Cheat, page 9
Almost every store, shop, club and restaurant had privately owned cameras used for security. Those ran through a common database, so that people cheating them, or just being a pain in the ass, could be tracked and dealt with.
Watch wasn’t going to share data with famous people stalkers, but there were other ways of doing the same thing. A fake nose and some larger cheekbones, a more angular jaw line, all of these could help throw things off.
It was also highly illegal. Just like wearing a full face mask was. For the same reason, too. It could be used to defeat the biometrics. There were probably some special allowances for very famous people and their assistants though.
After all, it was clear that people really would go to almost any length to follow them.
Mason tried to be careful, since breaking his new toy before he got to try it out would be annoying. He could redo it all, but having to build it that carefully, so that the government wouldn’t know about it yet, took too long. He’d worked on the idea for years, but the printing had taken about three weeks, which was forever practically. So he lowered the black box, like it was made of glass.
Lisa looked over, since Sam moved back away from her for a moment to inspect her efforts.
“What’s this? A new ice cream maker?”
Looking at it, the four by three by two box really could have been almost any kind of industrial machine. It had an opening on the top, but that could have been the side, and there was a set of spigots near the bottom. They were a bit small for a good flow of frozen food, but Mason could kind of see it, now that it had been pointed out.
“Good guess. Wrong, but I can really see how you’d think that. It’s a nano disassembler, as promised. I need to test it, but that will take some set up, if I don’t want Watch coming down on me inside ten minutes of turning it on.”
Sam turned, and smiled, then made a distinctly girlish sound.
“Goody. We can work that out. We need someplace off grid. I’ll work on it. For now, keep that safe. I might send some people around to help move it, if that’s good with you? It will be easier to find a place, and move it there first, then have the rest of us go along.” She looked at it and shrugged. “I can understand if you don’t want to do it that way. We could steal it.”
That was possible, after all. Sam and her friends might not be revolutionaries at all, and could just be a tech stealing gang. If so, the problems that he would have working it still stood. It had to be done off grid, or else. It would be a shame to lose it, but he patted it a few times and stood up.
“That should work. Your plan. I can always make another one if I have to.”
Lisa nodded a bit, and stood, then walked over the device.
“It looks good. Solid. All your stuff does. So, we should scoot. It’s Friday, and that means we’re going to be working.” She made a face. “Parties. I’d invite you, but you’re a bit small for a bodyguard. Sorry, assistant. It’s illegal to have private security now.”
The vast woman patted him on the back, sending him staggering a bit. Almost as if she were trying to make a point as to why he wouldn’t be there to guard someone. It was a strange thought, since he couldn’t see a reason that anyone would want him there. It was just so true that he didn’t even feel bad about it.
After all, that he was standing there with two people that would be off at that kind of thing, going in real life and not VR, was so rare as to be nearly unbelievable. Him going too would be too hard to explain.
Mason looked at her and shook his head.
“Yeah, I can see that one. No problem. I have work to do anyway. You two go, and get that taken care of, and I’ll do my thing, here. Thanks.”
Sam looked at him, and seemed like she was going to apologize, but then just laughed.
“Got it. Like I said, I’ll send some people, in a few days. Maybe sooner.” Then, because the woman was strange, if nice, she walked over and hugged him. “Be good. I’ll see you Monday? We really do have work to do. We should try to get away for a week or so. Can you get the time off?”
He did have about four months of time off built up, but it probably wasn’t going to be needed.
“Maybe? If I can know about it far enough in advance. I get time for vacation. I just haven’t had any reason to use it before, since I started at S&B. I don’t know how easy or hard it will be to set things up.” Which was true. He really didn’t, having never tried it before.
Sam smiled and squeezed his arm. It would have been flirty, if her head didn’t look a bit like a Halloween fruit display.
“Do it. Even if we don’t need a test on this next week, we can head to the beach. I have a house there. A cabin really. Nothing huge. It will be fun. Maybe John can come along with us?” She looked at Lisa, who seemed to be thinking of something.
“That could work. It will take some doing, and might not happen. It will depend on him getting time off, and who the hell knows what Genesh has planned? Consistency and that boy do not mix well.”
There was a soft smile and a nod then.
“That is one way of putting it. Well, get the time, Mason. We’ll do something.” Then she and Lisa walked out, as he considered the whole thing.
It wouldn’t hurt him to lose a few days of vacation, even if he just stayed at home and worked the whole time. After all, he hadn’t gone much of anyplace for years. As he walked them to the door, it felt kind of exciting. Doing something, almost anything, was a bit of an adventure. Going to the beach with friends was a good enough reason for getting time off.
So was testing his new disassembler. It would work, the simulations had shown that, but you always had to make sure of it.
Like everything always did, the work he’d done had made more. First he had to figure out how to hide nutrients of value inside a sugar bomb, then he set up a new data set for bio-marker masking. Each person would need to have their own set of information, or else things would become too obvious.
If other people had the current imbed, then it would be great for hiding Sam and Lexi, but kind of obvious that the person using it was trying to not be noticed. At least to the hundred people in the city that would bother trying to track the rich and famous. Or the underground, if it came to that.
When those two things were set in motion well enough, he went to the VR room. It was tempting to just get laid and go to bed, but that was a bit boring. Seeing how Sam and Lisa really lived, going to parties and things like that, made him feel a bit staid. He hadn’t even been out of his apartment since the restaurant. It wasn’t fear however.
No, if the MCT or even the regular police were ever to come for him, being at home wouldn’t be safe either.
To that end he did something that he hadn’t thought of in years. He searched out a basic self-defense program, and practiced fighting techniques. It was illegal to have games with realistic violence in them, and had been for nearly thirty years, since it didn’t work in the world of virt too well. Rather, it worked too well, and was kind of thrilling, but people had kept getting confused, and attacking people in real life, not able to tell the difference. Little things would set people off, so the government had put an end to it.
Which wasn’t really true, altogether.
You could play endless flat games that had a violent theme. That actually seemed to lower aggression on the physical level for some reason that no one had ever discovered a reason for. People played shooters sometimes that way. In three dimensions you could play in cartoon worlds that had shooting, stabbing and things like that, too. They were unrealistic and kept the means of aggression to specific and very unlikely instruments, so that people wouldn’t gain a lot of combat skill that translated to the real world.
What Mason loaded was a basic martial arts class.
By the end of it he’d learned several useful things. For instance, being assertive was sometimes useful, if you were attacked. So was running away, which was his own favorite technique, he decided. The instructor, who seemed like a rather plush older woman, had also taught him all about eye scratching and how to properly kick and slap an attacking man in the groin. It was an old program though. He could tell, because there was no mention of the fact that women were just as likely to attack you as men were.
Also, the VR quality kind of sucked.
Still, the info was there, and easy enough to learn, if not exactly high precision fighting.
After that Mason found and loaded a chunky older woman into the sex program. She looked almost exactly like the class instructor. She wasn’t very good in bed, but it was different than his normal type. It was always good to not let yourself get into a rut.
Then he cleaned up and went to bed, it being a bit late for him. Nearly eleven.
So he was a bit scared when someone pounded on his door, at about four. That wasn’t enough sleep for him, or anywhere near. Mason liked to get at least eight hours and worked best on about nine. This five thing wasn’t going to cut it.
When he got to the door, and checked the screen to the left, it showed what the camera on the other side was seeing. That was three men. One of them being held between the other two. He was the smallest, being slender and short looking. The others looked like they’d be able to rip Lisa apart. Literally. As in pull her muscular arms right off. One was nearly black, and had a bald head.
The other looked muscular, and tall, but normal, otherwise.
The only thing out of place was their clothing. That was all pretty nice, actually.
Knowing he was about to die, falling for the obvious trick that these stalkers or thieves had going on, he opened the door, not bothering to hide behind it. There was no way his body was going to stop either of these men from coming in. Maybe if they got the drunk looking central man to do it, he could hold him off for a while.
That one did not look like he was having a good night.
“Hello? Is your friend there all right?” When the door opened, he was face to face with the guy, who was clearly in trouble, now that Mason was closer. “Crap! Get him in, onto the sofa. What happened?”
Rather than laughing at him, once they were inside, the man tried to talk to him. It was hard to understand, but different than any high or drunk individual that he’d ever seen before.
He was also the only person that Mason had ever met with blue hair. People had a lot of different colors, but that didn’t mean they came to his home like this.
“Heya. I’s fine. Thangs.”
The white guy on the right, who was carrying the man by the time they got to the white colored sofa got his package into place, tucking one of the pillows under his head. Then he turned, stood straight and looked ready to fight.
Mason hoped not, since he doubted this man would want to fuck afterward. Not in a fun or relaxing way.
Rather than yell or order him around, he waved at the guy behind him with a thick hand. One attached to a lethally looking muscled arm.
“He had a nano hive put in, earlier this evening. Something’s wrong with it. The basic idea is that it’s supposed to have opiate analogs, that can move in and out of place? But it doesn’t seem to be working right. We tried to turn it off.” He dug in his pants pocket on the right, and came out with a tiny silver box. It had two old fashioned controls on it. A metal switch, which was flipped to off, and a dial that was turned all the way down to zero.
Mason froze for a second, working through what was needed. At the same time he held his right hand up.
“Right. I need my lab. It’s in the other room, down the hall, second door on the left. Bring him. Now.” He ran then, because, or so it seemed, when robbers came to his house to take his new toy, the very best plan was to lead them directly to it.
Then, either the little guy needed help, or they really were going to take the disassembly unit. There was no use thinking that he was going to fight them off. No matter how many groin slaps he used.
So he called back to the men, who were following, if more slowly, dragging blue head along.
“Lay him out on the floor. I don’t have a chair in here.” He had a stool, but there was no way the man was balancing on it. Not even with help.
A nano hive. A fucking hive! The man had said that, but if it was true Mason was going to have to call in the government himself, and have whoever made it locked up. A hive was a very specific thing, and the important part was that they grew. On their own. They had self replicating mechanisms, which was where the problems always came into play.
The idea wasn’t a horrible one, on the surface. You created a nano construct, or set, and instead of replacing them every six months, you made it so that they slowly replaced themselves, at just the perfect speed to become permanent. It wasn’t really needed with most imbeds, since the skin held things in pretty good stasis that way for long periods of time.
In the body, especially in the brain, things moved fast and hard though, so nanos only tended to last about a month, if that. They were great, for cleaning things up and doing simple repairs, and as was the point here, acting as drugs that could be turned on and off.
You didn’t try to make them into a freaking hive though.
Without waiting for him to be all the way on the ground, the large black man being pushed out of the way a bit, Mason knelt and ran a hand scanning unit over the man’s entire body, while calling his float screen over.
“Sorry guys, but move. You’re in my way.”
The one with hair pulled on the other guy a bit, and moved into the hallway. They both kept watching however. Neither spoke, seeming to actually understand that he was trying to work. Because he hated jerks, and didn’t want to be one himself, he started calling out what he was seeing.
“Okay, this is a hive. You called it, big guy. I’m going to have to take it out. That means a nano war, which can be messy, which is why we don’t call it a nano celebration. So get ready for that. Right now his brain is being eaten. Slowly, thank god, but if we can get it now, instead of waiting three days, he probably won’t have any long term problems from it. I…” Mason stopped talking, just kneeling there, looking at the float screen, the flimsy heaving a little, which was because he was breathing that hard, he realized. Near panicked on this strange man’s behalf.
Then he worked for a while ignoring the others that were there, still wearing his pajamas. Thank god he wore something to sleep in every night. Sure, he looked twelve, but they were comfortable, and were at least a nice black and blue striped set. He’d nearly worn his Link-Girl ones. That would be embarrassing, since it was a kid’s show. A cartoon, and the only thing he watched regularly.
The trick with fighting a nano hive was in overwhelming it, fast. The old gray-goo idea, thankfully, had never panned out, since things got in the way of the entire Earth being consumed by self replicating bots like that. Normally it was a lack of needed building components that did it. That didn’t mean that slowly, over the course of days or weeks, it couldn’t kill a person however.
Since making a hive was illegal, and normally caught early on, by Watch, it didn’t come up very often like this.
It shouldn’t have. Not ever. Anyone with even fifteen minutes of assembly studies in college would know better. In fact, he was pretty certain that the professor for that class had started the very first lecture with the phrase, “never turn nanos into a hive.” It had been on the test, too. In fact, every test he’d taken had worked it in for that course.
Luckily he had a good machine for fighting that kind of thing not five feet from him. Most devices wouldn’t have had a hope of making enough of a new nano set to do much, but his could. It was his own design work, so he’d been able to print the thing himself without it costing him five million dollars or more.
It started pumping out tiny machines, assembling them at a rate of a thousand per second. They were so little that it would take hours to beat the ones in this man’s brain. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to introduce them. Mason let the man inhale the dust that was collected every few minutes. That meant they were all getting some, and that the room was no doubt covered with them, but the hive was also escaping every time the younger man exhaled, so that wasn’t a horrible thing. If even one of them got out, it might infect someone else.
Then it could, in potential, spread like a disease. One that eventually ate your brain.
After the first hour, Mason sighed and spun the float around, thinking at it to make it move. It had a full color, if transparent, view of the activity inside the man’s head. There were red and blue microdots, each a thousand times larger than the actual nanos involved.
“We’re the blue ones. We just started to win. Now, if we can keep this up for a while, it should be fine. I don’t suppose either of you know where he got this from?” He stared at the men, feeling self-righteous. Right up until he recalled that they’d just shown up on his doorstep at four in the morning, and might be robbers, or insane killers.
That wasn’t normal, coming to his place that early, and pretty much had to be bad.
The big black one rumbled a little. It wasn’t a laugh, just a low sound that reminded Mason of thunder in the distance.
“We can find out. What’s the plan once we have a target?”
Mason stopped and looked at the man. It probably seemed hostile since the guy bristled a little, but he didn’t mean it that way. He was just confused.
“I don’t know what you’re planning, but I was thinking that Watch should learn about whoever did this? Releasing a hive is… In the nano world there isn’t a worse crime. Seriously, if you’d gone to a hospital instead of coming here, this thing would probably be in five people by now. In a week it would be in hundreds and after that, who knows? The body won’t fight it off, so anyone exposed would be infected and die. As it stands, we need to make sure you both snort some of this dust before you go. We can’t let this escape this room.”
