In Over Your Head – Part 2 – A Cyber Punk Story

This is a continuation of last month’s story. Click below to catch up on Part 1:

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“We can’t fix overclocks,” Napalm said. “If he goes bad on the job he’ll blow this whole thing. It’s not a subtle job but I want to get out with my head on my body.”

“He’s not going to overclock on the job,” Phlox said. “You’re not overclocked right?”

“I’m not overclocked,” Bett repeated. The Auto-IV dinged in completion and his cheek felt warm instead of hot. Bett rotated his inner arm and caught the medication with his other hand.

“He’s a daydreamer,” Phlox said. “He gets like that sometimes. Busy thinking about what the world should be like instead of how it is. Right?”

“Sure,” Bett said. He could now focus on the tablet in Phlox’s hands. She’d seen what she needed to and passed it to him. He looked over the keys to put together the beginnings of a Delauren program to get past the exec encryption.

Computer windows appeared in his field of vision. He looked in Napalm’s direction but wasn’t focused on the driver. Previous programs he’d uploaded to the microfuser were pulled from his memory. No, not his memory, the memory of the microfuser. He was not the computer. That way lay ruin.

“Careful with that thing kid,” Napalm’s words sounded slow to Bett’s ears. The increased processing speed the microfuser gave him had caused his sense of the real world to slow down so subtitles appeared over Napalm. “Mack put me on this job to make sure you two didn’t blow it.”

“I knew Mack added you to keep an eye on us. They don’t trust me,” Phlox complained.

“Should Mack trust you?” Napalm raised one of his eyebrows. The microfuser around his eye didn’t move and the skin tugged at the edges.

Phlox gave him a grin. “Bett’s not going to overclock. He’s a pro. Trained in a ‘glom school.”

“Still… it was dumb of yous to install it day of.” 

 Bett switched his gaze between the Delauren code and the subtitles of the conversation. Neither were particularly interesting to him.   

“Mack wanted a muscle and a hacker with a microfuser. Now we’ve got both.”

“We’ve got a liability. Most overclocks happen first week of an install or under high pressure situations. We’re putting him in both. Have you even let him get the wheels under him?”

“He’s doing that now,” Phlox gestured to Bett.

Bett’s view of the world was out of focus, glazed over like a donut. The keys were not fitting together. Training his program to run around it was difficult. “My mother wasn’t using her microfuser when she overclocked.” He wanted to give the last word an inflection, but they all came out too quickly.

“Hot shot thinks he can palav while he works. Ripe for an overclock.” Napalm said. “You don’t know what your mother was doing in her head. No one knows what overclocks are doing when they seize up.”

Bett knew his mother. Knew her well enough that she wasn’t going to use her tech while talking to him. She wouldn’t even let grandpa take business calls during dinner. She once threw his terminal across the room when he picked a call up.

“She was dosing on Clarvo.”

“Clarvo is a pain reliever, it’s harmless,” Napalm said. “Took three extra doses a day when I had my fuser installed.”

“You’re still hung up on that?” Phlox sounded disappointed. “‘Hances wouldn’t be possible without Clarvo. They made sure it was safe.”

“Sure sure, Death Reports say different,” Bett’s words came out quick and emotionless.

“Death Reports don’t say nothing but names.”

“And cause of death,” Bett added. “Combined with install records–”

“You’re not supposed to running analysis on Death Reports,” Phlox said. “You’re supposed to be doing the damn Delauren so we can get a last meal before the job.”

Bett ran some final unit tests on the Delauren function he’d built. They came back green. “Delauren is done,” his voice slowed down to its regular cadence. “Ran the Death Report analysis a few weeks ago. Saw a post on Dark Unity Network that connected some dots between death watch names, their install date, and location of body pickup. It seemed there was no correlation between act–”

“Dark Unity says anything to rile people up,” Napalm said. “It’s how they get views and money. They just report claims without support.”

“They had some data to support it,” Bett said.

“Get your head out of the clouds and come live in the real world,” Phlox said. “We’re getting Stinky’s tacos before this job. If I die tonight I won’t have to deal with the gas in the morning.”

---

“I’ll deal with getting fuel in the morning,” Napalm said. They were in his hover-car slowly climbing in altitude through the city. Despite being outside the tower it still felt like riding in an elevator. Bett snickered finally connecting the dots on why people at the bottom of the valley called drivers elevators.

Bett sat in the backseat and it was littered with bed sheets, underwear, and some hair gel. Napalm allegedly owned the car. But only the richest in the Valley could afford that. Everyone else had to settle for renting public cars. But if Napalm owned it, it’d explain why he worked for Mack. Dependable wheels were hard to find. Even if the car flew and the only wheel on it was for steering.

The elevator was wired in. The flatworm cable shone silver and neon reflecting the city’s billboards that flashed between advertisements. It ran from his cheek to the dashboard and connected him to the electronics of the car. He maneuvered through traffic climbing higher in the city with every turn.

The car still smelled like tacos. Napalm had given them a thorough lecture about not spilling anything onto the seats. Bett was careful, didn’t want to piss off someone he might be in the thick of it with. Clarvo had reduced his pain and increased his patience. But the car was far from pristine. Music played on the radio, a quick paced tune about sleeping over at someone’s house. It was old and unfamiliar to Bett.

“The lift dampeners of the car, you could really blow those?” Phlox asked Bett through a private message. She was sitting inches in front of him in the passenger seat of the car.

“I’m not going to do anything to Napalm’s car,” he replied, trying to reassure her of the emptiness of the threat he’d made earlier in the night. He didn’t even remember what it was about. He was just irritable from the microfusers.

“Good. You better not. But could you do it to someone else’s car?”

“Sure it’s just a quick hack job. Most modded vehicles like this one already have cracked governor chips to install upgrades and security bypasses. Usually modders don’t reinstall conglomerate security so it’s an easy misallocation job you can bury in the code. Whose car do you have in mind?”

“Someone big. I’ll tell ya later.”

Bett only knew one person Phlox considered big, Mack. Not as big as some of the execs but big enough to take down Mr. Louise the former kingpin at the bottom of the valley.

Mack was the only person Phlox seemed to think about on a regular basis. Whether they were old lovers or just bitter rivals, Bett didn’t care to know. He wanted to stay on Phlox’s good side. And he certainly wanted to stay on Mack’s good side. The day he had to choose would likely be the death of him, regardless of the side he picked. 

He wondered how they’d write that up in the Death Reports. Probably just another body found in the gutters. He wouldn’t be a John Doe though. Not with the microfuser installed. As long as his head was still on when the body crew found him. They could pull his ID off the microfuser and inform the next of kin. If a next of kin existed. Bett didn’t have anyone, yet.

He wanted someone. Wanted a whole damn family. Like he was supposed to have with his mom. It’s what his grandfather fought for in the Acquisition War. Bett didn’t want to live like a rat at the bottom of the valley. He wanted to be in the towers. One day, he’d earn enough from a job that he could afford to finish up his school work and apply to a glom gig. Family connections wouldn’t get him far. But as long as he kept his record clean on jobs like this he’d be fine. 

“Bett, you there,” the message from Phlox popped up over his eye through the microfuser.

“Bad time to go catatonic,” Napalm said. The flatworm cable slithered out of his microfuser socket and receded into the dash of the car. The roof of the car retracted and the starry sky was revealed above him.

“I’m here. I’m fine.” Bett said.

“We’re above the clouds,” Phlox said. “You can see the stars every night this high.”

Napalm plugged an overloader into the steel siding of the office window.

A breeze whipped up and Napalm’s jacket billowed in the wind. It was a strong enough gust that if Napalm was any lighter he’d get carried away. It would probably carry Bett away. He didn’t think he’d mind that.

The window opened. No shattering, no noise. Just the silent compliance of a hacked machine.

“Let’s go.” Napalm gave Bett a firm look. “You know what you’re doing right?”

---

“He knows what he’s doing, right?” Phlox repeated.

“This Clarvo data is scary,” Bett said. The words were quick as his microfuser mind combed through digital reams of data. “They’ve got clinical trials saying that it causes seizure in over thirty percent of people that take it. It’s been this way since before the Acquisition War. They made a change in ‘57 to save money on manufacturing cost–”

“Focus on the data we came for,” Napalm slammed his gloved fist on the desk. The quake knocked over the family picture McNeal kept there. “Can we leave yet? Mack only gave us ten minutes on this then we’re on our own.”

Bett pulled his mind away from the data and began setting up transmission protocols for it. “The merger data’s sent,” he said.

“Good let’s go,” Napalm said.

“I need to send out this Clarvo stuff too,” Bett said.

“We’ll get it next time,” Phlox said.

“No, we should do this now,” Bett said. “We’ve got it in front of us. It’ll be easier than trying to dig it up again later.” 

A seal broke on the office door. Security bots filed in guns pointed at the group.

“We’re going now,” Napalm climbed out the window and into his car.

Phlox ducked behind the fort of furniture she’d made while Bett hid behind the desk. His flatworm cable hung over the side.

“We’ll get this later,” Phlox said. 

“There’s no guarantee of later,” Bett said.

Phlox returned fire. It was deafening. His next ‘hance would be electronic eardrums like everyone else in the valley. Muting a sound like that would be a godsend.

The data was over half way transmitted.

“Who are you sending it to?” Phlox asked. Her shots disabled the first wave of security bots. But knowing ‘glom security there would be more. And eventually they’d be human which was Bett’s biggest fear.

“Sending it to the Dark Unity Network. This is what they needed.”

“You think this data’s going to fall on their desk. They get thousands of deranged manifestos a day.”

“You want me to upload it to the independent forums. That gets millions of shit-posts on it every day. It’ll get buried.”

The trials were privately funded, there was no public record of them. If this went on the net a glom scrub bot would take it down nearly immediately. It needed to be in twelve places at once. But Bett didn’t have the bandwidth or the time.

Human voices shouted from the doorway. They didn’t blow in shooting wild like the security bots. They were more careful than that, they were not as easily repaired.

“I’m leaving,” Napalm shouted from the car.

“Wait,” Phlox shouted out the window then turned to Bett. “How much time do you need?”

“Three minutes.”

“We don’t have three minutes,” Napalm shouted.

Bett didn’t think they had three seconds.

“Hold down the fort,” Phlox said. She handed him her gun. “Then get out. I want that pistol back. And I need you for the dampener job.” Phlox set an auto turret on the desk. “Waste of a damn good turret,” she complained. “You’re in over your head here. Always have been. Try not to overclock yourself in the fight.”

“I’m leaving…” Napalm shouted as if it was last call at a bar. 

“Jump out the window when you’re done and we’ll catch you,” Phlox said as she crawled to the window, staying lower than the furniture.

Bett wondered if they would. But he didn’t care. He needed to get the data out. That was the justice his mother deserved.

The turret began firing upon the security personnel as soon as they entered the room. Napalm’s car dropped away from the window. Bett looked at the transmission progress. It’d felt like three minutes had passed but that was merely his microfuser processing time. He had to hold out for a little over a minute.

Bett shot a few rounds over the desk. His microfuser slowed down time enough that as the security guards filed in the door they had to turn back.

Phlox had put him in a good position. The room was completely different from how it started. Executive offices were naturally defensible positions after the War of Acquisition a few generations ago. The lack of cover from the door to the desk’s cubby helped.

But these were trained guards. Bett didn’t have the skills to hold them back. Even with the microfuser he was fighting against people with military grade ‘hances. Trained to use microfusers since they were teens playing sonic-ball.

The auto-turret flew off the desk with a loud bang. It landed in front of Bett with a beanbag sitting on top of it. Bett ducked for cover hoping they’d use the same kind of rounds on him.

He looked at the transmission. It eeked the last millimeter of progress to 100%. Bett shot blindly over the desk as the flatworm cable slithered out of his face.

His blind shots did little to deter the guards. They responded with hundreds of bullets. The window took a few too many hits and crashed out into a thousand little pieces.

Phlox had told him to leap. If they didn’t catch him he’d be a splatter of blood washed into the gutters.

If the guards caught him he’d be just about the same.

He ran out the window. Bullets flew around him. He fell towards the clouds below him. His kevlar vest caught a few shots, his body caught a few more.

---

“You’re gonna catch him,” Phlox demanded. She was holding her second gun to Napalm’s head but he didn’t seem to mind.

“I’m Mack’s best elevator. You crater me and you won’t be able to work in the Valley again.”

“There are other employers in the valley other than Mack.”

“You won’t be able to work because you’ll be dead.”

“Catch him. He’s gonna be Mack’s best hacker soon.”

“I’ll have to do a lot of calculations. It’s not as simple as sweeping under him and–” the window of the building crashed out. Pebbles of glass rained onto the cloud cover.

“Get him!”

Bett flew out.

Napalm’s car lurched into gear. His microfuser flashed lights like a dance club. Phlox knew if he was really Mack’s best elevator the calculations wouldn’t be difficult.

The car glided over the tops of the clouds then dropped. Phlox’s stomach lurched up her throat as the car tried to match the speed Bett fell at. Then Bett landed in the back seat.

Well most of Bett landed in the back seat.

Phlox stared at the horror show in the back of the car. Bett’s green rain jacket was covered in blood. Everything was covered in blood. Except Bett’s head. His head wasn’t covered in anything because it wasn’t there anymore.

“That damn sewage-head got blood all over my sheets,” Napalm said. 

“God damn it!” Phlox pounded her metal fist on the glove box. “That kid was good. Could have been great, could have helped me–” She cut herself off. “He was too good.”

“Too good for his own good,” Napalm said. “You’re helping me wash this out. You’re the one who insisted I catch him. What are we doing with the body?” 

“Gutter service,” Phlox replied.