Inside my invisible shadow body, my invisible shadow heart beat faster. If the system found an anomaly in Merv’s disguise it would destroy us in a pica-second.
For the first time in a long time, I remembered a prayer.
Merv traversed the red spectrum navigating on colour subtleties and taste - amber to orange, sweet to fruity. Orange to sienna, fruity to scorched.
5G - an almost unbearable sensory experience to the uninitiated. In real time my mouth filled with saliva and my eyes streamed.
As we danced I began to discern energy clusters and finally shapes: light avatars forming exotic fractal creatures.
Decahedrons are the gateways. Merv thought-whispered. Data-streams poured around them, creating whirlpools and lightfalls.
We swirled down them, attracting only a flicker of security.
The butterfly fractals are data miners, he thought-said.
We jumped aboard one that was trawling the violet spectrum. As we got closer to the edge of the range we leaped from it into a dark worm-trail.
What’s this?
A virus.
Somewhere, some part of me held its breath, watching as Chaos sent out its virus protection, shining helixes writhing like snakes.
Merv’s firefly folded over me and we slid down the twirling killers.
His confidence and daring staggered me - a paradoxical contrast with the real person.
Momentum flung us into the wake of a fast-moving stream of indigo data heading right into the heart of a magenta cluster. I could taste strawberry syrup.
It was soon cancelled out by the familiar smell of putrid meat that told me we’d passed right under the nose of the sifter and the odour firewall that had bounced me into mouth-to-mouth with Gigi.
Prison central.
When the indigo transfer was complete we dived into light quicksand.
Temp repository, thought-said Merv.
I wanted to reply but I’d forgotten how to do it, so I contented myself by watching light flickers.
A lifetime or many passed as we hid out in the shifting data-pile.
When the swish of a new incoming transfer stirred the grains of our repository, Merv finally floated us upwards.
An error alarm started as Chaos tried to work out what tiny thing was out of place.
Merv contorted his firefly avatar into a helix shape and the system passed over us. In a pica he’d branched back into the main data-stream and we surfed the crest of a light wave right into the Jinberra nexus.
It was an elegant move. Humble. Brilliant. With much less statement than most bio-hacks employed.
We sank straight into another quicksand data repository.
It was impossible to know how much time passed. Somewhere in my hindbrain I had a vague perception of discomfort - a twinge that all was not well.
I absorbed Merv’s thought-speak. Your real-time body is having circulatory problems. I’m going to move your limbs. This may cause you some disorientation.
I thought-sent my agreement back to him.
Then vertigo took over.
The impression of the swirling grains of the repository disintegrated and I began to shoot upward into a curling viral blackness. Just like the nightmares I used to have of elevators exploding from the top of lift wells.
You’re getting sick. Merv’s thought-voice again, a tinge of annoyance in it. I don’t have suction so I’m going to derm you with an anti-spasmodic before you choke on it.
His mind-voice disappeared and a malaise crept up on me, another bodily sensation that I shouldn’t have been able to feel.
Panic.
What’s happening, Merv?
A delay before he replied. The node is defragging. We have to move ahead of it or we’ll be sloughed. Your mind-body connection is messed up. You’re going to feel things . . . they aren’t real, but your body won’t believe that. I’ve given you a second derm to counter it. It should work within a couple of real minutes, you just have to withstand the sensations of defrag until it does . . . good luck.
His last two words were the quietest I’d ever heard.
He pulled us free from the repository and the torture began.
The system-defrag tore me apart. I felt my muscle fibres being tweezed and shredded while they were still attached to me. My hair ripped out in tufts. The soft skin inside my mouth carved with a knife and peeled back to flop about on my tongue. My tongue sliced into sections that were then pulled apart and down into my throat.
Pain with no endorphin rush to combat it.
A total rending so painful that I should have died from the shock. And yet I didn’t.
I just lost everything.
My mind imploded. Only the pain stayed.
And stayed.
Some primal instinct took over.
I fled it, into a glacial darkness, dragging my memories with me.
I am Parrish. I am in vreal with a bio-hack. The pain is imagined. I am Jales. I am Roo. I am . . . no one . . .
In the cold distance I saw a shape, a void at the end of it all. I laboured towards it, the most wretched pilgrim, reaching it on determination alone.
This was the place I’d come to die.
Peace.
Finally. I deserved it. Mine.
But solitude, even there, was denied me. Something had taken my space, stolen my death’s refuge.
‘Who are you?’
The figure turned its shadowed Angel face to my impassioned insistence. Gone were the bloodied wings and statuesque body. Gone was the power of blood and lust.
It huddled in my last mindspace, as distressed and disarmed as I was.
‘Why are you in my death?’ I shouted.
‘Don’t you know yet?’ it said. Wearily, it opened its eon-long memory to me.
With the wonder of a child I began to see . . .
A comet seeding - riding the tides of a galaxy. Parasites bred as agents of evolution. Spreading themselves. Catalysts of change.
Earth discovered and infected. What satisfaction and relief. The host is most suitable, the WE agree. Strong enough to withstand and not be destroyed. Strong enough to be pushed the next step.
But Homo Erectus had its own survival mechanism.
The WE became trapped.
‘You say we wouldn’t have evolved without you,’ I say.
Yes. That is our single purpose. We have generated the higher evolution of many - those that can tolerate our needs. Some, of course, cannot. It is our hunger, our lust, the nature of WE that has brought you to where you are. See . . .
Thought images ran past me then.
Mass suicide of species that could not withstand them. Creatures so alien that they create only an impression. There is no reference to build their appearance.
‘But the balance has been disturbed. You are in excess now. You are taking us over.’
The WE cannot resist that which has happened.
‘What if we try to destroy you? We will both die, won’t we? We will all die . . .’
But the Angel withheld and began to dissolve into the walls of my core.
What? Merv’s mind-voice was back. Jales, I mean . . . Parrish. Are you . . . can you still . . . think . . . ?
No more than usual, I managed after a time. Humour not felt.
His relief enfolded me. And surprise. ‘You survived.’
I suppose. It didn’t feel like survival. More like a residue of what I had been.
I’ve found the place where the data is stored. But there’s one last hurdle, he thought-said.
Wasn’t there always one last hurdle?
My thoughts drifted, muddled still by the thing I had just seen, and by what the pain had cost. Slowly the vreal began to reconstruct around me and my bodily sensations distanced again.
Merv had set us down onto a crag above a crumpling data sea. Across it, the small, stolid light of an infrared transceiver pulsed.
You want to know about Code Noir, Merv thought-said. You have to get yourself over th
ere.
Chapter Thirteen
Do I go on? the residue of me wondered. It seems that is all there is, I answered myself.
And so . . .
How do I do that, Merv?
I’ve been watching. The impartial is periodically synchronised but I can’t travel the light wave. My avatar can’t be decoded in the infrared spectrum and the impartial’s got some old and ugly defences. You might be able to fly it, though. Nothing like you should have gotten this far into the Jinberra nexus. Your encoding is so simple, the most basic blip of information. It might not have a parameter to detect it as an intruder.
And if it does?
I imagined his shrug. Your call.
Momentum. That’s all there is, the residue of me thought. What do I attach to?
A photon. I’ll help boost you on to it. You’ll have to flake off at the other end.
Coming back?
Silence from Merv.
Ah. I see.
The residue of me recognised irony. My whole life - the smallest dot of information. It seemed fair.
So why loiter?
I saw the shimmer of activity as a wall of data assembled, ready to convert and transmit across the connection.
Boost away, I thought-sent.
Goodbye . . . the whisper came back.
Riding the light wave was a roller coaster. Slamming and rising. Slamming and rising. Speed irrelevant and yet everything. Transparent and opaque at once.
Then.
Not anything.
I decoded after a delay into a temp reservoir that duplicated a watered-down version of the 5-Gen vrealspace I’d just travelled.
I tried to recollect myself, to make some coherency, but bits seemed to be missing. I knew what I was doing here but I couldn’t remember who I was.
Compelled only by the momentum of a half-remembered purpose, I sifted data quicksand until I found the shape of a name.
I imprinted the information in my shadow cadaver’s infinitesimal storage and moved forward searching for another shape.
I found it among other recognisable shapes but I ignored them.
As I imprinted, a hexagonal shape began swirling up and down the data-streams, scanning for corruptions.
I finished imprinting and found a well to hide in.
But it vibrated on towards me. Erasure. Erasure. Erasure.
While my shadow cadaver stayed undetected by the ancient security, it picked me clean of the imprinted data and put it back.
Like an obedient robot on the assembly line I repeated what I’d done and squatted again.
The scan ran and re-sorted.
We continued the slow dance over and over. I stayed, trapped by my own lack of impetus and forgotten identity.
Get out now.
What?
Use smell to find your friend.
My friend?
I imprinted the information again and instead of finding my well, I began sniffing.
I followed a pale auburn stream of data, seeking out a familiar smell. It was there, behind the salty tangs of the data-streams and the mustiness of the repositories - the faintest odour of life.
I set myself after it like a dog.
Chapter Fourteen
Merv booted me back to realtime with a derm of adrenalin.
I jerked out and struggled to get a handle. Everything seemed so dull and barren, even compared to the degraded vreal of the impartial.
The screens on the wall resembled bulging eyes. I sorted smell and touch first because vomit had collected in the creases of my clothes and I was drooling.
The headache came next and was to die from.
I finally resolved the figure of Merv beside me. He looked tired and disturbed. Even more than usual.
I stumbled groggily out of the jockey seat, rubbing circulation into my legs. ‘Did you catch it?’
He nodded, his mouth ajar. ‘T-tell m-me, how did you get out of there?’
‘Let’s just say don’t ever lose your sweet smell.’
Merv grinned.
First time for everything.
‘Give me the data I collected and then erase any trace of it off your systems,’ I said, too tired for niceties.
‘Where do want it?’
‘Dump it into my p-diary. It’ll give her something to think about.’
A shower and some food brought me some humanity.
Or did it?
My references for that particular word had shifted. If my vreal hallucinations could be at all believed, I’d just found out that I was a product of a symbiosis with an alien parasite and without its presence I wouldn’t survive another day. Not just me but all of us.
The entire human race.
It felt like the ground was shivering beneath my feet so I sat on the edge of my bed and told Merry 3# to display the files.
‘No audio,’ I instructed.
She primped and pranced about. ‘Euuch. What is this stuff?’ she complained. ‘It’s like my shoes are pinching.’
‘It’s called work, Merry,’ I sniped. ‘You obviously weren’t built for it. Life isn’t just fashion bites and fake automatic-rifle noises.’
She gave me the finger and changed into optical glasses and a cape, nipples peeping through.
Funny.
I read the first file. Then again, cross-checking with Merry’s thesaurus for the meanings of some of the words.
It was a contract between the Prisons Corporation and a consortium named Stem. The prisons were to provide suitable inmates for the Code Noir project in exchange for a specified remuneration. (‘That’s money, Parrish’ said Merry.)
‘I know that.’
I didn’t even scowl at her.
Rage distracted me and there was too much of it to be provoked by something as banal as Merry’s banter.
Voice trembling, I told her to show me the other file.
. . . AKA Ike del Morte. Gaoled for a series of murders committed against media students. I read on impatiently. Released to head the Code Noir project by the director of Stem corporation . . .
I told Merry to shut the information down and purge it.
Then: ‘Cancel that,’ I said sharply. ‘And encrypt it.’
‘I should warn you,’ she said crossly, ‘my encryption is only factory-standard. Any halfwit could decode it.’
I thought for a moment. Like all her generation of p-diaries, Merry was capable of making changes to her configuration and programs as long as she didn’t ignore a direct command from whoever she was encoded to.
I tried to imagine the one thing she didn’t want anyone to take away from her. Especially if that anyone was me.
‘Hide it in your wardrobe files.’
She poked her tongue out. ‘Is that a direct instruction? ’
‘Yes.’
She gave a large, dramatic sigh and the information disappeared to the safest place she could put them.
‘Access netspace and search on the company Stem.’
It only took her a few minutes. ‘It’s registered to a long string that comes back to James Monk.’
Monk. ‘That was quick.’
Merry gave me the smuggest of grins. ‘I’ve got friends.’
‘What do you mean, friends?’
She placed a finger on the side of her nose and tapped it.
I frowned. ‘You sure it’s right?’
‘P-diaries don’t lie,’ she sniffed. ‘Why did you ask me if you weren’t going to believe me?’
She had a point. So why on earth did the thought of Merry having a friend make me so damn uneasy?
I kept her working until I’d recorded everything I could think of. Then I got her to run Snout’s pattern-recognition software. Merv had designed it for his seeker to be able to make sense of vrealspace.
Merry yawned and complained that she was too tired to think, so I minimised her and concentrated on the holo-schema from Snout’s programme.
Tulu worked for a broker who was selling information on illegal genet
ics to the Banks. (If Merv was right.) This explained why she was hanging out with Ike back in MoVay. She was poaching information about his practices, and winging some of her own. If Slipstream had sold that info to the Banks then how were they planning to use it?
And why in the freaking Wombat had Daac sold himself at the meat market?
Thrown into that mix of questions were a few extra curiosities.
My media ally . . . who was she? And why had Monk accepted and responded to a call from an unknown Amorato named Jales Belliere?
Now that I knew he was the one behind the company called Stem, that question seemed to burn hotter than the others.
If I went ahead with Lavish’s plan to try and persuade Monk to hire me, and succeeded, maybe I could find the answer.
But could I do that?
Could I play the Amorato game after my experiences with Glorious? The experience was so fresh - a wound of sorts. Not something I ever wanted to repeat.
I’d started thinking about Glorious. I’d been harsh towards her. Unfair, maybe.
After I heard her come back from a client, I went and knocked on her door.
She’d already showered and was watching OneWorld.
‘Jales, wait until you see this,’ she said.
I waited and watched until the five-second grab replayed - a Live-to-Air murder-suicide in the ’burbs with a house cam catching the moment for DramaNet.
‘The effects are so clever. So realistic,’ she sighed.
As the bona fide images flashed by, my heart contracted. My hand fell away from her shoulder in disgust. She couldn’t tell the difference.
Any lingering desire for her died a final, permanent death as she greedily watched the upcoming ads.
‘I always wanted to go into acting,’ she said.
‘I think you probably did,’ I said.
I left and walked slowly back to my room.
Why was I so surprised? Glorious was just one of us, a whole generation who couldn’t tell reality from production. Didn’t need to, really.
She came after me a few minutes later. ‘Did I say something?’
I didn’t answer. A set of stiff lace underwear had appeared on my bed. We both stared at it as if it was a third person.
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