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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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Save As
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My head’s ringing and I have to take a shit; those are my first two thoughts, in order. The third is that my legs don’t want to move, and I’m fairly certain I’m not a cripple (though I don’t know why I think that).
“You okay?” I recognize the voice, but there’s a gaping hole in my memory where the memory of its owner ought to be. My eyes open, and I see him, and the face at least brings back a name: Scott. He loops an arm under mine and pulls me up, and in reply I can only grunt. “Now you see why we always make a back-up before we run unsigned warez?” He grins so I can nearly see the shit peaking out from between his teeth- like a cow’s cud. He lets go of me, and for an instant it feels like we’re standing on a bullet train, and my hands shoot out to grab hold before I go rolling off the back- then I realize it’s just me and we’re standing still on the corner of Markley and Kaine. “Save your current system as a separate file, and you and I can run diagnostics on it to figure out of you’re just a dumbass and executed your high wrong, or if we bought stepped-on softwarez.” I’m barely moving, even in my own head, but I manage to call up a menu on my internal HUD, and drag down a list of options, and I try to select “save as.” But I’m jittery, and my mind’s eye twitches, from “save as” to “save” as I click. I swallow. I’m not sure what I’ve done… but I know it’s nothing good. “Shit, you didn’t.” Scott’s staring into me; hiding behind my HUD it feels like I’m in a small little cave, and he’s peering inside. “You saved? You were supposed to be running a temporary, firewalled instance. Fucking moron.” He stares at the horizon, or at least where the street ends at the foot of a large bank that stretches into the clouds, then suddenly his eyes flick back to me, and he’s smiling again. “But you’ve got your morning back-up. We should be able to” He stops in the middle of his sentence. “Shit. You’ve been quarantined. You just dropped off the network. Looks like the IP police flagged you. Means we won’t be able to back you up remotely. But I know someone who can hack the memory towers and get us a physical copy you can use- I’m texting her right now.” I know there’s another shoe, hovering, and he’s trying to ignore it. “And?” “And they’re going to come looking for you. Standard questions. Maybe arrest. If we can get your OS flashed by the time they find you, hey, no worries. All they’ve got is a system anomaly they can’t explain, and, most importantly, can’t track back to you.” “We should go, then.” I start to walk towards the crappier looking neighborhoods to the west; I figure visibility and cops would be less plentiful that way. “What are we, cave men?” Scott asks, as a cab pulls up in front of him at the curb. I blink at him. “You forgot we could hail a cab through the network? Yeesh. Once we get those warez neutered I’ll be curious to see how much damage they did to you- I mean, once we’ve got you 100% and sorted.” Something about that didn’t sound pleasant to me. Suddenly, there’s sirens. They whiz by us, back towards the spot on the concrete where we’d been standing. “Lucky thing them taking you off the network means they don’t know where you are.” One of them looks to the ground then at our cab, speeding away, and his lights go back on as his bike shoots towards us. It’s a funny little thing, shining and slim, like a liquid metal spider slicing through the air towards us; it’s impossible to know where the policeman and his bike begin and end. “Apologies, citizen, but I must comply,” the robot driving the cab says, and he almost does sound sorry. Scott aims something vaguely like a blow dryer at the driver. “You’re a twat.” Electricity sparks from the device, and the robot slumps, then immediately reanimates. Scott strikes a few keys on his wristpad, and the driver stomps on the pedal. “Disable safety protocols,” he says to the driver, then, “eject trunk.” There’s a moment where I imagine a spare tire and maybe a jacket flying through the air at the cop, then the entire rear above the bumper pops a foot into the air, and lands on the bike, stamping both bike and cop into a metal paste on the concrete. Immediately, a second cop who had staid at the scene turns on his lights and hurries towards us. “Take this right,” Scott says, and I barely have time to see the second cop pause to examine the remains of the first. “Next left, quickly, then shut down.” A moment later, the cop flies past us with his lights blazing. “Cop started pinging me, so I’m bouncing my IP around the city. Right now it’s free-riding in the back of another cab. After another thirty seconds it’ll jump into a bakery truck, and from there into a freighter heading south out of the bay.” Scott was pleased with himself. “And I got a text back. Apparently, she was having some difficulty getting at your back-ups- cops were trying to cordon it off for a detective, but once they thought they had us in the chase they redirected resources to physical capture- only to lose us. So she’s got a copy of your back-up, and right now they’re still chasing ghosts in their machine.” I was still frazzled, and I couldn’t help but feel bad for the cops who’d chased us, and as we pull out of the alley back towards Markley I can’t stop staring at the flattened bike and rider. “They’re likely just code coppers; I mean, there’s an off chance they’re drones, being remote piloted by flesh and blood people, but their safety procs should keep them from feeling the brunt- it’ll just disrupt their code long enough for us to get lost in the system. Probably already have a replacement body flying towards us now.” That didn’t really make me feel any better. “Take this left,” Scott says, the block before the corner of Markley. We stay on the same street, and with every neighborhood we pass through, my hopes fall that much more, because the area’s getting poorer and poorer, like watching time-lapse gentrification in reverse. We’re knee deep in the slums, and I swear I could see just a few blocks down the street a shanty-town, and I thought of course that would be where we’re going. “Stop,” Scott says, before the last apartment building in this part of the city. We get out of the cab. The street is dark. A single streetlight shines from the corner, but its illumination barely touches the front of our car. The building is painted in shadows. I look to Scott, wondering if we should go to the front door, try to get buzzed in. “Cop’s coming?” The voice is hot and ragged, moist and closer to my ear than I’d have thought possible. I spin around, and she walks out of the darkness towards me in slow motion. “No; lost ‘em.” “Good, because I imagine they’ve probably locked down his back-ups again. You’d have a bear of a time getting at them remotely, and I doubt the pair of you have the credit to stage a break-in at one of the memory towers. So this,” she pulls a small, flat disc out of her jacket, “is his last chance.” Suddenly there’s movement, from a pile of trash, and a voice, deeper than the growl of the cab’s engine, echoes from beneath it. “Think I’ll be having that.” Mind-thieves. “Ugh,” I say, old disgust creeping into my brain; “fucking freaks.” They’re fetishists, like to walk around in somebody else’s personality and perception, trying on the world in somebody else’s underpants. The thing is, they’re usually about as stable as your garden variety street tweaker, and get the borrowed memories confused with their own; lot of innocent people get raped, murdered or worse (why the hell was this the one memory that seemed to still be intact?). His hearing is better than I’d guessed, and apparently he takes my dislike for his lifestyle personally, because he takes out a long pistol and shoots me in the face. Then he takes the back-up disc and runs. Scott stands to his full, gangly height, his fist twitching as he weighs the value of chasing after him. Cass steps between him and the junkie running awkwardly away. “Aw, that’s sweet; you were having a John Wayne moment- over my honor. Don’t bother.” She exhales from a cigarette I’d never seen her with before (or light). “That disc belonged to a bona fide war veteran who lost the use of everything from the waist down- just use, not feeling. And I doctored it, too, so it’ll also give him crabs. And I’m not talking teensy parasites, I mean Alaskan King motherfuckers, clawing out of his urethra. You’d be surprised how many people think just because something’s physical they can just snatch and grab it.” I’m still on the ground, bleeding; Scott saunters over like he’s got all the time in the world, and even once he leans over me, he spends a good thirty seconds staring through the hole in my skull. “Cool,” he says. “I assume it hurts.” “Like a hole in the head,” I mutter, as he pulls me up off the sidewalk. I’m getting tired of picking myself up off concrete. “Why’d you fuck with that guy? Seriously retarded, even for you- even for mildly brain-damaged you.” I blink at him a moment. “I… didn’t think he had a gun.” “Jeez, you must have lost all kinds of memory. Guess it’s a good thing you went first with the warez this time; if I’d have been fried, there’s no way you’d have been able to walk me through this. But yeah. Everybody can download basically whatever they want when they’re hooked into the network, guns, ammo, a stripper pole, whatever.” At the suggestion Cass downloads a pole, holds it with one hand and leans back just enough to be suggestive- then it’s gone, and I wonder if my brain with a hole in it imagined it. “There’s supposed to be safety protocols that keep you from getting hurt or losing memories and such, but you were running softwarez designed to bypass those protocols and get you stoned out of your fucking ballz.” “Did I at least get high?” “Not from what I could tell. You screamed like a robot lumberjack was fist-raping you,” he leans in closer, “then passed out and gently pissed yourself- not so much that people walking by would notice or anything, but enough that, hovering over you wondering if you were dead or not, I saw.” He moves back away, and his voice got louder. “Didn’t look like you enjoyed it, though, no.” Cass shuffles; I can’t tell if she’s cold or anxious. “We should go. That mind-thief realizes he’s been screwed he’s going to come back looking for somebody to bloody- and he’s probably carrying some illegal warz.” “Warz?” I ask blankly. “Weaponized warez,” she says. “Shit that’ll tear clean through safety protocols like his virgin ass in prison,” she smacks Scott on the jeans, and he squirms uncomfortably. “I guess the spaz is vulnerable anyway, but the last thing I need is some mind-thief wearing my brain around town like a tuxedo.” Scott opens the car door for her, and she gets in front with the barely conscious robot driver. “You’re buying me a drink- and by ‘a’ I mean as many as I order. And that’s just for starters.” Scott gets in back, and there’s a long moment where I grapple with the door handle on my side before he leans over and opens it from inside. I should feel self-conscious, but I can’t- I’m not really self-aware enough for that. “Why’s he staring at me like that for?” Cass asked. “Lost his brain, twice now, enough that he can’t remember it’s impolite to drool.” “Oh, good, for a minute I thought he’d pissed himself.” “Did that a little, too.” “He’s turning red; aw, he’s embarrassed. And staring in a creepy uncle way. He doesn’t remember me?” “Don’t be hurt. He doesn’t really know me, either, and I was there when he popped his cherry, and I mean I was there, in the front seat while he was steaming up my backseat- er, the backseat of my car. Traded me a date with his sister for a date with mine- only he neglected to mention his sister likes women.” “Really? What’s she look like? My type?” “Who isn’t your type?” “Fair enough. But if he doesn’t remember me, does that mean he don’t remember trying to date rape me? You know, before I punched him in the colon.” “Hard to call it rape if you were involved enough you could punch him in the colon- if you had a hand in him that’s either consensual or mutual date rape- attempted, at least.” “Aw, I was just trying to fuck with him. I think he got drunk and tried to ask me out, once. It’s hard to know, cause he only got like three words out, ‘Would you like’ before he got an erection and passed out. From the looks of it he landed on it, uh, not that it broke his fall, more like he broke it in the fall. I felt a little bad for him.” “Pity- that’s his natural state of being- and the closest thing he has to charm.” “Can I have my brain please?” I ask sheepishly, only it doesn’t come out right. I sound like a stroke victim, and I’ve got what I hope is only drool pouring over my chin, but I was shot so there’s probably at least a little blood there, too (though hopefully my other head fluids are staying where they’re supposed to be). She looks at Scott. “He good for this? I’d ask if you were, but I know you better than to even ask.” “Between us we are. Besides, I can hook you up with his sister. That’s worth the price of admission alone.” She hands me the disc and slumps back in my seat. “She better not have a baby tongue.” Scott smiles. “I still can’t believe we ever got in this mess. I told him to save the warez on a separate partition in his memory- could have kept them isolated in case, well, they did what they did. You’re lucky they didn’t have ‘fiery colon explosion’ coded into a subroutine.” I’m hardly listening. I’m spinning the disc around in my fingers, thinking. I hold it over my wrist pad, and it scans the files. I can see into my life, like it’s someone’s house and I’m peeping in the windows. It feels familiar, but it doesn’t feel quite like home, either. “Can I… can I keep tonight?” I ask finally, and I’m surprised when I’m back in the car. Cass sighs, and her fingers start working across her wrist pad. “Here. I’m pinging you. Give me administrator access to your systems. I’m running you through Scott as a firewall, so you don’t get any brain damage on me.” “Though you’re bound to get some perve on you,” I said. “Heh. Yeah, but my system runs a sleaze filter automatically every time I see him, so it shouldn’t do any permanent damage.” “You’re a pair of assholes,” Scott says, almost telling the drive-bot to turn too early and take us into a pole, before realizing it, then slumping into his seat. “So that’s why you’re so comfortable around us, then?” I think I had a follow-up, but my brain hiccups, I think it’s Cass in my system files cleaning house. It’s harder to talk, but I manage to get out, “I think I want to merge my files.” She raises an eyebrow. “You sure? I can run a third partition, with both systems combined- probably the safest way to go- then you can just boot to whatever, depending upon how brain dead you feel like being.” She’s being cautious, but cold, but behind her eyes, a pink-orange color, there’s genuine concern; I think I’m going to ask her out, if my brain doesn’t melt. “Fuck it.” “You only get uploaded once,” she says, and starts flicking her fingers over the wrist pad. My mind shuts down and I flop back in my seat; I hope my BIOS is functional enough I don’t lose control of my bowels, but it’s a strangely abstract thought- one that seems less and less important as I try and remember what it was. I can vaguely hear speaking, though I’m not really able to understand it. “You’re not really doing it, right? I mean, there’s no real reason to overwrite his older memory files, besides maybe a twelve second performance gain over the entire operation.” “No, of course not. I’m not completely fucking retarded, like he is- though I think I saw why- he actually had a corrupted dll.” “One of those ancient Windows files? Wow. That’s fucked up. File had to be older than he is.” I moan a little as my lungs finally work when I ask them to. “Oh, he’s up. Morning, sunshine. Stop.” The car abruptly halts, and I smack into the back of the driver’s seat, because in my headwoundedness I’d forgotten to put on a seatbelt. It’s a full minute before Scott stops laughing, and there are tears in his eyes when he gets out and says, “First rounds on me, after that it’s him- unless he can’t remember his pin.” “Get us some beers, we’ll catch up.” Scott gives me the creepiest grin another man has ever given me (though now I actually can remember other men and previous creepy grins) and a thumbs up, then goes inside. Cass is nervous in the front seat, and gets out. I lunge out of Scott’s open door, because I don’t want her to make it inside before I can talk to her. “Thanks for fixing my head. Would you like to go out some time?" She thinks a moment, long enough I frown a little before she says, “Maybe. Buy me a beer, and we’ll see what it feels like.” I’m still standing there, waiting for my brain to catch up, when the door into the bar closes behind her. |
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