by Charlie Nash
Before dawn can erupt, she’s shot down twenty floors to the building’s level five pedbridge, a pulsating link stuffed with all-night caffeine purveyors and illicit, lingering tobacco. Near the end is a HarpoonWebz, a chain-joint Webz host, sporting rows of privacy-curtained, lockable Webz access chairs, each embroidered with their logo—a smiling white whale stuck with a neck-hugger shaped ’poon—glowing blue-purple and brilliant white under black lights and neon. Tak swipes her tab-phone at a booth, locks in and locks on, and a moment later she’s jacked into Webz central Syd. Harpoon’s patented jack-in portal looks like a vintage Star Trek transporter deck, and Tak stalks off the podium, giddy as her brain accepts Harpoon’s algorithms, and into the giant, simulated Sydney night.
It takes less time than she expects to find the seedy edges of endorsed Webz space. Beyond what the Kingdom pays to render, the blanks fill with unvetted providers. Some are legit shopfronts, others are squatter-types: domain-hackers with a front for illegal goings-on-in-the-back routines. Tak knows the Sprinks shut down these spring-ups with regularity, but high-profits mean they sprout again and again, the hydras of quantum bandwidth.
Tak sees one now, a quick-rendered nail salon, meshed in a mostly-blank side-alley. The store almost looks right, but the services bulletin says, gel tips, instant authentic!, profiling, best for love!, and she knows enough to read between. They hack bioprofiling data for people who want to hook up with the cute commuter they just snapshotted across the transporter. A promo-girl in a Manga costume nods her pigtails in Tak’s direction, offering a flyer.
“Nails?” she asks, flashing a ten-set of gleaming, blue hypersparkle. “Best for love?” She winks.
And for a hair-thin moment, Tak is going in there. She’s giving them the shot of Thumper, and she’s finding out who he is. Then, her eyeballs rest on that southern cross on her hand. She thinks about what it means to have allegiance to an idea. She believes in the New Kingdom, believes in her work and the company behind it, feeding the world. Will she really lose her morals just to maintain her average?
Fuck.
She stalks back to a caffeine vendor and takes a double hit of crema. She scowls down the alley as she sips, caught in a vortex. She wants him bad, wants that smug, black-clad, no-tatted ass to go down for what he’s done.
What he’s done. What is that, whispers a voice, screwed with a valve stem? Managed to piss you off? He’s just joining the queue. Tak glares into the artificially prolonged crema bubbles. She glances back at the salon.
By now, Thumper should be jacked out and paying the sandman, but instead, he’s pumping through the skyline. He stretches in a leap, GFs sticking the counter-gs around a banner pole. He lands atop the pedbridge and checks his watch; ten minutes since the tracker started glowing green. Not bad. He pulls a secret agent pancake to peer in a window, sees the usual assortment of coffee-pushers and cybersmoking dens oozing tantalizing scents. His heart slams against his chest in rhythm of a hunt. He slips into a balcony, feeling the tracker’s heading like a migrating-bird-brain in his center forehead. Not far. Not far.
He spies the faux-nail salon with a skip of nausea. The guys who hire him probably run it. He itches, somewhere low in his skull; he wonders if he’ll have to go inside, thinks about how he could hide himself if he does. The brake glows in his top-right vision. He could dump the brake. But risky, being marooned that way.
Was she worth it?
He slips down the alley, but the tracker’s heading swings around. She’s not down there at all. He sees her wedged in a caffeine pusher’s corner couch, a light streak of skin against the black velvet booth. The next instant he’s slipped inside the booth, thinking: the coder who wrote this velvet wasn’t that good; it’s too smooth, nearly polished on the fingertips, tripping the senses with visual disagreement.
Then he remembers why he’s here.
Tak seems defeated. “Don’t worry, I didn’t go in there,” she says. Thumper feels relief like a rain shower, and tries not to show it.
“You wouldn’t have gotten anything for it anyway,” he tells her. “I’m not in biometrics.”
She snorts. “Of course you are. If you weren’t you wouldn’t be able to travel. And I’m sure saboteurs travel an awful lot.”
He gives her a quick smile, one that he knows looks good on his avatar with its skull-trimmed hair. “There’s ways to alter data.”
“Then you’d never be able to cross a border.”
“You make it sound like the only way across a border is through security.”
She is shocked at this; he sees it plainly. She doesn’t like him. Doesn’t like that he doesn’t value the rules she does. And he doesn’t want it to be like that. “We’re not so very different,” he tries, hoping she’ll argue with him, keep this interesting.
Her look hardens like overcooked toffee. “You must be deluded.” She starts to edge around the booth and escape him.
“You don’t do your job for the money and neither do I,” he says. “There’s one thing common.”
She comes back at him with a pointed finger. “You don’t have a job,” she accuses. Thumper admires the render of her hair as she moves. “You stop other people from doing theirs. You make work for other people.”
Thumper laughs. “The world’s bigger than you think,” he says. “You suppose, then, that some jobs are more useful than others?”
She edges away again, so he keeps talking. “Like, for example, a doctor is more useful than sewer maint guy?” He stares at her. She hesitates; simultaneously thinking and trying to find a way out.
“Yeees,” she concedes.
“Why?”
Her eyes slide sideways, trying to rationalize. “Because a doctor saves lives. And the sewer guy just maintains a system.”
“But would you also acknowledge that the city goes to shit if the sewers don’t work? And that makes the doc’s work harder? Makes work for them?”
She purses her lips. “Yes.”
Thumper nods. “It’s bigger than that. The doc can only do their work if there are designers and fabricators to make the tools. If there are teachers to educate them. We’re all co-dependent. Everything needs everything else to work properly. The sewer guy is as useful as the doc.”
“That’s different! Neither of them are destroying other people’s systems!”
Thumper feels the smile creases drop from his skin. “It doesn’t matter. How do you know what the people who hire me want?” he says. “The whole world’s food production is corporatized and mechanized. Do you really know what they’re doing? What if the guys that hired me are looking for evidence? Collusion, maybe. Poisoning.”
Tak’s avatar shifts. “Are they?”
“I don’t ask. My point is, I’m just as useful as you. The system has room for what I do.”
She gives him a disgusted look, but with less heart. Then, as she’s edging away again, he adds, “Do you realize you’re in danger?”
That stops her. Thumper leans in. “I advise you against trying to pin me. I have no idea what the guys behind this might do. Try if you want to, but don’t ever come into the Webz to the illegits. I’m not in there anyway, and you’ll just flag yourself as someone who knows too much. And if you are going to try it, at least be smart! Don’t jack in with a registered provider like you are right now, and definitely not so close to home. Got it?”
Thumper tries to say this without passion, but he doesn’t like the idea she’ll be reckless on his account.
She rolls her eyes. “So convinced, aren’t you, that I’d come down to your level. I don’t need illegits. I’m better than that. And I’m going to get you anyway.”
She unjacks right in front of him. Thumper blinks once as the Webz render refreshes the space Tak had occupied in a flurry of mismatched pixels. She mustn’t be far from the jack-in point, but he knows she’ll still have a ripping headache. Hurt herself, just to escape him. He doesn’t like it.
Tak spends the night dancing with an unfamili
ar feeling. When she was very small, her father had taken her on a sailboat across a lake, which had seemed like crossing the ocean. Tak had been scared of the deep water, knowing that even muddy farm puddles could hide greebs and stones. And then, the storm had come. The sails had snapped like whips, and the steel-gray, lightning-streaked front had boiled across the lake.
Now, overdosed on codeine from the post-remote-jack-out headsplit, she has that feeling again. A storm gathering in the rear-vision. Thumper’s words have burrowed into her psyche, exposing the weak wood. Because she’s seen things in her years as a fault-finder. She’s wondered about how the FarmCorp runs. But those things have always been filed under zero-care-factor.
She finds Southern Boss waiting for her in the control room.
“It’s closed,” he announces, sitting her down. “Security’s done with it. They’re fencing the roof pad, putting a camera up there too. You’re done.”
Tak feels panicked; threads of incompleteness slipping her fingers. “But the guy—”
“Doesn’t matter,” says Southern Boss, linking his fingers across his risen-bun-dough of a gut. “Minor league perp. Didn’t do much damage. You did good.” He smiles that predatory smile. His eyes say, I’m done with this, don’t push it.
“But I’m not finished,” says Tak.
“Of course not,” says Southern Boss. “There’s the report to do. Hot-desk is yours until tomorrow. I’ll have the Scram for you then. System malfunction in an irrigator up in Arizona, if you’ll take it?”
Here is that moment again. The one where his binary view of her can be set to useful/sane or difficult/crazy. She swallows her disquiet. “Sure,” she says.
So she writes up the report in a daze. There’s not much to write; even by FarmCorp standards. She treks to the roof for good measure, checking the system numbers she’s given. By knock-off, the report is complete and thorough. She leaves it unsubmitted, in case she remembers anything more, and leaves to sleep on it.
But somehow, an hour later, the elevator doors are opening on the New Ship Inn. She wonders if this is a good idea, but if she’s right, she’s right, and tomorrow she’s on a Scram anyway. She slips past the bar, each table thick with patrons like zombies on a kill. In the screened back room, she eyes the dingy Webz terminals. These are bring-your-own-lock. A lock purchasing machine is hung with an out-of-order sign. She pretends to search for the least soiled seat, but really she’s looking at the registration units. She bets there are none. This is that kind of place.
So she’s not surprised when she spies Thumper, leaning against the very back wall, black-suited like the first time, glasses in place, every bit his avatar. She’s been so fixated on him, he seems like an old friend. She struggles to remember to hate him.
“This is much better,” he says, indicating the illegally unregistered Webz jacks.
“If you have enough money for the fine,” she shoots back.
He gives her a quick smile. “Have to catch you first. The Sprinks aren’t that good with climbing towers.”
“Spoken from experience.”
He shakes his head. “Spoken from logic and observation of their tactics. I don’t work in the Webz.”
Tak finds this interesting; she leans on the wall beside him. “Worried about black ICE?”
He glances down at her sidelong, appraising her. “What do you know about black ICE?”
She shrugs. “Digital security that kills the intruder. All the MegaCorps have it. You’ve seen the rallies, right?” From time to time, the news feeds show black ICE protests, placards that called it digital murder.
Thumper nods, the edges of his eyes creasing. “Sure, I’ve seen them. But no. Black ICE is a ridiculous fantasy.”
“What?”
“The MegaCorps want you to believe they can do it, but it’s bullshit. You can’t kill someone with a neural jack-in. Best you can do is seize them, maybe, but at some level, consciousness drops out and the neurotransmitters are exhausted. Blue ICE is far more dangerous.”
“What the fuck’s blue ICE?”
Thumper grins. “Getting ID’ed by a security system. That’s why I don’t work in the Webz. Blue ICE takes your ID, then drops your brake. Leaves you adrift in the Webz without ability to jack-out. Sprinks bust you. Laws are murky. Never work again, either ’cause they mark you, or they end you.”
Tak shudders. The world has become too large. Her shoulder is against Thumper’s now. “The job’s over,” she says softly. “They closed it today. I’m on a Scram tomorrow.”
He looks at her again, and this time, she holds his eyes. “Can I show you something?” he says.
“Does it involve clambering over buildings? Because I left my GrippyFingers at home.”
“Trust me?” he asks. And she lets him take her hand.
His place is in a dodgy quarter, across the harbor in a high-rise stuck with dozens of linking pedbridges.
“What, you don’t use the door?” she asks, lunging her boot through his window and hoping not to crack her head on the frame.
“Not if I can help it,” he says, easing in after her, far more gracefully. He takes stock of the place before moving on. It’s bare except for a bed and a chair with a Webz neck-hugger, which looks expensive. Thumper latches a plexibarrier over the window and closes the blind.
“What is this you’re going to show me?” she asks.
“Have a seat.” She sits on the bed edge and he stands before her, takes off his jacket. When he catches the hem of the shirt, he pauses. “Don’t freak out,” he says.
He pulls it off, and Tak stares. He’s well-built; long muscles built for urban chase. But he is completely unmarked.
“Why don’t you have any tatts?” she demands. She’s never seen anyone without them. Cleanskins are allegianceless spies, parts played in movies by actors who have to cover up their own marks. She springs up and circles him, scrutinizing the skin for make-up or signs of old ones removed. When she sees nothing, she touches him gently, in the center of his chest to check if he is real.
“I never got any,” he says, brushing his fingers over hers. “I grew up a long way from here and I avoided all the markings. It’s a long story.”
“What about here?” she asks him, pointing at his pants.
He loses those too, and his shoes, until he’s naked for her scrutiny. And still, not a mark. Tak remembers who he is, the trouble he’s caused. But then she’s standing in front of him, her hands on his body, knowing he’s looking back at her. Knowing he wants her.
“You must make a lot of money,” she says softly, as his lips seek hers, her hair a tangle in his fingers. She wants him to say something that gets her distance back, something that she can resent about him.
“Look around you,” he says against her cheek. “Money’s for what you need. And it amplifies any insecurities. A jerk is a bigger jerk when they’re loaded, you ever notice that?”
Tak feels the delicious slide of his lips on her cheek. But she thinks of Southern Boss, of all the bosses, and their narrow-minded, money-honed focus. “Yeah,” she says. “I noticed.” She is going to ask him more, but he kisses her then, and the question is lost.
When Thumper wakes in the morning, Tak is already gone. He sits a long time, thinking on his next move, avoiding smoothing the sheets crumpled where she lay. Not ready to erase her like that. Not yet.
Tak has her travel ’sack with her in the control room the next morning. She’s been here for an hour now, an hour before Southern Boss is due in. Her hand hovers over submit, a tangle of conflict dancing in her synapses and preventing the final stroke.
Some things have not added together. Thumper is smart, she knows that. He’s also incredibly valuable to someone. So this job just seems too trifling. Just a saboteur screwing with a low importance valve. The report is barely twenty pages; nothing in FarmCorp. Insignificant. Which means: will be overlooked.
Tak pulls her hand back from the panel. She gets a bad feeling. She checked the roof alr
eady, but she’s missing something. She pulls up plans, looking at what’s inside the roof’s swipe-door. Switchboards. HVAC system fans. Then, Tak swears. Off the hall, is a tiny lettered note on the plans: RDT. Remote diagnostic terminal. It’s a link-point into the main system, meant for routine maintenance. And she suddenly gets it. Every time he screwed with the valve, FarmCorp sent someone up there, who opened the door. Which would have let Thumper in and to that terminal. So, he mucked with the valve as many times as he needed to access the system. Dripping something in.
Tak curses, feeling played, feeling stupid. Feeling when she shouldn’t have been. She scrambles for her tab-phone, even as the sinking dread scrambles her responses. She has no idea what he’s planted, but she knows they’re about to have a very serious malfunction.
Thumper’s not even really out of bed before it happens. He hears the bootfall in the hallway, an unfamiliar tread that is not his neighbor or a delivery guy. He bothers only with his pants, and digs for the GrippyFingers at the bed-end. He can hear creaking outside, too: weight on the fire escape.
And his GrippyFingers aren’t there. He gives himself three seconds to rip up the mattress and pat around on the floor, but nothing. Panic gets its talons in. And he remembers: Tak being here last night, her laughing that he kept his GFs in the same place she did. Oh, Jesus Christ.
A knock comes on the door. And no one ever knocks on his door. He thinks about going for the window, but he can imagine what else she’s told them. He goes in through the window. He’s good at climbing. Exits here, here, and here.
Fuck, he’s been stupid.
He throws himself into the bathroom and locks the door. A panel above the toilet leads to a pipe shaft. Thumper replaced the screws with double-sided, quarter-turn fasteners the first day he got here, so the panel’s off in two seconds, and he pulls it closed behind him. Buys a few minutes.
He climbs using the bolted pipe joints, his naked fingers slipping on the slick, dusty steel. He counts access panels as he goes; there’s a pedbridge at three and six levels up, but only the six-up access panel is in a communal bathroom. He hopes he won’t fall before he gets there.