Chapter 3: Rethinking the Obvious

Stupid. I had done something incredibly stupid. Of course the hyper-advanced "We Ain't Gotta Explain Shit" aliens had the ability to detect my intrusion on the space of their pets

I supposed I was just lucky that they were the merciful and mysterious sort. Well, that and that I'd planned on acting in good faith and they seemed to have this hyperethical thing going on. Didn't change the fact that I spent a good two full hours ranting at myself in my safehouse in a dead postapocalyptic world.

The truth was that I'd gotten off fairly lucky considering the immensity of my oversight, and that I'd have to be considerably more careful with my future plans. The biggest question remained how I should go about being stealthy about my activities in the future if this was going to be a recurring problem. I had absolutely no idea how the Fahrkan had detected me. Maybe they had lifesign detectors pointed at all human space? Some sort of galaxy-wide spatial distortion detectors that pinged to my intrusion? I literally had no idea -- and I sure as hell wasn't going to try to force my way into their facilities to find out. As I currently was, I had no guarantees that even if I had a thousand years that I would get even the slightest hint of how they noticed me, let alone how they understood what I was.

Kinda wish they'd let me know that last one. But meh. I still got -- sort of -- what I was after there. I just needed it actually implanted. I'd been counting on the Eco-Tech Coalition for backing me up in reverse engineering more of the technologies I thought I'd need for the future, but that plan was out. Back to the drawing board it was. Happily, I'd actually kept notes of possible alternate routes before I settled on the ETC. One of the options I'd previously discounted because it limited a lot of my "infiltration" potential was the Ghost in the Shell universe. Reviewing my notes made it pretty clear that shouldn't be a problem assuming I could actually get the Eco-Tech neural implant installed by someone there. Given that they still valued gold currency and had a lot of refugees, integrating myself there wouldn't be especially hard for a modern world. It wasn't even one of the more difficult worlds for me to reach.

A twist through unspace later, and I was standing in a clinic in the American Empire. More specifically, a "back-alley" clinic in the American Empire. I'd chosen it because, well, there were worse things to be than a criminal supplier and maintainer of cybernetics for the underclasses in a failing racist regime. Giving the underdogs a bit of a leg up against fascist assholes felt like the sort of thing that would both get fewer questions asked of why I wanted to work with them and that I could live with any consequences should they emerge later.

What I didn't expect upon allowing reality to unfold around me was to be bombarded with noise. It was a cacophany. My head started to feel like it was literally exploding and I was really getting tired of collapsing into unconsciousness damned near every single damned time I went someplace new.

I came to and found myself resting on what I could clearly make out to be a medical table. I wasn't really sure, exactly, how loud my groan was.

"I must say, fellah, that of all the ways to make an introduction to a man like me, I certainly wasn't expecting yours. Name's Clemont Biggs, but I imagine you already know that considering what you had on you when you came in here." The man confronting me was tall, middle-aged, damned near rail thin, and of clear african descent. The doctor I'd chosen to do the implantation, in fact.

I stared blearily at him for a while before my brain fully kicked into gear. "Ahh… you… you opened that case up, did you?"

He nodded. "That I did. 'Fraid your manner of introduction makes a man a mite bit mighty curious. Figured you'd understand, considering I needed to see if you had some medical concerns. What you had in the other bag on you was meant for me?" He was referring to the ten pounds of unmarked fresh-minted gold coins.

I sighed and nodded at him in turn. The act helped clear up the fog in my head. "Well, yes. Mostly to cover installing what was in the case."

The good doctor's response was not what I had expected. "Why? What's wrong with the one you got in you now? Didn't find anything wrong with the diagnostics I could run. Not even accounting for the instructions in the case."

Those. Fucking. Greyfaced. Jeweltoothed. Bastards. That was what Nakajima had meant by mirroring the Fahrkan's generosity! "I. Uh. Well that's a long explanation you don't want. Nothing dangerous, just … obnoxious. Suffice to say someone played a prank on me."

Biggs was, in a word, skeptical. "Uh-huh. Sounds 'bout right. Total erasure of all control firmware in your implant is a hell of a 'practical joke', son. I ain't never seen anything like it before, but I did manage to cobble something together with the universal compatability micromachine firmware I had on hand. It ain't perfect, you understand? Only reason it works at all, less'n I miss my mark, is due to how… adaptable… that piece of technology you got in your noggin' is. Look, I'm gonna start easing off on the network blockers in here, now, son. You might want to ease yourself out of autistic mode as I do, you understand?"

This guy. This guy was going on my christmas list. I stood there and just soaked in the local network feeds as I did. I could feel them like a weird sort of vague misty smoke surrounding me. Picking out frequencies and listening in as I went was … well. I could see some things were encrypted but the publicly accessible stuff… how does a man react to knowing he's got the entire internet in his head? My greymeats were probably, like, eighty percent pornography already.

I stared at Doc Biggs hard. "A thought's been bouncing around in my head, doc, and I kinda hope you'll play it with me straight here. Why in the hell are you helping me so much? I came here with a case full of experimental technology and even more in my head already, and a bag full of unmarked and untraceable gold coins. I know for a fact you didn't find a thing on me in any databases you could pull up from my biometrics data. So … why?"

Biggs shook his head. "A man in my line of work doesn't get that way by asking questions he doesn't want answers to, son. But he doesn't stay in this line of work by acting in bad faith. Besides. You came here planning to pay me enough to pay off my mortgage and my children's college fees. And 'experimental' technology? The hell you say, boy. That shit is beyond experimental. I know experimental tech. What you have in that case -- in your head -- that's milspec. I served. As a cybertech medic. You ain't got a lick of detectable cybernetics in you; even a deep medical scan barely showed me that eye, and them two brain implants of yours. I know "military secrets" when I see them -- and I know enough about what the Imperials have been up to, to know that whatever military it is, it sure as hell ain't mine. To top it all off, you came to me without tripping a single one of my security alarms. Naw. I ain't never kicked a man when he was down before, and I sure as hell ain't gonna start now. Wouldn't be good manners. I don't know what you're running from, son, but if it don't follow you here I won't be bringing it down on you."

He paused, then, and if his eyes were laser drills he'd be boring for texas tea through my skull right then. "You tellin' me I got something to worry about with you?"

I raised my hand up placatingly. "Nobody's gonna come asking questions about me, if that's what you're worried about. I … I'm not actually on the run so much as I've been asked not to make myself a nuisance, let's say. Best I don't talk about it."

Biggs very carefully didn't wince at my words. "Political shit?"

I shook my head. "Not… I can't go home again, but there's no trouble that's gonna follow me and I haven't got any enemies I know about. Just let it rest there, yeah?"

His look turned into something mildly indulgent. "You're payin' enough for the privilege, son. That I can do. Not for nothin', though, I actually know a good psychiatric AI or two that are certified to scrub session data. Might've sent a man or two their way after the war, y'know?"

I started with a chuckle, "Sir, I may yet take you up on that. Got somewhat more pressing concerns at the moment, though. You mind if I keep ahold of your information for future needs? Might be I will find myself in need of a good physician who has a good reputation for keeping quiet about things."

"'S long as you're a payin' customer, and don't bring any trouble down on my head, I'll keep you patched up, son."

I smiled predatorily. "So… any chance you might be willing to take future payments in … trade?"

He looked at me askance and for a moment I wondered if I'd pushed too far. I'd been looking for a physician with loose ties to the civil rights underground, but a competent man of that sort would be cagey and I was already weird enough. "Might do. What you have in mind?"

I sent him a datafile from the Altered Carbon universe dataslate. One that explained Digital Human Freight and how the Stack played into it. Biggs' eyes widened like saucer plates. "This is … this is the real thing?"

My smile widened. "Yessir."

His frown grew to match the width of my smile. "Damn your eyes, kid. I can't say no to this and you know it."

I leaned back onto the bed. "You'll give it to the right people. I'm quite certain of it."

"And what do you want for this?"

"Honestly? I'm imagining you can recommend a good hacker to me. Someone who might be willing to teach me his techniques in exchange for, well, that and the dataslate."

The much older man grumbled at me and I could suddenly sense a datastream flowing from him. A short bit later, I found myself making my first cyberspace call. I was confronted with an extremely basic disc avatar, and a blurred synthetic voice. "Clemont says you're my kind of trouble. That Stack of yours… it seems the real deal. If you're playing us I'll hack your head to see nothing but german eel porn for the rest of your life. Meet me at the corner of fifteenth and Washington. One hour."

I responded back in kind -- the cyberbrain software the good Doctor had uploaded into my head was significantly more intuitive than I'd anticipated, but then again this stuff at its most basic was made to be usable by eight year old children. And I suspected the Fahrkan gave me somewhat better hardware than it normally ran on. "How will I know who you are?"

"You'll know."

"Hello, Mr. Anders."

I was standing beneath a streetlight on the corner of the indicated streets at the indicated time, and had been for a good five minutes, before I was approached by a japanese looking man with what I recognized to be the same kind of eye implants as were common in the Japanese SDF rangers. I couldn't for the life of me recall the model information, but the man I was looking at could have been a clone of Batou for all I knew.

I shook my head ruefully. "Well. You certainly weren't was I was expecting."

He just smiled at me. "Yeah, well. You try being a veteran of the wrong side of a war in this country and see how you like the feel of it."

I just quirked an eyebrow at him. "You got a name?"

"Yes. But you can call me Nobody, just for that."

I shook my head. "Alright… this is gonna take a while. You got a place we can rest our legs while we have this little chat?"

"Eh. You check out enough. Not even I could find a damned thing on you. Decent coffeeshop right behind you. Let's start there."

I walked in and made to sit an an otherwise unoccupied couch in what was clearly a cubby designed to defeat common forms of surveillance. Hell, the doorway to enter was even a holographic mist display. I settled in to wait.

'Nobody' showed up a minute or two later and set some sort of device that made a high-pitched whine when he set it down on the coffee table in front of us. "Alright. Let's cut to the chase. You're clearly a foreign agent here to stir up the shit. What are you offering, what are you really after, and what will it cost us?"

I paused for a moment while thinking through how to address the issue of the man in front of me. "Hrm. Okay. You haven't heard of my little … organization … but for now you can call us the Jovian League. Your lot were chosen because, frankly, the League likes the idea of strong interest groups backing the ideas of individual self-determination and free association. I was allowed to make the choice of who to contact and where, and I figured that here was as good a place as any. As to what I'm offering will cost you … well. The good doctor might've informed you about the shall we say 'catastrophic data loss' event I suffered when I arrived? It's a part of the League's operational parameters that agents need to gather together resources and tools not based on League methods. For deniability and profiling concerns, you know. What I want is, essentially, whatever software tools you're willing to exchange meant for cracking and infiltration purposes. Especially those that are dynamically adaptable to unknown hardware and software configurations."

'Nobody' carefully avoids making eye contact with me for some reason. "You're asking for a dedicated polymorphic AI assistant. That's a big ask."

I tossed the Altered Carbon dataslate at him. "Think that'll cover it?"

'Nobody' linked to the dataslate, and I could see in real time as his bodyheat profile showed him reacting like he'd found a long-lost lover and she was not only just as beautiful as he remembered but interested in picking up where they left off and making up for lost time while they were at it. "Dear lord. How do you have specs like that on this thing??"

I smiled indulgently. "Believe it or not, that sn't Jovian tech. All yours on top of the rest. Still a big ask?"

'Nobody' smiled at me predatorily. "I think we're going to be very good friends, you and I."

It is an interesting facet of social dynamics that trust can be established fairly quickly if you make yourself appear to be a gullible fool with pockets that are far too deep for your own wellbeing. Nobody pisses off rich kids looking to throw money in their direction unless they have to. I had my AI assistant -- and determined that I was, in fact, able to run it on the EcoTech implant in my head, no less -- less than an hour later. Turned out 'Nobody' was "actually" one Charles Turingson. A totally legitimate and not at all fake name. Not like 'Mark Andes' was a real name either. But hey, at least we could be on first name basis with one another.

I wandered aimlessly in a nearby park for the rest of that afternoon just exploring the new AI and my digital interfacing capabilities before allowing myself to slide through the surface tension of reality again.