I Piece of pie
Marisa woke up from the heat, she kicked her AC unit making it hum, cold air began to pour in. She stretched and got off her bed, she checked her hormone patch, the indicator showed that it would still work for a couple hours before needing to be changed.
A thought crossed her mind, she checked the box, biodegradable auto-HRT patches, by Sunflower Laboratory a subsidiary of Kazami Tech. She laughed to herself and put the box in her bag along with a case full of flash drives with the label toolbox on top of it. A soldering iron, screwdrivers, some spare parts.
Marisa checked her clock, the sun wouldn't be up for a couple of hours, this was good, she could work outside before the heat took over. She put on her hat and boots and walked into the kitchen to get some coffee for later, of course she steeped some mushrooms into the mix, that would make such work bearable after some hours. The sensation of the world around twisting while your mind races full of energy is quite good for her line of work.
Well the brain does remember things better if it is in the same state it was when the thing was learned. Marisa was just making sure her brain was in remembering conditions since half of her time in college she was like that, the other half she was asleep, so right now it was perfect to remember one half.
Big corporations say they love smart people, but they never hire the person who can threaten the boss by being smarter than them. Marisa was perhaps the best mechatronic engineer that had come out of her generation, maybe even better if her teachers were right, but she preferred to just say the generation. MAAS biosystems let her go through every filter, but in the end they went for the guy Marisa was fully aware never came to class but he was a party friend of the hiring manager.
Ono-sendai stopped replying when she provided her documentation and noticed that she had changed her name recently, of course they asked, they always would ask, harassment risk they said, so that job was not an option either.
Marisa hence preferred to work with her father, Akira Kirisame, he owned a small car repair shop at the edge of El Paso. Marisa liked to wear a witch hat, it became quite the fashion item in the early 20's in Juarez, to this day it remained as common as the typical stetson style of hat. She was the mechamancer, the one you called when anything with a motor appeared to have died since she'd bring it back to life.
That day she had an appointment with Miss Martinez, her car was not going to start, engine was fine according to the mechanic, but the computer refused to turn on. Marisa asked for pictures, it was a HRV 2030 not unbelievably old but not new either.
Marisa knocked at the door, Miss Martinez walked out with a VR headset on top of her head, she handed Marisa the keys "There you go"
Miss Martinez sold VR simulations, very exciting ones, sneaking your way into Meditech and stealing blueprints from their servers, running away from the legendary Section 9 in Chiba City while you ran with a bag full of bootleg pancreases. Breaking out of prison in the Sprawl.
Marisa thought of those simulations she had bought when she finally managed to make the car turn on again. She began putting away her tools, until she came across a spare flash drive, Marisa shrugged and put it in her pocket, she'd return it later, perhaps it contained a preview of the next big simulation.
Martinez paid for the repair and Marisa went to the shop before the heat made the sidewalks as hot as a stove.
Next was an easy repair on a tractor, she said it would take a couple of days, but turns out the fix would require just a few hours cracking the internal system, Minoriko stopped paying for the membership to drive that thing and now it wouldn't start, it was just a matter of putting another key file and making the system think the server was in fact the server Marisa had installed under the hood of the engine.
It would take a while, so Marisa plugged in the flash drive onto her Onno sendai and jacked onto her own computer. Some ICE, well expected since Martinez was good with machines herself. Marisa took a deep breath 3 she thought up, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, 6, 5… So on and so forth.
Pi was such an inconspicuous variable for a machine that usually ICE did not see such variables running in, maybe they would get close, but keep counting and the ICE outright ignores Marisa. She could also do it with e, or psi, but those numbers were not as common as pi.
The file in the drive didn't look like a VR asset, it had documents, maybe a quick read. Minna Marcos, social security… Yeah Marisa found no use for that, driver license, birth certificate, nothing out of the ordinary.
Wait but her name was not Marcos, this files were older than Marisa herself, checking more Marisa of course came across newer ones, this one had the Martinez name on them. Marisa checked the metadata, that's when Marisa decided to jack off right away. Marisa laughed to herself.
Her father coughed "Hey is that yours?"
Marisa froze and smiled
"Go return it… We won't get customers if they get their shit stolen" He huffed and turned around
Marisa put it in her pocket "They will return anyway, what are they going to do? Buy a new car?"
"You know what I mean"
"I never keep them, you know that, it's just fun"
"You are a mechanic not a hacker!" He slammed his foot against the door "Go return it!"
Marisa sighed and got up, she nodded and walked out of the door.
It wasn't even a block away when she found the owner of the drive, Marisa smiled and handed it to her "Oi sorry, thought it was my drivers toolbox"
The lady held the drive "Then it means you opened it! Who else sells you ICE breakers? Nobody in town could crack it"
Marisa shrugged "ICE breakers are needless if you slip between the cracks"
"You want your brain fried girl? You know who I am, do you think I'd put my personal info behind some thin ICE? This is the same crap that fried Satsuki Rin"
Marisa shrugged, Satsuki Rin was a cowboy, a good one, but she got her brain cooked trying to hack into a research facility. "Didn't she use some cheap ICE breaker from Ram?"
"Of course! I went to nab a piece of that ICE for myself. So who sold you that icepick? I won't put a price on your head if you tell me"
Marisa took a step back, it required some strength to keep her cool "I never use icepicks, I count irrational numbers"
"Then daddy was right, you are not a hacker. Do you know what an angel is?" The old lady put the flash drive inside her breast pocket.
"Not really" Marisa shrugged "I know a cowboy is a bootleg hacker, a greyhat is a hacker who works for money"
"An angel is madder than a cowboy and smarter than a greyhat. I know it because I am an angel myself"
"Mima!" Marisa finally said, so then she did know what was an angel. Those who work in cyberspace and make things happen that shouldn't are divided into different categories, among the normal ones there are cowboys, greyhats, and hipsters (who never jack onto their computers), then there are those who are crazy who are the angels, exterminators and fairies, you have to be good, you have to be smart, those never live more than a couple days unless they are good.
Mima, it was a widely known name among programmers. She broke into Dubai's government servers, brought the entire country down and made it look easy.
Mima more than anything was surprised this mechanic in the boonies had broken into her own personal files without much of an issue. She was probably too stupid to realize what she had done, or too smart to realize how rare it is to pull something off like that. Maybe both, regardless Mima could lure her into a trap, if she was good she'd survive, become a true angel, that or Mima would get rid of a loose end.
"I think you are good for a job I need help with" Mima said
Marisa clapped her hands "You want me to get killed? Jokes on you, I'm suicidal!"
Mima blinked a couple of times, she had forgotten Marisa was already a bit crazy.