by Lisa Smedman
Hitomi smiled behind his back and let the physicians continue to fuss over her. As soon as these silly adults let her return to her own room, she'd jack directly into a telecom line and enter the Matrix. She didn't need a stupid cyberdeck to join her new family. Not any more.
12:57:15 EST
Toronto, UCAS
Winston Griffith III sat behind the massive oak desk in the den of his Toronto residence and stared at his expensive cyberdeck. He'd shut off its power and now its blank screen reflected his image. Illuminated by the track lighting overhead, his face looked norm—
He caught himself, and smiled. Then he corrected himself. His face looked human. Aside from his complete lack of facial hair, it might be the face of any other Afro-American.
He pushed the cyberdeck away. He didn't need it any more. Nor did he need the smart frame he'd paid so much money to have custom-programmed. By now, his "shameful" secret was probably out. And if it wasn't, it would only be a matter of time before another shadowrunner got a sniff of it, and tried to blackmail him.
He was clearly no longer in the running for the executive council of the Human Nation. And the odd thing was, no matter how hard he tried, he didn't care.
What he did care about was his son. That e-mail message from Chester was eleven months old. Chester could be anywhere by now. But thankfully, Winston had the resources to find him. Both the financial resources and—he stared at his reflection, contemplating the empty datajack in his head. Then he smiled. And the material resources as well.
And assuming that the AI was still sane and on-line, he also had friends in high places . . .
Winston unplugged the fiber-optic cable from his cyber-deck, plugged it directly into his datajack, and entered the Matrix to begin his search for his missing son.
(02:57:15 GST)
Tenochtitlán, Aztlan
Yograj spent several minutes in a dreamlike state, half in and half out of consciousness. At last his eyes fluttered open. He glanced right, and saw the shattered remains of the robotic cleaning drone—glanced left, and saw the teenage rebel with the Ares Viper pistol. For a moment he was disoriented. Was he still in the Matrix—still Bloodyguts? Or was he in his hotel room in Tenochtitlán, having just completed the weirdest Matrix run of his life?
He sniffed, and smelled gunpowder. Reality, then. No wait. The ultra-violet system he'd just been accessing had contained smells, tastes, textures—it stimulated all of the five senses. Frag. He felt like it did when he'd messed up slotting BTL. As unable to tell reality from illusion as . . .
The rebel who leaned over him had one hand on the fiber-optic cable that connected Yograj to his fried deck. Yograj shook his head weakly. "Don't unjack me," he croaked. Then he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.
Suddenly his conscious mind was hurled back into the Matrix. Another decker's persona approached—an undulating worm that inched toward him on a multitude of feet. Its voice whispered in his ear.
"Be chill, man. I've come with a message from the Great Being."
"The what?"
"You know it by another name: Psychotrope."
"Oh." The pieces started to slot into place. The decker that Bloodyguts was talking to was otaku. He stared at the worm persona with open curiosity. There was so much more he wanted to know. "How do you—?"
The worm ignored the question. "The Great Being is grateful to you for helping to save its life. It sensed that you were having difficulty adjusting to your new—existence—and sent me to help you. It also wishes me to tell you that it approves of your fight against the BTL dealers. My brothers and sisters will help with your next mission if you like."
Yograj felt his meat-world bod grin, exposing his curving canine teeth. "I like," he told the worm.
He couldn't believe it. Only a few seconds had passed since he'd escaped from the pocket universe inhabited by the Al, and already the cavalry was here? These kids were really wiz. He'd be happy to have even one on his team. And there seemed to be more than one. "Brothers and sisters" the worm had said. They were just kids, yeah. But with the processing power of an AI to back them up.
Those BTL dealers had better watch their backs.
09:57:49 PST
Seattle, UCAS
Deni charged around the squat, readying everything he would need to bust Pip outta the abandoned geothermal plant.
He tossed the double-juiced stun baton into his nylon carry bag—that should frag up the Amerind kid with the weird aura but good—and made sure his Palm Pistol was ready to rock before shoving it into his boot top. He'd already rousted a grumbling Alfie from the sack with a bang on the door of her squat and told her to warm up her bike. Now he was tying the wolf-claw necklace that served as his shamanic fetish around his neck.
Kali, the dobie-lab cross that Deni had rescued from the junk yard ten years ago, watched his frantic preparations with wide brown eyes. The dog was missing its left front leg but could run like a jazzed turbo. Lean and strong, she'd easily be able to keep up with the bike. And her nose would help sniff out the worst of Hell's Kitchen's danger spots.
Sensing Deni's mood, the dog stood, tripod-still, the black fur along her spine bristling. Whatever went down today, she'd be there as backup.
Deni slung the nylon bag over his shoulder and was just reaching for the door when the flatscreen of Pip's Matrix-Pal computer deck suddenly lit up. Its tinny speaker let out a sharp ping! that stopped Deni in his tracks.
The high-pitched sound made Kali's head whip around. Her nose twitched, and then she began frantically barking at the screen as it filled with a familiar face.
"Pip!" Deni shouted. He leaped for the deck and seized it with both hands. "Chill!" he shouted over his shoulder at Kali. The dog immediately fell silent.
Pip's on-screen image opened its mouth and began to "talk," but the speaker remained silent. Watching the image, Deni realized that it was strobing back and forth between a digipic of Pip with her usual solemn look, and one of her laughing. The effect was spookin' and made Deni want to jerk the power cord. But then text scrolled across the bottom of the display. The block letters were crisp, neat. But the words were in Sprawlspeak, in the spellings that Deni had taught her in an effort to get her to open up to him by using written language. It hadn't worked—but his sister had learned to write. The "voice" of the text was all Pip.
HULO DENI. I CHAINGED MY MIND. THE PLACE MY FREND TOOK ME WUZ ONLY FUN A LITTLE WILE. THEN IT GOT SCARY. I WANNA COME HOME AND FROSTY SEZ ITS OK. HE SEZ HE'S SORRY THE RESONANTS DIDN WERK AN I CAN STILL BECUM AN OTAKU AN GET JACKED IF I CHAINGE MY MINE LATER. FROSTY WILL EVEN LEMME TAKE ANY TOYS HOME I WANNA. WILLYA COME GET ME?
PIPSQUEEK
PS DONT MESS UP FROSTY NONE, OHKAY? HE'S STILL MY FREND.
The image on screen stopped strobing and settled on the laughing digipic of Pip.
"Resonants?" Deni echoed. "What the frag did that wirehead do to her?" It had to have been something to do with computers. When Deni had seen Pip ten minutes ago, she was troded up and eyeball-deep in the Matrix. Something must have happened to her there.
Deni felt like turfing the MatrixPal on the floor and gutter-stomping it with the heel of his boot. Fraggin' thing. It was what had gotten Pip in trouble in the first place. But instead he gritted his teeth and stabbed out a reply with one finger. I'M COMIN PIP.
As he finished, he heard Alfie's bike rumble to a stop outside his door.
"Come on, Kali," he told the black dog. "We're gonna bring Pip home."
Epilogue
>(Hmph. Well, that was a waste of time. I can't see anything wrong in there. Whatever the glitch was, it seems to have disappeared as soon as I accessed the Seattle R T G . ) <<<<<—Captain Chaos (09:57:05/03-19-60)
>(CAP! WELCOME BACK, MAN! WE WAS FREAKIN'!!!)<<<<<—Angus (09:57:12/03-19-60)
>(What the frag you shouting for, Slater?)<<<<<—Captain Chaos (09:57:21/03-19-60)
>(You disappeared, Chaos. For more than eight minutes.)<<<<<—Mom on the Run (09:57:3
8/03-19-60)
>(I what? Just a sec' while I check my datalog.)<<<<<—Captain Chaos (09:57:52/03-19-60)
>(It's true, CC. I entered the Seattle RTG thirty-three seconds after you did, and have a great big hole in my log where the details of the run should be. Someone or something wiped my deck, starting at the precise instant I entered that RTG and ending at 09:57:01. Even worse, they also wiped my memory. MY memory, not the one on my deck. And as you and I both know, memory is all I've got, chummer.)<<<<<—Renny (09:58:26/03-19-60)
>(Sounds like someone fragged you. And not in a fun way, neither. Uh-huh.)<<<<<—Pervo (09:58:30/03-19-60)
>(Are you back in our shadowfiles AGAIN, you git? Go on back to your sleaze sites.)<<<<<—Mom on the Run (09:58:42/03-19-60)
>(Sounds like you got iced, chummer. Sounds like a LOT of people got hit with IC. I can't say where I'm working at the moment, but let's just say it's a LARGE corporation. 'Round about 09:48 PST—and never mind what the local time was—our deckers started to come down with the screams and shakes, one by one. Took me a while to scan the fact that the one thing they had in common was that they were all accessing the Seattle RTG. The suits upstairs panicked—they were worried that maybe a second arcology had gone into meltdown and was going to glitch up the whole system. But everything was cool. Except for the poor fragger we jacked out. I'll always be haunted by his screams . . .)<<<<<—Grunge Monster (09:59:36/03-19-60)
>(My boss thought it was a repeat of the Crash of 2029. You should have seen the Vancouver Stock Exchange when the news got out. Just two minutes into it, and the stock of all of the 'puter corps was in the toilet. But the market is starting to rally already. And my boss is tearing out her hair, wishing our brokers hadn't panicked and sold, just as prices hit rock bottom. Oops. Boss lady's coming. Gotta run.)<<<<<—Psylocke (10:00:03/03-19-60)
>(Hey, any corp war's gotta have its casualties. Whoever planted this virus really knew their stuff. I just wonder who's at whose throat, now. I thought the big boys had declared a truce.)<<<<<—Merc (10:00:11/03-19-60)
>(Screw you, soldier-boy. My girlfriend just DIED. Frag you all. Frag the corps. Frag whoever planted this virus. I'm gonna find him and take him down so HARD. . .)<<<<<—Bung (10:00:20/03-19-60)
>(Anyone else notice that the glitches seemed to cluster around the Underground News Net? It's all part of the master plan. A test run. Take down all communication, but leave the ork sites up and running.)<<<<<—Truthseeker (10:00:51/03-19-60)
>(Yeah, we roetas are behind everything, huh? Your "Great Metahuman Conspiracy" is wearin' a bit thin, twinkie-brain. I don't suppose ya noticed that EVERY news net was stil up and running, throughout the crisis? Data was still comin' through, loud and clear. It was just the DECKERS with the hot hardware got their hoops in a loop.)<<<<<—Angus (10:01:40/03-19-60)
>(If it was a virus, who was behind it?)<<<<<—Mom on the Run (10:01:55/03-19-60)
>(Who or WHAT is the question.)<<<<<—Captain Chaos (10:02:01/13-19-60)
>(Are you thinking what I'm thinking, CC?)<<<<<—Renny (10:02:27/13-19-60)
>(By "what" do you mean one of the corps? Well, I could tell you boys which one it AIN'T. Except that I can't tell. Except to say it doesn't start with an "R." An "M" or an "F" maybe, but definitely not an????)<<<<<—Grunge Monster (10:02:42/13-19-60)
>(I'm thinking the same thing, Renny. Something "artificial.")<<<<<—Digital Dawg (10:03:14/13-19-60)
>(You're way off, chummers. It was a virus, plain and simple.)<<<<<—Inchworm (10:03:49/13-19-60)
>(How do you know?)<<<<<—Angus (10:03:57/13-19-60)
>(Take a browse through the KSAF in basket. The pirate news station received a message at 09:45:00 that I think you might find interesting. Looks like someone had a little advance warning of what was about to be uploaded to the Seattle RTG exactly two minutes later. )<<<<<—Inchworm (10:04:10/13-19-60)
>(The worm's got that right.)<<<<<—Scoop (10:04:15/13-19-60)
>(A virus! Told ya so!)<<<<<—Merc (10:04:24/13-19-60)
>(What do you think, CC? does it scan?)<<<<<—Renny (10:04:43/13-19-60)
>(Could be)<<<<<—Captain Chaos (10:04:52/13-19-60)
>(I still think there might be an artificial intelligence behind all this.)<<<<<—Digital Dawg (10:05:09/13-19-60)
>(That's just wishful thinking, Dawg. There's never been a single shred of evidence that conclusively proves the existence of AIs,)<<<<<—Red Wraith (10:05:28/13-19-60)
>(Or the existence of God. Or the existence of Dawg. Gimme a break !)<<<<<—Merc (10:05:38/13-19-60)
>(Well, something weird went down on the Matrix today, that's for sure. And I DO SO exist, Merc. As for God, however . . .)<<<<<—Digital Dawg (10:05:50/13-19-60)
>(We may never know what really happened. Not if everyone caught up in the glitch has a hole in their wetware memory as big as mine.)<<<<<—Captain Chaos (10:06:07/13-19-60)
>(Someone's got to know the answers. We've just got to keep looking until we find the right file.)<<<<<—Renny (10:06:14/13-19-60)
>(Don't viruses leave behind a distinctive signature, just like chemical explosives? You wanna find out who bombed the Seattle RTG, check the signature. I'm guessing terrorists, now.)<<<<<—Renny (10:06:29/13-19-60)
>(See? Merc agrees with me. It WAS the orks.)<<<<<—Truthseeker (10:06:40/13-19-60)
>(Oh shut up, conspiracy clown. As for me, I'm leaning toward the corporate war theory. It's starting again, same place as before. Seattle.)<<<<<—Slater (10:02:52/13-19-60)
>(Hey, what are you guys talking about? My deck was glitched. Did I miss something interesting?)<<<<<—Retro (10:07:00/13-19-60)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Smedman is the author of the Shadowrun® novels The Lucifer Deck and Blood Sport. She has also published a number of her short science fiction and fantasy stories in various magazines and anthologies. Formerly a newspaper reporter, she now works as a freelance game designer and fiction writer. In addition to her three Shadownrun® novels, Smedman has written a number of adventures for TSR's Ravenloft® line and several other game systems. When not writing, she spends her time organizing literary conventions, hiking and camping with a women's outdoors club, and (of course) gaming. She lives in Vancouver, B.C.
Copyright
ROC
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