Crash Flux 1: Welcome To The Machine (4 page)

“Assholes…” Irule muttered to herself.

Adon signaled Burk to follow, then shut the office door behind him, leaving Raydin and Irule in the back room.  He sat down at his desk and placed his marquee deck on top of it.  He took hold of the eye jack connected to the deck and plugged it into the pupil of his right eye.  The business index of the day’s marketplace began to swell and scroll down Adon’s vision.  Burk lay down on Adon’s mattress.  “Do you think he’ll be ready in three days?”

Adon said, “He will be.”

Burk said, “And if he’s not?”

Adon said, “Then we go without him.”

The Score

Raydin was lying inside his cubby, a tiny three meter wide hexagonal room with no windows.  Raydin activated his C-MAX, and loaded a simulation.  Suddenly he was standing over home plate, knocking the dust from his shoes with a bat, in front of a baseball stadium filled with cheering fans.  The announcer said, “Next up to bat, Raydin Hiroshima-Phoenix.”

Raydin put his hand over his eyes and squinted.  “Turn off audio,” he said.  The roaring crowds ceased.  “Remove scoreboards.”  The scoreboards disappeared.  “Remove the bleachers, the fans, get rid of the whole stadium.”  Raydin was left in an empty field, staring at the pitcher atop the mound across from him.  “Remove the pitcher.  All I want to see is the ball.”  The pitcher disappeared.

“Let’s see what you got.  Pitch the ball.”  A white hardball went sliding towards him, and Raydin felt the bat rattle as he sent one flying.  He ran the bases, trying to imagine what it would be like, to live outside and breathe clean air, to feel the sun on his face and the grass beneath his feet.  

He stomped across home plate.  He looked up at the sky, watching the clouds pass.  He sent a mental signal, ending the simulation.  He stared up at the ceiling of his room, then walked over towards his closet.  He reached straight through the door to his closet. The door disappeared, nothing more than a hologram, and he grabbed his metal t-ball bat.  He took a swing, and looked towards the ceiling again.

He tried to imagine it, clenching the heavy side of the bat and wringing it with his left hand.  “None of it is real,” he thought.  “Just the same six walls, every day.  I’ve been here five years.  Five years of my life, gone.”  Rage welled up inside him, like an animal trying to claw its way through a steel cage.  “Gone!” he screamed.  He smashed the bat into the chitin walls.  “And for what?!”  He smashed the bat into the wall again and again.  He slumped down on his bed and tossed the bat aside, it fell to the floor with a metal clang.  He ran his fingers through his hair, then looked at the wall.  A tiny crack had appeared.  He thought “A crack.  I guess that’s all any of us can really do.”  He sat back up and started getting dressed, calling Adon on his U.C.D.

“Adon, are we really going to do this?”

Adon said, “Yeah man.  We’re ready to go.  Time to put on your game face.”

Raydin was sitting upright, dressed in his office clothes, addressing his crew through VR conference from his cramped living cell in the residential sprawl.  Adon and Burk were jacked in from Adon’s shop.  Burk slouched over the Bunk, wearing overalls loaded to the brim with gadgets, tools, and corporate logos.  He lined the inside of his bandana with the neural uplink and connected to his Quebic deck.  Adon ran his hands over the flat, plastic disc in front of him, then grabbed the wire and plugged it into his eye socket.  Crappy graphics combined with a lack of depth perception gave his simulation the look and feel of a trashy business demo.

Irule was the last to jack in, lying on her back in her panties, chewing bubblegum.  The tiny dot of light on her forehead sent her mind flying through subspace, until she was in a large corporate meeting hall, dressed in a smart business dress suit.  Raydin had been drilling them all morning, preparing them for the final run through.  “Alright, one more time.  Everybody wired in?”

Burk said, “Just a tick, let me upload the map.”  His persona fluxed for a moment, then settled.  The office was replaced by a three-dimensional map of the target building.

Raydin said, “With the triggers I have stolen from the Bulldog Corporation, we will infiltrate the Holografix corporate headquarters branch office for this sector.  I have given each of you a duplicate of Bulldog’s control rods.  These will broadcast a series of tones or a sequence of colored lights, which should trigger the three basic responses the guards have access to.  The yellow button is fear mode, the blue button is trust mode, and the black button is sleep mode.  We will only be using the sleep mode, which will cause the subject to fall into a trance, during which they will follow simple instructions.  The trance lasts for about five minutes, and the subject does not remember what happened during that time, so that should give us plenty of time to get the job done.”   

Raydin continued, “My holiday program has assigned three weeks mandatory vacation to five Holografix employees outside of Datcora in one of its exclaves in South America.  Security inside the exclave is particularly tight, which will work to our advantage… the marks will be unable to send any messages in or out while they are there.”

“Using Burk’s unique set of skills, he has provided us with forged corporate identification cards, each using one of the aforementioned employees’ names, which we will use to bypass security checkpoints here, here, and here.”  He pointed his laser pointer at the entrance lobby, the maintenance elevator, and the elevator lobby on the twentieth floor.  “But our job’s not done there.  The Humantix Corporation has many layers of CR conditioning, and we have only accessed the first.  If we want to make an impact, we are not only going to have to download the triggers used in this sector, we are also going to have to broadcast them as they are updated in the future.”

Burk said, “Wait a minute, hold on.  I thought you said we had everything taken care of with this worm program you and Irule cooked up.  How can they update the Conditioned Response triggers? I thought you had said they were programmed into us at the time of birth.”

Raydin said, “Yes, that is true.  But like I said, we only have the first layer, the simplest triggers.  When “errors” occur in our programming, the Second Estate has a second layer that only those working in the highest levels of upper management have access to, which they use to force us to report back in for reconditioning.  That way, the conditioning can constantly be updated and reinforced, changing the tonal sequences and color codes that they use to trigger specific behaviors.”

Burk said, “You said the worm program you two wrote will take care of that though.”  

“That’s correct.  The ones we have are the ones the police use.  The CR triggers broadcast at the Holografix Branch Office will be much more expansive.  The worm program will bury itself deep within the Holografix hypercomp, constantly updating the codes and replaying the broadcast you heard me make earlier.  We estimate it will take them at least a year to find it…”

Burk said, “If everything goes to plan, do you think this will spread outside this sector?”

Raydin sighed.  “No.  I’m afraid that we couldn’t find a way to crack the encryption Holografix uses to communicate to other branches within its own network.  Every sector has its own set of codes, so the triggers we broadcast in this sector won’t work in any of the others.  We won’t be able to return to Datcora, there will simply be too much heat on our tail.  Who knows? There is a possibility that others will join our cause and take up arms after we leave.  The smallest ripple can become a tidal wave.  We just have to wait and hope.”

Adon stepped up.  “Does that answer all your questions Burk?”  Burk nodded.  Adon said, “Good.”

This plan has four objectives.  The first, uploading our worm program into this sector’s Humantix corporate mainframe.  The second, to shutdown VR throughout this sector for fifteen minutes, deleting all trace of our involvement in the process.   The third, to transfer one-hundred million dollars to an unnamed account outside of Datcora.  The fourth, to monitor all activity within the building, and escape from the building through the ventilation ducts running beneath the sector.

Adon said, “Do we have a contingency if we can’t shutdown the hypercomp?”

Raydin said, “We shouldn’t need one.  The reason Datcora is so overpopulated is because controlling human beings remains the most cost efficient method to process complex data.  Datcora is the worlds most advanced economy because we specialize in one thing, the storage, processing, and transfer of information.  The central processing spire is the most advanced computer on earth, but even it can’t compare to the potential processing power of nearly one billion human beings working in a concerted effort in a virtual environment.”

He continued, “The Lifetree arcology is Datcora’s biggest customer, due to the legacy virus.  The legacy virus is a human engineered, benign nano-virus that records the genetic structure of every living thing on earth and reports the information back to the Lifetree arcology, where it is stored and used by their scientists to preserve and adapt the natural environment surrounding the arcology to survive the difficult conditions the earth has been exposed to since the great war.  All we are going to do is ask the spire to process all the data the legacy virus has gathered over the years.”

Adon said, “Which should crash the system.”

Raydin said, “Correct.  The broker we sent on vacation sells access to the spire.  All he does is sell time on the spire, accepting bids on every nanosecond he leases his customer access.  Trying to process all the genetic data that has been gathered and stored by Lifetree will cause the system to overload.  That will give us fifteen minutes to delete the hypercomp’s registers and escape.  Standard operating procedure will quarantine the sector during that period, shutting down the sector’s V.R. interface for about an hour.  It will give the people a small taste of the truth.  Without VR, there is no spatial distortion to protect peoples minds from the effects of overcrowding, no filters to censor out the constant violence that plagues the Hub.  I only hope it will be enough.”

Adon said, “You didn’t answer my original question.”

Raydin said, “Like I said, we shouldn’t need a contingency plan, but just in case, Burk has rigged a system that will fry all the computer hardware inside the building and give us enough time to escape.”

Irule said, “That’s not what I’m worried about.  I’m down with the revolution and all Ray-Ray, but I still want to get paid.”

Adon said, “Then you shouldn’t worry.  Phase three is taken care of.”

Irule crossed her arms and said, “I’m still a little sketchy on how your payroll program works, Adon.”

Adon said, “Basically it goes like this.  Using the authorization code we took from Mr. Holacauster, we will apply for and authorize a loan, which we will then distribute to many different accounts, which will eventually funnel the money into one joint account which we will have access to once we leave Datcora.  Needless to say, we won’t be paying it back.  In the meantime, we will transfer enough money into our accounts here in the Hub to take a vacation in one of Datcora’s exclaves in Europa, where we will meet our contact and arrange for our escape.”

Irule said, “Will they be able to trace the money?”

Adon said, “No.  I’ve covered our trail, the money will be bouncing through so many different banks they will never find it, and our anonymity will be protected once we are immigrated to Void Gate.”

Irule said, “How will we escape?”

Adon said, “There are those from other nations who sympathize with our plight here in Datcora.  They are called Coyotes, and they constantly smuggle people in and out of the arcology.  They also help people move between different castes within Datcora as well.  The only problem is that without knowing the specifics of our mental conditioning, those smuggled out always feel a strong compulsion to return to Datcora, even though returning will result in being arrested and subjected to a five year dunk in an isolation chamber, with minimal sensory input.”

Raydin interjected.  “Fortunately, we have the codes we need, so that won’t be a problem.  Are there any other questions before I continue?” 

Everyone shook their heads no, and Raydin brought up another image slide.

They all sat looking at a picture of the Basement sub-level.  “Burk will set up shop here, tapping into the security system, fire alarms, and other hardwired systems.  He will guard our exit out of the building until we are ready to egress.”

The slide shifted and Raydin continued, “Adon, Irule, and I will then enter the elevator lobby on twenty-fifth story.  Using the admin triggers we will bypass security here, here, and here, making our way to the inner offices.  Our holiday program should empty the offices we are trying to gain entry to, giving us easy access to the loan officer’s office, the media control center, and the broker’s office.”

Irule bend over the table, showing some skin.  She said, “Clever boy like you, ought to know all about easy access.”

Raydin smiled impishly.  “You’re a dirty girl, Irule.”

“You’re no fun.”

He continued, “After that, all we have to do is upload the worm, authorize the loan, and process the Legacy virus.”

Burk said, “Don’t forget.  Authorizing that loan means bypassing the hardwired security too.”

Raydin said, “Right.  We have Melvin’s retinal print, palm print, voice authorization, and password.  Everybody thank Burk for providing us with the biomorphic mask for the facial scanner, that was not easy to get.  Alright people, we got a job to do, so let’s get to it.”

*

Irule’s heels clicked on the cold, hard ground.  She wore the same black leather top and miniskirt she had on the other day, her heels causing her to strut her hips side to side, keeping perfect balance as she walked.  She smoothed out the wrinkle in her skirt, feeling a bit silly.  She buzzed the intercom to Adon’s shop.  “Is this rat hole ever open?”

Adon came out the back and opened the fence, stopping to pick up the shock stick he kept on the wall, slipping it underneath his jacket.  “Only on Christmas and Thanksgiving.”