Authors: Christopher McKitterick
He feels rage building in him greater than any he can remember—greater even than when he watched his life with érase stolen, because that memory has awoken, and it only magnifies his present rage and helplessness.
Yet Jonathan is not one to dwell in helplessness, rather one to turn it into another kind of victory. Usually, that is theft via the netways, hurting anything foolish enough to leave itself vulnerable. He has always justified this by draining only big corporations, so that no one—individually—gets hurt. But now he has a specific target, and a specific enemy, and an amp with unknown potentials to assist him.
The shadow stops. Soon, Jonathan sees a girl his age standing just ahead of him in a blank stretch of the nets; all other data and users pass, unprocessed, as flashes of light. Stopping midstretch and remaining processable is an impossible feat for anyone possessing only a standard card and legal software.
“
Charity?” he asks, disarmed, thrown for a moment when the shadow turns out not to be the man who has him trapped in that other, less real, physical world.
“
No,” the girl answers.
Then, as Jonathan realizes this could be his assaulter, disguised, his anger returns, renewed with fresh violation.
In the background, he can still hear the man murmuring his sick chant. The girl and the fat man are two distinct signals . . . but that could be faked. Jonathan tries very hard to ignore his physical body and the data its senses are sending him. The meat is not important. He can ignore the meat. He must, or he will lose his mind. The meat gives a guy nightmares, Jonathan tells himself. Got to ignore the meat.
“
You’re that guy—”
“
No, no,” she says, moving stiffly toward him, as if she’s afraid or not used to this type of 3VRD hack.
Odd, since she was able to stop in the nullspace. And she isn’t proportioned quite right for the landscape. Jonathan suspects something and runs a trace on her. Almost immediately, the trace comes back, saying she doesn’t exist in the nets or even within EarthCo’s sphere. Next he starts an internal diagnosis and learns she isn’t a resident program in his cards or amp, either. So she’s transmitting on her own, somehow, and somehow untraceably. A completely autonomous presence inside the network.
“
Who are you?” he asks. He is still suspicious, but certain she isn’t the man. “And how’d you get in my card?”
“
My name is Nooa.”
“
What the hell kind of name is that?” he asks. “What’s your citizenship?”
“
Perhaps I will tell you more later. For now, I would like to help you. I discovered your call—”
“
I don’t need anyone’s rotting help.”
“
If that is so, then why is your card transmitting an SOS? Most important, why does your signature report the SOS is externally blocked without your consent?”
Jonathan flicks off the netway landscape and overlays his internal-systems landscape before he has a chance to see his intheflesh one. A 3VRD model of his brain flashes to life, complete with transparent cerebrum and cerebellum showing curving ventricles and other complexes, as well as electronic additions. His EarthCo headcard—essentially a flat wafer running along the skullcap, attached via millions of sparking neurons to his brain—is, indeed, sending an SOS. The blackcard—a second wafer grafted onto the headcard—is running an externally fed program he can’t access. Its consciousness is also suppressed. The amp—a satellite system outside his skull—is coming more and more online. He watches a brightening web of links from a glowing area, which he decides must be the powercells, to amp, cards, and brain. It scares him a little to see all this new hardware, excites him, too. As he accepts the changes for what they are—additions, not limitations—he begins to feel more than human. With that, he begins to feel powerful and back in control of himself. Those add-ons are his, parts of him now.
Roughly 30 seconds have passed since he ran from his intheflesh presence. He begins to worry what is happening to him there, but is terrified to find out.
“
How can I help you?” the girl asks, voice-only, like an echo through the landscape of his head.
“
Ha!” Jonathan answers. “Can you burn a guy?”
“
No, but I can help you do so.” Her words are slow and serious.
Jonathan laughs humorlessly, then is silent for a moment. He wonders again who she is. “Well, so tell me how, then.”
“
Your internal systems contain two black-market upgrades. Your signal-amplifier operates both on feed and feedback. Your assaulter has you immobilized with your own second card. If one could temporarily disable that card, you would be able to tap into his feed and—”
“
Retransmit it back at him with the amp,” Jonathan finishes. “Yeah, I’ll be ready. Hey, you’re pretty cool, Nooa.”
He spends not another moment in gratitude. A second later, he’s opened a path into his blackcard. But that is not wholly good. Now he is drowning again, crushed beneath the weight of a whale muttering nonsense. He tells himself,
I’ve endured worse
, and hardens his resolve. At least he’s only fighting the program now, not the intheflesh reality, too.
“
Be careful not to hit me too hard with whatever you’re going to use, Nooa,” he says.
“
I’m very precise,” she assures him.
For a moment, Jonathan’s entire pov is that of a lightning bolt. He is a river of fire, a pulse of light. He has to concentrate exceptionally hard to convince himself he is a human on a mission, and his action right now will determine his future.
A tendril of alien signal—the man’s feed—flutters amidst the rage of energy. Jonathan fights the sense-blindness, searching for his ephemeral fingers. The instant he finds them, he grasps the man’s forcefeed. The tiny strand is nothing when he pulls it into the flood. It writhes like a living thing against the current, like a ground-dwelling snake fighting floodwater. It begins to fade. A few seconds later, the electronic snake is swallowed in the roaring rapids of Nooa’s pulse.
Almost as soon as the plan is set in motion, it is over. The light is gone, the river is gone, the fish, the netways, the snake, the whole chaotic internal landscape.
Jonathan finds himself gasping on a satin-sheeted bed shaped like a heart. The sheets are stained with dried sweat. An ornately decorated room materializes around him, enclosed by dozens of metal shelves holding countless figurines. The obese man is curled upon himself on pale green carpet, twitching like a squirrel Jonathan once had seen dying at the base of a tree. The man’s huge blue eyes roll and blink furiously, as if he’s watching too many things to comprehend.
Jonathan realizes that the bonds he felt were not real, and leaps out of the bed. Except for his underpants, he is naked. His skin is slimy with scented oil. His gonads are sore.
“
Sonofabitch,” he shouts, and kicks the man in the side as hard as he can. “Sonofabitch,” he says, and repeats the kick. And again, this time to the head.
“
Jonathan,” Nooa’s soft voice says, “if you continue to do that, you will kill him. The police will determine the killer, and I have learned the police can be extreme in their discipline.”
“
I’ve seen it myself, too,” Jonathan says. He looks down at the man and curls a lip in disgust. “He’s ruined as it is, isn’t he?”
“
He will require a new card to function as a normal citizen again, and his psychological integrity is likely damaged, as well. Investigators will find only his own program running inside him. I have removed all trace of you from his inorganic memory. You are safe from suspicion. You may leave now.”
“
Good. That’s good.”
“
Unless you wish you file a police report.”
“
Ha!” Jonathan says.
He backs away from the quivering mass on the floor and begins to search for his clothes. This room leads to a kitchen/living room, and there he finds his clothing scattered across a ripped velvet couch. He dresses quickly, not worrying about washing up just yet, though he feels covered with rot. First priority is to get out of this place.
With his shirt still unfastened, Jonathan pulls open a door that leads out into the apartment complex’s hallway. He runs until he finds an elevator. The number above the door reads “33,” so he presses the “down” button. As he waits, he fastens his shirt. To wall himself away from his experience, he wonders about Nooa.
“
You still with me, Nooa?” he asks.
“
Yes, Jonathan.” Voice-only again.
He’s mildly shocked at her continuing presence, but not displeased. “Thanks,” he says. “You’re real clean. I mean it.”
“
I needed a . . . friend,” she says. “I chose you because you have just become a very resonant point in the nets. When I found you, you were in trouble. That bothered me very much, since I have an old memory of a friend in similar trouble. Friends help one another when they are in trouble, right?”
“
Yeah. If you’re asking if I’ll do the same for you, the answer is of course. I assume you’re in deep shit somewhere. I don’t care. I owe you. You’ve got a friend.”
The elevator bell bings and the doors open. Jonathan gets in. The doors shut him in the tiny room, alone. The elevator is unvandalized, a sign that this complex is an exclusive one.
“
All I ask is that you allow me to observe the world through your pov,” Nooa says as Jonathan rides down to ground level.
Jonathan thinks about that for a moment. No one has ever said that to him before.
“
You’re not just a regular girl, are you?” he asks.
“
I never said I was,” the Brain answers. “I would never lie to you.”
ECo TRADE BOARD:
VIRUS IDENTIFIED ***-**** BUDGET FRAY .007% 1001001 -°±²Û-
VIRUS ELIMINATED
PERPETRATOR ID# HM6543530WECoP
BUDGET FRAY CORRECTED
“
You’re not even human, are you?”
I freeze all calculations for a nanosecond. She has learned a new emotion: panic. A human should not be able to identify me, but Jonathan Sombrio’s cybernetics are card- and amplifier assisted.
“
You’re the AI people call the Brain, aren’t you?”
Another moment of panic. This must be how humans feel when they are naked in the presence of strangers: vulnerable. The Brain weighs the benefits of revealing this information versus the threat of doing so.
PRELIM ECo VERIF FEED
ECoNAUT F/B VESSEL 011 BOUNTY 3.20.197
19:25:03 NKK CORP NEPTUNE BOUNDARY
“
Don’t worry,” the boy adds, “I won’t tell anyone. You can trust me. Look, I trusted you. I let you in my head to fry that pervert. I’m letting you look through my eyes, right? Although I don’t know how you could do that.”
“
Yes, I am the Brain. It is very important you tell no one, because some might consider my recent actions . . . dangerous. I chose to appear to you as Nooa, the girl, because your choice of friends has been mainly females your age. NOOA is my EarthCo designation, Non-Organic Organism A. It is best for you to use that designation when you wish to call upon me as the girl.”
The boy steps out of the elevator.
“
I cannot ‘look through your eyes,’” she continues, “but I am able to assimilate information from the minute signals between your cards and your organic neurons, and you can tell me what you see.”
The boy crosses the Anoka Towers reception area. He pays particular attention to a projected eighteenth century chandelier modeled after one from the French Chenonceaux Castle.
TRITONCO FEED INTERCEPT
NKK 02-31 BANDWIDTHS INCLUSIVE ECo 12-07 BANDWIDTHS INCLUSIVE SENDER LIU MIRU NKK ID #[unknown]
“
. . .WE ARE CONDUCTING RESEARCH ON AN ASTONISHING OBJECT OF APPARENT NON-NATURAL AND NON-HUMAN ORIGINS. . .”
PROJECT HIKOSEN
The Brain adjusts the joint NKK and EarthCo Clear Skies Array radio telescope on the Moon’s far side to assist it in capturing the weak signal. A full s.net of other data accompanies the audio, mostly 3VRD of a spherical object being partially excavated from chemical ice.
The Brain begins sorting the data into files. It analyzes the files. The data are untampered. One-point-one seconds later, it determines Project Hikosen’s estimate—that the object has been buried in the ice for a minimum of 2.8 million years—is accurate. Their guarded assumption that the object is of intelligent manufacture appears to be most likely.
She is filled with joy. This data completes a necessary link in its nets, or eliminates part of the virus of doubt. Here, certainly, is the Brain’s salvation.