Chapter 9. Gray Ops

After what felt like an hour I came to the old parking deck made of pockmarked gray concrete, older than the fungal-grown structures around it, the deck's rebar skeleton visible in some places where the structure had worn away. Parking decks used to be everywhere, I read in school, but once personal motor vehicles became both unaffordable and more or less illegal, most decks were converted into other uses.

This one was an open-air tech bazaar, its exterior hung with torn and mildewed banners in multiple languages announcing various shops within.

The entryway was packed with people shuffling in. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but not a market full of middle-aged people of limited means. I guess I thought of this place as being full of young punks and thieves, the kind of people I met at Mr. Grid’s. Though come to think of it, a number of those runners had themselves been middle-aged.

I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being followed, but figured nothing bad was going to happen in such a public space, studded with obvious surveillance cameras. I moved among the lower levels, checking out used, knock-off, or stolen hardware in big plastic bins or spread out on carpets.

Honestly, I didn’t know what half of this shit did. My eye was drawn here and there, and after my conversation with Dr. Rashida Qin, I was learning to let my eyes guide me. It was possible they knew more than my conscious mind. I picked up a few pieces of equipment without knowing anything about them, other than that some looked like they might connect to my net port via a simple cable, others with more complicated adapters. Still other things looked like they were tiny, implantable devices.

“Don’t buy anything implantable here,” came a raspy and familiar voice. I turned to see Kent, the old man from Mr. Grid’s, next to me wearing the same dirty hoodie and duster as last night. He carried an old green shopping basket full of devices that were completely unknown to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

Kent pushed past me, sorting through a bin of music players with his dry and cracked hands. “What are you looking for, kid?”

“I’m not sure. Enrique and Gloss told me to go shopping and then to find Linney for some help with a breaker. I think I need a console, maybe a laptop, some connectors, maybe one of those jack-out switches.”

Kent looked up at me. His eyes in the wire-frame glasses were huge, knowing, and kind. “You have no real idea what you’re doing, do you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Your ear is bleeding,” Kent said.

“Oh hell,” I said, finding the handkerchief that Enrique must have tucked into my new blazer when he set it on the bed in the guest room. I dabbed at my ear, found the blood mostly dried and crusty. At least I wasn’t dripping.

“Come on, kid, I’ll take care of you. You got money?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t tell me how you got it, all right? I don’t want to know anything more about you than absolutely necessary. Between that neural python yesterday and you bleeding on my shoes today, you seem to be a magnet for trouble.”

Kent reached over to a stack of grubby shopping baskets and shoved one into my hands. Then he shuffled down the row of stalls, some flying banners and signs and illuminated screens displaying messages in Chinese and Arabic and Cyrillic, some little more than card tables staffed by bored elderly people. The most wonderful smell of wok-seared noodles drifted through the space, and I had to admit my mind was more focused on lunch than it was on hardware.

Kent stopped every now and then to throw something my basket, usually with a muttered comment such as, “Gotta have this,” “Can’t go wrong with these,” “If you don’t want to flatline you’ll need this,” none of which told me anything about what he was urging me to buy. Each time he added something to my basket, he gestured at me to give the shopkeeper some money.

I figured I was supposed to bargain but I had no idea how, so I just handed over cash, feeling like a chump, but also trusting Kent to teach me what I didn’t know. By the time we’d finished with the first level, the basket was full and I’d spent 4,500.

“Hey, Kent,” I said, thinking of something as we reached the last shop, which displayed a row of knives in a clear, scratched up polycarbonate case, “I feel like someone’s following me.”

“That means someone’s following you,” Kent said. “It’s a healthy feeling, kid. Listen to it.”

“Could you help me get a weapon?”

He stopped and turned. “The only weapon you need is a good pair of running shoes. Because if they’re sending someone after you, fighting in meatspace isn’t going to go so well. You’re going to get greased if you stick around. People like us, we strike on the net, strictly.”

He hesitated, looked at me. My expression must have been especially dopey, because he softened.

“If it will make you feel better,” he said, turning to the case full of knives, “you can pick up one of these.”

He reached past the case of knives and plucked a small drone from the table. It was about the size of the drone that Enrique had me disable on my first evening in the city. In place of a camera, it sported two sharp metal barbs.

“Is that—”

“A stinger, yeah. We call this a hornet. Autonomous stun gun. Eight minutes flight time. Single-use. Professional security will brick it within three seconds of liftoff, but if they send some untrained prick after you, which they are known to do, this might give you a moment to run like hell.”

He handed it over.

“Five hundred,” said the shopkeeper.

As we walked up the incline to the next level, I worked up the courage to ask, “What is the rest of this stuff, anyway?”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Kent put a hand on the back of my neck, his surprisingly strong thumb and forefinger practically pinching me as he steered me toward the food court. Oh thank heaven, I thought, as he shoved me down into a flimsy plastic chair at an equally flimsy plastic table. As his shopping basket clattered to the grooved and oily concrete below, he practically knocked my shopping basket out of my hand and held out a finger to me—wait right here—and then turned to one of the food stalls. I looked around and observed the families lining up for food, speaking with the vendors, a few students with newer clothes and backpacks moving among them.

Within a couple minutes, Kent returned with two white ceramic bowls, fragrant with steaming noodles, vegetables, some manner of protein, and a sauce that was at once spicy, sour, salty, and sweet. I had never eaten anything so good.

Wordlessly, Kent and I slurped up the noodles. When his bowl was completely empty, down to the last drop of chili oil, he belched, then looked at me and said, “The first thing you have to understand is that we are living in a simulation. Us versus the corps: it’s all a gigantic game. Our real bodies are hooked up to server farms somewhere, probably on a boat in an underground ocean on the moon of Europa. So nothing you or I do matters at all.”

He stared at me and waited for me to acknowledge what he said. I sort of nodded, wiped my mouth with my napkin.

“The second thing you have to understand is how this hardware works. Aside from cables and power supplies, you have three things in your basket. First is a basic console combined with a network map. You point it where you want to go and jack in.”

“It looks like a metal dinner plate,” I said. Scratched into the finish of one side was the word “Impermanence.”

“It’s used, what do you expect?”

“Something that looks more like a computer.”

Kent turned to me, his expression full of an old man’s contempt. “Consoles can look like anything. One of the best consoles I ever saw was a toy stuffed animal. A possum. Never judge a tool by the case it’s in.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, be smart. I think I knew the runner who previously owned this console. It has a feedback sensor. If any harmful data is coming down the connection—”

“—it will shut off?” I ventured.

He fixed me with that hostile glare again. “No. Don’t interrupt. If any harmful data is coming down the connection, this console will convert it to power, which you can use or sell back to the grid. Your pain becomes your gain. Got it?”

“Oh. What about a jack-out switch?”

“You don’t need a jack-out switch. Just make smarter runs. What the hell is Enrique teaching you?”

“Not enough, clearly.” I gestured at the basket. “What else does this stuff do?”

“Second thing is a copy chip. You can use it to backup an icebreaker.”

“I thought that copying a breaker was almost impossible.”

“It’s difficult, but this thing can do it. You’re lucky I found one. This is a single-use item. A real oh-hell button. It will burn itself out when it writes the breaker’s code back to your console. So try not to waste it.”

“What’s this last thing?”

“Catheter. If you’re jacked in for more than four hours you’re likely to pee your pants without it.”

“Can I return it?”

“No returns, no refunds.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

Kent stood. “Thank me by not getting yourself flatlined and staying the hell away from me if you’re tagged.”

“Deal.”

He turned and walked away, muttering, “And if you are covered in tags, you need to overwrite yourself in the Root. Not that they don’t know where we are every second of every day, not that they can’t read our thoughts, but hey, it’s all part of the game, such a beautiful game, the best game ever designed ...”

As I walked out of the parking deck, having stashed my purchases in an old plastic sack taken from a metal tree at the entrance, I heard a sharp whistle. I turned and saw Linney sitting on a concrete retaining wall, her backpack next to herself, swinging her legs.

“Hey Rawls!” she said. “Enrique said I could find you here. I’m supposed to help you with your coding.”

My day was looking better. The prospect of spending a few hours with nonlineardynamics—Linney to her friends—made me optimistic about the future. I approached her and said, “Hey, thanks. I’m totally lost when it comes to breakers. I don’t know how I’m supposed to buy or make one or anything, and I have to warn you, I got a C+ in coding in high school.”

She tilted her head. “Is that a joke?”

I felt frozen. “Um, no.”

“You’re hopeless, dude,” she said. But she laughed and hopped down from the retaining wall and took my hand, so for a hopeless guy, I felt really good.

“Rule number one,” she said. She led me under a BRUTE overpass, heavy buses aimed at the rural counties rocketing overhead.

“We’re living in a simulation?” I said.

“You’ve been talking to Kent, I see.” The underside was full of tiny stalls, some with brightly-colored sun shades. There were stools, and chairs, and counters. Both frozen and steaming containers of liquids occupied much of the space in the stalls, and from all directions came the sounds of drinks being poured.

I showed her the inside of the shopping bag. She raised her eyebrows. “Ditch the cath,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, rule number one is coffee. Drink lots of it.”

We came to a stall with an antique brass espresso machine, and hopped up on two chrome barstools with leatherette seat covers.

“Coffee,” I said to the teenage punk-rock girl working the counter.

“What’s the magic word?” the punk said.

“Please?”

“Smash the patriarchy,” Linney said, and the punk winked and shot finger-guns at us, then turned to the espresso maker. “We’re going to get you a sick breaker,” Linney said. Then she reached forward and touched me behind the ear. “Hey, are you bleeding?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, enjoying her touch but humiliated by the reason for it. I gently removed her hand. Red blood, less crusty and more liquid than last time.

“You better not bleed on my counter,” the punk said as she tamped the espresso grounds.

“I’ll bleed wherever I bleed,” I muttered perhaps slightly too audibly.

“That’s the spirit,” the punk said. She came toward me a moment later with a small, thick-walled ceramic cup rich with dark coffee and a beautiful layer of crema on top. “Fight, die, bleed, look out for those in need,” she said.

“Will do.” I downed my shot. Liquid pleasure blasted through me. When I looked over, I caught Linney smiling at me. She seemed amused, even touched.

Growing up, the only time I ever felt like I belonged was when I was with Freya. But now, I felt like I belonged here, too.

“Rule number two,” Linney said. “Your breakers are part of you. What’s your favorite thing to do for fun?”

I flashed back to childhood, thought of the best moments of my life. “Honestly? Lay by Hungry Creek with my best friend.”

“Hungry Creek,” she said. “We can work with that.”

She tore open an alcohol wipe from her bag and cleaned off a sensor on her laptop. Then she pulled on a disposable glove and placed a warm hand on the back of my head. “Just need a blood sample.”

With the red smear on her gloved finger, she touched the sensor. Something popped up on the display.

“This is interesting,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“There’s something weird in your blood.”

“I just went to the doctor and she didn’t say anything.”

“It’s not something most people look for,” Linney said, looking at me with a strange kind of scientific curiosity. “At some point, someone injected you with fabricytes.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Only if you want to live a long, happy life. Typically the people who get these expect to die soon, but not before one last grand gesture. Buck up, cowboy, it was probably just someone pulling a prank. Or your guardian angel.”

She laughed, reminding me of the CheRRy, then cleaned the sensor off again, and we got to work.

The CheRRy’s Guide to the Hardware Store

Name

Fabricytes

Manufacturer

White Tree

Legal status

Outlawed in the United States and the European Union

Description

Artificial red and white blood cells, delivered by biannual injection

Cost

Depends on how picky you are about quality

Function

To keep a runner alive just a little bit after they should have flatlined