Virtual Immortality

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Who sent you?” Nina stopped four feet away. “Why are you here?”

  The man gurgled, his attempt to speak too quiet to hear.

  “Nice try, asshole. I am not falling for that one. Speak up or die where you are.” Nina pulled out her sidearm and leveled it off at his head.

  He growled at his failed ruse and his boosted legs threw him into the air. To the Division 9 agents by the door, he turned into a blur. To Nina, he moved in normal time. Her pistol went off like an automatic weapon as her inhuman dexterity loosed eight shots before he travelled far enough to reach her. All eight landed in his chest, though Nina did not have the time to appreciate their effect. His punch caught her in the gut, sending her flying in an arc toward a parked car fifteen meters away.

  I’m just going to stop carrying a fucking gun… I swear.

  She crushed the roof on impact, exploding all the windows into a beautiful display of glittering snowflakes that her accelerated perception held in midair around her, not quite the snow princess fantasy she had as a six-year-old. Nina sat up without hesitation, feeling no pain and thinking that she could grow to like this body after all.

  She did not have to be afraid of anyone ever again.

  A gut strike cannot knock the air out of a person with mechanical lungs. His punch, while inhuman in strength, still rode in on a living fist. A living fist now reduced to a twisted mass of broken bones after striking the plastisteel plates just below her synthetic skin.

  Ignoring his pain, the man’s roar floated on anger alone. What should have been red-faced rage took the form of more blood oozing from his shredded cheeks. A serenade of creaking metal surrounded her as she lifted herself out of the wreckage. Clinking fragments of glass fell out of her coat as she stepped back onto the street.

  A single metal blade slid out through the back of his left hand as he charged. His augmentation focused all on strength; Nina’s speedware let her avoid his attack with a casual lean. She rolled into him, spinning her back against his chest as she grabbed his arm with both hands. It broke in two places as she yanked him into a jiu-jitsu throw. A shove with her hips launched him up and over, and she swung him around into the side of the car she had landed on.

  The vehicle crumpled under the force of the impact, sliding several feet sideways before it rocked to a halt. Fragments of glass went everywhere. A few seconds of silence ended when the passenger side mirror gave up the fight and fell from snapped cables―landing in the assassin’s lap with a leathery plop.

  Despite his metal reinforced skull, now exposed to the air, the impact had been severe enough to knock him senseless. Nina hauled him into the air by the back of his coat. He flew up and to the left leaving streamers of blood. In a blur, she met his descent with a flip over kick that almost put her foot through his sternum. The impact launched him sideways; slamming his body into the retaining wall with such force it created a six-foot radial mess of blood and cracked concrete. Dark crimson bubbled out of his mouth as his head sagged forward.

  He slouched into a heap of dead flesh.

  Marshall and Jeffries had stopped shooting as soon as Nina ran. They approached the dead man with a mixture of relief and awe, not quite sure if they should put their weapons away.

  “Never worked with a doll before?” Nina swatted more fragments of glass out of her coat.

  “No, Lieutenant. Specification docs and old stories don’t quite do it justice.” Jeffries offered a nervous chuckle.

  “You two alright?”

  They nodded.

  “Secure their van.”

  Nina cast a mournful glance to the bakery truck. Traces of smoke still wisped into the air from the twisted shell. The two front tires stopped yards away on either side and no trace of the front seats existed save for a scattering of tiny foam bits in the road. The armor behind the driver cabin had a large dent at head level resembling a cannonball imprint. A breach the size of a finger peeked through the center where the plasma breached. Wherever the plate lacked a covering of scorch, red mist stained it. She continued directing other operatives to secure the area as she trudged over to where Dale had died.

  Her emotional compass was spinning. Images of his eager face danced through her memory. A pang of guilt came from how she had spent the entire morning thinking him nice, but less than Vincent. The sense of loss at his death was a surprise, considering she had just met him that morning. She leaned against the burned armor, savoring the feeling of humanity from the grief. He was the number two man on this operation, her backup. When Basket Weaver ended, they may never have seen each other again. All that was left of him now was biological vapor, plus whatever remained in the smoking boot on the hotel awning.

  She turned at a shoebox-sized delivery bot panning back and forth.

  “What do you want?”

  “Searching… Dale Abrams. Delivery of headache remedy.”

  “Cancel the order.” She wanted to smash it; however, it was not to blame for the sick individual that sent it here.

  Those pills aren’t strong enough.

  “Team, we are reading an unusual electromagnetic pulse from both hostiles. Stand clear of the bodies immediately!” Samantha yelled over the comm.

  Nina scanned both dead men. An array of display panels and lines connected to different parts of the corpses appeared as she ran through different vision modes. Before she could complete the search, a muffled pop came from one and then the other, followed by a second louder thud as a spray of guts and fluid showered the area. The self-destruct devices shredded most of the evidence that could link them back to where they came from. Nina scowled, knowing it would be difficult to trace. Clones with no prints, generic faces, and loaded with off-market cyberware. Despite the odds, Division 9 would spend dozens of man-hours trying.

  She glanced in the direction that the two men ran off in, narrowing her eyes. The death of Dale Abrams would kick up a shitstorm in short order.

  The only question was who would get rained on.

  oey held up three fingers to the simulated fifteen-year-old girl behind the counter of the nearest CyberBurger he could find, requesting combo 3. She smiled, a gleam crossed her bright blue eyes, and her head tilted. He almost saw the program code scroll past as it ran, move lip actuators, tilt head, widen eyes, and add a little red to the cheeks. There was no point trying to make polite conversation. These dolls did not have a personality; little more than computer terminals shaped like people. Food in hand, he flopped down at a table facing the grove of artificial trees set between benches in the ‘beautified’ sidewalk outside.

  He lifted the burger to his face, staring out over a horizon studded with sesame seeds at a handful of people waving signs. Decades ago, this chain had another name, but he could not recall what. They had been the first franchise to eliminate human workers in favor of cheap dolls; and even had the gall to make them look like high school kids. Social activists invented CyberBurger as a slur. When fast food franchises merged, the resulting megacorp adopted it out of spite.

  The protestors still came, though they were nothing like the crowds that used to show up at first. Back then, they blocked the streets. These days, it was more like a collection of two to six people that nothing better to do with their lives than wave signs at a megacorp.

  He did not care about the politics behind his shitty food. Everything from the meat, to the sickly green flap of pseudo-lettuce, to the bun, and even the sesame seeds―all of it was reassembled OmniSoy. Machines altered it at a molecular level, converting the protein structure into bread, meat, and vegetables. He could eat the OmniSoy straight and get the same nutrition, but the lie in his hands tasted so much better.

  He held the half-eaten burger up just high enough to where it looked like the demonstrators marched over it, and grinned. Society careened surely, inexorably, toward an implosion. Joey would be there, in a folding chair, cheering it on from the sidelines with four thousand calories of ersatz popcorn soaked in chemical butter.

  A pudgy w
hite woman, sign in hand, approached the window near his seat and tried to yell at him through the window. The thick glass muted her into an unintelligible murmur. He knew the drill. She railed against the establishment, asking him how he could bring himself to sustain such an evil corporation.

  He met her stare, chomping down with a massive shit-eating grin before going into a slow chew with exaggerated expressions of joy. He used his NetMini to create a two-foot tall holographic middle finger, and waved it at her. She gaped with a mixture of shock and anger before storming off in a huff.

  At this hour, only a few people were here, too early for the lunch crowd and too late for the breakfast seekers. He marveled at how clean the place smelled; perhaps there was something to be said about virtual employees that actually did the job they were not paid to do.

  Joey flipped the little device over in his hand and poked Alex’s smirking face out of the contact list. Before long, the same smirk appeared in real time.

  “You’re not gonna give me shit about eating here too, are you?”

  “Why would I? The place suits you.” He exhaled the rest of his words through an exasperated sigh. “I was just about to call you, if you must know.”

  “The errand’s done.” Joey tapped at his deck to send the file.

  “Good.” Alex touched the tips of his fingers together in front of his face.

  Joey squinted at the gesture. “What are you scheming now?”

  “I’m just ruminating on why someone is looking for you. I thought you always got out clean?”

  “Clean? Hah. The only thing he ever did clean was run away from his responsibilities.” The voice of Joey’s sister echoed out of his deck, loud enough to draw the attention of the two other people eating there.

  The sound of her voice could take him from a perfect calm to murderous anger in short order. If not for the file transfer, he would have shut the unit off with a closed fist.

  “Did you forget to pay someone again?”

  “That was my sister.” Joey’s eyes hardened, realizing where Alex would go with that.

  Cleo, I’m coming for you.

  Alex smiled; the expectation of a crass joke had spared him the displeasure of having to make it. “A man wanted me to arrange a meeting with you in Sector 12.”

  His voice muffled through a mouthful. “Black zone. Nice.” The implied danger made him forget hearing Katherine. “Wow, they must have gotten new machines, I can’t even taste the OmniSoy in these fries.”

  “You put too much salt on them, Joe.”

  The sound of his father’s voice made him spit a glop of semi-chewed starch onto the window.

  Alex picked at something out of sight, smiling as he teased at Joey’s idiotic tendency to leap at danger. “You know, it is the same area that the current rumors involve.”

  “Someone’s paying you to send me there?” Joey tossed another fry into his mouth.

  “Whatever gave you that idea my friend?” He flashed a polite little smile. “I’m simply looking out for your interests.”

  “You’re trying too hard to get me to go out there… What’s in it for you?”

  “Well, I had hoped that if you went out there and happened to find something about what is shooing the malcontents out of the area it might be worth selling.”

  “The only thing faker than your French-ness is your sincerity.” Joey tapped his fingers on the table, unable to resist the danger. “Where and when?”

  “I’ll send you a pin. Tonight, ten pm.” Alex reached off screen.

  A new window scrolled open with a map of Sector 12, a giant thumbtack lanced into one of the streets.

  “Okay, I’ll go.”

  “Good. Your payment should be in your account within a few minutes.”

  “Call me if you get more like that, someone shot a missile at me.” He turned to show the red mark on his cheek.

  “Cretin.” Alex’s holographic head flickered out of existence.

  Joey gathered the wrappers from his meal, stuffing everything into the sleeve the fries had come in. The woman from earlier ranted at the other protestors while pointing at him. The way they all stared at him made him expect a confrontation. He cracked an evil grin as he concocted a diversion. Settling back in the seat, he held the NetMini in a reading posture and plugged into his deck. He fell into cyberspace, appearing to the outside world as if in deep thought.

  The dark gunslinger came out of the cyclone of color standing in the virtual CyberBurger, a decent replica of reality that existed to process orders for delivery. The dolls behind the registers had different faces; other than that, the only difference from reality was four times the crowd. Less than a hundred feet from the door, a thin column of azure light traced through the sky―a data channel for the citycams. He walked in as if it were a public thing; easy and common, the cam lines were a neophyte hacker’s first practice dummy. Within a newly opened panel, he grabbed a still of the street out front and drew a lime green square around the woman’s face. Pinching it, he isolated her from the background and saved a separate image.

  After a short walk through the digital city, he arrived at an interlink connecting the GlobeNet to the public area of the police network. The desk sergeant had his hands full with a line of people and a litany of petty complaints. As Joey pulled apart the threads of reality, his avatar diverged from his true location on the network. The old cowboy’s ghost waited at the end of the line while he ducked through the barrier into the secure part of the network.

  Despite it being only the dispatch network, most deck jockeys would sweat getting in here; Joey got in before he realized it. He paused to reflect on how far his skills had developed since the last time he tried to get into the government network. He stuck the woman’s face into a falsified police report about her tossing an incendiary device through the window of a CyberBurger last month. The ruse would not last too long, but it would keep her occupied long enough for him to avoid an attack. Before disconnecting, he simulated an android dispatcher calling in a sighting of a wanted suspect.

  The dark cowboy flew backwards into the air, a sensation as though he sailed up through the floor into his body. Joey went with the sudden jolt, turning it into a stretch in his seat. He smiled and waited. The protestors all stared at him now. He continued grinning, walking to the door at a languid pace that fanned the fires of their anticipation. As two Division 1 patrol craft swooped in behind the protestors, he winked and made a finger gun at them, moving at a casual stroll to his bike amid the backdrop of screaming patrol officers.

  Thoughts about the upcoming meeting provided enough of a fear spike that he made it back to his apartment before realizing he had almost obeyed the speed limit. The streets still held far more than their usual quantity of gangers, proof that something still raised hell in Sector 12. Seeing them all teased him with an unpleasant form of fear. Territorial in the extreme, these gangs did not relocate at the drop of a hat. Most often, they would just kill or rape their problems. Sometimes both, and with black zone thugs, the order could vary.

  He shoved the heavy steel door open with a loud grating squeak as he dialed Masaru with this other hand. The apartment smelled of wet dog and mold, though the aroma of tequila-laced vomit had vanished.

  “Already? What is it this time?” Masaru, shirtless, sat in a hot tub with female arms crisscrossing his chest.

  “Feel like protecting my narrow ass again tonight, say around ten?”

  “Possibly. What are you doing?”

  Joey scratched the left side of his head as he continued. “Alex again, said that someone got a hold of him trying to find me; wanted to arrange a meeting in Sector 12.”

  Masaru reached as if to hang up the call, but hesitated, perhaps a modicum of respect for his friend.

  “Gomenasai, Joey-san… I need to prepare for an exam at the university.”

  “Scared, eh?” Joey smiled. “Since when do you take your own tests? I thought you had a guy for that.”

  Masaru frowned.
“I am not scared. That area is…”

  “Too low class for you to be seen?” Joey laughed, noting he did not challenge his comment about having others take his tests for him. “It’s just a quick meeting with some guy, it won’t take long.”

  “Alright. But it had better be brief.”

  “Great. Pick me up at 9:30, bring Kat if she wants to come along.”

  “Mm.” Masaru turned his attention back to the women sharing the hot tub with him.

  Joey crawled into the trash-strewn couch, trying to make himself as comfortable as possible. He had long since given up the fight; no matter how hard he tried to clear it off, more always came back. He attributed it to having an apartment that anyone could walk into at any time.

  hy don’t you clean the place up a little, Joseph?” A pleasant elderly man’s voice wafted through the room.

  “Not now, Dad.”

  He managed to add ten more seconds to the three hours of sleep he had gotten before his body shot bolt upright.

  “Not funny. Who the fuck was that?”

  After looking around and finding himself alone, he settled deeper into the rustling trash, searching for comfort.

  “The state of this place would kill your mother, you know.”

  His eyes snapped open.

  Joey sprang off the cushions in a shower of trash, and ran to the bathroom to make sure no one hid back there to mess with him. Finding no trace of anyone, he stomped to the front door and tried to kick it closed in anger. The warped metal plate slid an inch, jamming against the floor.

  Minutes passed as he stood in silence punctuated only by a few distant shouts, bangs, and a single gunshot. His knuckles creaked as he made and unmade fists, staring at the whirlwind of litter around him. Paper, foam, and plastic on the couch around him creaked and crackled, deafening in the stillness. He thought about the loons that swear ghosts are real; he used to disregard them as idiots until he ran into a telekinetic. Psionics were one thing; but ghosts, on the other hand, seemed too much of a stretch for him to believe. No, this had to be someone dicking with him. Cleopatra was the first person to come to mind, but how did she do it this time?