by Gary Ballard
“And he can show you how to do it… well, some of it. The hidden part anyway. You’ll still have to crèche up. But you can take this city off the grid completely. Now, are we done with the foreplay?”
Far-el leaned back in his chair, looking to each of his companions for guidance. All nodded in turn with slow reluctance. “Let’s talk alone in my chambers.”
Far-el sighed heavily and sagged into a chair, taking off his headband and placing it on the table in front of him. He indicated a chair but Bridge ignored it, preferring to stand by the window overlooking the city. “What’s with the headbands?” Bridge asked casually.
“What do you mean?”
“Everybody around here has one. It’s like half the choices you get in the avatar creator. Who has the headband fetish?”
“Don’t ask me, ask Curt Swan.”
“Who’s Curt Swan?”
Far-el sighed and rubbed his eyes, then ran his hands quickly through his hair. Despite the realistic appearance of everything, it still felt somewhat out of place in this antiseptic world. “Never mind. What are you doing here, Bridge?”
“I’m here to make you an offer.”
“You want us to help out Los Magos. You want us to get involved.”
“Not just Magos. I want you to help all the Families. We both know how this is going to end. CLED is all up in their shit right now, and I have the mayor’s personal assurance that they will keep at it until there’s nothing left. They’ve already succeeded in driving you guys underground. The body count is piling up. This may have started as beef between Magos and Diablos, but it’s escalated. This ain’t about turf, this is about Chronosoft putting its boot down on the independent operators.”
“Wait, go back. What was that about the mayor?”
“We talked. I had a hand in his election. Long story, and trust me, you don’t want to know about it. But he all but admitted that he’s pushing CLED into hammering the Families down like a rusty nail. They make him look bad. They make the LGL look bad. It’s not just taking back the subway, it’s splitting them up and destroying them in detail. He wants to dismantle them, buy up all the land and redevelop it into the new, shiny Chronosoft-approved Los Angeles.”
“A land deal?”
“Not ultimately, but he’s opportunistic enough to exploit the company to make a buck. Chronosoft wants a lower crime rate. Taking out the gangs accomplishes that. All those evictions that brought the Citizen Brigades to live with the Families opens up land for purchase. That land gets bulldozed and turned into expensive developments for corporate drones. Five years from now, LA looks like a totally different city.”
“So what do you care? It’s not like you’re the paragon of virtue. What’s in it for the Amoral Bridge?”
Bridge dismissed the nickname with a wave of his hand. “I didn’t make that name up.”
“But you sure lived up to it.”
“It’s served me well. But can’t nobody be totally amoral. Everybody’s got their limits.”
“And this reaches your limits w amoral. Ehy? You’re not a member of the Families and you made it quite clear you didn’t care about us in that meeting. And don’t go bringing up Stonewall either, because you pretty much sold him out then too.”
“Maybe I don’t want my city to turn into happy fun land.”
“Uh uh, not buying that either. You and I both know the tighter wound those people get, the more they seek you out for the kind of things they aren’t supposed to want.” Far-el fixed him with a brutal stare. “This is about Angela isn’t it?”
Bridge quickly averted his eyes from Far-el’s hard gaze, looked at Mu then away again as well. Even here, he could feel the tears welling up behind his eyes, but he fought them off. “They fucked with me. I might have deserved it, maybe I even ought to have expected it, but she shouldn’t have had to. She shouldn’t have been involved. They made it personal.”
“Revenge, then?”
Bridge shrugged. “A re-balancing.”
Far-el turned his attention to Mu. “You technomancers, you can help us hide the Bottle City?”
Mu hesitated, his eyes asking Bridge for permission. “We could hide an elephant in a closet. I’ll have to check with the Council, of course.”
“We’ll check with them,” Bridge added.
“Provided they approve the exchange, I’d say within two weeks you’ll be completely invisible.”
“And what do you get out of the deal?” Far-el inquired.
Mu frowned at Bridge. “Yes, Bridge, what DO we get out of it?”
“You let me handle that,” Bridge replied. It didn’t seem to placate the wizard, but he remained silent.
Far-el let the tension between bodyguard and client pass without comment. “What do you want then?”
Bridge perked up. “What, no need to hold some Council meeting to decide? You can make that decision by yourself?”
Far-el sighed again, a heavy weight seeming to drag his shoulders to the floor. “The Council will back me. They generally don’t care about making decisions, so long as they get to know about them before everybody else. That way they can blame me if it blows up in our faces. You know we even tried direct representation one time. Every decision got put to an instant vote, a little voting window popped up on everyone’s interface with a concise summary of the choices. You could have voted without even lifting a finger. You know what kind of turnout we got? 40%. Which means despite every bit of inconvenience being removed from the process, 6 out of 10 of every one of these lazy bastards didn’t give a damn one way or the other what we did, so long as the City was still there.an m0" width
“Yeah, breaking news. Humans still lazy cocksuckers.”
Far-el chuckled. “So what do you want the City to do for you in exchange for this magical invisibility cloak?”
“Four things, actually.”
“You’re pressing it.”
“I do that. Four things.” He indicated the number with his fingers. “First off, I need an excavator, sharpish.”
“An excavator? Can’t you just hire one?”
Excavators were a specialized form of legalized hacker, part detective, part undertaker. In the world of always on GlobalNet connections, with every financial, personal and business transaction being done through some form of GlobalNet connection, a body accumulated a ton of data, all of which was hidden behind extremely secure GlobalNet ID’s tied to each individual. Once that individual passed on, all that information would be inaccessible if arrangements had not been made beforehand. To retrieve all that information, the survivors hired excavators to hack the deceased’s ID. A hacker like Angela, however, would have used a myriad of illegal backup ID’s unconnected to her real ID to avoid detection by GlobalNet authorities.
“You know how good Angela was, how many ID’s she probably had. I need a team of excavators who weren’t hired by her crazy ass mother or the cops. And I need it within the next 18 hours.”
That brought a heavy sigh. “That’ll be tight, but we’ve got a team.”
“I knew you would. Second, I need a hiding space, somewhere I can chill out and think some shit over, someplace I can process all the shit the excavators will be bringing me. A clean room. Doesn’t have to be Kandor-themed, just somewhere I can float.”
“That’s easy.”
“Third, I need you personally to talk to the other leaders of the Families. Not Stonewall, he’s already onboard. But I need you to get the rest of them to meet again, including Nacho. I need everybody at this address, tomorrow night. They can bring three reps besides the leadership, but they need to all be there. Especially Nacho.”
“That’s a mighty big ask. None of them want to stick their necks out.”
“Make them. Send Johnny out if you have to.”
“No way. I’m not about to put him in harm’s way.”
“Does he know?” Far-el snapped a confused look at Bridge, then understanding set in. “Does he know you aren’t a man in the flesh?”
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Far-el tried in vain to wave it away. “ a He does. It hasn’t helped our ‘relationship’ any. He wants me to get a surgery, as if I ever walk around in the flesh anymore. And don’t even get him started on THAT particular choice.”
“Yeah, well everybody knows you two are an item. Ain’t many secrets like that among the families.”
“That’s why I got him off the streets, so nobody could use him to get to me.”
“And that’s why he’s the perfect guy to send to El Diablos. It’ll go a long way towards convincing them you’re serious about this meet. You tell them he’s bringing details on Los Magos surrendering. They’ll come for that.”
“Is it true? Of course it isn’t true, Stonewall got that name for a reason. What about the others? How am I supposed to get them to come?”
“You tell them about the fourth thing.”
“That fourth thing better be pretty good. They aren’t inclined to listen to anyone.”
“It is. That fourth thing? You’re going to need most of the City on this one. I got us a backdoor into the LGL Admin, and I need the Bottle City to use that backdoor for something.”
Far-el sat forward quickly. “How did you get us in there? And why?”
Bridge grinned. Far-el’s expression grew grimmer as Bridge explained what he needed. By the time Bridge had finished, the leader of the Bottle City was scowling.
“You are one crazy son of a bitch.”
“That I am. Do we have a deal?”
Far-el nodded.
Chapter 13
March 11, 2029
Time Unknown
Bridge floated in formless ether, completely unconcerned that his surroundings were nonexistent. He had asked Far-el for a clean room to stew in, then promptly removed every bit of decoration. Floating textureless, a vaguely-humanoid shaped blob of mercury shifted its shape with every stray thought passing through his mind. Dark cloudy space with the occasional twinkling star of data wrapped him in a blanket of shadow.
His body floated in the human soup, a dall sensory stimulation cut off by the crèche in Freeman’s apartment. But his mind needed that sensory deprivation as well, so he locked himself in the GlobalNet equivalent of a sensory deprivation tank. He needed to think. Bridge always said he didn’t do guilt, but he really meant that he ignored any guilt he might feel for as long as he could. The guilt bank had reached overflowing.
Too many things to be guilty about. Though he hadn’t promised he would rescue Aristotle’s grandmother from the dome in Boulder, he had certainly implied that his trip to the dome had something to do with the elderly woman. But he hadn’t gone there for Lalasa Freeman, he’d gone because the technomancers had forced him, had assaulted him psychically through his interface jack. He couldn’t have done anything to help Lalasa Freeman, but telling himself that over and over for the last five months hadn’t reduced the guilt one iota. In fact, all 30,000 of the deaths that had resulted from the technomancers ill-conceived experiment in Boulder weren’t his responsibility, yet he felt responsible all the same. Balfour and the rest of the wizards couldn’t really even be sure the people were dead, but Bridge knew his help had ensured the scientists turned wizards avoided the repercussions of their actions.
And then there was the escape from Boulder, the mad parade of remote-controlled cars that transformed into robotic golems and smashed through a cordon of National Guard and Legios Ranger checkpoints. That idea had been Bridge’s, and it had resulted in deaths: five soldiers and seven Rangers according to the news feeds. Carl’s dragon illusion had killed at least two other soldiers by blowing up a tank. But one death in particular affected Bridge. He had been driving when their convoy had broken through the last checkpoint, and in doing so, he had run over a soldier fleeing from one of the robots. Bridge had tried to avoid the soldier, but the sickening crunch of metal on bone had been unmistakable. Bridge had locked eyes with the dying soldier, had watched the young man spin and fall, a broken rag doll whose last moments must have been filled with the most uncomprehending fear and confusion. Bridge had been relieved to discover Corporal Eager, as the news had identified him, at least had not been married, or a father. At least there was that. Bridge had not made a widow or orphan. But there had been nights since that had found Bridge wide awake, eyes boring into the ceiling while Cpl. Eager’s frightened death mask stared back.
All that guilt, every single bit, Bridge could have dealt with, could have put aside without too much trouble. Those deaths, regrettable as they may be, weren’t anyone important in his life. Sure, he felt bad for Aristotle’s grandmother, but it wasn’t like Aristotle couldn’t live without her. He’d been doing just fine the whole time he worked with Bridge, never letting Bridge know he even had a grandmother. But those deaths didn’t impact him. They had as much relevance to Bridge as the thousands that starved daily in Africa, or the deaths of political prisoners in China, or aliens millions of light years away. Angela was another story.
For the first time since he’d been pulled from the wreckage of his apartment, he let himself think about Angela, really think about her and remember her. Every memory, every phrase they uttered to each other, every nuance, every facial expression, every date, every party, every single instance he could bring to the surface of his thoughts, he reviewed. Disconnected from his body, none of the pain he should be feeling penetrated. His stomach did not churn. His eyes di. Butd not tear up. The great physical pain of loss that crawled up every inch of his body like his muscles had turned into paper wrinkling up in the brilliant sun underneath his clammy skin, that pain didn’t even register. The physical responses that grief triggered could not touch him in here, separated from the nerves that carried those feelings to his brain. He felt only the numbness of ethereal disembodiment. It was the perfect death of emotion, and he hated every minute of it.
At some point during his aimless drifting in GlobalNet space, Bridge fell asleep, his thoughts forming strange images in the formless void of the clean room. A buzzing sound immediately snapped him back to wakefulness. Far-el was contacting him. Bridge opened a video window displaying the chiseled good looks of his Bottle City persona. “The excavation job is done, Bridge.”
Bridge unconsciously shook his avatar’s head to ward off sleepiness despite not feeling any physical stimuli that required such a movement. “Good, good. Pipe me the link.” Far-el did so and Bridge opened a window into Angela’s data trove. “How about those other things?”
“We found the backdoor. I’ve got twenty guys poking around for the data you need right now.”
“And the Families?”
“Working it. The Panthers are hesitant, but they’re in.”
“Good man. Keep at it.” Bridge shut off the connection without further comment.
Bridge stared over the connection to Angela’s data with an uncharacteristic hesitation. An excavation didn’t merely open up the deceased’s data to access, it made it possible for the survivor to inhabit the deceased’s GlobalNet personas. Akin to wearing someone else’s skin, Bridge found himself reluctant to be this close to Angela this soon. Well aware of the urgent necessity, he promised himself he would only stay as long as necessary and no more.
The pain he felt upon entering her data domain eclipsed even his worst imaginations. He rezzed into her lobby, and immediately felt a cold mental shiver. The familiar settings somehow took on a completely different air with this kind of root access. Bridge could see the room’s normal exterior, the same exterior he saw when he had been allowed into this setting. But he also saw all the commands that Angela could execute to alter the room’s appearance, to allow access to others, and all the secret things she kept in the room that he never could have seen in his own ID. Emails piled up in her inbox, stylized as a bubbling witch’s cauldron that flashed to remind her that new messages waited. Portals littered the walls; all admin access portals to one of the many virtual worlds Angela had ties with, either as creator, demigod or volunteer administrator. He recognized her p
rized possession, Ars-Perthnia, as well as a few familiar ones. Bridge chuckled when he realized she had worked with Boostup Arena, one of the fabled “bloodsport” cyber arenas, where hackers pit themseell as a lves against other hackers in battles with very real, very potentially lethal consequences. A large, ledger-shaped book floated in the middle of the room. Grabbing it with her hand, it lit up with the phrase “Accounts” highlighted on the cover. Bridge assumed it to be a spreadsheet for her information brokerage. He set it aside for later. Someone would need to straighten out the accounts, take over the business or place her subordinates onto different paths, but not today.
He could feel Angela in the room. Perhaps it was the fact that his avatar assumed the form of Baroness Elethia that Angela had preferred. It felt unnatural and awkward, the kind of ill-fitting proxy body both unfamiliar and unwanted. He rifled through her available avatars and chose one that closely resembled an idealized version of her real body, only with all the obvious flaws removed. It helped only a little. Bridge sat cross-legged and levitated in the middle of the room.
His first task was to secure the avatar from other excavators. He generated a new series of encryption keys for access, changed all the passwords required, then flagged the account as active, shifting the billing access to one of Angela’s many backup accounts. This one appeared to get its money from a dry cleaner in Amsterdam owned by an Annalea Bosch. Bridge wanted to make sure that whoever Angela’s mother hired to dredge her dead daughter’s digital life would find nothing. He would ensure that Baroness Elethia lived on, somehow, some way, but the particulars of that operation would wait for another day, when time did not press so heavily on him.
He initiated a search for the keywords “Bridge” mixed with a number of other phrases like “car,” “shooting,” “stonewall” and “art show.” The search took a thankfully short time to return results, leaving him little time to ponder his surroundings further. The first link was the jackpot, a bundle of data organized in a folder. It included a recording of their conversations the night of the art show, when the first Diablos attack had taken place. He fast-forwarded through the conversations up until he reached the point of the attack, then watched the attack again through his own eyes, once removed. Finally, the frame he wanted appeared, showing the plate on the attacking vehicle before its destruction. Examining the frame brought up a blinking link highlighting the plate number and Bridge clicked it.