John Golden: Freelance Debugger

by Django Wexler

  “Of c-c-course. He was an impediment.” The fairy cocked its head. “B-b-but he threatened to expose me.”

  “So you ate him.”

  “Ate him?” said Delphi.

  For a moment, genuine emotion showed on the fairy's face. It smiled the old Falmer smile.

  “We call this sort of thing a puppeteer,” I said. “If it gets strong enough, it can devour a person, body and soul, and gain access to their thoughts and memories. Enough to construct a pretty good simulacrum, if it doesn't need to touch too many things.”

  “The n-n-new version of SS AntiFae is nearly perfect,” the fairy said. “Once it is d-d-distributed, I will join every s-s-system that installs it to my burrow. I will be-be-be unstoppable.”

  “Except that the game is up.” I crossed my arms. “You're finished.”

  Another almost human smile. “Am I, Mr. Golden?”

  “John,” Sarah said. “I don't want to alarm you, but I'm under attack.”

  “What?” I put my hand to the earpiece, pressing it painfully into my ear. “Are you all right? Cut the link!”

  “I've got it—” There was a burst of static, like an old-fashioned radio. “—der control. Can't cut, but I think I can—” Another blast of noise, so loud it left my ear ringing. “—don't worry about it, just—”

  Then nothing but static. I ripped the earpiece off, and saw Delphi doing the same. I whirled on the Falmer-thing[61].

  —[61] Ordinarily I'm more than capable of defending myself against such attacks, but I have to admit this one caught me off guard. Falmer's burrow was a monster, with raw power to burn, and the puppeteer had obviously grown astute with human-style computer systems during its tenure as Falmer's programmer-in-residence.—

  “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

  “I've done my r-r-research, Mr. Golden. I know all about your sister's unique condition. Now she's my guest.”

  “If you hurt her...[62]” I breathed, then stopped, unable to think of an appropriate threat.

  —[62] He's sweet, sometimes.—

  “If you w-w-want her, come and get her.”

  I roared, taking a long step forward and swinging my fist into the fairy's face[63].

  —[63] Not very bright, but sweet.—

  It passed right through, of course, without even a flicker. It laughed, a weird, stuttering staccato giggle, and disappeared like popped soap bubble. Back into the burrow, I knew. Back to where it was strongest, and I was vulnerable. Where it now had Sarah.

  ~

  “Delphi,” I grated.

  “John?” She hurried across the room. “Are you all right?”

  “I need you to go get help. Go and get...” Who? The police? The first thing they would do would be shut down the burrow entirely, which would destroy any chance of getting Sarah back. “Listen. I'm going to give you a phone number. You're looking for Harry Muir[64]. Tell him John Golden sent you, and that you want to meet. Once you get him in person, you can tell him what happened—”

  —[64] Head of Microsoft's FSMG (Fae Safeguard and Mitigation Group), the archetypical corporate debugger. The corporate teams are often called in to clean up the aftermath of John's messes. This drives Harry crazy, but generates revenue, so he and John have a sort of love/hate relationship.—

  “Why?” Her eyes narrowed. “You're going back in, aren't you?”

  “I have to.”

  “I thought you needed someone on the outside to create your weapons and armor. Sarah told me that was her job.”

  I hadn't realized the two of them had gotten so chatty while I was in the first burrow. I gritted my teeth. “I'll be fine[65].”

  —[65] Idiocy, thy name is macho.—

  “No you won't,” Delphi snapped. “If you thought you were going to be fine, you wouldn't be sending me off to find a clean-up crew.”

  “We don't have time for this,” I said. “He's got Sarah—”

  “I know.” She crossed her arms. “You need someone on the outside. I'm on the outside, and I'm not leaving.”

  “You don't know what you're doing.”

  “It's got to be better than nothing!”

  I shook my head, but I was acutely aware of the seconds slipping away. Falmer wanted to lure me into the burrow so he could kill me, presumably, and that meant he'd keep Sarah intact for at least a while. Maybe. I thought about the pit full of spinning, flashing blades, and wondered how long his patience would last.

  Delphi wasn't moving. I gave up.

  “Fine,” I snarled. “Grab a monitor and keyboard.”

  She darted out the door and came back with the necessaries, trailing their cables. I hooked them in to Sarah's hardware, trying not to imagine that the very tenor of the fans in the little black unit had changed.

  Something that had lived in there was gone[66].

  —[66] Superstitious nonsense, of course.—

  Once we had the keyboard set up, I logged in using the administrator account I had promised Sarah I wouldn't ever use except in the direst emergency[67], and turned it over to Delphi.

  —[67] Having an administrator logged on to my system is a bit like having someone poke through my room, opening all the drawers, reading my diary, etc. Except that since I am on the system too, you have to picture me standing naked in the room, open to inspection. On second thought, please don't picture that, it's creepy.—

  “Start poking through the file system. Sarah may have some canned programs that you can run against the burrow that may turn up something handy.” I handed her the earpiece again. “If you lose touch with me, you're going to have to go to the cops and get them to nuke the site from orbit[68].”

  —[68] That is, disconnect and physically destroy all the hardware that forms the burrow. It's the only way to be sure.—

  “Right.” She fitted the earpiece, then grabbed my hand. I was surprised to feel her palm shaking. “Be careful.”

  That was probably the time for some gallant, witty remark, but I couldn't think of one[69].

  —[69] Thank God.—

  “I'll do my best.”

  ~

  I materialized in the burrow more or less where I'd popped out. The place was a screaming racket—the giant blender was at full speed, a nasty clicking, buzzing hiss, and all the fairies in the cages were shouting, squeaking, squawking, or bellowing at the top of whatever passed for their lungs. They threw themselves against the chicken wire enclosures, over and over, driven by their imprisonment into the rarest of states for a fairy: rage.

  Beside the central pit stood the thing that had been impersonating Walter Falmer. It was about eight feet tall, with a squat, bulbous body of waxy white flesh, pocked by weeping sores. Four slender metal legs, ending in long curved blades with wicked points, held it off the ground like a mechanical spider. A barrel-shaped torso mounded up from the insectoid abdomen, with two multi-jointed metal arms on either side, one pair ending in slithering, cable-like tendrils and the other in a snapping scissor-claw.

  Its head was just a lump, crowned by a ring of four glowing green eyes. Where a face might have been, a white, porcelain half-mask was painted with a red, leering smile[70].

  —[70] John's description, if anything, understates the case. I have seen uglier fairies, but not up close.—

  Sarah was hanging next to it, restrained by a double-loop of black cable stretching down from the ceiling and wrapping around her mid-section. She looked as she always does—and presumably always will—the willowy blonde teenager she'd been the last time she had a real body. She was struggling, but her arms were trapped at her sides, and as soon as I appeared she fixed me with an angry glare.

  “Welcome, Mr. Golden!” The Falmer-thing's voice, here, was a synthetic basso profundo, with a buzz in the upper registers like a failing tweeter. “You've already had a chance to look around, I take it. What do you think?”

  One of the green eyes swiveled, tracking me. I ducked sideways, behind one of the cages of screeching fairies. The puppete
er gave a booming chuckle and reached a claw up towards Sarah, mechanical legs clicking like a hairdresser's scissors.

  “Don't drag this out,” it said, with a laugh. “You humans are so predictable in your emotional attachments. Come over here before I have to start snipping bits off.”

  “John!” Sarah shouted.

  “I'm coming,” I answered, peering around the other side of the cage. One of the Falmer-thing's eyes focused on me immediately. The damn thing literally had eyes in the back of its head, which made it awfully hard to sneak up on.

  “No, you idiot!” Sarah shouted. “Get out of here!”

  I clenched my fists, back to the chicken wire cage. “Delphi, can you hear me?”

  “I can hear both of you,” Delphi said from the air. Her voice was tight, with the barest note of panic. “Is she okay?”

  “So far, but I don't fancy trying to take that thing on with my bare hands. Have you got anything?”

  “I'm trying!” I could hear her typing madly on the keyboard. “This system is a mess, how am I supposed to find anything when I don't know what I'm looking for—[71]”

  —[71] Oh, like your bedroom is always neat and tidy.—

  “Armor, weapons, anything like that?”

  “I've got... Here, try this.”

  The air shimmered, and a booklet appeared beside me and flopped to the ground. I glanced at the cover.

  “'Guide to Installing and Configuring Your Dell'[72]. Not exactly what I need.” Something else caught my eye. “But hang on...”

  —[72] I really have no idea why that was still on there. Sometimes bloatware can be impossible to get rid of.—

  The gun that Sarah had dropped me the first time I'd been in the burrow was still here. That made sense—it would normally dematerialize only when Sarah's system was disconnected from the network. It was halfway between the cage I was hiding behind and the altar, and I gauged the distance carefully. How fast was the puppeteer? If it spotted me, could I beat it there?

  Nothing for it but to try, I pushed off around the corner, my boots scraping against the raw metal grating underfoot. The Falmer-thing's head whipped round, and it clicked and rattled its way in my direction—away from Sarah—and extended a pair of heavy pincer arms toward me. It was faster than I would have guessed, but it hadn't seen the gun.

  At the last moment I tucked into a roll, slipped past the slashing claws, and snagged the weapon on my way past. I fetched up on my side, flopped awkwardly to face the fairy, and fired.

  The little weapon clicked and emitted a brilliant line of light, too bright to look at. My aim was off, and the shot hit the puppeteer in what passed for its shoulder instead of its face. Its pale flesh bubbled and flowed like wax, leaving a wide crater where the beam had struck. It emitted a weird, warbling shriek that slid up and down the scale like a demented synthesizer. But I could already tell it wasn't going to be enough—it was still moving, bearing down on me like a runaway car.

  I tried desperately to line up another shot, but it swung an arm down, tendrils bunched into a club-like fist, and slapped the weapon from my hands. I scrabbled backward on hands and knees, avoiding the viper-fast snaps of the thing's scissor-claws.

  “Delphi!” I shouted. “This”—snap—“would be”—snap—“a really good time”—snap—“to find something good!”

  “I don't know how!” Delphi screamed in frustration. Objects started appearing all around me—a can of soda, a bowl of creamed corn, two rubber balls, a zebra-print throw rug. “John!”

  I wanted to reply, but I couldn't. I'd ducked under another blow from the scissor-arm only to find the smaller arm coming up from underneath. It wrapped its cable-tendrils around my throat, seizing me in a solid grip and lifting me off the ground with effortless, mechanical strength. The Falmer-thing's metal joints clicked and whirred.

  “John, what do I do?” Delphi shouted. “John!” Then her voice vanished.

  “If I can offer you some advice, Mr. Golden,” the fairy said, suddenly sounding just like Falmer again. “Next time, try not to be so good at your job.”

  The claw-blades came at me at head height. I closed my eyes and tried to pop out of the burrow, but that takes a few seconds and more concentration than I could muster. In the distance, I heard Sarah scream[73].

  —[73] I did not scream. Shouted, maybe.—

  A line of brilliant light flashed in front of my eyes, and then I was falling. I hit the grating in a painful sprawl, the puppeteer's tentacled hand still wrapped around my throat. The arm that had been holding me had been severed halfway up by an energy blast, and my dazzled eyes tracked back along the path of the beam to find Delphi, eyes very wide but sighting down the barrel of the gun in an extremely professional-looking manner.

  ~

  The puppeteer gave another warbling screech. I clawed at my throat and managed to get my fingers under the clinging cables, tearing off the Falmer-thing's severed hand as I clambered to my feet. The creature itself was already turning toward Delphi.

  “Delphi, run!” I shouted.

  She needed no encouragement, though I was glad to see she held on to the gun. She headed straight for the nearest of the fairy cages, the puppeteer lumbering behind her, claws snapping. It was quick on a straightaway, I could see, but not terribly agile. Delphi cut left at the last minute, veering behind the cage, and the Falmer-thing couldn't turn in time. It plowed into the fragile structure at a dead run, tangling itself in the struts and chicken wire.

  The pixies inside the cage took the opportunity to attack their tormentor en masse, hauling themselves through rents in the cage and grabbing for holds on the puppeteer's misshapen body. They couldn't really injure it, though, and the Falmer-thing was already righting itself, using its three remaining arms to pluck the pixies off and toss them away or simply snip them into pieces that vanished in puffs of blue-green smoke.

  I circled around the other way, putting the central hill between the creature and me, heading for Delphi. I itched to run straight to Sarah, but the cables holding her were as thick as my wrist, and I'd need the gun to have a chance of getting her free quickly. Besides, I could imagine all too well what was going through Delphi's mind. I spotted her on the other side of the ring of cages, back against the chicken wire and breathing hard.

  “Delphi!” I grabbed her arm, then ducked as she automatically brought the gun up. “Whoa! Delphi, it's me! It's all right.”

  “John?” She blinked, eyes focusing. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Try to stay calm.” I was pretty far from calm myself, but I could remember my first time in a burrow. The transition is not conducive to an organized state of mind. “We're okay for the moment. The first time takes us all this way.”

  “What do you mean us?” She gestured wildly, unfortunately with the hand holding the gun. I ducked again and gently pushed her arm to her side.

  “Debuggers. You're a debugger, Delphi. We're inside the burrow.”

  She blinked. “But that's not...I can't...”

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “I was trying to help you. And I couldn't get that stupid system to do anything useful[74], and I just...reached out...”

  —[74] All right, all right. Spring cleaning next week!—

  “You twisted yourself into the burrow. And saved my life, incidentally. Thanks. That was a good shot.”

  She looked down at the gun in her hand. “I used to...spend a lot of time at the firing range. It was my thing. In college.”

  Her breathing was getting steadier, and her eyes clearer. Knowing Delphi, I might have guessed she'd be a quick adapter. Unfortunately, we didn't exactly have time to spare.

  “Deli?” Falmer's voice—the voice he'd had as a human—drifted over the burrow. “Was that little Deli I saw? You're in here too? Man, what are the odds!” He laughed, a human sound that shifted horribly into an electronic squeal, and his voice returned to the puppeteer's bass roar. “Now both of you get out here or I'll cut this
girl to shreds!”

  “John Golden!” Sarah shouted. “You get her out of here right now or I'm never speaking to you again!”

  “How good a shot are you?” I said. “Really.”

  Delphi shook her head slowly. “Pretty good, but I've never used something like this.” She lifted the ray gun. “Is it going to run out of ammo?”

  “I doubt it. It's not a real gun, after all.” I looked carefully at her eyes and satisfied myself that any trace of the transitional fog had gone. “Listen. I think I've got an idea, but I need you. Are you okay?”

  She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “Yeah. What's the plan?”

  “Okay. I go right; you go left. Open all the cages. The fairies should go straight for Falmer, they're furious. Then, when I give the signal—”

  Delphi listened, swallowed and nodded. I glanced around the corner of the cage. The puppeteer had freed itself of most of the clinging pixies, and was stumbling back towards the central pit and Sarah, scissors snapping at a few determined holdouts.

  “Go,” I said. “Now!”

  Delphi took off at a run, and I headed in the opposite direction. I reached the first cage, wound up, and delivered a kick at the corner strut that bent the thin metal and kinked the chicken wire. A little more work, and the twisted strut pulled free, taking half the front of the cage with it. A wave of angry fairies poured out, pixies in every color of the rainbow and other, stranger things, flowing around me with a quiet, vicious determination making directly for the puppeteer. Over the buzz of the blender-teeth in the central pit, I could hear the whine of the ray gun as Delphi took a more direct approach to opening the cages on her side.

  “Golden!” the puppeteer shouted. “What do you think you're doing, Golden?” It stepped toward Sarah, claw-hands coming up, and my heart stopped for a moment.

  Before the blades could close around her, the first wave of fairies reached the Falmer-thing, and they hurled themselves at him with a fury born of long imprisonment. Another wave, from Delphi's side, arrived a moment later and started scaling the huge, misshapen body like mountaineers, wrapping themselves around its mechanical limbs and digging tiny, sharp teeth into its waxy flesh.