by Aaron Frale
While the Rathlillian Wisp did peak Makiuarnek’s interest, he decided that the data drive was more important.
“That will have to wait,” Makiuarnek said. “I have a job I need done.”
“My only job is to make sure the people of this fine establishment are having a good time,” Lars said and waved his hands towards the debauchery around him.
“You’re the only one I can turn to. I got a data drive that needs decrypting.”
“A data drive?”
“Yeah, it’s my father’s.”
“And what’s on this data drive?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need someone to decrypt it.”
Lars looked around and waved Makiuarnek to sit at his side. After Lars had been satisfied that no one was watching, he told his floozy to make herself scarce. She huffed and walked toward the bar.
“Now don’t bullshit me. This isn’t some frat boy get back at your father crap, is it?”
“No,” Makiuarnek said. “You have my word.”
Not that his word meant much. If Makiuarnek were to analyze his actions, it was some frat boy get back at his father crap, as Lars so eloquently put it. Makiuarnek didn’t even know what he would do with the information on the drive once he got it. It didn’t matter the reasons why he took the drive in the first place. The fact was that he did it, and he would see it through to the end. Anything less would be letting his father win. Makiuarnek could not have that.
“Good,” Lars said. “The reason I ask is that there is serious stuff going down near the planet of Nigramoto.”
“Yeah, my dad has the mining rights.”
“Right, well the Shusharian Collective seems to have ignited their war factories. They are making fleets of battleships. Same seems to be happening on Earth.”
“So what are you saying? That the UPE is going to war? That’s ludicrous. No planet is worth that much.”
“A habitable planet with a decrand core might be.”
“So what’s that have to do with this data drive?” Makiuarnek said.
“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d tell me,” Lars said with a big smile.
“Can you do it?”
“What?”
“The decryption.”
“I know a guy.”
“I’ll pay double for no questions.”
“Hey, Makiuarnek, buddy. You know me. I’m only here to make sure everyone enjoys themselves.”
_______
Makiuarnek’s G-Series Atmosphere Hopper cruised over the city. It was sleek, yellow and orange, and the envy of every schoolmate. It was designed for two people, though Makiuarnek could shove three to four in the passenger seat if they squeezed. The ship had a round back and a needlepoint tip. It was pretty short range and good for a trip around the globe or maybe up to a space station or two. Makiuarnek didn’t use it for much more than going around the planet.
Makiuarnek could take the Hyperloop tracks built into the Earth’s surface. He was even rich enough to travel in a private pod, use the express lanes, and have a taxi drone drop him off at the entrance. It would be a faster way to travel than the Atmo-Hopper, but it didn’t change the fact that the Atmo-Hopper was his, and he enjoyed flying it.
The city underneath him was vast and seemed to branch out into eternity. Mega-skyscrapers stretched in every direction. Drones, ships, and all sorts of aerial traffic crisscrossed the sky in the designated sky lanes. It was a swarm of aerial activity that occasionally rained down towards a building as a ship reached its destination. Due to safety rules, most ships were controlled by the planetary traffic grid that would autopilot everything in the atmosphere. Makiuarnek paid for a special rig that would let him override the planetary traffic control network. He dove into the buildings below.
Even though air traffic was restricted to a certain height above the tallest buildings of Earth, Makiuarnek wove between the buildings anyway. He could just pay the fine if he were caught. It wasn’t as if he had run-ins with the IF Enforcers all too often anyway. There were so many legitimate special business permits that would allow a person to fly outside of designated lanes. Reckless flying would usually be the reason for the traffic stop. And when he was stopped, flying outside a designated zone and flying while under the influence would be added to the list. However, Makiuarnek’s family lawyers were good. Since his father would lose face if any of the charges stuck, Makiuarnek was pretty sure the family lawyer would always be there for him regardless of the hour.
Tonight, Makiuarnek didn’t want his father’s lawyer involved, so even though he was weaving between the skyscrapers, he flew the safest he had in a while. The buildings flew past as he cruised through the city. Lights from the buildings illuminated the sky enough to where nighttime was a dull glow with only a hint of the night sky above. He buzzed past an ancient building. It was hidden among the towering monoliths and dwarfed by the city. The only reason it wasn’t demolished for a mega multifunctional tower long ago was that it had permanent protection status as a historical site. It was called the Empire State Building, even though the building itself did not evoke images of empires.
It was much like Makiuarnek’s family home, an artifact of Earth’s past that was deemed too precious and protected from industry’s advance as the UPE became the center of the galaxy. Makiuarnek turned the Atmo-hopper into an alleyway of two buildings so tall, their false brick exterior disappeared into the night sky. The alley itself was marginally wide enough to fit his ship. He flew in deep enough to obscure the view from anyone passing by on the street.
The seams of the hatch to his ship were only visible when it opened. After he climbed out and sent a command to a computer screen wired into his arm, the hatch lowered and blended with the smooth service. The alleyway was pristine and clean. The cleaning drones made sure that every surface of the city didn’t have a mark. However, despite the lack of garbage, there was still a thriving homeless population. A few were huddled behind an emergency exit of a building. They eyed Makiuarnek suspiciously.
Makiuarnek kept his head down and moved on. Most of the homeless people of the planet lived underground and came to the surface only to scavenge. They would dig through trash before the recyclers got a hold of it, and raid the bin of a cleaning drone on its way to the dump. Sometimes people who couldn’t afford their garbage bill or businesses with shady practices would dump underground as most of the Undercity was ruins. Other than the hubs for Hyperloop’s, the underground was space that was left to waste.
He left the alley and walked down the street. There was all manner of people and aliens walking in every direction. Business people pushed their way through the crowd, students packed themselves into large social groups, laughing and chatting. Tourists recorded video. Makiuarnek made sure to set his image to blur in case he appeared in the background of a video. Everyone had privacy controls that could blur their image in other people’s photographs and videos if they didn’t want to be noticed.
A vendor was busy dispensing an alien cuisine that was popular on Earth at the moment. He passed by a very old sign that directed foot traffic to a basement bar that looked like it was out of the past. He stopped at the next business over. It was a pawnshop with a couple of guitars and an instrument that required six hands to play in the window. There was a gate over the front door, and the interior was dark.
Makiuarnek reached his hand through the gate and knocked on the door as he was instructed. A burly man with dreadlocks passed Makiuarnek while he pounded. Makiuarnek felt foolish and was about to abandon the notion of decrypting the hard drive altogether when he heard a click from inside, and the door opened. A bug-eyed creature poked its head out. A couple of birdlike creatures with shimmering wings on the sidewalk passed them by.
The creature had a lot of strange ticks in its voice, “What do you want?”
“Lars sent me,” Makiuarnek said. “He said you’d be expecting me.”
“I don’t know any Lars,” the creature said and slammed the door.<
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Makiuarnek was about to turn around and check the navigation charts on his Atmo-Hopper when the door opened. The interior was dark, and he couldn’t see much past the threshold. Makiuarnek leaned forward to see inside when the same voice with many ticks said, “Well, come on. I don’t have all night.”
Makiuarnek stepped inside the door and must have passed through a security filter as there was a faint hum in the threshold. The shop interior was too dark to see in from the street during broad daylight. Not that there was much to see. It was mostly junk.
The creature who had answered the door was a small being with four transparent wings that kept him hovering about a meter off the ground. Had the creature been standing, it would have come up to Makiuarnek’s waste. Its eyes were red and segmented like a fly’s. It was a gray color and had brown hairs dotting its body. It was hideous to behold, and Makiuarnek understood why his father hated aliens on a visceral level even if he didn’t share the sentiment.
“Go to the back. Go to the back. I don’t have anything for you,” the creature yelled when Makiuarnek hesitated. He went back to a small room with various amplifiers. A woman with her long purple hair pulled back by a pair of goggles was playing a large crystal instrument with two strings. It sounded like a cross between a Theremin and a guitar.
For a brief moment, Makiuarnek was mesmerized by the music and even more so by the girl. She wore a black latex dress with a French maid cut skirt and plenty of gutter punk adornment. Makiuarnek was entranced and didn’t say anything for the longest time. He was content to watch her fingers move nimbly across the strings.
Finally, she said, “Is this a free show or should I set up a tip jar?”
Normally, Makiuarnek would have a witty comment but for her, he didn’t have anything, so he just said, “Lars sent me.”
“Lars Sent Me? Is that your band? The name sucks. Get a new one and maybe we’ll talk.”
She turned her back on him and continued to play the instrument. Makiuarnek wasn’t used to getting any resistance from women. At the clubs for members of his social class, he could point to a woman, and she would be his. Most women had the impression that they could win him over and marry into his family. This was a fact that Makiuarnek took advantage of on more than one occasion as he left a trail of jaded women in his past. This one was different. He could tell that she wouldn’t succumb to his usual tricks and that just made him want her more.
He turned off the amp that was blaring her music and sat down on a stool across from her. The instrument sounded like an out of tune guitar without its amplification system. “I have a hard drive that I need decrypted.”
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” She turned back towards him. “What’s with all this Lars sent me? I don’t care if it was your great aunt.”
“It’s not my problem that you and your little doorman didn’t tell Lars your secret code word. Can you help me or not?”
“First off, my doorman’s name is Vigo, and you’re lucky he struggles with human languages or he would feed you your genitals if he heard you call him little. In fact, I might have him do just that for my amusement.”
As much as she had enchanted him moments ago, her personality was grating. No one had ever spoken to him like that. “Do you know who I am?”
“Only that you’re a little rich prick that’s used to getting what he wants.”
Makiuarnek had enough. No skill in decryption was worth this abuse. He would just tell Lars to find him another geek. Maybe he would also get his father to put Vigo out of business. As much as he hated his father’s backhanded ways, there were times when they could be useful. Makiuarnek stood up and turned to leave.
“Wait,” the woman said, and Makiuarnek stopped. He didn’t know why he stopped. Despite the fact that he felt her personality was all venom, he still wanted to get to know her. “Let me see the hard drive.”
Makiuarnek pulled the hard drive from his backpack and tossed it towards her. She pulled a wire from a compartment built into her forearm and plugged it into the drive. She stared into nothing as she nodded her head. She must have had a virtual reality interface. It was an invention that superimposed the interface of any device in the recipient’s field of vision. Makiuarnek preferred the arm implant that would impose the image on his forearm or in a three-dimensional projection in the air above his arm. The brain chips that changed a field of perception seemed like too much of a risk. Something told Makiuarnek that this woman wasn’t above taking risks.
“This is some tight security. Do you know who designed it? Was it a corp? A hat?”
Hats were independent computer security experts. Back in ancient times, people used to call them hackers and their hats, black, white, red, etc. used to symbolize their political alignments. Hats evolved into a term for a freelancer whose skills were so in demand they could free themselves from corporate serfdom. Makiuarnek’s father would rather die than hire a hat.
“A corp. I think,” Makiuarnek said. “Do you think you can do it?”
“Yeah, but my services aren’t cheap.”
“I’m good for it. If you don’t believe me, I can give you half up front…”
“With those clothes and driving around an Atmo-Hopper in a neighborhood like this, I know you’re good for it.”
“How did you know-“
“What I want to know is what you plan to do with the information once you have it.”
Makiuarnek hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Even though he didn’t have the slightest clue about what was on the drive, he knew his father had a dark side. He had witnessed the evil. Maybe he could blackmail his father, pretend someone else got the data and threatened to expose him. While he would like nothing more than to see his father live with the fear that Makiuarnek had lived with his entire life, he wasn’t about to tell this low-life anything.
“What do you care? I’m paying you good money, and I’ll even throw in a bonus if you shut up,” he yelled at her.
“No deal,” she tossed the drive back and turned her back on him. “Vigo! Escort this asshole out the doorway.”
“Hey! Lars said you’d be discrete. He assured me that-” Makiuarnek stopped in mid-sentence. He felt the cold barrel of a plasma gun pressed against his neck. Vigo chirped in a frenetic language that his translator struggled to pick up.
“It’s ok, Vigo,” the woman said, and the gun dropped from his neck. “He may be a rich, entitled piece of shit, but he is no more dangerous than a Bot-Dar Fly. If he was here to cause trouble, I would have strangled him with a guitar string myself. Now listen here…”
She paused and motioned with her hands. He said his name.
“Now listen here. Makiuarnek. You said Makiuarnek? Like Rasmus’ son? The fucker that owns DMC?”
“I don’t like him anymore than you do.”
“Hold up. This is your father’s data drive?” She swiped the drive back from him and began to inspect it. “Let me guess. You swiped this from your old man because you are all butt hurt about something he said. You figure you can get back at him with this.”
“He threatened my favorite teacher,” Makiuarnek said, which was partially true. Sgt. Lefallfous wasn’t a jerk, so that more or less classified him as his favorite.
“Oh, how cute! Look at you with your little righting the sins of your father’s past! You are an adorable little fuck face.”
Makiuarnek couldn’t understand why he was letting her insult him like this. When he was thirteen, Tom Lancaster, heir of the Earth One Media Corp., had insulted him. Makiuarnek slammed his head repeatedly into a urinal so many times. They had to do reconstructive brain surgery. Makiuarnek’s dad footed the bill with a generous settlement to keep the footage off the Galactic Network. No one insulted him after that.
This girl was something else, though. The girls back in London would let him do whatever he wanted. He’d just use them up and discard them when he was done. They were like his possessions. He could have anything he wanted, so he didn�
��t care about anything. He got the impression that he couldn’t have her, which made him want her more. If letting her get away with an insult or two without cracking her skull was the price he had to pay, he would do it.
“Will you do it or not?” Makiuarnek said.
“Yeah.” She said already pulling a cord from her arm to plug into the drive. Makiuarnek pulled out a coinchip. She didn’t say anything for the longest time, and she finally looked up at him as if she was surprised he was still there. “I don’t want your lousy Corp money. I’ll do this just for the chance to stick it to those pig fuckers that are killing the galaxy one planetary ecosystem at a time. Name’s Cassie, thank you for asking.”
With that, she sunk back into the depths of her mind, concentrating on what seemed like thin air. Makiuarnek knew that it was pillars and pillars of code, intricate loops and subroutines. It was the web that his father had spun, and it would finally be put to good use.
3
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” his father said, “but I loved you, you know.”
Makiuarnek wanted to die now more than ever. The Taurilian metal couldn’t work fast enough.
“I know I didn’t show it very much,” the ancient voice of his father croaked in between respirations, “but you must know that everything I did, I did for your benefit. When you went away to the IF academy, it was the proudest and the saddest day of my life. You proved to be your own man. I respected that even if I didn’t show it at the time.”
He was a liar and a foolish old man. Rasmus hated the fact that Makiuarnek joined the IF. Not only would his only son be sent out into the galaxy with a slew of alien races, but he would also be responsible for protecting them and safeguarding sentient life in the galaxy. As far as his father was concerned, humans were the only ones who deserved the galaxy. All other cultures and civilizations toppled under the might of the humans. Aliens had to adapt to the human way of life or die. The IF’s motto “to protect and serve all sentient life” should only say human life as far as his father was concerned. His progeny, the only being worth all his wealth and power, had joined the largest peacekeeping force in the galaxy. It was a slap in the face of his father and everything he stood for. Makiuarnek couldn’t think of any better way to spite his dad.