Know the signs of imminent portal rupture:
Changes in color or luminosity.
Distortions in shape, alignment, or edge continuity.
Unusual sounds, vibrations, or mana emissions.
Report all anomalies to Civil Defense Authority.
Seek shelter immediately.
Last job of the day, and I was putting the finishing touches on it. One part artistry, one part coding, one part gentle hardware massage. Served best dry.
And done. Signed, tagged and placed into the outgoing bin. The client would be happy, I was certain of it. I was good at what I did. I knew it, my boss knew it, and the clients came from all over. Not that the shop hadn’t been doing well enough before I started here, but business had grown significantly, and the demand had shifted from refurbished slates and accessories to being more services-oriented. I stretched in my chair, then toggled my own device as part of a ritual for leaving my private workspace.
My other face snapped to life around my head. The field didn’t obstruct your vision at all from the inside.
Holomasks. They were the rage throughout all of X-3, and were making inroads into X-2. They came in all manner of form factors and capabilities. Mine was entirely custom work I’d made myself, and I’d used high-end components. My chosen style was in the form of a digicollar. Polymer and textile in a wide band that fits snugly around the back and sides of my neck and open at the front. Collars were one of the larger designs, some fashion, but primarily additional volume for added functionality, comfort, and extended battery life. I didn’t ever install facial trackers in mine: I didn’t need them. I had a neural lattice, and mine connected directly to my DNI port. There was no scanning or rendering lag at all, I had full expression capabilities – and more.
I pulled my shrug off the back of the office chair and slipped into it, grabbed my skimmer, flicked the light in my office off, and stepped out into the hallway.
I threw a three-finger salute to my boss as I crossed the sales floor and made my beeline to the front entrance. I studiously ignored the roaming eyes of the shoppers. Still, my boss called out to me.
“Kay! You want me to contact you with any priority offers?”
I didn’t look over to respond as I pushed the doors open. “Nope! I’m ImmSimming for the next two days straight if I get my way.”
With that, I left the shop behind me and headed home. A flick of the wrist snapped the handlebars of my skimmer open and upright. I hopped on the grip tape-covered board and seamlessly transitioned and merged from foot traffic to skimmer lanes.
6-3. My home. I was born and raised here, a proud native to the sub sector that consistently ranked among the highest in transit scans. People from all over the layer, and even some from off-layer, visited here to do their shopping and commerce. We weren’t the only sub-sector with trade and commerce, of course. That would be absurd. But it was our identity and specialty. Our bazaar didn’t migrate; ours was both the largest by far and permanent. Outside the bazaar, we were also packed full of retail shops. The tech boutique I worked at was one of hundreds, every one vying for their own angle and niche to market towards.
Living and operating a business here was expensive. Not the most expensive, but certainly in the running. Most business owners couldn’t afford an actual building rental, so it was either stall space at the bazaar or the intermediate option, which was a shop-truck.
I’d thought about my future, and it had been pointing in that direction. I already had a good client list, and I did pretty well for myself with the white- and gray-market work I did. Theo, my boss, was very clear with me. Light side of gray market, no dark side, and no black market. Nothing that could get his shop shut down.
Of course, I had plenty of demand for that work. So I did it privately. My own workbench in my cube, chit payments only. I’d started off with the retail job and had gotten progressively more into the less-than-legal work via discreet note, suggestion, and word-of-mouth. I was anything but rich; nobody who wasn’t into real shit in X-3 was, but I had luxuries I enjoyed.
Maybe in another couple of years, I’d buy a used truck and set out on my own. Up-front costs were high, but you saved in the long term by not having to pay rent.
Life was pretty good here, all things considered. High prices, but we had breathable air, most workplaces were temp-controlled to attract customers, and it only rained about two days a week.
I was approaching my preferred lift, so it was time for a quick transition. I hopped off my skimmer, folded it, and tucked it under my arm to wait in line. My job was on the first stratum, and my cube on the fourth, so taking lifts was a daily occurrence for me. Not the big Deepwell elevators. These didn’t have scanners and you usually didn’t have to spend more than a couple of minutes waiting, unless you were at a particularly congested location.
The next lift came down the rails from above and stopped, locked into position, and announced the arrival with a buzz. Caution lights flashed, railings dropped on the opposite side, and people made their way out of the large, wide platform. The railings cycled from far to near, and the line moved forward.
I really wanted to get back home to jack into what was hopefully a long and uninterrupted Immsim sesh. I was lucky to get in at the tail end before the railings moved. I was somewhat uncomfortably squished up against four or five other people, and their hair and clothing were causing interference patterns with my holomask. The buzzer sounded, and we started dropping into the lower strata.
Annoying.
For most, holomasks were a fashion item, a toy, or a way of showing one's block culture. For others—my private clients—they tended to be tools that facilitated anonymity and plausible deniability for the purposes of getting up to no good. My most lucrative and steady revenue stream was building hidden facial recognition and identity-scanning scramblers into my holorigs. For the casual eye, you were wearing a cool-looking bird head mask, a product-placement advert or any one of the hundreds of thousands of net-available designs. Corporate VI facial scanning systems saw a twisted mush of blindingly-bright visual noise on all the non-visible or near-visible spectrum sensors they used. And of course, the hologram itself covered the direct video feed.
Facial and retinal scanning scramblers were well into the major trouble and immediate attention required areas of corporate law, and running around with one active on CorpSov was a really good way to get shot on sight. But that was true of doing pretty much anything CorpSec disapproved of with the trigger-happy cowboys they had working in X-3.
I liked to think that my work was of a higher grade, and significantly different grade than the cheap-as-scrap drok you could get at any bazaar stall. Those relied primarily on blinding sensor networks and might as well put a giant please aim here sign on your head for your nearest agent or autogun.
My stuff read as badly-tuned, badly-maintained, or out-of-spec holo emitter. Potentially alarming to VI and agents, but not the giant red flag of the lets go do crime other variety. It was also seamlessly incorporated into the standard system and I had additional modes planned to give cover to clients. Emitter frizz that skewed colors and distorted images while also conveniently blocking positive ID’s. Modes you could toggle between to simulate sweat or water getting on the emitters, or EM field noise.
My biggest clients for this custom work? Mostly street gangs, where it served multiple purposes. Color blocking for gang identification, cryo memento mori skulls and death masks that the gangs slurped up, and the added benefit of being able to evade charges from CorpSec or the cops. I’d even done the occasional custom job for borgs.
The temperature dropped slightly as I rode the lift from the first stratum, where I worked, down to the fourth stratum, where I lived. From a balmy 35 down to an almost tolerable 30. I didn’t handle the heat as well as most of my X-3 kin, something to do with old-world genetic heritage. Or at least, that’s what my mom always told me. Some relation between fairer skin and wilting in the hotter sub-sectors.
I missed her terribly, and I’d give just about anything to be able to sit down and have a hot, crispy sector flat with cured egg smeared on the way she used to make it before work. It had been three years now since she’d passed away. Her death had been quick and virtually painless, from what I’d been told. Overworked crew pulling doubles, tired people, careless mistakes. She’d gotten knocked off a gantry deck, nutrient hoses wrapped around her neck on her way down, and that was it.
My fingers slipped under my sleeve, and I thumbed her Four icon that hung from the beaded bracelet on my left wrist. Her friends told me that she wanted a traditional agri-stack burial. I wasn’t sure if they were lying and saying that to satiate their beliefs and practices, or if it was something she’d actually said. In the end, I decided to go with it. She wasn’t the most devout, but it seemed more likely than not. Her soft biomass was emulsified, and her skeleton and implants incinerated, the ashes re-added and incorporated into the nutrient system for the stacks. She’d died as she lived: making sure people were fed and had comfort in their lives. There was a solemn beauty to it. Every sector recycled everything that could be recycled, and that bled into burial practices and last rights in some of the sub sectors.
The buzz of the lift pulled me out of my musing. I was standing at one of the ends of the wide platform, as you were supposed to if you were moving more than one strata. The crowd shifted, and the press of bodies evaporated as most of the lift departed before the new riders came on. The gates cycled, and I was half-pressed, half-shoved to one side by rough, pebbly, and leathery skin.
A Tokh had bumped into me, barely more than a tap for them. To me, it was like getting roughly shoved. It looked down and to the side at me, rustled its eye quills, and clicked. I wasn’t fluent in the language, but I knew enough to order food, ask the price for something, and a couple of choice words and phrases that made their way into the broader media ecosystem. I was pretty sure that was as close to an apology as I was going to get. I straightened the baggy shirt I had on under my shrug and picked up my dropped glider before it got too crowded to retrieve it.
They had an unfortunate habit of going missing if left unattended for more than one second, and the moment it was tucked out of sight, you’d never find it again. I’d installed a D-TER 6K system on mine. Any finger or palmprint on the grips or mechanisms other than mine, and you’d get a warning beep followed by enough voltage to turn you into a lump of limp meat on the street. I’d managed to recover it three times now and learned from each experience. Like most with experience in these things, I had a carrying strap to wear it over a shoulder or across the back when not in use. That was awkward in lifts, though, and you were liable to catch a knee or elbow to soft spots if your deck gouged someone, or you left tread marks on someone’s fit.
One last stop and a buzz, and I was out of the packed lift, once again on my glider, and underway with both my real and virtual hair flowing in the breeze down the street. I hated riding the lifts because of the occasional comment or look I got when my mask and the expectations of a stranger didn’t line up. People touching me also set me on edge a little as well. It was unavoidable in X-3 life, but I didn’t have the comfort in my own skin that some others seemed to have.
I turned off onto my street and familiar sights greeted me. The hab-block tower I lived in, with its brutalist bare polycrete, covered only by murals and tags on the first and last five stories. Color blocks greeted my eyes, equally familiar. Red, magenta, cyan in vertical segments, a yellow horizontal line in the middle, and a black line under it. The 6-3 colors and the lines for the division of the gang that controlled the area around my cube. I had my own color block on my glider, the same red, magenta, and cyan, but with lines that indicated to those in the know I wasn’t a member or an applicant, but an associate.
A status I paid regular taxes to maintain, either in the form of chits or services, the latter of which I preferred as it kept more cred in my wallet.
I snapped my glider shut, slung it over one shoulder, and walked up the steps to the entrance. A trio of members leaned against the railings. Two had visors on, the third had a low-end retinal projector blinking in rapid stuttering pulses of lights beamed into his eye. I’d worked on it for her several times now.
“Sup, K?” she greeted me with an upnod.
“About to crash out hard with a good, long trix session. Things good?” I asked her.
“Heard, and never a bad day with this blood,” she tapped a glowing index finger nail on her color block.
I smiled at her with my digital face and nodded in agreement. Before I turned to enter the building, she clicked her tongue a single time. “Big Cee is looking for you. Said he’d turn up in the next couple hours.”
I gave her a two-finger salute, confirming receipt of her message. “I’m not going anywhere; he can pulse me whenever he’s got time, or drop by.”
She winked at me with a sly grin, but didn’t say anything further beyond: “Enjoy your trix trip!”
Anemic climate control and stale air filled with the scents of fermented dishes simmering greeted me inside, and I took the elevator up to my floor. I didn’t live in a particularly great part of town, but this was one of the sort of middle-of-the-pack blocks. Not anywhere near any borders, and so relatively quiet. The multitude of pock marks, chipped craters, and bullet holes in the face of the building told some of the storied history of this block.
A short jaunt down the hall and fishing my slate out of my pocket to unlock the door, and I was in my safe haven. Cool, filtered air greeted me. I hung my shrug and glider on the rack near the door and let out a groan of relief.
My cube wasn’t much to look at, but it was mine, and mine alone. Eighteen cubic meters of me space. I dampened a microfiber cloth and freshened up quickly, munched on a Choco Brick, and washed it down with a solid chunk of my water ration.
I booted up my deck and watched as the status lights pulsated before turning solid in sequence while I ate. I didn’t feel like setting up my lounger, so I unfolded my bed from the wall instead and stretched out on the mattress. Getting myself good and comfortable, I reached over to my deck for my jackline and swapped the cable for the lead on my collar, which retracted with a snick.
A quick glance through the virtual menus of my deck got me up to speed on any patch notes, changes or scheduled maintenance, and notices from my guild. I paid my rent while I was at it, my weekly bill was in my inbox waiting for me and it took way less effort than paying it using the door terminal. I clicked the temperature in my cube down several degrees and started up my favorite addiction at the same time.
My deck was on the beastly side, and where most of my free credits went.
I closed my eyes. The world of meat space dropped away, and I was greeted with the menu screen for World of Divers. My avatar felt more comfortable to me than my actual self did. WoD was a game that required high-end hardware to run, a true immersive simulation world. In some ways, the sensations in WoD were more real than mundane reality was, and sim addiction was a very real and well-documented phenomenon. I was an addict, but I was a functional addict. I worked, kept up the limited social obligations I had, and I made more than enough credits to fuel this habit in relative luxury. Immsims could run on a wide range of hardware and I/O devices, but if you wanted the full experience, you needed a lattice and a DNI. Fairly common and affordable implants for even X-3 residents, but not ubiquitous like they are topside.
My character was a tier four mage-type, with a plasma primary aspect. I had busted my ass to develop a lightning aspect to go with my randomly-assigned solar aspect and combined them into plasma. My virtual User had glowing electric blue eyes that transitioned into fuchsia limbal rings. I was one of maybe a dozen total plasma aspects on the entire server. The combinations it required were rare enough that very few had it or were willing to put in the work to develop it.
It was a kick ass aspect, and I kicked asses with it. World of Divers was extremely realistic and had little in the way of “game” mechanics. The realism was one of the big selling points. It tried to model User abilities as accurately as possible, and they had a whole host of famous Users that had collaborated in developing it and providing expertise and feedback. A game that real Divers worked on to try and accurately represent their chosen lifestyle without all the glamour, rumor and speculation.
You started as a freshly-awoken User, joined Guilds, and got into Diving, similar to how it really worked, but with some of the more annoying parts automated out or streamlined. I was coming up on my thousandth Dive in-game, and my current advancement represented how seriously I took my virtual second life. I wasn’t top one percent, but I was close enough that I stood out, got into a serious guild, and had a small treasure trove of portal artifacts and wealth.
I started out with a warm up run. A tier three portal, and one I was pretty well versed in. I could finish it in about two hours, so it was a good exercise before getting into stuff that would push my advancement.
Time blurred past.
I incinerated and vaporized monsters in ways that felt satisfying in my very soul. I was solo Diving, which is how I tended to operate outside guild runs, and was in the guardian’s chambers when an out-of-sim alert pinged me. I had a guest ringing my doorbell outside my cube.
It never failed. Always getting interrupted in the most important parts. There was no pausing in WoD, because there was no pausing in real life. Death was permanent. And the guardian was alerted and bearing down on me, so I was locked into this engagement. The alert counter ticked up another digit. Fuck. Doing my best to only partially split my attention and bring up my door camera feed. It was Big Cee. I trusted him. I unlocked the door and watched him enter my cube through one of the security cameras.
It only took me a few more minutes to down the guardian, snag the loot from the portal, and check into a rest area where my character couldn’t be attacked, and where it was safe to log out. Your character slept and trained when you were offline.
I sat upright in my bed, covered my mouth, and yawned.
Big Cee was sprawled in my dining chair with a can of Blast! in one hand and scrolling his slate in the other. He looked up from his data feed and smirked at me. Putting his can down, he grabbed the other can from the counter next to him and tossed it to me.
Nice of him to think of me when he was helping himself to my fridge Blast! Stash.
I cracked the can open with the hiss of carbonation and drank a few mouthfuls while I waited for him to tell me what he was after me for.
“So, Kier—” he started to say.
“Just Kay, please,” I interrupted him.
We’d grown up together as cube neighbors and went to the same schools. We’d been friends since the age of four. I knew it was a force of habit for him and not intentional.
He tapped his fingertips on the energy drink and nodded. “Sure, sure. Kay. I got a gig I really want you to come along on.”
I paused, lowered my can, and let out a quiet sigh.
His hand came up automatically, palm out to placate me. “Look, I know you’re itching to get back to your sim, but this is a big deal for me personally, and I really want you there for it.”
I wasn’t a stranger to having more direct hands-on experience with gang-related matters, and my stripes indicated that it wasn’t just a buy-in investment I had. Or maybe the investment was the other way around. I was never sure about that part. As part and parcel of the sorts of consumer electronics work and customization I did at work and home, I had more than a passing familiarity with digital systems and firmware. It wasn’t something I advertised, but Camilo knew. He was my direct connect with official gang business and worked as an intermediary for a number of people. Ganging wasn’t just bashing heads and shooting punchers, even if that might have been the bulk of it most days. They needed skills too, and I hadn’t wanted to join up.
Joining wasn’t always a voluntary matter, but Six Delta had respected my wishes with some strings attached about the occasional odd job. This sounded similar, but not quite the same.
“What do you mean by big deal for you?”
His dark eyes glittered in the overhead lighting of my cube. “I get this under my belt, and I get promoted.”
I let out a low whistle. He’d been grinding for a while now, but it took either extreme talent, a hell of a lot of hard work, or being lucky enough to be a User to make it beyond the member ranks. This would be him setting foot into the players' club with 6D.
We went too far back to refuse him, and he knew it. But he also knew that I wasn’t going to be a bobble head, either. Hustle respects hustle, and the fastest way to learn what cheap puncher or the sole of a boot tasted like was to get into the habit of accepting initial offers. Because hoo, did those goalposts like to move, and quick.
“I take it this is a big job?” I asked, ready and waiting for him to make his pitch.
I wanted to hear about it as his friend, but I also wanted details as someone with skin in the game.
He made his pitch.
The job was fairly simple and well within the capabilities of the crew he was bringing.
Highway robbery, except highways were a relic of the past and only kept alive in vids and the language.
The target was a corporate transport, which got a raised eyebrow from me.
Not a normal one, he was quick to clarify. Unmarked, civilian-grade wheels, and the only security present would be two, maybe four tops.
The cargo? Corpo-grade stims and meds that were either below-grade or out of date and bound for local distribution to the black market. Potentially some implants, too. They had a manifest they’d bought off a suit. Secure containers, some chilled, some on cryo, the rest ambient. It was owned by Veris Biosciences, which was all pharmaceuticals and the really high-end implants that Users used. But gear with that many digits attached wouldn’t be rolling through 6-3. Pawned off meds with the labels conveniently damaged or mostly missing was the bread and butter of every gray market clinic in the sub sector, and most of the “legit” ones as well.
I wouldn’t be involved in the heist. They were going to jack it in the streets; they had the route, timings, and ID for the vehicle. Dispose of the plainclothes security—doubtful they were even agents, probably subcontractors—scramble the transponders and pull it into a shielded garage out of sight to be cracked open and inventoried.
Once it was safely tucked away where it wouldn’t be found, that’s where I came in. He wanted me to crack any and all of the locks on the vehicle and containers so they could access the goods without them being destroyed or otherwise spoiled.
Fifteen, maybe thirty minutes of work on my part. A couple grand worth of chits up front, and I’d get a very minor slice of the proceeds after it’d been tallied up and moved. The rest of the crew were members, some old hats to make sure things went over smoothly, and they didn’t get paid, but reaped the full benefit from the street value of the goods.
We haggled back and forth, and I settled on two months of taxes, fifteen hundred on chit, and two percent. I took a lower percentage and initial payout for waiving my taxes, which is how I preferred it to be handled. We shook on it, and it was a done deal.
“So, when’s the gig?” I asked after downing the remainder of my White Berry Blast!
He stood up and cracked his neck. A slow grin broke his face.
“Three hours. You need to be here in two and a half.” He flicked a meaty finger across his slate and narrow-beamed me the coordinates for the garage.
I sighed loudly. I was going to miss the Guild Dive tonight, but that was okay; tonight wasn’t the good one, that was tomorrow night.
“My crew is going to kill me,” I complained with a gesture over at my deck.
He snorted out a half-laugh. “You’re such a fuckin’ nerd, we need to get you laid.”
I flipped him off, and he followed up with a loud, harsh laugh and made his way to the door.
Before opening it, he looked over his shoulder and asked me, “Want to hit the hash bar next week?”
My cheeks warmed a little at the invitation. That was a pretty popular hookup spot for casual in-and-out, but I was relatively certain he was asking me as one would ask a wing person, and not like it was a date.
I nodded quickly and shot him a thumbs-up, then got ready to jack back into my deck before I had to leave later.
I can’t believe I’m going to be robbing an actual corpo transport tonight.
The door beeped, and the locks clacked. I fell back into my immersion.