Revenge for Lychee

by Aies Jay

  -Then what the hell did you do when I spoke to Geisha? Play Jewel Tug?

  She cringes at my harsh tone and recites the third rule of the Code.

  -”My world is my own”.

  -I know the hacker Codes, Nicla, all six of them, even if I’m an old fart and most kids don’t give a shit anymore. I was pressing a point. If they are out, you could have gone and got some shots somewhere else.

  -I wanted to wait for you. And it wasn’t that long ago I got a shot, anyway.

  -You’re fresh out of surgery. You should be more careful.

  She ignores my comment, stuffs her things into her worn purse including her wrist Gate and yanks a chit from a station that slips into its slot in the bar, vanishing from sight.

  -Shall we?

  she says and looks at me as if there was nothing more to discuss. I guess there isn’t unless I want this to become more real than I’m comfortable with once more. We made a deal. I’m sticking to it.

  -Sure, whatever. Do you know who DragonFire is?

  -You mean was. He kicked ass in the Tournament five years ago, made a real name for himself, then he disappeared. Some huge corporation probably gobbled him up, made him straight and proper. It happens a lot these days. So much for the “never being owned” Code. Or he fried.

  She knew more than I thought she would but not what I needed her to know.

  -No, he’s still around. Geisha said so. He changed his Avatar.

  She cringes.

  -Why the hell would you want to do that? I mean, I don’t even have one, but hell if I’d change it if I did.

  -I don’t know. An Avatar takes time, effort, chits. I knew a guy who made his first Avatar when he was 7 years old. It was a huge, fluffy kitten called Snookums. Some people laughed at it and many told him to ditch it but that fucking thing wreaked havoc, I tell you. He kept it until his death and it was way levelled.

  She frowns.

  -I never did understand that levelling stuff.

  I shrug and keep talking as we leave the club.

  -It’s easy, yet complicated. One level takes approximately a year of work on your Avatar. Your Avatar is your armour in the System, your representative, your soul-glove. It stands between you and black ice, it makes hacking easier, holds your tools, speeds up reading code, and downloading and so on. You hook programs to it, info bots, but that’s not all. It’s an extension of your brain, like a surgeon’s robotic arm, a magnifying glass or a calculator. You control it, it protects you. But most hackers have no patience for that slow a process so they buy patches from each other or corporations, or steal them. Patches, upgrades, routing, you name it. It’s sort of like ordering a sandwich at a shop rather than buying all the parts on their own and putting it together for yourself. Some hackers level their Avatar five times the calculated speed that way, some more. It comes down to morals or credits. We usually have a lot or very little of those two things. Before, in the old days when all people had hardware Gates and no flesh installed hardware, or before bioware for that matter, hackers had loads of Avatars. Some even had one for every Portal. But those weren’t even close of the Avatars of today. Back then, the Avatars were just masks, the cartoon character you used instead of your real name and face. Our Avatars are like small alter egos… a bit of yourself you mount up to become all the stuff I just said, armed with skills, knowledge and software.

  She grins at me. I lose my pace, not understanding one bit what’s so funny.

  -What?

  -You’re still so passionate about it. Whenever you talk about hacking, or the System or stuff like that, you light up.

  I shrug.

  -It’s the only thing left that’s real to me.

  We walk in silence for a while until she asks me

  -So what’s DragonFire’s new Avatar?

  A wafting smell of deep fried food hits my nostrils and I realize I haven’t eaten anything since the Yin Yang, almost five hours ago. The thought of food makes my stomach turn rather than churn. I’ve eaten a lot lately, or so it feels. Almost in regular intervals, even.

  -I don’t know. I need to connect, swim through his old spots and hang outs. But first I need to eat. I’m not hungry, though.

  -Then I know just the place. Savoury Pizza, extra spicy.

  I heave a dry laugh.

  -Thanks.

  She smiles. It feels like the first earnest smile she’s ever given me.

  -My pleasure.

  dive

  After the spiciest sausage pizza ever and buying a new six pack of Jackhammers we’ve returned to the apartment, my odd little house, and again found it empty. Teeth has refilled the fridge and made a mess out of the couch, hanging out here properly for the first time in my absence it seems, but that’s it. It’s late, closing up on midnight, but we’ve had enough down time. I sit down in front of my Gate and exhale, hooking up to every jack I have.

  -This is going to take time.

  I say, hardly noticing Nicla anymore. She says something about borrowing my shower and then vanishes. And so does the rest of the world. The old program debugger DragonFire dropped on Axorpa is still in my Gate, and I enter my Domain, pick it out and go over it again to find what hooks to choose to find him. I don my well-charged Avatar and hook up to the System, and start looking for DragonFire’s old work. His stuff is very distinct, there’s almost a certain flair to it, aesthetics as well as extra finesses on everything, viruses, programs and cheats. I grit my teeth to my task, this guy is a master, finding him when he doesn’t want to be found will take time indeed. The difference between finding him and the dropper of the mail is that I have ware that he made himself that I can track him by. It’s like finding another piece of art in a huge museum by the same artist you already seen the works of, the dropper left a mail by someone else, that’s like tracking who dumped a soda can in a dumpster. I grip all my tools on the Avatar, send out every hook I could think of with fastenings that will attach to things that have the specific elements in common with the old stuff, and keep swimming as I do.

  Code runs past me, I enter Portals and pass Domains, comparing with his signatures. I look until I find a few forums he’s been to, and as the conversations span out, I’m soon talking to eight different hackers from all over the Universe, sitting physically wide spread from Rimmie to Maxima but here I find them side by side. Not one of them is willing to talk to me once the topic comes into view that I want to find his new Avatar. No one encourages me to look for him and I get more and more suspicious as I go along. What the hell happened to this guy?

  -he’s dead don’t go looking

  -there’s a damn fine reason you can’t find him, leave him alone

  -if he wanted to be found he would have left breadcrumbs, wouldn’t he

  -unhook, old man, and fuck off of DF

  The last one caught my attention. The only one who referred to him as DF before was Geisha, and hackers usually don’t shorten their names. I try to strike up the conversation for real but he slips and goes off the forum, but I follow him fast as hell, tracking his name and Avatar, a green gummy bear with red laser eyes. My fingers run across the keyboard, tracking him, following his connection. I find another Portal and search his threads, he’s even dropped a few tools and I rake at them, comparing them to DragonFire’s old work. My grin becomes greedy. It’s the same flair, and way too expert not to be him.

  -Got you.

  I track him further, looking for another Portal to find him in or to track him further by. Suddenly his Avatar rises above me, raging like a mutated green gummy bear from hell, his red eyes shooting after me. I dart to the side and swim around him in furious circles.

  -I know it’s you, DF I need your help

  His big gummy paws sprout laser claws and he swipes for me but I’m too fast for him.

  -FUCK OFF OLD MAN OR I’LL SHOW YOU WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE GHOSTED AT TWENTY-ONE

  I lose a little of my patience and boost up my Avatar, too, increasing in size, sprouting a lion’s mane an
d fangs, which really just means I just boosted my firewall and relayed power to my code breaker. As he swipes at me I roar furiously

  -A medical company is killing off little kids to peddle medicine! I need to track these fuckers by a loose mail scrap to find them and I’m nowhere near that level! I need someone to find the fucker ducking down here and observing the operation or my son will be just one of the many that died for creds in their pockets and I will not let that fucking happen

  He roars back at me and suddenly, mid-roar, he unlocks a volume level that’s quickly turning noise into pain and I rip at my volume control to mute it, cursing. When I focus back at the screen he’s gone. I just stare but he’s vanished. Gone, without a single trace.

  -Little fucker unhooked on me.

  I mutter, sitting back in my couch. From my bedroom, I can hear Nicla sleeping.

  The door swooshes open and Teeth comes in. He looks tired but he grins as we make eye contact.

  -My contact is officially available.

  -Took you long enough.

  I mutter. He raises an eyebrow at me.

  -He wasn’t easy to find, to be pretty about it. And it was deep business as I said. You don’t walk away from that mid mission. Why are you so snippy?

  I stare at the screen. The warning message that my volume exceeded safe levels still blinks on it, reminding me who I messed with. He is good.

  -Because I’m going to have to break every sacred trust and a few holy commandments of my religion right now to find whom I’m looking for.

  -Didn’t think you were religious.

  -I’m a hacker.

  He rolls his eyes at me but it’s more of a conformation than anything, like remembering someone’s a vegetarian when they say no to a hot dog. I crack my knuckles again. I have DragonFire’s new Avatar and I even got a shot at a few of his names, GummyBear67, Greeng00ey and L4serEyez. That means I can track him, find his real flesh name if I really put myself to it which means I can find his cred record, just like I did Nicla. I have never, ever done that to another hacker before, only nuggers, virgins and body mods.

  -He’s going to be very, very pissed.

  I groan as I hook up once more with all three jacks and clicking off sound in my route. He’s not getting to fuck my ears up one more time, should he get wise to what I do. But he won’t. I’ve never been caught. I’m good, and I never hit anyone I know for sure I can’t beat. I rack up his names, likely codes, Avatar name, including the old one, and plunge. I dive, I swim, I send out hooks and swim faster than before, it must be done quickly. Finally I find the common denominators and run the info down to his cred rec. A couple of firewalls that I slip past without even needing to break them show of his trying to hide but at this I’m the master, not him, they don’t even slow me down. I’m already on to him. What I find surprises me. It takes a good while, so many hooks come back empty, but when I track the order for hardware and supplies, they all have one thing in common.

  -Delivered to the same address? Home delivery, are you kidding me? He’s that sloppy?

  I track it back, hard. The deliveries started four years ago, all of them shipping to the same address. I even recognize it, the place is on top of a Chinese restaurant, only a few blocks from here. Pickup conformation by thumbprint. Oh, holy motherboard. I have his name and everything. His flesh name. I download it all to an info chit, yank out of the System and copy it to my Domain. As I unhook from my jacks I flip off the screen.

  -Got you, you little fucker!

  broken hardware

  I let Teeth tag along, mostly because I need a lookout and maybe even a pair of extra arms. I’m as much of a noodle like the next hacker, which is to say that I might not stand much of a chance against a planet bound ten year old. Before the Exodus, or perhaps even now, on the planets that we pass on our original Liner, there was still something of a manual life but as a hacker on S2, there is basically only getting out of bed, feeding and cleaning myself and getting my ass to work. The ease that Teeth moves with indicates a life that revolves around exercise as well as combat training and staying as healthy as possible so that his body can stand another cybernetic upgrade, should his creds allow it, along with his Bushido and sword training. He gently nudges the doors I need to full on push and trot up staircases with unaltered speed as I have to slow down halfway up and pant like a cat in heat once I reach the top. The restaurant is on the second floor and the way there is a tad complicated due to a few blocked off walkways. We pass quite the few hole in the wall restaurants and establishments. One of them promises that “Madame Fa sees your future”. I’m almost tempted to stick my hand in there and hear whatever nonsense she’d say about me. I’m no more superstitious than religious, but common curtesy says don’t shove your own ideas in other people’s faces, so I don’t, plus I have other holes to stick my hard stolen creds into right now and I’d rather not use my Magnetic Moray again this soon. Teeth stops when we get to the restaurant. It’s a big, posh looking place, two golden dragons curl their way around red pillars on each side of the door, but there are hardly any customers and the big fish tank in the window only holds one single lobster, which is still bragging at its finest. To have a live, fresh lobster to serve up should anyone with too much money happen by is pure and raw luxury. It gives the place an odd feeling to me. Maybe the thing isn’t for eating.

  -Triads?

  I ask, looking at Teeth. He shakes his head.

  -Not so much, I think. But in my experience, every Chinese descendant on S2 is Triad. Even if they don’t work for them, they still belong to them, one way or another. By paying protection or just closing their eyes when told to.

  I cringe.

  -I refuse to believe that.

  He scoffs and looks at me.

  -Which you’re free to do.

  I shake my head at him, shoving my hands in my pockets.

  -It’s just because you move in those kinds of circles. You think because everyone you meet is connected, or a crook, hoodlum or whatever, you think everyone is like that.

  -Whatever, man. What’s our move?

  I frown and look inside. This is the address, right on top, but it seems the only way to get into the apartment above is through the inside of the restaurant. I can see it from the outside, it looks like a little house, smacked into the rest of the building, a little bit of it sticking out like the restaurant’s house swallowed a smaller house once and now is trying to spit it back out. The windows are shut and black plastic covers them, preventing any curious onlookers. The tiny number by the window is right for the address.

  -It’s up there. I need to get up there discreetly. But the only way in is through the damn eateria.

  -You want me to make a diversion again?

  -Hell, no. I mean… shit, any ideas?

  He scratches his chin and takes a good look around. The walkway we just came from is littered with odd bits of garbage and discarded stuff. His eyes stop on one of the larger crates.

  -Actually, yes.

  The crate that Teeth put me in is less than comfortable to be honest. It smells like something rotted in the bottom of it, and my left hand is in something sticky. It’s dark as hell, too, there’s barely a slit between any of the boards and none of them is giving me a view so I have to trust him utterly. I’m beyond impressed by him, though. I never would have thought of this, clever or not. He even thought of slapping a freshly printed address delivery note to the thing after finding a printing firm a block away. He’s doing the heavy lifting, too, literally, and the way he’s carrying the box I can tell he’s not even taking the opportunity to mess with me. The smell of Chinese food gets intense as he walks into the restaurant, calling out

  -Hey, I have a delivery package for the apartment above you guys, but I can’t get up there. Do you have some way up there in here or what?

  His Chinese is more than passable. He must have been a native speaker since before. It occurs to me that apart from the story of his daughter and that he trains in a doj
o, I don’t know shit about him. A little old lady answers him.

  -We’re not expecting anything.

  -Not you, little mother, the kid upstairs, William Cheng Smythe. Computer parts. But there’s no way up.

  -Where’s the regular guy?

  -The flu. I’m covering for him.

  The little old lady makes a small huff.

  -You don’t look like a delivery man.

  -And he didn’t look like he could top my three queens but here we are. Can you help me or not? Please? I don’t want to carry it back and forward.

  She turns and shouts something into the kitchen. I can’t hear, it’s too muffled. My heart jumps as I realize that if they demand to check the box, we’re fucked. After three minutes she returns her attention to Teeth.

  -Elevator’s over there, next to the toilet. The sign says “Staff only”.

  -Thank you so much.

  -Buddha says the man who gets a tip should leave a tip.

  The sound of Teeth dropping a cred chit into a bowl or something is followed by a politeness from the little slightly richer lady.

  The elevator takes its sweet time and I have to wait even more. As it stops and the door of it swings open, Teeth carries the box gingerly, like there’s crap on the floor up here, and then I hear him pressing a button. A somewhat mechanical voice speaks.

  -WHO IS IT?

  -Delivery from Copu Copu.

  he answers, like we agreed, mostly because it’s the only firm I remember off the kid’s list of shopping sites.

  -I HAVENT ORDERED ANYTHING FROM THEM IN FOUR MONTHS.

  the reply comes after a while.

  -Note says “Loyalty bonus package”.

  Man, Teeth really can think on his feet. If I wasn’t so busy feeling the full impact of my knees killing me by now, I’d be really impressed at this point. A few metallic clicks later, a door swings open. Teeth carries me into what seems to be an apartment that’s almost as cool as a fridge and puts me down. As he passes my box to ask for “thumb signature” I try to pop from the box in a surprise move but it’s more of a pain ridden unfolding of limbs and a loud curse. As I look around, Teeth has already pointed a huge gun at the bed where the kid I now have traced is lying. The small studio apartment is full of computers of various kinds, I count over twenty screens and an H model in a nurse uniform of an older model is standing on its charger. In this case, it’s not a luxury. He probably depends on it to survive.