by Russ Linton
She’d always stayed in the background of the hacker’s world, deflecting any curious pokes and prods with her own skills. Hackers would flood newbs with unwanted drone deliveries. They’d drain your tokens, or worse, take over your avatar and make your online lives hell. She didn’t need that level of feedback ever.
M@ti had used their tools to make GTA mostly out of sheer boredom. Messing with specheads was worth a few laughs. Tonight though, she had a more specific goal.
She skimmed the data overlaying the streets and picked a hov. The ride was two blocks from its drop-off point. M@ti quickly overwrote the destination and watched as the hov dropped out of traffic.
Oblivious riders tumbled out. One face-planted against a wall where a familiar door should’ve been. Even then, he seemed shocked, groping at the building for a door handle. M@ti snorted.
The other three passengers milled about aimlessly. Those who had the presence of mind to listen to their LifeMinder and check their surroundings huddled in disbelief at the alien landscape. From her map, M@ti knew this intersection to be called 120th and Broadway. For them, it could’ve been the far side of the moon.
No wardens nearby, no Superuser flunkies, she’d be safe as long as she kept things simple, lost in all the background noise. She killed her GTA routine and switched on TrueSight, the staple of any hacker’s toolkit. Coded by the one and only Fel-0-Sh!p, she’d never intended to join their cryptoanarchist cult. A few small personal projects, that’s all she wanted it for.
As soon as the app engaged, spectral threads of data ripped through the city. From point to point they materialized and then vanished. Golden lines pierced windows and skewered rooftops. Looming above it all, a single massive red trunk arced into the lower orbit of the Collective’s geosynchronous satellites. From this connection, massive tentacles wriggled, feeling about the streets and alleyways of the whole of Manhattan.
M@ti toggled her interface into receive-only mode. Next she adjusted the scanning band to target only the red tendrils. These she called the emergency channels, mainline into Collective central. She’d soon be hitching her own ride.
The hapless passengers who she’d booted from the hov continued to huddle. Fucking cavemen whose fire had gone out, M@ti thought. She secretly hoped for humanity’s sake that one of them would decide to start walking. Those hopes quickly died as one of the red tentacles lanced down toward the group.
“911, what’s your emergency?” M@ti’s bone-conducting audio implants relayed the operator’s crisp response through her skull and straight into her ear.
They’d chosen the archaic call number for consistency, familiarity, and every human on the planet knew this voice on some weird instinctive level. The tone had been carefully engineered for optimal reassurance. Often, the pitch changed, or the gender, or even the accent, but that unmistakable tone of engineered concern was always there. It chilled her to hear it.
“My hov. It...didn’t work. I don’t know where I am!”
The rider sounded frantic. M@ti almost felt bad. Almost.
“We’re sorry. Our completion rates are ninety-nine point three five percent and improving. Perfection is right around the corner! A replacement transfer will be at your destination in two minutes and seventeen seconds. Ride speed will be increased so you arrive on time at no extra token charge.”
“Thank you! I really don’t know what I would’ve done. My PedCreds are maxed for today and I’ve already met my CalBurner levels.”
No more rewards for walking and exercise. Why bother then, right? M@ti shook her head. Like the guy could’ve found his way home on his own anyway.
“Don’t worry, you did the right thing,” said the soothing operator. “Why make life difficult? Trust in the Collective. We’ll see to your every need.”
That was M@ti’s cue.
The call ended, and she reached out, grabbing the retreating connection. Virtually plucked between her fingers, she draped the feed across her temple and slipped it behind her ear. Manipulating the virtual connections with her hands had been another of her hacks. With a swivel, she hopped off the ledge and onto the roof, kiting the connection behind her.
She wove through a stand of rust-scaled pipes. Copper peaks, green with age, rose on either side of her path. The same material encased the open observatory dome which she was headed toward, mounted atop a red brick base.
There’d been a time after the wars when copper had been a prime target for looters. But the Collective had ended war. They’d even ended material needs and found alternatives for those precious terrestrial metals.
M@ti’s eye quickly found the dark imperfection orbiting the moon. Most people hadn’t even noticed that the Collective had dragged an asteroid halfway across the solar system and dumped it into the moon’s Hill sphere. A sub-sub satellite? She’d known. She’d watched the rock diminish over the years as space probes feasted on it like ants on a crumb. M@ti had continued to watch as their minders marched into the future, leaving their flock docile and happy. Tonight, they were about to do it again.
She passed through the short entry of a brick shed attached to the observatory. Right past the outer metal door was a glass paneled one which gave an oddly homey vibe. M@ti smiled. Inside her sanctuary waited.
A cot sat against one wall across from a swollen particle board shelf covered with treasures she’d rescued from the subway tunnels. Above this hung the tri-fold city map. Beside the room’s single window stood a steel cabinet she’d claimed as a closet. She passed through the space quickly, still trailing the captured signal, and headed for the narrow pass-through into the observatory.
Red LEDs roped the steps. Raised off the roof by several feet, the compact observatory’s hardwood floor creaked and popped. An empty mount dominated the center where a telescope had once been. M@ti could only imagine the discoveries they’d once made.
She settled into a frayed lawn chair next to the empty mount. She shifted, and the frame groaned with a rusty squeal. M@ti still marveled that Livingstone had let her keep this gem. Of all the smaller items he’d turned a partly blind, flexible eye stalk to, this one had been undeniably impossible to ignore. He’d reached for it when she emerged from the tunnels and stuttered when she announced her shift was over. He didn’t even call after her as she dragged it down the sidewalk. Lost in their virtual worlds, nobody stopped her on the four block walk home. LifeMinder had casually informed her to log her exercise in CalBurner as her heart pounded with each step.
Most of her other treasures she kept on the shelves near her bed, but the dome’s inner lip was lined with books. Frozen in place by ground down gears, the enormous shutter’s rails made for a decent shelf. Plenty of textbooks which the drones had missed could be found on the former campus, if you kept your eyes open.
She’d also claimed a glazed pot ringed by colorful stripes which reminded her of distant gas giants. It sat on a scarred desk and beside that stood the strange figurine she’d found on her most recent subway trip.
The Nexus had no information about the muscled figure. Anything must’ve predated the Great Partition when the Collective decided which human knowledge had been fit to keep and which was dangerous or obsolete — which often meant too dangerous to provide for reference. But how could a toy be dangerous?
Along with the rare wooden desk that held her latest prizes, she’d also found a telescope. Barrel bodied with thin legs, it was big enough to be awkward to carry up eleven flights of stairs from the basement where she’d uncovered it and absurdly tiny when aimed through the parted dome. With it though, she could reach beyond the invisible cage encircling the Manhattan Preserve. Sometimes, that was enough. Other times, she needed to get closer.
A slight kick of her feet and the rickety chair reclined. Stars glittered feebly behind the muddy haze of city lights. She didn’t need long to locate Mars. The God of War burned red, even through the ambient LED fog. She dropped her custom interface in preparation to use the emergency feed she’d kept tucked behind
her ear.
Her work profile immediately sprang to life and her secluded aerie transformed. Graffiti on the painted bricks and paneled ceiling glowed as if illuminated by black light. A neon nimbus outlined her treasures and “Report” or “process” options blinked for each item. M@ti swiped them quickly away and double checked her link. She was still just idle, no transmissions out.
Eyes wide open, she took steady breaths to control her excited pulse. LifeMinder needed to be kept happy while she connected. She didn’t need to set off any alarms when she opened the connection. Gently, she pressed the red data stream against her temple where her own wetware received their signals.
No visible changes were a good thing. Alerts would’ve fired immediately had she messed up the hack. Her own personal connection remained masked with no status updates, no work reports, no suggestions to exercise or hydrate or consider a bio break. Peace and quiet.
Often she wanted to stay here and just enjoy the silence. Eventually though, the systems would respond to her inactivity. She could spoof a full-blown Superuser’s credentials and fake a diagnostic. Golden boy from the park became the obvious choice. The thought was beyond tempting. Punishment for that would be much worse than hoarding a collection of junk, and she had no plans on getting caught tonight before she’d seen the show.
A hand fell lightly on her shoulder. Her LifeMinder erupted along with her panic. M@ti nearly fell out of her chair trying to escape.
5
Wardens and superusers fresh on her mind, M@ti knew she’d been busted. Excuses ran through her head. She’d found the roof like this, so she’d come to do her job. Reclaim, recycle for a better future. Earn her tokens so she could shelf her brain with the other thirty million lost souls of Manhattan.
Then there was the mad old man who’d shouted at her in the square. Had he followed her? She turned, ready to put a boot in a place which may or may not affect an AI.
Knuckles leapt back, nearly falling off the raised platform. His second-generation specs flickered another world before his eyes.
“Damnit, Knuck!”
“Woah there!” he said, hands raised.
She could still feel his skin on hers. Where he’d touched her shoulder, the muscles tensed and sent shivers crawling down her spine. She watched her vitals peak, trying to undo the damage and regain control.
Of all the systems she’d been able to circumvent, LifeMinder’s health monitors hadn’t been one. They could be looped or swapped but not fully shut down. She could force a sleep mode, but since she actually wanted to sleep later, the inconsistent data wouldn’t help. She already had one checkup scheduled. Last thing she needed was a full systems review. If that happened, she could forget her system intrusion going unnoticed.
“We talked about the touching,” she said. Friends, superusers, it didn’t matter who, skin on skin made her cringe. “And there’s no reason to go sneaking up on people like that.”
“Don’t get out of range,” he said, putting his hands behind his back. “The sneaking, I can explain. Nightingale floors.” He pointed at his specs. When she scowled, Knuckles shifted defensively down another step. “Where’ve you been?”
“I was just about to jack in,” she said, calm and steady. The tension under her skin faded leaving an uncomfortable heat behind. “You didn’t need to be right here for the swap.”
“Oh,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “I thought you preferred the old-fashioned face to face.”
M@ti cleared her throat. “We’d already made plans. A quick transfer, that’s all.”
“Great, you got the tokens then?”
“Plenty.”
“Stem my feed, wiz.” Knuckles grinned in anticipation. “HSB is moving against us in Fivefold Bushido. We’re gonna teach those scripters a lesson.”
Knuckles never had enough tokens of his own. The Lifestyle Index Score of the drummer for the Weeping Tits was degrees of magnitude below that of a trash collector. Rumor had it, in the distant past, popular musicians had been able to live lavish lifestyles. Before the Partition, before the Collective, opportunity inequality had run rampant. Now, everyone got an even share of celebrity. The only problem was that in a post-work world there were too damn many musicians. Drummers though had it way better than lead singers.
“You can have all of my tokens,” she said. “But I need you to log time in Space Nomad using my profile.”
Knuckles deflated. “Come on! All that resource management frag. And messed up. Did I tell you about the tentacled aliens shagging in the turbo lifts? We tried to hose it down after and finally just had to erase and recompile.” He shuddered in revulsion.
“Whatev. If you want the tokens, you need to log some of my time. I’m behind this month but I’ve got better stuff to do.”
Knuckles gave a salute, a gesture aimed at somebody inside the Nexus, and flipped up his specs. He eyed the telescope dubiously. “Better stuff? Like what? Staring into space again? Or are you finally going to process all this junk?” he asked, indicating her collection.
M@ti shrugged.
“Staring into space it is,” he said, shaking his head. “Even though you can go into space in Space Nomad. Suck gas out of planets...or aliens...whatever gets you off.”
“Then I’d be using the time you’re asking for, wouldn’t I? Or would you rather verigrind?”
No tokens meant doing verification work for older AI sensors. Pointless, mind-numbing video tags and sound processing, verigrinding had been gamified in the most blatant Pavlovian way. It sucked, but broke specheads like Knuckles accepted it as a necessary evil to get back to their not-so-real lives.
Knuckles ran his fingers through his hair and gripped tight to his bundled topknot, grimacing. Hair was one of the few things on your body you could modify without breaking Collective rules. M@ti shaved hers clean off. Silent protest, she told herself.
With or without specs, it had become difficult to tell people apart anymore. People’s genetic profiles had been optimized like everything else in the pursuit of perfection. Knuckles though had a build which showed the hard work put in behind his real world drum kit. Wiry, muscular, M@ti sometimes caught herself gazing in admiration while he hammered out riffs or fought imaginary battles.
The hopeless spechead would never see her looking though.
Inside the Nexus, Knuckles had several avatars. His drummer aspect looked exactly like himself, only dressed in torn jeans and spiked leather. Another was a spindly thief from a race of midgets with hairy feet. The other was an armored samurai badass concealed behind a demonic mask which he’d once dramatically told her was an “oni of pain.” Taking time out from his life to sit at her dusty astrogation station on the UFP Galaga was, to him, a pretty big sacrifice.
“Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll log your time. But you owe me.”
He always said that even though, technically, he owed her for the free tokens. Not many hackers could pull this off.
“Perfect,” she said. “I’ll swap vitals. Put yours on sleep mode, and I’ll keep it calm up here.”
“Verified,” Knuckles replied. He flipped his specs back into place and turned away.
M@ti listened to his in-game banter as she prepped her systems. Terse, barked commands, his attempts at sounding Japanese, if that’s what it was, always sounded angry. He motioned with an imaginary sword and rammed it into his sheath. She half-laughed. The light in his specs dimmed and she hid her smile.
Still in samurai mode, he spun stiffly on one heel. “Beam me up, wiz.”
M@ti clasped her hands together and bowed, imitating his previous sign off. “All yours, Knuckles-san.” A quick flick of her fingers across the interface caused her display to momentarily glitch. She plucked a stream of data from Knuckles’ specs and replaced it with her own. Not a true bypass, more like a re-routing, their vitals swapped, and she watched her Nexus account drain as his funds replaced hers. M@ti gave a low whistle. “Maybe you need to reconsider your career choice.”<
br />
At least he could.
Knuckles mimed a drum roll as his goggles re-lit, ending with a flourish and two middle fingers. “Thanks for the hit. And don’t forget my concert tomorrow tonight. If I gotta respect your personal shields or whatever, then none of that creepy shit watching me drum solo. Show up at the Nexus venue. There’ll be a surprise for you.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” she called out. As the door swung closed, she flopped into her chair.
M@ti double checked the system time. Another series of hand motions and she activated her custom display. Best if not even Knuckles suspected what she was doing. When he thought she was star gazing, he thought it was through the open roof and not over a secure connection beamed in from deep space.
Humans were never granted this level of access. Oversight of networks was completely in AI hands with a few exceptions like the Superusers. Not even they got to see this.
She’d once wanted to be like the damn golden boy. One of those rare trusted agents given administrative access and taught how to hack. She’d had the skills and the aptitude, but the Lifestyle Index hadn’t agreed. Instead, she’d been given a job most people would kill for - low skilled labor with an AI partner.
As she’d found out, the relationship had come with some perks. But as nice as Livingstone was, he wouldn’t be able to help her if she got caught.
M@ti pinpointed Mars in the night sky. With her emergency feed hack now activated and sensitive systems at her fingertips, she could see the countdown ticking away. She tunneled out on the borrowed connection and pried open the backdoor to the Alpha Centauri expedition.
A dozen video feeds of a rocket rising from the red planet filled her view. Monitoring stations on the launch gantry were consumed by white smoke, illuminated against an orange haze. Plumes of fire exploded on other screens. A camera further back showed the lean rocket, quaking, crawling upward. M@ti gripped her arm rests. Surveyors and rovers turned their electronic eyes skyward as the rocket traced an arcing cloud miles into the ocher sky.