Gunther.
Rebecca nodded at him—simultaneously relieved, scared, apologetic,
and
nervous.
Never a good combination of emotions to see on someone, but there it was…
As it happened, he watched as the girl took another long drag with her lungs, not fidgeting; no, Beckie hadn't ever been a girl to really be all that nervous, but the fact that she did seem to be in a good deal of distress was, well, concerning.
“Alright, so like I said, don't freak out. But—oh, who am I kidding? Right!
Right...
So, I’m being hacked.”
“Hacked?”
“Yeah, Gunny, fucking
hacked
, alright?”
Gunther frowned, but then his eyes grew a fraction wider as one of Rebecca’s arms lifted to give him a little wave, as if to say hello.
“Fuck, Christ, would you freaking stop already?”
In response, the arm simply moved to gently tap the large woman's nose, the act so delicate that it left Gunther somewhat surprised and Rebecca twitching at the cheek.
“And that wasn't you?” the old man asked, his finger already pressing on his device.
“Don't 'hit' the EMP, Gunny… please.”
“You’d be free…”
“Nope—no, the fucking bitch injected my mods with reaper code. Says she’s gonna brick every piece of tech I got if either of us tries something ‘stupid’, and I really think that using an EMP would be count right now.”
Gunther nodded, not taking his finger away from his ace in the hole but wavering all the same. “And why you? What the fuck did you get yourself into, Beckie?”
“Nothing! Alright? Fuck, literally nothing—Mmhmm! O-okay, shit... Ugh, maybe we kind of sort of attacked someone's android.”
Gunther sighed…
Closing his eyes, he silently counted to ten in his head, then, as if hoping it was all a bad dream, he popped them open again, only to realize nothing had changed.
He wanted to call her stupid.
He
wanted
to call her a fucking right and proper numbskull…
He wanted to call her a whole lot of things—yet he wasn't going to let the girl suffer through this on her own. Dipshit or otherwise, Beckie was, well, not 'family' but, maybe something close to it.
“Right!” he instead chirped, reanimating himself through force of will as he splayed a hand across his counter, fingers drumming rhythmically across the plastic surface. “What the fuck does your mysterious ‘hacker’ exactly want?”
“She, ugh… umm… W-well, again, don't freak out, but… ‘she’ is sort of—ugh—hard to explain.”
“Well, I’ve got two ears, yeah? And now that you’ve dropped this shit off at my doorstep, I suppose I’ve got the time. So, spit it out. Is it credits she wants, or—”
“She’s a robot,” Beckie blurted, though her words didn't quite compute.
“A—robot?”
“S-stuck in a robot,” the girl corrected, after one of her hands lifted to start rotating as if whoever was controlling it wanted to just ‘get on’ with it. “She’s apparently some high-profile tech from ‘Plat's Ville’ who went and got herself uploaded to a bot.”
“So, call the fucking peacekeepers,” Gunther grunted, not seeing what he or Rebecca really had to do with this. “Not the first time this has happened; I’m sure they could help her out better than we ever could.”
“No, they can't,” came a new voice, cheery and upbeat, musical even, and though he didn't want to admit why, one that was, as it happened, somewhat familiar to him.
Just like that, Gunther felt his asshole tighten as a genuine-to-god Paradise 'Doll' sauntered in from the street, her appearance as clean and pristine as they came, or that was to say, when they arrived at one of their ‘appointments.’
He recognized the model, too. Not one that he’d personally rented; its line was a little, well, he just had tastes that didn't quite conform to the somewhat monochromatic variant, which was also the most common to see.
A ‘Claire’ Doll…
“What the fuck is going on here…?” he muttered, teeth now chewing his lip as the ‘Doll’ stopped right beside Rebecca, not seeming intimidated in the least by her size or proximity...
“Yeah, trust me, you’re not the only one who thinks it's fucked,” the bot huffed, planting her hands on her hips and staring him down. “Alright, look, I’ll be straight with you here because I already know what’s going through your head. But your girl here," she pointed, a delicate finger gesturing to the much larger woman at her side, “attacked 'me' first. She’s lucky I didn't just fucking fry her! But, I need help so, she's got a chance to live.”
“So, you hack her fucking systems and march her in
here
to do that?”
“Thank you!” Rebecca groaned, glaring at the smaller girl, but unable or unwilling to test the woman’s patience any further.
“Okay, again, she attacked me first! So what if I treated her like a puppet for a few minutes?”
“It’s been nearly an hour!”
“Better than death,” the bot commented, rolling her luminescent eyes as she spoke. “Look—Gunther, is it? I can't go to the Peacekeepers because ‘I’m’ not the real me, alright? There you have it. I’m a fucking mind clone.”
“Oh, shite…”
“Yeah!” the Doll agreed, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “Best case? They just fucking delete me! Worst? I get sold off as ‘property’ and dumped somewhere in the fucking sub-verse until I go insane. Either way, I'm not sticking around to find out which is which.”
“How’d you get the bot?” Gunther queried, understanding what was going on here, if not why the steaming bag of dog shit had been tossed on his particular porch.
“I’m an executive tech for Paradise.
You
don't need to know anything more than that, and I don't really care what shady shit you’ve got running here. All I need is someone to help me get on a ship heading for a mining colony on the rim.”
“Got the cred for something like that?”
“No, I don't have the fucking cred!” the bot hissed, shaking her head as if he were a moron. “I’m not
classified
as a freaking person by the government, I don't have anything…”
“Well, we ain't got the cash to pull something like that off for you—so,” Gunther added, reaching for his burner again for another puff, “I’d suggest you let go of my girl there and then piss off before I send a call to the ‘boys in white.’ I’m sure they won't charge me a greasy nickel if I let them know what’s roaming around down here in a Paradise bot.”
“Haha! Yeah,
no
, that’s not how this is gonna work,” the android laughed, reaching out to place a hand on Rebecca’s back. “You see, I’ve got a nasty bit of ‘dead-man's code’ all nice and cozy in Beckie’s hardware. The moment the signals cut from my connection to the sub-verse, her brain gets cooked like burnt scallops.”
“Fuuuuuck...” Beckie groaned, her head tilting back as her own eyes closed, loose neon strands falling across her brow.
For his part, Gunther simply nodded his head. Oh, this was far worse than he really thought it was, wasn't it? For someone to be capable of bypassing the security restrictions on proprietary tech like that, they weren't dealing with some random jack-off who had gotten themselves cloned.
No, they were in the presence of someone who knew their shit inside and out because they had likely been the ones to write it. If the story was true, and they were an engineer from the Platinum Mile, then they were in a whole lot more danger than even Beckie might suspect.
He’d only heard rumors, of course, but those rumors had likened such individuals to be the ‘wizards’ of the modern age. Capable of doing things on the sub-verse or, much like she was now, to cybernetics that most people simply couldn't fathom.
“Mm-hmm… Alright, say I believe you. Still doesn't change the fact I can't help you either.”
“Don't fuck with me…”
“You think I got that kind of cred just lying around, do you? You have any idea how much it is you're asking?”
“Ten thousand for a passenger—”
“Ha!
Ten thousand,
she says! Girl, you're right fucked, you are!
Ten thousand…”
Gunther chuckled, shaking his head at the fucking insanity of it all.
"You're a bot! Ten thousand is for 'human' customers. You? You're gonna need to pay in chips. So, we're already needing to add thirty percent to get them loaded in the first place, then another thirty 'cause nobody in their right mind is gonna take a hit on their own profits when turning those back into proper credits."
He laughed, eyes narrowing as the android's own widened, not letting up as he began ticking things off on his fingers: “Then we gotta talk about how much it would cost to bribe a fucking captain to take you aboard! We gotta talk about another fucking bribe to keep him from turning you in and collecting a bounty.
And
we gotta talk about—”
“Fuck! I get it! It’s going to cost a 'lot' of money...”
“A lot of money!” Gunther burst, shaking his head as he did so. “A fucking
fortune.
And even then, I’d give it fifty-fifty odds they don't turn you in anyway! Work in a cheeky ‘double dip,’ as it were.”
“Okay, but, ignoring the cost—”
“No, not ignoring the cost—”
“Ignoring the cost!”
the bot interrupted, speaking over him with an exasperated tone. “Could you do it? Set it all up—if I got the credits?”
Gunther paused, pulling in a long breath through his teeth as he regarded the woman for several long moments. Then, he cleared his throat, glanced at Rebecca, and then, with a sigh, he nodded his head.
“No, I couldn't do it myself, but I know the man who could. But I can already tell you it’s a fool's errand! Ain't no way you’re gonna be able to ‘scrounge’ the numbers we’re talking about.”
“Just—tell me how much I need, and—I’ll figure it out.”
“It’s not so simple…” Gunther tried, drawing his words out while shaking his head. “Where do you plan to get the cred, hm? By robbing people?”
“No… maybe? Look, I’ll admit, I’m desperate here,” the bot groaned, her shoulders and somewhat aggressive posture slumping, very much like a normal human. “But, Beckie here and her goons tried to ice me, so not only does she owe me for that, but I also saved her life. That’s
two
life debts, as far as I’m concerned, and if you people don't help me, well, then I see no reason to be nice either.”
Gunther nodded, not blinking for a span while he zoned out, his mind grinding the problem before him.
He couldn't see how the girl could possibly get the funds needed to get where she wanted to be, let alone what would happen to her once out there. For as rough as Port Pride was these days, the frontier was a sure-as-shit sight rougher!
He’d know!
Gunther had piloted a mining drone himself for damn near twenty-five years before taking his hard-earned savings and pissing off back to real civilization, absent the misery of darkness…
But, what choice did he really have here?
“You said you’re a technician from Plat's Ville, did you?”
“Platinum ‘Mile,’ and yes, I practically 'wrote' the fucking code for the Doll I’m in.”
“Alright, tell you what!” Gunther grunted, eyeing the android coolly. “If you’re some ‘hot-shot’ code wizard, then it shouldn't be too hard for you to earn your way through honest labor.”
“Labor?”
“That bot’s got some good specs, or so the rumor mill says. And if you are who you say you are, then you should be able to make miracles out of the heaps of scrap I pull in from the scavengers. You let Beckie there go, wipe that nasty bit o' code from the augments, and I'll let you work at my shop until you can afford—”
“Counter-offer,” the bot snipped, lifting a long finger to point at Gunther’s chest. “The code stays in Beckie until I’m on the ship. You get the process rolling right away and leave me to show you why I was living in a penthouse while you were all scraping in the gutter.”
“Hmph! Cheeky bitch…”
“Better than an old swindler.”
Nearly a minute went by as both of them stared at each other, neither quite willing to be the first to speak, before Gunther flinched first.
“Fine! But if you think I’m not charging you for electricity, tools, whatever parts you use…”
“Not a concern.
Do we have a deal?”
“...Aye…” the man sighed, eyes glancing at the stupid girl who'd gotten them caught in this shit. “Aye, we've got a deal…”