Revenge for Lychee

by Aies Jay

  -How is he? Straight up.

  The doc shakes his head a little.

  -He should be at least conscious by now. From the looks of it they shot him up with that boosted rejection enhancer, too. Fortunately his wiring was mostly neuro polish and muscle routers, no brain ware, his teeth good bioware. I’ve taken it all out but his body was in very poor condition even before this, and there were serious damages done to him with the katana, a severe trauma to the head and he lost an awful lot of blood. I didn’t even think he was going to make it to the clinic, he was bleeding so much.

  -Will he make it?

  Seizer starts pawing at his pockets, takes out a pack of proper tobacco cigarettes and just holds it.

  -I don’t know.

  The answer ails him. Maybe he’s not used to losing his patients. I swallow and nod, squeezing Teeth’s shoulder gently.

  -Don’t worry. I’ll get them. For this, and for our children.

  I almost saw his eyelids move. Nicla touches my arm and I lay my hand over hers.

  -We’re in a hurry. Do you have a plan?

  I nod.

  -Yes, I do. I need to get to a Gate and then I find the President. If DF is still alive, I’m not bothering him anymore. He may have changed his Avatar again for good measure anyway, I couldn’t find him when I peeked.

  -Where are we going? You can’t use your Gate at home.

  -I know this great little place around the corner.

  I look at her and somehow, as I look into her grey eyes, I can muster a smile. Did the doc call her Geisha back there? I touch her cheek for once and she leans her face into the caress.

  -Who are you?

  She smiles back at me.

  -”My world is my own”.

  For a moment we just stand there. But just for a moment. We have no more and we get no more. Sometimes you have to be grateful for that little grace.

  pod

  I enter the Spot I used to love like a second home with my heart in my throat. It was more than ten years since I came here and I’m expecting all stares and frowns as I walk in. That’s not what I get, though. The place looks almost the same, a pleasant moss green on the walls has replaced the dark blue, and in the far end, the colour fades to the old one, ending up in a brilliant sky full of stars. There are nineteen pods in here, it used to be twenty-five, but only five of them are occupied. I walk up to the bar-like welcome desk to my immediate right with Nicla behind me, still holding my hand, squeezing it gently.

  -Maybe you should wait with jacking up. You’re right out of surgery.

  -Don’t be such a nurse. And I can’t wait, you know that. Hi, I’d like a pod, please?

  The brand new H8 model behind the desk smiles pleasantly at me. She’s dressed up like a butler and the smooth language of the finest of updates falls from her lips as a wisp of blonde, wavy hair escapes her bob haircut and pokes at her cheek.

  -Of course. And for the lady?

  -I’ll just have a green tea with a slice of cheesecake and a table by the window.

  -Certainly. Cred chit, please.

  She gestures her gloved hand to the unit on the bar and Nicla sticks in a cred chit I recognize from my shelf back in my now probably ruined home. It’s one of the fatter ones. She must have grabbed it when she found me on the floor, dying. Clever girl or devious woman, she’s giving it to me as she pulls it out after paying. I smile at her.

  -Just keep my tab running. I don’t know how long this will take.

  The H model smiles again.

  -Number four is free.

  -Thank you.

  -And thank you. Welcome back, Lionfish.

  I jerk my head up at the H model. For a moment without thinking of it I scan her. She has the same movements as the other H model they had when I used to be a regular. She tips her head at me.

  -The shell is new but the software has been fully transferred from the old body.

  I grin crookedly.

  -Nausicaä?

  She nods.

  -Indeed.

  -Good to be back.

  Nausicaä gestures gracefully at me to go inside and leads first Nicla to the tables by the frosted window. The chairs are in the same moss green colour as the walls and the tables are wicker with a glass top. Nicla squeezes my hand one last time before sitting down, saying

  -Just be careful, okay?

  I nod at her and then follow Nausicaä. Pod number four is my old favourite and its dark tinted front shield is open, waiting for me. Its exterior of looking like a huge pale white space egg is still pretty to me after all this time even if there are some new scratches and dents. The seat looks new and the machinery looks polished but other than that, it’s like meeting and old friend. I slip inside, make a note of that my body has grown since last time, and get comfortable.

  -If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.

  the H model says and I’m eager to get started so for an answer I just exhale, nodding. The pod shell ceiling closes around me, soundproofing my environment, and I slowly peel off the bandage behind my ear to get to my first jack.

  -Swimming time.

  My voice doesn’t really echo in here but it sure as hell feels like it. The skin under the bandage feels raw and I’m actually feeling just a twinge of pain as I touch it. I don’t really feel a jack there, just a weird wound. If I didn’t trust the doc completely I would have thought he tricked me. I reach for the cord and almost scream as I do.

  -What the hell?!

  Did I see that? Did I really fucking see that? It twitched as I reached for it. The cord and the jack, both. At the same time. It felt like the jack was opening up for the connection and the cord fucking moved to reach for my hand. I shake my head.

  -It’s the drugs. I’m hallucinating.

  I grab the cord and slowly put it towards the jack. It feels like holding a living, warm thing, like an eel or a snake. It hurts like hell when it hits the jack and I connect, not only because I’m sticking a piece of metal into a wound, but because it feels like it jumped in there faster than I intended it and the jack bit down around it. I have no time for reflection. The sensations waiting for me are too powerful. My screens, the shield and my very eyes light up and I can see a tidal wave, rising and coming at me, just waiting for me to make the last hook up.

  -Oh, mother of all Systems…

  It’s like an ocean wall, streaming and coursing in front of me, waiting for me. I swallow and as I reach for the keyboard I realize I don’t need it. As my fingers reach out with intention, I get a small keyboard icon down to my far right in my vision and as I tap my fingers in the air the screens fill up

  DOT

  DOT/

  DOT />>

  NO GATE FOUND

  DOT///>PROCESSING///CONNECTING

  I swallow. The doc never touched my fingers. This is, literally, all in my head. My mind is creating a keyboard and the muscle memory’s information to my brain of the fingers moving is enough. I’m typing in mid-air, all intention and not so much exact movements and the position of what could be an actual keyboard, matters.

  DOT/

  DOT />>

  GATE FOUND//UPDATING ACESS//APPLYING PATCH

  DOT///>PROCESSING///CONNECTING

  The waves get restless in front of me as the uploading bars run across the screens.

 
  SYSTEM: BRAINWORM

  USERNAME: LIONFISH

  WELCOME HOME

  The ocean washes over me, lifts me up and roars its song in my ears. I’m not even overwhelmed, I feel like a fish that’s been returned to water and I don my Avatar like flicking hair out of my face. My surroundings become alive and I can see 360 degrees around me, including above and below. I can hear, see and touch the information around me in the System, I can almost fucking taste it! There is a difference when hooking up, a big difference. The other entering of the System was like sitting by a pond, fishing into it and overlooking it, now I’m inside it, or like the difference between sitti
ng in a shuttle, flying over a city, to actually be running through it, in the streets, smelling it, hearing it all, discerning the details of it all.

  -Thank! You! Babe!

  I shout out loud and ride the thrill of it, starting my search for 0v3rl0rd. I’m making a search pattern spyglass to look through, turning the world in the System temporarily grey. If the 0v3rl0rd can be found, any traces of him will light up in my spyglass. It’s beyond tempting to diverge from the search, everything in here is so vivid and beautiful, I see so much information to be had and I get goose bumps from the thought of how programming is going to be for me now. I concentrate and look more carefully, extending my search to overlord, 0verl0rd, 0v3rlord, 0verlord, ov3rlord and Overlord or anything containing those combination letters and numbers. The place lights up like a commercial neon sign billboard, almost blinding me.

  -Whoah…! Back up, back up.

  I change it to the correct combinations available, including the backwards combos. A few meagre lights come up but it’s only traces, not actual prints.

  -Of course he cleans up his tracks.

  I mutter and decide to change technique. I go to my Domain and almost gasp when I look at it. Hooked up by the Wire, it looks more beautiful than ever. It’s my digital paradise, my Eden, with all I ever had and loved in brilliant colours, surrounding me in full dimensions, all the way around me.

  -Welcome home indeed.

  I take just a moment to appreciate it all and then go to work. I start by making an info bot but change the concept. It’s no longer an info bot, it’s like a little mail, only there’s no info in it, just the search word 0v3rl0rd. I change the looks of them too. Now it’s a miniature lionfish, and the one who catches them and tries to open them with the code 0v3rl0rd will succeed, and as they do, the little fish caught will say that one word back and then pop. I encrypt them hard as hell to make sure no other command can get them open, and more than two tries will make them pop and vanish. When I’m satisfied I copy it up a hundred times and then I start giving them directions of where to go. I send them to Portals that are S2 based, to where I found traces of him and sites that are most visited by citizens of this fair liner. As I release them it looks like a school of mini lionfish, swarming their way into the System sea, and vanishing by scattering into the spots they are meant to go. I lean my head back. My neck feels odd. I physically reach back there and swallow when I realize what’s off. Shit on a keyboard. There are two more jacks in the back of my neck that’s connected with cords. I didn’t do that. Or at least not consciously. I touch them carefully and deduct that the cords have slipped in under the bandages that are still attached to my skin before hooking up to the jack.

  -Did I do that or what the fuck is happening to me…?

  I withdraw to my Domain and start a self-scan, checking over my ware. It goes fairly quickly and I read it faster than I should, like the information displayed is somehow incorporated in my mind as soon as I access it, like I’d become aware of the full contents of a document just by opening it. I find all the things the doc mentioned he’d stick in, neural openings along the spine like jacks from the fourth vertebra in my neck ranging to my first lumbar, no less than sixteen of them, eight on either side of my spinal column. Neatly tucked inside my medulla oblongata I find the main control, like a Gate made out of full bioware and that is a meat computer, or more like a computer made out of nerve material, if I’m being unclear on how awesome that is. The triple polish on my nerves in my arms and legs are like a parenthesis but man, he’s literally made a near paraplegic into a walking man. The bio cameras he stitched to my optical nerve I’ve already noticed, but the scanners and auto focus and playback function I wasn’t aware of. The function that makes me wonder is the one called “auto jack”. Is that what just happened? Or is that my ability to hook up to the System without actually hooking up? I open a mail to the doc and tap without touching the keyboard

  “everything working smoothly except for pain in the jacks when I hook up what the hell is an auto jack”

  when I suddenly get distracted by a light flashing in the pod. I switch on one IRL eye and check it, I’ve never even seen that before. It seems the light is flashing because someone outside of the pod wants to talk to me.

  -Oh, Nicla, not now…!

  I mutter but I suppose it’s important as hell so I carefully unhook, wincing. I don’t like unhooking at all. Apart from the pain it feels like leaving a hot bath or leaving a warm and snug bed for a cold and unfeeling world. It’s more than uncomfortable, it’s right down unpleasant and I don’t want to do it. Cringing I slowly click off and open the pod. The butler H model is standing by the pod as I open it, smiling apologetically.

  -I’m sorry to disturb you, but it seems you have a visitor of some importance.

  I turn around to check what she’s gesturing at. I make a double take. At first I just see a teenage girl, sixteen years old tops, wearing a French maid uniform, dark curls and big boobs, waiving at me and smiling with dimples showing. Then I see what she really is. She’s a fucking H model. If I hadn’t upgraded I’d never have noticed.

  -Holy fuck…!

  I get out of the pod, mumbling a “thank you Nausicaä” and walk up to the H model who starts talking to me in a very girly voice, bowing as she greets me, making her boobs bounce.

  -Konnichi wa, I’m Kawaii-chan. The Overlord has sent me to cordially invite you to an IRL meeting. Or like he said, “tell that little fish he’s on my hook and I’m reeling him in”. Don’t worry, he’s nice. And we have cookies!

  hail to the Chief

  I just stare at her, mouth hanging open, for a full five seconds before I clap my gob shut. I make a jerking bow and a mumbling “konnichi wa” back out of pure shock.

  -What are you…?

  She giggles.

  -A girl must be allowed some secrets, neh? Are you coming?

  -Of course I’m coming, give me a moment.

  As I walk towards Nicla I notice that the few people in here who aren’t in pods, two not counting me, aren’t staring at her any more than in the “wow, look at that cute thing” sense. They must think she’s human. Nicla is sleeping in the chair where I left her and a blanket has been laid on top of her. The tea and cheesecake has been consumed. She looks so innocent when she sleeps. For the second time outside of sex, I touch her cheek.

  -Nicla?

  She turns her head and blinks.

  -Hmm?

  -I, um… I’m going to see the President. Stay here or go to the doc, okay? Don’t be alone and such.

  She nods and closes her eyes again. I trot up to Nausicaä.

  -Let her sleep, okay? As long as she needs. And I was never her and nor is she.

  The H model behind the counter smiles and winks at me.

  -Don’t worry, Lionfish. You know this is a place where both secrets and hackers are safe.

  -Thank you.

  -My pleasure.

  With one last look on the sleeping Nicla, I turn to Kawaii-chan.

  -Let’s go.

  She grins and starts walking next to me toward the exit, out the door and on to the very, very unknown.

  Our walk takes us all the way to the front Atrium, first level. It’s a long walk and I have ample time to look at my guide and be generally paranoid over getting shot. Kawaii-chan takes us on small and busy streets, only stopping to wave enthusiastically at people waving at her first. She’s adorable, in all senses. I pass a few streets I’ve never even been to under her guidance and a roar from my stomach as we pass a hole in the wall is hard to ignore. I have absolutely no clue as of when I last had solid food.

  -Do we have time to stop to eat?

  She holds up an index finger, wagging it at me.

  -No, no, no. Overlord said to come right back.

  My stomach grumbles again but the little H model just smiles, all sunshine and sweets.

  -I’m sure the Overlord will offer you food. He’s a very gracious host.

  -I frigging hop
e so.

  I mutter, leaving the smells of Heaven behind, following her. As we get to the gates that open up into the huge space craft hangar where the ships still get attached to the sides of the station, looking like old fashioned zero G style but actually just by very strong grippers, she takes a left to a Guard and Guide Station. It’s an old and in many ways outdated machine but for some reason still in use. It looks that way too, almost dusty, abandoned and unmanned, looking like a soda vending machine without the sodas. There’s a screen and a couple of buttons to push, but all it does is hand out maps or call security. Good for a newcomer, useless for a local. Needless to say, I’ve never used it. Next to it is a huge gumball machine that takes tokens. The token machine is standing next to it and I remember a few times I’ve actually had one of those bubble gums. They’re huge, almost like gob stoppers, but they’re really good. They cost the equivalent of ten creds, though, and the hassle of getting the tokens through the other machine first just isn’t worth it. There are plenty of candy stores on S2. A bunch of people, all looking like weary and worn travellers, are milling out from the gates of the hangar as we walk up to the bubble gum vendor. A few stop to point at the Guide and Guard but all of them roll on to either a restaurant or the huge map screen to the right of the gate, looking at it with their eyes growing large. I have vague memories of a space journey in my childhood, my only real proof that I wasn’t born here. My very first memories are not of S2, it’s from the space journey here, and it’s some of the few memories I have that are really lucid. I remember my mother complaining about the prepacked six layer plastic foods that were repacked and transported until they tasted nothing and my dad holding me up to a window so I could see the stars. I swallow back the memories. This is not the time for sentimentality but I can’t help but to think that once upon a time, we came here, the three of us, just like these people, off a space craft to the station liner that would be our home and our tomb. Kawaii-chan take out a token for the bubble gum machine and my thoughts are distracted from an obvious fact. Her token doesn’t look like the ones I’ve used. The ones I used were silver, with a S2 logo on one side and a deep groove on the other side, which is the reason tourists usually keep them as souvenirs. Hers is gold and instead of a single, deep groove, there’s an intrinsic pattern that looks way too complicated to copy.