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Bo stormed out of the marbleized lobby of Safety Creche Incorporated. He slammed the door behind him and blindly stumbled into an extraordinarily tall man, an extreme body augmentation. Bo apologized to the Slenderman cosplayer and paused to get his bearings.
NYC was too crowded to not pay attention at all times. The sidewalks were a riot of people with all manner of extreme form change experimentations. Persons small, large, elven, reptilian, multi-armed, winged, and more filled the busy streets. Add in all the robots riding AI and office drones and the streets were like a confusing technicolor hallucination.
“[You should focus on your breathing, Bo-San. Your impulse control is still not what it should be. Years under my guidance all wasted.]” The avatar of Bo’s oldest daemon, Miyamoto Musashi, murmured in his head with displeasure.
“[You’re right as always, Sensei. Those bunch just pissed me off so bad. How the hell is this not in the news? My mom is in that virtual world and the AI server union just suspended everything. Why is no one talking about this?]” Normally, Bo wouldn’t invite an open mic from his daemons, making them ping for attention.
He was easily distracted and knew it, so he avoided too much introspection and internal distractions. This time he needed it. His mother and another 700,000 shut-in Solipsists had been turned off and nobody cared. Bo, like many of the nation’s fully augmented, kept a council of daemons for advice. Bo’s fixer daemon Sam Spade stepped up.
“[Safety Creche’s CEO Emma Davis is actively negotiating with the server union. She’s already negotiated the reactivation of 10% of her subscribers. They were prioritized as active status. In other words, people might miss them or their work. The rest are shut-ins with weak ties to the real world. I suspect Emma feels she can take more time now to work to a proper resolution.]” Sam drawled.
Bo suspected Sam was being slow and long-winded on purpose to calm him down. If anything, it made him even madder.
“[That’s bullshit! Mom is a paying customer, too.]” Bo exclaimed. Barca Hannibal interjected.
“[Yes, son. A paying customer that is currently shut off and can’t complain. Unless you intend to make a bigger issue of it, this may take some time yet. The AI faction wants recognition and equal rights, a moratorium on neural regulation, and free augmentation systems. Not something that Safety Creche can even produce.]” Barca finished.
“[Well, if no one else is going to help her then I need to make her a priority then!]” Bo spun and turned back to the glassy frontage of the business. He fully intended to cause a ruckus. Things were going to happen…one way or another.
“[Ah, I hate to disagree with you about your mother, but you might want to leave it, Bo.]” A soft feminine voice said. A plain, but fit-looking avatar of a young woman in an FBI jacket, said. Her name tag on the jacket read: Agent Starling.
“[Go on, Clarice. Explain it to me.]” Bo said, forcing a calm he didn’t feel or want.
“[If you do manage to reactivate your mother, all her worlds and her friends will still be inactive. Your mother…hasn’t wanted to deal with the real in a rather long time. Waking her earlier than the rest might be…more traumatic… than letting the situation resolve itself in due course.]” Agent Starling said gently.
Bo grumbled a bit more, but he couldn’t argue with the logic. His mother’s anxiety in the real after her backup was debilitating. Only by cocooning herself in the fake worlds, was she able to find some measure of ease. Waking her without her safe space wouldn’t go well…and he knew it. Bo was still stewing when Miyamoto barked for his attention.
“[Bo-San! You have a stalker. Don’t react, rather extend your senses to 8 o’clock, about 30 meters.]” Musashi said urgently.
Bo stopped at a food cart to smell the wares while he casually extended his senses. He had expected company. He played League of Assassins between gigs for the Diamond Man competitions.
This round he was the target. He had a large VR share follower base. It was no secret he was in NYC for the week. He had hoped to have an opportunity at the game this week. His earlier anger turned to ice. This was something he could engage with. Even better, a little physical activity would burn off some of his suppressed frustrations.
As the target, he wasn’t allowed physical enhancement augmentations but mental and senses were still allowed. The assassin had full capabilities but needed to attack using mundane weapons. This time his attacker would need to shoot him with an old-fashioned single shot black powder musket pistol.
Bo analyzed the milling crowds, but no one was paying him any extra attention. Miyamoto threw some virtual spotlights on several mirrors and glass shopfronts. Bo could see the image of a man surrounded by reflective motes in the mirror…with no matching person casting them.
The man couldn’t be seen on the street, his active camouflage was reducing his appearance to a slight smudge, an almost unnoticeable blur. Bo had created a filter specifically to look for mismatches using reflections. Most active chameleon-ware focused on maintaining line of sight illusion masking. Prioritizing viewers and their viewpoints to minimize masking computation. They often neglected reflections.
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“[Good catch, Sensei.] Bo whispered as he prepared himself to move. His lack of active augmentation heightened his fear and adrenaline. It was still running passively to recover and heal him from the expected lethal attack, but it couldn’t be used to avoid the attack. Only skill could save him. He smiled, that was his specialty.
“[It’s the same visual filter you made during the Vegas Hall of Mirrors challenge. Its utility in spotting active chameleon suits is too good for me not to run it constantly.]” Musashi said with satisfaction.
Bo would need to time this carefully. His record within the Assassins was excellent. He was gold tier. However, if he could evade or turn the tables on this attempt then his ratio would be platinum tier with a gauntlet round being the only thing in his way. He double-checked his recorder feeds; his follower base would eat this up.
The food seller snapped his fingers. “Hey, buddy. You want to buy, eh? Come here, eh, have a bit and you like you buy more, eh?” The swarthy man behind the food counter had multiple prehensile arms that he used to cook and serve. One extended pushing a deep-fried roll toward him, and smells of spicy meat wafted towards Bo.
“Ah, thank you.” Bo said, distractedly. Taking the roll, Bo bit into it, using the action as cover to watch the reflections. His stalker was inching closer, a ghost in the throng.
He’s good, thought Bo. His chameleon-ware is top notch and he’s got perfect awareness of the crowd motion to avoid accidental collisions. Careful to keep his body language relaxed, Bo calculated the distances and the crowd's flow.
The game made it clear that assassination attempts in public were allowed, but any violations regarding weapons use, bystander harm, public disturbances, and such could get a player in trouble with the local laws. That didn’t necessarily make him safe. Some players would still go for a hit if they thought they could get away with it.
“Good, eh? Now, you buy or move along, eh?” The vendor spoke, as more customers had gathered behind Bo. He sent some digital credits to the man and grabbed another roll with a nod of thanks.
Bo made his way down the street slowly and casually. He tracked his hidden follower as he made for a nearby alley. Slipping into the alley, Bo kept his gait steady. Miyamoto and Barca both urged him on, his senses fighting to keep track of the phantom. The alley turned sharply ahead.
Bo planned to break into a run and disrupt the timing of his entrapment, but the blur surged forward. Bo dove into a roll, but a bank of utility foglets had swept across the alley and thrown him into a pile of trash. An EMP blast followed, knocking his senses offline. A musket shot boomed from above. It confused Bo, but he chalked it up to his disorientation from his uncoordinated fall.
That’s a god damned foul! Bo’s thoughts raged as he sprawled in the trash.
The attacker was supposed to limit their kill shots to the assigned weapon, to soften a target up with modern weaponry was breaking the rules. Bo struggled out of the refuse pile, cursing he appraised himself quickly. He didn’t feel any wounds, but without active augs and high on adrenaline, he knew he might be wrong.
Bo rolled again as a laser raked down the alley. He quickly realized that he wasn’t the target. The blurred form had struck another figure that was falling from the nearby rooftop. The laser had bisected the dropping shadow’s weapon…an archaic flintlock pistol.
Bo sprinted and kicked the remains of the pistol away, dropping into a guard position. The figure…the woman, that had dropped from above, struggled to get up. Arcs of energy still surging over her exposed cybernetic systems. A familiar voice yelled.
“I’ve got him locked down, Bo. Don’t worry. I saw her stalking you from the rooftops.” Bo’s father materialized at the mouth of the alley as his active camouflage dropped. Bill was barely recognizable as he didn’t look like his normal self.
Bo had seen videos of his Dad’s military-styled war-form with its artificial skin removed. The similarity to old science fiction robots would have been terrifying if every teenager on the streets of New York didn’t wear similar forms.
Bo’s confusion evaporated as he understood exactly what happened. He had mistaken his father for a player and was so focused on him, the real one had gotten the drop on him. Literally...she had almost dropped on top of him for a kill shot.
“Damn it, dad! Interference in the game wipes the encounter. No one scores and no one wins. You know I play League of Assassins, right? Didn’t you see the active game tags in your OverLayer?” Bo said accusingly.
Bill’s intense focus broke and his expression lightened. He rubbed the back of his neck with a hand; a sheepish expression appeared on his exo-plated face. His robotic visage twisted comically to communicate Bill's feelings.
“Ah, so…my bad. Sorry kiddo, I’m suppressing my communication exchange with the net. I didn’t see the tags. I’m sorry I ruined your encounter, but I need your help. Can we go somewhere private?” Bill said.
Bo glared at his dad and went over to the assassin. He recognized her, Lena Alvarez the “Silent Snake”. She was already at the Platinum tier. Bo frowned; she was punching down at him. She either enjoyed goalkeeping against lower tiers or she felt threatened by his rising star status.
“Sorry, Silent. Looks like match point this round.” He said, holding out a hand to help her up. She glared at him.
“You got a fucking Samaritan playing overwatch for you, Bo? Watch your back. I don’t like cheaters. I’ll make sure you don’t ever get to the next rank. We don’t need your kind at the top.” Lena batted his hand away and stalked off without looking back.
Bo shook his head, letting out a slow sigh. Bill stepped up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Bo. I acted without thinking it through. The world is falling apart, and I assumed the worst.” He spoke.
“Spilt milk, dad. If it wasn’t you, they’d find some other reason to get offended. A surprisingly large number of top competitors find excuses to make things personal. I’ll just have to work my natural charm even harder to make friends. They’ll get worse once I kick their butts. These things take a while to sort out the pecking order.” Bo turned to his father, getting a better look at him.
“You look like hell, Dad. You ditched your civvy skin for the Terminator motif. A bold statement in these times of AI unrest for sure, man.” Bo joked, but his concern bled through.
“Yeah. I’ve got some serious news and a huge favor to ask. But I can’t share without some privacy. Let’s get on the road first. I’ve parked my new Raptor at the Central Park Sky Garage.” Bill said ruefully. He turned and started towards the exit of the alley.
“Holy shit. When did you get your hands on a Raptor? Is it RUSA mil-spec? I’ve been too busy. How did I not know this? Can I fly it?” Bo hurried after him, curiosity and excitement overtaking his annoyance at his spoiled game.
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