2xs

by Nigel Findley

  It was Jocasta who opened up first, despite my readiness. Her small Colt spat once, and the bike's headlight exploded. Exceptional shot, or else extremely lucky. Either way I wasn't going to argue. Through the swimming red afterimages, I could see him silhouetted against the lights outside the alleyway. I put my sighting dot on his chest, a head shot being way too uncertain right now, and squeezed the trigger six times, maybe seven. The big gun clicked empty.

  Jocasta was blazing away, too, but she was using the trick the movie cowboys never figured out: she aimed for the horse. Her rounds smashed sparks from the bodywork of the bike, slammed into the gas tank.

  Something burst into flame. Elf and bike parted company. He skidded, flopped bonelessly into the alley wall, struck Jocasta's dumpster with a meaty thud.

  Jocasta got the elf. I got the bike. Flaming and kicking up sparks, it slammed into my dumpster. Laws of inertia being what they were, that kicked the wheeled container back my way, and the metal smashed into my shoulder. I did half of a half-gainer and landed on my head. For the next few moments I did what one normally does in such a situation: I went "dun" and watched the pretty lights.

  A shrill squeal penetrated what was left of consciousness, that and Joscasta calling my name. I forced mysel to my knees, which was as far as I could get. She grabbed my arm-now I knew how irritating that was-and half dragged me to my feet. I swayed there for a second, then shook my head to clear it. It hurt like hell, but it did bring back some clarity.

  The squeal was still in my ears, surprising, since I'd figured it was an artifact of my occipital impact. I looked around for the source.

  It was the elf. For a horrid moment I thought he was screaming, lying there with his broken back, but then realization dawned. It was his bracelet. No wonder it had looked familiar: I'd seen something like it in my Lone Star training, although I'd never had one. It was one of the life-function monitors that DocWagon issues to its Super-Platinum clients. As soon as something critical goes wrong with the client-and I guess a broken back fits that category-the monitor immediately calls a roving DocWagon team, all the while letting forth a teeth-hurting scream to let everyone know that someone's gone down. My shock-numbed cranium chewed on that for a moment. Super-Platinum service runs seventy-five-K per year. Serious nuyen, and not a sum you'd expect a go-ganger-even the gang boss-to be good for. And DocWagon is very careful with their credit checks.

  Well, worry about it later. Jocasta was tugging on my arm, making let's-get-out-of-here noises.

  Seemed like a good idea. I broke into a shambling run, and we got out of there.

  We stuck to the alleyways, cutting across Pine Street. We'd just hit Pike, another block on, when we heard the siren, and ducked back into the shadows. It was an emergency-response team vehicle, like I'd expected, sirens and warning strobes working overtime. Surprise, surprise, it was Crashcart, not DocWagon. I watched around the corner as the van hung a screeching left onto Fifth and roared out of sight. Curiouser and curiouser.

  Chapter 8.

  After flagging down one of the new autocabs, we were heading back toward Bellevue. Jocasta had jammed a credstick- not a personalized one-into the foul machine's maw, and pointed out our destination on the touchscreen. Then she'd settled back into the seat and withdrawn from further intercourse with anything, flesh or otherwise. From the set of her jawline, I could tell she had "a good mad on," as my old chummer Patrick Bambra would have put it.

  It wasn't a normal anger, though. That I could tell. It had an edgy, unstable feel to it, almost like her brain was using the anger to keep itself from thinking about what we'd just been through. I could understand the attraction of that. Frag, I kind of wished for a similar defense mechanism. We were approaching the bridge across Lake Washington when I saw the shakes start, saw her lips press together so hard they almost disappeared. The trauma was starting to burn through the façade of anger. No matter how hard her subconscious tried to keep a lid on it, her forebrain wasn't going to be able to hold back the nasties too much longer.

  I could justify it as a therapeutic move, helping her maintain the defense mechanism she was choosing to hold herself together. In reality, of course, I did it for the entirely selfish reason that I didn't want to be in a closed cab with Jocasta when she fell apart. I said something I figured would re-ignite the anger in full force. "We were set up," I remarked.

  She picked up on it immediately and turned on me, eyes flashing. "You fragged up," she spat out. "It might not have been a set-up if we'd played it straight." I started to say something, but she cut me off. "I'm not finished. If I'd called, the way I was supposed to, I might have got another location for a meet. A safe meet." I got three words in: "But the bikers-" And she was off again. "They were there to protect the contact, in case we did something drekheaded like track the phone number. If we'd played it straight, we'd never have met the fragging bikers."

  "You don't know that," I protested.

  "I know that we hosed the meet," she shot back, "and I know we've lost the contact. He's not going to trust me twice." And that was all she said, on that subject or any other.

  She was still blazing mad-the shaking of fear overpowered by the trembling of anger-when she bailed out in Beaux Arts. I redirected the cab toward Purity, and immediately began to feel like a piece of drek for letting her go like that. I looked out the rear window, but she was already out of sight. The sullen clouds started to rain about then, which suited my mood perfectly.

  I slept late the next morning, Saturday, November 23, and the denizens of Purity were already about the business of stealing lunch by the time I rejoined the world. The bruises on my elbow, back, shoulder, and head-caused, respectively, by impacts from bullet, bullet, dumpster, and alley-were turning all the colors of the rainbow, and I felt like an old, old man. I considered calling Jocasta to apologize for last night, but realized I didn't have her number.

  I was putting together the day's first pot of soykaf when the telecom beeped. Seeing the grinning face of Bent Sigurdsen, I cut in my video pickup.

  His grin faded somewhat when he saw me. "Hoi, Dirk," he said, a tinge of concern in his voice. "Are you okay, chummer?"

  I ran a hand through my hair, more out of form than any belief it would actually help, and shrugged.

  "How could anybody not be on such a fine November morning?"

  "Afternoon," he corrected me.

  "Whatever. Got something for me?"

  He nodded. "What do you know about 2XS?"

  "To excess?"

  "Uh-uh," he corrected me. "Digit and letters: Two X-ray Sierra. Do you know anything about it?"

  I shook my head. "Never even heard of it."

  Bent scowled, an expression for which his face is ill- suited. "I wish I could say the same," he said sadly. "It's a real scourge on the street at the moment. Lone Star, even the FBI, are turning the heat up as high as it'll go to stamp it out or just to get a line on where it's coming from. I shouldn't be telling you this, but the story is 'no joy' from all over. Nobody seems able to touch it."

  I nodded sagely. "And just what is 2XS?"

  "It's a chip," he said, obviously keeping it brief. "A new chip."

  "Just a chip?"

  He sighed. "A chip, like simsense is a chip and BTL is a chip. Okay?"

  I chafed a little under his keep-the-words-short-for-the-moron approach, but nodded. "Okay."

  "Think of the difference between a simsense and a BTL chip. Simsense gives you the movie, but with all five senses instead of just two. BTL gives you the same, but pushes the sensory signal to the red line."

  He paused to see if I was following. "Now take a BTL chip-"

  "Okay, okay," I put in. "I scan it."

  "Well, 2XS is the next step. Like BTL, but it hits you at the physiological level as well: adrenalin, endorphins, everything. Apparently, a user feels like he can rule the world while he's running it. But it works at such a basic level that you can't run it on standard simsense gear. You've got to feed it right
into a datajack, so it hits the brain directly."

  "And of course it's addictive as all hell." He nodded. "Of course. Physically addictive and psychologically habituating. One touch of it, and you never want anything else."

  "And of course it degrades, so it's fragged after you've slotted it a couple of times?"

  "Yeah," Bent confirmed. "It's nasty."

  "Yeah," I echoed. It sounded nasty. BTL chips-

  "Better Than Life"-were bad enough. Unlike normal simsense, BTL chips had no governor, no limitation on the intensity of the sensory record. When you slot a BTL chip, you feel and experience exactly what the person who recorded the chip was feeling and experiencing, just as if it was all happening to you.

  Everything and any- thing: orgasm, life-risk, fear, exaltation, even-for that once-in-a-lifetime thrill-death agony. While the chip's feeding the sensory data into your brain, you are the subject of the recording.

  Which is plenty wild enough to wreck the sanity of regular users. (I recalled the punk kid who'd taken a potshot at me just hours before Jocasta showed up in my life. He'd probably slotted a BTL chip that put him into the mind of a sniper so many times that he'd finally decided he was the sniper.) But at least BTL chips don't have a direct effect on the body. Sure, you get somebody scared, and adrenalin pumps into his body. But stuff like endorphins and the natural "energizers" that allow forty-kilo mothers to lift cars off their infants don't get triggered by BTLs. (Otherwise the weird cobber "auditing" the death experience on BTL would kick off for real.) According to what Bent was telling me, that limitation did not apply to 2XS. Scary.

  Scary as hell.

  My disturbing thoughts must have shown in my expression. Bent's face was equally serious. "There's more. It also seems to be very debilitating, even over the short term."

  "I guess it would be," I said, thinking out loud. "You take a car engine and rev it from dead-stop to redline, just like that"-I snapped my fingers-"Do that a couple of times, it'll be kind of debilitating to the engine."

  A smile appeared briefly on Bent's face. "That's a good analogy. Would you mind if I used it?" I waved that off.

  "Please keep all this to yourself," he said. "I'll be in deep drek if it gets around I told you."

  I raised an eyebrow. "Why? Isn't this common knowledge?"

  He snorted. "Not hardly. This comes from Lone Star Secured data files."

  LSS, that twigged a memory. "Mi Long?" I asked.

  "Of course," he said. "You asked me to look into it."

  "This was all in that secured file?" Bent looked uncomfortable. "Nooo. That file led me to some others . . ."

  "Which were also secured," I finished. "Null perspiration, Bent chummer. Locked and encrypted. Nobody learns it from me."

  I paused. "So what you're telling me is.. ." I let it trail off.

  Bent nodded firmly. "Mi Long was addicted to 2XS," he confirmed. "She died from it."

  A rough week on blondes.

  I had no reason to stall any longer, so I followed through on the conditions of my employment concerning Long, Mi Carole (deceased). Going through standard channels, I electronically claimed the body, using the employment and personal data my Chicago-based Mr. Johnson had given me. Then I arranged for Mi's mortal remains to be shipped back to the welcoming arms of her former corporate home.

  To spare my own feelings, I struggled to blot out the human dimension, concentrating on my task as merely a shipping transaction. Null program, of course. Mi's holo was still in my wallet, and I didn't want to take it out to destroy it because then I'd have to look at it. The question that kept running through my head was whether she'd gotten into 2XS chips before or after hitting Seattle. Sometimes I really enjoy my chosen career, this was not one of those times.

  I'd just blanked the screen and sat back to rest when the telecom beeped again. Frag it. I wanted to go back to bed, but it could be something important. Jocasta, maybe?

  I hit the key to answer the incoming call, but the screen stayed blank. Okay, two could play voice-only, I didn't cut in my video. "Yeah?" I said.

  "Is that you, Derek old son?" The voice was musical, somewhat high-pitched though definitely male, and brought to mind smiling Irish eyes.

  I couldn't help but grin. "Patrick, you fragging reprobate," I roared. "Keep your hands off my daughter!" It took him a moment, then he came back, his voice reason itself, "Ah, but Derek, you know I wouldn't be messing about with your daughter, seeing as how I'm sleeping with your mother." He laughed then. "It's a pleasure to be hearing your voice, boyo," he went on. "Humor has been sadly lacking in my life for the past days."

  "Oh? Is that why I don't get to see your face?"

  "One of the patrons of this fine establishment seems to have taken a bite out of the video pickup." The humor faded from his voice. "I'm in trouble, Derek. I need to talk it out with someone."

  "So I got the short straw?" He was silent for long enough that I wondered if he'd been cut off. Then he said quietly, "No, it's not like that, not like that at all. You're better at all this than I am, Derek." I heard a grim chuckle. "I think you're what I want to be when I grow up, if you didn't frighten me a little."

  I sighed. Melodramatic, but that was Patrick. "What's going down?" I asked.

  "Not over this contraption," he said quickly. "Meet me."

  "Why?"

  "I can't," he said. And for the first time I could hear what was behind his façade of humor: a healthy dose of fear. "I'm at a place called Superdad's, if you can believe it. It's in Kingsgate."

  "I know it," I said. "I can be there tonight, call it twenty-"

  "No," he almost shouted, then more calmly, "No. Can you make it sooner? Now?"

  I sighed again. I had enough on my mind already without worrying about pulling Patrick's fat out of another fire. But, frag it, he was a friend, and I wasn't quite cynical enough to write off friendship. Not yet, at least. "Okay," I conceded. "Give me an hour." And I broke the connection before he could thank me.

  I sat back in my chair, considered what was left of the bottle of synth-scotch-the sun was, after all, over the yardarm somewhere-but discarded the concept. I guess the thought of diving into a bottle to hide had been prompted by hearing from Patrick.

  Patrick Bambra has that effect on a lot of people: he drives them to drink, then keeps them company.

  It had been a while since we'd been in touch. The last time we'd talked was some months after I'd bailed out of Lone Star, when he called me, all in a lather, asking me to talk some rather large "debt-management consultants" out of remodeling the architecture of his knee joints. It sounded like something similar had happened again.

  Which didn't surprise me one iota. Patrick's comment about wanting to be me when he grew up had a germ of truth to it. After he'd been flushed from Lone Star training, he'd rattled around for almost a year, doing odd jobs here and there. Then I quit and went into the investigation racket. Almost immediately, the way I heard it, Patrick decided that was the career for him. So, in a back-door kind of way, I felt responsible for him. Just what I needed right now.

  Kingsgate is one of the less appetizing areas of the Redmond Barrens, and that's saying something. It's just east of Highway 405, opposite the Juanita district of Bellevue, and to say it's seen better days is a cosmic understatement. Soon after the turn of the century, before Seattle really began to fall apart, Kingsgate was being touted as "the next Bellevue." Developers expected the high-tech businesses that were taking up residence in Bellevue to leak across 405 into Kingsgate, bringing their money with them. It seemed to be working for a few years, then something went very wrong. The successful tenants started pulling out of the flashy industrial parks and downtown-style office buildings, and their less-successful competition couldn't afford the astronomical rentals. If the building owners had reacted by dropping their rates, they might have pulled it out. But they hung tough, expecting things to turn around.

  Things never did, of course. Commercial vacancy rates spiraled up, income for
the property-owners dropped. People defaulted on loans, and the banks ended up with vacant buildings they didn't know what to do with. There was some brief hope that the rest of Redmond would somehow be able to pull Kingsgate out of the drek, but of course Kingsgate was an omen of what was in store for the rest of the area.

  And that's how the Kingsgate of today came into existence. Lots of flashy office buildings, empty except for squatters and other unofficial residents. Overgrown industrial parks that all too often serve as battlegrounds for rival go-gangs. Though the rest of the Barrens area slid rather quickly down into oblivion and chaos, remember that Kingsgate did it first and did it best.

  Superdad's was a sleazy dive located on the ground floor of what used to be the Seattle Silicon building, with a sputtering neon sign outside advertising GI LS-LIVE G RLS. I pushed open the door and walked into the relative darkness. Rhythmic music pulsed from cheap speakers, but it was almost drowned out by the sound of a trideo tuned to the sports network. My nose was assaulted by the reek of stale beer and other, even more unpleasant odors. In a moment my eyes had adapted to the lighting, or lack thereof, and I looked around the place.

  The room wasn't large for a watering hole, maybe twenty meters square. Dominating the place was a large U-shaped bar, manned by a scrawny young kid who looked chipped so high he almost vibrated.

  Behind the bar was the stage, where a massively endowed teen-age ork danced topless. I watched her for a moment, somewhat impressed by her skill: it's tough to dance as completely and consistently off the beat as she did. Her eyes were rolled up so only the red-shot whites showed, and she seemed to be totally oblivious to her surroundings, dancing for herself alone.

  Which was just as well, because nobody was paying her the slightest attention. Two burly orks sat at the bar, one watching the Urban Brawl game on the trideo mounted over the stage. The other had his face planted on the dirty bar-top and was blowing bubbles in a puddle of spilled beer. The only two other patrons were at a table as far as possible from the stage, lean and mean street weasels engaged in an intense business discussion. I guess the lunchtime trade wasn't what kept Superdad's going.