of the real world to its digital addiction.

  He’d rather a bit of hot water and a square meal than any false reality that altered his sense of space and self. Not that there was any real difference between his neurons being stimulated by code or physical objects, it was more that Bob held a deep belief that letting go of the physical world was dangerous. The human belief that they had mastered their environments was wrong. He scanned the street for his very real, physical quarry.

  Chicken Fingers and Nova had sped up a bit after their brush with the militia. While the brutality of Chicago’s main paramilitary forces hadn’t surprised Bob, their employment of such tactics had caught him off-guard. They acted like they were at war with their own city, despite few civilians being anywhere near a match for their firepower. Usually they reserved their rockets and incendiary rounds for situations outside the Wall, taking down smugglers, looters, or in peace-keeping efforts across the immigration camps. The occasional armored vehicle might require heavy munitions, but an unarmed family or an idiot in a tower with a peashooter shouldn’t have invoked the response they received.

  The right tools needed to be used in the right situation, and to waste firepower on civilians who were already gunning each other down seemed superfluous. Bob despised wasted effort. His world was clean; it was a world of precision.

  Speaking of tools—he dug into a pocket and drew out a pair of eyeglasses. He perched them on his nose, then tapped the side to activate a series of sensory filters. The lenses shifted through a range of input/output modes, letting him view the area in everything from infrared to X-ray to sonic pings.

  Just because he held no pieces of tech or genetic augmentation within his body didn’t mean he ignored the value of tools. Only a fool would do so. The weapons he carried were tools—mere extensions of himself that enhanced his ability to control the situation. Technology could be the same, a tool to control a situation. Control was the real difference between him and the digital addiction generation. So long as his tools never directly integrated with vulnerable elements such as his spine or brain, he remained in control. No one could access or influence his innermost thoughts, and his brain was impervious to electronic attacks as long as he kept the tendrils of silicon, plastic, and metal out of his body.

  Two heat blobs in the distance—the tall one all oranges and reds, the short one with rings of blue in it, moving methodically and carefully, whereas all the other heat sources were anything but controlled—were his targets. He matched his pace to theirs. Bob had a good idea of where they were headed, but people could act irrationally, especially in such unusual circumstances. He needn’t keep too close an eye on them, so long as he was aware of them in general, until the right moment came along to reveal himself.

  He tucked the glasses away for the time being. As he jogged along, four figures emerged from the shell of a blown-out tattoo shop and stood in his way. Bob sighed. He’d noted their presence during his scan but had hoped they’d be wise enough to remain indoors.

  They hadn’t been.

  One man had horns like a bull and muscles to match. Two looked to be neo-human twins, their faces unnaturally symmetrical, bodies perfectly poised. The fourth had so many cybernetic implants and grafts, Bob wondered if any of her original body remained. This was one of the dangers he had been forewarned of. While many of the population that didn’t have TAPs or optics capable of handling the spam filter crash were hiding in their various cubes and houses or in the streets rioting, those that did were organized and using the riots to escalate violence. In this environment, he was far less ghost than normal to those that had powerful HR filters that were set to max.

  The bull hybrid leveled a shotgun at him—but from the nervous twitch of his muzzle and the way the weapon moved, Bob guessed that either he was more vulnerable to the HR maelstrom around him than the others, or possibly they’d run out of ammo already. Out of ammo actually made sense to him, otherwise they would’ve tried to ambush Chicken Fingers and Nova as well. Instead, they chose to confront the lone man who looked like he might be more comfortable behind a desk, balancing spreadsheets. Four to one odds were also much better than two to one, especially against armed opponents. Bob had learned long ago to trust his instincts on these matters.

  Poorly chosen choice of quarry, friends, he thought.

  “Hey hot stuff,” said the cyber-woman. “Whatchu doin’ on our turf? Dont’cha know there’s a toll?”

  As she spoke, the 2.0 twins moved out to either side, blocking off any route but back the way he came. One held a machete and the other a baseball bat.

  Bob spread his arms. “I apologize, gentlemen and lady. Violence gives me a certain joie de vivre, as I’m sure it does you, but you see—I’m late for an appointment and thought this might be a shortcut.”

  “Oh it is,” said one twin, sneering. “See, if you don’t do what we say, we’ll cut off your legs and leave you a lot shorter. See? See?”

  “Shut it, Loke,” the woman snapped. “I didn’t say you could chitterchat.”

  Bob took his jacket in one hand and held the other empty one palm up. “I’m just out on my own business. I have no wish to interfere with yours, and would rather you didn’t with mine.”

  “We likes doin’ business.” The woman grinned, showing metal teeth filed to points. “You’s in our territory, so we own your life. We’s gonna sell it back to you for a nice price, capiche?”

  “How banal,” Bob sighed. “Very well. Be a friend and hold this for me.” He flung the jacket at the twin on his right. In the same instant, he darted low to the left and thrust his hand to the side. A slim blade appeared in his palm.

  He jabbed two fingers into Loke’s wrist, sending a wild machete swing off course, and rose up under the twin’s guard. A quick jab with his empty hand into the man’s throat sent him staggering. With the other hand, he punched the blade into the neo’s chest, straight to the heart. It didn’t matter how genetically enhanced he was; the man wouldn’t heal from that.

  Spinning, whipping the bloodied blade around, he dodged as the shotgun barrel whiffed past his head. His intuition had been dead accurate about their lack of ammo. The hybrid swung the shotgun like a club, trying to use his over-amped musculature to reduce Bob’s head to a squashed bowl of brain matter. He swiveled away from another blow
, and with a quick axe kick he forced the shotgun’s descent to accelerate. The gun’s plastic stock shattered as it hit the concrete.

  The hybrid had even bent over to add extra force to the hit. Bob grabbed one of his horns and flipped himself up onto the broad back. He moved like water around stones in the rapids, violent only when he impacted them. The hybrid snorted in short-lived confusion as Bob drove the tip of his blade into the back of his neck, severing the spine.

  He leapt off the body as the bull went down. The other twin ran in with a high-pitched yell, baseball bat poised to swing. A snap of Bob’s wrist sent his blade flying into the other neo-twin’s eye. The man fell to his knees, screaming and clawing at his face.

  The augmented woman gaped. Her eyes darted between her downed companions, although she couldn’t hide shock. He imagined her train of thought was something along the lines of “How did an accountant kill all three of my thug buddies in under five seconds?” Her gaze landed on him. “You son of a bitch. Gonna kill you. Lots!”

  Servomotors whirred as she lumbered for him. She shook her hand and a serrated claw emerged from the side of her palm. It was an older Russian modification he had seen before the short-lived RGB died out. Bob analyzed her offensive and defensive measures in an instant. Armored torso, vital organs shielded. The extra plating slowed her movement, but she hardly needed grace and speed when she could take hard hits and keep coming. A chromed skullcap and reinforced joints nullified most of his other usual targets. His small knives, though they were sharpened to nearly monofilament edges, would be hard-pressed to fell such an opponent.

  Except for …

  Taking a deep breath, Bob visibly relaxed, standing casually, and let her close the gap. When the claw came at him, he dove to the side and somersaulted, coming up with the fallen twin’s machete in hand.