Under the Amoral Bridge, A Blog Novel by Gary A. Ballard

The New Web Site Revealed - http://www.bridgechronicles.info

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 03:06:00 +0000

The time has come. The Bridge Chronicles is moving to an all new, full-featured web site. While I will keep this blog up, I will no longer be updating here. Everything will live at the new site, http://www.bridgechronicles.info from this day forward. New short stories, sample chapters from my upcoming cyberpunk novel, if [tribe] = as well as anything else Bridge-related can all be found at this new web site. Head on over there now, bookmark the site and be prepared for the future of Artemis Bridge!

Interview with Matt Heckler of Android Dreamer

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 20:21:00 +0000

Matt Heckler from the Android Dreamer blog interviewed me for his cyberpunk month, and the interview has been posted. You can read the entire interview here. Thanks for the opportunity to promote myself and my work, Matt. Don't forget to read Matt's review of The Know Circuit and Under the Amoral Bridge as well.

The Know Circuit Reviewed by Android Dreamer

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:47:00 +0000

Matt Heckler at the Android Dreamer blog has put up a review of The Know Circuit as part of his cyberpunk month. I want to thank Matt for his great review. You can read the full review here. Overall, he gives the book a B+, rating it higher than he did Under the Amoral Bridge. Sometime during this month, he'll be posting an interview with me as well, which I'll post when I get the chance.

Connection: Keep Alive - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

This story takes place one month after the events in The Know Circuit. Part 1 is available here and part 2 is available here.

The first thing he saw with his real eyes was a blinding green light, mottled and distorted with months of sleep crusting his eyes. He could feel the whiskers on his face stuck to his skin, the saline solution that filled the interior of the sensory deprivation inner chamber of his crèche feeling like a thick layer of mucus covering him from head to toe. He heard the whoosh of the crèche’s lid opening. Mu could barely open it, his arm filled with lethargic fatigue. As the lid swung open, its lights shut off and he was bathed in a muted darkness, like a bedroom whose only illumination came from a tiny night light. Every muscle ached with lethargy, but he managed to sit up. The gorge rose in this throat, and he promptly threw up over the side, a wracking spasm of dry heaves that shook him for long minutes.

Mu carefully crawled over the side, avoiding the puddle at the foot of the crèche. He could barely stand, but every second he stayed awake brought more feeling into his legs, dispelling the needles that crawled up and down his veins. He leaned over to steady himself. Underneath his hand sat another crèche.

The room he found himself in was probably forty feet square, unadorned and dark, like a prison or barracks. Crèches filled every inch of the place, all dimly lit, their inhabitants unaware of him. The room’s lighting flickered and Mu finally noticed the source of the illumination. One wall of the room had a gigantic hole blasted in it, the edges of the hole still smoldering with tiny flames.

Mu saw something then which led him to believe he might still be in the GlobalNet. Hovering in the hole, oblivious to the impossibility of his being, sat a man. About the same age as Mu, the levitating man was Chinese, dressed head to toe in dark clothing that glinted here and there in the light, golden runic shapes barely visible in the flickering light. A hooded cape draped over his back and fell to the floor. “Ah, you’re awake,” the man said, his legs dropping to the floor.

Stunned that the man actually existed, dismayed that he might still be in captivity, Mu replied, “Fuck, I’m still under aren’t I?”

The Chinese man flashed him a bemused smile. “No, you made it out. This is as real as real gets. Though our perceptions certainly cloud our grasp of reality, and perhaps trick us into believing this is the real reality, the quantam reality we all expect, but the math on that isn’t quite solid yet.”

“What?” Mu asked. His head buzzed.

“Sorry, I ‘m getting a bit ahead of myself. Congratulations are in order. You managed to break the program all on your own.”

“Are you the asshole that put me in this box?”

“Didn’t you put yourself in the box?”

Mu recoiled as if struck. “Ok, technically that’s true. But I didn’t do it expecting to be there six months straight.”

“More like eight months I think. No, I’m not the one who kidnapped you. I am, however, the one who is going to ensure that you are able to get out of here. As well as the rest of your fellow prisoners.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Wong. I represent a special order of scient… I mean, wizards. We’re wizards. That’s right. I’m a wizard.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Have you heard of the technomancers?”
“What? No, what the hell is a technomancer?”

“Oh right, eight months. Yeah, you probably haven’t heard of us. We don’t have a lot of time. I’d rather not fight the Chinese army that is probably even now headed our way. I just need to…” He began to gesture, his hands dancing in front of him. Mu stared at him in surprise, unable to figure out just what kind of crazy this stranger was inflicted with.

His surprise grew as Wong’s fingers began to glow, a dazzling shower of sparks that danced and dipped around his hands before spreading itself over the entire room, a fog of light that settled to the ground before disappearing. All at once, the crèches shut down, their lids whooshing open, their lights winking out. “Now then, shall we go?”

“How? Where?”

“We’re in Mainland China. Your captors were some very powerful people.”

“Were?”

“They resisted.” His face got very sad for a moment, a fleeting glimpse of vulnerability. “We technomancers had heard of a secret cabal of underground arenas that were using captive hackers to fight against their will. We decided to find you and set you free. Though you didn’t need my help for that.”

“Is that why I’m coming with you?”

Wong nodded. “You were the only one to spot a flaw in the programming and exploit it. Very good work, by the way. I’m impressed.”

Wong had been leading him quickly through a series of hallways, many of them charred and smoking like the room they’d left. His eyes grew wide as he began to see bodies as well, many of them still smoking. Suddenly, Mu stopped in his tracks. “How do I know you didn’t set me up, that this whole thing isn’t some elaborate scam?”

“You don’t. Would you rather go back in the box?”

“Good point.”

“You survived. Revel in that. And if you are interested, how would you like to be able to do this?”
Again Wong’s fingers danced. But instead of a soothing glow, his hands exploded with a ball of fire that shot from his grasp and exploded against a wall, burning a hole through it to the outside world. Stinking industrialized air blew in with a hint of sea salt wafting across Mu’s nose.

“Are you recruiting me?”

Wong nodded. “No pressure. I’m taking you to safety no matter your answer. You have a gift. Fifty hackers are stuck in this place, all of them in the same situation you were, all probably wracking their brains to figure a way out of that trap. But you did it, you wrote yourself out of it without any help. That kind of creative thinking can be channeled into magic. The things you can create are limitless. Or, you can go back to hacking, waiting for them to try out version 2.0. Your choice.”

Mu didn’t take long to decide.

“Do I get to wear a cape?”

“If you’d like,” Wong replied with a smile.

Mu’s sticky beard split for a grin wide as the sky. “Kanpai, motherfucker.”

Connection: Keep Alive - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

This story takes place one month after the events in The Know Circuit. Part 1 is available here and part 3 is available here.

Once he’d learned how to store information in a separate memory block from the normal avatar processes, Mu managed to create a clock and calendar program to keep track of the time that had passed. Every time he woke, he tinkered in what little bit of meditative time he could find, creating all the pieces of a new avatar interface that he hoped to eventually connect to his previous shell. Mu was counting on the programmer of the kidnap software not to have expected an attack from within.

Though a slow moving slog, the creation of the new avatar proved to be therapeutic. It kept Mu sane. His captor let slip a number of details during that time. Some corporate account in Hong Kong he’d hacked last year had actually been a dummy account used to launder money from Los Angeles to China and back. The owners of that account had hired his kidnappers to take care of the problem, and rather than whack him, they’d decided to enlist him in an experiment. The kidnap software, in the alpha stages of production, scared the shit out of Mu. It could infect his system from specific GlobalNet interactions, forcing his connection to the GlobalNet to remain open. That allowed the kidnappers to trace him back to his roost, no matter how many anonymizer hops he took. Once they’d found his crèche, they broke in, replaced his nutrient drip with the SomniTrip, hooked up the crèche to a portable generator and moved the whole shebang out under the cover of darkness to some remote facility with a bunch of other boxed up hackers.

The physical part troubled Mu. Even if he managed to get his new avatar interface working, even if he could kill the connection so that he woke up in his crèche, what then? The place had to be guarded, and his body would take some time to recover from the effects of the drug. He would need to shut off that feed hours before he severed the connection with his avatar, and that little module required weeks more programming than he first expected. But once he escaped the box, he would have to rely on his physical skills to escape whatever bodyguards were strewn about the place. He had no chance of that in the best of times. He knew the outcome of that scenario but it no longer mattered. Better the guards put a cap in his ass than his brain burn itself out from overuse months, maybe years into the future.

Finally the day came. His clock informed him that he’d been captured for at least six months. His friends had likely given him up for dead. His family probably believed that his lifestyle had finally caught up with him, and he realized with chagrin that they would actually be right.

By the time his escape plan was ready, he’d decided on calling his handler Liàn, which was Chinese for chain. She provided him with a katana for his battle, a fairly straightforward sword clash between himself and three plate wearing assailants wielding claymores. Despite their obvious advantage in numbers and equipment, he’d bested them easily with his maneuverability. Along the way, he’d cloned the katana’s code, storing an exact duplicate in his new cache. Standing over the bodies of his victims, he knelt to the sword, awash in the cheers and jeers of a full house. Then without acknowledging the crowd, he walked confidently back to the prison where Liàn waited.

“Weapon,” she said coldly. His chance had come. He tossed her the sword, and while it flew through the air gleaming, he summoned his copy of the sword and a shield from a previous battle, diving through the air as she reached up to grab the sword. To her credit, she avoided his killing stroke and grabbed the sword out of the air in one motion, catching the blade and slicing downwards at him, a blow which landed harmlessly on his shield. He rolled into the antechamber and sprang back into a fighting position just as the portcullis slammed shut behind her. She pressed her back against the bars in a practiced stance.

“Very nice,” she said with obvious admiration. “How’d you do that?”

“My little secret,” he hissed, feinting with the shield before spinning and landing a blow that she parried hard enough for sparks to fly from the blades. “I’m leaving. Do you want to tell me your name before I go, or should I keep calling you Liàn?”

“Chain. Cute. It’s as good a name as any.” Three lightning quick slashes drove him back a few feet, the last a fatal mistake. He slammed her arm with the shield, causing her to drop the sword. He popped her in the face with the shield, then slashed her from shoulder to hip. She derezzed immediately.

Time to leave. He knelt quickly, triggering the kill program stored in the sword. His avatar drove the sword into its belly and sliced across, severing his connection with the GlobalNet.

Connection: Keep Alive - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

This story takes place one month after the events in The Know Circuit. Part 2 is available here and part 3 is here.

Time had lost any sort of meaning in this place. Albert’s only method for determining how long he had been in this sandy shithole was counting the number of fights he’d been forced into since his virtual self “woke” up here. Sixteen fights since then, sixteen opponents he had somehow bested by improvisation, tenacity and dumb luck. Between the fights, Albert could only remember pain followed by drinking binge style blackouts full of merciful darkness. The pain, as intense as any he’d ever experienced, wasn’t exactly physical pain. His GlobalNet avatar could transmit pain to his brain, of course – that ‘feature’ was part and parcel of the full-sensory experience of the crèche connection. His brain knew somewhere deep, in some primal animal place that this avatar’s body was not his own, which muted the pain but providing no opportunity to soothe it with normal physical reactions, such as rubbing a bruise, or scratching at an itch.

His avatar had lost arms twice, and his left leg below the knee once, and the mental pain had been indescribable. The soothing darkness had swallowed him and upon waking the limb had been regrown. His screaming mind had told him the limb did not, could not, exist, and it had taken what felt like hours to calm his thoughts enough to use the new virtual limb. No sooner had he regained his mental balance than he’d been thrust into battle once again by his captors.

No stranger to GlobalNet arena battles, Albert had enjoyed the adulation of the crowds, the rush of virtual danger made more real by the pseudo-pain, and most importantly, he’d enjoyed the winnings from side bets he’d place on himself. Though his freelance hacking paid the rent and kept him in a crèche, the cut from his arena battles covered the luxuries on and offline. The underground GlobalNet arena scene thrived despite violating the GlobalNet terms of service in every net-connected country. Albert knew enough to avoid the scummiest arenas, the places where real-life physical damage and even death were not only possible, they were frequent. He flitted through various standalone arenas and the gladiator scene of many of the multiplayer virtual worlds run by commercial enterprises and private enthusiasts. From Ars-Perthnia to RealerLife, from Carnivore to the Mountains of Mars, Albert’s gladiatorial pseudonym Mu had become known as a fierce competitor. Like a long-lost memory of someone else’s life, he recalled his last victory in the Silverine Caverns of Demonia. He had stood swaying unsteadily as the crowds cheered his triumph over the Bastard Twins, a pair of chimerical conjoined monster twins with two heads on one mythical body. His foot pressed against the stilled lion-like chest of the beast, the crowd wild with bloodlust. His virtual vision had derezzed to blackness.

Dusty light had filtered down through the bars of the arena entrance as he woke, causing him to blink and cough even though his virtual body drew no real breath. Every sensation he might have normally felt on the GlobalNet was amplified, as if the input feed on his connection had been boosted exponentially. Virtual life had never felt so real. The heavy chains on his arms caused his back to bend, and it ached with the weight. His hands were mangled nightmares, bloody stumps with blades sewn into the wrists. His normal avatar, a wiry muscular humanoid body with the dexterity of a dancer and the power of a martial artist, had been replaced with the bulk of a giant, a beast of barely human strength. When his mind had finally become adjusted to the enhanced sensory overload, he had noticed her standing behind him, clad in all six foot two inches of leather. Her mysterious, vaguely Asian good looks were completely destroyed by the detached cruelty in her eyes. She had prodded him in the back with something that felt like electric fire, forcing him out the door and into the bloodiest arena battle he had ever seen. The victory had taken forever, and it had hurt more than any battle he’d ever faced. After every victory, every defeat, no matter the location, no matter the arena, she had been there, prodding him forward into battle.

Today, she woke him with the prod, searing him to life with angry fire. “Wake up, Albert,” she said with a hint of a Cantonese accent, a singsong nature to her words that would have been endearing were it not on the end of a cattle prod. “You have fighting to do.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake, Angela,” Albert had been trying name after name on her, to see if any seemed to fit, but none had. “And don’t call me Albert. You’re gonna treat me like a fucking slave, at least call me by my gladiator name.”

“Moo?” she said, stretching it out to sound like a cow.

“Mu,” he corrected, struggling to his feet.

“Cute. That hacker speak?”

“Chinese actually. Figured the Chinese word for ‘nothing’ described me better than Albert.”

“How’s a pretty China boy like you get a name like Albert in the first place?”

“White American daddy gets yellow fever, refuses to name his only heir some chink character he can’t even say.”

“Sounds like a douchebag.”

Albert shrugged. His father wasn’t really that bad a guy. Cold and distant, probably a father much too young and unprepared for all the baggage of his very traditional Chinese wife. Albert had been almost happy when the old man had split, at the very least relieved.

"So what am I fighting today? Giant centipede with scorpion claws? Giant rape robot?”

“I think it’s a gorilla with robotic arms. About twenty feet tall.”

“Do I at least get a size increase for this one?”

“I think we’re giving you a rocket launcher or something,” she said with an evil smirk.

He knelt in the dust, still amazed at how real the ground felt. He put his head to the ground in a prayer pose, kneeling his head five times to the ground. Albert didn’t believe in any religion, but it made for a good show for his captor while he concentrated on his attempts at escape.

Escape had been on his mind from the minute that she jammed that prod into his back. He had attempted to access his root menu, to bring up the logout screen, severing his access to the GlobalNet and causing him to wake up in the saline-covered interior of his crèche. Every option on the root menu had been grayed out, inaccessible. Somehow, he had no control whatsoever over the state of his avatar, no ability to jack out, no ability to alter his location, no ability to run, not even the option to change his appearance. Whoever she was, she had trapped him on the GlobalNet, forcing him to stay connected, to go where she wished against his will.

“You think Allah is going to get you out of this? We’ve got you cold.”

“There’s all sorts of gods in the machines. Maybe one will come along and wake my body up.”

She sneered, her attention diverted to the dusky arena outside. The bars of the gate cast ominous shadows on her shiny, plastic skin. “Yeah, that won’t happen. You still think your body is sitting in your apartment, stewing in the soup?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Hell, no. We moved your ass first night we captured you. Your nutrient tube is cut with enough SomniTrip to keep your body immobile for the next century. It’s one nasty drug that shit. Like a liquid coma, only instead of dreaming, your mind is totally 100% clear, sharp enough to work the GlobalNet like you were tweaking on Trip.”

He paused from his mock prayer, staring up at her with horror. “How long can my brain sustain that much activity before it burns itself out?” She shrugged. “Seriously, how long do I have?”

“Don’t ask me. I ain’t no doc, I just handle procurements. I don’t think they know. None have burned out yet.”

“How long have I been under?”

She seemed to weigh her options, perhaps checking a clock on the HUD only she could see. She might actually have felt some bit of sympathy for him, but remained wary that any nicety might form an exploitable bond with his captor. Finally, she made up her mind with a sigh. “Three weeks, I think, maybe four. You all kind of run together.”

He stood, his lanky avatar a foot taller than her lithe frame. “Who did I piss off to deserve this?”

“Oh come on, Albert,” she said, emphasizing his Anglo name evilly, “we both know what you do to make your paper. You hack. Hackers make all sorts of enemies, corporate and criminal. Pick one.”

He had her there. Mu crossed his arms across his waist, stretching his virtual muscles in preparation for the coming carnage. “Ready, Mr. Nothing?”

Mu nodded. A rocket launcher twice as large as she should have been able to bear appeared in her hands. She tossed it casually. As his hands closed on the weapon, he felt the interface connect his avatar program with the launcher’s software. That little glimmer of connection, that little nanosecond flash of code across his vision became the sliver of light in the pitch black box they had trapped him in. The gates rattled upwards. Every step he took into the arena, his mind processed that scrap of code, probing it for weaknesses.

His opponent entered the fray with a thundering stride, the ground shuddering underneath Mu’s feet with each step. Mu used that intense level of concentration the drug had given him to write new code in his head, code that allowed him to store his writing in a separate cache from his normal avatar’s storage space, bypassing the need for his internal HUD. “Kanpai!” he screamed in rapture as he fired off the first shot from the rocket, smiling for the first time since he’d been captured as the smoke trailed off towards the giant gorilla with robot arms.

Under the Amoral Bridge Reviewed by The Android Dreamer

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Matt Heckler, of the sci-fi blog Android Dreamer, published a review of Under the Amoral Bridge a few weeks ago. I've been meaning to post about it but haven't had much of a chance over the last few weeks. I want to thank Matt for the great review! Read more about the review after the jump.

Matt gave the book an overall grade of B-. Here is an excerpt.

The plot really is the strong point of the book. It is a bit slow early on, but once it finds its feet it becomes a really fun, pulpy, action-packed romp. There's a political angle to it, a nihilist bent, and a little bit of a moral to the story, though I think it is left to the reader to take from it what they will. I think that is a mark of strong writing.

If I had to cite one weakness of the book, it's the main character. He isn't necessarily a bad character, but I think he could be better. In many ways, he reminds me of the street rats Philip Marlowe of Raymond Chandler's novels would pay off for information. There is a catch-phrase throughout the book of "I know a guy" and frankly, it gets pretty corny. Bridge isn't really that likable, but he does serve the purpose of carrying the narrative, which I think is the most important part of the novel. On the other hand, I think the supporting characters were strong. I especially liked Aristotle, Bridge's philosopher/bodyguard, kind of a Michael Clarke Duncan meets Henry David Thoreau.

Matt is spot on with his description of Bridge as a Chandler-esque street rat. There were points in writing the first novel that I felt I could have had Bridge be a more active, physical participant but deliberately did not. Bridge is all about surviving no matter who else gets hurt or how he does it. He's not about physical confrontation and that is such a perfect description of a very conscious choice on my part about Bridge's character. As the series goes on, Bridge will be taking more of an active role, but he'll never be the kind of protagonist who acts on his own. I hope Matt enjoys The Know Circuit as much if not more than he did the first novel.

Still Alive

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 01:06:00 +0000

I just wanted to drop a quick note on the blog to let my Bridge followers know that yes, I am still alive. The last few months have been crazy busy. My work schedule has been full of actual work, I spent a few days in December being called to jury duty followed by a week of a pretty terrible flu, and the Christmas holidays did not afford as much time for leisure as I'd hoped. I've been gaming my behind off lately, trying to recharge my writing batteries.

But I'm happy to say that things are evening out a bit, and I've gotten deep into editing the third Bridge novel, if [tribe] = which I hope to have out by May of this year. With my writing attention focused on that, I haven't had time to prepare a new Tales short story. One has been written but not edited, and another has a few pages of a first draft written as well. I hope to have a new story for publication here sometime in February, and maybe another in March. In the next few weeks, I'll be adding links to some very good reviews my books have received. For now, thanks for keeping up with the Bridge and keep checking back for more.

T.R.C., Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:30:00 +0000

This short story takes place between the events of Under the Amoral Bridge and The Know Circuit. Part 1 is available here.

The contrast between the HR offices and Collections stunned Peter. Since Collections occupied the same building as CFirm, he knew their digs wouldn’t be as nice as in the newer building, but even for the older structure, the offices were Spartan and dismal. Lighting was at a premium and shadows draped the entire cube farm. The only sound emanating from the area was the low hum of crèche cooling fans. No conversations broke that low-level buzzing. Upon entering the darkened area, Peter had to double back to make sure the offices were even occupied. Standing at the door, he uttered a timid, “Hello?” which sounded as loud as a gunshot in the murky silence.

“What do you want?” The disembodied voice, filled with electronic static, seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“I’m here to see Margaret.”

“Straight across, cowboy.” Bridge peered through the darkness and found a sliver of light seeping from the sill of a door opened but a crack.

Peter muttered a weak “Thank you,” at whoever had directed him towards the door and walked across the floor. His hesitant knock thundered through the area and echoed back on him.

“Yeah, what?” came the response, a gravely female voice.

Peter eased the door open. “Are you Margaret?”

“Who wants to know?” The speaker sat behind a desk, her long fingers dancing the air on a keyboard only she could see. She slouched in her chair, her head almost level with the battered desk. She had curly blonde hair that cascaded sloppily down to her shoulders, its luster just beginning to fade. Peter reckoned her in the mid-30’s, the start of crow’s feet edging at her hazel eyes. She wore a little too much makeup, her cheeks rosier than natural. Her silk blouse was an ill-fitting number, the sign of someone not especially that concerned with her appearance, or at least someone who didn’t really have to worry about it within the confines of her job.

“Peter. I’m heading up the CFirm division.”

“Didn’t we buy you out few months back?”

Taken aback by the question, Peter nodded. “How did you know that?”

“I had to run the background on your startup. You guys put together a nice little minnow.”

“Ummm, thanks?” he replied, not knowing quite how to respond to being called a minnow. “Are you Margaret?”

“Yeah, I guess so. What are you doing here, Peter from CFirm?”

“Jan Anderson in HR sent me. I…”

“Say no more. Let’s go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“You’re buying me lunch.” She stood up like a shot, grabbed a snazzy vest jacket and pushed past Peter while turning off the light in her office.

“I am?”

“You are. You feel like Italian? I don’t. I feel like Mexican. I know this great place has ox tongue tacos you would not believe. Melt in your mouth like butter.”

“Ox tongue?” Peter stammered with a disgusted look on his face. Confused, he followed the brash blonde like a puppy. “Can I expense this?”

“Most certainly not. We aren’t really discussing business, so it’ll have to be a personal lunch.” She pushed through the door leading out of the Collections division, leaving Peter standing gobsmacked.

The Mexican restaurant she had insisted on far exceeded Peter’s initial expectations. The hole in the wall dive smelled like seared beef and looked like a disaster area, but the food hit the spot. After collecting their order, Margaret led them to an outdoor table and dove straight into her food. She had finished one taco before Peter had gotten through a half, showing few table manners in doing so. “God, I love this place. Totally makes these meetings worth it.”

“What are we doing here?”

“Well, we can’t talk about what you need at the office,” she said matter-of-factly, and her expression said that Peter must be a moron for thinking otherwise. “This way, if anyone looks at why we were meeting, they can’t be sure you aren’t just banging me.”

Peter almost choked. He coughed out, “I’m not sleeping with you, I’m married!”

“Relax there, tiger, I’m not offering. I’m merely suggesting we have another excuse should it come down to it.”

“Why would anyone care if we met at the office?”

“Because if we’re at the office, I have to record our conversation so that you don’t sexually harass me or we don’t do some illegal shit.”

“But we’re not doing anything illegal.”

“Not yet we aren’t,” she said through a half-full mouth grinning from ear to ear. “But you didn’t go to Jan Anderson because your business life is all peachy keen, now did you? You went because you had a problem employee you wanted to fire and Jan shot you down.”

“How did you know?”

“Jan and I have an understanding. She sends me the people she can’t help and I don’t do what I do to her. Everybody’s happy. Well, I’m happy and that’s all that counts.”

“And what do you do, exactly?” Peter squinted at his lunch companion with mistrust.

“T.R.C.”

“What does that mean?”

“Boy you really are green to this whole corporate scene, aren’t you? You startups.” She sighed and chugged down a large gulp of her drink, shaking the cup with a frown at discovering more ice than drink. “Transactional Redactive Collection, a T.R.C.”

“Yeah, I still don’t know what that means. I mean, I know what those words mean separately but I don’t get the combination.”

“Good, it’s done its job then. See, the phrase itself doesn’t mean anything, it’s just one of those bullshit phrases that we can abbreviate and put on a report somewhere and no one will look twice at it. It’s kind of descriptive, but only vaguely so, and that acronym makes it seem like it’s legal.”

She fixed Peter with a serious stare. “But it’s not, of course. You need to understand that. It’s not exactly illegal, per se, in that no one has made a specific law saying we CAN’T do this type of thing, but the actions we have to take are most definitely illegal. So as long as no one gets mouthy about it, no one really looks too hard at it.”

“I don’t want to do anything illegal,” Peter said timidly.

“Too late for that, homeboy. You’ve already bought me lunch. The T.R.C. won’t cost your department anything. We can have it done in days. Problem solved.”

“But you still haven’t told me what you do exactly.”

Her brows knit into a wrinkled scowl. “You cannot be this cherry. Ok, let’s break it down. You have an employee that’s burning your ass, right?” Peter nodded. “And this fuckup is dragging your whole department down. You need to get rid of him, a little addition by subtraction, am I right?” Again, Peter nodded, amazed at her cynical yet accurate portrayal of the situation. “But of course, you can’t fire him either because you haven’t followed procedures or he’s unfireable, right?”

“Yeah, he’s got some kind of bullshit disability or disorder. Asshole’s Syndrome, or something.”

“Whatever, doesn’t matter for my purposes. The only way you’re getting rid of him is a long, arduous process of paperwork, reprimands and procedural ass-covering, or he gets arrested or dead or something. And you don’t want him dead, I take it?”

“Fuck no! Why would you even ask that?”

“Just checking. It’s not really my area anyway, and Jan doesn’t do those types of transactions.”

“Wait, Chronosoft kills people?”

“You didn’t hear it from me, and I couldn’t confirm it even if you did. I’ve got my suspicions, but again, not my area. Arrested, however, that I can do.”

“You can have Josh arrested?”

“Josh, huh? Yeah, if need be. Not the only option I have and it’s a pretty messy operation but yeah, we can have him arrested.”

“For what?”

“Not important.”

“Ok, hold up, you’re making my head spin here. What exactly are you going to be doing to him, provided I actually ask you do something to him? Which I’m not sure I am, by the way.”

She had finished her last taco and began shifting nervously in her chair, scratching both arms. “Fuck, I could use a cigarette.” She raised one arm to reveal a skin patch. “I swear, I get done eating and I’m this close to licking one of these fucking things I want a smoke so bad. I’ve even gotten to love the smell of these stinky things. How sad is that?”

“Ewwww. What is it your department does, Margaret?” A ball of nervous fear took up residence in his stomach beside the tacos. Peter didn’t want to know, but his curiosity got the better of him.
“A T.R.C. We assassinate his credit.”

“Run that by me again.”

“Ok, in the old days, like Internet days, right, everybody had this credit score thing. Still do. It was supposed to be some objective measurement of your creditworthiness. Banks, retail, car dealers, landlords, whoever could use that to determine whether they should lend you money or provide you a service. Of course, being good little blood suckers, a lot of them started finding other ways to make money off lending, particularly off of lending to really shitty candidates, people who had no business being lent a dime much less the price of a car. The government had to get involved back during the oughts, but really didn’t do much of diddlysquat. The blood suckers only got more creative, see.”

“What does any of this have to do with Josh?”

Margaret reached an arm across the table to pick a piece of steak off of Peter’s plate, and he couldn’t help but notice the wrinkles around her wrist, which gave his stomach a little turn. The more this person talked, the more disgusted he became by her mere presence. “I’m getting to that, sport. So the blood suckers right, the creditors kind of got together and started setting up all these elaborate algorithms for credit worthiness, a whole bunch of shit even more arcane and abstract than credit score. Somewhere along the way the algorithms achieved their own little bit of organic artificial life, a self-replicating numerical organism made up of every past, present and potential future transaction you could ever make. That organism is your credit.”

Seeing the perplexed expression on Peter’s face, Margaret stepped back. “Let me put it down on your individual level. Last week, you bought a pack of gum at a convenience store in the dirigible terminal gift shop. Let’s say you bought it with a debit card. Three months, six days ago you bought that same pack of gum in the same place with the coins jingling in your pocket. Every time you bought that pack of gum, you made an entry to your credit record. Those coins were tracked to you just like that debit card purchase. You got that change when you bought lunch at that little burger joint you go to 6.7 times a year in Century, that place near your old offices. You got that cash from the street term up the road from the burger joint because your wife was across town buying a dress at Macy’s with your particular debit card, which you must have left in your car. Now, based on the pack of gum you bought, the frequency with which you have bought that gum in the past and the difference in the two transactions, we can predict you’ll get another pack of gum at the same place with your card roughly two months into your future.”

Peter began to think back as he tried to follow her train of thought and somewhere around the time she brought up the burger joint, it hit him full in the face. No hypothetical scenario this, the purchases she described were all too real events of his recent past. His jaw dropped. “You’re not talking theory here, that’s really me you’re talking about.”

“Can I have a piece of gum?” She replied with the most evil smile Peter could ever picture. Unconsciously he reached into his pocket to retrieve the pack of gum and laid it on the table in front of them, leaving it there to sit, unwilling to touch it again. She picked up the gum and popped a piece into her mouth, making the pack disappear into her purse. “Now, you see what I just did there? I took the pack.”

He nodded. “That’s what we do. We take your gum. Of course, it’s much more complex than that. Not only do we remove that purchase from you now, we take it from you then. That purchase gets wiped out completely, as if it never existed. So in essence, we’ve made it so that you stole that gum. Only, instead of doing it to an insignificant pack of gum, we do it to your electric bill; or your GlobalNet surcharges; or your rent; or mortgage. However many transactions we need to excise to achieve the desired result, we’ll do. Then we take any money you have in your bank account, and we remove that. Gone, poof, disappeared. Then we take your future income, which is really nothing more than a promise from your employer that your efforts will be compensated at a certain level in the future, and we take that promise away as well. You may still technically be employed, but for the purposes of your bank paying for transactions in excess of current available funds, that promise of future income is what they use to justify paying that excess. Without that promise, your bank will deny the charge completely. Your accounts become frozen overnight. If we plant the right information into those voids, we make it look like you’ve committed a crime, and the first time you realize something is wrong is when your lights go out, a second before the cops come busting through the door in riot gear.”

Her lips smacking around the gum, she leaned back with a final thought. “We take that credit organism apart, piece by piece and recreate it in the image we want to portray.”

His appetite completely gone, he stared down into his lap for a moment to gather his thoughts. “That’s truly horrifying. Why would you do that?”

“Me personally? I don’t handle the day to day anymore, so I wouldn’t be the one doing it. But when I did pull jobs, I did it to get paid. Same reason you write code.”

“No, why does Chronosoft do it? Why do they have an entire department dedicated to T.R.C.’s?”

“Technically, the department doesn’t just do T.R.C.’s. We do actual bill collections, as well as other stuff.” Peter didn’t want to know about the ‘other stuff.’

“Chronosoft does it for a variety of reasons, though. They want to recruit some hotshot from a competitor, but they don’t want to pay market value. Or the guy refuses. Or some podunk software house doesn’t want to get assimilated by the megacorp and is playing hardball at the negotiation table. We take the knees out of whoever needs fixing, and leave them begging for Chronosoft to pull them back up. At a discount, of course.”

“And that’s not illegal?”

Margaret shrugged. “Not if you don’t get caught. No lawyers will defend the target. After all, how’s he going to pay? Besides, when you’re a corporation that makes the local and state law, you know how to manipulate the wording of the law so it doesn’t trip over federal statutes. Mostly. There’s not a real delineated set of rules for doing this shit. And every corp with an LGL does it, at least every one of them I know. None of them want it done to them, but if they call out their competitors, they lose the ability as well. Can’t have that.”

Peter shook his head. “Why don’t we just shoot them in the head?”

“Not my department. I’m just Collections. Somebody else can do the physical work. So what’s it going to be, sport? You want to put a hit out on this Josh character?”

Despite his disgust at the idea, Peter hesitated. His deadline was real, oppressively threatening his peace of mind and the department’s profitability. When he’d chosen to visit HR this morning, he had been so assured. Josh’s removal from the picture would ensure they met their deadline, but this? Peter couldn’t say with certainty that even as big an asshole as Josh deserved that kind of treatment.

“Can I think about it?”

“You got 24 hours. After that, you forget you ever heard of us. I don’t want to hear from you unless you are sure you want me to do what I’m paid to do. None of this pussyfooting around.”

She leaned over the table with a squint. “And before you get any delusions of do-gooder dancing through that cute little noggin of yours, keep this in mind. The cops? Don’t forget their official department title is Chronosoft Law Enforcement Division. The press? Chronosoft Network News. The feds are too dependent on the corporate LGL tit to make waves. You want to blow the whistle on some great injustice, be prepared for it to blow right back up in your face, and your wifey’s face too.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I don’t need threats. It’s a fact.” She stood with a smile. “I’ll be waiting for your call. Or not. Doesn’t matter to me, I got a busy docket.” She strode off with an evil confidence, leaving Peter with his thoughts.

He sat for a long time thinking it through. The half plateful of food left on the table grew cold. His mind did gymnastics trying to rationalize the use of Margaret’s services, but no matter where it went, he couldn’t justify it to himself. Yes, Josh could probably qualify as one of the biggest assholes Peter had ever had the misfortune to employ. His work redefined sloppy code. Peter knew with an absolute certainty that CFirm could not meet this current deadline with Josh in the crew barring a miracle.

Finally, Peter stood and began to walk slowly back to the office. His mouth felt dry. He barely noticed the pedestrians passing him on the sidewalk. The taste of onions lingered sourly in his mouth. Walking through the opulent front entrance to the Chronosoft Downtown Headquarters, he put his hand in front of his mouth, sure his breath stank. He needed a breath mint, or a pack of gum. He walked dazedly to the public mall, his eyes unable to focus on the glittery promises of the overpriced stores. Remembering the pack of gum in his pocket, he reached for it only to recall that Margaret had taken his gum.

Standing at the counter of the gift shop, a pack of gum between he and the shopkeeper, the kid behind the counter said, “That’ll be 55 cents. Cash or card?”

Peter stared down at the gum, then at the vacant eyes of the cashier. “You know what? Never mind. I don’t need it that bad.”

T.R.C., Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:30:00 +0000

This short story takes place between the events of Under the Amoral Bridge and The Know Circuit. Part 2 is available here.

Not even the normally cathartic influence of death metal pouring directly into his brain from the cybernetic MP3 player implanted behind his ear could calm Peter Carragher today. The driving beats, the wall of guitars, the thundering bass, shrieking vocals, none of it drowned out the angry thoughts buzzing around his cranium. One of the programmers under his charge, Josh, had worn down his last nerve. Peter hadn't hired Josh. Given the choice, Peter never would have.

When Peter's small cybernetic firmware outfit had been bought by the global megacorporation and local government licensee Chronosoft, he had brought his own team of twelve over with him, personally ensuring every one of them received a generous benefits packages, lucrative stock conversions and ample salaries. The money had been too good to pass up. Cfirm, Inc. LLC had been a fantastic bit of fun as a startup, successful enough to turn a decent profit in their second year of existence. Peter could have afforded a couple of years off with the takeover money, but he'd never been one for fuck off time. Better to be working, be productive, and take what vacation the wife forced on him than live an idle life. He'd agreed to head the new CFirm Division in Chronosoft R&D's Los Angeles division, complete with swanky new digs at the recently completed downtown complex across the street from Chronosoft's LGL City Hall. Peter wasn't quite sure how he felt about corporate ownership of local government, but it hadn't seemed to have much effect on his day to day life. He took the dirigible into work from the suburbs every day instead of driving the choked L.A. freeways. But other than mode of transportation, he ate like he used to, he watched his TV like he used to, he made love to his wife every few days like always. His life was that of a typical middle management schmuck with a thinning hairline and expanding paunch.

Peter rubbed that paunch now, the first acidic rumblings of heartburn stirring up his esophagus. That fucker Josh was burning a hole in Peter's gut. Even in the old days, CFirm lived in a constant state of deadline crunch time. New owners didn't change the timelines, only the stakes. Firmware had to be written according to the marketing milestones, which usually meant seat-of-the-pants coding. It had to be tested as meticulously as possible by the army of Bangladeshi children the company had contracted for Q&A. And then it had to be uploaded to the servers for GlobalNet deployment by a certain date or there would be "hell to pay." In CFirm Inc., LLC terms, "hell to pay" meant bowing and scraping to the bank for a bridge loan to keep the lights on and make payroll. In Chronosoft lingo, it meant the stock price took a shit until the product got a firm ship date, all the executives just above and just below Peter's pay grade saw the value of their golden parachutes dip and got very, very antsy. Their anxiety turned into a load of scrutiny that would land directly on Peter's balls. The next project might be awarded to a different firmware department or worse, be outsourced to some shit-encrusted backwater software house in Africa or some Slavic state whose idea of labor laws originated in the Middle Ages.

Josh's task was a simple one. Get a 3% increase in response time on that cyberarm code he'd been working on for a week longer than he should have been, and do it without acting like a massive, whiny douche. Massive, whiny douche was Josh's default state of being, of course. The slovenly beanpole looked perpetually pissed off. He would spend whole workdays including overtime ensconced in his crèche, coding away or fucking off on the GlobalNet depending on the hour of the day and whether or not he was under observation. When he did manage to crawl into the cold fluorescent light of the cube farm, he reeked of old sweat and sneered at everyone. Josh had a vocal opinion on everything, a cocky assurance that everything he thought, believed or said had to be absolutely 100% correct, and a vast storehouse of personal experience that could never be topped. If Peter had climbed Mount Everest, Josh would claim to have done that AND to have climbed Olympus Mons on the surface of Mars by himself. His work, if one could call it that, had flashes of brilliance. Those flashes were all too often lost in the mountain of sloppy mediocrity that only a three-star talent with delusions of five-star skill could produce.

Josh wouldn't have lasted two weeks at CFirm Inc., LLC. Peter would have shitcanned him on the spot the second time he'd missed a milestone. In such a massive corporation as Chronosoft, Peter would have to go through proper channels - which meant he'd have to talk to Human Resources. That was a conversation he dreaded like the plague, but he couldn't put it off any longer. The knock on his open door that morning had made up his mind. "Got a second?" John Beaver had asked, though he knew no one in that office had any free time.

"What's up?"

"What do you think?" John asked with a grimace.

"What's he done now?" The all too frustrated look in John's eyes told Peter everything he needed to know about where the problem originated.

"He just spent the last half-hour tearing QA a new asshole about some bug that ended up being his fault. We gotta do something about him."

"I know. I know. I've got to go talk to HR about him."

"Today, Peter. He's fucking killing us."

"He's certainly killing me," Peter responded with a sardonic smile. His eyes lifted to directly over John's shoulder at the middle-aged, well-dressed man who walked up with a worried expression. "Arthur!" Peter said with a joviality he did not feel. "What brings you down to CFirm?"

"Let's talk, Peter," Arthur replied with a glance at John. Peter's second got the hint and buggered off. Arthur entered the office and closed the door. Breathing heavily, the marketing executive sank into a chair with a long sigh. "How are we doing for the new firmware launch? Everything on track?"

Peter began to explain the delays, but stopped as Arthur raised a hand. "Let me keep you from having to lie and go ahead and tell you that I know you're mired in a swamp of bugs. The question is can your team make the announced deadline? Can you get it working in two weeks?"

"I'd have to check for sure, but you know how these bugs go. They could take months to sort out, or we could have a moment of inspiration and solve it tomorrow."

"Inspiration, right." Peter had heard that tone before. Marketing big wigs like Arthur didn't understand programming and didn't care to understand. All Arthur knew was that the coders manipulated unfathomable numbers and formulae to produce cybernetic magic. Creative types, ad men and artists had inspiration, not engineers soldering circuit boards and living in GlobalNet soup cans. "I can't pin a marketing plan for the next six months on the possibility of an engineer's inspiration, I have to set up press, put together email campaigns and GlobalNet banners, get the buzz out on the socials, and get a ravenous public all in a froth over glorified tweaks. Do you know how sexy firmware upgrades are? Yeah, about as sexy as a fucking refrigerator. But the geeks love it, the cyberpunks will stab you in the face over it, and that's the market I have to keep happy. Do you know how much your predecessor's firmware delays cost us? Every delay dropped our stock price 6% in a day. Do you know how much 6% of infinity is? Yeah, neither do I. But it's a fucking lot. I own that stock. YOU own that stock. We all lose money if you don't make those deadlines. I don't like losing money."

"Well, Arthur, maybe if you'd asked me before you announced a firm release date, we wouldn't be having this problem. I could have told you how unrealistic that deadline is."

"You don't get that option. Marketing sets the release date, production meets it. That's how it works at Chronosoft. If you can't handle that, you can go back to garage startups, got it?" The threat was clear. Get the product to market or get bent like the last firmware division Chronosoft had acquired, assimilated and spit back out. The firm, Peter noted ruefully, that had brought Josh into the Chronosoft fold according to his personnel file.

"Crystal fucking clear, Arthur," Peter replied through clenched teeth. Without another word, Arthur stood up and stalked out. Peter sighed and leaned back in his chair. Time to visit HR.

Human Resources had much nicer offices than CFirm. Located in the newly built Chronosoft Local Governance License Administrative Offices in downtown Los Angeles, across the concourse from the corporate headquarters CFirm occupied, it embodied the very idea of corporate excess. Brighter lighting, open-air cube farms and offices with wall-to-ceiling windows kept watch over the gleaming, pristine center of downtown. Peter couldn't suppress the tinge of jealousy as he entered Jan Anderson's corner office. Anderson wasn't even a high-level executive, approximately a tier or two below Peter on the corporate managerial hierarchy, but her massive, clear glass desk and imposing view put him in his proper place. Anderson, a mom in her mid-40's with fading looks that might once have been irresistible, sat behind her desk with complete comfort, smiling genially at Peter's entrance as she offered a variety of beverages.
Deferring refreshment, Peter blundered directly into the problem. "Jan, I need to fire someone."

The friendly smile that had dominated her face fell into a wrinkled frown. Her posture stiffened uncomfortably. "Oh dear, that's not good. Are you absolutely sure? How many 8-60's have you given the employee?"

"Say what?"

"Form 8-60's, a written warning."

"I don't even know what that is."

She stifled a 'tsk' and asked, "It's in your Chronosoft handbook. Has no one been through that with you?"

Taken aback, Peter stumbled over his words. "Well, I have one. My department's been a bit busy, haven't had much of a chance to go through it completely."

Her disappointment was palpable. "Well, that won't do. What has this employee done?"

"He's a colossal fuckup." She recoiled at the use of profanity as if struck. "What little good work he does is overshadowed by sloppy code that's got more bugs than a flophouse mattress, and when you call him on it, he goes nuclear on whoever happens to be in shouting distance. He's a complete douche."

With pursed lips and her fingers forming a steeple underneath her chin, she said, "We can't fire an employee for a disagreeable manner."

"Disagreeable? He's a world class asshole."

"What is this employee's name?"

"Josh Cartwright."

Her fingers danced in the air as she accessed something on her internal HUD. Another whispered 'tsk' escaped her chapped lips. "This won't do. This won't do at all."

"What won't do?"

"Mr. Cartwright. You can't just dismiss him."

"Why not? He's a fuckup."

Again, her face scrunched up in almost physical pain. "Regardless, Mr. Cartwright is disabled. You cannot fire him so suddenly without a significant pattern of written warnings."

"Disabled? He's no more disabled than you or me."

"On the contrary, he's got a terrible condition. Disorder. I'm actually not sure how it's classified. It's like Asperger's, only more severe. It's a very recently discovered disorder."

"Asperger's Syndrome? More like Asshole's Syndrome."

"Language. Whether you believe in it or not, there are medical texts that establish it as a disability and the government agrees, as does Chronosoft LGL. The use of GlobalNet crèche's make it worse, but generally sufferers can only make a living doing the sort of work that worsens their condition."

"That's bullshit." She recoiled again, and Peter softened his language. "He's just a disagreeable person with mediocre skills. And he's killing my department. His screwups are going to cause me to miss a very important deadline and I've got people breathing down my neck. We would function better without him even if that left us shorthanded."

"He has a doctor who has classified him as disabled. You can't even suspend him without at least three written warnings. You're going to have to follow procedure to the letter with Mr. Cartwright."

"That's all you got?"

Anderson seemed to contemplate the question longer than she should, then stood up. "That's all I can do for you, Peter. I'm sorry. I can show you how to fill out the proper paperwork if you decide you'd like to follow proper procedure. If I could show you out?" She indicated the door. Peter reluctantly stood and began to walk out. She followed him to the door and placed a gentle hand on his arm. In a low whisper, she said, "There is one other option."

"What?" he said, his voice sounding too loud in contrast to her whisper.

"See Margaret in Collections. Tell her your problem, she may be able to help you."

With that, she turned on her heels and returned to her desk, as if she'd never spoken to him. He stood outside her door with a puzzled expression then turned on his heel and walked out. He'd have to look up the company directory to see where Collections was located. Whoever this Margaret was, he'd talk to her immediately.

Anatomy of a Credit Assasination - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:00:00 +0000

his short story takes place after the events of Under the Amoral Bridge and a few days before the beginning of The Know Circuit. Part 1 is available here.

His trip to the utility office was an escalating series of anxious moments. He arrived in the absolute dead of the early morning when the place was deserted. Since the Chronosoft Corporation had taken civil control of the Los Angeles county area as part of the bailout of the United States government in 2027, the electrical and water utilities were all contained under one subsidiary, Chronotility Energy and Water. One favorable consequence had been the removal of "banker's hours" from the utility business. One could show up at any time of the day or night and get in-person customer service as well as the usual phone and GlobalNet support.

The office itself was a nondescript brick building at least fifty years old, though remarkably well maintained. Inside, the building was incongruously modern, the foyer full of video screens repeating branding messages, greetings to the visitor and customer support instructions that would allow the visitor to transact their business without the need to meet a CSR. The room felt like a giant telephone menu given physical form. However, given the nature of his problem, Matt needed a face-to-face interaction, but gaining access to a real person was a real problem. The help desks were hidden behind locked doors, and the only way to enter was to input account information including thumbprint verification. While Matt wasn't quite sure he believed any of this credcrashing business, the police presence at his apartment made him reluctant to offer up his identity before he could actually talk to a person.

He spent a few minutes throwing nervous glances around the room, trying to spot the security. Cameras surrounded the lobby. "Hello, is anyone there?" he yelled, timidly at first, then with real authority. He waited anxiously for a response, and had almost given up when a voice crackled to life from behind him. "Can I help you?" Matt jumped a little and turned towards the sound of the voice. A rather unappealing woman had appeared on one of the video screens behind him, opposite the thumbprint scanner. She bore a set of cybernetic goggles over her eyes, and he could see the faintest glimmer of a bleached moustache on her upper lip. Her natural chestnut hair was pulled back severely into a flame-like point from the back of her head, a style that had been popular ten years ago when this lady likely had been a teenager. Her skin was the pallid color of pancake makeup, revealing her as a late-night GlobalNet operator.

"Yes, I need to check on the status of my buddy's account," Matt stammered, using the cover story he'd worked on during the train ride with shaky confidence. "His power got shut off and he wants to know why."

The pale worker was uninterested. "Your friend can submit a request through any street term, sir."

"Yeah, that's just the thing, he can't. The terms shut him out, won't even let him make a phone call. He got freaked out and came over to my place, asked me if I'd come down here for him. I told him he could just come down here and get it taken care of himself, but he's really paranoid."

Her eyebrows were raised severely, and Matt imagined her eyes had shrunk to tiny pinpoints behind the visor. Her blistering squint made him feel even more uncomfortable. That bug-eyed cybernetic stare was unsettling at the best of times. "And what is your friend's name and address?" she asked with a tinge of sarcasm dripping from her voice. Matt gave the information and fidgeted. Looking up at the video screen made him feel so small, as if he was a child begging to go to the bathroom under the harsh glare of a severe teacher. "And what is your name, sir?"

Matt tossed out a name without thinking. "Cyndal Reeves," he said, using his rival guild leader's name with a perverse thrill. "Is my name necessary?"

"We have to document any request for confidential information from someone other than the account holder, sir," she said. It sounded convincing but at the same time suspicious. The sweat began to build under Matt's arms and down his spine. He was already starting to feel the urge to bolt for the door and just run as fast and as far as he could.

"I'm sorry, sir, we have no record of a Matt Farnsworth having an account with us."

"Are you sure? He's had power for months now, I've seen it. Is it possible to check the paper billing records to verify it?"

Her surprise at the mention of the paper billing records was obvious. "Sir, we don't just grab paper billing records for anyone that asks. The account holder must submit a request in writing and email and pay a processing fee of…"

"But what if this is an emergency? Like life or death emergency?"

"Sir, unless your friend is on life support in his home, it's hardly life-or-death. Besides, we'd still need the account holder's thumbprint for verification. Perhaps if you'd like to give us your thumbprint, we can verify that you are authorized to gain access to this account."

Matt looked sideways at the thumbprint scanner and began to back away. The paranoia had infused every cell of his body by this point, and nothing short of physical violence could make him stick his thumb on that scanner. "No, that's all right," he said as he began to back away towards the door. "I'll just tell ole Matt that he can deal with it himself…"He was a step from the door when he heard two distinct sounds. The first was the door labeled "Security" to the side of the inner entry opening, the latch unlocking and the doorknob turning slowly. The second was the distant wail of sirens, most likely police sirens but far enough away that Matt couldn't be sure. Either one would have been enough for him to lose his bottle completely, but the combination of the two sent him dashing through the door to the street. He cut through multiple alleys and side streets, avoiding the desire to peer back over his shoulder at any pursuit. He had gone at least six blocks before he stopped, bending over with pain and gasping for air.

Gathering himself as best he could, Matt retrieved the antiquated cell phone from his pocket and placed a call to Stonewall. "This is Matt. You were right," he said as soon as the phone was answered. "What kind of work are we talking about?"

Stonewall was surprisingly accommodating to a stranger who had doubted his word. But the ex-footballer just calmly directed Matt to meet an associate without a hint of gloating. "You're going to want to find my boy Bridge," Stonewall explained. "He ain't got no kind of routine, but you can usually find him in one club or another this time of night. I'll find out where he is and hit you back. Sit tight." Matt had nowhere else to go, so he spent the time sitting on a dirty bus bench. He could have gone back to the subway, but without a destination, he was unsure Stonewall's word was absolute all along the line. His body was somnolent with fatigue, his limbs heavy as lead, and his thoughts sluggish. The street had seen much unrest during the riots, and the Chronosoft rebuilding projects had not yet reached this neighborhood. A few buildings were nothing more than burned-out husks and the rescue technicians' graffiti still decorated the exteriors with the criss-cross body count tally. The recently elected Mayor Soto had promised to clean up all of these ruins, but Century City was apparently low on the list. Matt's head began to slip downward as his muddled thoughts pictured this street on fire, angry mobs running up and down with Molotov cocktails and rocks, the horrorshow light of a burning city casting macabre shadows over the twisted faces of humans reduced to the levels of animals.

He floated away, his limbs languidly shackled by chains of numbers, numbers wrapped around his body. The numbers led him one way, then another, and he was happy, warm and content in a womblike eddy of liquidity. Then one by one the chains began to snap, setting him adrift in the amniotic darkness, each strand sending a shockwave of uncertain fear tingling from his extremeties inward.

The phone ringing in his hand shocked him back to consciousness. He shook his head. 'Falling asleep on a fucking park bench in this place is a good way to get shot,' he thought to himself as he answered the phone. Stonewall had succeeded in locating this Bridge person. He instructed Matt to go to a club called Tanz, a high-profile dance club in a much better part of town. Bridge would arrange for the bouncer to get Matt in through the back, since he certainly wasn't dressed for the posh front entrance. Matt went to the nearest subway station, but rather than the easy entrance he'd gained when he met Stonewall, the set of guards appeared insulted by his presence. Dropping Stonewall's name got him a ride, but there was clearly some tension between this station's inhabitants and Matt's benefactor.

Tanz was a beautiful sparkling diamond in a row of brilliant clubs. This section of town was a stark contrast to Century. Not only had all traces of the riots been erased whoever had done so had upgraded the neighborhood with high-dollar investment. The street was like a Rodeo Drive for nightlife, and the glitterati were out. Matt tried to escape the notice of all the paparazzi, blogjournos and entertainment reporters that seemed to flock around the club entrances waiting for celebrities to exit. Just walking up the street he saw four television stars, and a couple of net porno actresses as well as the normal small "c" celebrity musicians and recognizable athletes. Though it was hours past midnight, the entire street was alive with activity, pulsing with lights and sounds and conversations.

He approached the Tanz with caution. The bouncer stared down contemptuously at Matt, but after a confused spew of explanation, the man reluctantly motioned Matt around to the back. Matt was soon ushered past empty dressing rooms, bathrooms overflowing with waiting patrons and a storeroom before exiting out onto the throbbing dance floor.

Even at his most social, Matt had never been a club-goer. He spent a few bleary-eyed nights during college sampling the local LA scene, but the fact that he couldn't hold his alcohol meant he rarely drank in public. And for all his bravado as King Matthias, Matt the accounting software programmer had the social skills of a nihilist with bipolar disorder. Tanz was unlike any bar he'd seen. The air was smothered with smoke, even though Los Angeles had banned smoking in public places during the previous decade. Matt had to stop halfway to his destination, racked by a coughing jag. The winking, strobing lights were hypnotic, pulsing with the reverberating rhythm of the club's music. Despite it being past two in the morning, the dance floor was packed with writhing masses of desperate flesh. Tables and booths surrounding the dance pit were filled as well. Random thoughts about fire codes and overcrowding flitted through Matt's thoughts. As the sensory overload of the club was reaching a crescendo, Matt's guide dropped him off at his destination not a moment too soon.

"Bridge?" Matt said hesitantly.

"Who wants to know?" Matt was taken aback by the man's standoffish behavior. He sat at one of the booths away from the dance floor, his brown eyes scanning the whole club subtly. He was of average height and a little stocky, his brown hair close-cropped, thin heavily gelled bangs flipping across his eyes occasionally. His suit was impeccable with a dark jacket, thin black tie, perfectly pressed pants and shoes that sparkled like Christmas lights in the disco strobes. High cheekbones oversaw the thin mouth that betrayed a slight irritation at Matt's presence.

"Stonewall sent me. My name's Matt."

The man's face lit up, instantly switching from cautious irritation to gushing friendliness with no transition. "My name is my profession. Artemis Bridge is the name, but you can call me Bridge." Matt stuck out a hand but Bridge raised his hands away from the proffered shake. "Sorry, don't do physical contact. Never know what somebody is trying to give you these days." Matt pulled his hand back and looked at it strangely, his tired mind trying in vain to comprehend what Bridge was saying. Noticing Matt's confusion, Bridge said, "Nanoviruses, regular old viruses, wiretaps, contact explosives, all kinds of nasty shit out there."

"Oh, ok, I get it," Matt lied. He really didn't get it but it wasn't worth trying to figure out. Bridge motioned to the chair opposite his and Matt sat down. "Stonewall said you could help me out."

"Stonewall told me a bit about what's going on. What did he tell you about me?"

"Nothing. Just that you were the guy to see."

"Good on him. You must be one of his pet reclamation projects. So what was your story? Cred-crashing, right?" Matt nodded. "You know what that means? He explained it to you?"

"He tried but it didn't make any sense. How can someone kill my credit?"

"Easy. Well, ok, it isn't easy, but you get my drift. All your financial dealings, every single penny you get or spend, even the cash it all goes through the computers."

"I understand transactional theory. I write accounting software."

"And your software, it's meant to be accurate?" Again, Matt nodded. "These guys, these cred-crashers they fuck with that. They take all your accurate calculations and they spin a new formula. They make 2+2 equal a negative number. The really good ones will make it seem like you've been stealing all the services you paid for. Everything in your life from the termination point forward is reversed, like Bizarro credit."

"But why would someone do that to me? I just write accounting software!"

"And the bum on the street begging for change used to build medical nano software until some suit from a rival company decided that bum's product was too hard to compete against." Bridge took a huge swig of a brownish-liquid before continuing. "Now not every cred hit is corporate headhunting or espionage, sometimes it's just personal revenge. But most of the time, it's the privileged few shifting their serfs from one plot of land to the other."

"You make it sound like the Middle Ages," Matt said ruefully.

"Look around, my man. We're living in the age of the modern city-state. The corporations own this city. They put on a fancy dress theater of an election to give you the illusion that you have a choice, but really, you are their servant. They control your health care, your cash flow, the chemicals you put in your body, the thoughts you put in your head."

"You sound like your commie buddy Stonewall," Matt said.

"Nah, I don't give a fuck about the government. Communism, capitalism, those are just labels for the same basic human principle. Who do I gotta fuck to get mine?"

Matt laughed. "Your girlfriend must love your sunny disposition."

Bridge returned a shit-eating grin a mile wide. "She tells me I'm the most negative person she's ever seen, actually. Then she tells me to shut up and go to sleep."

"So what do I do? How do I get my life back? How do I find out who did this to me?"

"You sure you want it back?" Bridge asked. Matt nodded vigorously. "I onlyask 'cos some guys find freedom from the rat race liberating. Not you, huh? Fair enough. First thing we do is get you a place to crash and some hardware to work on. I know a guy that could use some software written. Something right up your alley."

"What job?"

"Little accounting thing, nothing to worry about; just a little something something in exchange for my services. Think of it as working for room and board. While you're doing that, I get another guy I know to check out the hit on you, dissect it, see if he can figure out who ordered it."

"And if he finds out? Then what?"

"That's up to you. Chances are the closer he gets to the source, the more likely it is you'll get some kind of job offer. If it was a corp that ordered the hit, it's probably going to be the one that offers you that job. That's how they get you. When you're so low that anything looks good, they give you a job. They own you, for all intents and purposes."

"And if it's not a corp?"

Bridge stared directly into Matt's eyes, a killing smirk on his face. His eyes filled Matt with a tingle of fear, the depth of venegful intent washing over the destitute programmer. "Then you get to go Old Testament on somebody."

"What, kill them? Just like that?"

"Hey, it's up to you what you do with that information. You want to whack them? I know a guy. You want to cred-crash them back? Hey, I know a guy for that too. You want to throw them a parade? I know a guy. Long story. Now, do you want my help or not? You're not making me any money sitting here jawing."
Matt made up his mind, a cold rock of anger building in his stomach. "I'm in. I got nowhere else to go."

Bridge set Matt up in one of the dirtiest shitholes he could imagine, a fleabag hotel in spitting distance of the urban nightmare Century City was in the process of becoming. Trip addicts and old school meth heads stumbled around the exterior of the motor hotel next to the low class whores, all observed by the pimps and dealers through remote cameras placed on the whores' clothes. Matt had to hold his gorge to keep from vomting at the smells of urine and desperation outside his room. Inside the room was a battered creché, its shiny surface scuffed with age and misuse. Matt was sad to admit to himself that the image of that dusty outdated creché was the best thing he'd seen in days.

Bridge and his mysterious girlfriend had set Matt up with some forged GlobalNetID's that were clean. Using a fake ID like this was a crime that could lose him GlobalNet rights, but Matt had no choice. He could only use them and hope the forging was solid enough to go unnoticed. Bridge's girlfriend helped Matt setup once he'd jacked into the web. During the week he worked in the hotel, he never saw her in person or got her real name. She only appeared in the GlobalNet as a white-skinned undead liche of terrifying beauty, calling herself the Baroness Eletheia. It took Matt a few meetings before he realized where he'd heard that name before. Eletheia was one of the mods controlling Ars-Perthnia, one of the main demigods who ruled the lands. Her haunted estate, infested with hordes of shuffling zombies, skeletons and various other undead, was an important landmark in his character's level progression. One could hardly ascend to the ranks Matt had without making it through the Cursed Estate of Eletheia.

The work was challenging, both morally and intellectually. Matt had to create a spreadsheet structure that appeared to be a typical set of accounting books, tracking accounts receivable, payable and all the usual expenses and calculations all businesses needed. But it also had a hidden payload, a second set of numbers that were made to look legitimate. The second set of numbers would be the kind to make the business appear completely above board, while the real numbers in the spreadsheet were hidden. Just loading the files would show the fake numbers and the program would monitor access to the information, sniffing for specific queries that would indicate a forensic accountant was examining the file. Without the access codes and encryption keys, the file would only display the fake numbers, and any attempts to decrypt the program or search for evidentiary data sets would lock the file's real numbers further. It was an ingenius piece of work, a source of guilty pride for Matt.

Unfortunately, each code module that tested out was another spike in Matt's morals. The true worth of accounting software was measured in its rigid accuracy, and he had always taken the utmost pride in honing to that standard. The cloaking device Matt had created was a total repudiation of his entire life's work. But as he thought about what had been done to him, how his life had been upended in such an arbitrary fashion, his anger grew. He fumed, cursing his invisible tormentor with venomous regularity. His life had been devoted to helping businesses track every micro penny with precision. Yet those same businesses could use some hopped-up hacker to destroy his life.

Many times Matt would pause in his work and ponder his future. He'd emerge from the crèche and look around his squalid surroundings and wonder, could he live like this? It had a certain allure, the outlaw's freedom a tempting counterpoint to the rigid routine of his everyday life. The 9 to 5 often became twelve-hour crunch time marathons of blurry-eyed walls of code. The all-too brief but tempting respites of escapism in the lands of Ars-Perthnia. Maybe he had been too cloistered, his life too sheltered from the normal press of actual people and real physical contact. He wasn't a complete shut-in, but the nervous moments in the club with Bridge had highlighted how often he retreated from flesh meetings in lieu of the virtual worlds where he could forget his physical shortcomings and social awkwardness. In real life, he was a follower, a corporate drone reliant on his regular job and his regular schedule. In the GlobalNet, he was the leader, the lightning rod others followed. The outlaw's life that had been forced on him was one he'd never chosen, but its exhilarating uncertainty offered an attractive future.

And then there was the matter of the person responsible. If Bridge wasn't full of it, if the slick-talking fixer could find out who had done this to him, what then? If it was some faceless corporation, would he be able to go to work for that company knowing how they had trapped him? And if it were an enemy, someone he knew, what would he do then? Would he instruct Bridge to hire an assassin to take revenge? Could he do it himself? He pictured his hands wrapped around the throat of a faceless enemy, squeezing the life out of another living being with methodically dispassionate efficiency. Every time he pictured the scene, he grew so nauseous that he had to bury himself back in his work. He slept sparingly, his dreams tortured by the same scene repeating over and over again.

Before he knew it, the program was done. He informed the Baroness, who set up a meet with Bridge in the Tanz that evening. Even on a weeknight, the place was as packed as usual, the same sort of vapid celebrities drawing the crowds like moths to the flame. Bridge was in an especially chipper mood, loading the flash chip into a portable reader that wirelessly interfaced with the fixer's personal data HUD. "Fantastic work, my man," he grinned. "I knew you had the knack."

"I do good work," Matt said with uncharacteristic confidence.

"Yes, you do, but it's nice to hear you acknowledge it. You were so mousy when we first met, I wasn't sure you could cut it without the corporate paycheck. Angela said you could, but I didn't believe her."

"Angela?"

"Elethia. Shit, I wasn't supposed to tell you her name." He waved it off. "Ah, doesn't matter, it isn't like you even know what she looks like. And I hope we can continue our working relationship in the future."

"Yeah, about that," Matt began hesitantly. "I got to thinking about this code you wanted. It's not for some client, is it? It's for you."

Bridge seemed to mull something over for a moment, then chuckled. "You are sharper than I thought. Yes, I'm the client."

"Why not just tell me?"

"Because then you might not do it. It's one thing to write some illegal shit for some faceless asshole you'll never meet, but when you've got a good idea of what kind of lawbreaking you might be doing…" He trailed off without finishing the thought. "Besides, if I need someone to write this kind of thing, it always helps…"

"To know a guy," Matt finished.

"Yeah, now I know a guy." Bridge appeared to be on the edge of continuing, but was patient enough to be asked.

"So what now?"

"I'm glad that you asked. You've paid your way and then some this week, so I got two things for you. First thing is the job offer."

Matt remembered Stonewall's warning about the offers that he would receive. "The offer? This quick?"

"I know a guy. I floated your name and vitals to him and he wants to offer you a job with Chronosoft." Bridge let that sink in. "I don't know what you think of them. I think there a bunch of cockweasels personally, but whatever. Name me one corp that isn't. Anyway, they want to talk."

"You said the first offer is usually from the guys who did this to me," Matt replied angrily. "How bad are the terms?"

"Oh, 3-year, NDA tighter than a nun's habit, slave wages, the usual leash job. It's steady, it comes with shitty corp housing so you don't gotta worry about a place to live. It's about as good an offer as you're going to get."

"Are these the guys that did this to me?"

Bridge shook his head begrudgingly. "Much as I'd love to attribute this to them, because they do some seriously egregious shit, no, it wasn't this merry magnum of assholes."

"Then should I take it?"

Bridge shrugged. "Hey, I'm not your mentor. It's your decision. You don't have to. I just want to make that clear. I know me and Angie could give you more than enough work to be competitive with this offer. It wouldn't be steady, you understand, but we got the work."

"Illegal work," Matt confirmed. Bridge nodded and held up his hands.

"It's what we do. Some dudes can hack it, some can't. You're the only guy can judge that."

"You said Chronosoft didn't do this to me. Do you know who?"

Bridge nodded. "That's why we're meeting here instead of the hotel. I found out who bought the hit."

"You found the hacker?"

"Yes, but that's not for you to know. It doesn't matter who pulled the trigger. He's the tool. You don't blame the gun for the bullet, you blame the asshole what aimed it. And she," Bridge pointed over Matt's shoulder. "She's the bitch that aimed the gun."

Matt turned around quickly, following the finger. Three tables over sat a moderately attractive brunette. She was a little on the heavy side, with slightly droopy eyes. Matt had never seen her before in his life. "Who the hell is that? I don't know her. I've never met her."

"That's what you think," Bridge answered. "Does the name Cyndal sound familiar?"

"That's Cyndal?" Matt yelled. Bridge shushed him quickly.

"Shhh, no. That's not him. But that is one of his guild chippies, Ashen. According to Angie, she's been trying to snuggle up next to Cyndal for weeks now, but he's kind of given her the cold shoulder. Apparently, he likes Marithia, which is really funny because not only is Marithia a man in real life, but Cyndal knows it. He likes them that way or something. Of course, this Ashen doesn't know that, but Angie's got all the gossip. I never liked it myself. I'm more of a PVP guy."

"So she fucked up my entire life over a game?" Matt whispered incredulously. His anger was a raging fire swelling within his belly. Bridge just nodded matter-of-factly. "She did all that to shack up with that asshole? He's a complete prick! Is she fucking mental?"

"Very likely. The question is what do you want to do about it?"

"What do you mean?" Matt wasn't sure where Bridge was going, but the anger was replaced with a cold knot of nervous fear.

"Well, she obviously didn't give a shit about flushing your life down the toilet," he began. "You want some payback? You want her whacked? I know a guy. You want a little eye for an eye? I know a guy can hit her credit by tomorrow. And then there's this," he finished, holding up a tiny, paper-thin tab. "The latest in contact nanoviruses. You can program it to make her really really sick for a week. You can make her hallucinate like bugs are crawling out of her skin. Or you can end her. All you have to do is wirelessly select your effect, palm it and touch her bare skin. Whatever you want will happen within 24 hours. It's all up to you."

Bridge continued with absent-minded aloofness. "Now, if it were me, I'm the type that'll fuck you and smile all the way out the door. I don't appreciate that kind of abuse. I'd drop this on her and make for the door, and I'd sleep the sleep of the just. And I say that as someone who avoids violence like the plague. But that's me."

Squaring up on Matt, his brown eyes piercing through Matt's soul, he asked, "But what do you want to do?"

Matt reached out and grabbed the tab. He stood up quickly, palming the paper-thin death sentence and connecting his HUD to the nanobot's programming interface while walking in a daze. The anger bubbled beneath the surface; his skin broke out in the coldest sweat he'd ever experienced. His anger was a righteous one, the innocent man facing the lies of his jailer. It seethed through his every pore, threatening to drown his thoughts in revenge fantasies, his hands wrapped around this trifling bitch's throat as he squeezed out her life. His mind screamed with conflicting emotions, alternately shrieking for revenge before begging him to stop and think of what he was doing. It was wrong. It was murder, no matter how detached he would be from the final outcome. He'd heard of such nanoviruses, completely untraceable. He could kill her and get away with it, an invisible retribution. The war within his mind raged on, right up to the moment he reached her table.

"Ashen?" he said timidly, still unsure of what he was likely to do.

"What?" she yelled, unable to hear him over the throbbing beat. He repeated her name. "Do I know you?"

"Sort of," he replied, his throat aching with the effort of making himself heard above the din. "You knew me as Matthias."

Confusion dribbled onto her face slowly followed by the shock of realization. She was nicked, and she knew it. "How did you know it was me?" she asked.

"Why? That's all I want to know is, why? Why would you do that to me?"

"Why not? I got rid of you when we needed it. Your guild fell apart. We got what we wanted. We even took in some of the stragglers."

"Did Cyndal know?"

"I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't even listen to me. Too busy snuggling up to that bitch Marithia. But at least you're out of the way." Her condescension was palpable, her words infused with an unmistakable contempt. She turned her attention back to the dance floor, her husky shoulders swaying with the beat. He had no more importance to her than an irritating fly.

Matt felt the tab in his hand, but with each passing second, the anger in his bones was replaced with something approaching pity. He wanted so badly to kill her then, to just shake her out of her seat while applying the patch to her shoulder or arm, but something stopped him. He could never pinpoint whether it was a twinge of guilt, or some connection to an absolute morality he'd never acknowledged, or just the empathic compassion for the mentally inferior that stayed his hand. But he put the tab in his pocket and walked away. As he did so, he heard her exclaim to her friends, "What a loser." She would never know how close she came that night.

He strode slowly back to Bridge's table and sat down. Putting the tab on the table and pushing it back to Bridge, he said, "Couldn't do it. I just couldn't kill her, no matter what she's done. I guess that makes me a pathetic shmoe."

Bridge made the tab disappear in his jacket and shrugged. "The world needs good guys, too. Now what?"

"I'm no outlaw. I'm the kind of guy that needs that structure, a steady paycheck and benefits and a boss telling me what to do. I need to fill out seven different reports for fifteen different bosses, none of whom understand what I do one damn bit."

"Somebody's got to," Bridge smiled. "And if you get tired of it and want to try to bring the whole corportocracy down, I know a guy."

"Right now, I'd settle for a beer," Matt replied. "The revolution can wait."

Anatomy of a Credit Assasination - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:00:00 +0000

This short story takes place after the events of Under the Amoral Bridge and a few days before the beginning of The Know Circuit. Part 2 is available here.

"You're trespassing on our territory, Cyndal," Matt stated emphatically, adding a thrust of his gleaming pyrotic sword in the Hierdul's direction for effect. "You and your entire flea-bitten guild are in direct violation of the RGD treaties you yourself signed. The Crimson Swords have laid claim to this dragon according to the rules of that treaty and your very presence here on the night he pops is an act of war." Matt was proud of his unswerving calmness. Had this been his real life job, he'd have stuttered through the entire spiel, but here he was King Matthias of the Crimson Swords, one of the largest player guilds in Ars-Perthnia.

"Your precious RGD treaties don't mean shit," Cyndal replied curtly. Even through the plastic surrealness of the GlobalNet's avatars, Matt could read the contempt Cyndal held for him. The Hierdul, a race of super-evolved, dark-skinned mages, came out of the virtual womb with a haughty, superior air, and running a guild of hundreds exacerbated the douchieness. The long-standing bad blood between Matt and his former guildmate Cyndal had honed that arrogance into palpable loathing. "We are in pursuit of a wanted criminal who escaped capture earlier tonight. Our scouts have confirmed his location in the dragon's cave."

"And it just so happens he sought refuge in this dragon's cave on the very same night we had announced our plans to take down the dragon. I'm sure there's no coincidence there. And when you've accidentally killed the dragon and stolen all the loot, I'm sure that'll be a coincidence too. No damn way." The troops were getting restless. If Matt didn't get them moving in the direction of the dragon soon, they'd take the next available targets, which just happened to be Cyndal's gang of thugs.

Matt wasn't worried about his group's safety. They could hold their own with any army in Ars-Perthnia. But the political shitstorm created by such a battle would render him sleeplessly busy for weeks. All because Cyndal had beef with Matthias from way back. Nothing to do with roleplaying, nothing to do with the game. It was just metagame bullshit from their former association, useless drama for drama's sake. Matt prepared a telepathy spell, intending to call upon the world's elder mods to adjudicate the situation.

And then the world went blank.

Blackness. Suffocating. No air. He should have air. He should be able to breathe. Something hard on his face. He has a face. His face. Where is his face? His hands are wet. His arms slick with slime. Drowning. Floating in slime. Can't remember his name. He has a name. Floating in inky-black vision. Bursting. Blasting lights exploding behind his eyelids. Take a breath. Can't take a breath. Arms move. His knuckles rap against something hard, something enclosing him. Buried alive, buried alive! Something on his face, constricting his breathing. A mask. A coffin.

Not a coffin, his net creché. Open the lid. Find the inner latch. Find the latch before blacking out. His fingers scrabbling, sliding off metal. Grab it, grab it, grab the latch, open it, open! Eyes closed to protect against the harsh light he knows will be flooding the room. Ripping the breathing mask off his face. No air coming through the mask, there should be air.
Slowly opening his eyes in wary anticipation of his vision being filled with blinding, stabbing light as he rose from the absolute blackness of the crèche to the dimly lit dinginess of his apartment. But there was no light, only a less oppressive shroud of blackness. Matt was certain he'd left at least the lamp in the corner lit. Maybe the bulb had died. Matt had been in the creché how long? Eight hours? Twelve? He lost track when he entered Ars-Perthnia. The only light in the three rooms were dusty slivers leaking in around the thick paper he'd affixed to the windows. The creché blocked light pretty well, but he went the extra mile to ensure the room around was darkened no matter the time of day. Ambient light hitting his eyes could sometimes interfere with the GlobalNet interface, confusing his virtual senses with his physical ones. Such confusion would cause his avatar to lose life-saving speed. Other crèche-dwellers could handle the conflicting data better than he could.

He stood on wobbly legs, pins and needles causing his toes to tingle as the digits made contact with the waterproofed rug under the creché. His balance was completely screwed up, forcing him to hang onto the lid to prevent falling on his naked ass. Using his hands as eyes, he stumbled shakily to the lamp and flipped its switch. Click. Nothing happened. No light. He clicked it again in vain. The lamp refused to illuminate the room. The silence was stifling.

He finally noticed the silence. It wasn't natural, or more precisely it was too natural. Absent was the artificial hum of climate-controlling air conditioning, the buzz of electric lighting, the entrancing hum of the apartment's refrigerator. All the white noise he would normally ignore completely was now painfully apparent as he stumbled through this inky void of sound. Perhaps this was a blackout. Los Angeles had had a number of them since last year's riots, though with much less frequency since the corporation Chronosoft had taken over civil administration as the Local Governance Licensee. He made his way slowly to the window, tripping over a few software packages on the way.

A faint sliver of sickly-orange light outlined the shape of the shade. Matt pulled it back slowly, conscious of the shock his vision could receive if there was daylight outside the window. Luckily, it was night, but the illumination of the streetlights and neighboring buildings was still enough to cause him to cringe in discomfort, a sharp spike streaking through the back of his head. The familiar strain of a disconnect headache settled around the netjack interface in the back of his skull. The neighboring buildings had power. He scanned the windows below. Other apartments in the building had power. Only his apartment seemed affected. His first unconscious reaction was to wirelessly connect his interface to the house phone, but kicked himself for forgetting that his power was dead. He'd have to manually dial the phone.

Leaving the shade open to guide his way, he stalked over and snatched up the receiver, oblivious to his nudity. It touched his ear with a cold silence. No dial tone or operator greeted him. He cursed under his breath. Not only could he not call about the power problem, he couldn't even call a cab to take him to the 24-hour utility service center. He'd have to hoof it to the street term on the corner. He dressed quickly, grumbling the whole way. On the way out, he absentmindedly began the key sequence to set the apartment's alarm, cursing again as he remembered the power outage. Disengaging the electronic locks on his door took an irritating amount of effort, and more bother on the way out since he couldn't re-engage them. He'd have to make do with the manual deadbolts.

Matt cast a sideways glance at the elevator down the hall but thought better of it. He was already having a helluva day (night?) with modern tech. He decided not to tempt fate, opting for the stairs instead. "Legs need a little loosening," he muttered to himself. He was still unsure how long he'd been under this time, since the clock in his apartment didn't work and he was having trouble connecting the wireless in his jack to anything. The darkness outside told him it could be no earlier than six p.m. and probably closer to eight or nine. The night sky had none of the pink tinged glory of late afternoons in smog-shrouded Los Angeles. Music blared from behind multiple doors, and the couple next door was midway into another boisterous domestic dispute. He rarely heard any of these things, safely sequestered in his soundproof creché. He jogged down all five flights of stairs. Matt exited into the alleyway, his breath ragged from lack of exercise, heartbeat throbbing in his eardrums.

The street was awash with police vehicles, flashing lights flooding Matt's sensitive vision with a painful kaleidoscope of reds and blues. He felt dizzy from the combination of a five-story jog and the disorienting light show. Half-staggering out of the alley, he pushed through the growing throng of onlookers. Seconds after he'd left the alley, a clot of stormtroopers entered from the opposite side, jamming into the stairwell while uniformed cops closed the alley off with yellow wooden barricades. Matt noticed the stormtroopers' gear, a mixture of vests, gas grenades and submachine guns. He noted the CLED logo, Chronosoft Legal Enforcement Division, the corporation's LGL-backed local police force.

Matt sidled up next to some of the local color. Two of the onlookers were engaged in a conversation while simultaneously vodcasting, probably to some local video blog. One of them, a half Puerto Rican Chinese girl had a crappy vidcam strapped clumsily to the side of her head, transmitting through her interface jack to her Globalnet site. She looked young enough to have to beg her parents for the gear, which is probably why she had the external camera instead of cybernetic eyes with video recorders.

"What's going on?" Matt asked with a half-interested tone. The neighborhood was no slum, just a polyglot of lower middle class apartment complexes. But this was L.A. He was no stranger to police raids. Since the riots, CLED had raided most neighborhoods with an alarming frequency as part of Mayor Soto's new crackdown on crime.

The girl never turned her head, conscious of her vid feed. "Big time po-po action," she managed in broken English. Her friend took notice of Matt, scanning him up and down before deciding he would add nothing interesting to her story.

"I heard one o' dem say sum'in 'bout a hacker, big timg GlobalNet pimp," the friend replied dispassionately. Having sized Matt up and found him wanting, she began emoting into her blogphone with badly mangled slang in a gravelly voice. Matt searched up the face of the building for his darkened apartment, finding it quickly.

"Ready to proceed," he heard the police radio of a nearby crowd control officer squawk. "GO!"

A festival of flashlight beams and laser-targeting sights danced across the darkened windows of his apartment.

Matt was the target. As the realization began to slowly crawl across his consciousness, the adrenaline coursed through his veins, setting his feet into terrified motion.

He began to run.

Matt ran for four blocks, randomly changing directions, weaving through alleyways. He stopped to catch his breath in an alleyway awash with the neon glow of a tattoo parlour's lights. Whether from the smell of trash in the alley, the incomprehensible fear of pursuit or the unwelcome exertion, he threw up violently. Though hunched over and gasping for air, the distant wail of sirens shocked him into motion again. Another two blocks and the dry heaves began, forcing another rest. Crouching behind a dumpster, his stomach turning from the smell of rotting garbage, he tried to control the panic gripping his heart. He had to get somewhere, anywhere but here. The police were after him. They were even now searching his apartment for something. They were likely finding his collection of bootlegged Netvids, his porn magazines, his… what?

Nothing in there was worth a squad of vest-wearing, SMG-toting CLED stormtroopers. The worst he had was no more than a fine and a temporary GlobalNet access ban. Maybe his credit had been rejected at the utility, which was why the power was out. But surely they weren't arresting deadbeat power clients. He'd get to the utility office. He'd straighten it out.
Get a cab. Find a street term, order a cab. There on the street corner was a term. He'd get a cab, get it straightened out and get back online. Just a temporary misunderstanding. He reached the terminal, but his cred card didn't work. He couldn't logon to the GlobanlNet, not even to order a cab. The screen kept spitting the words "Credit Rejected" back at him, no matter how many times he swiped the card. He slammed his fist against the screen, prompting a warning about the destruction of private property being a criminal offense. Another siren in the distance put his feet in motion again. Rounding the corner, he caught a glimpse of two CLED patrol vehicles swooping in on the street term. He ran again.

Two blocks over, he lucked into a cab idling on the corner after dislodging a fare. The driver, a stout Mexican with an old-fashioned soul patch sat inputting figures into the cab's touchscreen. "You still on duty?" Matt asked. The driver pointed up to the cab's "On Duty" sign without looking at Matt. "Take me to the utility office, over on Winston."

Again without moving his head to look at Matt, the driver jerked his thumb towards the card reader built into the clear bulletproof divider between the seats. "Card," he said without interest. Matt fumbled with the card, swiping it nervously. "No, this card's no good, man." The driver finally got a look at his potential passenger, and he was not amused. "What the hell happened to you?"

Matt surveyed himself. His clothes were drenched in sweat, a little puke staining the front of his shirt. "Jogging, not used to it," he replied breathlessly.

"Well, whatever, man but I can't take you anywhere. Your credit's no good."

"But I gotta get to the utility office!"

"And I gotta eat. Go take the damn subway, you deadbeat." With that, the driver took off, the rear door slamming shut on the disappointed deadbeat. Matt quickly glanced up and down the street, crossing to the other side before reluctantly heading towards the subway station.

No one took the subways anymore. If you had credit, you took a cab or, if you were some well-heeled corporate executive commuting from the company-subsidized suburbs, the more expensive dirigibles. If you didn't have credit but had some cash, you took the buses. Matt had no cash, because no one used cash but poor people and criminals. The subway was a last resort. After the popularization of the dirigible, the subways had degenerated into an underfunded welfare transit system. Without funding, there was little security, no cameras and no way to tell who rode it. After the riots in 2027, the Chronosoft Local Governance board had cut what little funding the subway system still retained, abandoning it to the gangs. They somehow kept a few of the trains running for the city, but what few trains still ran did so with few passengers. Drug runners used the subways to move product in small amounts, pimps and prostitutes and rapists and muggers and homeless and all other forms of forgotten people squatted in the cars and stations and no one paid them an iota of attention. And now whitebread cubicle jockey gamer geek accounting programmer Matt had to take the subway.

Half the lights on the staircase leading down into the underground were out. The shadowed tunnel smelled of urine and dust and something vaguely scary, something with the faint hint of gunpowder and copper. Elaborate grafitti shared the walls with more crude scrawlings, much of it in an incomprehensible amalgam of Spainish and English. Bullet casings jingled under his steps, alerting anyone ahead in the shadows to Matt's entrance. Cold sweat broke out all along his back. The cloying silence of the tunnel enveloped Matt, and he unconciously slowed his breathing to a shallow whisper, his entire body tensed for a coming ambush. He finally reached the bottom of the stairs, stepping through the open gate into the larger station area. He breathed a long sigh of relief at having made it to a well-lit area.

"You seem to be in the wrong place." The voice had come from Matt's left, from the area drenched in shadow directly beside the staircase. The English was thick with a Mexican accent. The speaker was a tall Hispanic, easily a few inches taller than Matt, wearing a bulletproof vest with the CLED logo on it over a sleeveless muscle shirt. He carried a machine pistol as casually as a carpenter might wield a hammer. Matt's mind struggled with confusion, as part of his mind wanted to believe the tough guy was a cop and not some gang member out to jack him and another part that was afraid he was a cop who was searching for Matt the fugitive.

"I need a ride," Matt blurted out, his voice almost a squeak of mousy fear.

"Does this look like a taxi service?"

"Well… the trains… are the trains still running?" The faint echo of a train crashing through the station reached Matt, and he struggled to keep himself from running for that train. His fear had rooted him to the spot.

"Do I know you?" The Mexican eyed Matt like a butcher sizing up a slab of beef. Matt shook his head, his puzzled expression accurately portraying the confusion and fear he was battling. The guard raised the machine pistol and held it up to Matt's head. "DO I KNOW YOU?" he screamed, each syllable punctuated with a press of the gun's barrel against Matt's forehead.

"NO!" Matt screamed in response, his eyes squinted shut. "I just need a ride on the subway, man, I gotta get across town. I don't have any money."

"You think the train is free? Do you? You expect to come in here and not leave a donation for the peoples and just ride whereever you want? You got some balls on you, son."

Matt was close to the verge of tears, but he somehow managed to contain them. "Look, I don't have any money, my cards don't work, they cut my power out, the cops sent a godamn SWAT team after me, where the fuck am I supposed to go? I can't even use a street term and I…" His eyes squeezed shut, he managed to halt the babbling stream of consciousness as he felt the gun lifted from his temple.

"Give me your card," the Mexican commanded, genuine sympathy replacing the tough guy bravado of a moment earlier. Matt's mind raced in desperate confusion, unable to process the change in attitude. "Let me see your card," he repeated. When Matt hesitated, he motioned irritatedly with his hand until Matt retrieved the card from his wallet. The guard opened a well-hidden panel on the wall and swiped the card through a terminal, frowning as the screen spit rejections back at him. "Damn, they got you good."

"What do you mean?"

"You got crashed, homes." Seeing Matt's puzzled expression, he continued. "Credcrashed, dog. Your credit is fucked. Finito. You might as well get you a carboard box to sleep in." Realizing that Matt still didn't quite get the concept, he said, "Tell you what, let me take you to Stonewall. He's the jefe around here. He's a smart motherfucker. He'll explain it better than me."

Matt had no idea what or who a Stonewall was, but he followed the gangster dutifully. The subway station appeared abandoned at first glance, but as the pair moved through the dusty terminal, Matt noticed people all around, hidden well in shadows and alcoves. Trash littered the floors and cracks went along the walls to the ceiling, but as Matt moved farther in, it became apparent that this was a disguise to fool the easily dissuaded. They traveled down a long escalator into a promenade full of discarded shops and Matt was amazed at the low hum of activity that permeated the air. Though no longer retail outlets, the store spaces were neverthless being fully utilized, with numerous hives of busy people transacting business. In contrast to the level above, the promenade was almost immaculately kept, floors polished to an almost mirrorlike sheen. Everyone seemed armed with a sidearm while a few sported submachineguns.

"You look surprised, homes," said Matt's guide. "You shouldn't be. This all belongs to the peoples now. They keep their shit together, no? The suits may not give a shit about the trains, but we does, you know?"

"Who does all this?"

"We do, man, the Five Families. Ever since the riots, those CLED fuckers been driving us out of our homes. The train's the only place we got to go. They let it go to shit, so we took it. We get to choose who rides. The rich got their balloons, the suits got their taxis and their cars, us proles got the trains."

"So what do I got to do to get a ride to the utility office?"

"I'll let Stonewall decide that. I'm just the gatekeeper. Here he is." The pair had arrived at an old sandwich shop, which now appeared to be a makeshift watering hole and meeting place. The cloying, earthy smell of freshly brewed coffee hung around the booths and tables. Several groups sat at the tables absorbed in conversation. Matt's guide spoke to one of the men, handing over Matt's card and pointing in his direction. The man stood, a lanky Mexican over six feet tall with short blonde nappy hair tied into a field of triangluar-shaped buds about an inch high. Matt instantly knew why they called him Stonewall. Though thin, he had a solid build with an expression chiseled of unflinching granite. He looked like exactly the kind of man you went around, because you can't go through him.

"You the guy got crashed?" Stonewall asked in a voice tinged with sympathy. He spoke in a low voice, almost a hoarse whisper but with enough force to be heard by anyone. Matt felt immediately comfortable around the man.

"That's what your guard said. I don't know what that means. I just need a ride to the utility office and my card isn't working and there are cops at my apartment…"

"I got this, Antonio," he said to Matt's guide, holding up his hand to cut Matt off. He motioned for Matt to sit down at a table away from the others. "Sit down. You want anything? Coffee, a soda, some water?" Matt shook his head. Their conversation had the air of a doctor telling a man he had terminal cancer, the kind of whispered empathy and sedate undertone of an impending funeral. "Suit yourself. We got something stronger if you want. No? All right then, let me check you out." Stonewall pulled out a PDA and ran its scanner over the card's bar code. His huge fingers moved with a practiced deftness over the PDA's touchscreen, and Matt wondered why anyone would bother to use one of those antiquated things when an interface jack and internal HUD were so much easier and quicker.

"What are you looking at?"

"A corpse," the Mexican said with grim finality. He put the PDA down gently on the table and began picking absently at his soul patch as he spoke. "What do you do for a living?"

Matt was confused about what his job had to do with the situation he was in, but answered the questions anyway. "I write accounting software matrices. Pretty complex economic projection modeleing based on previous revenues, stock prices, market conditions. I can't really talk about most of it… NDA, you know," Matt said, making the sign of a lock and key on his lips.

"So nothing major then? No huge product waiting in the wings to revolutionize the industry?"

"Well, it's pretty cool stuff if you're an accountant, I guess. It could revolutionize accounting if I get it to work right." Stonewall's expression was soaked in boredom, the same kind of look most people gave Matt when he began talking about his work.

"You own your own company or work for somebody else?"

"I don't have the patience to run my own business. I work for this small software house, Incremental Financial Software Systems."

"You guys on the verge of a buyout or merger?"

"Not that I know of, but not really my department. I just write the software, I don't deal with the money. What's that got to do with my lights getting shut off and cops busting into my apartment like I was public enemy #1?"

Ignoring Matt's question, Stonewall continued firing questions at him. "Have you been approached about a new job, been recruited by a head hunter recently? Threatened?" Matt shook his head. "Then somebody out there must really hate you."

"What are you talking about?"

"You ever heard of a credit assassin?" Again, Matt shook his head, his confusion only growing. "Yeah, not many people have. You're smart with numbers so you should be able to get this concept. Used to, you'd get paid a check, you'd cash it or deposit it in the bank and that amount would be how much money you had. It was actual wealth. It ain't that way so much anymore. Nowadays your paycheck is deposited directly to your accounts, and it's based on how much your employer thinks your work will be worth. In lieu of a concrete measure of wealth, it's all just numbers on a spreadsheet."

"Think of your credit as a living, breathing entity that lives off your ability to pay for things sometime in the not too distant future. A whole lot of numbers and judgements by bean counters are the blood of your credit, and it's backed up by not only how much you make today, but how much those bean counters think you'll make tomorrow and how much of what you make is owed to someone else."

"I understand what my credit score means," Matt said with irritation. "What does that have to do with my power getting shut off?"

"Credit score, shit, that's 20th, man. That's old school. Your credit these days ain't just your credit history and your place on a balance sheet, it's EVERYTHING. Your power is paid for out of your credit. All that intangible money in your bank account is just a part of your credit, as is the payment history with the power company. And your payment history with your credit card accounts, and your rent history and all those other things you've ever paid. Any cash you've used in the last five years that wasn't Five-Year? That's part of it too."

"Five-year?"

Stonewall made a disappointed face. "Five-year. You got any cash on you?" Matt shook his head. "Good, 'cos it's fucking worthless now. Five years ago, the government put out a new set of bills, right? Big-time tech-heavy bills. Supposed to eliminate counterfeiting and money laundering. You ever wonder how they were going to do that? Easy, every bill gets tracked. Every. Single. Bill. Every bill gets tagged with your name when you exchange it with a reputable merchant, and every transaction you make is catalogued and tracked and added to your credit. People who don't want to have to answer where their money goes use Five-Year, the bills they made before 2023, because it doesn't have the tracking embedded. Get it, Five-Year? Currency that's five years old or more. Some pendejos want to call it 23's, but that's hard to say. I mean, you gonna ask for $1500 in Five-year or $1500 23's? It don't roll off the tongue, eh?"

"What's that got to do with my credit though?"

"All those transactions are aggregated, databased and analyzed by that same type of software you probably write. Well, different, but same kind of math geek shit. What a cred crasher, this credit assassin, does is systematically destroys every single piece of your credit that he can. Those last six months of utility payments you've made? Dead. Your last four paychecks? Gone. Your bank account? Wiped. The last year of rent you paid? Desaparecido. Vanished. Deleted."

"So someone stole all my money and my utility payments?"

Stonewall shook his head. "Not just stole, deleted. It isn't just that the money is stolen. It was never there. It never existed. It's like they reach back into the past and delete history. There's no paper trail to show you paid. If you checked your email, those bill confirmation notices you get? Erased, and so's your bill. The account is still there, but suddenly, your ass is six months unpaid and you get shut off. And so's your water, and your GlobalNet and your rental agreement, all up in digital smoke. The cops are sent out because suddenly you've been stealing electricity and water and lodging. Anything you thought you paid for, you didn't actually pay for anymore, eh? And if they can catch you, they put you in jail, brother. You want to try to settle up all those debts with one phone call? A lawyer won't see you and your public defender wants you to plead. If you're lucky you don't get any jail time but you get hammered with the collection on all that debt. And your employer just fired you for lying about your credit rating on your job application. If he doesn't, it won't matter much, because your salary is going to get garnished so hard you'll get stuck working three jobs unless an angel descends from on high and saves your ass."

"And that's when the job offer comes."

"What job offer?"

"There's always a job offer," Stonewall continued, with the sly look of a snake oil salesman. He took a slow sip of coffee. "That's why I asked you what you did. Usually, the person gets targeted because some executive at a competitor got word you was working on some hot shit. He wants it for his company, because that makes him look good to the higher ups. Now, he could go the normal way, and offer you the job, and pay above market value for the talent he needs. Or, he could just pay a guy under the table, in Five-Year or through some backdoor account, to cut the legs out from under the talent. Leave the talent drowning in a sea of cops and debts and impending homelessness or jail time just long enough to get him extra desperate. Then they throw him a life preserver. It's the perfect con, man. No one's going to hire you, not with the police after you and your credit rating in the toxic range."
"Watch. You'll get approached from nowhere by some slick fucker with enough clout to make all the charges go away, offering to get you back on your feet. Granted, you'll be making cacahuates but it's a job. You just have to sign an unbreakable contract for a few years and you'll eventually be back to just underneath where you once were. The corporation gets a bargain, a new hit, and an endentured servant too traumatized to see the con."

"That can't be legal," Matt replied, trying vainly to sound cool. His mind was already working through the possibilities, a feeling of claustrophobic fear creeping just underneath the surface. The thought that such a thing could be true, and worse, that he could be the victim was at first ludicrous, but deep down he was scared it was all too true.

"Who said it was legal?" The Mexican laughed with a wistfull lack of humor. "It's illegal as shit, but who is going to tell? The suits who order the hit? The crashers doing hits? The government? Shit, they all get their piece of the scam. Anyone who could investigate the kind of thing got neuteured when they set up the Local Governance Liceneses last year. The corporations are the power, man. Welcome to the Oligarchy, where the modern-day bourgeious own the worker serfs lock, stock and barrel. That whole freedom thing? They figured out the way to kill it."

"You sound like a Communist."

"Socialist, actually, but that don't change the truth. Which is that the people with the money are in the driver's seat like they been all throughout history. The names change, but power follows money. And power does what it wants."

Matt mulled over his situation silently for a moment, while Stonewall leaned back comfortably in his chair and sipped his coffee. If what this gangster said was true, Matt was well and truly fucked. He couldn't go back to his place, no matter what. If he had been targeted, going to the utlitity office would probably mean the cops would arrest him there. "Let's assume for a second what you're saying is true. I got crashed. Can't I just go to the utility office and straighten this shit out? Surely they have paper records of everything."

"You ever been to the utility office?" Matt shook his head. "Heh, you think the DMV is full of unhelpful assholes. First off, their paper records ain't at the office. They're in some warehouse. You know how they retrieve those records? Robotic filing system. And what do you think one of the first orders of business for a crasher is? Send out a shred order, remove all your paid bill receipts and make the network forget it ever did the shred. And that's even assuming you can get the bitch behind the computer to send the order to retrieve the paper before she calls the popo. You're a wanted criminal, a deadbeat who illegally gained an account with them through falsified credit reports and proceeded to steal electricity and water and sewer service. Why should they believe you?"

"Because I'm telling the truth!" Matt shouted. He instantly regretted raising his voice, as the entire shop grew quiet as a tomb. All eyes were fixed on Matt and his eyes darted nervously from one face to the next. The looks of concerned respect on all the faces spoke to the esteem in which Stonewall was held. He was a little king, the nobility of the city's castoffs. Matt recognized that look from the faces of his guild in Ars-Perthnia.

"Truth is for sale these days, mi hermano. And your truth got sold. Your truth is whatever those computers say it is."

"I can't believe this. I write accounting software. I'm all about tracking these kinds of transactions, that's what we have computers for. And you're trying to tell me those transactions get wiped and no one can tell they were even there? That's impossible." Though he said it, his conviction was weak. Every digital transaction had a record, but every record was digital. If you cut deep enough, you could remove those traces. But the sheer immensity of the operation would be daunting. The vast interlinking of transactions with other transactions in modern accounting was massive. Just one purchase at a convenience store involved entries in a multitude of accounting databases, from the store's sales records to the store's merchant account, through the creditor's bank to the purchaser's bank. From that bank to the payroll account of the purchaser's employer and into the bank holding the payroll account and further back, those transactions could be decades long. Surely somewhere along that chain of transactions there existed a record of Matt's existence. To just sever all those links without causing a cascading failure that someone would notice would require skills Matt could barely fathom.

Stonewall noticed Matt's pensive stare as the chain of events became clear. "You're thinking it over, thinking about how hard it would be to pull that off. It's the perfect crime, really. No traces, no clues, just a vast hole where a person used to exist. One day, you're just a regular old consumer, happily doing your American duty to use up as much of the world as you can while enriching the economic elite. The next, you're nobody, a zero, a negative balance. You're one of us, the castoffs. The only question now is what are you going to do about it?"
Matt's mind was made up. With steely determination, he made eye contact with Stonewall and said, "I'm going to the utility office, and I'm going to get my shit straightened out. They have records of my payment and I will get them. Nobody can erase me, not if I don't let them."

Stonewall exhaled a resigned sigh. "It's your loss, brother. Some tontos got to learn for themselves. You want a ride? We give you a ride, no charge."

"Just like that? No charge?"

"Hey, if I'm right, you'll be back. The peoples could use a guy with your skills. I know someone who probably knows someone looking for your type of work on the sly right now. Probably pays good in clean Five-Year. And if I'm wrong, I did you a favor which has got to mean something to the universe, right?"

Stonewall snapped his fingers at one of the hangers-on a few tables over, holding his hand to his ear as if he was speaking on a telephone. One of his attendants tossed him something shiny and black. "Here, you'll need this." He slid the object to Matt along the table. Matt stared at it for a minute as if trying to comprehend what it was. "It's a cell phone."

"I know what it is, it's just been so long since I saw one this old," Matt replied. "What am I supposed to do with this? Do I have to start it with a hand crank? Does it even work?"

Stonewall nodded his head. "Oh yes. It's like us, see? Another castoff. People don't use something this big anymore, they either plug in the little ear buds or get the implants like you got. A few chips and this thing works as good as it used to for free. 'Course you don't want to use it more than a few days, but there's plenty more where that came from. America consumes until it gets tired, spits out the refuse for the new shiny and we pick up the old and make it useful again. Just like the subway."

"So who do I call with it?"

"Well, if you manage to make it out of the utility office without getting arrested, you give me a call. I'll hook you up with some work to earn a little cash. You're gonna have to eat sometime. After that, we'll see."

"I don't know, I don't think I'll need it," Matt stammered.

"You'll need it." The Mexican said it with enough certainty to shake Matt's confidence. He took the cell phone quickly, stuffing it into his pocket. "Antonio will show you to your train. Good luck, brother." As the guard led Matt out of the restaurant into the main terminal to put him on a train, something that had been tugging at his mind finally came to the surface.
Matt stopped and turned back to Stonewall. "Hey, do I know you? You look really familiar."

"You a football fan?"

"What were you, a wide receiver or something?"

"No, not that kind of football. Soccer, brother. I played for the Galaxy."

"Oh, I don't follow soccer."

Stonewall shook his head with a smile. "Americans. Know nothing about real sports. You probably saw my picture on the news a few months ago. They calling me a cop killer, don't you know?" Matt couldn't conceal the abject terror as he remembered the story. Three cops killed in a raid on a warehouse. The raid turned up a bunch of bodies, criminals that had been tortured before being executed. To escape, the killer had blown up the place to conceal his tracks. A big shot club owner and former soccer player had been one of the victims. "It's a frame job, brother."

"You didn't kill those cops?"

"I didn't kill those people in that warehouse."

"That's not the question I asked," Matt replied, showing a little steel in standing up to what might very well be a multiple murderer.

"But that's the answer you got, hombre," Stonewall said with a smile before turning his attention back to his coffee. Antonio urged Matt on towards the train with a bemused smile.

The train car was empty except for another pair of guards, calmly brandishing their submachine guns as he boarded. As the sickly lights of the station faded from view, the ball of nervousness in the pit of his stomach grew.

The Know Circuit Featured on The Indie Spotlight

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:25:00 +0000

My second cyberpunk novel, The Know Circuit, was featured last week on The Indie Spotlight. The Spotlight is a site run by the self-published authors Edward C. Patterson (founder of Operation eBook Drop) and Gregory Bernard Banks, owner of WheelMan Press. The article features an interview with me and an excerpt from the book. Click here to see the spotlight and if you'd like to buy the book, you can find out where to get it on this page. Thanks to Ed and Greg for providing indie authors a place to hawk their wares.

The Run, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:00:00 +0000

This short story takes place in September, 2026, almost two years before the events depicted in Under the Amoral Bridge, almost a year before the Los Angeles Riots of 2027. Below is the second of two parts. Part 1 was posted on Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010.

A coppery stench filled the air, intermingling with the smell of smoke. Singed silicon. The crackle of electricity firing off into sparks as circuits fused or were broken, unable to connect. The sound of static and screeching tires. The shaggy, muck-encrusted legs of a stray dog running into the alleyway six feet three and one half inches from Kris’s face. Scratch of the pebbly sandpaper surface of sidewalk on his cheek. A ringing in his ears that didn’t quite drown out the world. Brick building. Indecipherable gang graffiti. No sirens.

It took him 3.6 seconds to snap into something resembling full consciousness after his connection to the GlobalNet had been severed. It was another 1.2 seconds before he realized what had happened. The street term was a shambles, holes in the screen and power supply. The smart card had ejected, hopefully with money on it. He reached up for the cord connecting him to the term, missing once before catching hold. One hard yank freed the connection with a small pop, another electric jolt to the cortex. “I got som’in’, don’t know how much. ‘mon Krog, let’s split!” he yelled, barely coherent. His fingers clasped the card, pulling it free. He’d scored.

Another crack crack sound and a spark leapt from the side of the term towards his face. A white-hot tracer of shrapnel scratched his cheek. A second went by before he realized what it was. A bullet had skittered off the machine. Someone was firing at him! “Kroger!” he yelled, looking around as he ducked behind the term’s meager cover. A pair of Nicron shoes lay attached to a twitching pair of legs that led off to the other side of the term.

Kroger had loved those shoes. Some 50-year old waitress in Idaho had lost a week’s worth of pay for those sneakers. Now their white leather surface was stained with blood and dirt, and the feet seemed ready to flop out of them. Twitching. Slower now. Another bullet skipped off the pavement next to the shoes. He could use those shoes. Time to run. Run.

“Oh God!” was all he could choke out of his mouth, tears already streaming down his cheeks. The dog had the right idea. Kris followed his lead, dashing into the alleyway as another series of shots rang off the term behind him.

It only took two blocks for Kris to get winded. His hands started to shake so badly he had to stow the card in the pocket of his tattered jeans. No food, no Trip, no sleep. Sleep was a luxury when you were Tripped, and it all seemed to start crashing down on Kris. His blood pumped so heavily in his veins, his vision pulsed with each heartbeat.

He’d tripped something. Some alarm, some port scan had given him away. The account had a lot of juice, more than enough to afford the detection measures Kris had only heard Net rumors about. The hacker might’ve had backup, someone Kris hadn’t seen. Who was shooting at him? Who’d killed… he couldn’t think about that.

The alleyway cut across one street, and Kris barely avoided becoming a hood ornament on an Auto Taxi. The car managed to clip his foot, spinning him around before he set himself back on the right path. He made the next block, and cut a left through another alleyway. Bumping a trash can, his senses were flooded with the crash of cheap plastic and the scent of soy sauce and fried rice as he passed the back of some noodle shop. Six more steps and his feet came out from under him. Kris’s toe had caught a sewer grate, flipping it and him end over end. Gasping desperately, he looked back the way he’d come, only to see the shadows of his pursuers, guns drawn. He heard the revving of a powerful engine behind them, echoing off the alley. He dove into the sewer grate opening, pulling it closed behind him.

The splash of his feet rebounded off the slimy walls around him. He resisted the urge to begin dry heaving from the odors of excrement, soy sauce and mold that smothered him like a steaming blanket. He tried to control his breathing, keep himself still. His hands shook, and sweat poured from his forehead and underarms. The sounds of boots, guns clicking against harnesses and straps and low voices drifted down through the grating. He couldn’t make out the words.

Seconds went by, and the voices were joined by another, louder voice, swearing in what might have been Chinese or English broken by years as a second language. He couldn’t tell which. Kris resisted the urge to crawl closer to the grating to get a better listen. Instead, he gathered his wits, looking down the tunnels either way to see if there was another way out. As he did so, he kicked off a sampling of the data he’d gathered from his run. When his Net connection had been severed, a temporary copy stored in his head had saved what it could. He could access most of what he’d gathered, but connecting it to the wider world of data would have to wait until he could jack in again.

Most of it was standard fare for a bank job. He’d managed to get a few account numbers just on the way in, none of which seemed particularly useful. He couldn’t sell them anyway; the contacts he’d been using were all Kroger’s friends. He’d just been along for the ride. The thoughts of Kroger brought back the darkness building in his head. He swiped at the tears staining his cheeks. Finally, he got to the hacker’s handle, and froze.

He knew that name. D@rkkD@nc3r.

D@rkk was some Hispanic-Asian hacker that Kroger had introduced Kris to on New Year’s Eve at a block party in Boyle Heights. Kris thought he was a poser, a cocky little prick, just few years older than Kroger but all talk and no flash. They’d all Tripped at D@rkk’s house, bragging about scores they’d made and scores they’d never make. The whole time D@rrk had been showing off the crèche he’d just gotten.

The crèche had been sweet, premium gear way too expensive for this poser. It looked like it was worth more than the entire house, a corporate-level crèche in some barrio shithole in Boyle Heights. When asked how he could afford it, he just smiled and talked about some new gig. Kris could barely remember what the guy looked like, but he remembered the apartment. He remembered the neighborhood, which wasn’t too far from where he was now. Maybe D@rkk knew what was going on, maybe he was the one Kris’s pursuers were really after. Maybe Kris could hide with him. Maybe he had some Trip, which is all Kris needed to think clearly and formulate a plan. The sounds of boots pounding the pavement above him lessened. He tried to get a general idea of which direction to follow the tunnel to get away, but in the end, just picked one at random. Taking slow, methodical steps to minimize splashing and keep from passing out, Kris wandered down the tunnel, hoping he could find a sewer exit out into the canal bordering the Heights.

He ended up three blocks west of the street terminal, checking warily to either side of the opening for pursuers. No hail of bullets followed him as he climbed down to the canal. His pants were soaked to the calf but he made it across the canal safely and crawled up the other side. Walking a few blocks took him within a block of D@rkk’s house. Covered in grime, tears leaving trails in the crust of dust and muck on his face, he walked in a daze. Kroger was dead. He’d never lost a friend, at least not to death. Arguments, drugs, girlfriends and games, but nobody had gone and died on him. Maybe they’d used knockout bullets, or beanbags. But the blood… too much blood, he’d been shot, he had to have been shot. The twitching could have been from a taser, but then the last few seconds of twitching played back in Kris’s head, like the slow spinning down of a dying hard drive. Kroger was dead.

D@rkk’s place appeared deserted. He knocked and yelled, but there was no answer. The only light that burned came from the razor orange of the bug-encrusted porch light. He pressed his face up to the window of the front door, looking for some sign that D@rkk was home. Through the grime-covered window, he saw a closed door, with small blinking lights creeping out from beneath it. Something was running, probably that expensive crèche.

Kris crept to the side of the house, where he found a small rock. As quietly as he could, he used the rock to jar free one of the panes on the door. He felt around for the doorknob and turned it slowly. No electric shocks. Maybe the hacker had no security system. Stealing a quick glance over his shoulder, he softly padded into the foyer.

The place was a rat’s nest, made even filthier by the lifestyle of its tenet. Discarded Chinese food boxes, news sheets, code designs, Trip dispensers and various software cases were scattered about the floor. What little furniture there was appeared stained and well worn. The kitchen gave off a funk that curled Kris’s nose hairs, even over his own stench. And right in front of the door, a tiny light blinked.

“Shit,” Kris hissed. D@rkk had a security system of some kind after all, probably an alert tied to his crèche. Kris hadn’t noticed it before. He’d have been lucky to remember his name at the time if it wasn’t hard-wired. D@rkk likely would be waiting for him. The rear bedroom door where the blinking lights originated, was a few steps to his left. Kris heard a whoosh of escaping air, muffled by the door, and a dull thud. He ran to the door and dove through it.

The shot whizzed six inches above Kris’s head, showering him with sheet rock dust. “WHOA! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he screamed, falling to his knees, hands splayed out in front him as if to ward off bullets with the open hand of friendship. The second shot never came.

“Shit, Homes, what the fuck j00 doin’ here?” came the weak reply, thick with the Spanish hacker gangsta dialect D@rkk spoke. “J00 come to finish me off?”

Kris finally got a good look at him. His skin had always been a pallid yellow. He looked paler than before, drenched in the green neon light of the crèche’s interior. Still wet with the saline solution, blood ran down from his nose. He was completely naked, dark hair spiked and dripping. He coughed hard, blood creeping over the edge of his fingers, to get lost down in the short hairs of his goatee.

“I did that?” Kris asked, caught completely off-guard now. He’d had a nose bleed or a bruise from Net duels before, but nothing like what he saw now. “How the fuck did I do that?”

“J00 run dis deep, Holmes, wit’ dis kinda gear, j00 takes some big chances wit’ yer health, know what I’m sayin’?” The gun in his left hand seemed forgotten. He looked at it as if seeing it for the first time then placed it gingerly beside him. He leaned back against the crèche and exhaled heavily, coughing again. “Where’s my smokes? I got a nic fit j00 wouldn’t believe!” He reached behind him and grabbed a pack of imported clove cigarettes from the floor, offering one to Kris. “J00 want one?”

Kris never could handle smoking, but it always excited him to see someone else doing it. Smoking was one of those taboo things, and Kris loved breaking taboos. His lungs just couldn’t handle it, so he waved off the offer. The first drag sent D@rkk into another coughing fit, though there seemed to be less blood this time. “Mother Chang always said these things’d kill me. Don’t gotta worry about dat now, doh.” He chuckled. “Don’t worry ‘bout da gun, wasn’t j00 I was ‘pectin’ anyway. Sure as fuck wasn’t ‘pectin’ j00 ta get da drop on me in dat bank.” His mind seemed to clear from the shock of disconnection. “How da hell did j00 get here? An’ why?”

“I panicked. Someone shot Kroger while I was in there, and blew out the term and I just ran,” Kris babbled. “I got in this sewer and tripped over these cans and when I checked my logs, I recognized your handle.” He stopped, trying to get a handle on his panic. “I need help, someone’s after me, I don’t know why, maybe for that job. I was just trying to get some scratch, not get involved in a war!”

“Do j00 know what j00 just fucked with?” D@rkk replied, incredulous. “How big dis whole ting was? Dat wasn’t some 401k fund j00 tipped over, dat was some huge shit! Dat’s da kind of shit knocks governments over, know what I’m sayin?” D@rkk’s eyes bugged to emphasize his point. “Da suits what hired me ta do dat job don’t take kindly to fuckups, comprende?” He looked sad and lost for a minute. His eyes seemed to focus beyond Kris, beyond the room, beyond life.

“Dat’s in da contract, da fine print, yo. And da peoples what pay dis big for a job, dey got no problem blowin’ up half of LA seein’ it gets done.”

He stopped for a moment, mulling over the situation in his head while Kris’s mind raced from one possibility to the next. He could call Dad. Dad had some pull with suits, maybe he could hide him in some damn silicon factory in Bangladesh or some other pissant place. He could go to the cops, confess everything. He’d do a little juvie time, maybe not allowed to touch a computer for a year or two. That could work. He could do a few years without a computer… unless those were the cops trying to kill him. He looked at D@rkk closely.

“Who hired you, man? Whose money did I just steal?”

D@rkk’s eyes got huge. “J00 took money from dose accounts? Are j00 completely fuckin’ mental? Gimme da card. Come on, give it over.” Kris hesitated. That card was all the money he and Kroger had left. All the money he could use to get Trip or food, or break into another term. D@rkk caught the hesitation.

“Dat money ain’t no good to ya now. Every cent o’ dat has been red-flagged from here to Tokyo. J00 buy a stick of gum in fuckin’ Hong Kong, j00 got a gat in yo’ back two seconds after.” Kris handed the card over with a grim sense of despair. “J00 got a backup?”

“Backup?”

“Yeah, a backup handle, another ID j00 can switch to when da heat gets on yer ass. Fuck, didn’t Kroger teach you any o’ dis shit?”

“No, he always talked about it, but we could never afford it.”

“Too much fuckin’ Trip, not enough fuckin’ thinkin’ sounds like. J00 always gotta have a backup, shit, have t’ree or fo’. When da heat comes screamin’ around da corner, j00 better be in Budapest or some shit, and the Net better t’ink j00 in da Congo.” He crawled over to a dresser next to the crèche and pulled out a card. He tossed it to Kris. The plastic was cool to the touch, a vibrant metallic blue sheen. Holographic lettering on its surface bore the words Cr@sH3D on it. “There’s yer new j00. It should have plenty of scratch on it, enough ta last j00 a few months. Just don’t spend it all on Trip, or it’ll be worth shit. Dere’s also some good contacts on dere, a Net agent that’ll buy just about anythin’. She ain’t never met me in the meat, Homes, and she don’t care to neither, dig?” D@rkk checked the magazine on the gun at his side. “Meanwhile, I’ll go take dis card and buy me some noodles or sum’in’. I’m hungry.”

“Won’t they know where you are?” Kris asked. The hacker stared back at him dully.

“Dey already know who and where I am, yo. Dat fine print is a real bitch.” Realization began to creep into Kris’s consciousness. “Dese peoples don’t play for funsies, eh? J00 sign dat contract, j00 better know what da fuck j00 sign.” He coughed. “J00 didn’t sign up for it, doh. I did. An’ I fucked it up.”

The finality in D@rkk’s voice gave Kris a chill. This was his last run. “Where do I go?”

“Don’t matter, Holmes. Stay low fo’ a little while. Do some real low-key jobs for that agent, and don’t ever tell nobody dat j00 knew Kroger or me.” He slapped the crèche lovingly. “And get j00 some sweet machinery like dis. J00 think that term crackin’ is a rush. Shit, nut’in’ compares to dis. Nut’in’. It’s like sex, and God and adrenaline and Trip all mixed into one.” D@rkk took a long drag off the cigarette, his eyes hollow with the loss. “J00 don’t need the Trip, dig? J00 just don’ need it.” A sad resignation stole across the hacker’s face.

He pointed to his head. “It’s all up in here, dig! All of it. That shit just fool j00, Homes. That shit… it’s like these suits I worked for. It promises everythin’ and don’t give j00 nut’in’ in the end. Nut’in’.” He jumped as a vehicle squealed down the street. “Get outta here, Homes. ‘Fore dey send da cleaners out. Go.” He took a last drag, and stamped the cigarette out on the floor.

Kris went out the way he’d come in, walking about four blocks east before catching a bus. As the bus rattled down the street, he fingered the card in his pocket. It was a new start. His veins itched for a shot of Trip, for the mingling of the drug’s euphoric adrenaline rush combined with the breathless drop into free fall of jacking in. He wanted to fall so badly, to just let the weightlessness of his NetBody drift with the currents of data. Instead, he ran. He ran to the new name, the new identity that the dead man had given him.

The Run, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:52:00 +0000

This short story takes place in September, 2026, almost two years before the events depicted in Under the Amoral Bridge, almost a year before the Los Angeles Riots of 2027. Below is the first of two parts. Part 2 will be posted on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010.

September 26th, 2026
10:35 p.m.

The street terminal was being stubborn.

Kris banged on the screen for good measure but the goddamn term wouldn’t let him access sysop privileges. He could access the normal options menu, a neon blue court jester mocking him with the promise of a payoff. The words “Banking” and “Taxi” and “News” glowed uselessly in a plain white sans serifed font. “Come on you fuckin’ piece of square trash, give me the goods!” he half-whispered at it. Kroger diverted his attention from scanning the streets for cops long enough to give Kris a concerned glance.

“Take it easy, Ov3rdIv3. Last thing we need is some zero getting suspicious.” Kroger was the older one, all of 18. Getting caught with would mean real jail for him, unless the quasi-legal corporate cops got to him first. Then he’d probably just get his ass kicked. Kris was 15… No, wait, he was 16. In a flash of regretful clarity, he remembered that today was his sixteenth birthday.

Kroger and Kris had been living on the streets of Los Angeles for almost six months now, though Kris couldn’t be sure how long exactly. The Warehouse District was an ugly place for the hardest of criminals, but somehow he and Kroger had managed to survive. Every three or four days, they’d have to hit a street term to replenish their cash card. If they got really lucky, they could crack a database or two, download some juicy information they could sell to Kroger’s information broker. They’d lived like kings the week they’d lifted that memo from Cendar Ventures detailing the purchase of the company by megacorp Chronosoft. Share price had gone through the roof short-term, and Angela always paid top-dollar for short-term stock tips. She’d given them enough cash for a week’s worth of mescatripizine.

The drug mescatripizine, more commonly known on the street as Trip had become a third entity in the pair’s friendship. It was the driving need of their lives, more important than the vague hunger and the revolving fleabag coffin hotels. They needed the Trip like oxygen. Netruns were almost pedestrian without it, a dull, droning, sluggish hell that only served to remind them how awesome the GlobalNet could be with the heavenly mana of the Trip. Their reflexes were faster. Their NetBodies were stronger. With Trip, no databank was impenetrable. They were data-fueled supermen. Without it, they were merely good hackers with shaky hands.

Kris’s hands were shaking now, though he couldn’t tell if it was from the lack of food, nervous excitement or the day and a half he’d been without a hit. He couldn’t think clearly. This was a street terminal. Grandmothers could crack this thing. He deserved an easy score. It was his birthday, after all. It’s not like he was going to get cake and all that shit. Dad had probably sent him an email, dogging him for not taking that stupid intern position with Chronosoft. Fucking shill. Cake and candles and some weak-ass punch and everybody looking at him, wondering what he was going to do with his life. Screw that.

“Give me that card, I’m gonna fuck this thing up!” Kroger looked down at him. He was a good four inches taller then Kris, and even more gaunt. His dark mane of hair, shaved on the right side up to the crown of his head, looked matted and dirty. Kris thought they might have showered yesterday, but it might well have been the day before. Kroger reached in his blue Crenelli jacket, some designer label he’d bought after the Cendar score, with a greasy smudge of something on the right elbow, from when they’d been dumpster hopping for old cash cards and laid the flat slab of plastic in Kris’s hand.

The terminal accepted credit and cash cards, as well as some forms of data storage cards. Most had GlobalNet upload abilities, but with severe content restrictions. But they could be fooled. The card Kris had contained a short-term virus, meant to “jiggle the locks” on the terminal. It would fry the security system long enough for Kris to gain root access. From there, he could open the maintenance port on the back of the machine that would allow him to jack directly into the GlobalNet with the interface port surgically implanted at the base of his skull. He’d have ten minutes at best to pull off whatever job he could manage. By then, the term’s owners would be alerted to the presence of the virus and commence lockdown. Shortly after that, a flesh team would show up to check the exterior of the box while a live team would access it from the GlobalNet. The pair needed to be blocks away when that happened.

Kris jammed the card in the reader slot with a “Suck on this, bitch!” A new menu appeared on screen, with the additional options of “Email” and “Upload.” He chose upload and activated the virus. The screen flashed for a moment, went black, then a new menu opened up. “Root! This bitch is ours!”

“Hurry up, OD, we ain’t got much time,” Kroger said. “Pop the port.”

A tiny port about belt high on the left side of the box opened at Kris’s command. This maintenance port was used to interface with the live team on the GlobalNet or the software innards of the term’s programs. Inside was a tiny bundle of fiber-optic cables and a net interface plug. “You sure you want me to do this, Kroger? That Trip is long gone.”

Kroger held up his hand. It shook even worse than Kris’s. “You got more than me, bro. Get in there and grab some good shit. I ain’t sleeping on a park bench tonight, a’ight?”

“Goin’ in hot, then. Don’t let nobody buttfuck my slab while I’m in there.” Kris reached to the back of his neck, feeling the cold round circle of metal and plastic. The skin around it was rough and scarred. The surgery had not been neat or cheap. He’d grown his hair to his shoulders in the months before getting the surgery, hoping to hide the plug from his parents. It was illegal even having a port if you were under age 16, but there was no shortage of sawbones who’d plug anyone up for the right price. He fumbled with the plug before finding the slot and jamming the plug home. Felt the tinge of pent-up static electricity as the plug touched the metal base. His ears popped as the connection initialized.

The sensation of speed was incredible. If his NetBody had eyes or fluids, he knew that he’d tear up just from the rush of air preceding his entry into the GlobalNet. He felt weightless, without body, substance or form for nanoseconds before a phantom sensation of physicality returned. The terminal was slow. He’d once been able to cruise the Net in a crèche that a friend of his had back in the Burbs. Riding a term was like riding a bike. A crèche was a luxury sports car with rocket fuel. But only rich kids and corporate runners could afford a crèche. Kroger and he always dreamed about that one big score and the sweet crèche’s they’d buy with it. But for now, he was stuck riding dinky street terms to nickel and dime databanks.

He acclimated himself, looking over his NetBody. Silver, like liquid mercury, the NetBody responded to his thoughts, shifting shape at his whim. He was surrounded by the transparent internal menus of the street term, and sparse pockets of data stored locally on the term. The term’s internal dimensions were cozy like a coffin, but there were multiple ports leading out into the wider GlobalNet. He ran one diagnostic on his NetBody; cohesion was good. He had packed a few programs into his cheap storage unit, enough to crack some smaller databanks. A sword attack program. A stealth program, for disguising himself as part of in-going or outgoing data streams. A decoy virus that he could send to strike at remote parts of a databank away from the point of his own attack. That would send security assets scrambling to contain the virus while Kris went about his business in the databank. The fourth was a communicator, so that he could hear Kroger talking to his body. The fifth was his datagrab program, made to extract data, truncate it into a few hundred pieces and scatter those pieces in multiple places over the GlobalNet, storing what it could locally. Once any heat was off, he could reconstitute the data into one aggregate and do with it what he needed.

He wasn’t going to be very effective against live opponents, but if he did this right, he wouldn’t be facing any. Kris activated the comm. While in the Net, the body’s senses were effectively cut off from the NetBody’s consciousness. He could take a beating out in the real world and never know it until he jacked out. The comm would simulate the auditory stimulation of the real world, allowing Kroger to tell him when it was time to scatter. It usually had a time delay of a few seconds, as the processor in his head just wasn’t fast enough to perform the function in real-time.

He dialed up the term’s GlobalNet mapping program, inputting a search algorithm that would give him a few addresses. He was looking for something with money behind it. The kind of sift and sort run he was on tonight would hopefully net him either bank accounts he could skim or some kind of corporate insider information he could sell. The former was usually more instantly lucrative, but the latter was easier to find. Even after decades of hacker culture and the ubiquity of the GlobalNet, there were plenty of brain dead middle managers that didn’t know how to secure their email.

The search came back quickly with sixteen potential targets. He immediately nixed six of them as being too well protected or too likely to contain only chump change. Another four were from targets that were way too high profile. Trying to crack Chronosoft and Network 7 databanks would only get the heat on him faster than he could react. The last six looked promising. Two small-time banks, a home entertainment equipment company, and three independent movie studios. He flipped a coin in his head and landed on one of the banks. Maybe he could even get the term to spit out some cash with a fake trace on it.

The banks closest branch was in Inglewood, but he didn’t want to take that avenue. Too close physically. He pulled up the location that was farthest away, some place in New Mexico. Forty-two seconds had elapsed since he’d jacked in. He didn’t have much time, so he began to bounce his location off of only five or six false trails. Maybe one day he’d have time enough to disguise his trail with enough false hits to be completely untraceable, but tonight was not that night. He’d need his own crèche for that.

He liked hitting the smaller banks. People never used cash anymore. It was just as traceable as credit and corporate accounts, even more so because of how few people used it. As a result, the only people who ever tried to knock over banks physically were idiots with hand cannons and “Born to Die” tattooed across their chests. But hackers, hackers hit them all the time. A hacker who knew what he was doing could make off with thousands in almost untraceable credit on a good night. On a bad night, he might find information on loans or money shifts that rumor brokers sought. That part of the scores was tough, because it was all about the connections. Nothing was ever worth it at face value, unless you made the connections.

He could use information like a CEO applying for a loan, which he could leverage into a takeover. Middle managers shifting stock options from one company to another in anticipation of a stock dive. Dummy companies being incorporated to funnel funds from one place to another. There was always something you could fence to the rumor brokers, if you got it quick enough. Information had a shelf life that could sometimes be measured in seconds. But if he was really lucky, he could get cash.

He rode the datastream, his life span measured in nanoseconds. From Los Angeles to a college in South Dakota, from the tourist data bank for the St. Louis Arch to a candy maker’s discussion room in Denver, from a street term in some town in Utah he couldn’t pronounce and finally to the branch in New Mexico. It was all pulses, blips on the IP map of the world. He missed the Trip. Trip made being digital so sharp and focused, the pulse of data in your veins almost hurt. GlobalNet data was beautiful sober, but on Trip, he was coursing through the bloodstream of God.

He had no time to examine the gigantic puzzle box of cubes that was the branch’s databank. They looked like obsidian blocks, light reflecting off of them in glimmers and twinkles. He stayed hooked to the datastream he’d rode in on, activating his stealth program. It made his appearance mimic the data surrounding him. It worked against most non-sentient port scanners. A live operator would probably spot him instantly. That was another reason he liked hitting small banks. They couldn’t afford enough operators, and their databanks were huge. One or two operators could not be everywhere at once.

The incoming port looked like an iris, constantly opening and closing. It shimmered with a constant pulse of light, scanning every bit of data that entered. Bits that were rejected were sent skimming along the cube’s surface, to be returned to sender and logged. Kris checked his time. 77 seconds. His virtual skin tickled as the port’s light scan hit him. It was over almost before he registered it. He was in.

Kris grappled himself to the inside wall of the databank, accessing an internal system map. Locating accounts, he entered a new datastream, still under cover of the stealth program. Another port scanned him in vain. This bank was a cherry. It seemed all too accepting of duplicate data. As he entered the account databank, he began pinging accounts, trying to find an open corporate account with liquid assets. He didn’t mind ripping off some little old lady from Santa Fe’s pension, but it wouldn’t be much of a score. In the nanoseconds that he waited for the search routine to return, he noticed a cloud of odd bits floating past him.

Most data within the GlobalNet or databanks held a coherent pattern. To the observer, it took on a consistent yet amorphous shape. Occasionally, data would become corrupted and lose its coherency. However, it rarely hung around, as internal “trash collection” would clean it up, defrag the storage medium where it had resided and virtual life would go on much as before. And then there were the remains.

Hackers had often spoken about the remains of another hacker’s NetBody. When a hacker ran across another hacker, there was usually a fight. These fights rarely lasted more than a few seconds real-time. Using their custom programs, and good old-fashioned ingenuity, hackers would duel like two gladiators, swinging weapons that grew from their NetBodies. Thrust and counter thrust would end with the victor enjoying the spoils, while the loser got knocked offline. In some cases, the loser had physical injuries to go along with his bruised pride and failed run. Death, though rare, did happen.

But the winner always described the remains of his opponent’s NetBody as floating bits of data, without coherence. These bits of what had been someone floated by Kris. His NetBody shivered with excitement and anticipation. An intruder had smoked either the bank’s operator, or had been smacked down by a pretty good operator. Kris was probably going to have to fight. 80 seconds.

Data didn’t flow in random patterns; there were currents in the system, currents that could be read when tracing someone on the inside of a databank. Kris analyzed the approximate location the data bits had come from and vectored in on it. Whichever of the two had won, the hacker or the operator, they’d likely be weakened, vulnerable to surprise attack. It’d been eight days since Kris’s last net fight and he was spoiling for a good duel. Plus, if the survivor of the fight had been an intruder, he’d likely already found something worth taking.

Remaining stealthed, Kris prepped his sword, which flowed from his arm, an extension of his thoughts as well as his NetBody. 91 seconds. He’d have to hurry. Hopefully, he’d only need a hit or two. Getting in a first sucker punch might end it quick but he was likely dead if the fight were extended. Entering the accounts cube, his target appeared on the horizon. The hacker’s NetBody hovered 236 degrees above Kris. The account datacube was huge, larger than Kris had expected. He hesitated for a moment, gathering in the size of the cube. It was twice as large as it should have been. Perhaps it was a linked databank? But linked from where? The bank’s assets weren’t large enough for it to need this much storage. He surveyed the data, gathering some diagnostic information from the system.

Storage was at 90% capacity. Number of records was through the roof. His search had been for a bank with half the number of assets that the diagnostic was now showing him. This meant either his search was wrong or the bank was a front for something. 96 seconds. Banks fronted money for organized crime, shell corporations, governments and anyone else that needed tax dodges and anonymity. Kris considered bolting. The people likely to have money here were the kind of people that used other people’s lives like currency. Kris’s life wasn’t worth a penny to those types.

Who better to steal from?

The hacker was busy, each hand buried in an account, transferring information from one account to the other carefully. From a distance, it looked like a simple smash and grab. Kris followed his datastream closer to the hacker, preparing to strike. He had to be quick. As if from a distance, he could feel his heart rate quicken, a numbing hollow feeling on the edge of his consciousness. Closer now. The hacker took no notice, busily transferring bits from one hand to the other. Almost.

The thrust was clean, completely catching the hacker off-guard. The sword thrust through the hacker’s kidney area almost severed him in half. Kris followed the move by attaching the datagrabber to the hacker’s NetBody, gathering as much information as he could about the hacker, including handle and location. Bragging rights were important, even for a sucker punch victory. He withdrew the sword from the hacker’s NetBody, spinning in a liquid pirouette. The hacker was quick to react, swinging blindly behind him. It missed by a mile. Kris’s second strike was enough to end it, a quick slash that severed his enemy’s head. The surprised hacker’s NetBody exploded into mercurial dissolution, drifting past Kris into nothingness. 103 seconds.

Without pausing to savor his victory, Kris accessed the hacker’s last actions, trying to hook into the same accounts. The hesitation of the system as he accessed the account told him it was a big one. 105 seconds. He activated the datagrabber, preparing to siphon what he could out of the account. The data struck his vision like a lead pipe. It was big. The mother lode.

“What was that?” he heard, through the static-filled haze of the hearing simulation. He barely registered the sound. The account had him hypnotized. Kris had never seen so many zeros, especially not in his virtual hands. He pulled up a display of the last few transactions, trying to get a sense of what the hacker had been stealing. 112 seconds.

An extensive list of tiny transactions, no more than a few hundred dollars each, had been activated on the account. Each seemed to go nowhere and everywhere at once, cycling through a random series of other accounts. The hacker had been taking money, all right, and lots of it. The thefts were in amounts so small they would ignored by any but the most thorough of searches. He grabbed the destination account numbers; they were likely dummies. It didn’t matter. Given enough time, he could track the real account or accounts behind them. Since he had the runner’s handle as well, it’d be even easier to trace. Then something happened.

The first transaction disappeared. Then the second. Like dominoes, they began to fall, blinking out of the list as if they’d never been there. Suddenly, money that had been there no longer was. Even worse, for anyone looking at the accounts, there was no way to know where it had gone or that it had ever existed in the first place. He watched the balance drop, as more transactions began firing off. Whatever the runner had unleashed, it was still running. He kicked off a transfer of his own. Money began funneling from the account to the street term he was hooked into, dumping down onto the smart card he’d used to hack the term. Though finding the mystery had been fun, he needed some scratch a bit more than a brainteaser. 126 seconds.

“OH SHIT, GET OUT!” were the last words he heard from the hearing simulation, followed by a crack crack. White light flooded his perception, followed by a piercing screech as his connection was terminated.

To Be Continued in Part 2

A New Direction - Two Degrees to the Left

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 18:49:00 +0000

You may notice a slight difference in the look of the web site today, as well a new title - Tales from the Bridge Chronicles. The reason for the change is a slight shift in the purpose of this web site. In the early days, this site was my main and only source for distribution of the Bridge Chronicles stories, before they were called The Bridge Chronicles. Since I've decided not to release the upcoming novels in the series for free anymore, that leaves this site pretty bereft of new content other than links to reviews of the books. To let this site go entirely to seed, though, would be to waste some great marketing potential.

With that in mind, starting this week, I will update the site with a brand new, free short story once a month. The stories will all be set in the same universe as The Bridge Chronicles, though not all will revolve around or even feature Artemis Bridge. Some of the stories will happen before the events in the most recently-released novel, some during or concurrent with, and some after. I plan to do this up to and after the release of the third novel in the series, if [tribe] =, slated for release sometime in early 2011. You'll probably even see some pieces of that novel here as well. Each story will be prefaced with a paragraph that outlines its place in the Bridge timeline. There will be stories with all new characters, some old friends and enemies, and some characters that appeared in the original series of unpublished novels that take place after the Bridge Chronicles' timeline. The first up will be a story set in the time before the Riots of 2027, even before the U.S. federal government budget collapse that precipitated those riots. Depending on the length of the story, it may be published all in one day, or spread across multiple entries. Once I have stories published, I'll be adding a link at the top to the Tales. After a sufficient amount of stories are published here, I plan to collect them in an eBook only compilation, much like The Bridge Chronicles, Books 1 & 2.

So stick around and enjoy the ever-expanding universe of Artemis Bridge. Thank you for your support!

New Bridge Short Story on The SciFried.com

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:07:00 +0000

A new science-fiction community portal has opened up, called The SciFried.com. Brandon of The Drunken Scholar fame, asked me if I could write a special short story to appear on the site and I agreed. The result? An entirely new, unpublished Artemis Bridge short story called The New Transfer Protocol. Head on over to SciFried.com and read the story, and keep checking back here for updates on the Bridge Chronicles. There should be some interesting news for Bridge fans soon.

A.F. Stewart reviews Under the Amoral Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:44:00 +0000

A.F. Stewart, writing for the Canada Sci-Fi Examiner, recently reviewed my first science-fiction novel, Under the Amoral Bridge. She gave it a favorable review. The only negatives had to do with a few minor formatting mistakes and typos. That's a fair cop for a book edited by yours truly. Thanks, A.F. for your positive review!

Red Adept Reviews Under the Amoral Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:43:00 +0000

Red Adept Reviews, one of the most well-respected Kindle eBook reviewers, posted a review today of my debut cyberpunk novel, Under the Amoral Bridge. She gave it an amazing 4 3/4 stars! You can read the full review here, and there's a taste after the jump.

From the first paragraph, I was pulled into the story.

Artemis, the main character, was really fun to read about. I loved his style. While I couldn’t agree with his politics, or lack thereof, or his moral reasonings, he still remained sympathetic in my eyes. He wasn’t particularly likable, yet I still found myself cheering him on.

Thanks to Red Adept for her fantastic review! The book is available as an eBook, a paperback and as part of a compilation eBook with The Know Circuit in The Bridge Chronicles, Books 1 & 2.

Great Review of Under the Amoral Bridge at InkSplashD

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:50:00 +0000

Author David Alexander has a blog called InkSplashD and has recently reviewed the eBook version of Under the Amoral Bridge. He gave it a great review, with the only real negatives being the formatting of the ePub version - something he notes is a problem with many of Smashwords' ePub versions. From the review:

I downloaded the ePub version of the file from Smashwords and shuttled it to the top of my TBR pile. That was like a week ago. Off and on, over the course of the next few days, I managed to finish all 51,000 words.

And let me tell you, I need Book 2. The book was well written, dialog was sharp, and descriptions were pretty much on-point. Ballard doesn’t hit you over the head with pretty prose or pages upon pages of description. There’s nothing pretty in 2028 Los Angeles. His prose comes off sharp, the characters acerbic.

I'd like to thank David for his excellent review!

Interview with David Wisehart at Kindle Author Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:53:00 +0000

David Wisehart, author of Devil's Lair, interviewed me over on his web site, Kindle Author. It's a pretty detailed interview and I ramble on as I'm prone to do. Go on over and give David a few hits, maybe even buy his book or one of mine! I'd like to thank David for the opportunity to promote my books.

Interview with Brian "Psychochild" Green of The Internet Crashed

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:13:00 +0000

One of my old f13.net forum sparring partners, Brian "Psychochild" Green, has a new cyberpunk community site, The Internet Crashed. He was kind enough to interview me about my books for the site, and that interview has been published here. Go on over and get a taste of more of my skewed views on cyberpunk, MMO's and the world in general.

Featured on Bitsy Bling's Book Review Author Hot Seat

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:25:00 +0000

The author Charlie Courtland runs the book blog Bitsy Bling's Book Review. She recently began a series of author interviews to promote unknown, indie authors called The Hot Seat. I've been featured along with my new novel, The Know Circuit, on the Hot Seat, found at this address. A big thank you to Charlie for her help promoting indie authors like myself!

The Bridge Chronicles, Books 1 & 2 - eBook Compilation for sale now!

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:00:00 +0000

With two novels released in The Bridge Chronicles series, I wanted to offer new readers a chance to get the whole series with one purchase. Doing this as a paperback is somewhat cost-prohibitive at the moment, but an eBook costs me next to nothing and can be easily and quickly deployed. As such, I've collected both Under the Amoral Bridge: A Cyberpunk Novel (The Bridge Chronicles) and The Know Circuit into one eBook called The Bridge Chronicles, Books 1 & 2. It's available at Amazon.com's Kindle Store, as well as on Smashwords.com in a variety of formats for only $3.50. This is less expensive than buying both books separately. If you've never read the series, click on the links above and grab yourself a copy today!

Good Things Are Coming - The Next Bridge Novel and the Future of This Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Gary A. Ballard) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 20:20:00 +0000

Followers of my Twitter feed will no doubt be aware that I've been hard at work on the sequel to the recently-released The Know Circuit since October of last year. With the long holiday weekend, and an extra day taken off of work, I hope to conclude the first draft of this novel if not this week, within the next two weeks. In the past, I've serialized the Bridge novels on this blog in full, giving the entire story away for free before packaging each novel as a paperback and eBook, hoping that ad revenues will grow enough to generate some revenue. This has not happened. There simply isn't enough traffic on this site to justify continually giving the novels away for free, and sales of the other versions have done well enough to make the idea of a free serial novel somewhat silly. As I discussed earlier in my post on pricing, it no longer makes sense. So what does that mean for future Bridge novels and for this blog? Good things, actually.

As I've said, both Under the Amoral Bridge and The Know Circuit will remain on this web site for the foreseeable future. But without a new novel to drive traffic to this site, what should I do with this blog, other than post updates on the new novels, links to reviews on my work and other appearances? I've always believed in giving the fans a little something for nothing, that is what I intend to do. Starting in mid-August (providing I finish the next novel on time), I plan to release free short stories set in the Bridge universe at the rate of one a month. These stories will vary in size and subject matter. Not all of them will feature Bridge - he will have cameos in some of them, but not all. You may see many peripheral characters from the universe I've established starring in their own little adventures. This is a way for me to flesh out some areas of the setting without having to create an entire novel centered around Bridge, as well as to explore some concepts that may not otherwise make any sense as a Bridge story. Two of the stories are written in rough form already, and I have ideas for at least six or seven others. Keep following my Twitter feed for updates on when you'll see some new stories. This series of stories will be known as Tales from the Bridge Chronicles, and once there are enough of the stories, I will likely bundle them all up and release them as a lower-priced eBook. If demand is strong enough, they may even end up as a paperback.

As for Bridge himself, there's that third novel and a fourth is in the back of my mind. Today, I want to announce the title of the third Bridge novel, which I hope to release either later in 2010 or early 2011. And so, I announce that the title of my third Bridge novel is:

if [tribe] =

You can read that as "if tribe equals." I'm really excited about this story and the changes it will make to Bridge and the people in his circle. It's topping out at a bit longer than The Know Circuit, and I know fans of The Bridge will love it.

Check back with me often and thanks for your support!