The Machine Killer

by D L Young

  He’d been hired thirteen months earlier, an unlikely candidate targeted by an ambitious recruiter looking “to fill knowledge gaps” in the company’s data security division. Filling knowledge gaps had been corporate speak, an innocuous way of saying the company wanted to stock its talent pool with underground datajacking skills. Prior to his own recruitment, Maddox had heard of that sort of thing happening from time to time, legit companies hiring datajackers. Who better, after all, to sniff out a datasphere’s security gaps and weaknesses than someone who’d made a living doing exactly that? The best among Maddox’s former peers, however, whose illicit incomes far outsized a salaryman’s pay, usually rebuffed any feelers from the legit world. Pay cuts weren’t popular among the datajacking elite, first of all. And second, datajackers were born thieves, most of them proudly, even arrogantly so. The humdrum, straight-and-narrow life of a salaryman couldn’t compare to the criminal glory of a top datajacker’s existence.

  Maddox knew that life, having once been among the elite of his profession, until a single disastrous gig had changed everything, taking the life of Logan Rooney, his longtime mentor, and poisoning his reputation among his fellow datajackers and those who hired them. After his fall from grace, he’d wandered the City in a months-long aimless funk. When the last of his cash had all but run out, fate had intervened in the form of the Latour-Fisher recruiter, a woman named Montoya, who’d managed to track him down. A blur of interviews and assessment tests had followed, culminating days later in one of the greatest shocks of Maddox’s life: a job offer. He accepted, figuring what the hell, what did he have to lose, and it wasn’t like people were beating down his door anyway. He entered the legitimate world at thirty, having spent half his life on the other side of legality, datajacking organizations not unlike the one that had just put him on its payroll. Strange times, indeed.

  In the year since, he’d played it straight, following the rules, doing what he was told, keeping his nose clean and his head down. The straight life had taken some getting used to. Paying bills, opening bank accounts, signing a condo rental contract. The little things non-criminals breezed through without a second thought were to him unfamiliar, slightly jarring experiences.

  As the square peg in a workplace full of round holes, he hadn’t fit in at Latour-Fisher from the start. His colleagues didn’t like him, especially the corporati, the wealthy, highly placed execs like the two dickheads. To them Maddox was street scum. No academic pedigree. No friends in high places. He was a mistake, a hire that never should have happened. The beneficiary of an ill-conceived initiative cooked up by some overzealous recruiter. He might have dressed like any other data security analyst, shared their same hairstylist, but the company men and women didn’t consider him one of their kind. His peers and higher-ups, even the unpaid interns a decade younger than him, rarely missed an opportunity to remind him of his outsider roots.

  He blew smoke out from the balcony as the cricket chirped its song. Somewhere high above, the high-pitched drone of hover engines rose and fell.

  Still, even with all its downsides and snubs and oddness, he couldn’t deny the life had grown on him. Sure, there was no thrill in it. It was a calm lagoon of an existence compared to the treacherous, raging river he’d navigated most of his life. But that was part of its appeal: the stillness, the quiet, the freedom from worry. Most of his old crowd would have laughed at that, ridiculed him for being a low-rent sellout, a dutiful little cog in a big machine. But screw them. A little cog never had to lie awake at night, worrying about the cops breaking down its door. It never had to sweat when its next payday would come. Never had to picture itself doing time at Rikers Island. A little cog had safety and security, and those were no small things in a brutal, merciless world.

  Yes, even with all its downsides, the life had grown on him. He was used to it now.

  And he didn’t want to lose it.

  The soft tone of an incoming call. He turned and spied his specs, flashing green on the coffee table inside the condo. He blinked. It was well past midnight. Crushing out his cigarette, he picked up the cricket cage and went inside.

  “Maddox,” he answered, donning his specs, hoping the call was a wrong number.

  It wasn’t.

  3 - Drinks in the Chatter Bubble

  It was Maddox’s first trip to his building’s rooftop hover platform, and when he stepped through the sliding doors into the glass enclosure, a twinge of disorientation poked at his insides. It was less acrophobia than the unfamiliar vista at this lofty altitude. He hadn’t been up this high in a long time. When was the last time he’d been above a hundred? He searched his memory, recalling an almost-forgotten adventure from childhood, courtesy of a maintenance crew’s misplaced security card. He’d stolen aboard service elevators, dodging doorguard bots and sneaking past surveillance cams, eventually reaching floor 105 before he was finally caught.

  Beyond the glass vestibule, the City was calm and quiet, even peaceful, the constant thrum of the street far below and unheard. The rain had stopped, leaving a wet sheen over everything. There were no flashing ads and massive holos this high up. That was how you knew you were in the rich level of town. The wealthy valued peace and quiet. Only the infrequent whine of a passing hover broke the silence. Yellow headlights appearing in the foggy distance, the turbofan motors crescendoing as the vehicle approached and then whizzed past, red taillights disappearing a moment later.

  He waited for his ride, still mulling over the call he’d received minutes earlier, still struggling to believe that he’d really received it. The personal AI of an executive vice president, one Jonathan Hahn-Parker, had called him, summoning him to a meeting. At first Maddox had thought it was a scam call or even a joke, but when he’d checked the connection, he’d noted the call had come in using the company’s tightest encryption, the kind reserved only for executive communications. He’d suddenly felt as if the hand of some god had reached down from the clouds and thumped him on the forehead.

  The matter couldn’t wait until morning, the machine’s voice had said, then asked him politely to make his way to the hover platform, where a company car would pick him up in ten minutes. The entity had disconnected before Maddox could ask what the meeting was about.

  Of course it had to be about the attempted datajacking earlier in the day. Had he screwed up in some way he wasn’t aware of? Had his modded executable damaged something valuable? Corrupted company IP, God forbid? For an EVP to summon him at this hour, it had to be something pretty heavy.

  He swallowed hard when the hover limo appeared out of the fog. Long, sleek, and bearing the Latour-Fisher Biotech logo, the obsidian-black vehicle came to a floating stop next to the building. Its six engine fans whined, the housings swiveling in minute, barely noticeable adjustments as it neared and then made contact with the platform. Locking into place with the telltale hiss-clank of a solid connection, the hover’s door slid open and the vestibule’s boarding bridge extended.

  Inside, the hover was empty. Maddox climbed into the back, sinking into lush, cool leather he was too anxious to fully appreciate. The limo detached itself from the building and slid into the transit lane. Gentle acceleration pushed him back into the seat, and outside the rain started up again. Drops streaked sideways across the glass as the hover increased speed. He tried to relax as he watched the buildingscape pass by. He’d been in hover taxis a handful of times, but never a limo. And never this high up. Without the constant neon assault of flashing ads and holos, it was easier to see the shape of the buildings, the almost organic connectedness of the City’s infrastructure. He recalled what Rooney had told him about the evolution of the City’s architecture. How most structures in the City used to be standalones. Rooney had shared with him holos of the City from long ago. The image reminded Maddox of a pincushion with the buildings as freestanding needles. At some point, Rooney told him, the buildings had begun to grow into one another. Concrete embedded with cheap, disposable nanobots had been the innovation making the
connections possible. No engineers or constructions crews needed. Just tell the bots to make a walkway connecting building A to building B, then sit back and watch them do their thing. And so the buildings slowly began to join together, connecting themselves like adjacent beehives growing together to form massive superhives. That was why they called them hiverises, Rooney said, the daisy-chained megastructures housing hundreds of thousands, even millions, of residents. Each one was a universe unto itself, a self-contained kingdom with its own customs and languages and food and styles of dress.

  The rain abruptly stopped. Lost in thought, Maddox hadn’t realized the hover had passed under a dome. He looked up through the limo’s transparent roof, dotted with moisture. A star-filled sky and a crescent moon, too perfect to be true. Thin wisps of clouds drifted by, smoky and pale white in the reflected moonlight. A beautiful illusion animating the dome’s underside, one he rarely saw since he almost never came to the domed sections of the City. The sky from his lowfloor world was a perpetual overcast gray, not that he looked up at it much. Two minutes later, he was still staring upward when the limo hiss-locked onto its destination platform.

  The limo’s door lifted open. He paused before getting out, took a gathering breath, then laughed inwardly at himself for bothering. There was no preparing for whatever was waiting for him. There was only getting it over with.

  Exiting the limo, he was met by a woman. Fair-skinned and nearly his height, she wore a dark pantsuit and low-heeled Pradas. Dyed a light shade of slate, her hair was cut short on the sides, and on top a thick mane fell to one side, falling just below her jawline. She held herself more like a bodyguard than an executive, and Maddox pictured a strong, muscled frame beneath the business attire. She wore no specs.

  “Mr. Maddox, welcome,” she said, voice flat, her naked face expressionless. “I’m Beatrice. This way, please.” She gestured, then stepped aside, and as Maddox passed, a glint from the woman’s eyes caught his attention. Her irises flickered slightly. A small thing, noticeable only from close up. He’d seen eye implants before, a few times, but they were rare, even among the wealthy.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “What’s the matter? Never seen any before?”

  He broke eye contact and said, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to stare.”

  They walked on. She was company security, he figured, or maybe Hahn-Parker’s personal detail. He wondered what other mods she might have, hidden beneath her designer threads. The modded, especially security types, rarely stopped at a single enhancement.

  They entered a hallway with a polished white marble floor and oil paintings decorating the walls. “What building is this?” he asked. With his gaze fixed on the dome’s night sky, he’d missed exactly where the limo had dropped him off. Somewhere in Central Park West, he guessed, judging by the duration of his ride, the dome’s presence, and the address’s upscale first impression.

  “Sembacher-Chan Tower 3,” she answered.

  He’d guessed right. SC’s Tower 3 was one of Central Park West’s most luxurious standalones, a mixed residential and commercial highrise housing the City’s wealthiest businesses and private citizens. He was keenly aware how out of place he was, how rarefied the air he was breathing. A square foot of the real estate here was worth more than his entire condo.

  The readout on his specs said one ten in the morning. Roughly half an hour had passed since Hahn-Parker’s office had called. Maddox had never met the man, but he’d heard the name plenty. An executive vice president, Hahn-Parker sat on Latour-Fisher Biotech’s board of directors with five others, four men and women and the company’s AI. Aside from those few facts, he knew nothing about the man, but those facts were more than enough. As a Latour-Fisher board member, Hahn-Parker would be among the wealthiest, most powerful movers in the City.

  The mystery of his summons still dogged him. Why would a topfloor corporati want to see him? If something had gone terribly wrong with the attempted datajacking, surely someone much lower down the food chain would have contacted him. None of this made sense.

  They exited the hallway into the forty-ninth-floor atrium, the enormous open space that was the building’s signature architectural feature. The cavernous expanse enclosed a country estate, or what Maddox thought of as a country estate. He’d only seen such things on entertainment holos. Perfectly manicured grass, pink granite walkways bordered by large leafy plants in chest-high ceramic pots, thick copses of trees with lush canopies reaching ten meters high. Set to an approximation of sunset, the lighting control cast a golden glow upon everything. He resisted the impulse to curse in amazement. The cost to build all this, to maintain it, had to be staggering. Rarefied air, indeed. The woman named Beatrice headed for the walkway. Maddox followed.

  At the center of the grounds was Chateau Montmartre, a stone-by-stone replica of the original restaurant located in the Côte d’Azur. A postcard image of a quaint, rural cottage nestled in the foothills of the French countryside. A steady stream of the City’s elite—highfloor corporati, fashion models, movie actors, politicians—could be seen daily coming and going, but at this hour there was only Maddox and the woman and the sound of their footfalls echoing on the pathway.

  She led him through the front door and across an empty, darkened dining room. Wide canvasses of impressionist landscapes adorned the walls. Large, ornate wooden chairs were neatly placed around tables in perfect geometry. They turned a corner and went through another door, where they found Jonathan Hahn-Parker alone in a private dining room, seated at a table covered with white linen. A small chandelier hung overhead, its lights dimmed. A small, squat candle burned at the table’s center, and beside it, a crystal glass half-filled with an amber liquid Maddox guessed was an expensive scotch. Across from the executive, a second glass sat empty.

  The man stood, smiled warmly, and extended his hand. “Jonathan Hahn-Parker, a pleasure.” Fiftyish and trim with boyishly thick hair gone mostly gray, he gave off an air of quiet confidence. He wore a three-piece charcoal-gray business suit with a perfectly knotted tie of turquoise blue.

  “Blackburn Maddox.” They shook hands. Hahn-Parker removed his specs, a custom pair of Kwan Nouveaus, and gave them to the woman.

  “Please, have a seat.” Hahn-Parker gestured to the empty chair across from him.

  “Your specs, please,” the woman said.

  Maddox nodded, removing his Venturellis and handing them to the woman. Relinquishing specs—a gesture Maddox hadn’t expected—meant their meeting wouldn’t be captured and archived by the lenses’ automated archiving. A nakedfaced conversation implied the highest level of confidentiality. Given the circumstances, Maddox wasn’t sure if this meant he was in less hot water or more.

  “Drink?” Hahn-Parker offered, nodding to the empty glass.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Maddox said, sitting down.

  The woman placed a flat, round object on the table that looked like a metallic coaster. The executive pressed his thumb to it, and a green light appeared around the outer edge. Backing away from the table a couple meters, the woman touched a forefinger to her ear, apparently to a small earpiece Maddox hadn’t spotted.

  “All good,” she said. “Solid wall.”

  Hahn-Parker nodded at her.

  The woman left, closing the door behind her. Maddox stared at the coaster thing and blinked. “Is that a chatter bubble?”

  “It is.”

  “I didn’t think they made them that small.” The ones Maddox had seen were the size of a small table lamp, and outrageously expensive. He couldn’t imagine how much this one cost.

  “I think the manufacturer only made six or seven.” Hahn-Parker sipped his drink.

  So, their conversation was going to be nakedfaced and take place inside a chatter bubble, an invisible spherical distortion field that not only garbled their speech to anyone listening from outside its two-meter radius, but also blocked outside parties from monitoring or capturing whatever was said inside. If you wanted zero chance of anything you said being und
erstood or overheard, you said it inside the expensive privacy of a chatter bubble.

  “Maybe I will have a drink,” Maddox said.

  The executive grinned. “Good man.” Hahn-Parker reached down beside him and lifted up a bottle from the floor. He filled the empty glass in front of Maddox, refilled his own. “My apologies for the hour. I do thank you for coming on such short notice.”

  They drank. The scotch was insanely good, smoky and rich and full in his mouth, then luxuriously warm down his throat. He stole a second drink before returning the glass to the table.

  The executive gazed at him. “So tell me how things are going for you at the company.”

  Small talk. At two in the morning. With an EVP. What exactly was going on? “Just fine.”

  “Just fine? That’s all?” Hahn-Parker raised his eyebrows. “Yours is an enviable life, wouldn’t you say? Do you know how many would trade places with you in the blink of an eye, times being what they are? Don’t you feel fortunate, Mr. Maddox, for the opportunity fate has afforded you?”

  “When you put it that way, sure.”

  The executive nodded, watching Maddox like he was pondering something deeper, more meaningful than his simple question and its simpler reply.

  “I’ve followed your progress, and I have to say I’m impressed.” Hahn-Parker took another drink.

  Followed his progress? Maddox didn’t know what to make of that. The notion that an EVP even knew his name seemed inconceivable, but following his progress? The idea bordered on the absurd. Someone in Hahn-Parker’s position negotiated multibillion-dollar deals before breakfast, they didn’t bother with the goings-on near the ground floor. It was like a god taking an interest in a housefly.

  “You’ve performed well over this last year.” The executive rotated the glass slowly in his hand. “Yesterday’s events notwithstanding.”