by Russ Linton
The online world I used to know was an entire ecosystem. Eric once described the deep web as the Marianas Trench—a primordial place where the vast quantity of ocean and sand rests undisturbed by humanity. Yet life percolates from those depths. Bizarre extremophiles cluster around vents of pure energy and sustenance. Their shit feeds ever larger critters, on up into the food chain. Compared to the surface, their dominion is vast. All-encompassing. It’s likely we'll never fully understand how one affects the other.
FreedomNet, on the other hand, is a homogeneous, controlled wasteland. Narrowly defined parameters provide regulated services, limited connectivity, and approved information. But it isn't alive. It's as vacuous as space, as the empty reaches between planets. An existential horror for the geekily inclined.
And everywhere I look, Eric's OneNet is knocking on the door, threatening a terraform.
These aren't just stateside attempts to open a suspicious portal. Chroma's there too. I can see her fingerprints exactly as I envisioned them in my jailhouse epiphany. She's picking her way through the state-approved firewall one port at a time like a bored kid flicking Legos. She's in no hurry. My guess, the two of them are on their honeymoon in Europe and Asia, consolidating the functioning networks there. America has become a third world destination.
Eric. I'll decide how I feel about him later, but Chroma is a threat. Like all the rest of those high-powered Augments, she's caused nothing but trouble. I never should've backed down like Eric asked in Detroit. I should have dealt with her then.
Sleep? Shower? Naw, who needs that noise. I'm gonna funk this room up coder style while I implement my shitbrick madness on a real computer.
CHAPTER 8
FIVE A.M. ROLLS AROUND almost unexpectedly. I'm buried in code, schematics, and open browser windows. The uselessness which is FreedomNet has repeatedly made me question why I'm bothering to do this. So much information has been made unavailable, I've had to recreate scripts and tools which are usually a mouse click or command line entry away.
My ability to sleep has been garbage since the bunker days. Every so often in my college dorm, I could lay down, close my eyes, and feel the odd sensation of a circuit being opened in my skull, lights shutting off. I'd drift to sleep then. That psychosomatic click became a comfort. Just as often though, I'd doze off in class or at the library, leaving a drool stain on open pages.
I used to blame my insomnia on Charlotte. When an out of control Augment invades your slumber and wrecks a childhood fantasy along with your family, dreamland loses the restful connotations. But even now, when I want a psychic phone call, good shut-eye doesn't happen. My stint in jail didn't help the condition.
Tonight, or today, whatever, I've made good use of my latest disorder turned super power.
Xamse never gave me access to his networks. No matter, 'cause I've found several entry points by looping back through FreedomNet. Those points exist because he's currently providing the backbone for this government venture. Whether he's aware or not, Charlotte knows exactly where these same routers and switches are too.
She's continued to probe the edges. At any time, she could overwhelm his defenses. She hasn't though. I get to watch every little trick she can perform as she impatiently stands at his gateway. Add that to what I already knew from the Cyberwar, and she's been pwned.
The lock on my door slides and clicks. Glaring white from the hallway drowns out my screen. I don't bother turning around to see who it is. Ayana already wordlessly brought dinner last night.
"Not even going to try to hide what you're up to?" she asks.
I shrug. "You and Xamse have been watching the whole time. Since you haven't cut the power to my room, then you know what I'm doing and want to see it done." I turn and squint. "Could you close the door?"
Instead, she turns on the lights. I cringe, vampirically.
"Breakfast," she announces as she crosses the room. She drops the tray on top of my magic desk. Plates rattle. Characters spray across the command line before the keyboard winks out.
Today, Ayana has on a strictly paramilitary ensemble. I think they call this Office Assault Casual. Prior to the countrywide blackout, if you saw an employee in your office wearing fatigues, a bandolier of ammo, a combat knife, and a pistol, you directed your thoughts and prayers toward the hope they were one of those good guys with guns. With society on the brink of collapse, my guess is those types have become common around the watercoolers—and equally impossible to tell apart.
"Any coffee?" I ask. Emily almost got me hooked on the stuff while working in her lab. Not normally my thing, but I'll take my caffeine however I can get it.
"Juice," Ayana mutters. Her focus is on the mess of open consoles and browser windows.
I take a sip and nearly spray the contents. Grapefruit. Was not expecting that. Ayana ignores my struggle to avoid texturing the monitor with pulp. I set the glass aside and notice a bottle of pills on the tray.
"Why?" I ask, reaching for the pills, my face twisted.
"Grapefruit juice. Xamse finds the taste invigorating."
A bit of a sympathy pucker forms on her own face. At least we agree on one thing. "No. The pills." I pluck the bottle off the tray and give it a good shake.
"For sleep. Xamse expressed a misguided admiration," she stumbles over the word as if she's reluctant to use it in my proximity, "over your work ethic, but he has concerns for your wellbeing."
I can't help but laugh. This must be a bottle of rat poison. Or some sort of mind control drug. Maybe an allergen which would swell my tongue making speech impossible, so I'll be a quiet little minion.
"No chance," I say and go to poking at the fancy looking plate of eggs and fruit. "Any chance to get some bacon up in this?"
Her eyes don't leave my bash script treatise. "Fresh produce is a luxury," she mutters toward the screen. "Eat it."
My normal reaction to authoritah is to bristle, but arguments can wait. Forkful after forkful goes down with barely restrained moans. I occasionally had fruit in jail, or was that the GMU cafeteria? It always came out of a can and was usually the wrong color.
"Show some respect," she says, her gaze scanning my code, "and you could go far here."
"Go far, huh?" I manage to ask through a buttery mouthful of eggs. "Exactly how much further down does the elevator go?"
"Joke all you want, but Xamse is a true leader." She's finally pulled away from the screen long enough to acknowledge my existence.
"Yep, a real prince," I say.
Now I have her full attention. The gleam in her eye isn't a fiery I-will-hurt-you look which I am ace at earning. No, this is a look of true admiration and respect for the subject of her coming dissertation.
"You don't understand. How would you? He is a king in your country. A king," she says, the fervor spreading to her voice. "When has that ever happened? For someone of his skin, his blood?"
"There's Matt Kemp." Her face becomes a tortured knot. "Braves? Dodgers? Guy got a serious payday, like 160 million, and then took a ride on the disabled list. Might've come back if it weren't for the apocalypse."
"What are you prattling about?"
"Braves outfielder. You know, baseball?"
Ah ha! There's the I-will-hurt-you look.
"Clowns and jesters," she snarls. "Xamse is an Emperor! Where the other corporate magnates have fallen due to their lack of foresight, their greed, he has risen. One hundred and sixty million dollars? Nanomech is worth one hundred times that."
"Like current dollars?" I ask, prodding the air with my fork to make the point.
"Forget dollars. Power. Fortune. He will be the next great leader of a rising nation." She's in her own world, no longer addressing her conscripted laborer. As the moment fades, she spares a hateful look as slender fingers tap on her holster. I keep working on breakfast.
Her sudden zeal can't be taken lightly. I mean, this young, powerless former lackey did have my own father by his Augmented balls. And without a doubt, he's got plans for w
orld domination or hostile takeovers, or at least securing unnecessary tax credits from the state of California. My goals are less ambitious: Survive. As in stop pissing off the gun-toting lady long enough to find the guy who killed my dad.
Eggs almost gone, Ayana hasn't stopped skimming code since her outburst.
"Not even going to ask what it is?"
"Come with me," she says. I shovel down the rest and wipe my hands over the plate. "And bring your dishes."
"No room service? I thought maybe you'd..." She locks eyes, and the rough slab of scar tissue rises to a craggy, venomous squint. Her hand wanders to the small canister she wears. Chalk it up to maturity, my true nemesis, I let this one go. "Dishes. Right."
Ayana leads to the elevator. When it arrives, I start to step on, but she blocks me with a stiff, forceful arm to the chest. She taps the edge of my plate with a finger. I eye her sideways while cautiously stooping to set the plate inside. Once deposited, she sends the elevator up to the ground floor.
"World's most secure dumbwaiter," I say.
She leads me down the featureless hall and toward the wooden office doors. I feel a surge of energy—that past-tired euphoria which can handicap a normal person's judgment and utterly erases mine.
"Let's get this over with."
I barge into Xamse's office before Ayana can lock me in a sleeper hold. Once more, I stumble in the face of unexpected changes. Half anticipating a flying elbow in the back and to be buffing the floor with my face, I partly register Xamse's presence and the signal for his guard dog to retreat. There's a soft click as the door closes.
The office has been graced with an aesthetic and not simply an empty void. The solid black walls? White, like the hallway, but with actual decorations. The side table with the insect chess board? Gone.
So much has changed, I'm not even sure this is the same room. None of the furniture is the same. My guess? It was incinerated somewhere along with the patch of flooring where Beetle bled out. Melted, cleaned, disinfected, and dumped in a desert five hundred miles away.
Then there's the alcove. I wonder. If I look closely, I can almost see a seam.
"Quite the bill, my friend," says Xamse. He's at his desk in his high-backed chair going over a stack of papers. "Lawyers. Who else charges for the paperclip, eh? So many things I learn."
He's partial to a more natural style than the former occupant. A desk of dark grained wood with an almost tan heart, it's the opposite of what I think it should be. His office chair looks comfortable, if ungodly ugly what with the baby poop yellow leather pin-cushioned with buttons. My chair? Well, he's taken a page from the former occupant's playbook. It's a fancy hunk of bare wood made to look sleek yet sit like a hemorrhoid.
Keep your guests uncomfortable. Maintain the edge.
But at least Xamse has tried to decorate. Colorful tapestries and rugs, along with an assortment of weapons and masks, adorn the walls. Then there's the giant wicker sculpture in the middle. Floor to ceiling, it could be an inverted tornado.
That alcove though. Bare. Unobstructed. Exactly as it was before, concealing the Black Beetle's armor. No matter how I try to play it off, he can sense my hunger.
I sit.
We talk.
He offers the battle armor. The Black Beetle. No need for me to spend the next six months licking his boots or hacking past all the bullshit security he's erected. I accept.
CLOSING XAMSE'S OFFICE doors behind me, I'm greeted by my favorite person. Ayana Talksalot gestures down the corridor toward my room. We pass Xamse's office and stop beside one of the doors—the one with a small glass window. After another retinal and fingerprint scan, she pops open the door. Beyond is a claustrophobic room lit by a tiny window opposite us and the glow of another bank of security measures.
My thoughts go to the Whispering Pines killbox. This one more resembles an actual box; a coffin-sized five by five room. A moment of panic strikes as the door closes. My escort doesn't appreciate the hesitation. She marches me to the center of the room and heads for the next round of security measures. I creep close behind her while she steadies herself for the retinal scan. That way she's subject to whatever slaughter pen action goes down.
Fingerprint and retina scan complete, she flinches when she finds me hovering off her shoulder. The scowl returns. I'm practically carried through the next door.
"You need to lay off the grapefruit juice," I say.
Another rough shove. I stumble into a slack-jawed slump as the main lights wink on. Tall ceilings make this room feel cavernous despite the tight perimeter. Testing equipment I'd expect in a high-tech computer research facility and some of which I've seen in the bio lab at GMU nests in the open spaces. Micro-spectroscopes, cell manipulation tech, and pathology equipment likely used by Drake in his nanotechnology research fill each station. He's even got his own electron microscope in an adjoining glass room. High capacity vents grid the ceiling probably to flush out heat or toxins, maybe both. One corner contains an operating table, complete with restraints. The far wall is suspiciously vacant.
But the biggest oddity is a glass chamber protruding from a central workstation. The dirt compressed between the panes of glass is riddled with tunnels. An ant farm. Strange yet almost comforting.
For a moment, the absurdity of the past year begins to lift.
Working with Emily in her lab, I fell into a rhythm. I could pretend to be normal during the day. It didn't matter if every night I chased an impossible task which would be solved by Charlotte freely giving up her body to Mom. Faced with Xamse's lab, I can almost see a glimpse of that same normalcy again. A nine to five existence where I wake up, kiss the wife and the one point five kids goodbye, and go to work at some hopelessly geeky, utterly mundane job while continuing to Torrent warez and hack pay-per-view sports feeds in my spare time.
"Xamse approves of your firewall designs," Ayana says venom in every syllable. "You can continue your work from here. Once you've completed them, you have been chosen to help prepare the battle armor."
MANTIS. Multi-Role Augment Neutralization and Threat Intervention System. The Black Beetle. Drake's pet project to fund the nanotechnology solutions he would unleash upon the world on his own quest to escape the Augment world of constant peril and shadowy intrigue and become a corporate giant. Even the ultimate villain dreamed of being normal, aside from his sociopathic tendencies. Or, was all this in support of those tendencies?
"I'm guessing you're Xamse's war-az," I say, repeating a term Xamse himself had said years ago when we first met. I continue to check the ant tunnels for signs of life. When Ayana doesn't answer, I check over my shoulder to find her lip curled in disgust. "You know, his heir."
"Werashi," she says, proper accent and everything. "And no, I am not."
"Oh yeah?" Ayana's already moving toward the exit. "Who then?"
"It is anyone's game." She lingers at the doorway. "You are fond of games I take it?" The remark leaves me in stunned silence. "Do not leave this room. Without proper authorization, you will be sealed inside the security checkpoint. I may or may not retrieve you."
She leaves. The question humming in the air of the lab doesn't. Was she talking about me?
CHAPTER 9
EVEN WHEN AYANA RELUCTANTLY informs me I've been granted security clearance and can walk myself to the lab or go to the employee cafeteria, I don't stray too far. They're keeping close tabs. I've identified the hidden cameras in my room along with the snooping software installed on my machines. My employee badge has an RFID chip and failing that, Big Sister's got a face recognition subroutine monitoring all the hidden cameras. The whole building is wired for the helpful AI assistant with glowing wall tiles and hidden speakers for communication.
I keep my explorations virtual.
Aside from the laboratory terminal and the interface in my quarters, I have access to one more machine on the LAN. This third machine is located either in Xamse's office or maybe with Ayana and her security team. From this network, no direct, ph
ysical connections exist to Nanomech. Even the FreedomNet uplink is dedicated for my machines only. I'm their isolated threat.
The converted office on the basement level where zero WiFi signals penetrate and the contained network both show a level of preparation for this exact scenario. With my identity already logged into the system on arrival, I wonder how long Xamse's planned this.
Of course, I can't let him feel too comfortable.
I locate several ways into Nanomech through the FreedomNet. I've got no plans to test those pathways just yet. But I do make sure they've logged the fact I walked through the ether and stood outside their gates, eyeing the defenses. I am a prisoner by my own choice, not theirs.
There's another system linked to Nanomech which I did probe. One even Chroma has bounced uselessly off of. A tempting little black box with no latch and no key.
I consider what could be worthy of such protection. If they can already turn away Chroma, why do they want me to continue work on another firewall? But since when has Xamse ever been straightforward.
For the next two days, I subsist on a continual stream of code and coffee. The bitter stuff grows on you. Jittery highs with less of a body-wilting crash than soda, I've finally replaced my drug of choice. Outside the campus, coffee is the number one black market commodity. I've heard it's easier to buy a brick of cocaine than a bag of Columbian brew.
Barefoot trips to the employee break room on the third floor earn polite stares. Funny, my feet don't seem to be the focus. Employees treat me like some sort of sideshow attraction—curious enough to stare, yet too freaked out to approach. Fine. I don't want interruptions, and I don't want to play get-to-know-you games anyway.
After twenty cups and forty-eight hours, lines of code persist when I close my eyes. From experience, there's nothing too weird about that. Until I start to see text scrolling down the blank walls or stretching out along the corridors like errant shadows.