Beautiful Red

by M. Darusha Wehm

Luj smiled patiently, and explained that they get in input jack implanted in their heads where the rest of us have wireless nodes implanted. Then, when they want to connect to the network, they stick the prong end of the cable into the jack and away they go. "Eww," said the same person who originally questioned the process, "that's nasty, sticking shit in yer head."

  "It's a lot less nasty than implanting foreign bodies in there permanently," said the other staffer, a soft-spoken man who looked older than anyone Jack had ever seen. "At least I can take the shit out of my head whenever I want to." He turned away from the group, and Jack could see a small black artificial looking patch just behind and below his left ear.

  "Okay, everyone, I think we've beaten this dead horse into the ground," Luj said, herding the group toward a set of chairs and viewers. "These will be your workstations, and you can log in wirelessly here, just flip this switch to the on position," she pointed out a lighted button next to the viewer, "and insert your key for authentication. Then you'll be on the system with the basic permissions we've given you as new users. If you'll each take a station and log in, you'll get your assignments for the shift."

  Jack grabbed a chair in the middle, and completed the login procedure. She was greeted by the same friendly voice as the viewer, but this time it identified itself as Red Three. It gave Jack the promised boring task, reviewing code for a new version of the scheduling module of Red Five. It wasn't programming Intelligent Agents, but it was better than any of the other jobs on offer. Plus, Jack got to poke around the internal Red system while she was there.

  It was very much like a cross between a typical firm's network and an individual's local system. The scheduling process was by far the majority of the system and the most collaborative. However, there were user accounts with backup storage, and she noticed that there were at least two other systems outside the one in which she was working. She suspected that users with higher permissions could access those systems, and that was exactly where she wanted to be.

  It wasn't going to happen on this shift, though, since she just managed to poke around a little bit and review her assignment before the friendly voice told her that she was done for the day. Jack logged off Red Three and pulled up the map from her local system. She had about half an hour before she was scheduled for a short course on Common Lies We All Believe, And Who's Behind Them.

  She left the labs, and decided to take a quick stroll around the compound. She headed to the area behind the main building and the programmers' labs, where according to her map, the more seasoned Reds went about their business. There were a few people milling about, and they certainly seemed more familiar with their surroundings than most of the people Jack had seen in the noobs' area. She found a central location with a bench and sat down, just letting the activity of the space flow around her.

  She started paying attention to the little things about the people walking around her, the small differences. She noticed that a couple of people had the same kind of jacks in their heads as the quiet fellow at the programmers' lab. There were a few people who seemed to have done something strange to their left hands - the thumbs seemed to stick out at a funny angle. And Jack was convinced that one person was missing a left hand entirely. She was starting to wonder if she was seeing things that weren't there, and decided it must be time to head to her next session. As she walked to her next class, she found herself looking more closely than usual at the limbs and ears of the people she passed.

  She found her way to the meeting room for her next session, and listened while an earnest speaker explained that firms existed only to make money and that they treated people the same way they treated any other asset they owned. Jack was amazed that this was news to anyone, but she had been working for the firms for three quarters of her life and had seen that attitude first hand. The speaker talked about some specific instances and highlighted those cases where people were cast aside like last year's chair or even where people died. Of course the law, such as it was, was made by the firms and backed up any action they took so long as it didn't interfere with another firm's business.

  Some of the participants were shocked, but Jack was surprised that so few people knew the law. Individuals had stopped having rights outside of what their employment contracts included when she was a kid; maybe younger folks just didn't know what they were missing since they had never had it.

  After a few more examples of old news, Jack tuned the speaker out and started planning how she would crack into the higher levels of the Red system. She was pretty sure that getting into the higher level systems would be fairly easy for her, the problem was making sure she didn't get caught. She thought that since they relied on physical keys as their primary authentication method, that she might be able to mask her identity that way somehow.

  She spent the rest of the session planning her attack and when it was over she walked out of the room more or less in a daze. She headed back to the main hall and her dinner date with Susanna. Jack found her waiting at the entrance to the building, and they walked into the dining area together. Jack asked Susanna how her session had gone.

  "It was pretty jazz," Susanna said, grinning widely, "the guy was talking about how the ident chips we have track us all our lives and limit our freedoms. He was all about how we are tagged at birth then sold to the firms as if we were just another piece of gear."

  "My session was pretty similar," Jack said, scanning today's dinner options. "It just wasn't focussed specifically on the identity chips."

  "Well, mine was about why you should dig your own chip out," Susanna answered, "so that's why the focus was there." Jack was glad they hadn't gotten their meals yet, because she was sure she would have choked.

  "Dig them out, yourself?" she asked incredulously.

  "Yeah," Susanna said, picking the soup and rice combo, "a bunch of Reds removed their chips themselves. That's why you see some of the old timers with fucked up hands." She leaned in conspiratorially, and lowered her voice. "Some of them, in the early days, just cut off their entire hands. They were a little whacked, I think, but supposedly that was before it was well known exactly where the chips were."

  "Holy shit," Jack said. "That's so fucked up." She paused and picked something off the menu she had never heard of before.

  "I know," Susanna said, sounding almost in awe of the whole concept. "I wouldn't have the cojones to whack off my hand, would you?"

  "Hell no," Jack said, "nor would I want to. That's way too extreme for me."

  "Yeah," Susanna said. "Though if I might get it done surgically. It's not as jazz as doing it solo with a pocket laser, but whatever. At least it wouldn't hurt."

  "Are you serious?" Jack exclaimed. "That's way more of a big deal than a tat or…" her gaze strayed to the top of Susanna's head, "horns or something. That's a permanent lifestyle choice. You could never get a normal job again, never get a normal apartment for chrissakes. I don't think you can get a new chip all that easily, you know."

  "I know," Susanna pouted, "and I'm not saying I'm going to do it for sure, but I'm thinking about it." The food arrived on the track on the wall, and they took their bowls and began to eat. Jack was again stupefied by the tastes of the fresh food, while Susanna seemed to be having trouble with her meal.

  "What's wrong," Jack asked in between bites.

  "It's just so… strong," Susanna said, her nose wrinkling in distaste. "I'm not used to this kind of food. It's weird."

  "Whatever," Jack said, decided to spend the time enjoying the meal rather than arguing. Jack savoured her meal while Susanna chased hers around the bowl. When Jack was done, she asked, "You gonna eat that?" Susanna shook her head and Jack grabbed the bowl lustily and finished Susanna's portion. After she was done - maybe she was filled with magnanimity as well as food - she said, "I've got a few meal bars in my room, you can have them if you want."

  Susanna smiled, and said, "Thanks. I know I should just get used to it, but it's just too weird. I'd never had real food before I got here." Ja
ck pitied the girl, but was happy enough to offload her bricks of nutrient laden sawdust in exchange for Susanna's soup. They got up to leave the room, and head back to Jack's room, when Susanna suggested they hit the bar after.

  "There's a bar?" Jack asked.

  "Yup" Susanna said, "a bunch of the people here don't do substances, but there's a bar for the rest of us. That stuff costs money, though. I hope that's okay."

  "That's fine," Jack said, already salivating at the thought of a beer. They walked to Jack's room, where she gave Susanna the food bricks she had brought with her. The two then walked over to the back of the main building and through an unmarked doorway. "They don't seem to want to advertise this place, do they," Jack asked.

  "It seems like there's a lot around here they want you to just stumble over," Susanna said as they entered the dark room. "I think it might be a community building thing - you have to talk to people to find out what's going on."

  "You could be on to something," Jack said, "I'm sure glad we talked about this, let me tell you." She grinned and they walked up to the bar itself. It was a long sheet of metal, not unlike the tracks in the meal hall. There was a human behind the bar and he asked them what they wanted.

  "I'll take a beer," Jack said.

  "Do you want a regular brew, or real beer?" the bartender asked.

  "Uh, how much does real beer cost," Jack asked, then before the bartender could answer, she thought better of the question. "Never mind the cost, just give me one." The barman smiled and pulled a pint of dark liquid from the old fashioned tap on the bar. He named the price, which was high, but Jack was perfectly happy to pay. After confirming that she was wirelessly enabled, the bartender flipped on a wireless connection, and Jack paid. Susanna ordered a drink Jack knew consisted primarily of THC.

  They took their drinks to a nearby ledge and looked around. The room was dark with occasional strobes and other dim lights. Music was playing fairly loudly, but no one was dancing, though there was an open area in the middle of the space. There were maybe thirty people in the place, just chatting and drinking. And one of them had a big black ball instead of a right eye.

  Chapter 25

  Jack didn't know what to do. It was BlackEye for sure, chatting with some dour looking guy just two tables over. It was the first she had seen of him, and although she had imagined before she arrived that he would be leading the group in some kind of bizarre incantation three times a day, once she had been here for awhile the community nature of the group made her doubt even the existence of a leader. Of course, leaders aren't always of the "do it my way or get out" variety, and she noticed that everyone else in the bar deferred to BlackEye when they interacted with him.

  "Do you know who that guy is?" she asked Susanna, who was already starting to get an unfocussed look about her.

  "Which guy," she asked after a brief pause to understand the question.

  "The one-eyed man with the hair wings. Over there," Jack jerked her head in the direction of the table. Susanna looked over, and studied the two men carefully for some time before answering.

  "Nope," she said, "I've never seen him before." She pulled out one of Jack's meal bars, opened it up and started to eat small bits of it. Jack took a sip of the beer and was momentarily distracted from BlackEye. The drink was full of flavour and a slightly harsh taste as well. Jack could now understand Susanna's difficulty with real food, although she was enjoying the new taste of her drink. She had a few more sips of the heady brew and noticed Lars walk in the door. He saw her and Susanna, and headed over to their table.

  "Well, I see it didn't take you long to find out some of our secrets," he said, grinning at the two women. Susanna looked at him more or less blankly, while Jack smiled and told him that Susanna had found it and brought her along. "I've never had real beer before," she said, wanting to share the experience, "this is fantastic."

  "I like it myself," Lars said, and excused himself to get one of his own. By the time he returned, Jack recognized the opportunity she had.

  She decided to stick with the as much honesty as possible plan, and said, "At the open house I was at last weekend, someone from here was speaking over the nets. I think it was that guy over there," she tried to subtly point out BlackEye. "Who is he?"

  "That's Rackham," Lars said. He took a long drink of his own real beer, then set the glass down on the ledge. Susanna was still munching on her food brick as Lars continued. "He was one of the founders of the Red. A cracker of the old school, who got booted out of the firm he worked for after some scandal or another. There are plenty of stories about what happened to his eye, but the truth is that he tells a different one each time someone asks. He's hard as nails and the only reason that the compound ever succeeded.

  "He holds most of the extreme views: no wireless, real food only, no implants of any kind - hell they say he even interfaces with the network using viewers and some kind of writing device rather than a cable. But he is adamant that the Red accommodate everyone. He's scary as hell, but we wouldn't be anywhere without him - I swear he makes infrastructure out of thin air. He built this place out of nothing, and sometimes I think he keeps it together by the sheer force of his personality." Lars paused for breath, and Jack though she saw a glint in his eye. "You want me to introduce you?"

  "Christ," Jack said, taking a swig of her beer, "after a description like that I'm more inclined to turn tail and run the other direction as soon as I see him."

  "Oh, it'll be fine," Lars said, "he's really nice to the noobs. Come on." He started toward BlackEye/Rackham and Jack felt compelled to follow. As they approached the table, the two men stopped talking and looked their way. Rackham was old - Jack gathered as much from the brief biography Lars had provided. But in person he actually looked old, and that was maybe more unusual than the matte black orb in place of his right eye. The other man at the table was one of the people Jack had seen earlier with the hands. Or, in his case, the lack of a hand. "Rackham, Morty, this is Jack," Lars introduced her to the two men at the table, "she's one of the new folks who was in my session this morning." The man he introduced as Morty gave a vague smile then looked away as if he were shy or demented. Rackham grinned, and stuck out a large hand toward Jack. She shook his hand and smiled back.

  "I saw you at one of the smaller gatherings last weekend," she said, "and I just had to come out here. This is one hell of a place you've got here."

  "Well, thank you, my dear," Rackham said, picking up his dark drink and sucking back nearly a quarter of the contents of the large glass. "We try to get the word out as best we can. I hope you're enjoying it here, but more importantly that you are finding what you're looking for. As much as I appreciate all the work everyone does for the cause, the truth of the matter is that people need the Red more than the Red needs people. Isn't that right, Lars?"

  Rackham slapped the smaller man hard on the back and Lars sputtered slightly as he answered that he supposed that was true. "Damn rights it's true," Rackham answered, and Jack noticed that he was slurring his words a little. Shit, she thought, crazy and drunk. That's a great combination. "It's all a great circle, people." He waved his large hands in the air, demonstrating the circle. "We do what we do for the benefit of the others. And we need people to do what we do. But if there were no one to benefit from our work, we wouldn't need to do it and then we wouldn't need the people." He brought his hands down to the ledge with rather a lot of force, and glared at his audience. "Is this sinking in at all?" He was beginning to shout, though Jack thought it was more of a volume control issue rather than anger that caused his voice to rise.

  "I think I get it," she said, emboldened perhaps by a realization that he was human after all or perhaps by half a pint of real beer. "The movement exists for the benefit of people. When the administration of the organization becomes more important than actually helping people, then the priorities are obviously all wrong."

  "Close enough," Rackham said, and drank most of the rest of his drink. He signaled the barman for
another, and said, "Pretty damn good for a noob, I'd have to say." He polished off his drink, and said, "Well, it's been nice talking to you all," and turned away from them. It was an obvious cue that the conversation was over and they should go away. Jack and Lars went back to the table where Susanna was still sitting, enjoying her own little world.

  "So, that's our Rackham," Lars said. "Like I said, scary as hell but a real leader."

  "He sure is something," Jack said, trying to reconcile his words with the mind control programs. It didn't fit, but Jack knew that words aren't worth that much in the grand scheme of things. She drank the rest of her beer quietly, and saw that Lars was also lost in thought. She looked at him, as if for the first time. He was brooding at that moment, probably trying to think if there was a way that meeting could have gone better. His long face was pursed in thought but his skin was unlined and soft-looking. He was pale, with light hair and eyes and Jack imagined that he would be the kind of man that would have filled the ancient Nordic romantic novels. He had no augmentation that Jack could see, including a cable shunt, so she figured him for one of the moderates.

  She watched the strobes reflect off his skin, and realized for the first time that she was attracted to him. Maybe it was that he was the first person to talk to her, or maybe her encounter at the party the previous weekend had awakened desires for flesh sex she never knew she had. Or, maybe it was the strong home brew beer. Whatever it was, she knew she either had to make a move or move on. As she was deciding, Susanna came out of her stupor and announced that she was getting a bit freaked out and had to go back to her room. They said farewell, and she headed out of the bar, leaving Jack alone with Lars. They looked at each other for a while in silence, then Jack made up her mind. "Show me your room?" she asked.

  They left the bar and walked back to his room in the staff quarters. It was no different from hers except for a larger work area near the viewer. When they arrived, Lars produced a large bottle of ale from a cupboard near the entrance. They shared the bottle, as he set the viewer to play some soft instrumental music. They didn't speak once, even after the bottle was empty and their clothes were on the floor next to their tangled bodies. Jack had to admit to herself that Lars knew his subject, and she got more than an introduction on how to use her body that night.