08:- Vaz
Brief: I would like a slightly dystopian story featuring a
female MC and her badass talking velociraptor
companion attempting to steal something priceless from a
shady corporation.
~
Slianka looks like a carnisaur, all teeth, claws and scales,
but actually she's warm blooded, closer to being a mammal
than reptile. The cosmetic effect is awesome, though, and
her footprints, in a million years or so, will be
indistinguishable from her distant non-ancestors.
Not very long ago, owning something that looked like
her (or 'believing you owned', as she would insist) would
have indicated major wealth - either one of the individuals
whose value is measured in the Billions of Newdollars, a
major corporation or a national government. To own one
that thought like her - well, 'unique' was the strongest word
we have, and it's inadequate.
The Universal Entertainment Society, as innocuous a
name for probably the most rapacious, unprincipled
organisation of individuals remaining in this vale of tears,
thought they owned her, and several of their enforcers were
in regeneration tanks right now for attempting to impose
this situation - a couple more and an ex-member of the
board of directors would never interest themselves in such
matters again, and I had been totally and proudly involved
in their lack of interest.
With mining, manufacturing, farming, construction…
all in the claws of machines, with a tiny group of enhanced
humans overseeing repairs and progress - as if we needed
that much more progress. What was left for humans? The
arts, if they happened to be creative, or sports - or watching
TriVee all day, and sex.
So, why would something looking as if it had eaten the
baby (and would like more, please) trust someone who
looked like a small, not particularly athletic human female?
One who looks about as vulnerable and fragile as a kitten?
The UES affair is just our most recent escapade together; I
actually came out of the same laboratory as her, before the
riots smashed the biotech industry, private laboratory,
government centre and university, leaving free rein for the
plagues that followed, and brought the world population
down to a manageable level. I can't say - and I am the
foremost data hacker and analyser in this part of the world,
and perhaps the entire planet - that vengeful biologists
deliberately released the microorganisms on the world, but
they had seen colleagues and family torn apart physically,
or injected with noxious reagents, had seen their attempts to
improve the health and lifespan of everybody smashed and
poured down the sewers, with no care for what it might do
to environment or the smashers themselves - oh, I can
understand why they might want to. And making resistant
diseases was child's play relative to some of the things they
could do. But I can't feel much sympathy for them either they were my jailers, even the pair who had donated their
genes and so were technically my parents.
To get something that looked and moved like Slianka
you would have needed to be extremely rich - tens of
thousands of man-hours had been poured into her cosmetics
and articulation. I suppose she should be happy her creation
fell in a Jurassic park film and revival - she could have
ended up a giant floppy bunny, or werewolf - others did. To
make something that could talk, too - and not just parrot
prepared sentences, develop her own philosophy, albeit a
bloodthirsty, murderous one, there can't have been ten
individuals worldwide who could have paid the work,
much less afforded it. That was nation level, or
international corporation financial territory; it is reasonable
to suppose she might have been built for the UES. They
claim that, anyway, and that they have the contracts to
prove she is their property, which is legal since she's not
human, and totally enrages me. It'd doubtless be the same
with me, despite what I look like.
When we had broken free, during a riot around the lab
buildings I had detected growing before the authorities
suspected anything - or admitted suspecting, at least,
though they looked stupid enough directly after that it's
difficult to consider them concealing anything.
So I started pushing all the buttons a cute, open-faced,
curly-haired, snub-nosed, braced-tooth, freckled little girl oh, I might have missed some buttons on that list, by my
younger self had been preparing them for years, and won't
have - has available, to find details of the security
arrangements, and the trace minerals in our food, without
which we would sicken and die. Would you believe they
used the same chemicals for every different subject? That's
like using the same password for your library card and bank
account. I found a stockist (yeah, they got all their different
insurance from the same chemical distribution house, too)
and ordered about a ton of the stuff; enough to keep the
eight of us in on the breakout going for 'bout a century, and
when we had got out, broke it down into smaller packages,
some of which were hidden away various places, others
distributed between the six surviving freaks. Yes, just six,
and all of us hurt - it hadn't been a safe attempt, but most of
us had made it. And "dying in the attempt" was obviously
better than life would have been had we been recaptured,
which not one of us was.
Adrenalin is habit forming. When your implanted
augmentations and financial algorithms guarantee you will
never lack anything you can buy, after the escape,
challenge is severely hard to come by. Part of it I got by
solving scientific conundrums, but more human ingenuity
had been poured into security systems, so I concentrated on
those for a while - and rejoined Slianka who had come to
the same conclusion. Mainly corporations - what was left of
government could be used for the training of the next
generation of hackers, about ten years old now. Their
encryption was as out-of-date as their power, and, despite
the fragmentation of political power to pre-1800 standards,
they tended to all use the same algorithms across what was
no longer a country, but a jumble of territories with
independent currencies, 'justice' systems (I'd laugh except
that I probably wouldn't be able to stop), taxes,
communications… only adhering at all because of the
network of multinationals and satellite TV. I'd have
planned to crash out the UES completely, rather than just
eliminating its stock of 'ownership contracts' for 'intelligent
artefacts', except that a hundred million people with
nothing else to do but pass the day in front of their screen
(not merely nothing better - nothing at all).
In our favour was the fact they were shooting Star
Wars 24, so the existence of various odd costumes in the
corridors would not be seen as all that strange. Still, the
security systems would be set to scan deeper than that, so
the presence of a skinny schoolgirl and a smallish (but
powerful and very toothy) dinosaur with a fully automatic
assault rifle and crossed bandannas of twenty-five round
magazines in a high security region would set off some
kind of an alarm. But those systems are electronic, and I
can convince any electronic system to output anything I
want with a short conversation before – and I was using
their own CGI software, dots following our movements and
security screens showing us as people on their personnel
files. The real risk was a human guard taking a walk
through the building and seeing us – there weren't supposed
to be any, but biologicals are less predictable than
machines, and me bursting into tears and explaining I was
lost held no guarantees, while anyone who saw Slianka...
So we'd just have to hope, and eliminate any witnesses
outside camera-covered territory.
We didn't even know exactly where the documents
would be concealed. They'd be in a safe somewhere – but
every executive office had a safe, and a whole lot of other
rooms too. Analysis of security camera footage suggested
they'd be in the archives in the second subbasement, so that
was where we were headed. Not easy to escape from when
the work was finished, but hey – if I'd wanted to live
forever I could have disappeared, no? (Slianka was a little
more problematic.)
As we arrived in the underground car park, the
building recognised my implants and started talking to me,
and I expanded my senses as wide as my brain could
manage. The building itself was friendly, anxious to please
and almost lonely. But it had to take orders from any
administrative human, so I had to convince it to keep our
secret. The security subroutines were less clever, but also
less flexible, requiring a different style of control, but in no
way impossible for as much. You can't insist on more than
a certain level of security before it cripples your
effectiveness - military establishments had demonstrated
this last century.
We took the elevator down, rather than the more
romantic emergency stairs. After all, the security cameras
would be sabotaged the same in each, and if we chanced
upon some human or another, just maybe we could bluff it
out, pretend to be lost. Difficult to do that in a secure,
darkened corridor (all right, not really viable in a lift where
few staff have the correct clearance to get to the floor,
either
No difficulties with the lift - it pinged softly and let us
out into an emergency always lit twilight corridor - very
dim. I was certain I could have navigated in total darkness,
but appreciated the security of the dim glimmer. Of course
I had a flashlight with me, but the corridor widened by the
lifts, and the opposite side became a sort of reception room,
with desks, extinguished computers and videophones, but
after a few metres it was just doors, offset on the two sides,
spaced about twenty-metre intervals, with labels saying
what they were, and, if one knew the encryption, doubtless
what they contained - I thumped one, confident in my
cleansuit to leave no forensic remnants nor pass any
poisons that might have been on the surface, and nothing not the slightest boom, or resonance. I might as well have
been punching a mountain.
Suddenly - I suppose any change in circumstances
would have caused adrenaline shock at this point, but
'suddenly' was how it felt - all the lights came on and we
were totally exposed in a brilliance that felt like a
searchlight beam, even if logic told us it was no brighter
than a normal office. No alcoves to duck into, no corners to
rush round, and no possible explanation as to why we were
here (apart from the truth, entirely unsatisfactory. I had a
stun-bomb ready in my wrist projector, but anyone coming
in here would be closely monitored, and collapsing in a
heap would be certain to draw attention, even if only on
medical grounds. Quiet, slippered footfalls and the hum of
an electric trolley, and a man in archivist's uniform
appeared from the lift alcove. There were no alcoves to pull
back into, the vault doors opened directly flush with the
walls - the two of us were as exposed as flies on a
windowpane. Breathing was not an option, but I heard my
heartbeat reverberating down the corridor, like an enraged
rock drummer doing his solo.
And the archivist turned away from us and walked in
the other direction, soon turning a right-angled corner and
disappearing from our view. We expected to hear the
footsteps stop, and an alarm ring - but when they did stop,
there was a distant 'whoomph' of a very heavy, hermetic
door opening, then closing, then the light dimmed down to
darkness, until our eyes accustomed themselves and it was
again dim, but the symbols on the doors were legible. I
stored in my memory details that I had been revealed by the
light - ventilation ducts a mouse would have to squeeze to
get around in, with grilles fine enough to stop ants - the
robots for cleaning those could be no bigger than match
boxes. Must be fun when one gets stuck. Certainly not an
escape route.
Not that I knew precisely where our documents would
be stored, but I had narrowed it down to three probable, and
roughly twenty less likely. If they weren't there, we didn't
have a snowball's chance of finding them. But that I
estimated the risk worth the carrot we wouldn't have been
there, would we?
Opening the doors to the vaults was the most heart in
mouth moment. I would have been so easy to add an extra
level of alarms. My breathing started up again as the first
door swung open, letting out a gust of air who knows how
long mustying. Yes, air - the fear I had had about them
having pumped the rooms full of nitrogen to prevent decay
or fire was groundless - I had brought in the breath masks
for nothing. I never even considered that the alarms might
have gone off silently, somewhere else, and that a gang of
guards might have been creeping up on us - which goes to
show I was too involved in the details to see the big picture,
and who hasn't suffered from that? The vaults were set out
identically, with shelves for ring files, drawers for hanging
folders and lockers for… I didn't even check. There was a
table region for inspecting documents with light fixture,
scanner, computer and videophone connector, looking
dusty and unloved, but this wasn't the vault we wanted, so I
left an incendiary grenade with a good long timer in one of
the drawers and moved on to the next door on my list. The
second one was the charm - luck or good planning, what
difference? Bags were unfolded, and I took shears to
remove the electronic tags which would definitely trigger
alarms. We intended chaos for our departure, but not quite
yet. We changed into our 'mock fireman' gear, much lighter
than the real McCoy, but there wouldn't be any that fitted
that we could commandeer - and I didn't want to hurt any
rescue workers, they were OK guys.
Left several more incendiary grenades, on shorter
fuses, and didn't close the door. Opened a couple more
vaults at random, dumped a few more bombs - we weren't
going to need them from now on, anyway. And my time
sense told me my bombs were going to ignite. Impeccable.
Slianka had her great gun unslung and ready, with a
magazine if incendiaries in place, and I made a 'go it, girl
gesture, checking my earplugs were installed with the same
movement - that was a hefty bit of hardware, and a steel
and concrete tunnel was not going to absorb much of the
energy. And the alarms - smoke, intruder, for all I know,
radiation and gas attack - almost covered it. Chunks of
concrete zipped through the air round us, and I added
smoke, which billowed attractively. By now every
emergency service in the county was sending
representetives, every one in the state was receiving data,
and the building security - twenty-five men on duty, it only
seemed few because it was a forty floor construction - were
rushing down, rappelling down lift shafts, racing down fire
stairs - all routes that didn't involve using the building's
labour-saving advantages.
The security forces were the first to arrive, breathing
somewhat heavily - not enough practical training, boys and not looking particularly happy about life. Well, I
suppose skinning down a lift shaft, opening the emergency
roof hatch and dropping into the cabin, forming up in good
order and then discovering the system is in full gas tight
shutdown, and the doors can only be opened by
deconstructing the locks - either by unscrewing panels, or
more directly blasting them apart - is not conducive to
analytic thought. Nor the equivalent with the emergency
exit doors. But they were security - they should have
known. If a few of them got wiped during the exercise I
could live with it - They'd known what they were signing
up for. It was the outside forces didn't deserve casualties.
Still, it hadn't been their decisions that had brought about
this situation, and I wouldn't wipe any unnecessary guards.
When further explosions announced the external
would-be rescuers had arrived (oh, wasn't that 'hermetically
sealed' detail lovely? And neither I nor the building's AI
had to invoke it - it was there by default) he two of us were
pressed against the ceiling, with billowing smoke below I'd improved on the naturally generated with a few
grenades, reducing visibility to negligible and enforcing
respirator use (that guards hated) at ground level. There
was no longer any need for stealth - orders, pounding
charges in random directions and occasional gunfire
resonated from all directions, hierarchy was unclear,
various different services competed for the most moronic
hero trophy, and dropping down and mingling was only a
question of finding a gap in their ranks. I had misjudged the
door they would choose for access, but it didn't matter nothing would have mattered save one of us getting hit.
Chaos, splendid chaos, was everywhere, on the
electromagnetic spectrum as much as the biological. A
colony of ex-laboratory rats joined in the confusion, getting
underfoot and biting, the entire population of the upper
floors was being evacuated and lined up outside the
building, reporters and 3V trucks were arriving to film and
commentate - in the eternal battle between order and chaos,
not a single order was being obeyed.
The 'emergency vehicle' (not a fire truck,
unfortunately, but still equipped with flashing lights and
siren) was no problem to steal, nor drive out through the
merry chaos - nobody noticed a fireman with a long,
powerful tail, nor that she was twice as big as the 'victim'
she was carrying. less than a half hour driving we left our
escape car at the side of a quiet suburban street - they'd find
it fast enough, as soon as they started looking - even
without flashing and wailing the colour scheme was garish
enough, and it was bound to have a built in locator. We
'adopted' an unobtrusive domestic electric car, and got off
main roads as soon as possible, and into woodland paths.
When these became impassible to the car, we carefully
parked it, locked it and turned on its transponder - no need
to make problems for its owner, who hadn't done anything
to us I'd ever heard about. Then packs slung, and continue
on foot, taking care not to leave three toed and if I'm not
grinning quite as impressively as Slianka it's not because
I'm not as elated, but just not as dentally gifted. Arriving at
our preplanned meeting spot, the pack and bikes were
untouched, and we high-fived - well, she high foured for
physiological reasons so I suppose we high four and a
halfed - and set up the fire in the concealed rock cavern.
We wouldn't need much wood - we had lots of lovely
inflammable paper to dispose of. The raid had not been
critical; after the last court attempt to reacquire property
rights over us I doubt whether they were planning anything
for quite a while. But it had been supremely annoying (for
them) and enjoyable (for us), and if anyone had got hurt it
had been due to their own incompetence or inattention. So,
what next?