Markus’s worries proved to be prophetic. In the following days, news stories about break-ins, daytime robberies, and street muggings seemed to be increasing at a steady rate, and while everyone in Neocopy had some experience with the inherent dangers of day-to-life in the city, the locations of the crimes were striking closer and closer to the upper-crust community (or “nano-brain pigs” as Markus would call them) that Aiden called home.

Much of the uptick in criminal activity was reportedly being committed by individuals known as taggers. Originally meant to imply anybody involved in the illegal theft and trade of profitable tech, the term had grown over time to loosely describe the ne’er-do-wells of society that thrived in organized crime that was related to the sale, distribution, and usage of tech and weaponry on the black market.

Aiden heard about taggers every now and then from rumors of their exploits posted on the Net. Nowadays, any netizen with anarchist leanings could declare themselves a tagger online, but the acts committed by the real culprits were undeniably authentic.

Daytime robberies had always been common, but usually not to managing directors at energy systems companies like Lux Aeterna, one of whom was found in a circle of dead bodyguards with eight stab wounds from an energy blade and a missing briefcase. Institutions like the Third Borough courthouse were also generally seen as off-limits (not to mention having little proposition value), but that was before two separate masked groups commenced simultaneous assaults on the shining marble steps, culminating in a shootout that ravaged the front of the building for nearly half an hour. There were casualties on both sides, but the survivors somehow slipped out from the grasp of authorities before they could be taken in, leaving only charred remains of fallen bodes and smoking, bullet-ridden wreckage behind. The motive and identities of the assailants were never determined.

Then, three days before the Terminary Spring Extravaganza, a riot broke out in the Fourth Borough, traveling quickly to the Fifth Borough before the Neocopy Corporate Compliance and Security (CCS) forces stepped in to contain it from spreading into the Sixth and Eighth Boroughs. A tagger collective had hit a metro train carrying special corporate delivery packages, sparking a fight that quickly moved into the metro station itself and spilled out aboveground. Things escalated from there: the police tried to shut entire blocks down, but regular citizens started taking advantage of the chaos, looting and raging into the streets.

School was cancelled. This didn’t affect Aiden’s routine much. Nowadays his excursions were mostly limited to school, ziv-ball, and home, and except for his last visit to Markus and that one dinner out with his ziv-ball team after their semifinals win, gone were the times he could hop on the metro and travel around Neocopy as he pleased.

So that day, Aiden stayed in his room on the third floor of the mansion, working on improving Auxy’s social awareness matrix in preparation for the school dance. He was relatively confident in keeping his two dates on the hook long enough to have some fun, but was stumped on the task of navigating potential fallout should one or both of the girls discover his other plus one.

Having transferred most of Auxy’s software from his neural chip to an external hard drive in his sleep the night before, Aiden now sifted through the training interface linking to Auxy’s core codebase, assigning new data sets pulled from the Ninth Borough police precinct’s crisis management tutorials, as well as audio records from several highly-rated relationship therapists in the area. He also scattered in some rom-coms for good measure, for variety’s sake (you never knew when even a cheesy one-liner would come in handy).

Though he was tempted, he didn’t dare hack into higher-level government or corporate databases for juicier, more advanced information. It wasn’t worth the risk.

A small knock came at his door. Aiden kept his eyes on his monitor. “Leave me alone, Tancy.”

“I’m gonna do an emergency override if you don’t open up,” came her muffled voice.

“Yeah, right.”

“It’ll probably interrupt whatever you’re working on. Maybe even cause you to lose data.”

Aiden got up and jabbed irritably at the wall panel. The door slid aside.

“What do you want?” he said shortly.

“I sent you five net-messages. You can count them on one hand, but that’s still a lot of net-messages about the same topic.”

“Yeah, I’ve been ignoring them. That means ‘stop net-messaging me’.”

“Look, I need your help, okay?”

“Not today you don’t.”

Tancy closed her eyes. “Please, I…I kinda have a big problem.”

“I’m glad you finally admit it. Acceptance is the first step towards recovery.”

“I’m serious, okay? This is bad. ”

Her tone gave Aiden pause. A minute ago, Tancy had threatened to activate a one-off emergency override from her cyberware, which on its own would have disabled all security systems in the mansion, as well as stall or halt most electrical systems and data protocols while the mansion’s central processing center rebooted. Their parents had given them this feature in the event of a lockdown malfunction, which was always a possibility given the amount of essential software installed directly in the mansion. In the event of such a shutdown, their override allowed them to move freely throughout the house as the system problem was resolved.

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Tancy’s willingness to resort to such a drastic move spoke volumes about the issue she faced.

Aiden swiveled in his chair. “I’m listening.”

“Remember how Mom and Dad basically told us to do no more screw-ups?”

Aiden steepled his fingers. “Oookay…I think I have an idea where this is headed.”

Tancy began speaking very fast. “I was working on a project for a portable essentials kit — kinda like a survival backpack, just for experimental purposes — and I was having trouble with the omni-generator because I wanted it to be able to charge through multiple energy pathways — so I was running tests and needed an energy source, and the central house outlet was just there so I used it — but I underestimated the amount of power the pack needs, and there was a power surge — so I’m basically running a program I can’t shut off that will probably drain the house generator and cause a borough-wide blackout in ten minutes.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Just wow.”

“Please help me,” she said in a small voice.

“Here’s a thought,” said Aiden conversationally. “Unplug it.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. Just grab the power cord and give it a little tug. It’s like pushing, but with more thought involved.”

“The surge is really high,” said Tancy, sounding distressed. “And I don’t think the backpack’s battery can handle it. I turned the computer off but I can’t access the loop that’s running independently in the pack itself. If I unplug it while all the pack systems are on, I’m afraid some internal process will get messed up. Or what if something catches fire? Plus, the wireframe in the pack itself is overheating, and I don’t know if that’ll mess it up even more. If you could just tell me how to fix the code —”

“How are you putting so much strain on the power grid with one little backpack kit?”

“No, it’s — just come with me. It’ll be easier to show you.”

Tancy led Aiden through the corridors of the mansion up to her bedroom/workshop/brainstorming station on the fourth floor. Her room was cluttered with blueprints, tools, and machine parts — remnants of both discarded and ongoing projects. Despite her tendency to break more things than she built, it was impressive that she managed to get anything done at all. Aiden attributed this paradox to Tancy’s ability to seemingly daydream her ideas into existence, no matter the learning curve.

Sometimes those dreams turned into nightmares.

The instant Aiden stepped into her room, a wave of toasty warmth rolled over him. It was sweltering inside. In the center of the floor was a hastily thrown anti-grav generator supporting a one-strap backpack with a metallic sheen. The air around the floating pack shimmered with heat haze given off by the orange lines of heat glowing through its seams — no doubt the wireframe Tancy was talking about.

Aiden booted up her computer terminal and was greeted by an intimidating wall of code.

“My God, could you write anything more inefficient? Define some functions, at least. I’m tempted to force-halt the entire thing to shut it down.”

“No! Don’t crash it, it’ll corrupt the driver.”

“That might be the only option.” Aiden pressed a button, and a larger hologram of the screen flickered on.

“First of all, you’re making too many variables in the program. That’s partly why it’s taking up so much CPU usage. And what’s with this protocol here? If the Amdahl’s Law calculations discredit parallel processing output, you should go with a single-thread framework, instead. Otherwise you’re just making things more inefficient.”

“Can you stop criticizing my work and just help me stop this?!” said Tancy anxiously.

“Just saying.” Aiden’s eyeballs flicked left to right as he scanned the text. Finally, he zeroed in on the defective chunk of code, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “Ah-hah, what do we have here? Looks like you were routing the input power to the heating coils instead of the photovoltaic cells, as well as a power option of the omni-generator that doesn’t exist.”

Aiden uploaded the new code to the operating system in the backpack and executed the new routine. Immediately, the backpack began to cool, the glow from its overheating frame fading away. He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m assuming you were trying to test out the solar capabilities?”

“Yeah,” said Tancy, somewhat sheepishly.

“There’s a sun for that, you know.”

“I was going to, but I was testing out the program just as much, and I don’t like coding in my cyberware when I have a computer in front of me.”

Aiden plucked the backpack off the anti-grav generator. “Well, your program conditions were demanding the output of a jet engine. And since you were routing it to power cells that weren’t even in the pack yet, it was converting the extra juice to heat. No wonder you were draining so much electricity.”

Tancy took the backpack and turned it over in her hands. “Thanks,” she said, a little grudgingly.

Aiden snorted. “You’re welcome.” He turned to leave, and Tancy said, “I’m going up to the roof to test the pack’s solar power to get some real-world data.”

“Good to know,” he called over his shoulder, and walked back to his room.

Plunking himself back at his desk, he resumed his work on Auxy’s training data sets. He wrote introductory paragraphs explaining a “hypothetical” situation of a man concealing and maintaining one date prospect from another. He upped the jealousy factor for Woman 1 (from gossip, Mateo had told him Dorothy Ramirez could be quite catty), and then initialized the neural net optimization routine.

A 3-D visual appeared on the monitor screen of three people standing in a crowded room, accompanied by dialogue that transmitted between the artificial participants in light blue streams of text and analytical code. A behavior tree hologram materialized on the wall, displaying summaries of Auxy’s learning progress.

Another small knock came at his door. Upon its opening, Tancy said at once, “Can you come with me?”

“To watch a power bar fill up? I’ll pass.”

“Please.”

“Goon, all you need to do is leave in out in the sun and check back later. You have like two whole hours of afternoon daylight left.”

“I want to stay by while it charges. It won’t take long. I just…don’t want to mess anything else up.” Her eyes were wide with sincerity.

Aiden looked back at his computer. He sighed.

“Okay, fine. Auxy is going through a new training module, so I can let it run on its own.”

Tancy scrutinized the monitor and the hologram of the behavior tree. “Are you training Auxy with healthcare data? Doesn’t that violate patient privacy?”

“Maybe.”

Aiden could feel his sister’s gaze boring into the side of head. “You can be judgy all you want. It’s not like I’m selling their data to diagnostic companies.”

“What if somebody else steals the info from you?”

“By hacking me? Get real. My encryptions are airtight and my firewall is solid. I’ll be deleting these data sets after I’m done with them, anyway. Do you want to get started on watching your backpack battery fill up or not?”