by Damien Boyes
I want to stop and check on the constable’s injuries, but I have to keep up with Eka, can’t let him out of my sight.
Once he’s far enough away, Eka leaps into a still-moving Sküte and the domed vehicle zooms away. He’s trying to lose himself in the flurry of traffic and identical bulbous vehicles, but I mark the Sküte’s registration number and don’t take my eyes of it. With the traffic heavy, the Skütes can’t move that fast, and I keep up by running, following on foot.
He can’t see me, doesn’t know I’m chasing. I’m the invisible man. All the running I’ve been doing has conditioned me. I could do this for hours.
Luckily, Skütes have to stick to the surface roads, can’t get up to highway speeds, so I’m able to stay with him as he takes a circuitous route around the city. He’s being cautious, but not cautious enough.
Eka leads me on a marathon, twenty-some klicks before he finally figures he’s lost anyone tailing him, and returns to his hiding place.
The Sküte stops in front of an apartment building in the west end. Fifteen storeys on a corner lot with a small parking area around the side. Eka, wearing the skyn of a black man, leaps out, glances around and, apparently still unable to see me across the road watching him, runs up the front walk and through the doors.
I hang back and wait with my tab up, scanning everything. A moment later the sweep identifies another cypher leaving the front door. She’s olive-skinned, short and plump. She does a hasty perimeter scan of the property and disappears back in the front door. Then another Sküte rolls up and another cypher emerges, his head on a swivel, and runs into the building. Then another, agitated as well.
I’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest.
I check each skyn against Galvan’s sweep, making sure the results stay local. I don’t want the AMP knowing where I am. They all come back as high probability cyphers.
I log as Gibson and get my IMP to do a property search on the building. The current owner is a ghost entity. A shell company of a subsidiary of an offshoot of a shell company. It runs through previous owners, each as carefully crafted as the one before, a maze of holding agents and fabricated IDs.
This is it, I know it. I’ve found Eka.
Whoever he is. Whatever he is, he’s inside that building.
I can still do the right thing. Making a case like this, tracking down a rogue superintelligence single-handedly—I’ll be a hero.
But then what? What happens if I call Chaddah and have her send in the troops and we capture the man in the multiple bodies?
What happens next?
I’ve been pretending I didn’t know what I’d do when I finally found Eka, been lying to myself that my quest to track him down had something to do with bringing him to justice.
I’m not interested in justice. Not anymore. There isn’t enough justice in the world to make Amit Johari pay for what he’s done to me.
I know exactly what I’m going to do now. I’m going to walk in that building, and when I finally come face to face with the man who took everything from me, I’m going to tell him who I am and what he did to my life.
Then I’m going to kill him.
I cross the street, walk up the path to Eka’s front door and make myself known.
End: Book Four
To be concluded in…
Lost Time: Part Five Sync. Coming Mar 26, 2016.
Want to get sneak peaks of upcoming books, get discounts on new releases, and maybe receive the odd free story? Join my mailing list at damienboyes.com.
Thanks for reading.
Glossary
AMP. (Artificial Mind Pattern) Advanced neural code approximations running on cortical processors. They are classified as superintelligences but their use is governed and their operating code secured. Only licensed government agencies and select corporations are allowed to employ AMPs. The Ministry of Human Standards is responsible for monitoring and tracking down illicit use whenever it’s discovered.
BioSkyn. An artificial, lab-grown body. Components printed a layer of cells at a time and then assembled and implanted with an optical processing Cortex.
Biosynth. Someone who uses geneblocks to assemble unique, life forms—bacteria capable of operating to order to create atomically precise circuitry, manufacture drugs, enhance the immune system or replace biological functions. Plants that grow directly into furniture. Or wholly fabricated animals for domestic or military uses.
Bit-head. Xero. Sudo. Derogatory slang for a restored personality.
Bright. An extropian, far leftist, digital human philosophy. Brights believe in a creator of the Universe—or ’the system’—and that humanity is one of a billion billion probable physical manifestations of rules that began to play out at the moment of creation. God didn’t create us, but it allowed the conditions for us to exist, like a scientist fine-tuning an experiment, and humanity its results.
Continuance of Personality Act. The set of legal guarantees allowing for the transfer of a consciousness from organic to digital.
Cortex. Second Skyn’s in-house neural prosthetic. Now common slang for any neural prosthetic.
Cortical Field. The composite image of a scanned consciousness. Since consciousness is stored holographically, the stronger the field, the stronger the fidelity to the original personality.
Cypher. A rithm without an official restoration record from the Ministry of Human Standards.
Digital Life Extension. Extending a human consciousness past brain death as a psychorithm. The personality is captured, translated to a psychorithm and the resulting rithm loaded onto a prosthetic mind implanted in a bioSkyn. The Continuance of Personality Act provides digital humans with all the legal rights of a fully organic human, while Human Standards laws limit the extent to which digital humanity can augment its existence. DLE is fraught with political and social turbulence.
Dwell. A simple shyft that allows the user to speed up or slow down stored memory playback.
Fate. The rapidly growing corporation bringing immortality to the masses and hiring out low-cost knowledge work, all while reducing governmental expenditures around the globe.
Fleshmith. Someone who uses modified Geneblocks and scaflabs to produce designer bodies and organs.
Genitect. Someone who architects and encodes custom geneblocks, the genetic code building blocks used to form the genomes of synthetic lifeforms.
Headspace. A digital human’s customizable home running onboard their prosthetic brain.
The Hereafter. The brand-name of a virtual reflection of the real world, where digital humans can visit the living. It is the largest, and most populous, digital virt.
Human Standards. The legal baselines limiting human life extension, physical augmentation and neural enhancement.
IMP. (Intelligent Mediating Personality) Originally designed to assist with daily communication, the IMP’s capabilities quickly expanded to become a full-fledged digital assistant that learns over time. Upgradable with personality sprites.
The Link. The world-wide stream of conversations, sensor data, cameras, feeds, virts, games, and everything else that arose from the internet.
Lost Time. The minutes or hours of memory between personality back-ups lost due to a pattern decoherence or Cortex damage.
Lowboys. A gang of low-rep petty criminals. Kids, mostly.
Ministry of Human Standards. The government agency tasked with enforcing Human Standard laws.
Neurohertz. (NHz or N) 1N is the average speed of human neural processing. Human Standards limit the function of prosthetic brains to 1.15N.
Past-Standard. The only Human Standard criminal offence. Past-Standard encompasses everything related to genetic augmentation and manipulation of a mind or body past established human norms. Past-Standard Offences and Psychorithm Infractions often intersect, causing friction between investigating agencies.
Prodeo/Prodian. What digital-only personalities against the restrictive Human Standard laws call themselves: Homo Prodeo. From the latin "prodeo": to go forward, and "
pro Deo": ’before’ and ’the supreme being.’
Psychorithm. The Conscious Algorithm. The human brain’s self-sustaining, recursive algorithmic neural code translated into digital.
Psychorithm Crime Unit. The Toronto Police Services unit responsible for investigating crimes by and against the local Reszo population.
Psyphon. To extract a rithm from its Cortex by force.
Recovered. A psychorithm is recovered from a dying or unhealthy brain and imprinted onto a cortical field.
ReJuv. The genetic reset performed once a year through the intravenous injection of a gene-regulating cocktail.
Rep. The cumulative social reputation earned by a personality on the link. Also known as Social Faith.
Restored. Layering a recovered cortical field onto a prosthetic brain. Also a common identifier for a digital human.
Reszo. Slang for a restored personality.
Revv. A shyft that allows the user to bypass human-standard neural governors and run their rithm higher into the NHz range. The effects are limited only by the hardware.
Rithmist. Someone who hacks the psychorithm. From manipulating autonomous and emotional responses all the way to enhancing or creating new cognitive abilities.
Second Skyn. The global leader in digital life extension. In defiance of global courts, Second Skyn opened its first facility in a small South-East Asian country that had more pressing concerns than enforcing soon-to-be-outdated UN cloning laws. Once Personality Rights legislation was enacted, Second Skyn formally opened in Toronto, Stockholm, Seoul and Dubai, then expanded around the world as demand grew.
Skyn. Slang for bioSkyn.
Scafe. An illegally copied or hastily created skyn.
SecNet. The interconnected web of cameras, sensors, and databases that comprise the backbone of the North American Union’s security and surveillance infrastructure.
Shyft. General consumer term for a neural state overlay. One-time-use code snippets legally sold to temporarily simulate drunkenness, enhance pleasure, dampen fear, or one of a thousand other emotional flavours. Much more powerful illegal versions also exist.
StatUS. Formerly a governmental organization, StatUS was spun off as a private company and is now responsible for providing and maintaining identification for all Union citizens and visitors.
About the Author
Damien grew up on Terminator and Raymond Chandler and Green Lantern. On Deus Ex and PWEI. Blade Runner is his chicken soup when he's sick. He rereads Neuromancer every few years, and still loves the image of payphones ringing one by one as Case walks by, anachronistic or not.
He's s UX designer by day, a dad and husband by night, and a writer in the moments between.
Email him at [email protected] or visit his website at damienboyes.com and sign up to his mailing list for deleted scenes, free stories, and more.
Thanks To
Mom and Dad, for stoking my love for stories.
Everyone at Critters who helped shape the first draft, and especially Ted Cox for all his great suggestions.
Laura Kingsley for helping me with ‘what’s he thinking or feeling here,’ and Natasha Snow for the countless rounds of cover designs.
My friends and family for their ongoing encouragement.
And to Jacob, Josh and Maryellen, for the love, support, and constant distraction.
Editing by Laura Kingsley.
Cover by Natasha Snow.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental. Obviously.
Copyright © 2016 by Damien Boyes.
All rights reserved. With the exception of excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
First Edition
Table of Contents
SysDate [06:23:17. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [08:20:41. Sunday, April 28, 2058]
SysDate [06:23:17. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [11:22:28. Sunday, April 28, 2058]
SysDate [07:13:18. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [18:06:44. Sunday, April 28, 2058]
SysDate [16:41:51. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [07:32:53. Monday, April 29, 2058]
SysDate [17:01:58. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [11:29:51. Monday, April 29, 2058]
SysDate [17:48:19. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [21:21:58. Tuesday, April 30, 2058]
SysDate [18:01:23 Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [11:12:18. Wednesday, May 1, 2058]
SysDate [19:31:13. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [10:45:52. Thursday, May 2, 2058]
SysDate [19:54:20. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [07:01:03. Friday, May 3, 2058]
SysDate [20:26:44. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [16:33:51. Sunday, May 5, 2058]
SysDate [22:02:29. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
SysDate [17:09:47. Sunday, May 5, 2058]
To be concluded in…
Glossary
About the Author
Thanks To