Glitter
By Daishi Prime
In a flash of glorious light, I was jacked in and floating. The small almost-room around me vanished, its unpleasant smells and utilitarian ugliness vanishing with the world it was part of. In its place, I found the shining lines of light and code that combined in a jarring, disharmonious, and utterly perfect form known to those less experienced than your humble narrator as the 'Seattle Matrix.' I knew better of course. This collection, half illusion and half hallucination, was nothing more than insubstantial currents of electrons and less substantial lines of code. But it was an adequate representation, and I did not need anything particularly special for this morning's entertainment. After all, I wasn't expecting to do anything particularly dangerous, not this time. Simply educating a child as to the wisdom of his elders.
I spent a moment simply enjoying the sensations of being jacked in. The feeling of knowledge and power flowing through me never ceased to amaze and inspire me, exciting my admittedly vast intellect. However, it was only a moment, and I quickly set about laying the groundwork, simple as it would be.
My little jaunt into the cleaner, if more dangerous, side of reality this morning was not motivated, as normal, by boredom and greed. Rather, it was boredom and pique. I had been enjoying a nice lively drink with certain, acquaintances, of mine in an establishment we were known to frequent for both business and pleasure. While we tend to reside on the shadier side of the law, such a well-known haunt is no danger, due to certain well considered applications of the all mighty nuyen and a reputation for vindictive viciousness. I must say that I have played my own small part in building our group's reputation, and this morning's escapade was certainly going to add to that.
But I digress. As I was saying, Arrow, Dervish, myself, and diverse others were enjoying a few rounds of drinks, discussing nothing concerning any governmental or corporate related individuals who, through some happenstance, have come into possession of this little bit of drivel. One individual, whom I shall refer to as Nameless, since he obviously wasn't old enough to have earned one, began questioning certain claims of mine. Now, I am a fair and open-minded individual, just ask anyone who has ever crossed me. I always accept apologies and restitution quite promptly. This young snip of a boy, however, managed to get under my skin. He actually dared to question my abilities! Can you believe the gall of the child? Questioning me? Psiber? I was decking through systems he couldn't break now when he was still in diapers, the young snot! Hhhhmmppphh! The arrogance!
Hah, but. I decided, after putting the young snot quite firmly in his place (the floor came into the discussion at some point, but I'm not sure why it wanted to leave so many dents in the boy's face). I explained to the bouncer (it was quite simple, really. Dervish is a perfectly nice troll, once you get to know him), and continued on with enjoying the company of my companions and erstwhile fellow employees. However, I felt that such a young and stupid individual required a more pertinent object lesson in respect for those wiser and better than one's self. Considering that he had claimed I could not even penetrate the security he had around some insignificant bank account of his, I decided that the lesson in question would involve those accounts and the ending thereof.
So, there I sat, the next morning, decking into the Seattle Matrix. I drifted for a short while, allowing certain automatic programs I have had the pleasure of developing randomly relocate my presence in the Matrix, laying the groundwork for this day's enterprise. Back up programs, extra connections, trace re-routers, trail-clearing programs, false-trails, and any number of other convenient, if minor, little items which would leave me undetected for a remarkably long time against what I expected to be moderately impressive (but, nonetheless, inadequate) ICE. I also checked up on certain other projects, but that was secondary and really no concern of anyone who should happen to be reading this account. I don't ask about your business, you should return the compliment and not pester me with questions I shall not answer. Such probes are likely to result in a bad mood at this end, and you will see where that can leave one shortly.
Once the back-up systems were up and the programs in place, I began hunting my quarry. I had already retrieved the young child's name and vital information (including, I am ashamed to admit, his Matrix handle) when I relieved him of his credsticks in the pub. Truly, I must apologize, and it really is bad form, I know, but the child made things so simple. I did check carefully for any sort of viral interference, and the young man does actually exist (I watched him the night before this little run through several security cameras. Some he had installed in his own apartment, which just goes to show you the folly of youth. I still do not know how I managed to survive my own torturous childhood. Fortune favors the young and stupid, I guess), so no, old age has not made me idiotic. Only a little quicker to take advantage of short cuts that are true.
I adopted the young snot's persona, which I shan't bother to describe, it being a childish and all-together worthless piece of off-the-shelf garbage. Nameless proved his worth with that, even without the clumsy and stupid way in which he lived his (soon to be much shorter) life. Once the new persona was active (sigh yes, I know, a new persona simply must be in the hardware of the deck before it can be used in the Matrix. So says the Great THEY. But THEY is a remarkably ignorant god, and I have played tricks upon it many a time. Not the least of which was convincing half of Seattle that Dunkelzhan's spirit had adopted the city as its protected enclave. (Oh my, did I just admit that? How careless of me! Of course, you can't prove it, now can you:). To return to the subject at hand, I assumed the young child's persona, and found myself a satellite queue.
It wasn't hard to do; satellite communications are conducted worldwide every hour of every day of every year. Without them, the entire corporate world would grind to a halt in seconds, gutting itself on the shoals of ignorance. Governments and other such out-dated operating systems would take somewhat longer, being far less intelligent and far more robust than their newer, sleeker, more vicious incarnations. I sat for a few moments of subjective time, idly pondering what fate would befall the annoying little bug who I was imitating, but then the queue filed on, and I was in the satellite beam. Timmeeee sssstttttrrrreeeeccchhheeeeddddd fffooorrr aa mmiinnuute of indescribable sensation, and then I was through, dropping like a feather into the London grid.
The London grid is an entirely different being from Seattle. While the city itself may be old as dirt and twice as ugly (depending, I will admit, on one's point of view), the accompanying grid is slightly younger and far, far less developed. Seattle is always changing, growing, getting brighter, hotter, and faster every second. London is somewhat behind the times, somewhat as the old United States used to be behind France in the fashion arenas, though with much more tangible results. The London grid has the sort of rough, unfinished feel which I remember the Seattle grid having when I was younger and far less wise than I am today. I find the change of pace refreshing and quite pleasant. But only in limited doses. Too long a stay, and the ease of operating begins to bore and I can actually feel my skills becoming dull. But I was here with a specific goal in mind this day, and I knew that even I would have anything but an easy time of it.
My objective in the real world was a nondescript office building somewhere in the middle of London's sprawl. It was indistinguishable from any number of neighboring buildings and completely uninteresting. My compatriots had recently had cause to visit it (yet another item which concerns none of you, save as it relates to the events I currently relate to you), and I had taken a short jaunt through the buildings computers to insure that my allies were not unduly inconvenienced by such bothersome creatures as the owners might choose to employ as 'security guards'. While waiting for them to conclude their business and run into the inevitable problem which only myself could deal with, I flitted about the system, looking at this and that, pondering the idiocies of sculpted systems. During this little bit of randomness, I found a rather interesting little place.
Aztechnology, through several front companies, of course, owned the building my comrades were touring. In its basement, I discovered, they had built a highly profitable and highly illegal cyber-zombie clinic. While I have nothing personal against such beings (though I would never wish to become one), I do understand why most governments have a problem with them. After all, encouraging their subjects to become soulless killing machines isn't really good for business, at least from a government's point of view. But that was not our problem at the time and none of our business. Still, it is a dead decker who fails to retain such valuable information as that, and I duly noted the pertinent information about its physical location and Matrix access before being called upon to open a lock I feel quite certain Dervish could have opened very easily all on his little lonesome.
This day, I was paying the small clinic a repeat visit. It was a bare week since I had last perused their system, and I knew that not even a megacorp could move such a volatile endeavor so quickly. I found the building's Matrix location and slipped into the system. Much to my joy, they had rebuilt their sculpture. Now it actually looked passable, instead of abysmal, though it was a bit too common for my tastes. As the trend goes, the system was sculpted to mimic the actual office building. A cheap, easy-to-buy bit of sculpture that requires no effort on the part of anyone with a fore-brain, but nonetheless better than the hideous bit of amateurish drivel they had used on my previous visit. I shall not dirty the minds of my readers by describing such horrors. Now, there was simply a lobby. The floor was black-veined white marble, with a few white chairs placed decoratively about. The walls were an inversion of the floor, with white-veined black marble. Columns were evenly spaced down each side and one was placed on either side of a single elevator door in the rear wall. Between your humble narrator and that elevator, there was a wide desk of some hardwood, commanded by a severely dressed English woman in a business suit with her hair pulled back into a bun so tight I am still surprised that the program did not have a headache.
I smiled as the receptionist program looked straight at me and stared. Walking forward, I reached into a 'pocket' and pulled out a card. I was a tad bit surprised to find that the sculpture had forced itself onto my assumed persona, but that was no great difficulty. I rarely bothered to deny a server that privilege, considering that makes it so much easier to blend in with sculptured systems. The secretary took the card and froze for a second as the code-breaker program rifled through her memory banks in order to find a suitable access code. It found one quickly and easily, as I had designed it to, and the 'woman' blinked and nodded. Her face broke into a beaming smile of welcome, and she graciously waved me past and into the elevator. I smiled and strode on, ignoring the program and heading for the elevator.
The steel door slid silently back into the wall and I stepped through, finding myself in an actual elevator car. Turning, I found that, as I had expected, there were several buttons on a panel beside the door. Unfortunately for me, they weren't numbered. I reached into a pocket again and pulled out yet another little item. This time, the program I activated appeared as one of those automatic lock-picks, and I grinned as I held it up to the panel. There was a slight flash of light, which I didn't expect, and then the lock-pick vanished from my hand. I felt the program shut itself down, and frowned, both internally and in persona. It should have acknowledged finishing the break. But I disregarded that (I never said I was perfect, only better than most of you), and decided that I would flip a coin. After all, if I ran into ICE, I already had an answer prepared for that. So I decided that the lowest button on the list would lead me to the lowest 'floor' of the building. Since the sculpture was mimicking the actual building, and the clinic was below the lowest basement, I figured that would be a good place to start looking in the new sculpture.
As soon as my finger hit the button, however, I knew I was in trouble. The elevator vanished, without warning, gasp, or ominous music. In its place, I found myself standing on a sand floor beneath a great arching dome of purest silver. I couldn't judge how high it was, since there was nothing else in the room, but it looked a tad bit too high to be comfortable. Big things fit under high ceilings, and big things in a sculpture tend to be powerful things in code.
But my terrors were not immediately realized. Instead of the great devouring monster, when the ICE appeared it was nothing more than three armored knights riding equally armored horses. Not the traditional Azzie iconography, but probably appropriate to the building's location in the meat world. It may also have been a British Corp I found myself in. Whatever, the knights lowered their lances, screamed something I didn't bother trying to understand, and charged.
Being the long experienced decker I was, I did the smartest thing I could think of. 'Shriek and flee', it's often called, though, personally, I prefer the term 'strategic withdrawal'. I began running, throwing evasion, invisibility, and override commands at the node, trying to get it to think I had vanished. Those didn't work, and I knew that time was of the essence. No doubt at this very moment there was some sort of trace program active trying to get a lock on me. While I had numerous cutouts and false trails, I knew that with time anyone could trace me and I would be in a moderate amount of trouble, far more than this little brat was worth. So I decided to forgo my normal, politely subtle approach, and simply bludgeon my way through.
I called up one of my favorite attack programs. This little goody was actually one of the first pieces of good code I ever wrote, and it has served me well (with appropriate compensation for the SOTA) for close to twenty years now. I won't bore you with the details, but needless to say, I have yet to find the program that can stand up to it. I call it Lenny. I've run into this little toy of his, and believe me, it's nasty. The damn thing erases single lines of randomly targeted code. Doesn't corrupt, or override, or take control, it just erases them. If you armor the program, it erases lines of the armor's code until that fails, then carries on into the protected program. Believe me, this thing's a pain in my ass. – Crackerjack Normally, Lenny manifests as a mini-gun, one of those multi-barrel monstrosities of a vehicle-mounted weapon that even trolls won't try and use. The spray of bullets tends to shred the program it's aimed at quite nicely. This time, however, I found myself holding a crossbow. Not the most encouraging of weapons, considering its slow rate of fire. Lenny usually needs to hit several times to be fully effective.
I was correct and I was wrong. I stopped a short distance around the circle of the arena, turning and dropping to one knee. The bolt leapt from the crossbow. I could even hear the WHUNG! of the bow releasing and feel the recoil (My opinion of this system's sculptor was going up every nano-second. Very slightly). The bolt hit one of the three horses dead in the chest, burying itself all the way to the quarrels. And the horse vanished, leaving the knight suddenly running at me with an upraised sword. That was more effect than I had expected, but not as good as I could have hoped for. After all, simply removing the accelerator sub-program wasn't going to help me all that much in the long run.
So I took to running while the damned sculpture insisted on taking a few precious seconds to allow Lenny to reset. I dropped Lenny, deciding that he couldn't help me with this one, and switched to a different program. I called up a ghost and another host of cloaking commands and programs, then activated all of them at once. I disappeared into the good cloak, and turned in towards the middle of the arena. The ghost kept right on running, flickering briefly as the poorer cloak activated and was overridden continuing to flee around the circle of the wall. It made a comic sight, a man in middle-ages noble's clothing running madly around a silver walled arena being chased by two knights on horses with lances leveled and a third falling further and further behind waving a seven foot sword over his head like some sort of armored berserker.
But I did not stop to ponder the amusement factor. When the ghost took the ICEs' attention, I should have found myself out of the arena and in whatever node the ICE was protecting. Such was the nature of the ghost program; it convinced the computer that it was the intruder and that I was simply another authorized user. Based upon the apparent affects, however, it only half worked. So I whipped out Angie, one of my less sophisticated attack programs, and went for the horse-less ICE, letting the node run the ghost for me.
He didn't even see me coming, just kept right on going, running after his compatriots. I cut inside his circle and intercepted him, getting to within a few feet of him and swinging Angie right at his neck. Angie's a fairly simple girl, and I originally designed her as a monomolecular edge sword. She appeared here as a seven foot long claymore. The ICE's head bounced along the sandy floor a couple of times before both head and body vanished. The ghost, on the other hand and much to my disappointment, vanished almost immediately as the node found me again.
The two ICE programs remaining reigned in and turned without even pausing, lunging back towards me with their lances lowered in what I am sure was a beautiful display of horsemanship. Needless to say, I was terribly impressed. Or was that niggling little emotion 'terror'? Whatever, I vanished into a cloak, and they pulled up, both of them looking about for me. I slipped up, doing my best imitation of a cat on a hot floor in a room full of rocking chairs, then lunged, shoving Angie's blade deep into the gut of one, piercing right through the flimsy excuse for armor and crashing the program. It vanished, and once more my cloak went with it. Horrible nuisance, that. I'll have to work on a better cloak, I guess. Maybe tomorrow. The remaining ICE decided to try and match me, the more foolish it. Its lance vanished and a sword appeared just as I slashed the horse's legs, crashing the accelerator. The stupid program tried to bring its own sword down on my head, but I slipped to one side, pushing my dodge programs for all they were worth, and engaged it in a short and sweet little duel, ending it with a thrust through the face plate. I thought that to be a rather artistic touch, myself, right through the eye-slit.
They say that fencing classes and such don't help in the Matrix. I will be happy to tell you right now that there is nothing more useful in a sculpted system than those classes. They allow you to interact much more easily with the sculpture, to follow its rules and blend in, forcing it to follow its own rules. I have no doubt those lances were something particularly nasty, and wanted nothing to do with them. By closing the distance and using techniques and weapons that fitted into the sculpture, the knight had to as well, meaning when I was so close it couldn't touch me with its lance, it could not touch me with its lance. After that, well, there's no ICE yet made that can hold Psiber, now is there?
As soon as the last ICE program went down, the arena vanished. Just as abruptly as I had found myself in danger, I found myself standing in a comfortable, plainly furnished, and all together too corporate-standard office lobby. I mean, really, each of these mega-corporations claims to be so different, to be the true representative of their own culture and yadda-yadda-yadda. But when you get right down to it, there is really no difference in the specifics. The only differences between a Renraku building and an Aztechnology one is the uniform of the security goons and exactly which pieces of hideous pseudo-art are displayed on the walls. Case in point: the disgustingly common off-the-shelf sculpture that I had valiantly managed not to play games with this morning. It was seen throughout the Matrix, used by every corporation, with so little variation that the original owner could sue them for copyright infringement. That is, if the poor bastard was still alive and felt like dying sometime soon. They do tend to play rough with their toys, the mega-corps.
But this office soon proved to be a severe disappointment. There was nothing relating to the cyber-zombie clinic in its files. There were simply some routine files on operations, finances, and so on for a very small and very public corporation which confined its area of business to Britain and the immediate area. Nothing at all about Aztechnology except for a few references in the financial files about paying rent (of all the things to waste my time with!) to one of the Azzies' front companies, the one that officially owned this particular eyesore of faux-stone. So I did a quick sweep for valuable information, sent it on its way (under more correct identifiers than I had assumed for the morning) to an information broker I knew in London who would pay quite well for the information. Especially since he knew if he got it and didn't pay, his systems wouldn't last the night. I believe I mentioned I have a slight touch of the vindictive, yes?
But, while good for my finances, that left me much shorter on time and no closer to finding my target for the morning. So, feeling rather short of options, as usual, I stepped back into the elevator. Deciding that I couldn't find the clinic through the buttons in the elevator, however, I took the next logical step, and created a floor access panel. Once that was in place, my sometimes faulty short-term memory stabbed me in the back, and I paused, running a quick check of my surroundings. None of my alarms were tripping, so my computer hadn't picked up anyone tracing my connections yet, but that meant nothing. On the other hand, the node I was in did not seem to be on any particularly heightened alert level, so they had not called in those pitiful immitations of deckers the mega-coprs liked to call 'computer security professionals'. As if some half-educated corporate-clone kid with a data-jack could secure anything against me.
I removed the panel, once I had managed to create it (the sculptor had apparently decided that there would be no access to the elevator shaft, and overriding the idiot's programming took some small effort. Not much, mind you, but far more than I felt like giving. Really, you would think that system designers would be more considerate of users, wouldn't you?) Finally, I found myself rappelling down the elevator shaft on a grapnel and line. While I went down, I noticed numbers on the wall next to several doors, and realized that the damned Azzies had coded the buttons in the elevator car so that the top floor was the bottom button and vice versa, while still being numbered with B3, the lowest basement, at the bottom. God I hate those children. They always throw these stupid little tricks at me that simply delay me, do nothing to stop me, and wind up annoying their poor workers far more than they annoy me. Not to mention doing terrible things to my poor much abused cardiopulmonary system.
At the bottom of the shaft, I found the door marked B3. A slight application of a shield-breaker program, and I was once again in deep kimchee. The doors cracked open, I had a brief impression of light, and then I found myself elsewhere once more.
I would like to pause here to be sure you all to understand something. I get bored easily. Very easily. Running into the same old thing time and again simply annoys me no end. More than twice, and I start getting aggravated. Normally. But when it is the same idiotic piece of code, I tend to get aggravated faster. Knights, I could have handled. Even the receptionist and a passel of knights wouldn't have been much of a problem. Boring, annoying, a waste of my time, yes, but not enough to truly get my goat ('slotted off', for the uncouth barbarians amongst you). But no, they had to go one better than any of those. They had to get cheap and 'efficient'.
They.
Put.
ME.
In.
The.
Same.
Arena.
Again.
Again!
How dare they! The same crappy piece of insignificant and useless code! NO DIFFERENT! The same boring silver walls. The same boring fake-sand floor. The same lack of all exit. The same bloody structure! I almost jacked out then and there I was so disgusted with them. I mean, seriously! Show some taste, people! A little creativity! Could it possibly hurt so much! Just a little? Please?
My anger soon found a new route to expression, however. Uncurling out of the sand floor this time was nothing less than a fully-grown alatuserpens quetzalcoatlus. The construct was incredible, indescribable. There were actually individual feathers described all down the long, serpent-like body, shading from teal to green and back again from nose to wings to tail. The rainbow fan of the crest around the back of the head was repeated in exquisite detail on the primary feathers of the wings and the long feathers at the ends of the tail. Small but intelligent black eyes peered beneath prominent over-hanging brow-ridges, and a long, thin tongue snaked out of a mouth lined with short fangs. The canines were similarly detailed: huge, forward-jutting and very, very sharp-looking. The claws on the short feet looked remarkably similar.
The feathered serpent stared at me for a moment, uncoiling from the floor in the center of the arena slowly. Then it screeched and took to the air, spiraling upwards rapidly. The construct was just as beautiful in motion as it was at rest. The muscles actually rippled, visibly flowing under the skin as the wings beat and the body undulated. The feathers rustled slightly with the motions, and I could even hear them sliding against one another. When the thing turned over and bellowed its war cry for my edification, I knew I was facing serious ICE. Nothing gave warnings except the most powerful anti-intrusion programs, and only the best programs could afford to waste space on such things as beautiful sculpture. Even as the thing nosed over and dove at me, bellowing madly, I knew that it was guarding the clinic I had come to find. It had to be. There was nothing else so sensitive in the whole node structure, and even if there was it would make a much better target than the clinic.
Any lesser being would have run screaming in terror. The child I was impersonating this morning, if he had been so unbelievably fortunate as to make it so far, would have been lost, unable to even comprehend the death about to strike him, for I had no doubt that this was ICE of the blackest sort. But not a one of them has my experience. None can even begin to approach my skills and experience. There is a reason I used to be called the Ghost in the Machine, I can get into any system, through any ICE, and I wasn't about to let some two-bit corporate decker-wanna-be chase me out of this system. I had a slight to repay.
As the alatuserpens nosed over, I summoned up my best protection and attack programs. A shield appeared on my left arm, and a crossbow appeared in the other. Aegis would suffice to take the beast's first charge, at least, and with luck I could place a good shot into the beast before it could recover and strike again. This was not my old stand-by Lenny, however, but a more vicious variation, closer to normal attack programs but nonetheless derived from Lenny.
The charge landed before I was expecting it, however. As soon as it had appeared, I moved the Aegis shield between myself and the dragon. While I was still setting myself, the thing hit. I was slammed into the ground by the force of the impact, crushed beneath a massive weight as two inch-long sections of fang punched through the shield mere inches from my face. For a moment, I felt the freezing water of sheer terror flow through my veins as the dragon shook its head, trying to free its fangs. It actually lifted me from the floor of the arena and shook me about slightly. Thankfully it worked its fangs free quickly and I dropped to the floor again before I became too rattled.
I rolled, quickly bringing Aegis back around, but the program was seriously damaged, flickering and stuttering. Cursing, I brought the crossbow up and fired it, unleashing my attack program. It hit the serpent in one wing, and the whole thing flickered for a moment. Then the bolt was gone, the wing was fine, and the bloody Aztec dragon was lunging its long neck forward.
I swung Aegis to take the blow, all ready calling up new armor, dropping the attack program for more protection. Aegis failed as I rammed it into the snake's face, the program crashing hard. I knew I was going to have to re-write the whole thing, and my subconscious kicked the rest of me quite hard several times while my conscious mind dealt with the rude intrusions of the modern world.
The armor I called up appeared as full-scale police riot-armor. That was what I had originally designed it to look like, with the Kevlar padding, plastic helmet, face-shield, and plastic riot shield. But having it appear here, in the middle of this sculpture, was a Very Bad Thing. The computer I was in had recognized that I did not belong, and was no longer trying to enforce the imagery of the sculpture on me. It was setting me back to the persona I had appeared in. That meant it was aware of an intrusion now and was telling someone in the meat world that there was a problem. That person would look in, see me, and start tracing, start doing Other Bad Things with his own deck, and I would be in serious trouble very shortly, unless I could get through this ICE and get what I was after.
So I did the unexpected, and lunged forward. With Aegis out of the way and my attack program having minimal affect, I summoned up Angie once more. The sword appeared, monomolecular blade once more, and I swung as I charged, aiming not for the beast's neck, but for the claw that it raised to defend itself. I knew the tactic, I had seen a real Feathered Serpent rear back like that, catch the man attacking it with the raised paw, pin him to the ground, and then bite his head off while gutting his corpse. But I also knew how to get around that tactic. After all, if there's no clawed foot to hold the victim, there's no victim. True? True!
As predicted, the claw came forward, lashing out incredibly quickly to catch me and crush me to the ground. But I sidestepped, running a dodge program, and sliced Angie right through the thing's ankle. The damage to the program was immediately evident. It let out an incredible shriek, and lunged clumsily into the air with its other foot. I scored a quick hit there, but nothing serious, and once again the program flickered as it repaired the damage. But it didn't replace the missing foot, instead continuing to spiral upwards.
Now it was my turn to let out a war cry as I closed Angie and activated Lenny once more. This time, I had my mini-gun. This time, I would get the full effect of my favorite attack program. Even the 'rounds' that missed the serpent would hit the arena, possibly taking it down. Without a second thought, I raised the weapon, pointed it at the nearest section of wall, and pulled the trigger. At over three thousand rounds per minute in the real world, the mini-gun I had based my little friend on was capable of laying down a literal stream of lead. It chewed through things that would laugh at rifles with ease, and went through ammunition like a marathon runner went through oxygen during a race. Lenny did much the same thing, 'firing' sub-program packets at the target as quickly as the host system could accept them. In this case, that resulted in a firing rate very close to the meat-world god-cannon he was based on. The arena began flickering almost immediately as its very substance was flayed away. Then, in a flash, it vanished, leaving me standing in a small room just outside the elevator.
And standing in the only door deeper into the place was the Serpent. I turned Lenny on it, now, not bothering to let up the trigger. It tried to dodge, but the sculpture held it, and it simply bounced off the wall. When the 'rounds' began impacting, it charged again. I took advantage of the lack of laws of physics in the Matrix (something most children will forget time and again until the Matrix kills them for their folly) by raising my shield and holding the mini-gun one-handed. The Serpent began staggering almost immediately, flickering madly as the self-repair subroutine tried to fix the damage I was inflicting. But the damage was coming in too fast, and then Lenny managed to get a vital chunk of the self-repair subroutine itself, and it shut down. The dragon crashed into me, throwing me into the wall and pinning me there behind the riot-shield as I continued to pour fire into it. It tried to worry its way through, but the effort was half-hearted and I could tell it was beginning to fail.
When it did, it simply vanished, disappearing back into whatever storage place ICE goes to when it ceases inconveniencing its betters. I stood for a moment, panting in the meat world and the Matrix, allowing the adrenaline to flow out of me. When I had calmed down sufficiently, I glided forward, keeping Lenny and the shield before me as I stepped into the computer system the feathered serpent had been guarding.
There were no more surprises. No more return trips to that damnably tasteless arena. No more ICE dragons. There was simply an office room, yet another example of the universals of corporate life. Little modular cubicle walls divided the chamber into several smaller 'offices' for the unimportant but vitally necessary functionaries. There didn't seem to be anyone using any of the offices, so I picked the nearest and shut down Lenny. Having an attack program ready would make it easier to respond to danger, but the armor is much better when ICE or a corporate decker manages to surprise one, so I kept the armor up and let the weapon go. In its place, I summoned Gerald, one of the best search routines I had ever constructed. I let him loose on the computer, and the small antique desktop displayed by the sculpture soon flicked on and I smiled. Slowly spinning there in the screen was the Aztechnology corporate logo.
I quickly swiped all the computer files, not copying them but actually downloading all of them through the satellite link into a carefully prepared dump-file. A different file received every nuyen the clinic had at the time. Each of the files had its own individual (and, I assure you, quite different) destination. The originals went directly (and I do mean directly) into the child's personal files. The nuyen dropped quite comfortably into the bank account he had claimed I could not access (that was, of course, the first thing I had done this morning, opening those files and leaving myself a back-door without ever bothering the off-the-shelf ICE from two months ago the young fool had bought second hand and over-used). From there, however, the two files had very different destinations. The data was copied, the originals left in the child's possession, and the copies routed through a few million random exchanges and blind data-dumps before winding up in the possession of a certain friend of mine who would be more than happy to have such hot data. The nuyen was completely logged into the child's accounts. Then those accounts were closed out, and the money began its own odyssey through the electronic highways and byways. Unlike the data, it would go through close to a full billion transfers, including, more than likely, a number of exchanges through Aztechnology-owned banks. In the end, they would end up in an account that I would personally empty into a credstick. That stick would then be deposited in another bank for a person who never existed and would shortly die, then begin another round of transfers and jumps, this time only a few million before being deposited into yet another credstick which a friend of mine would retrieve. He would then transfer it to me, minus a hefty fifteen percent, and I would have quite a lovely chunk of money in my accounts.
I sighed, happy as could be, and did some fast checking. My alarms were going off, telling me someone was finally attempting to trace me, and I felt a brief flicker of surprise flow through me as I realized how close they were. I did a quick check, left the line open, and jacked out. The meat world appeared around me in a flash of pain and disorientation. Sharp, acrid odors assailed my nose, and the sounds of pumps and distant people intruded on my ears, and I sighed as yet another trip to The Land of the Mundane And Uninteresting began.
Rising from the uncomfortable seat I had taken, I carefully replaced the small plug into the base of my skull, removed the ties holding my hair out of the way, and shrugged once to settle my duster. Then I picked up my shopping bag (I just had to have this one suit I noticed on the way in. It was designed for me, had to be), and stepped out into the service hallway. It was empty, as usual, and I casually walked down towards the door into the mall. I stopped in the public bathroom, answered Nature with utmost politeness, and then took a leisurely stroll through the mall, smiling my beatific smile at the poor corp-spawned degenerates flowing around me. A few minutes after I stepped into the mall proper, a number of strapping young men in very pretty uniforms with Lone Star's emblem splattered everywhere, each of them carrying a very impressive looking weapon, went charging down the service hallway, eliciting screams and other sounds of dismay as they charged through.
I smiled, and walked out to my car. My apartment was two solid hours away, and I had plans for the rest of the day.
As I walked in the door, my phone began to sound its charming little sound. I walked over and tapped the speakerphone. "Good morrow, dear caller," I sang in my best superior-British-noble accent, "you have the distinct and great honor to be addressing Psiber. I give you leave to begin your worship and adoration of my august personage."
Without even a pause to admire the beauty of my voice, the impudent caller stated, "The CIA thanks you for the information, young man." That stopped me in my tracks. Cold. "Consider the funds to be payment for services rendered. We will contact you when we have more work for you. Good day." The click as my caller hung up was quite possibly the loudest sound I had ever heard. It remains to this day one of the most final and damning.
I stood there, staring at my rather plain and unprepossessing phone for several minutes, shocked beyond words. I did not doubt that this whole thing had been concocted by the CIA, it fit too well with their reputation and style. I was utterly panicked for a few moments, and visions of UCAS strike troops breaking down my door and swinging on rappelling cables through my windows buzzed about my brain.
Then I broke out laughing. I had been duped, played like a fiddle, by what was probably the worlds most maligned intelligence agency. The agency which had a reputation for being a day late and totally wrong when reporting on the weather outside their front door had used me to get data on a cyber-zombie clinic in another country, and had learned just what I was capable of at the same time. They had probably even hired that ignorant child to go in and harass me, if he wasn't actually a CIA plant. I collapsed into a chair and spent the next hour laughing at myself and the world. We were all being fooled. What was derided as the worst intelligence agency in the world was probably the best. After all, if they could fool me, there isn't anyone they couldn't fool.
I jacked in again, visited a few bulletin boards, conducted some more legitimate business, and went out for drinks. After all, if I was going to be doing runs for the CIA, I would need some security, now wouldn't I? I stopped in and, enjoying the feeling of security that comes from being a millionaire, bought a round of drinks for my companions and co-workers while I related this little story. They weren't quite as amused, but hey, I have always maintained that not one of them has a valid sense of humor. They do not even appreciate Monty Python. How can you have a sense of humor and not like Monty Python, I ask you?