tortillarun
Nov. 27th, 2012 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kadrinI made my own tortillas recently. They were the best thing. I can never go back to store bought tortillas now that I know what tortillas are actually supposed to taste like.
I think we all know that I write stories in order to be hugely famous and to acquire hordes of screaming fans. This is why I have written this story, based on a moderately obscure Sega Mega Drive(/Genesis) game, featuring an OC made bythebaconfat. I'll get the hang of Internet famous any moment now. (This was not written for Internet famous. It was written for fun, and love of the game, and for, naturally, Baco.) Spoilers for Shadowrun, though I honestly don't know how many, because it's all over the place game-canon-wise. IT'S A STYLE CHOICE.
*
Okay, this mess I'm in right now, I want to say it started with me in a Fuchi plaza, blown out computers and drek all around me - can't see any blown out people, but that doesn't mean there aren't any - with an empty Allegiance in my lap, half of Lone Star pointing guns at me, and that weird betrayed look hiding behind Reckert's eyes...
Wait, no, I don't. I want to say this mess I'm in started when my local Johnson gave me ten thousand nuyen just because I'm such a charming guy and I took all my favourite 'runners down to Icarus Descending where everyone laughed at my jokes, but a ‘runner trades on his reputation, and so I’ve got to give it to you straight, right?
This is what I’m saying, can’t keep my story straight. And I can always keep my story straight, it’s basically what I do. I once told a Lone Star officer that I’d taken a Roomsweeper, seven frag grenades, and a little bit of lockpicking wizardry off an Eye Fiver during a citizen's arrest and I was just taking them to turn them in to Lone Star, and he believed me, or at least he couldn't pick a hole in my story because when Joshua tells a story, Joshua gets his story straight.
So that's why this is bugging me. It started with the Fuchi building, then I met up with Stark, and then... no, wait, Stark was looking over that stupid Pigeon shaman in Seattle General, so I didn't meet him afterwards. I met up with Stark beforehand, because I needed help on this run because that slotting Black Ice had done a number on... no, the Black Ice was in the run...
Okay, focus. I’m a ‘runner, this was a run. So it started where all ‘runner stories start. It started with the Johnson.
*
Give Caleb this; he fakes sincerity well enough that sometimes I think he’s actually sincere. He looked at me across the table, all wide eyes and solicitous set of his mouth, and he says in that silken Mr. Johnson voice that Gunderson could never get down, “I’m sorry, Joshua-sib. I have nothing for you.”
Elves. A good Johnson can tell you a ghouled hellhound’s a fluffy, friendly puppy. If he’s an elf, too, you’ll only figure out he was lying when petting it loses you an arm.
“Come on, Caleb.” I gave him my best wheedle, and he shot me that little frustrated glance he gives me whenever I don’t call him Mr. Johnson. But I really needed to make him see me as Buddy Joshua here, not ‘Runner 15 or whatever he’s got me listed as. Or maybe I really needed to make him think that I thought he was thinking of me as... frag it, my head’s all numb. “You’ve got to give me something here. I ran into some bad ice and lost my best Sleaze program, I’m gonna be half the ‘runner I should be until my credstick’s healthy enough to replace it.” I reached out over the yawning abyss of Going Too Far. “Really, you should give me a job for you, Caleb. I’m going to spend the cash on deck gear, so it’s like an investment, right?”
Caleb made this little sound with his tongue. It’s like a tut, but somehow ten times as disapproving. I don’t think humans can do it. “As I said, Joshua, I don’t have anything I could rightfully give you.”
I never know if he’s dropping these little hints on purpose. “Null sweat. Gimme whatever job you could wrongfully give me, then.”
He sighed. “I do have a Matrix run...”
“Right up my alley. What’s the fee?”
“I have told you, at times, that the Matrix run I have given you is red-flagged for experts only. This Matrix run would be better described as black-flagged. The talk among my fellows is that this job is too dangerous to give to any ‘runner, and that my employer will have to be satisfied with that.”
I showed him my best sympathetic face. “That’s a hard thing to have to cope with. What’s the fee?”
“Joshua. If you are trying to get me to offer you a job as an investment in your future, the job you request shouldn’t be one that will most likely eliminate your future.”
“The other Johnsons really don’t give you credit for your wordplay, Caleb. What’s the fee?”
This is how I get all the best jobs. Subtlety and psychology.
Caleb finally broke, from my master salesmanship and the line forming outside his booth, and gave me the details. Mitsuhama had some new algorithm they were plugging into their corporate systems, something about getting around their competitors’ ice. If an ambitious young ‘runner - naming no names here - could install it into his Deception program, I could... he could, naturally... dance through the Matrix like an elf ballerina and come out with all the data in the world, before it even knows it’s been stolen. With that on the table, and a frankly embarrassing amount of nuyen, it would have been a crime not to say yes.
Sure, it was also a crime to say yes, but that crime got me money.
No, that was when I met up with Stark, right. Not right away. Right away I was drinking at Matchsticks, because Caleb had given me ten percent in advance (yeah, so, maybe that should have been a red flag, but wave a bunch of nuyen in my face and it’s amazing how quick I stop seeing colour) and I deserved it. So there I was, with something from relatively near the top shelf in a glass, and there was Rianna Heartbane, who was drinking something about half as expensive and was therefore jealous. She and I chatted, in the way the top deckers do, about how much better I was than her and all the fantastic things I was doing with my life and how she could improve her deck to make it more like mine. At around her fourth completely unfounded accusation about my skills, she asked me what kind of job had me paying the cover charge, and being the magnanimous type, I told her.
Know how I said elves get facial expressions and such which humans don’t? It’s not fair, really. Rianna managed to go ghost-pale - more so than usual - and smirk at the same time. It was a pretty special expression; hard to top. So I asked her what she was goggling about.
“When we first met, I told you that the Matrix was a world where all things are possible,” she said. “A Heaven for anyone with a sharp deck and a sharp mind. You have seen this beautiful world of crystal possibility and decided to walk straight into Hell. One of the deep circles. Perhaps the Sixteen Departments of Heart-Gouging.”
She’d probably tell me that’s some ancient elven mythology, but I’ve been to China. ...Well, I read a book about China, once.
“Mitsuhama has no intention of letting a weapon like that algorithm out of its system,” she told me, “so it didn’t put it on its system in the first place. They have another system purely to keep this project on, kept within the main system like a pearl in an oyster’s shell. If, that is, a pearl was covered in blades and poison needles. There is ice there worthy of a Hell within Heaven, Joshua.”
“Ice,” I scoffed. In my defence, the drink was very strong. “I’m not scared of a little ice.”
“I will tell you something I learned simply about the SAN of this jewel within the lotus, Joshua.” Now she was onto Hinduism. I once tried to lock down exactly what cosmology Rianna ascribed to the Matrix, but she gave me one of her non-answers, that any Heaven was perforce all Heavens, philosophy philosophy not getting paid. “It was my belief, and I think the belief of every other decker in Seattle, that once one had put a layer of Tar Pit ice on a node, that was as far as one could go in that direction. The SAN of the algorithm’s hidden hell has nested Tar Pit ice, enough to strip every program from your deck, and to send the whole system to an Active Alert that makes Renraku’s main system seem lethargic by comparison.”
I gulped down the rest of my drink, and swallowed, hard. Because I didn’t want it to get warm, you understand.
“So get in to the building and jack in to an I/O node,” I suggested. “Skip the whole thing. Boil the oyster open to get at the pearl. Is it still an oyster, or is it a lotus now?”
She chuckled, shaking her head at me. “It is a labyrinth now, Joshua, with every dead end a trap, and the guards outside the labyrinth are every one a minotaur. That’s speaking metaphorically, you realise. Literally, they are highly trained strike teams with immense guns and unbreakable armour. You may prefer a minotaur.”
“Well,” I said to her, “thank you for all that free info, Rianna.”
“I wouldn’t ask payment,” she said. And, because she couldn’t leave me alone without one last metaphor, “It’s not worth nuyen to point at a meat grinder and say that it might be ill-considered to put one’s face inside.”
“Point taken.” I nodded graciously, or as graciously as I could with this much good alcohol in me. I didn’t know precisely what it was, but I liked it a lot. “Now, do leave me alone, if you would, I’m preparing for a very important shadowrun.”
She made that face at me again, the shocked-smirking face that I guess was supposed to be an anticipation of schadenfreude. Then she turned back to her own drink. She could give me up as a lost cause. That was just fine. She didn’t know about my ace in the hole.
*
My ace in the hole is tall, wears an armoured duster, carries an SMG that I think could kill and has killed God Almighty, and might still have one patch of natural flesh somewhere around the small of his back. My ace in the hole could, perhaps, be killed by a precision asteroid strike, but I wouldn’t bet on that. My ace in the hole has the skills and inclination to make a bloody mess of everything within ten miles of me that wishes me harm. Also, he reminds me of my older brother, and that’s nice, sometimes.
The little guy who chewed the ends of his fingers - I mean it, he didn’t bite his nails, he literally chewed the ends of his fingers, freaked me the hell out - wasn’t my ace in the hole. In fact, after a few minutes around him, I considered him more an ace hole, if you get my drift. But Stark pointed out that both of us have way too much metal in our bodies to get any magic going, and while I can open any lock in the Matrix and he can kick a door down so hard its family will unlock, neither of us can really get through a physical door without waking up half of Seattle. So, okay, we had this skinny chemhead Pigeon shaman who spent all his time sampling half of the Pullayup crime mall along with us. I guess the ends justify the means.
And I gotta say, he did get the job done. I pulled the old “look out, this guy’s having a heart attack, it might be contagious” con on the foyer and got us in through the Employees Only door, but every time we needed to get somewhere we couldn’t otherwise go after that, he came out of his shell. He’d look at the door, chew on his fingers, make a freaky little cooing sound, and then in goes the lockpick and out comes the door. Like that. I saw him pick one door with a paperclip, and I know that doesn’t seem too impressive, but the lock was electronic.
It was amazing. We met two patrols - I charmed one, Stark charmed the other (with bullets), and we didn’t trip a single alarm. No. Wait. Maybe we tripped one alarm. I remember Rianna said we shouldn’t have tripped that alarm while she was turning it off. Right? It’s a bit fuzzy.
Anyway, soon we were in the head programmer’s office. We had the head programmer tied to a chair with Stark’s SMG under his chin, Who’s Not A Pretty Birdie had the door barricaded and in lockdown, and I figured if anything was going to be close to the algorithm without much ice in the way, it was going to be this jack. So I plugged in my deck, and there it was. “Lines of light ranging in the nonspace of the mind. Clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.”
Rianna said that, once. Pretty sure it was Rianna.
Right away I could feel the ice. Decker’s sixth sense. Seventh, maybe, or somewhere up around nine. I barely need an Analyze program any more. You get a scent for it, a taste, you end up personalising it. Access ice feels like a happy puppy around your ankles that might just bite, but its teeth are too small to do any real damage. It really wants to let you in, it really does. Barrier ice always feels like this one guy from the gangs where I was growing up, strong silent type, didn't say much. Didn't even say I couldn't go into the building he was guarding, just stood in the door. I was nine and slippery, you'd think I could get around him somehow, but... Any Trace ice feels like one of those sharks with the teeth on funny, in a circle like a leech or a lamprey. Blaster ice is a big guy with a shotgun, and you just know he's given his shotgun a name, and he tucks it into bed with him at night. Killer ice is that guy's big brother, like a car without the personality, and he's got three shotguns and somehow he uses them all at once, and they've all got girl's names that are variations on a theme, like Molly, Polly, and... Lolly.
Anyway, they're all freaky and ugly and I don't like any of 'em, but for those ones, when I smell 'em, I think, better watch out for that, and I go about my business. I don't get scared.
Yeah, you know what's coming next.
Black ice isn't like any of those guys. Black ice is a really quiet guy in a corner, little guy, big smile, eyes open wide, he doesn't blink. He's got a knife, nothing too big, nothing showy. The knife doesn't have a girl's name. It's too close to him to give a name. Black ice uses a little knife because black ice wants to be perfectly precise, to take his time with you. Black ice isn't even upset with you being there. Black ice is overjoyed. Black ice is so happy he's going to get to show you everything he can do with his knife.
I jacked in to that port in the head programmer's office and I smelled him all around. Like he was saying hi. Wanted me to know he was there. Nice to meet you, chummer. Come on in. Let me get a good look at you.
So I crept a little. I loaded a good suite of programs, a variant Attack I'd had good experiences with, a nice quick little Shield, an old Medic I barely used any more, and my good old friend Deception. Me and him go back since I first got my deck, or at least since the last Tar Pit that ate him. My deck felt nice and responsive. I floated left, I somersaulted right, I swam through data. I blew down the Access and Killer the programmer had on his I/O node with a huff and a puff, and when I was in the little piggies' house, I made my way through the woods to Grandmother's.
I don't know how long it took, and neither Stark nor the Pigeon shaman were able to tell me. It felt like it took nearly an hour, which probably means we were stuck in there for days. No, I'm joking. I know, we'd have to have food. Michael told me that he got stuck besieged in a hotel room while a decker worked on a node for a whole week, and they had to ration out the minibar and the fancy soaps from the bathroom, but I don't believe him. I'll call him up about it later. Gotta remember that; gotta call him quick before he dies in Salish-Shidhe.
It wasn't easy. Ilene was right, it was a labyrinth, and every time I turned a new corner, the rest of it turned around behind me. At one point I swear I had to break some ice while I was /leaving/ a node. Hand to God. I was leaving a node, and this really enthusiastic Barrier with about five Tar Pits behind it was eager to make me stay. I lost a Smoke - good riddance - but managed to Relocate the alert before it went active. Wasn't even sure I could do it before I just did it. Good thing, too. If the whole thing went to Active Alert I'd probably get my deck handed to me and my brain fried before I could jack out.
Finally I was at the end of the labyrinth, the centre of the lotus, and the Minotaur was there waiting for me, the happy little sadist with his no-name knife. Nice to meet you, chummer.
When Michael tells me about decking, and this must be before I turn, like, twelve because by then I'll already be teaching him, he's going to tell me that black ice is like a cold so cold it burns. Cold that's gone out the other side and become heat. And that's a pretty good analogy. But I've felt black ice since then, and there's something else it feels like. It's like the cold so cold it's hot, the fog of burning freezing that swamps your brain, has got one particular little line and it's just cutting through you. It's a cold so cold it's hot, and it's an intangibility with a knife edge.
Frag-face the gremlin here was chopping up my brain like a really good sushi chef with every tick that passed. Cerebellum sashimi. Medulla maki. Neocortex nigiri. All of it with a hefty dose of burning wasabi. But I've dealt with some pretty vicious black ice in my time, and I managed to turn it around on him, get the knife out of my brain and make my brain into a knife, and stab him right through the black ice heart. Got him. I reached out my virtual fingers to pry open the oyster and get to the pearl inside.
But it was a lotus, after all, because it showed me a flower.
It went through a few stages, just the way black ice does, and it was pretty, just the way black ice isn’t. It was a flower, then it blossomed into a cloak of feathers, and then it molted into a rainbow, and then it glowed back to being a flower again. I tried to push it out of the way, but it wouldn’t move. I tried to Relocate it, nothing. I gave it Deception, Attack, I even pushed the button on my deck that would have Sleazed past it if that program hadn’t been eaten. After that, I just looked at it a little longer, wondering what the hell it was for.
Then I got what it was for.
Then I screamed at the top of my voice, and grabbed the jack, and yanked it out of the node, blowing half a dozen neurons in splitting explosive pain. No good. Even when I threw my 250,000 nuyen deck across the room to smash in half on the opposing wall, it had already gotten into my smartlink. You get what I’m saying? I closed my eyes, and I still saw it, flower, feathers, rainbow. Stark was staring at me, and the Pigeon shaman was flapping his arms, trying to coo me quiet.
I got my Predator out from under my coat, and I put a couple of shots into the I/O port, making sure to hit all the vital areas. Then I turned to the shaman and put a couple of shots into him, making sure to hit all the vital areas. I remember thinking that he should be happy with that; the Predator was silenced, after all. Stark turned to look at me, with this big wide-eyed what-the-hell expression I’d never seen on his face before, and that meant he wasn’t in the way of the programmer any more, so I shot the programmer a few times, pff pff pff, and then plinked the other eight bullets into Stark’s dermal armour, none of them - thank God - doing a thing to him. He grabbed me by the coat and I started to lunge at him, kicking, biting. I scratched one of his cyber-eyes, felt the iris reticule bite down on my fingers, so I bit his eye back. I mean, and thank God again, I couldn’t really hurt Stark with everything I had, up to and including the frag grenades, but I think he dropped me just ‘cause he was shocked. Anyway, I was gone. Straight out of the building, fastest way down. I didn’t see any guards, I think. See, this is where things got really, really blurry. I ran down the stairs, and I bought a ticket to Seattle, to find my brother, and Caleb told me that this was a dangerous run, so I’d better take the Allegiance shotgun, and every time I found Ito Ogami, I blew him open again. And again. And again.
*
Reckert’s looking at me, and he’s got that shocked look on his face - you can tell, the eyebrows go up half a centimetre - but at least he doesn’t look betrayed any more, which is nice. I mean, I'm happy to tell most of Lone Star to slot off, but I always smile when I say it to Reckert.
'I can buy that you weren't in your right mind," he says. "None of this - wanton destruction and killing - fits your profile at all. I want to be clear, though. You're accusing Mitsuhama of employing a basilisk hack."
Gotta give it to him, I'm surprised. "You know what a basilisk hack is?"
"I know what I believe it is," Reckert replies. "But when I deal with you I'm never sure we're using the same dictionary. In my understanding, a basilisk hack is a pattern used to cause the brain's visual centres to register particular signals, which then interfere with the brain itself. It's not feasible against non-cybered individuals, but the incomplete fusion of brain and cyberware can cause a decker to be particularly vulnerable. It's like introducing a computer virus into the brain."
"Okay, fine." I nod. "Yeah, so, sounds like what happened to me. Pretty devious ice; shut down the info leak, get the leaker to kill everyone he might have told, then get him to go commit suicide by Lone Star and wreck up a rival while he's at it."
"You have to be very careful with what you're accusing," Reckert says, and he stresses every single word, making the sentence long and plodding. Fine by me. I could use some long and plodding, I've had enough of fast. "The legality of any kind of black ice is questionable, but even if used completely defensively, a basilisk hack is entirely illegal, no matter who uses it."
"I'd hate to have anything to do with illegal activity on either side," I say, looking saintlike, and Reckert doesn't even scowl at me. And maybe it's the flower growing its roots in my brain, but I think I can see why. Because he's got two options. Either he has to arrest me, and not for a short stay, for multiple murders (bad) and destruction of corporate property (much worse), which would mean locking up or executing someone who's probably innocent and giving the real criminals exactly what they want. Or, he has to go after Mitsuhama and try to pin a crime on an entire megacorp. I mean, under those circumstances, a better man would arrest me.
Fortunately for me, Reckert's not that better man. I mean, he's better than me, though most people in Seattle are better than a low down thieving 'runner who'll take any job, but the reality of life's probably shown him that you can't always be the good man. Sometimes, you have to be the bad guy to do good.
I'm sorry, I don't really do philosophy. It's the flower in my brain, I swear.
"You seem to be mending," he says, sharply. "From everything I hear, you'll recover quickly, should the image pass successfully into long-term memory."
I nod. “Sure,” I tell him. “Almost got time flowing the right way again.” Almost. I have to shake my head out when I realise I’m looking forward to meeting him for the first time, handcuffs and all.
He doesn't say the bit about how if it has a problem passing into long-term memory, I'll have another psychotic episode that makes the first one look tame, and then enough grand mal seizures to splatter my brain all over the inside of my skull. He doesn't say that bit because he's a nice cop. He tells children not to play with frag grenades.
“Since all but three of your victims survived your attacks,” he continues, and I try not to look disappointed - I thought I was a better shot than that, especially with an Allegiance - “two of those do not have corporate insurance, and the details of the programmer’s death are not being released by Mitsuhama, it is my decision to charge you with minor property damage with mitigating factors, possession of illegal firearms, and public indecency. There will be a two thousand nuyen fine and the shotgun will be confiscated. On the record, you will also have a ten thousand nuyen suspended fine, contingent upon you not breaking parole; off the record, if someone offers you a run like the one you were on again - whatever that was - I highly suggest you tell them to slot off. Now, go back to your hotel and get some sleep.”
Because bedrest eases memory transmission. “Null perspiration, chummer,” I say, cheerfully, and jump to my feet. Major corporation sticking fingers in my brain or not, it’s hard to top that getting out of Lone Star with a slap on the wrist feeling. And I didn’t even kill the Pigeon shaman, though on reflection, not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
“I have one more request.”
There’s Reckert for you. Every time I’m about to get out of his office and go do some wonderful crime, he’s got something else to tell me, and it always breaks my train of thought. And he never just says “Joshua” or “Hey” or “where do you think you’re going, frag-face”, it’s always this “I have one more request”, like a troll trying to add without using his fingers. (No offense, Winston. To be honest, he calculates how much ammo he’s got left on a clip faster than I do.) I sit back down.
“When you wake up tomorrow,” he says, “I want you to come in to sign some more paperwork. We need some more time to process it.”
He’s an atrocious liar.
So I give him another null perspiration, and I’m out of my chair, and back into the world of the free.
*
Well, almost, anyway.
Stark raises his eyebrows when I hand him my Predator, but he knows what I mean, and I know he knows; if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have that string of concussion grenades trailing from his belt. Stunners, not killers. He’s a good friend.
“When I wake up,” I tell him, “if I’m crazy, I want you to take that gun, and find me, and make sure I have good covering fire. Because last time, Lone Star got me, and it was embarrassing.”
He laughs. “Null sweat,” he says, and it sounds strange in his mouth. Obviously something he picked up from me. It works, though. Makes me feel a little better about a bad situation. It’s something Michael would do.
So I lie down, and I pull the thin sheet around myself, the only one Stoker hasn’t had stolen out from under his (admittedly big) nose. When I close my eyes, it’s there, waiting, eager to give me one last hurrah. Flower. Feathers. Rainbow. And hidden behind all the colours is a little man with a little knife, and he’s giving me a nice broad smile, because he’s just so happy to see me.
Nice to meet you, chummer.
Come on in.
Let me get a good
look
I think we all know that I write stories in order to be hugely famous and to acquire hordes of screaming fans. This is why I have written this story, based on a moderately obscure Sega Mega Drive(/Genesis) game, featuring an OC made by
thebaconfat. I'll get the hang of Internet famous any moment now. (This was not written for Internet famous. It was written for fun, and love of the game, and for, naturally, Baco.) Spoilers for Shadowrun, though I honestly don't know how many, because it's all over the place game-canon-wise. IT'S A STYLE CHOICE.*
Okay, this mess I'm in right now, I want to say it started with me in a Fuchi plaza, blown out computers and drek all around me - can't see any blown out people, but that doesn't mean there aren't any - with an empty Allegiance in my lap, half of Lone Star pointing guns at me, and that weird betrayed look hiding behind Reckert's eyes...
Wait, no, I don't. I want to say this mess I'm in started when my local Johnson gave me ten thousand nuyen just because I'm such a charming guy and I took all my favourite 'runners down to Icarus Descending where everyone laughed at my jokes, but a ‘runner trades on his reputation, and so I’ve got to give it to you straight, right?
This is what I’m saying, can’t keep my story straight. And I can always keep my story straight, it’s basically what I do. I once told a Lone Star officer that I’d taken a Roomsweeper, seven frag grenades, and a little bit of lockpicking wizardry off an Eye Fiver during a citizen's arrest and I was just taking them to turn them in to Lone Star, and he believed me, or at least he couldn't pick a hole in my story because when Joshua tells a story, Joshua gets his story straight.
So that's why this is bugging me. It started with the Fuchi building, then I met up with Stark, and then... no, wait, Stark was looking over that stupid Pigeon shaman in Seattle General, so I didn't meet him afterwards. I met up with Stark beforehand, because I needed help on this run because that slotting Black Ice had done a number on... no, the Black Ice was in the run...
Okay, focus. I’m a ‘runner, this was a run. So it started where all ‘runner stories start. It started with the Johnson.
*
Give Caleb this; he fakes sincerity well enough that sometimes I think he’s actually sincere. He looked at me across the table, all wide eyes and solicitous set of his mouth, and he says in that silken Mr. Johnson voice that Gunderson could never get down, “I’m sorry, Joshua-sib. I have nothing for you.”
Elves. A good Johnson can tell you a ghouled hellhound’s a fluffy, friendly puppy. If he’s an elf, too, you’ll only figure out he was lying when petting it loses you an arm.
“Come on, Caleb.” I gave him my best wheedle, and he shot me that little frustrated glance he gives me whenever I don’t call him Mr. Johnson. But I really needed to make him see me as Buddy Joshua here, not ‘Runner 15 or whatever he’s got me listed as. Or maybe I really needed to make him think that I thought he was thinking of me as... frag it, my head’s all numb. “You’ve got to give me something here. I ran into some bad ice and lost my best Sleaze program, I’m gonna be half the ‘runner I should be until my credstick’s healthy enough to replace it.” I reached out over the yawning abyss of Going Too Far. “Really, you should give me a job for you, Caleb. I’m going to spend the cash on deck gear, so it’s like an investment, right?”
Caleb made this little sound with his tongue. It’s like a tut, but somehow ten times as disapproving. I don’t think humans can do it. “As I said, Joshua, I don’t have anything I could rightfully give you.”
I never know if he’s dropping these little hints on purpose. “Null sweat. Gimme whatever job you could wrongfully give me, then.”
He sighed. “I do have a Matrix run...”
“Right up my alley. What’s the fee?”
“I have told you, at times, that the Matrix run I have given you is red-flagged for experts only. This Matrix run would be better described as black-flagged. The talk among my fellows is that this job is too dangerous to give to any ‘runner, and that my employer will have to be satisfied with that.”
I showed him my best sympathetic face. “That’s a hard thing to have to cope with. What’s the fee?”
“Joshua. If you are trying to get me to offer you a job as an investment in your future, the job you request shouldn’t be one that will most likely eliminate your future.”
“The other Johnsons really don’t give you credit for your wordplay, Caleb. What’s the fee?”
This is how I get all the best jobs. Subtlety and psychology.
Caleb finally broke, from my master salesmanship and the line forming outside his booth, and gave me the details. Mitsuhama had some new algorithm they were plugging into their corporate systems, something about getting around their competitors’ ice. If an ambitious young ‘runner - naming no names here - could install it into his Deception program, I could... he could, naturally... dance through the Matrix like an elf ballerina and come out with all the data in the world, before it even knows it’s been stolen. With that on the table, and a frankly embarrassing amount of nuyen, it would have been a crime not to say yes.
Sure, it was also a crime to say yes, but that crime got me money.
No, that was when I met up with Stark, right. Not right away. Right away I was drinking at Matchsticks, because Caleb had given me ten percent in advance (yeah, so, maybe that should have been a red flag, but wave a bunch of nuyen in my face and it’s amazing how quick I stop seeing colour) and I deserved it. So there I was, with something from relatively near the top shelf in a glass, and there was Rianna Heartbane, who was drinking something about half as expensive and was therefore jealous. She and I chatted, in the way the top deckers do, about how much better I was than her and all the fantastic things I was doing with my life and how she could improve her deck to make it more like mine. At around her fourth completely unfounded accusation about my skills, she asked me what kind of job had me paying the cover charge, and being the magnanimous type, I told her.
Know how I said elves get facial expressions and such which humans don’t? It’s not fair, really. Rianna managed to go ghost-pale - more so than usual - and smirk at the same time. It was a pretty special expression; hard to top. So I asked her what she was goggling about.
“When we first met, I told you that the Matrix was a world where all things are possible,” she said. “A Heaven for anyone with a sharp deck and a sharp mind. You have seen this beautiful world of crystal possibility and decided to walk straight into Hell. One of the deep circles. Perhaps the Sixteen Departments of Heart-Gouging.”
She’d probably tell me that’s some ancient elven mythology, but I’ve been to China. ...Well, I read a book about China, once.
“Mitsuhama has no intention of letting a weapon like that algorithm out of its system,” she told me, “so it didn’t put it on its system in the first place. They have another system purely to keep this project on, kept within the main system like a pearl in an oyster’s shell. If, that is, a pearl was covered in blades and poison needles. There is ice there worthy of a Hell within Heaven, Joshua.”
“Ice,” I scoffed. In my defence, the drink was very strong. “I’m not scared of a little ice.”
“I will tell you something I learned simply about the SAN of this jewel within the lotus, Joshua.” Now she was onto Hinduism. I once tried to lock down exactly what cosmology Rianna ascribed to the Matrix, but she gave me one of her non-answers, that any Heaven was perforce all Heavens, philosophy philosophy not getting paid. “It was my belief, and I think the belief of every other decker in Seattle, that once one had put a layer of Tar Pit ice on a node, that was as far as one could go in that direction. The SAN of the algorithm’s hidden hell has nested Tar Pit ice, enough to strip every program from your deck, and to send the whole system to an Active Alert that makes Renraku’s main system seem lethargic by comparison.”
I gulped down the rest of my drink, and swallowed, hard. Because I didn’t want it to get warm, you understand.
“So get in to the building and jack in to an I/O node,” I suggested. “Skip the whole thing. Boil the oyster open to get at the pearl. Is it still an oyster, or is it a lotus now?”
She chuckled, shaking her head at me. “It is a labyrinth now, Joshua, with every dead end a trap, and the guards outside the labyrinth are every one a minotaur. That’s speaking metaphorically, you realise. Literally, they are highly trained strike teams with immense guns and unbreakable armour. You may prefer a minotaur.”
“Well,” I said to her, “thank you for all that free info, Rianna.”
“I wouldn’t ask payment,” she said. And, because she couldn’t leave me alone without one last metaphor, “It’s not worth nuyen to point at a meat grinder and say that it might be ill-considered to put one’s face inside.”
“Point taken.” I nodded graciously, or as graciously as I could with this much good alcohol in me. I didn’t know precisely what it was, but I liked it a lot. “Now, do leave me alone, if you would, I’m preparing for a very important shadowrun.”
She made that face at me again, the shocked-smirking face that I guess was supposed to be an anticipation of schadenfreude. Then she turned back to her own drink. She could give me up as a lost cause. That was just fine. She didn’t know about my ace in the hole.
*
My ace in the hole is tall, wears an armoured duster, carries an SMG that I think could kill and has killed God Almighty, and might still have one patch of natural flesh somewhere around the small of his back. My ace in the hole could, perhaps, be killed by a precision asteroid strike, but I wouldn’t bet on that. My ace in the hole has the skills and inclination to make a bloody mess of everything within ten miles of me that wishes me harm. Also, he reminds me of my older brother, and that’s nice, sometimes.
The little guy who chewed the ends of his fingers - I mean it, he didn’t bite his nails, he literally chewed the ends of his fingers, freaked me the hell out - wasn’t my ace in the hole. In fact, after a few minutes around him, I considered him more an ace hole, if you get my drift. But Stark pointed out that both of us have way too much metal in our bodies to get any magic going, and while I can open any lock in the Matrix and he can kick a door down so hard its family will unlock, neither of us can really get through a physical door without waking up half of Seattle. So, okay, we had this skinny chemhead Pigeon shaman who spent all his time sampling half of the Pullayup crime mall along with us. I guess the ends justify the means.
And I gotta say, he did get the job done. I pulled the old “look out, this guy’s having a heart attack, it might be contagious” con on the foyer and got us in through the Employees Only door, but every time we needed to get somewhere we couldn’t otherwise go after that, he came out of his shell. He’d look at the door, chew on his fingers, make a freaky little cooing sound, and then in goes the lockpick and out comes the door. Like that. I saw him pick one door with a paperclip, and I know that doesn’t seem too impressive, but the lock was electronic.
It was amazing. We met two patrols - I charmed one, Stark charmed the other (with bullets), and we didn’t trip a single alarm. No. Wait. Maybe we tripped one alarm. I remember Rianna said we shouldn’t have tripped that alarm while she was turning it off. Right? It’s a bit fuzzy.
Anyway, soon we were in the head programmer’s office. We had the head programmer tied to a chair with Stark’s SMG under his chin, Who’s Not A Pretty Birdie had the door barricaded and in lockdown, and I figured if anything was going to be close to the algorithm without much ice in the way, it was going to be this jack. So I plugged in my deck, and there it was. “Lines of light ranging in the nonspace of the mind. Clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.”
Rianna said that, once. Pretty sure it was Rianna.
Right away I could feel the ice. Decker’s sixth sense. Seventh, maybe, or somewhere up around nine. I barely need an Analyze program any more. You get a scent for it, a taste, you end up personalising it. Access ice feels like a happy puppy around your ankles that might just bite, but its teeth are too small to do any real damage. It really wants to let you in, it really does. Barrier ice always feels like this one guy from the gangs where I was growing up, strong silent type, didn't say much. Didn't even say I couldn't go into the building he was guarding, just stood in the door. I was nine and slippery, you'd think I could get around him somehow, but... Any Trace ice feels like one of those sharks with the teeth on funny, in a circle like a leech or a lamprey. Blaster ice is a big guy with a shotgun, and you just know he's given his shotgun a name, and he tucks it into bed with him at night. Killer ice is that guy's big brother, like a car without the personality, and he's got three shotguns and somehow he uses them all at once, and they've all got girl's names that are variations on a theme, like Molly, Polly, and... Lolly.
Anyway, they're all freaky and ugly and I don't like any of 'em, but for those ones, when I smell 'em, I think, better watch out for that, and I go about my business. I don't get scared.
Yeah, you know what's coming next.
Black ice isn't like any of those guys. Black ice is a really quiet guy in a corner, little guy, big smile, eyes open wide, he doesn't blink. He's got a knife, nothing too big, nothing showy. The knife doesn't have a girl's name. It's too close to him to give a name. Black ice uses a little knife because black ice wants to be perfectly precise, to take his time with you. Black ice isn't even upset with you being there. Black ice is overjoyed. Black ice is so happy he's going to get to show you everything he can do with his knife.
I jacked in to that port in the head programmer's office and I smelled him all around. Like he was saying hi. Wanted me to know he was there. Nice to meet you, chummer. Come on in. Let me get a good look at you.
So I crept a little. I loaded a good suite of programs, a variant Attack I'd had good experiences with, a nice quick little Shield, an old Medic I barely used any more, and my good old friend Deception. Me and him go back since I first got my deck, or at least since the last Tar Pit that ate him. My deck felt nice and responsive. I floated left, I somersaulted right, I swam through data. I blew down the Access and Killer the programmer had on his I/O node with a huff and a puff, and when I was in the little piggies' house, I made my way through the woods to Grandmother's.
I don't know how long it took, and neither Stark nor the Pigeon shaman were able to tell me. It felt like it took nearly an hour, which probably means we were stuck in there for days. No, I'm joking. I know, we'd have to have food. Michael told me that he got stuck besieged in a hotel room while a decker worked on a node for a whole week, and they had to ration out the minibar and the fancy soaps from the bathroom, but I don't believe him. I'll call him up about it later. Gotta remember that; gotta call him quick before he dies in Salish-Shidhe.
It wasn't easy. Ilene was right, it was a labyrinth, and every time I turned a new corner, the rest of it turned around behind me. At one point I swear I had to break some ice while I was /leaving/ a node. Hand to God. I was leaving a node, and this really enthusiastic Barrier with about five Tar Pits behind it was eager to make me stay. I lost a Smoke - good riddance - but managed to Relocate the alert before it went active. Wasn't even sure I could do it before I just did it. Good thing, too. If the whole thing went to Active Alert I'd probably get my deck handed to me and my brain fried before I could jack out.
Finally I was at the end of the labyrinth, the centre of the lotus, and the Minotaur was there waiting for me, the happy little sadist with his no-name knife. Nice to meet you, chummer.
When Michael tells me about decking, and this must be before I turn, like, twelve because by then I'll already be teaching him, he's going to tell me that black ice is like a cold so cold it burns. Cold that's gone out the other side and become heat. And that's a pretty good analogy. But I've felt black ice since then, and there's something else it feels like. It's like the cold so cold it's hot, the fog of burning freezing that swamps your brain, has got one particular little line and it's just cutting through you. It's a cold so cold it's hot, and it's an intangibility with a knife edge.
Frag-face the gremlin here was chopping up my brain like a really good sushi chef with every tick that passed. Cerebellum sashimi. Medulla maki. Neocortex nigiri. All of it with a hefty dose of burning wasabi. But I've dealt with some pretty vicious black ice in my time, and I managed to turn it around on him, get the knife out of my brain and make my brain into a knife, and stab him right through the black ice heart. Got him. I reached out my virtual fingers to pry open the oyster and get to the pearl inside.
But it was a lotus, after all, because it showed me a flower.
It went through a few stages, just the way black ice does, and it was pretty, just the way black ice isn’t. It was a flower, then it blossomed into a cloak of feathers, and then it molted into a rainbow, and then it glowed back to being a flower again. I tried to push it out of the way, but it wouldn’t move. I tried to Relocate it, nothing. I gave it Deception, Attack, I even pushed the button on my deck that would have Sleazed past it if that program hadn’t been eaten. After that, I just looked at it a little longer, wondering what the hell it was for.
Then I got what it was for.
Then I screamed at the top of my voice, and grabbed the jack, and yanked it out of the node, blowing half a dozen neurons in splitting explosive pain. No good. Even when I threw my 250,000 nuyen deck across the room to smash in half on the opposing wall, it had already gotten into my smartlink. You get what I’m saying? I closed my eyes, and I still saw it, flower, feathers, rainbow. Stark was staring at me, and the Pigeon shaman was flapping his arms, trying to coo me quiet.
I got my Predator out from under my coat, and I put a couple of shots into the I/O port, making sure to hit all the vital areas. Then I turned to the shaman and put a couple of shots into him, making sure to hit all the vital areas. I remember thinking that he should be happy with that; the Predator was silenced, after all. Stark turned to look at me, with this big wide-eyed what-the-hell expression I’d never seen on his face before, and that meant he wasn’t in the way of the programmer any more, so I shot the programmer a few times, pff pff pff, and then plinked the other eight bullets into Stark’s dermal armour, none of them - thank God - doing a thing to him. He grabbed me by the coat and I started to lunge at him, kicking, biting. I scratched one of his cyber-eyes, felt the iris reticule bite down on my fingers, so I bit his eye back. I mean, and thank God again, I couldn’t really hurt Stark with everything I had, up to and including the frag grenades, but I think he dropped me just ‘cause he was shocked. Anyway, I was gone. Straight out of the building, fastest way down. I didn’t see any guards, I think. See, this is where things got really, really blurry. I ran down the stairs, and I bought a ticket to Seattle, to find my brother, and Caleb told me that this was a dangerous run, so I’d better take the Allegiance shotgun, and every time I found Ito Ogami, I blew him open again. And again. And again.
*
Reckert’s looking at me, and he’s got that shocked look on his face - you can tell, the eyebrows go up half a centimetre - but at least he doesn’t look betrayed any more, which is nice. I mean, I'm happy to tell most of Lone Star to slot off, but I always smile when I say it to Reckert.
'I can buy that you weren't in your right mind," he says. "None of this - wanton destruction and killing - fits your profile at all. I want to be clear, though. You're accusing Mitsuhama of employing a basilisk hack."
Gotta give it to him, I'm surprised. "You know what a basilisk hack is?"
"I know what I believe it is," Reckert replies. "But when I deal with you I'm never sure we're using the same dictionary. In my understanding, a basilisk hack is a pattern used to cause the brain's visual centres to register particular signals, which then interfere with the brain itself. It's not feasible against non-cybered individuals, but the incomplete fusion of brain and cyberware can cause a decker to be particularly vulnerable. It's like introducing a computer virus into the brain."
"Okay, fine." I nod. "Yeah, so, sounds like what happened to me. Pretty devious ice; shut down the info leak, get the leaker to kill everyone he might have told, then get him to go commit suicide by Lone Star and wreck up a rival while he's at it."
"You have to be very careful with what you're accusing," Reckert says, and he stresses every single word, making the sentence long and plodding. Fine by me. I could use some long and plodding, I've had enough of fast. "The legality of any kind of black ice is questionable, but even if used completely defensively, a basilisk hack is entirely illegal, no matter who uses it."
"I'd hate to have anything to do with illegal activity on either side," I say, looking saintlike, and Reckert doesn't even scowl at me. And maybe it's the flower growing its roots in my brain, but I think I can see why. Because he's got two options. Either he has to arrest me, and not for a short stay, for multiple murders (bad) and destruction of corporate property (much worse), which would mean locking up or executing someone who's probably innocent and giving the real criminals exactly what they want. Or, he has to go after Mitsuhama and try to pin a crime on an entire megacorp. I mean, under those circumstances, a better man would arrest me.
Fortunately for me, Reckert's not that better man. I mean, he's better than me, though most people in Seattle are better than a low down thieving 'runner who'll take any job, but the reality of life's probably shown him that you can't always be the good man. Sometimes, you have to be the bad guy to do good.
I'm sorry, I don't really do philosophy. It's the flower in my brain, I swear.
"You seem to be mending," he says, sharply. "From everything I hear, you'll recover quickly, should the image pass successfully into long-term memory."
I nod. “Sure,” I tell him. “Almost got time flowing the right way again.” Almost. I have to shake my head out when I realise I’m looking forward to meeting him for the first time, handcuffs and all.
He doesn't say the bit about how if it has a problem passing into long-term memory, I'll have another psychotic episode that makes the first one look tame, and then enough grand mal seizures to splatter my brain all over the inside of my skull. He doesn't say that bit because he's a nice cop. He tells children not to play with frag grenades.
“Since all but three of your victims survived your attacks,” he continues, and I try not to look disappointed - I thought I was a better shot than that, especially with an Allegiance - “two of those do not have corporate insurance, and the details of the programmer’s death are not being released by Mitsuhama, it is my decision to charge you with minor property damage with mitigating factors, possession of illegal firearms, and public indecency. There will be a two thousand nuyen fine and the shotgun will be confiscated. On the record, you will also have a ten thousand nuyen suspended fine, contingent upon you not breaking parole; off the record, if someone offers you a run like the one you were on again - whatever that was - I highly suggest you tell them to slot off. Now, go back to your hotel and get some sleep.”
Because bedrest eases memory transmission. “Null perspiration, chummer,” I say, cheerfully, and jump to my feet. Major corporation sticking fingers in my brain or not, it’s hard to top that getting out of Lone Star with a slap on the wrist feeling. And I didn’t even kill the Pigeon shaman, though on reflection, not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
“I have one more request.”
There’s Reckert for you. Every time I’m about to get out of his office and go do some wonderful crime, he’s got something else to tell me, and it always breaks my train of thought. And he never just says “Joshua” or “Hey” or “where do you think you’re going, frag-face”, it’s always this “I have one more request”, like a troll trying to add without using his fingers. (No offense, Winston. To be honest, he calculates how much ammo he’s got left on a clip faster than I do.) I sit back down.
“When you wake up tomorrow,” he says, “I want you to come in to sign some more paperwork. We need some more time to process it.”
He’s an atrocious liar.
So I give him another null perspiration, and I’m out of my chair, and back into the world of the free.
*
Well, almost, anyway.
Stark raises his eyebrows when I hand him my Predator, but he knows what I mean, and I know he knows; if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have that string of concussion grenades trailing from his belt. Stunners, not killers. He’s a good friend.
“When I wake up,” I tell him, “if I’m crazy, I want you to take that gun, and find me, and make sure I have good covering fire. Because last time, Lone Star got me, and it was embarrassing.”
He laughs. “Null sweat,” he says, and it sounds strange in his mouth. Obviously something he picked up from me. It works, though. Makes me feel a little better about a bad situation. It’s something Michael would do.
So I lie down, and I pull the thin sheet around myself, the only one Stoker hasn’t had stolen out from under his (admittedly big) nose. When I close my eyes, it’s there, waiting, eager to give me one last hurrah. Flower. Feathers. Rainbow. And hidden behind all the colours is a little man with a little knife, and he’s giving me a nice broad smile, because he’s just so happy to see me.
Nice to meet you, chummer.
Come on in.
Let me get a good
look
