Karin woke to the sound of a message alert. A quick check of her queues showed her new mods had finished passing through the translator. While she coded them, she felt everything fit perfectly, but she still checked the compile and the translation. Everything checked out remotely. Now she had to get to the office, collect the mod, scare up an applicator, and get home.
She cleaned herself up, got dressed, and stood in front of the door.
The door sat there mocking her. She couldn't bring herself to open it. Objectively, Karin knew most people walking down the street would see nothing more than a very pretty pink-haired woman. Subjectively, she felt everyone who saw her knew her measurements, her turn-ons, and her favorite positions. They'd know how she gasped when she got off. They'd follow her, trying to get downwind to catch a whiff of cotton candy sweat.
Silently she stood there swearing at Kent. He had done this to her. He seduced her, convinced her to play around with cosmetic body modification, to turn herself into the ultimate fuck toy. She still regretted letting him film her, but at the time it seemed so natural. Documenting her greatest success, making herself a tidy sum by showing off what she could do by tweaking a few genes, modifying a few proteins, and enjoying herself.
For a while, she even enjoyed the attention she got at parties, at clubs, and especially at conventions where everyone knew who and what she was. After a few months, she decided she wanted a break. That's when the trouble started. Everywhere she went someone knew her. Someone had one of her mods, either the ones she wore herself, or one of the line Kent convinced her to design. They wanted to talk to her, to congratulate her, to touch her. Everyone wanted a piece of her.
And Kent, supportive Kent, inspirational Kent, helpful Kent, bastard he ought to be gang raped in prison Kent made sure every single one got whatever piece they wanted.
She remembered imploding. Gradually walling herself away inside her own head until she just went through the motions, doing whatever Kent told her to do. She still didn't remember everything she'd done then. Every week it seemed she found another video, another picture, another full sensory recording of her doing something… someone. She didn't remember most of them. When Vivian confronted her, she realized she hadn't created anything for nearly a year but put it off to a lack of inspiration. It took seeing her mentor on the street, waiting for her, ending his self-imposed exile from society, to break her free of Kent.
She remembered the details only vaguely, although she'd seen plenty of crappy amateur videos of the event. Kent leading her to a club. Her mentor standing in the doorway, waiting for her. Kent going to push him out of the way. Her mentor ignoring Kent, watching her, a sad smile on his face. Kent taking a swing at the old man, knocking him to the ground.
Every time she stood in front of a door like this, afraid to go out, she hated Kent. Burning hatred let her reach for the handle. Shame fueled fury pulled the door open. Sickened rage made her step out into the hallway.
All in all, a typical morning going to work.
The wide, breezy common area of her apartment building greeted her. A few of her neighbors, mostly retirees, waved silent greetings. She walked to the corner exit and waited for the bus, a cotton candy girl waiting for something to go wrong.
***
She had a relatively uneventful trip to the office. She got one request for an autograph on the bus. The guy looked creepy, but she knew better than to judge by appearances. If she did, she would send herself clubbing every time she looked in a mirror. It turned out the creepy guy, Harry, had one of her latest body mods, a simple scent removal. They talked while the bus plodded its way from the suburbs to the center of the city. He played Cat's Paw, and when he found out she did too he eagerly told her about his latest character, a Lupo, a Werewolf.
"Yeah, I rolled him when I lost my last character. Brant was an Ursa."
"You, playing a werebear? I just don't see it." She smiled at him. God help her, she was flirting with a creepy guy on the bus.
"Yeah, I know, right? I let it pick for me the first time, and I rolled a bear. He kicked some major ass, but then one day I got swarmed by a Lupo rush. The whole damn pack jumped me at once. I know I took down four of them, but Brant died before I could break the pack. This time I'm going to take over my own pack. Lupo rushes are where it's at, man."
"Why didn't you just respawn?"
Harry looked at her like she'd said something witty. When he realized she wasn't kidding, his face fell into a look of pity mixed with mild horror. "You've never read up on the game, have you?"
"Well, kinda. I didn't let it pick at random. I looked up which archetype was the stealthiest, which one could blend into the woodwork."
Harry nodded like he understood. "Yeah. Okay, I guess I can see that. I mean, I had you pegged for a Mage, or maybe a Vampire. They're the high-profile players. But…" he broke off, embarrassed.
"What's wrong?"
The big man chuckled, bouncing a palm off his forehead. "I'm such a knucklehead. I figured your fifteen minutes of fame were up, and you were planning a comeback. I just realized; you wanted out, didn't you?"
She blushed, his eyes lost focus. She watched carefully as his hands twitched, but he kept them to himself. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. When I got my Cat's Paw account, I just wanted to disappear. I've… I think I've done that in there. Nobody knows who I am."
"So, you're a stray?"
"Well, sort of. I chose to adjust the stats. I didn't want the character doing things for me. I dropped the personality and intelligence sliders to the bottom of the scale, pushed everything that enhanced stealth as far as I could the other way. I wound up an adopted stray."
Harry grunted acknowledgement of her explanation. "Yeah, I can see that. Y'know, sometimes I wonder who programmed the game."
It was something she'd wondered herself, but she replied with a simple "Why?"
"Well, it completely ignores some conventions of MMORPGs. There's no 'starter area'. There's no tutorial. You get dropped in the pot right from the start. There's no leveling; everything is skills based, and so far, no one has managed to crack the code to reverse engineer skill levels."
"Huh. I'd never played one before, and, um…"
"What?"
She blushed again. His hands twitched again, but he kept eye contact with her. Apparently, he was no stranger to self-denial. She spoke to distract him. "I haven't left my owner's apartment."
His next words made her hate him, an old hate she couldn't muster any fire for. "Man, your owner is a furry or something?"
"No. I stay in cat form or log out when he gets home. As far as I know, he doesn't know I'm a Neko."
"Ah, shit. I'm sorry. I just… Look, I didn't want to mention it, but after I got your mod, I looked you up."
"You've seen my movies." It wasn't a question. He didn't need to answer.
"You're really, really good at… You're good at whatever you do. I get that you don't want celebrity. I get that you just want to be a mod coder and maybe do some gaming in your off time. I'm not one of those whack jobs who think that because they've seen… Seen stuff that you…" Harry broke off, realizing how much she'd retreated into herself. When he spoke again, his voice was full of amused self-recrimination. "I forgot something."
"What." Her answer was perfunctory, forced out past her desire to disappear.
"The first rule when you find yourself in a hole."
"Huh?" Despite herself, her curiosity spiked. Maybe Kittul had rubbed off on her more than she realized.
"Stop digging."
That pulled a smile from her. She looked at him, gave him a half-faked grin, and said, "Look, I appreciate the compliment, but I'd just like to be alone for a while."
"Okay. It was great meeting you. Sorry I turned out to be such a dick."
At that she laughed, but she still stood up to move to another part of the bus. "No, I know dicks. You're just a little awkward."
He looked up at her, "I could move. Seriously."
"No, you're sweet, but I’m smaller than you, I'll find a seat better."
"If you insist. If you ever need a hand in Cat's Paw, just look me up. My handle is Wyatt of the Patuxent River Pack."
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
"Sure Harry. Nice meeting you."
***
At the office, she found an old applicator in the drawer under the translator. Dust covered the packaging, but the seal looked good. Just to be sure she ripped it out and tossed it in the mini autoclave.
While it steamed, she checked the translation. The proteins formed exactly as she'd planned. She inserted a USB into the translator's port, transferred some data in and out, and checked the storage. Everything worked.
She sat there, nervous, until the autoclave pinged to pronounce the applicator sterilized. Moving with a professional lack of hesitation, she loaded the protein and a retroviral coder into the little injector, swung it up to her neck, and hit the inject switch.
As expected, she felt a small cool patch form, then dissipate. Briefly, she considered waiting in the office to be sure nothing would go wrong. A quick look around reminded her what happened last time she was in the office.
As she strode out the door, she rang up Vivian. A few seconds later, her agent answered. "What's up, Karie?"
"Nothing much, Vi. I just stopped by the office to pick up a few things. I'm headed back home now. I wondered if you wanted to get something to eat."
Vivian made a noncommittal noise, "I dunno. I'm…" she went silent for a few moments. When she spoke again, her voice dripped amused frustration. "Sure. My plans just went out the door with my backup plans in tow."
"Mongolian?"
"The place near the office?"
"I'll meet you there."
"Okay. See you there."
Karin disconnected and started walking to meet her friend for lunch. Kent was still in jail. She had no reason to keep looking over her shoulder.
She still did.
***
De'Shak looked down from her observation deck into the vast laboratory in which her Researchers tortured the fabric of reality to obey her whims. Her Prime Researcher, a relatively new one converted after the last raid, waited silently by her calf.
The great Gateway, designed to punch holes in the fabric of space and time itself, stood powered up but mostly idle. Occasional arcs of lightning filled the air, grounding out in specially placed rods. While she watched, the play of electricity caught up a Researcher doing maintenance on of one of the rods. For a few moments, it seemed he would simply provide a pretty light show as he cooked in his own tank, but the electricity proved too much. The tank shattered, throwing fluid and gray matter in a wide arc.
The Imperiatrix smiled. It was good the incapable and unlucky got weeded out. Without the threat of starvation or age, protected from violence by De'Shak's Guard, the Researchers lived until something killed them. De'Shak couldn't be counted on to weed all the problems out herself. Satisfied at chance augmenting her culling, she turned to her new Prime.
"How goes our plan?"
"It goes well, mistress," The Researcher's whiny artificial voice needed to be adjusted. Without waiting for it to finish talking, she reached around behind the thing and twisted at the connections. His voice trembled from the pain of being manipulated, but he continued his report.
"All three gateways have been created. Power generation is marginal, less than anticipated per connection point. The generation from each connection is sufficient to maintain that connection, and bleed over from connection maintenance is maintaining the tertiary universal connection."
The Imperiatrix glowered down upon her Researcher, and he trembled more pronounced than he had when she adjusted his voice, "Is the project a failure, then?"
"It requires approximately one quarter million connection points to power the primary gateway. The secondary gateway requires less power, as the parallel to which we are connecting is less stable itself. One hundred fifty thousand additional connections are required to maintain that gateway, although as you are aware we need not maintain that gateway for project success."
De'Shak blanched as the Researcher quoted figures. Counting every Researcher, Guard, and Servant in her domain, she had barely a quarter million beings. The total population of the collected Imperiatrices hovered under one billion, although the precise figure varied wildly, swinging up post-Harvest, dropping to its nadir in the scramble for power just before one of them initiated a new Harvest.
"How long can we afford to maintain the project before we will no longer be able to participate in the next harvest?"
"Indefinitely, Mistress."
To ensure the maximum menace, De'Shak slowly tracked her gaze from the gateway to her prime Researcher. When she was certain the being's full attention focused on the terror she inspired, the Imperiatrix spoke.
"Explain yourself."
The Researcher skittered back half a pace, as if that might save him should the Imperiatrix desire his termination. That put him perilously close to the edge of the balcony. De'Shak decided that she would, eventually, kick this Researcher from the balcony, but not before hearing what he had to say.
"Mistress, at no time since the project initiation have the inhabitants of that parallel maintained less than five hundred thousand connections. There is a lull to near that number roughly once per period of rotation in the primary parallel. This coincides with the time period when their sun is aligned above the Pacific Ocean. Time differential makes the lull time vary wildly, of course."
De'Shak's head spun with the heady feel of wealth. Opening a gateway required massive amounts of power, maintaining one only slightly less so. Connecting to a gateway when another Imperiatrix decided to Harvest remained the least expensive option for invading another world, and even that consumed up enough energy in the course of a week to fuel her entire domain for nearly a year.
The Imperiatrix leached all triumph from her voice before speaking, "Why did you not inform me of this first?"
The Researcher remained motionless; perhaps he realized how close he stood to falling from the edge of the platform. "The other Researchers informed me you preferred to hear all bad news first."
De'Shak smiled, and the Researcher wheeled forward slowly, subconsciously drawn to her pleasure. The Researcher's eventual fate was sealed, De'Shak was already enamored of the idea of seeing his broken tank and scattered gray matter on the floor of the laboratory. "Is there any other news?"
"Yes, Mistress. One more item remains. We have recreated the interface used to create connections. It has been modified for your personal use."
"What will this do to power consumption?"
"Actually, it will trigger a negligible but measurable power drain from us and your destination to the uninvolved parallel."
De'Shak frowned slightly, enjoying how the Researcher rolled away in fear. "So, I will be powering the parallel of the connections? With their technology, I'm not sure I like that at all."
"Mistress, you can connect to either of the parallels in question. You could observe or intervene if it became required. We considered making additional interfaces, should you require others to assist with intervention."
De'Shak's smiled hugely, her interlocking teeth gleaming in the light of the gateways. "You are to be commended, Researcher Prime. Begin construction of… Two hundred forty-three additional interfaces. Construct them in sets of eighty-one, with forty adapted for my Guard, forty for Researchers and one for a servant. Choose whichever servant you see fit to."
"Thank you, Mistress."
"Bring me the interface now. And Researcher Prime?"
"Yes?"
"Meet me on the observation balcony when the additional interfaces are completed."
***
Fortified by lunch, supplied with the leftovers, and reassured by the knowledge that Kent remained in jail, Karin made her way home. This time no one recognized her on the bus, all the stares just random leers prompted by her hair and face. When she arrived, she found a small package waiting. The label indicated it had been delivered by a reputable courier service. She grabbed it without thinking, carted it into the kitchen, and left it on the counter until she had her remaining barbeque stored in the tiny refrigerator.
She almost left it lying there, but a faint floral scent coming from the box intrigued her. She tore away the opening strip and spilled the contents onto the counter. A single pink rose slid out, surrounded and cushioned by a veritable snowstorm of red and white rose petals. A weary smile slid across her lips. Long ago she became jaded to random fan mail, but it had been a while, and she did love roses. Karin shook the box to be sure she'd removed all the petals, and a simple card fell out.
Wondering who sent her the card, thinking perhaps Harry had been more enamored of her than he let on; she picked it up and read it. Her eyes scanned the single, simple line, and before she could think she swept the entire mess of flowers, petals, and box into the garbage compacter. Her gorge rose as she hit 'compact', and she tried to forget what she'd just read, but it had etched itself into her mind.
I'm sorry. I'm a beast, worse even than you know, but I'm sorry. – Kent
By the time the compactor crushed the garbage into a pulpy mass suitable for dumping in her tiny composter, Karin had her stomach under control. She considered emptying the disposal, but even now she smelled the reek of crushed flower petals trying to escape the machine. If she opened the machine now, the stench would permeate the apartment. She could escape into her VR rig, but she didn't want to actively fear coming out of Cat's Paw. She already had too many reasons to stay in the game.
Staggering, clutching at the furniture, she stumbled through the tiny apartment until she reached her VR rig. Karin fell into the chair, let her hands take over to get the leads connected, and sank into the Wider World.
***
As her VR rig took over her senses, the first thing Karin did was dial up a strong smell of citrus to clear her nose. The virtual smell overwhelmed the stench of roses that still lingered, making her want to retch even in the sterile confines of a neutral browser. Once she had that detail taken care of, she went looking for hacking tools. She wasn't horribly familiar with them, but given how long she'd been with Kent, she at least knew what sites to hit.
Unfortunately, at least half the sites she hit had nothing but script kiddies and trolls. Soon she thanked the scent of the strong citrus smell she'd brought up. Half of the boards had scents they listed as 'integral to the browsing experience', which meant her browser wanted to implement them. Her ad blockers stopped them, but even the descriptions of some made her stomach roil. The worst she read this trip was 'Rotting Clothes', but it was impossible to tell if a scent was what it said.
Eventually, after a long and tiring search, she found the latest version of 'Carnivore'. When developed, it was the ultimate in hacking tools. When the Information Singularity snuck in under the radar, better applications sprang up, but Carnivore remained a reliable workhorse for getting through computer security. The latest versions even incorporated some of its descendants, making it far more effective than anything pre-Singularity.
Of course, if the programmers of Cat's Paw had included a modern security suite in the Agency, Carnivore would just set off their alarms. Fortunately, she couldn't be banned. If they banned her, her real reason for keeping Kent out of jail went away.
Moving quickly to still her nervousness, Karin downloaded her copy of Carnivore. That complete, she carefully checked it to be sure it contained no booby traps, Trojans or viruses. She breathed a sigh of relief. Half of the time when she went looking for tools of a potentially extralegal nature, she wound up having to purge and reinstall her entire system. When that system contained a part of her brain, that possibility made her understandably nervous.
She installed the clean copy of Carnivore to the storage in her head. It went smoothly, as if it installing it to an ordinary USB drive. She ran a few tests on the security of her apartment. On one hand, she liked seeing the cracking tool work exactly as advertised. On the other hand, seeing how fast it cut through her own security terrified her.
Satisfied that her new wetware was working as designed, Karin copied the installer to her head storage. The last thing she needed was a guide to modifying palm computer hardware. After a quick search to find one, she read a few random pages to be sure it made sense, then dropped it into her head. She got tempted to go looking for half a dozen other things, but she had what she needed. The scent of roses tried to seep back into her nostrils.
Before she started heaving, she fired off a message for Vivian to inform her as soon as Kent got out of jail, turned off the citrus scent, and logged into Cat's Paw.