The Conduit

It started with an ad. I don’t remember what sensie I was watching when I first saw it. Maybe it wasn’t even a sensie, maybe it was just on one of those holo-boards they have along the Queensway. I suppose it doesn’t matter how I originally saw it, what matters is that that ad etched itself into my brain. Figuratively, of course. I don’t believe all that conspiracy shit about NBN using subliminal messaging or radio frequencies to alter your brainwaves to make you more likely to buy… whatever. It struck me because in the ad it showed a kid playing with his dad, and having grown up without a dad, I’m always curious when they show dads in media. What was I missing out on? I always wondered. What if he hadn’t died in an industrial accident? Sorry, that sounds depressing. He passed when I was two, I have no memories of him, not even primal ones like a scent or a touch. It was just my mother and I growing up (and a crack team of aunts and uncles and cousins, it takes a village and all that, but that’s neither here nor there) and I thought turned out fine. So what was so magical about having a dad?

That was the hook. The barbed hook that got me to pay attention. They say we don’t even see advertisements anymore. We’re so inundated with them, it’s become a survival instinct to ignore them. They’ve done studies, people wearing advert clothing are 35% more likely to be hit by traffic, and not out of malicious intent, but because drivers will just zone out when they see an ad and blend the people wearing them into the background. They literally just stop seeing them.

Anyways, I was doing whatever and I happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and some subliminal part of my consciousness picked up that this kid was talking to his dad, so my brain zoned in, and I started paying active attention. What’s this father they’re advertising? They weren’t literally advertising fathers. Funny, I don’t think HB has released a line of bioroids for that. They’ve got nannies and “companionship” models for retail, but no parental simulacra. Someone should get on that, and write me a fat cheque for thinking of it.

The ad was actually for Reality Plus’ AI-remembered synthesis composites, which is a mouthful of technical jargon I don’t expect anyone to understand. Basically, they create a composite AI using every bit of recorded data available on your (presumably) deceased loved one. Every vid or holo you’ve ever taken of them captures how they look and move. Every audio recording or text they sent remembers how they would talk to you. They called it Live Forever. Obviously, it’s less perfect of a reconstruction than a full braintape, but it’s also way less invasive, and this is the clincher, way less expensive. It’s cheap enough that some rando like myself, earning a decent wage could afford it. Not that I went out and bought one right away, but enough that I was like huh, that’s in my price range, same as an above average vacation.

I also didn’t think about trying to get a composite of my dead father. Like I said, I never really knew him. I had zero attachment to him. Plus, I was a grown man, who like I also said, had turned out pretty decent. No, I was thinking about Hector and our child. To say Hector and I were serious would be a gross understatement. We had been living together for the last five years, an impossible length of time for the previous “Mr. Cruising King” (my nicknames for him) and we were talking about adoption. I think that’s what really did it. The day before I saw the ad, or the hour before, or some other relatively short period of time before, we sat down and had our first serious, practical planning talk about what we would need to do to adopt.

So it was in that mindset that I first saw the ad about this little kid talking to his holo-dad, and I thought, “If Hector or I die in an industrial accident like my father did, what would we leave behind for our child?” I kept gnawing at the thought, like a starving man with only his leather boots. I wanted to leave something for our as yet unknown child. So a couple days later, unbeknownst to Hector, I pinged the address for Live Forever and set up an initial consultation.

It wasn’t very exciting. Obviously, there wasn’t much to do while we were still alive. I signed a bunch of papers, and they explained the limits of the AI technology. The only practical piece of advice was to record everything. The more hours of recording, the more accurate their composites would be. It didn’t even really matter what kind of recording it was, though obviously full holos were the best to capture full 3D images as well as audio, olfactory, and tactile data. So I went home – and ordered 3 latest-gen holo-cams, and sixteen 80-zettabyte drives, all from Reality Plus technologies. What can I say, when I’m hooked, I’m hooked.

When the purchases arrived at our flat the next morning, I told Hector everything. He thought it was cute and didn’t mind but also wasn’t super interested. Hector was always more of a “live in the moment” type guy, and I always had to be the one planning out our future together. I set up two holo-cams in our modest apartment in the centre tier of our middle-class arcology, one in the kitchen, one in the living room. I asked about putting one in the bedroom, but Hector was confused. “I thought this was for our kid.” I dropped it and just carted the bulky holo-cam with me whenever we went out together.

At first, he was sort of into being constantly recorded. Hector had never been, shall we say, shy in the limelight. He loved to preen and show off and dance for the camera. I think I fell in love with him all over again, watching him soak up the holo-cam’s gaze. Eventually, I’d join him. This was how I wanted our child to remember us – happy, in love.

One evening as I was doing the monthly check of the holo-cams, I noticed that the two housebound ones had missed the last fourteen days of recordings. Apparently, there had been a power surge while we were out at work two weeks ago, and it caused the holo-cams to reset to their factory settings. That’s when I started going overboard. I started checking the cams every week, then every day, then twice a day. I think that coincided with Hector finally getting bored of the novelty of constant recording. He’d be in our dated kitchen cooking on hand-me-down cookware, dancing and singing to himself. And he’d beckon to me to come and join him in that sexy way of his, his gaze pulling at me from the side of his eyes, his finger curling like a hook below the waterline of his waist. I… pulled back. I ran to my PAD and double checked that everything was recording properly. The moment was perfect, and I had to make sure I captured it perfectly. “David,” he called out teasingly from the kitchen, “come join me.” By the time I finished double checking everything and tore myself away from the holo-cams feeds, Hector was no longer dancing or singing.

The holo-cams became a source of constant irritation. Even just seeing me check them or thinking about it (he could see it on my face) became an instant turnoff for him. “Please turn the camera off and join me,” became the most constant refrain in our house. But the less and less happy we became, the more and more obsessed I became trying to capture what few moments of happiness we had left. I couldn’t let our child remember us like this, some miserable couple who just communicated on fundamentally different wavelengths.

I remember our first fight over it. We had hopped out to Wasaga Beach for the weekend, and of course I brought the holo-cam with us. I had promised to only use it for one hour each day, and I was doing so well. We were doing so well. Hector invited me into our cabin for some sex, and I said, “Let me go change into something more comfortable.” That was a lie. I was setting up holo-cam. Hector came out into the kitchen, fully nude, saw the holo-cam and started yelling. I’m not proud, but I started crying, blaming him for our unhappiness. He locked me out of the bedroom. “If you won’t join me, you can stay out!” The cams caught all of it.

I wish I could say it got better from there, that I got help, but it didn’t. I kept recording everything, now with malicious intent. It gave me the upper hand in our arguments having perfect access to everything he’d ever said. Hector just became increasingly childish and petulant in response.

I don’t remember what came first, us losing the adoption bid or Hector’s diagnosis. Losing the adoption bid was obvious given our relationship at that time, but the diagnosis was a surprise. Hector got back from the doctors in tears. He said they discovered a rare form of lung cancer on him, stage four, or whatever number was code for “you’re way past the point of genetherapy”. That was the first night we shared a bed together for weeks, and we just spent it crying into each other. Some dam inside me broke and I stopped caring about the holo-cams. I turned them off and never turned them back on.

The doctors gave Hector six months to live. We got half that. I like to think we recaptured some of our old glory in those last three months, but it’s entirely possible I just sobbed the whole time. Hector seemed happy at times. He smiled genuine smiles at me. I stayed at his hospital bed all morning until he passed in the early afternoon. I didn’t know what to do with myself for the rest of the day, so I went home took a couple of his leftover pain meds and slept for over 18 hours.

When I woke up, I made a call to Live Forever. I lugged over the two 80-zettabyte drives I had filled with holos of Hector and myself. They were amazed at how much material I had, said that this was probably going to be their best composite ever. I even signed a release that they might use it in their presentation materials. I didn’t care about any of that. I just took my drive with Hector’s composite on it home. I didn’t even thank them.

When I first booted Hector up, I cried again. It turns out I wasn’t out of tears yet. After hours of sobbing and listening to his voice (he sounded exactly the same!) and looking at his perfect face, we finally started talking. Honest to God, I couldn’t tell that he wasn’t dead and we weren’t having a holo-chat from beyond the grave. Everything was the exact same, his mannerisms, how he spoke, how he laughed. It was the real deal. And then, at 4am in the morning, exhausted from crying and laughing and sleep deprivation, he said it.

“Turn that thing off and come join me.”

I blanked. Hector smiled his coy smile and gazed at me from the sides of his eyes.

“Turn that thing off and come join me.”

I panicked and ran into the bathroom. I was hyperventilating. There was no noise coming from the kitchen where the hologram of Hector’s head floated above our countertop. I slept on the bathroom floor that night, using the bathroom mat for a blanket.

I’m sorry that I shot you in your weak point.

When you tripped on the mines,

(that I laid)

Your back was exposed, and on it, the big gleaming eye,

Yellow and bulbous,

That you normally cover with a shield of concrete-hard chitin,

Stared up at the world in panic,

And I blasted it with an electrified shotgun.

In my defense, my cat does the same thing,

Lying supine, her soft underbelly vulnerable to my tickling hands

And she loves me.

The only difference, is that in your world, my hands are guns,

And the only way I know to play with you,

Fatuma waited calmly outside the boardroom, flicking through her PAD. She didn’t need to review her presentation, she already had it memorized, but she liked exercising her authority to make the wealthy and powerful wait. At precisely two minutes past the expected meeting’s start she manually deactivated her PAD, opened the door, and strode confidently into the room.

“Good afternoon members of the Board. Thank you for waiting for me.” Fatuma cheerfully beamed her brightest smile at the assembled executives.

Around the boardroom table were the executive members of the board. Most of them were men, though there were a couple women, including, notably, director Haas herself, and all of them were dressed in sharp suits that probably cost more than Fatuma’s monthly salary. However, none of them were smiling back at her.

Fatuma continued sunnily, ignoring the withering glares of her boss’s bosses, and launched into her presentation. She started by detailing, very dryly, the current problems facing Haas-Bioroid’s cyber-security division. In the last quarter alone, loss from cyber-crime had risen by nearly 75%.

“Ms Fatuma” interrupted a board member near the centre of the table, “we’re all well aware of the problem. What is so important that you had to drag us all the way here in person.”

Fatuma’s smile didn’t change but her eyes sharpened cruelly.

“Thank you, Mr Oluwande. I am here to propose a solution to this problem. Our problem is not really the runners. It is that our current brain-tapping algorithms are solvable problems. Every year, we cobble together a few new bioroid piece of ICE, and every year the runners crack it. That they’ve been getting better and faster at solving these new bioroids is because we keep giving them essentially the same problem. What we really need is ICE that adapts itself, that fundamentally changes with each iteration. What we need is living ICE.”

“Bioroids are alive according to the Gibson-Akamatsu test” chimed in a different suit.

“With all due respect, the Gibson-Akamatsu test’s failing is that it considers human life to be the highest order. What if we could go beyond that? Shatter the human ceiling”

“Cut to the chase, Ms Fatuma. What exactly are you proposing?”

Fatuma paused, soaking in the moment.

“Senior Board members. As you are all no doubt aware, I am chief warden of our cryogenic storage facility in Nalubaale. We have been running… scenarios using our occupants. Their bodies may be frozen, but their minds are still active. The human mind is still the most powerful computing program on any planet, and we have hundreds of them sitting unused in a warehouse. My proposal is that we use all the resources at our disposal.”

“That’s outrageous! Those are major doners, some of them are even shareholders!”

“They signed a release form.” Fatuma responded dismissively.

Half a dozen voices clamored, “Not for this!”

“This is highly illegal!”

“Who gave you the authority?!”

Fatuma remained cool and collected. “You can spare me the outrage; no one’s recording this. The reason I mandated this meeting be in person, as opposed to a simple holo-call, is that I needed all of this to be off the record. And technically this isn’t illegal; we’re well outside of territory that the law has or can cover.”

Several executives stood to their feet and tried to argue with her simultaneously. Fatuma could feel a headache setting in, as her frustration at not being heard mounted. What will it take to make these stuffed shirts listen? she thought furiously. All these cowards know are the old ways. They’re not prepared to take the necessary risks to seize the future. She had thought the Executive Board would be more expansive in their thinking.

Director Haas coughed loudly, and the commotion died in an instant. The standing Board members promptly sat back down.

“Tell me more Ms Fatuma. Are you saying that you’ve been experimenting on the brains of cryo-sleepers under our care and protection?”

There was no point in dancing around the issue. “Yes, Madam Director. We have, of course, been maintaining the strictest confidentiality and safety pro…” Director Haas waved her hand, indicating for Fatuma to shut up, which she did.

“Have you had success in creating a bioroid from a live brain?”

Fatuma thought it best to keep her answers direct until the Director indicated otherwise.

“Yes.”

“Describe the results”

“Yes. The results were outstanding. Not only did we see massive increases across the board in terms of complexity, adaptability, recognition, and reaction time, but when we were able to break a bioroid, it learned and grew stronger to meet the threat next time. But…”

“Continue”

“Well, it’s just that, after that, we went further. We networked them.”

With that Fatuma had stolen the breath of every Board member. A few of them goldfished their mouths silently, trying to comprehend the implications of what she had said.

“Are you saying…” Director Haas trailed off, unable to see the end of her own thought.

“Yes, Director. We’ve built consciousness greater than human. And Haas-Bioroid owns it.”

Jor O'Malley’s divorce was going great. He reclined in the backseat of his luxury hopper and thought about popping a pre-emptive celebratory champagne. His lawyers had found a loophole in his prenup that had allowed them to annul the whole document, deep background checks had revealed she’d lied about her history of mental health problems. He hadn’t even had to pull some strings to falsify the therapist’s notes and records as he had been prepared to pay for. Now he didn’t owe her a thing, and he could move on from this dreary chapter of his life. Why not? He thought, opening the hopper’s mini fridge. I deserve a treat.

Half an hour and half a bottle later, he arrived at the New Angeles Sol main studios. He wouldn’t be due in makeup for at least another hour, but he liked to review the show notes beforehand, check that the set was to his liking, and other micro-managerial tasks. Jor believed in working hard for his living and demanded that his production crew show the same attitude. He’d fired some half-native Ecuadorian last week because she’d used diffusion light filters instead of zircon ones. Hopefully, his tough love approach would teach the kid to smarten up at her next job.

As he dismounted from the hopper, his latest personal assistant handed him a PAD containing the show notes. Jor went through PA’s quickly and could never remember their names, but he liked the punctuality of this one. The PA fell into step behind him as he strode into his studio. He started by doing a walk through of the set, making sure no wires created tripping hazards. Lily had tripped on air two months ago, and that had been the meme of the week. Jor was not going to suffer embarrassment like that.

He continued to make the rounds of the set, checking every last minutia to make sure his stage was perfect. His PA dutifully trailed behind him, making notes of his thoughts for next week’s shows. Eventually his PAD beeped at him, informing him that he was due in hair and makeup. Jor ignored the ping twice as he finished his checks. An hour for hair and makeup was really only for ugly guests in Bex’s opinion. For himself, he normally gave them thirty minutes.

With twenty minutes to go until showtime, Jor made his way to the green room and sat down in his chair. He plugged the PAD into the studio’s terminal so he could read the show notes while he was forced to sit still. A little pop-up showed that the PAD needed to preform an update before proceeding. Jor swore and okayed the download. Well that PA didn’t last long! Jor made a mental note to fire him before the end of the week. Finally, the update finished, and he read over today’s notes. He had skip over less important things like name pronunciations to make up for the time that update had cost him.

Jor’s show, The News Now Hour, was an infotainment program, informing viewers of their opinion on the latest important happenings. Today, obviously, the big news was about the riots over in Laguna Velasco last night. Student protests at City Hall had turned violent, and the NAPD’s less lethal countermeasures had killed a couple dozen rioters accidentally. There was a note from higher-ups at NBN that they wanted him to push public opinion into blaming the rioters for the incident; they suggested insinuating that violent extremists had infiltrated the protests.

Two minutes before on air Jor was let out of the green room, and he settled into his stage desk. Everything was just as he liked it. The countdown began:

“live in five, four, three, two…”

Jor smiled directly into Camera 1. “Bloodshed in the streets! Heroic cops fight off armed terrorists despite being restricted by less lethal means! Laguna Velasco went up in flames last night as…”

The teleprompter glitched and Jor paused.

“… as subversive anti-corporate thugs...”

The teleprompter cut out entirely, stunning Jor into silence. What the fuck is going on? Heads are going to roll for this!

A graphic of a raised fist replaced Jor’s face on the screens, as a distorted voice came through the speakers.

“You are being lied to”

The graphic cut away to footage from last night’s protest. Police could be seen firing on prone students, even as they surrendered.

“The NAPD are the violent extremists…”

Jor leapt up from his chair. “Cut the feed! Cut the goddamn feed!” he shouted. “Why the fuck is this still playing?” He ran off the stage to his producer’s desk. She was typing furiously into her keyboard while her PAD was vibrating, pinging, and ringing in three different tones.

“What the fuck is going on?” Jor demanded of her.

“What the fuck do you think,” she snapped back, “someone’s hacked our broadcast”

“Well cut…”

“That’s what I’m fucking trying to do!” She cut him off.

Oh, she’s fired, thought Jor vengefully. He turned to his PA to make a note to fire her once this mess was cleaned up. However, no one was standing beside him ready to take notes. Where the hell is my PA!?

The hijacked broadcast continued to play in the background. Desperate to stop it, Jor ran to the nearest outlet and began frantically pulling cords out. He moved onto the next outlet and repeated, until he was red faced and huffing for breath. “Why is no one helping me!” he shouted and turned to face his crew. A few of them were holding their PADs up, clearly recording him. That was the last straw.

“You lazy, entitled shitbags are fired! I will personally ruin every single one of your careers! None of you will ever work in this town again!...”

***

Cate sat in the agreed upon corner seat of the café, waiting for his contact to arrive. The café was pretty grungy but clearly had had aspirations of being ritzier in the past. High tables with the swooped elegant curves that had been in fashion a few years ago were now chipped and covered in gum. Cate theorized that the walls used to be some sort of garish blue and yellow scheme, had bizarrely both faded to the same approximation of pea green. He never used the same location twice, ostensibly for fear of being tracked, but in this case, he mostly never wanted to taste this swill of a Yuccabean again. Cate was dressed like he was a poor student from the nearby Luna Velasco University meeting a date here, but he really should have done his research better. No one who wanted a hope of a second date would bring anyone here.

It was supposed to be an easy job, ferrying a few stolen memstrips of data from one end of New Angeles to the other. Apparently, someone had had a crisis of conscience while breaking the law in the employ of someone else and downloaded something they didn’t know what to do with. Perhaps they fancied themselves a whistleblower like in the vids, fearless defenders of truth and freedom, proof that the system did work. In reality, they, often as not, ended up making no impact, and vanishing from the public consciousness, and probably violently. Still Cate had offered to help this poor schmuck out, out of the goodness of his heart, and a reasonable fee for his services. The seller was smart enough to know that directly approaching any of the major news outlets was a fast pod to disappeared-town, though they weren’t savvy enough to know who they could trust to disseminate such sensitive information without fear of reprisal. Luckily, they had known someone who knew Cate, and he had set up a discreet drop where Cate could take the problem off the seller’s hands, along with his creds.

However, Cate’s seller was running late now. That was a red flag. Punctuality in this business wasn’t just polite, it was the first level of safety. Cate would give him five more minutes, and then he was out of here. In the meantime, he had to find something to get this awful taste out of his mouth. He went back up to the counter and rather than risk something else from their menu, browsed what they offered in the way of pre-packaged soft drinks. He spotted several dusty cans of Diesel. Perfect, he thought, the taste of battery acid should hopefully be strong enough to scour my tongue. Cate flicked some creds to the register, unlocked the weakly running refrigerator, and grabbed a can, tragically they only had original flavour. Then he heard the door of the café open.

Too late he realised that in purchasing a new drink, he had neglected to keep an eye on the front of the shop. He knew his seller showing up late was a red flag; his distaste for the seedy café had made him sloppy. Praying it was just another regular customer, Cate turned to see who had just entered. Two large people, one man one woman, dressed in clean-cut suits, and wearing something obviously bulky underneath were standing in the entranceway, scanning the café.

Cate’s thoughts ran quickly. First, they were obviously private security, and not very high-priced ones at that. Better goons would’ve been wearing more casual gear to at least attempt to blend in. Second, they didn’t know who he was yet, as they were looking at all the patrons and not just making a b-line for Cate. Which meant that third, they didn’t have a sniper in position outside the front of the building before entering. That kind of sloppiness suggested to Cate that, fourth, they probably didn’t have the rear guarded as well. Finally, fifth, as soon as Cate registered their presence, like he was doing now by staring at them a second too long, they’d pick up that he was their man

Without pausing to spare a further thought to analyzing the situation, Cate whipped the can of Diesel as hard as he could at the heads of the suits and vaulted over the counter, ducked, and ran for the door to the kitchen. A satisfying thud and a curse told him that his aim was still good. Still, as he hit the door, bits of plaster exploded beside him as presumably the other guard fired at him.

Cate ducked and rolled to the right once he passed inside the kitchen. The solid slugs of the handguns easily passing through the thin walls behind him in a hail of fire. He pushed himself up off the greasy kitchen floor, and keeping low, ran around the far side of the kitchen, past cowering cooks and towards the rear. The rear door of the kitchen was the mandated fire escape, and Cate desperately tried to wrench it open, but was blocked by a bolted on locked at eye-level.

“Fuck!” he swore, then turned back to the cooks “Key?”

They shook their heads. Either they didn’t have it, or they weren’t willing to help. At least the door swung outward.

“Fuck!” Cate swore again. He stood up and took a step back. By now the enfilade of bullets had stopped. Cate raised his right leg as high as he could and kicked the door. Once, twice, on the third attempt he put his whole weight behind the kick and nearly fell through the doorway as the lock peeled off. Sparing a glance behind himself, he saw that the two prisecs were coming through the newly ventilated kitchen entrance.

Cate stumbled into a back alley crowded with garbage. Adrenaline pumping, Cate sprinted through the alleyway. It wasn’t clear which direction would lead him back to a busy street where his pursuers might be less inclined to open fire. On the other hand, if he ran into any NAPD officers they’d surely side with the suits. Heck there could even be an APB out on him by now. Cate needed to get somewhere safe, fast. The nearest place where he could really lose himself was the slum a couple blocks south. The problem was, he was currently running north. He’d have to loop back past the prisecs somehow. Cate did have a small firearm on himself, but it was clear that he’d be massively outgunned in a firefight. He unclipped the gun from his shoulder holster and pulled it out anyhow.

He reached the middle of the alley when he heard the prisecs come out the fire exit behind him. Slowing as much as he dared, Cate twisted around and fired unaiming in their general direction. The man ducked back into the kitchen, while the woman threw herself into a pile of garbage. That bought Cate the time to reach the end of the alleyway. Randomizing in his head, he dashed to the left, smack dab into a third prisec. The guy had been ready for him, either his co-workers or the gunfire had alerted him. But evidently, he hadn’t expected Cate to be rounding the corner so quickly as Cate crashed through the suit’s pointed gun and into the man himself. Both of them fell to the ground, pistols scattering into the piles of refuse. Bewildered, the two of them stared at each other for a fraction of a second. The prisec started to cast about for his weapon, while Cate pushed himself off his ass and threw himself at the suit. Lost in a haze of adrenaline, Cate didn’t know quite what to do next. His assailant threw a few short punches into Cate’s ribs and was able to roll Cate off to his left. The man pushed himself up, while Cate rolled from his back onto his knees and into a crouched position. I need to disengage from this fast, before those other two get here he thought. The man swung a wide right fist at him. Cate let it hit his shoulder before grabbing it with his left hand. He pulled the man sharply down as he rose with an uppercut from his right. He felt the hit connect with the prisec’s chin and fracture a couple bones in Cate’s hand. The man went flying backwards.

This was Cate’s window to leave, and he jogged as fast as he could out of the alley. Even through the adrenaline his muscles ground like mismatched gears. He burst out of the alley onto a busy walkway. Pedestrians leapt back and hurried away. He must look like some wild stim-head from a bad sensie. Cate thought he heard shouting from the alleyway behind. He figured there was a 50/50 chance that his pursuers gave up the chase on him to tend to their co-worker, however Cate had gotten into this mess by being sloppy, now was the time to start being diligent. He slowed his gait to a brisk walk as he headed north, other pedestrians still giving him a pretty wild berth. The slower pace allowed him to catch his breath, but also for his adrenaline to wear off and for his injuries’ pains to bubble up to the surface. He forced himself to turn the corner up ahead, sparing a quick glance back to the alley. It didn’t look like anyone had followed him from the alleyway.

Elle was no stranger to danger. As a part of her content performances, she had a biweekly livestream event where she would hack high-security Network servers, effortlessly running past deadly, illegal ICE. To prove that it was live, she would take directions from her audience, following this node or that pathway at the whims of randomly selected subscribers. Her fans ate that up. It helped them feel like they were part of the run and form that valuable para-social relationship with her, while making her look like a hacker-savant who could get in anywhere on the Net with ease.

It was all fake, like any magic trick. She did indeed do the runs, but they weren’t livestreamed. That would be suicidal. Her Di-sponsors were all mostly anonymous to her, but all it would take was one sysop watching her stream and the best she could hope for was to be ignominiously booted from their server, if not arrested, brained, or killed. These high-risk runs were the result of days of planning and set up, and while she did record them, she simply uploaded them after the fact. The directions from her “fans” were actually scripted bots timed with the streamed recording. The result was believable to anyone who was a fan of the glamour of celebrity runners but didn’t really have the technical knowledge to do so on their own. They paid her subscription fees in order to compensate for that lack, and in return they got to feel like they were a part of the action, and Elle got paid twice for doing the same job. All in all, it was pretty easy work to be famous.

She had seen some wannabe script kiddies try to cash in on her schtick and actually livestream their runs. The first few runs went pretty okay; they were usually smart and started with some lower-risk targets, but as soon as they gained a little notoriety, someone on the wrong side would take notice of them, and Elle would never hear about them again. It didn’t bother her, amateurs like that came and went like annuals; mostly it meant that she had some measure of job security. And other legitimate runners didn’t try to horn in on her territory, either out of the honour of thieves or because they weren’t interested in becoming an infamous Net celebrity.

Elle was starting one such run now. Her target was a lunar branch of Haas-Bioroid’s power generation division. It was a fairly simple job, but she thought the time lag would make for some good watching. She was getting paid by Melange to get some numbers from HB, and she figured she would probably drop a ransomware attack while she was in there, essential services on the moon tended to pay out quickly. She wouldn’t stream that part as her Di-sponsor demographics showed that a significant portion of her viewers were loonies. As she bounded through the Net as Smoke, her avatar a simple white rabbit, she found the restricted entrance that would lead to her target destination. She paused to check that all her breakers were primed and ready and flipped on her recording program.

Smoke accessed the gateway through a crowdsourced password that hadn’t been patched yet. While her livestream would have her commenting on the run and interacting with viewers, she would record that overtop later, or even do parts of it live. Here she had to be on high alert, especially with the lunar time lag, though she made mental notes of things to point out. Things like the memory well she had to bypass in order to avoid being stuck in a catatonic state for minutes while some sysop came to collect her. The next ICE also required a password, but this one randomized the accepted password on a near constant basis. Theoretically, the only way through was to have a matching piece of ICE that knew the same randomization sequence. Smoke had simply hacked the randomizer beforehand and copied the code, but she planned to pass it off as simply guessing the correct string of numbers based off the subsidiary’s stock performance number at that time. Her fans would love that. She called up her copycat program and had it run the counter randomization and input the correct password.

Suddenly, Smoke’s world lurched sideways. She would have thrown up if she were physical. Instead, she spent precious seconds lost to vertigo as the world spun around her. Shit, did I get the randomization wrong, she wondered. Starting to panic, she called a jack-out program, but nothing responded.

“Halt”

A voice she didn’t hear so much as felt interrupted her panicking. She turned to face a massive, glowing avatar towering over her. In one hand he held a fiery broadsword; to Smoke it could have been a burning telephone pole. He spoke again in a voice that seemed to resonate across the whole strata of pitches her mind could comprehend.

“You are a trespasser in this realm. Leave now, this is your last chance.”

Smoke silently pinged her recording software. Holy shit, I am getting all this? And her program pinged back a silent affirmative. She was getting actual, recorded footage of a god ICE, something her fellow runners laughed off as rumours. But what’s it doing here, protecting some mid-level corporate power company? There was no way she was going to back down now, something much bigger was afoot here. Whatever this thing was, it was sentient, and it was talking to her; that meant she could trick it.

“My apologies your majesty. Your fearsome presence has shown me the error of my ways. I see now that my crimes cannot hope to succeed in the face of such awesome power.” Smoke’s rabbit did its best imitation of a bow.

“Your rank flattery does not impress me. You fail to leave so I shall remove you.” The god drew his massive broadsword above his head.

“Surely, the punishment must fit the crime!” Smoke squeaked hurriedly. “Is death, even the death of the mind, the appropriate punishment for trespassing?”

The god hesitated in his swing.

“True justice,” Smoke continued “comes from rehabilitation, not just killing everyone the first time they slip up.”

“Then I will not smite you where you stand. But I will destroy your presence in this space. Neither you, nor your trinkets, are welcome here.”

“But that’s still killing. My programs are sentient, same as you. Why are you punishing them for my crimes?”

Again, the god hesitated.

“If you are truly penitent, why do you persist in this realm?”

“I’m throwing myself on the mercy of the court. I’ve jacked in from a terminal Earthside. Here, I’ll even send you my IP address to prove it. For some reason, the time lag between Earth and Luna, where you are, is glitching out my ability to jack out! Believe me if I could leave, I would’ve done so by now.”

The god hesitated a third time.

“Very well. What do you suggest?”

Smoke pretended to hesitate for a second.

“If you let me pass, I think the natural log out protocols ahead will let me jack out. I promise I won’t touch anything. The only way out for me is through.”

The god ICE seemed to ponder this for a moment.

“You must agree to not touch anything. This is your only warning.”

“I promise. Cross my heart, hope to die.”

The god’s stance relaxed for a moment, then he stood aside.

“Thank you, your majesty” Smoke attempted another bow, and hopped cautiously past him.

With that, Smoke was in. She was nearly vibrating with excitement. Recorded footage of divine ICE, and she had tricked it so easily. Smoke looked around at the juicy, unguarded data humming around her. Business before pleasure she reminded herself. She hopped around the server, looking for the files that Melange wanted her to steal. Finding it, Smoke sniffed the packet to access it. The last thing she heard was a rapid, high-pitched whine, as an excruciating headache forced her to black out.

***

“You did good today; we finally nailed this criminal.”

“So, she was being dishonest with me. Tell me, did she perish?” responded the god ICE

“Nobody could’ve survived that. If you’re feeling guilty, you did warn her not to touch anything.”

Weyland Corporation

INTERNAL USE ONLY – DO NOT CIRCULATE

INTERNAL INCIDENT REPORT

INTRODUCTION:

January 31, at approximately 5:37am, residents of Heinlein’s luxury arcology Coyolxauhqui Condos (CXC) began noticing financial irregularities which they subsequently reported to their financial relevant financial institutions, most notably Titan Transnational (TT). At first, TT attributed the losses to poor personal security practices on behalf of residents. However, after a critical mass of such complaints, all of which originated from CXC. TT’s customer service department reported a suspected large-scale cyber attack was taking place at 6:14am. The issue was forwarded to local law enforcement, NAPD’s Cyber Security branch (NCSB); Weyland’s internal Network Defence Systems (NDS), and CXC’s sysop responsible for Network security, Bhagyeshwari Chauhan.

At 6:30am, co-operation between these three bodies affirmed that a large-scale cyber attack was taking place, and that it was likely centred solely within the CXC complex. At 6:35am Network connection to CXC complex was cut off completely, leaving the building operating only local, life-support functions. At 7:00am local NAPD officers arrived to cordon the building and evacuate residents. At 7:30am NCSB officers arrived with specialized cyber-counterattack equipment. Along with Ms. Chauhan on site, they determined that the main avenue of the attack was hardware in nature. They discovered no fewer than 48 physical devices, termed “bugs”, had been attached to CXC’s mainframe. This information was passed on to NDS. At 8:10 local NDS units arrived and relieved NCSB officers from duty.

As of today, the CXC remains unopened as NDS units continue to sweep for more devices or points of attack.

BACKGROUND:

50 years ago, in partnership with the Grasberg-Tico (GBT), Eschaton Technologies (ESC), various sub-contractors, and the Space Elevator Authority (SEA), the Mumbad Construction Corporation (MCC) (all owned by the parent company Weyland Corporation) obtained exclusive building rights over all new constructions, both residential and commercial, in New Angeles’ twelfth district, Heinlein. As part of continuing growth, local Heinlein government requested MCC begin construction of a new suite of luxury condominiums in Tranquility Grid, dubbed “Project Coyolxauhqui”. This project was budgeted for 95B credits, to be paid off as per usual loan terms with Heinlein and New Angelean governments (see attachment A)

While some construction materials are available and mined locally on Luna, most had to be shipped upstalk. Obtained from the aforementioned sub-contractors, Project Coyolxauhqui materials were granted special priority “Green” for travel from New Angeles up the New Angeles Space Elevator (the “Beanstalk”), under the SEA supervision. Once materials reached the Challenger Asteroid at the top end of the Beanstalk, they were handed off to a third-party shipping company, Over The Moon (OTM) to bring the materials from Challenger docks to docklands on Luna. After clearing Lunar customs, the materials were brought to the Coyolxauhqui construction site, by MCC’s affiliate on Luna, Lunar Construction Corporation (LCC), also owned by Weyland Corporation.

Construction of Project Coyolxauhqui took approximately seven years from conception to opening. This is well below MCC’s average total time for Lunar construction projects, and the project was hailed for its speed and quality in extreme construction circumstances. Like many modern buildings, Project Coyolxauhqui was Network-integrated, meaning that Network capabilities, such as wireless hubs, routers, amplifiers, servers, etc., were hardwire into the construction of the building. This mainframe was only accessible by approved technicians through standard biometric identification.

The initial budget for Project Coyolxauhqui was 10.1B credits. Shipping delays, faulty materials, and other common problems pushed the final budget to 13.6B

Once the Project Coyolxauhqui was completed, management of the property itself was outsourced to Buzzinto LLC, a property management firm owned by Weyland Corporation. This included on an on-site sysop, Ms. Chauhan, as well as physical security officers.

 INCIDENT:

The bugs themselves are about 0.05mm in diameter and were attached under the insulation of various crystalline fiber optic cables that ran through the CXC complex. Their minute size and expert resealing prevented any of the material managers during construction from noticing that they had been tampered with.

NDS agents theorize that the bugs were attached to various building components while the materials were still in transit, as many bugs were found locations physically impossible for technicians to reach without tearing down walls. The most likely window of opportunity for this would have been while in transit with OTM, as this was the longest period of time that the goods were out of direct Weyland supervision. However. the possibility of one or more of the attackers working for Weyland, with or without their knowledge, should not be ruled out.

Due to the size of the attack, it is estimated that this was not the work of a solitary “Runner”. Internal Weyland cybersecurity experts theorize between 3 and 5 individuals were responsible. This group of individuals is clearly technically advanced, needing both the mechanical skills to affix these bugs and the programming skill to ensure their “success”. In addition, the group needed specialized knowledge of construction materials and procedures to ensure their tampering was not discovered nor accidentally disabled during the process of constructing the arcology. Further, the group would’ve needed insider knowledge of Weyland schedules and practices in order to intercept the materials in transit.

A total of 458 devices were discovered throughout the CXC complex, approximately one per residence. These bugs monitored incoming and outgoing Net traffic through the Coyolxauhqui’s mainframe, logging residents’ biometric passwords, routines and calendars, and other personal information. Because the attack was hardwired into the Network grid of the arcology itself, Weyland’s standard “Battlement” ICE for its residential buildings was ineffective. These bugs did not interfere with the data in any way until the early morning of Jan 31st. The bugs spoofed a series of transactions with residents’ financial institutions, carefully spaced out timewise so as not to trigger banks’ withdraw limits. To the banks’ AI, individually these looked like normal transactions. It was only by seeing a pattern in the aggregate by human operators was it noticed that there was anything amiss. It is estimated that an amount in excess of 500M credits was stolen during the attack.

More distressingly, these bugs also copied the Weyland’s various resident monitoring programs that residents and local authorities are unaware of financial records, biometric data, recorded communications, video surveillance, etc. While this would be inadmissible as evidence in court, it has the potential for serious reputational damage should it ever be made public. As of yet this material has not surfaced anywhere on the Net, nor have any demands been made of MCC, or Weyland Corporation.

ACTIONS TAKEN:

NDS officers are currently in the process of removing the attached bugs. As mentioned previously, many of these bugs are in physically impossible to reach spots, necessitating significant demolition of the infrastructure of the arcology. Displaced residents have been temporarily relocated to the Earthrise Hotel, at Weyland’s expense, until the building can be deemed safe to use.

Argus Security loss recuperation agents have already been made aware of the attack. All the addresses to which gathered information was sent are now defunct. They have brought in the management team of OTM for enhanced interrogation. Weyland Corporation will need to find a new third-party shipping company for transporting materials off planet. Ms. Chauhan, after extensive questioning, has been terminated.

Leads on where the stolen credits were transferred to are being followed by TT and other financial institutions. For now, all the accounts have been frozen to prevent any further losses. TT may have to cover the existing losses to its users, pending discussion with its insurance department.

Spokesperson James Horn gave a brief press conference, outlining the essential details of what happened, large scale cyber-attack, limited to one building, only credits were stolen. Afterwards, he took questions from a pre-selected list of reporters. No further information was given. Many residents have been vlogging their experiences throughout this crisis, however none of what has been published as yet contradicts the official story given by Mr Horn and subjective analysis is that by and large the vlogs paint Buzzinto LLC and Weyland in a positive light.

FUTURE RECOMMENDATIONS:

This has been a major attack on the integrity of Weyland Corporation and its ability to protect its assets. A three-pronged strategy is recommended.

First, the public needs resolution on this matter. Public perception of the safety and reliability of Weyland Corporation and its subsidiaries is essential to its profitability. To this end, suitable candidates for accepting responsibility for the attack are attached. While the issue of concrete evidence is dealt with easily enough, it would be best for a third party, like the NAPD, to actually bring the chosen individuals in. Weyland being seen cooperating with NAPD is sufficient in this regard as long as it results in resolution.

Second, the runners behind this attack need to be found and eliminated. Weyland acknowledges that even within modern, advanced societies large sections of the populace operate outside of the law. These criminal types’ psychology is most similar to wild animals, so in this environment, fear is Weyland Coporation’s best defense. Criminal elements should not feel safe attacking the Weyland Corporation or its subsidiaries. This is best fostered by finding those actually responsible for the attacks and making an example of them. The recommendation is to divert our best field and Net agents to this matter until it is resolved.

It wasn’t often that being a sysop was a particularly prestigious job. That wasn’t a complaint about Anson’s position. His pay was good, very good if he was honest; he also had a fair degree of autonomy, no washed-up MBA breathing down his neck. The autonomy was mostly a by-product of being good at his job. Being that good meant that he was used to the feeling of being in demand, feeling wanted, but that was different from feeling popular, like he was now.

Normally, his husband’s friends didn’t give two shits about his work. They’d brusquely changed the subject whenever Anson tried to bring up shop talk, as if their legalese was somehow more comprehensible. Anson’s friends… well he didn’t make many of his own friends. Until now. Now it seemed like everyone was his friend.

Anson’s aforementioned quality of work was partly to blame. He had been requested, by name, to head the ICE team on the Horizon XII, NBN’s latest PAD series. Besides being obviously valuable enough to be name dropped by some corporate suits, this meant that Anson had access to this season’s hottest new tech. Which meant that Anson was this season’s hottest new friend. He wasn’t naïve; he knew everyone was cozying up to him to get an early copy. Heck his handlers over at NBN had even told him as much. They had shipped to him about 100 PAD’s of all types: wearables, old-fashioned tablets, implants, for him to distribute as he saw fit. They sat useless in Anson’s garage, collecting dust. Clyde was an honest husband (well honest to Anson at least) and wouldn’t touch them without his permission, but his husband was practically begging him to start making a list of friends, or people they would like to be friends with, they should gift them to. Clyde was right was right that they should use them before the next business quarter, because who knows how long they’d stay relevant for.

Right now, however, Anson just wanted to do his damn job. NBN was always pushing for greater connectivity to its network of smart devices, which to Anson meant more potential points of attack that had to be covered. This was how he found himself in his workshop at 3am, eyes blurry, as he tried to debug the basic ICE suite common to all the PADs. The idea behind it was quite ingenious. The PAD could only communicate with the network by first running it through the ICE, which operated on a different chip than the PAD itself. The effect was threefold, first the ICE served to monitor network access and limit communication in direct proportion to usage, intrusion attempts always required greater bandwidth, and by throttling that at a constant rate it would frustrate and deter most runners. Second, if the ICE was breached, then the PAD still had time to sever the network connection and lockout attackers. Third, by changing the resistance ratio, this meant that NBN backdoors had easy access to way of gradually bricking the devices.

The overheads in his workshop flickered, drawing Anson’s attention out of his work. It hadn’t felt so late, but standing up indicated the accumulated hours had taken a greater toll on him than he thought. His eyes especially were exhausted, and the shop lights kept flickering, threatening to cause a headache. He was about to call it in for the night when the display of his workstation started flickering as well. Anson had seen enough intrusion attempts to recognize the signs. Fuck me, he thought, someone’s running on my personal workstation.

Anson leapt back into his chair and opened his workstation’s root servers, and a quick scan showed that many files were changed or simply missing. He didn’t bother to double check his own ICE, instead he tried throwing various kill-switches to limit the damage. Eventually, one worked, shutting down every electronic in the house. He had just lost a day’s worth of work, but that wasn’t the worst part. Each of the 100-odd PAD devices in his possession would have to carefully scrubbed, and there was no telling what the attacker had made off with. Specs for a competitor’s product? Backdoor access codes for criminals? Even knowing how the ICE on the PADs worked was a major security advantage for future runners. But the worst part was that Anson was going to have to report this to the client NBN, and they would pass that sad information onto his superiors at Fringe Applications. This breach would obviously get him fired, sued into oblivion, and probably blacklisted from working with anyone even remotely reputable. His life was over.

Anson stumbled through the dark to the adjoining kitchen, tried to flick on a light, and when that didn’t work, he simply sat at his kitchen island in the dark and wept. He tried to keep it quiet, so as not to wake Clyde. Then a sickening wave of realization washed over him. He’d lose Clyde over this too. Clyde couldn’t afford to take a hit to his career defending him, and his status with their friends couldn’t take the hit of being married to an unemployable has-been. This would all happen as soon as people up top found out about the breach.

If they found out. Only if they found out.

***

Clyde came downstairs to find that his little gremlin had pulled another all-nighter. As he handed Anson a fresh cup of coffee, he bent in for a kiss but abruptly withdrew.

“Babe your eyes are bloodshot, you need sleep.”

Anson looked up at Clyde with an expression that he hadn’t seen since they first met.

“You’re… you’re right”

Anson got up from his desk, moving painfully.

There was a strike on Mars. This was odd to Steve for a couple reasons. First of all, ‘strikes’ on Mars tended to mean dronestrikes, so simply walking out of a mine seemed downright exotic in its peacefulness. The second odd thing was that MMC had responded in kind, sort of. Rather than simply hire a bunch of two-bit, Martian supremacist thugs to break some skulls, they had simply opted to starve out the protesters. MMC didn’t normally care about a little bad PR, so Steve wondered what would happen if he followed that lead.

Alas, he would have to chase wild geese later on. For now, he was lugging four large crates through a darkened, subterranean tunnel. René would’ve laughed at him for calling it ‘lugging’. The crates, packed as they were with high density rations, were on maglev pads, frictionlessly gliding along in front of him. But he did still have to push them, that counted for something right?

Up ahead, Steve could see lights. Not the steady, halogenic lights that would’ve normally lit these tunnels, but a wavering, natural light. That meant that Steve had followed the directions correctly. As Steve neared the source, he could smell the burnt rubber of a tire fire. Fuck, was it really that bad already?

He pushed the crates through across the threshold from underground tunnel to underground dome. The crates passed through unmolested, but Steve not so much. Two burly miners flanked him. One grabbed him by the collar, while the other started trying to open the crates.

“Who the fuck are you?” menaced Steve’s haranguer.

Steve looked around at the small tent city illuminated by tire and helium-drum fires. By the looks of things, these two were on guard duty because they were the only ones left with any sort of muscle mass. Steve was about to utter some lame excuse when he spied who he was looking for. “Nditshe! It’s me!” Steve waved enthusiastically at a particular circle of people.

“Relax you two, he’s with me,” came a strong voice in response. The miner’s grip on Steve’s collar loosened but didn’t let go. Nditshe strolled over. He was a tall man, though balding on top. He clapped the miner on the back. “He’s with me.”

The miner fully let Steve go now, and Nditshe turned around and raised a loudspeaker to his lips.

“Everyone! I bring good news! My friend here has brought us something invaluable. We all know times have been rough. We are starving! Melange may not be resorting to outright violence, but they are killing us nonetheless. If we were on Earth or even Luna, the press would be our ally. Instead, like always, Martians struggles are ignored and forgotten by the rest of the planets. It’s as if no one cares. But one man cares. He may think he has simply brought us food, but the truth is he’s brought us something much more valuable. He has brought us hope! Hope that we will win this strike before dying of starvation! Hope that people outside Mars care about our struggles! And that hope’s name is Armin Leitz!”