My therapist told me writing things down would help me deal with things in a more adult manner. I'm not sure what she meant by that, but I know I'm less depressed when I write things down than when I let them build up. I have a habit of avoiding things I don't want to think about. I'm doing it again now. I'm not surprised. When my therapist suggested a journal, she was trying to get me to admit to myself that I was gay. I'm not, or not exactly, but what I'm trying to work through now makes that look pretty normal in comparison.
It all started with Al. The name doesn’t really fit him, but then again it does. If you knew him like I know him, you’d know why. The first time I saw him was in the parking lot at the university. I was doing a series of lectures on multidimensional topology, and I had to get in early to set up the video cameras for the remote students. Al was there in the parking lot, leaning against a battered old tow truck.
At first glance, they were a matched pair. The truck was a big one, the converted semi type they use to tow tractor trailers. It was old, metal worn through in places. A relatively new coat of eggshell paint covered the whole thing, but it couldn't hide where the layer of paint underneath had chipped and been painted over without sanding the old paint away. The hydraulics had tiny leaks of fluid around the seals, and the paint underneath each leak showed the telltale stains of more extensive leaks that had been wiped away. Altogether, it looked to be an old, barely serviceable vehicle, cared for inexpertly with the cheapest materials available.
Al leaned against the driver's side door, his faded jeans ripped and poorly sewn up in some spots, permanently stained with the red of hydraulic fluid in others. An olive drab tee shirt stretched across his chest, mostly covered by an old denim jacket. The jacket had no rips or stains, but the elbows were worn through and patched inexpertly. Altogether, he looked to be a poor, marginally civilized human being, covered in the cheapest clothing available.
A mass of curly black hair, glistening in the pre-dawn light, hung down to obscure his face. All I could see was bottom edge of Al’s bronze jaw, methodically working something in his mouth. I fixated on why a tow truck was sitting in the empty parking lot. I guess most people would wonder a little bit about that, but I spent way too long working in agencies with letters for names. A dark-skinned man in ragged clothes driving an incongruous vehicle immediately set my teeth on edge. Part of me wished I carried a gun, but only a small part. I’d never learned to use one, and I’m smart enough to know guns aren’t magic wands.
I don’t know quite how long I sat there, staring at Al’s jaw slowly working whatever he was chewing, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. Normally I would go get breakfast in the student center, but given where it was parked, I would have to walk right past the tow truck to get to it.
Okay, I could have walked around the long way, but that would have been obvious. If this guy were exactly what he seemed, a tow truck driver called to a parking lot to wait for someone, it would also be stupid. I hate looking stupid. It probably goes back to when I was a kid; the smartest kid in class could never be wrong. If the average kid gets something wrong, even something blindingly obvious, nobody laughs, because it could have been any of them in the hot seat. If the dumb kid gets something wrong, nobody laughs for fear of reprisal. But if the smartest kid in class gets something wrong, even something way above what he ought to know, the whole class piles on with the mockery.
Yeah, I’ve got some issues. I did mention the whole ‘therapist / journal’ thing, right?’
Anyhow, I sat there long enough that my phone started ringing at me. Normally, that was my sign that I needed to shut down my web browser, toss the remains of breakfast in the trash, and get my butt headed for class. It looked like mama Silver’s little boy Zedekiah would go hungry this morning. I checked the floor of my Nissan Leaf to make sure none of my notes escaped during the drive in. Surreptitiously I checked the can of mace that hid among the pens and chalk in my breast pocket. Satisfied that everything I might need was where it ought to be, I grabbed my cell, opened the door, and stepped out into the morning sun.
He didn’t react to me getting out of the car, but when I shut the door, his head snapped up like he’d been waiting for the sound. I wanted to grab for my mace, but my hand wouldn’t move. I was staring at his eyes, a gleaming brown like old polished oak. After a few heartbeats, he shoved himself away from the truck, slouching his way toward me. He smiled at me; an honest, friendly smile. His teeth looked just a little too big in his mouth, like he’d had them inexpertly capped. Funny looking dentition or not, I was grateful for his smile. It drew my gaze away from his eyes and let me look at the rest of his face.
When I really got a look at him, I froze again. The man walking toward me was beautiful, with smoky brown eyes, wavy black hair that shone in the morning sun, and skin the color of honey on hammered bronze. The broad, disingenuous smile that stretched across his face softened his dark, dangerous looks just enough. His teeth looked a little too big, but they were the flat, even teeth of a human, not the predator fangs of a Vampire or Shifter. It was all I could do to keep myself from posing for him, trying to catch his eye the way he'd caught mine.
I didn’t say I wasn’t gay, I said I wasn’t exactly gay. Anyhow, that’s not the problem, Al is. Sort of. I’ll get to that when I get to it.
Anyhow, by the time I managed to pull myself together enough to start reaching for my mace, he’d gotten too close for it to do any good. His hand was inside his jacket, reaching for something. He pushed into my personal space, and I could smell the musty, musky smell of him. Despite the stains, he didn’t smell of dirt. For a moment, the musky smell made me wonder if he could be a Shifter. I'd never been within arm's reach of a Shifter before, so I didn't know. There was a lot I didn't know back then.
My sister Agnes has dealt with quite a few Shifters in her time. She tells me that the first time she ever slept with a target he was a Leo: a were-mountain-lion. It was the smell, virile and earthy, impossible to ignore or resist. That's what she told me. The thing that always seemed unfair to me is that when Shifters forget their deodorant, they’re sexy.
Lost for a moment in the smell of him, I didn’t react when his hand slipped out of his jacket clutching a folded slip of paper.
“Dr. Silver?”
His husky voice held an underlying music that told me he’d grown up speaking a more lyrical language. The combination of language and proximity immediately started my brain going again. A lyrical language, much closer personal space habits, whoever he was, he’d grown up in the Middle East. I couldn’t go for my mace now without being obvious, but my hand itched for it.
“That’s me. You are?”
“Al Moody. I’ve been trying to get into your lecture series, but they told me I need your permission to get in this late.”
What he was saying didn’t make any sense. If he wanted to get inside my head, there were easier routes. “You could just audit the course.”
“Then I wouldn’t get credit for it. I’m non-matriculated.” Al paused, his face screwing up in consternation. He was hiding something, but I had no idea what. “They wouldn’t accept my transfer credits. Or my diploma.”
I was getting tired of this. If I was late to class, the administration would dock my pay. I stopped caring about being subtle. I pulled the mace out of my pocket and held it at my side, pointing down. “Look, Mr. Moody. I don’t teach cryptography, or anything remotely related to it,” that was a lie, but one that he would only catch if he were a mathematician, “so you’ll probably want another class, right?”
A confused look shot across his face, followed by a hurt so deep it made me ache to look at it. His shoulders slumped; his gaze dropped to the cement. Before his hair hid his eyes again, I saw the hurt kindle to sullen anger. “I should have figured. Everybody else assumes the same damn thing.”
His fist crumpled around the paper he’d been holding out to me. A moment later, he turned his back on me and trudged toward the big tow truck he’d leaned against. I stood, shocked by his words.
He couldn’t know it, but his words were an echo of ones I’d uttered when I'd left the Agency. I'd been completely open about my orientation, eventually, once I knew what it was. I'd been too focused on math to notice men or women until I got out of school and joined the Agency. When I realized, when Fred showed me, I told my supervisor immediately. I hadn't done anything wrong, but after that I never got another critical assignment. I was gradually shuffled to less and less important departments. Just before I resigned, they assigned me to re-encrypt files that were about to become declassified.
All that flashed through my mind in an instant. My gaze locked onto the crumpled registration form. The rational part of my brain told me Al was just a well-prepared foreign agent. My resignation was easy enough for a foreign agent to find out about. The reason wasn't as obvious, but I made no secret of it either. He was bait on a hook that I couldn't see.
A gust of wind blew the crumpled paper to my feet. He might be a Shifter, but even a Shifter couldn't make the wind blow. My pulse thundered in my ears; the wind was a sign. The rational part of my mind gave up, and I bent down and grabbed the form before it could blow away.
“Mr. Moody! Wait.”
He froze in the act of tugging on the truck's door handle. Not a Shifter then, I thought. No Shifter born or made would need to tug on a door handle. Even through the denim of his jacket I could see how tension held him rigid. I heard one of the seams pop, saw the fabric of one sleeve slip down his arm.
“I'm not sure they'll take this with all the crease marks. Why don't we go over to the registrar after class, and we'll get you a new one.”
***
Imperatrix De’Shak Kthar the Kinslayer shrugged off her heavy battle gear section by section. At any other time, her Imperial Guard would have been on hand to assist her, but in the aftermath of battle, the few survivors of her Guard were otherwise engaged. She swore as her phase cannon caught on a section of armor plate rent by the latest harvest’s weapons.
With a thought, she activated wall screens and cameras, allowing her to see the problem plating. A low whistle escaped her pursed maw when she finally brought the cameras to the correct angle. The harvest was late this time; they had weapons nearly equal to De’Shak’s Imperial Legions. In this case, the weapon was some kind of projectile cannon with rounds that released plasma moments after impact. The Kinslayer looked down at her wounded side, anger welling in place of pain. She never felt pain; it was dampened by the same robust physiology that even now knit her flesh back together. Her carapace of gleaming crimson scales, centimeters thick, grew together to form a single flexible layer. The wound would take days to grow scales back, months for them to harden, and years for them to become indistinguishable from the thick, refractory yet flexible armor that covered the rest of her body.
The anger grew into rage as she thought of how long she would need to cover herself. Her remaining Guard, escorted by a mob of body servants, dragged a captive into the room. Her rage blossomed into incandescent fury at the thought that anyone should see her weakness. De’Shak hit the emergency release on her battle gear, grabbed up the nearest servant and, with a few quick motions, disemboweled and flayed it. Its skin made an impromptu sash around her midsection, covering her in a pleasant sheen of gore as well.
Suitably attired, her blood lust momentarily sated, she looked down on the captive. He dangled between two of her Guard, his feet barely touching the floor. He was short, but even broader than her Guard, who had been specially bred and modified for their positions. De’Shak reached out one talon, lifting the captive’s chin until she could look on his face. Her touch roused him, and after a moment of confusion, the prisoner’s eyes burned with the fires of hatred.
“Goddamned Demon! Why haven’t you killed me yet?”
Ignoring the question, De’Shak studied the prisoner. He was an unmodified human, late pre-Singularity era. As such, he was completely unadorned with the biomechanical augmentations De’Shak took for granted. Even with proper augmentation, he would still be short, but once he had proper wetware his broad frame would be capable of carrying loads even she would balk at. Without looking at the Guards or the prisoner, she spoke.
“Why is this one here?”
When she spoke, the prisoner’s eyes rolled, and his whole body shuddered. Her Guards, by no means immune to the siren’s call of her voice, had nonetheless become accustomed to it, and retained some semblance of self-control.
A voice like grinding gears sounded from the guard on the left. “This is the leader of the last resistance. He was also instrumental in the defense of the final bunker we captured.”
De’Shak saw the Guard glance at her side and understood the implication. This one was the one that had wounded her. Surprised, she blinked once before moving to make a closer examination. The human was damaged, his lower abdomen leaked fitfully from multiple holes. His lower limbs dangled uselessly; if the Guards weren’t holding him up, he would drop to the floor.
She got within reach of him, and without warning he lunged for her. The Guards restraining him staggered as his unaugmented muscles strained against their biomechanical bulk. One Guard reached for a weapon, but De’Shak motioned for him to hold. With the same motion, she wrapped a clawed hand around one of the human’s wrists. She waved that Guard back, and then repeated the process, leaving her holding the human before her, his arms outstretched. Throughout the transfer he kept struggling. De’Shak had to exert herself to hold him. A slight twinge from the crease in her side told her how much.
When she let the grin spread across her face, revealing her fangs, the human finally stopped his struggles. For a moment she feared he’d killed himself, but then his eyes fluttered open.
“Just kill me, Demon. Get it over with.”
“Oh, no, little human. I would never do that. You’re lucky, you realize.”
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The human twitched, his features distorting in a pain-filled grimace. The blood from his reopened wounds warmed her as it pooled around her feet. Eventually he stopped twitching. A batch of feraid humped itself over his wounds. If his struggles didn’t kill him, the nanomachines in the healing gel would keep him alive. When awareness returned to his eyes, she waited patiently for him to speak. A single groaned word was all he could manage.
“Why?”
“Many of my sisters would have killed and consumed you for having the temerity to strike an Imperatrix. The majority, of course, would never have been involved in the invasion, but they would have punished you by returning you to your world. The common belief is that accelerated proton decay is the most painful death a sentient being can suffer.”
De’Shak watched as the impact of her words sunk home. She was impressed; the human didn’t even twitch when she spoke of his own death or the death of his world. She decided then that her course, as always, was the right one.
“I will do no such thing to you, little human. Instead, you will become one of my Guard.”
“Go back to Hell, Demon!”
The Imperatrix nodded at her Guards, who stepped forward to take possession of the prisoner once more.
“You seem to think you’ll have a choice.” Her decision made, she nodded to her Guards. “Take him for implantation. Not just spinal interruption. Full augmentation.”
The Guards nodded and turned to leave. Before they reached the doors, she absentmindedly called out a final directive.
“Leave his reproductive paraphernalia intact. I may wish to take a gene sample later, personally.”
It was always such fun when she found what would make them squirm. She adjusted her ersatz sash before her next visitor. The whirring of electric wheels accompanied the clear glass of a Researcher’s tank. De’Shak identified him by the number painted on the back of his carapace. This one was her latest seneschal, his duty to see to the efficient running of her holdings in her absence. She waited while his voice synthesizer warmed up.
“Mistress, your return fills me with delight!”
“And your welcome reminds me why I remove the vocal cords from my body servants. Stop fawning and tell me how much we gleaned.”
“Our energy take was larger than expected mistress. Our reservoirs are at nearly eighty percent.”
That was good news. The world they’d just harvested verged on collapse. Without that power source, the Imperial World would need to subsist on stored power until they found another world to drain. Still, it wasn’t the most important news, and the little worm knew it. Casually, she leaned one hand on his glass carapace, stroking him gently. Ever so slowly she leaned more weight on the dome until they both heard it creaking.
“Our take of matter was reduced! Three of your sisters banded together to ambush our returning war party! Six of your Guard were destroyed, two were returned to the collapsing world for daring to assault an Imperatrix! Our matter stores remain under forty percent!”
“Better. Is your feed to your brothers live?”
“Yes, Mistress!”
“Good. What is the status of the Cat’s Paw?”
The near subliminal whine of the communication link between the Researcher and his fellows increased. Before it lowered again, he began speaking.
“The mechanism is created. The targets have been identified. We are ready to initiate at any time.”
“Excellent. Do so.”
“At once, mistress!”
“Also, never delay telling me bad news again.”
With that, she flexed her talons, shattering the glass, driving it through the exposed gray matter of the Researcher. The waldos attached to the side of his tank twitched once, then sent still. There was a brief whine of Researcher communication, then blessed silence.
***
An alarm pinged in Karin’s ear and tore her attention from the journal under her avatar’s fingers. Panicked fear of discovery thrilled through her for a moment, but a quick check of her chron transmuted her fear into anger at the interruption. She had at least twenty minutes of break time remaining this workday. During her down time, she had every right to be playing a game. The fact that she was self-employed didn't matter, she still had to stick to a schedule, or she would never get anything done.
A scowl creased her avatar’s face, claws slid from its fingertips. Marvel at the depth and intricacy of the simulation washed through her, sluicing away the anger as quickly as it had come. She debated continuing her session. After a moment, she realized her immersion had already been destroyed, and the escape from reality she craved wouldn’t be achieved even if she did keep playing.
Karin did a quick check of the virtual reality room’s doors. They were all locked. When Kent first convinced her to try the game, she had done a little research. All the player guides said the same thing; if you left your avatar somewhere they could wander off, they would. They could even wind up getting killed or worse. With some of the more powerful avatars, wandering was an insoluble problem, but Karin had never been attracted to the more destructive aspects of the game. Instead, she chose an avatar type normally associated with ‘social’ players, then tweaked it for stealth and subtlety. Now she locked the doors, settled down on the bed, and transformed into her feline form. Without thumbs, her avatar should be relatively secure until she returned.
Somewhere outside of herself her thumb flicked a toggle. Her vision dimmed, mimicking loss of consciousness. She blinked, and the walls of her work cubicle rose about her. As always, the raw, visceral emotions she remembered from the game dulled, leaving behind nothing but a vague feeling of annoyance and of worry.
Without really thinking about it, Karin checked on the compilation of her most recent gene sequence. It was coming along nicely. Some of the base pairs misaligned, but well within acceptable tolerances, none of the amino acid sequences would be different to the ones she wanted. Briefly, she considered how many of her peers would have a fit if even a single base pair misplaced. She didn’t suffer that same level of obsession, but she was lucky. Her mentor had shown her his greatest works. While she was still suffering through the awe and insecurity of seeing how perfectly his designs fit their environment, he showed her his initial code. The differences were subtle, but the fact that there were any differences at all shattered her entire worldview. She could still hear his voice when he explained.
“We do everything in our power to make our designs as perfect as we know how, Kitten. Then we push them into reality, and it shows us how imperfect they are. If we’re skilled enough, and clever enough, and work hard enough, and above all are lucky enough, reality hones them for us. It makes them better than we could imagine. It transmutes the inspiration and work and skills we put into the project into a perfect little living breathing thing.”
“What if we’re not?”
Karin still remembered the way his face, normally serene with a hint of underlying amusement, fell into a deeply saddened frown. He led her through a seldom used door, into a hall hung end to end with huge, framed portraits. His face solemn, he waved her toward the pictures. She stared at them, uncertain at first of what she saw. After a moment, enlightenment hit, and abomination stared at her from the walls, surrounded her on all sides. She gasped, but before she could frame a question, her mentor spoke.
“This is what happens when we forget ourselves, Kitten. Chase perfection too hard, and reality will shatter your dreams every time. Worst, we’re not the ones who pay the price.”
Those words rang through her still. Every time she worked on a new project, she heard them again. In a very real way, they made her the coder she was today. She refocused her attention on her check of the gene sequence she worked on, starting again from the beginning. As always, the simple, repetitive task soothed her. It helped her focus herself and damp the emotional response she tried to ignore. She had no reason to carry bad vibes from games and memories into the real world. Even less when she played the game to escape bad vibes in the real world. Soon work entranced her once more.
The alarm pinged again; this time followed by the tinny warble that indicated a potential physical interruption. A curse died on her lips when she saw she had nearly completed her code check anyhow. That pleased her; the new compiler she coded would be at least five percent less prone to coding errors. She smiled, aware of the dissonance inherent in acceptance of imperfection in the pursuit of perfection. It was very Zen. Her mentor would be thrilled.
Her proximity alarm pinged again, almost overlapped by a voice and the image of a face projected to her retinas from the camera outside the door. Her calm evaporated, replaced by an icy fury. With a flick of her wrist, she secured her entire office. Automated routines locked the door, physically detached her office Net from the Wider World, and started wireless white noise generation. She felt it all as an external echo of the tightening of her gut. She stood, recognizing it as purely psychological positioning even as she did it. When she spoke, a primitive intercom carried her voice from the confines of the office to the corridor outside.
“What the hell do you want, Kent?”
Her wireless systems blocked by the white noise, her VR rig connections severed by the act of standing, she could still see him in the little video screen beside the door. Kent froze with his hand half-raised, ready to knock. She watched his eyes flicker back and forth; knew he wondered what physical security measures might even now work to destroy him. She saw the exact moment he remembered her dislike of violence, and her hatred of him deepened.
“Open up, Karin!” His hand crashed twice on the outer door panel, but even with his long limbs and sculpted muscles, he couldn’t budge the solid security door. The only reason Karin heard anything was the faithful reproduction of the sound by the intercom.
“Get your ass out of here, Kent.” Karin hated the way Kent could instantly drive her to profanity, but if she didn’t swear, she would start breaking things. He could already ruin her calm just by being nearby, she wasn’t about to allow him to drive her to violence.
A smug grin spread across his face as he realized he had been right about the absence of weapons covering her door. He opened his fist and spread his palm on the door. To any outsider, it would look like a caress of her door in lieu of her. Karin knew better. Right now, the implants in his hands probed the door, searching for the electronic controls to the lock. Normally he wouldn’t even need physical contact, but the white noise was doing its job.
“Come on, Karin. Let me in. I’m sorry,” he lied, “I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to see you.”
“You’ve still got the pictures, Kent. You've still got the videos and the sensory recordings. Go home and play with those.”
“They’re not the same.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m wearing clothes, and the pictures won’t call the cops.”
Kent’s chuckle would have been menacing had Karin not known him. Instead, it was infuriating and terrifying all at once. The only time Kent laughed was when he had someone at his mercy.
“You can’t call the cops, love. You cut your landline and this static will keep your wireless from connecting. Now, why don’t you stop fucking around and open the damn door before you make me mad?”
“I hope you get mad enough to have an aneurysm, you piece of shit. I hope you hit that door so hard your fucking bones break. I hope you die, painfully, of some self-inflicted wound. Am I making myself clear? Fuck. Off.”
Kent’s face twitched, but he managed to keep his bemused grin for a few moments longer. It dropped off his face as he realized the door held no electronics.
“How the hell?” Kent checked the handle again, stopped when the door wouldn’t budge. Karin grinned. The lock mechanisms were deep in the walls, shielded from the outside world by layers of wood and further protected by the white wifi noise in the air. At this point the door was nothing but a slab of steel with long steel bars anchoring it into the walls, ceiling, and floor. She watched him stare at the hinges a few moments before coming to the wrong conclusion.
He took a few steps away from the door, as far as the narrow complex corridor would allow him. Looking annoyed at the width of the corridor, he launched himself at her door, his shoulder hitting it like a linebacker tackling a running back, or a cop taking down a fleeing suspect. Karin knew he’d been both in his checkered past, before he ‘retired’ to run his 'web development' company. The crack as his shoulder hit the thick metal of her door brought a cruel smile to her face.
She watched as he pushed himself upright. He swore under his breath, too low for the microphones to pick up details.
"Let me in, bitch. You're mine."
"That is one thing I won't be again, Kent. Go away."
"You have to come out some time, bitch. You can't stay in there forever. And this door can't keep me out forever."
Karin shook her head. Kent never was the brightest of souls. It would take him days to break in. He was good with locks, if he could get to them, but when she put her new security in, it was with him in mind. Of course, he was right about her as well. The tiny cubic footage available to her didn’t leave room for a back exit. While Kent kicked at the door and continued his diatribe, Karin checked her tiny refrigerator. A six pack of yogurt, a box of peanut butter candy cakes, and a mixed bag of apples and oranges weren't enough supplies for a long siege.
Her compiler took up the center of the small office. She moved to check on her compile, realizing that if things got bad, she could always whip up a custom bacterium to recycle her waste. It was better than starving to death. Of course, the fact that eating her own recycled waste was better than opening the door for Kent said a lot too. The compile had come along nicely. The prototype of the new compiler would be ready for translation in a few hours. Translation didn’t require the same level of babysitting that compiling did. She really ought to be hearing from Vivian soon.
Of course, her agent had let her sit idle for more than a week before. Nothing for it but to make the best of it. Yogurt and spoon in hand, Karin sauntered to her chair, leaned back, and settled in to watch the festivities.
***
Karin wasn’t given to pacing, but the waiting made her a little stir crazy. She was a better scientist and bio-coder than Kent, but when it came to straight electronic hacking, he had her cold. Her only real defense was the complete isolation shell she’d placed herself in. The problem with the isolation shell was that it went both ways. Any line out would be a way for Kent to hack in, so she had no lines out.
She had her local computer, she had her bio-compiler, and she had her little fridge. She’d already eaten half of the yogurt, along with all the candy cakes. She’d watched a pair of movies; she’d finished her compile and put the translator to work turning the compiled DNA into a new compiler. Vivian still hadn’t stopped by, and Kent still stood outside banging on the door.
At first, she’d wondered why the neighbors didn’t notice and complain. Then she’d checked her clock. Kent showed up at two in the afternoon on Saturday. She checked again now. Ten PM. None of the nearby offices opened until Monday at nine. She wouldn’t starve to death, but she would be hugely bored. Her pacing brought her back around to her chair. She swung into it, sliding into the embrace of her VR rig like sliding into a lover’s arms.
Her bare desktop came alive around her, but instead of the wireframe of her office Net surrounded by the endless vista of the Wider World, she was stuck in a ball of cotton, nothing but her basic local functions around her. She could code some more, but now that she knew it was the weekend she didn’t want to work. She could watch another movie, but she wanted something interactive. She reached for the connection to her MMO, Cat’s Paw. The introductory graphic came up. The words ‘searching for connection’ floated beneath the image of a furry, clawed humanoid hand.
Without thinking, she started to toggle her network active. Before she could finish the activation, sanity caught up with her and she threw her emergency kill switch. She leapt from her chair, trembling with reaction to how close she’d come to letting Kent in. She knew VR games were addictive, and knew a good MMO was the same, but she’d never realized just how insidious Cat’s Paw could be. If she'd been a moment slower to kill her reconnect, or even a moment faster to complete the connection, Kent would already be through the door.
Karin wished she had some of the candy left, or even some pretzels, but she'd eaten all of those while working on the new compiler. She needed to do something to settle her nerves. The occasional thump that made it through the soundproofing on the door wasn't restful at all. She sat back down in her VR rig, careful not to activate it. She didn't have any new commission work, and her work on the new compiler was done, running its way through the translator.
She decided to code a new translator. Even if she got hugely inspired, if she didn't rip off too much code from the old one, it would easily take her until the end of the weekend. Kent couldn't keep up his door smashing that long, she was sure. Even with the mods she'd coded for him, Kent had stamina problems. She could only do so much to a basic frame before a person became someone else, even something else. With Kent, he'd always been strong and fast, but there was a reason she'd referred to him as a ninety second wonder.
She was just sitting down to start work on the new translator when a thought hit her. Kent was a better hacker than she was, but he'd never been much of a scientist. If she could figure out a way to send a signal from a system he couldn't hack, she could get a message out. He was a genius with anything mechanical, but living things always eluded him. All she needed to do was code up a completely biological device that could interface with her computers and communicate with the Wider World; a living firewall.
Even as she began coding, a self-deprecating smile crept across her lips. All she had to do was push the boundaries of a technology that, in the year she was born, would have seemed like magic. Without stopping, she threw a prayer to the winds that the spirit of her old mentor would always be around to soften the impact when her hubris made her fall.
She might not be able to do it. Others had tried and failed. She had a few ideas they hadn’t tried, but in the end, breaking out wasn’t her only goal. Giving her hands and mind something to do before she gave in to her craving for Cat’s Paw was far more important.