Ragnarok

by Ari Bach

  The Undernet trapdoor was no more than a warning label on the Nikkei planetoid’s lowest layer floor—“Warning: This site will destroy your brain.” A spamwriter looked at them with disdain, shaking his head in disappointment, knowing the sickening goings on beneath that label. Veikko saw him and caught his attention.

  “Hey, spamboy, is ‘Crisco’ a good name for a mission?”

  “You’ll die down there, slick. Crooks in those parts ’il eat you and your pals alive,” he muttered as he floated away.

  Veikko laughed, “That was a yes. Let’s do it! Crooks who know pick Crisco.”

  He leaped onto the trapdoor and fell out of sight. His Tikari’s avatar followed immediately. Violet noticed on the spamwriter’s words, “Slick,” that they all had a shiny black appearance. Though they had signed in through AleGel, they still had their obsidian avatars from Valhalla, avatars being a brain setting rather than a net selection. It wasn’t a flaw, necessarily. Some parts of the net recognized them as the Obsidian Order. Balder once explained that a couple of lurkers even knew they were the netside visage of the Hall of the Slain. A good thing for the most part. People who recognized them as such knew they weren’t to be messed with. Violet hoped it would work to their advantage. She hated the feel of an overlooked mission element no matter how positive its effect. She had to wonder just what else they’d overlooked on their first rogue project.

  Vibeke followed after, her Tikari disappearing with her into the warning. Varg and Violet jumped last, Tikaris silently following them into the pit. And it was a pit. The Undernet looked little like the warm colorful planetoids of the common web. Where most sites loaded as globes to be wandered, the Undernet was a vast funnel with nine distinct levels. The top level was called the shooting gallery and had become a sort of proving ground for the virulent ads of the region. When they’d logged in before via Alopex, they could bypass the common entry and land anywhere they pleased on the Undernet, all without a single advert passing Aloe’s natural security. Without Aloe they came in like the rest.

  The shooting gallery didn’t look all that bad. It manifested as a long circular garden with plush grass floors. Most of the avatars seemed benign, just common topside users who weren’t there for any specific criminal activity but wanted to see the forbidden zone. Taking up a third of the circle was the Lower Mantle Bulwark Orientation (LMBO), a castle forged from stolen code and illegal barrier coding. There one could find the legends of the illegal net. Omar, The Octopus, The Hypocrites, and the infamous Caesar all worked from the LMBO, wreaking havoc upon the topside nets with hacks the common net user couldn’t fathom. Hacks that even Alopex couldn’t implement. Valhalla had once tried to engage Caesar to break into the Gallia Database, but he declined, having broken in some years prior and not wanting to repeat himself.

  Valknut suffered the indignity of having to walk through the landscape, unable to simply appear where they wished. They’d have to make their way down each ring from portal to location specific portal, treating the vast rings like a combination lock to find their man. And like the rest of the net, they’d have to deal with the same dangers.

  Violet spotted the first threat coming from far away: a Skuzzbot. It had no avatar, but against the limp code of the walls, it stood out as a blister in the VR. Contact barriers were still in play so it couldn’t hack her and make her buy the deadly Skuzz, but the bot would monitor her and learn what she was after, then disguise itself and wait to be touched. Veikko had spotted it first and hit it with a delay code.

  There were several others incoming: Silkbots, zombieware, zombified users sent recruiting, fractal theft algorithms. Violet even spotted a transcription bubble floating ominously around the ring. Alopex could have burst it in an instant if she were there. But rogue as they were, V team couldn’t do a thing but avoid it. It would eventually find a user and take over their monetary implant back on Earth, alter their RNA transcription to produce physical worms, and then release the parasites to infect the innocent in reality, where contact barriers sadly didn’t exist.

  “Yoshi is in the Deutsch section of the gambling sack,” said Varg, “We have a long way to go.”

  The avatars followed Varg as they descended from level to level, trying to stick near to the German routes and portals. Level Two sold pornography. Pornography even Varg was loath to witness. Most was thankfully nothing particularly worse than what appeared topside, merely made more scandalous by merit of its location. The appeal of the forbidden. But some corners of the ring didn’t display what they sold. That was their advertisement, that they wouldn’t even show their stock on the illegal Undernet. The team moved quickly, not wanting to even consider what might lurk inside those rooms.

  Having lost their appetites completely, they arrived in the third circle, where the illegal foods trade thrived. Where illegal high concentration livestock farmers hocked their abused goods. Where foie gras was advertised openly, where endangered species were sold by the premium cut. But the crowds on the third circle didn’t flock to eat beef. A crowd on that ring meant someone was online offering the real forbidden fruit—Soylent goods. Human blood was common enough, but all hell broke loose when an avatar appeared offering genuine human meat. It was often a lab growing the stuff illegally, but if ever a live farm went online, it was in the third circle.

  They dropped quickly to the fourth, the Black Nikkei itself. Arms dealers, illegal medical stores. It was estimated once by Forbes that the amount of cash flowing through the fourth level of the Undernet was ten times what passed through the top five subconglomerate companies topside. There were so many avatars Violet could believe it.

  V team had browsed the ring a hundred times for Mishka. But that was under Alopex. It looked completely different as a common user. They couldn’t instantly see the true identities of the anonymous around them anymore. Violet was surprised to find a few were black solid blanks like their own. She wondered if any might be from Valhalla, seeing right through their own from Aloe’s eyes. Common detective work could resolve her curiosity about some of the crowd.

  The biggest transaction in the ring was coming to an end. Violet used a plain Bryce hack to listen in. It was a matter of shipping rights. Heavy load transportation from Mars to Earth, massive payment, massive security. She didn’t try to trace any of the avatars, but some were obvious. WYCo wasn’t even disguised. Xorats was there, evidenced by a poorly hidden provider log. Zaibatsu had two avatars present. She’d have to trace to learn which, but if they were on the Undernet, one was likely Yakuza. The avatar she guessed was the Yak won the contract as V team left the area. Violet followed her team down to darker circles.

  The fifth circle was a thick swamp of anonymous hate. Primarily a ranting zone, the arena was also rife with duels. Where offended parties from above came to settle their disagreements without contact barriers. Here they would take each other’s hands and fight to the death with their cruelest hacks. Many of the avatars were frozen as statues, duels in which both had become caught in infinite loops, their bodies dying off in the real world, and their brains stuck forever in their final feuds.

  Ring six was a smattering of political dissident sites and underground religious groups. One log bore an icon of a crescent moon and star—Muslims, according to an old briefing. The label had a musical code under it, and Violet glanced at it to listen. It was a chant of sorts. It seemed fairly innocuous, unlike the formidable police tracking codes that stuck to any user walking in or out of the place. Other religious symbols appeared, but Violet wasted little on them. She only glared angrily at one Russian Cross, and then they moved on.

  Ring seven was dominated by gang disputes. It was there that Bruise and Kigali En Ligne fought the war that lead to the Black Crag itself, that killed the most junior teams. Violet had been there not too long ago to clean up the aftermath. It was a sad place, made all the uglier by its garish militaristic designs. Thankfully ads and malware were now all but absent. The people deeper down the cruel vortex meant business
and would happily spend their time tracking down an author or programmer if they were attacked.

  The eighth level was the most massive. Divided into ten sacks, it housed the most colossal fraud ring in existence. Each sack held an organized crime syndicate or illegal action zone. The mafia owned the first. The next was empty, having housed the Orange Gang a year prior. It hadn’t filled in, to Violet’s surprise. It was seen as cursed. She grinned at that back in the real world. The level was so massive the team clung to their Tikaris and activated Geryon systems to bypass most of the netspace, a process taking longer than walking but avoiding confrontation with the illegitimate businesses that might have disputes with the black avatars that once foiled their projects.

  They skipped the Unspeakable Darkness’s sack where body modifications were bought and sold. Many of the mods were illegal and dangerous, but those there to buy were in no fighting mood. They just wanted their teeth implanted with venom glands, and that was fine by Violet. They skipped the Yakuza sack, which seemed to be celebrating the deal made a few circles up. And finally they came to Bulge Five, the gambling sack.

  It was a rowdy place full of pitfalls of damaged coding. Everyone was shouting. All the link labels were in different, larger lettering. When Violet looked at one to have it sounded out, the thing screamed at her. It was nothing like gambling sites on the common net. Those sites ran in euros and legally checked and monitored every bid. Nor was it like the Nikkei nets, which ran in untraceable Yen instead of tracked euros. It was more like a den of rabid animals, or what Veikko explained as a “Mosh Pit,” a long banned musical ritual where people danced by running into each other as hard as they could. The metaphor was apt. People everywhere were trying to grab each other without permission. The contact barriers kept bumping the avatars back at odd angles.

  What Violet could make out amid the shouting was confusing to say the least. A large pit bull avatar was calling out stakes for some sort of match. Violet looked directly at the board icon, but it wouldn’t say what sport, only the names of the contestants, which sounded like pet names instead of human. Beside that kiosk was a political betting stand. The bet was on a senate vote to censure a group of GAUNE subsidiaries. It had few takers, but the ones there were double blanked. It would take Alopex to trace them completely. On her own Violet couldn’t find the avatar’s name but a quick penetrative scan revealed them to be logged in from a GAUNE senate chamber link.

  Varg and his Tikari were making a thorough search of the region. The sack churned slowly under their feet, showing them every dirty game from Interzone Inc. to the remains of the Purple Gang’s betting businesses. Violet was tempted to ask how their old boss Hrothgar was holding up when Varg found his man. The team headed for a small kiosk leaning against the debugging gutter of a Russian Roulette casino. It was programmed in rotting wood textures with a text sign that bore no link label. Violet couldn’t make it out at all. Her text software called the left letter a backward E, and the other two just looked like smiley faces. Whatever it said, Varg recognized the old man inside.

  And he was an old man, a wrinkly, liver-spotted mess of an avatar with brilliant white hair, about ten strands of it on his entire head. He was speaking in a low curdled rasp to an ASD avatar. Valhalla had considered using ASD avatars in the beginning, the constantly shifting face and scrambling voice provided extreme anonymity and left other users guessing as to what was behind the mask, but obsidian black offered the same without the confusion or implications—ASD avatars were generally used by drug enforcement, and given the nature of some of Valhalla’s contacts, they didn’t want to be suspected as such. The old man handed his customer a folder, and the strange thing logged out. He looked at the faceless obsidian crowd.

  “I don’t serve blacks,” he grumbled and closed his kiosk window.

  V team looked to one another briefly, then all to Varg. Varg shrugged, even online with one palm up and the other down. He walked up to the closed front and used one of his borrowed Alopex routines to force-start the portal. The old man was startled but more angry than afraid.

  “Obsidian goddamn Order. I know about you! White knights in black armor. You schwarzes Glas always trot around the place and never buy.”

  Varg replied quickly, “Today we’re buying, Yoshi.”

  He was surprised. “Who says my name is Yoshi?”

  “Your sign and our pals in Deutschland GmbH.”

  “I know a lot of Germans. Not many of ’em are my friends. Who sent you?”

  “Think pickles.”

  The old man lit up. “The game boys! Pickled Pints and Hungry Hungry Hobos! Always sent that same kid, KolossalKnockwurst69. How’s he holding up? Didn’t seem like the type to hang out with your order.”

  “He died, I’m afraid. Skied off a cliff.”

  Violet was growing concerned again. Varg had to get into the man’s good graces, but they were on territory that could reveal an identity if they weren’t careful. But then, Varg had to give him something. All he would buy was information. If Yoshi could be bought for outdated tales, it would be well worth the risk. She trusted Varg and said nothing. The old man was suspicious again.

  “You kill him?”

  “No. He was a good man. A strong man, and the world will miss his good looks, his singular wit, and his robust—”

  “We need information,” interrupted Vibeke. “We need someone who can search the Black Crag for us.”

  Yoshi considered the gravity of their request. He nodded solemnly. “I can climb the Crag. But for that kind of work and that kind of risk, you’d have to give me the kind of tips I can retire on.”

  “What do the rich people need to know?”

  “Three big questions people want to pay for today. Answer a couple, and I’ll do your dirty work.”

  “You got it.”

  “Alright, first, whose probe’s gonna get to Barnard’s Star first?”

  “UNEGA,” Vibeke stated without skipping a beat. “The propulsion system on GAUNE’s probe had superior acceleration at first, but it’s reached its top speed. UNEGA never gave a press release, but Pan Fleet intercepted a telemetry link that shows their probe is still accelerating, which is why they’re neck and neck right now. UNEGA’s will enter orbit in four years, six months ahead of GAUNE’s. GAUNE knows it and can’t do a thing. None of that should be public for another couple weeks, but if you’re selling the information, you better be sure Pan Fleet isn’t the one buying. They’ve killed two vendors already.”

  Yoshi was very impressed. “Do you have a copy of the telemetry link?”

  Vibeke held out her hand. Yoshi considered it for only an instant before accepting. Vibs transferred an ancient site map to him, one from the AleGel accounts where she had stored the telemetry before heading out. She had expected it would be the second top seller for information before they left, and the top seller they had access to. The top seller was something they didn’t know, and it was to be Yoshi’s second question.

  “Where is Ellessey MacReedy?”

  “We don’t know,” she answered honestly. News of the YUP traitor was the highest commodity on that side of the globe. Valhalla analysis was almost certain that the pirate they’d once encountered was behind his defection. Most of the planet thought a Cetacean had something to do with the company’s downfall, but nobody had any clue where they hid MacReedy. Valhalla had no reason to look into the matter, so the former human, now partway through underwater modification surgery, was going to stay on the loose.

  “Alright. Third question,” Yoshi began. None of V team was sure which bit of intel he’d put third. Vibeke was banking on the identity of the Carson Robber. That was intel she’d be happy to deal out, having discovered the missing Carson Bank detector logs by accident while looking for Mishka. Varg and Veikko were both convinced he’d want to know whether Zaibatsu was going to purchase Nabisco from GAUNE. Months earlier Nabisco had unveiled Calabi-Yau Breakfast Cereal, the world’s most technologically advanced cereal, which offered
six dimensions of flavor, but they discovered too late it did so at the cost of quantum diarrhea. GAUNE made money in the end off the drugs to alleviate the problem, but with its stock lower than ever, many expected UNEGA to buy Nabisco at a low point and thus control a major part of GAUNE’s food supply. Violet alone guessed what Yoshi would ask next. “Who stole the Skunkworks prototype?”

  All four cringed to hear it. The question they knew the answer to but couldn’t answer. Violet spoke quickly, she thought, because she wanted to offer something else. She couldn’t admit to herself that she wanted to move on out of fear Vibeke would answer him.

  “Can’t say. But you can keep the software you use on the Crag. It’s a Gullinkambi system that’ll let you look through the entire Crag site code in seconds. It works on any website. You could strip bare this entire ring of the Undernet with it.” She produced the program in her hand to let him see. She had forgotten that Veikko designed their copy’s icon: A blue rooster with a gold comb. Thankfully her avatar had no face to keep straight.

  Yoshi looked at the blue rooster, one of Alopex’s finest routines. H team had developed it a few years back to speed up searches in high risk areas. C team claimed to have used it on the Crag a year before. It would, to Yoshi, be one of the most valuable tools imaginable.

  “Tempting…. But why can’t you say who stole the prototype? You know who, don’t you?”

  “We can’t say.”

  “I’ll tell you fine folks what I’ll do. I’ll take your blue bird and that juicy bit about Barnard and scale the Crag for you if you’ll answer one more question. Just yes or no.”

  “Deal,” stated Vibeke.

  Yoshi looked directly at Violet’s avatar. He might have looked because she was offering the Gullinkambi program. He might have looked at her randomly of the eight avatars present. But to Violet it felt like he knew exactly who she was and knew exactly what she’d done. His eyes narrowed, his wrinkles grew deeper, and he put the fate of the mission right into her hands.