Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (25 page)

It was
cleaned up, but you could still see the blood stain. Metasteel is
porous, that is the main reason it’s so light anyway. But porous
means absorbent, and the blood gushing out of his severed arm had
seeped into the foundation of the building. You could clearly see
the darker texture on the metal if you knew what you were looking
for.

People
blabbed on but the user was focused on that stain. The day of the
accident, it had all happened too fast: Aibo, the stray dog the
crew had adopted from the streets, was keeping them company,
enjoying the sun while the workers were busy. Leo’s instincts had
kicked in and saw an accident waiting to happen, a loose grip on
the machine above their dog. He had extended his arm to push Aibo
out of the way. The proximity alerts on his hardhat didn’t have
time to warn him, and he couldn’t react fast enough anyway even if
they did. The metasteel beam had simply slipped out of its hinges
as it was being carried above him and sliced his arm off as clean
as scissors cuts paper. A faint woof was heard. He didn’t remember
anything after that, it was all black.

He
extended his left arm and swiped his palm over a device that gave
him operator access to the machinery.

rfid>
CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

eyed>
So that’s what you keep saying…

armd>
He still needs to shut up unless talked to. I’m gonna punch his
bits out.

The
company RFID chip that was implanted on the soft tissue between the
index and the thumb of his left hand, gave him access to the
machinery and helped keep logs of the worker’s activity. A
combination of old-fashioned preparation and machine logic spread
out the commands to every worker, making them build stuff as
efficient as an ant colony. You just showed up, received your
bite-sized instruction and made sure you do it.

He sat
in the heavy lifter. His veil, the Shared Augmented Reality that
was fed in a see-through overlay in his vision by his eye implants,
showed him the metasteel beam he was expected to move. The correct
levers flashed in front of him like a videogame tutorial, but he
already knew the right ones to push. The heavy machine clamped the
metasteel beam and he carried it easily to the place it was needed,
a glowing schematic pointing out the exact location it should be
held until the workers buzzed in and shot rivets in place. Even
though the whole thing was perfect for workers in, let’s say,
China, here in Greece it was also empowered by human yelling. Lots
and lots of yelling. Nevermind that the system showed him when the
beam was in place down to the millimetre, the guys in place were
yelling commands and accompanying hand gestures like “lower, lower”
and “OPA!” when it slotted precisely.

It drove
foreign workers mad, but they soon got used to it and joined
along.

The
workday went on like that.

Chapter 12:// Taking apart

The PAN was restless.

parrotd> I want you to push through.

httpd> I can’t! It’s not letting me through the
firewall.

parrotd> I want to see the accident! Lets fake a
reporter’s email.

They
did. They got a reply fairly quick, but it was the same video that
was approved for release to the media, just a few seconds long,
from the CCTV in the construction site. It showed the user, leaping
forward, pushing the dog away from danger and the metasteel beam
falling down, dragging him to the floor in an instant and cutting
off his arm. The gory details were blurred and the video had a
warning of graphic images.

armd>
Thank god for that. Can you imagine a world without me?

eyed>
Yes.

parrotd> Ok. We can’t get to the raw video by network
access. Let’s think like humans.

fingerd> Ooh! Me. Me!

armd>
Will you just say it you retard?

fingerd> Let’s pee on something.

eyed>
What good will that do?

fingerd> Well, humans pee all over the place.

eyed>
That’s dogs. Dogs do that. You are confused. Again.

fingerd> What’s the difference?

armd>
Different sort of meatbag.

walkmand> I know! They call tech support.

parrotd> ACK. That’s much better. We could email as a tech
support guy and ask for it.

They
went online and found a forum post with instructions from a real
human, telling some other person how to send an original video
file. They copied the instructions and asked again for the same
video in its original version, citing an excuse like incompatible
codecs and such.

The guy
on the other end of the datastream was a bored corporate employee,
who didn’t care about any such things as codecs and news articles.
He forwarded the email to his boss asking for permission, then
resumed whirling his hot tea with a spoon. He wasn’t actually
British but he saw that on a TV show and thought that it made him
look distinguished. The email looked legitimate enough, so the boss
skimmed it over and sent back “OK.” The guy followed the
instructions step by step, overriding any sort of firewall and
common sense, unwittingly committing a felony by sending
unauthorised footage to a third-party outside Hephaistos Heavy
Industries. He sent the unedited file and as it was uploading he
resumed sipping his tea.

It was
lovely.

Chapter 13:// Breaking down

[email protected] pinged the
user.

He
finished his task as soon as possible and ran to the shipping
container that was made into a field office.

The fat
foreman grabbed him from the shoulder as he entered and friendlily
crushed his bones, smiling all the way. “Mister Pappas, it seems
you are quite famous today. Please, have a seat.”

There
was another man waiting in the office, whom Leo instantly
recognised as the mayor.

“
So nice to meet you young man,” the mayor said with a perfect
political smile and a firm handshake.

fingerd> Fingered! The man is
[email protected]. He seems to have root access to
this city.

walkmand> Ooh! Our user is meeting all the bigshots. How
cool is that?

“
Nice to meet you too, sir,” said the user and sat
down.

The fat
foreman got a ping on his phone and rushed outside to tend to some
issue. He muttered, “Keep the mayor some company while I’m gone, OK
Pappas?” and darted outside, his red laser beaming all over the
place.

“
Mr. Robertson here tells me you are back at work so soon
after recovery. Isn’t that a bit risky son?”

httpd> [email protected] has numerous search
results for being against the corporate expansion of the latest
years.

armd>
Just look at that smug meatbag. Somebody should just punch the
guy.

parrotd> I see. Maybe we should- Hey! Who forked? What’s
happening?

Leo
stared at the man’s tie. It was a very nice tie, violet and blue in
alternating lines and shone like silk. For some reason all he could
think of was that tie. The mayor’s voice came in
muffled.

His
vision blurred.

A high
pitched noise made his ears ring, but he kept on focusing at the
man’s tie. He thought he heard a hiss.

Yeah,
definitely a hissing sound. From under his chair? He couldn’t rip
his eyes away from the mayor’s tie even for a second, to check
beneath his seat.

He began
panting. Could something be right under him? His heart
pounded.

He dared
a look. He managed to tear his eyes away from the tie and look
under his chair.

Nothing
there.

BANG,
the foreman came back in his office slapping the door open as he
usually did. Leo came to, shaking his head out of the
daze.

A
metallic taste was in his mouth. His forehead was feeling wet,
beady. He looked at the mayor’s tie again. It was bloody. The noose
was around a stiff neck, head squished like a lemon. An eye was
still falling slowly from the mess. Leo looked at his newly
acquired prosthetic arm. It was wound in a fist and was dripping
brain matter.

The fat
foreman took off his hardhat and brought it to his chest. He
wheezed, out of breath, “Pappas, what have you done? What the hell
have you done?”

Chapter 14// Pushing on

In prison,
there was no frickin wifi. Leo was held in a jail cell especially
designed for augmented people. They couldn’t just rip out his arm,
and sure, there were police officers with much more strength and
gizmos, but this was supposed to be easy lockup. His jail cell was
also a Faraday cage, which meant no electromagnetic signals coming
in or out, and he was locked behind a metal alloy door that not
even black market cyberarms could rip out.

But he
wasn’t gonna try to get out.

Leo was
really bummed out.

They had
taken his walkman too.

The
prison warden had taken it right in front of him, out of his
confiscated possessions and had plugged in his own headphones,
enjoying the old tunes.

“
Hey! Put that away,” Leo had yelled at the warden, but the
response he’d gotten was an angry snarl. “Hey, listen to me you big
blue bastard, take those headphones off! That’s mine, those belong
to impound, that thing and that player is mine!”

The
warden had shoved his shockstick up his belly and electrocuted him
repeatedly after that.

Without
parrotd, the daemons that were left had cooked up an ad-hoc network
so they could communicate.

armd>
Now I’m the session leader.

eyed>
Not many daemons to lead over, smartass. Plus, you are the one who
bugged out and punched the mayor to death!

armd>
I did not have physical confrontations with that man.

eyed>
Yeah right. His brain just appeared in your fist out of
nowhere.

httpd> Stop arguing. I have no net access. I’m useless. I
can’t handle the pressure right now.

eyed>
Plus, all you do is talk about punching stuff.

armd>
I will punch your bits out!

eyed>
See?

Leo
looked at wall through the prison bars and sighed. It was
lights-out, the warden yelled and the corridor went
dark.

He
leaned back and tried to relax. He was keeping his newly replaced
cyberarm away from his body, the least he could do since he
couldn’t really pop it out and put it in the corner. He wished for
that exact feature at that point, and made a mental note to demand
popability in his next cybernetic limb. The dark was nice, because
he couldn’t really see the matte black surface of it. It was clean
now of course, but all he could see was the mayor’s brain matter
dripping from his black fingers.

He just
wished he had his walkman at least. He could put on some old tunes,
make him relax, get some rest at least. Or take his mind off the
conviction for a moment or two. Leo closed his eyes and hummed
slowly.

It’s
funny how the subconscious brings out buried aural memories at
random times. He hummed the snake charmer’s tune, eastern and
mesmerising. The flute’s notes were easy to mimic with his mouth,
so he did. He was certain that whistling too hard would bring a
series of curses and yells from the other inmates, so he basically
hummed to himself.

But the
tune became louder.

Funny
that.

He
closed his mouth and could still hear the flute, locked in a slow
and repeating motif.

A hiss
echoed in the silence and made him jerk up and kneel on the bed,
pulling his feet off the ground.

His eyes
had adjusted but it was simply too dark, just some faint lights
from the city outside.

The hiss
grew louder and he saw the outline of the huge cobra, backlit
colourfully from the night glow.

The
cobra was thick. Thank god for that, cause it was too thick to
creep through the prison bars.

Leo saw
the wide hood of the cobra touching the bars, and let out a short
breath of relief as he noted it would never let the snake fit
through.

That’s
when the cobra pushed on, bent the unbendable bars and Leo shrieked
like a little girl.

Chapter 15:// Breaking out

It was a
mess. Leo screamed, the daemons screamed, the inmates yelled, the
cobra hissed.

Leo
backed up into the corner, trying to keep himself as far away from
the serpent as possible. The cobra’s enormous bulk stood up, almost
as tall as a man. It waved slowly, sizing him up for
attack.

eyed>
We’re gonna die!

fingerd> I can’t finger her. I’ll keep trying, but no
fingering is possible at the moment.