144:07 am. She was almost done. Her fingers flew faster, as if in anticipation, or perhaps just eagerness to be over and done with. A pulsing cramp was beginning in the backs of her hands, running down the muscles that controlled her fingers. It would probably lead to more mistakes, but she could have someone proof it later; she herself would not remember how she had done what she had done when she opened her eyes. While she was known for writing the best utilities for sectors around, she did it by Zen, closing her eyes and letting her mind track back to a different language. Math and logic were not her natural mode of thought. She was a more emotional, irrational creature than the computers required. But in this mode of thinking, she was not writing a utility so much as speaking a language to another, somewhat thinking being. When her mind reverted back to English Standard, she would not be able to read what she had written. She had discovered this little factoid purely by accident. Five more minutes… two… and then she was done, and she opened her eyes.
Before her lay the familiar blinking black and gray screen with pages and pages of symbols on it: a completed utility. She wouldn't know whether or not it worked until she ran it, and she hoped it would run on the first try. She wasn't sure she had the strength to log onto the North American Network and send it to her friends there, who would then run it and tell her how much work remained to be done. She plugged in her goggles with their sensors resting coolly on her temples and, giving her aching hands a rest, toggled the screens over to the blinking icon in the corner which asked her if she wanted to log onto the Athens Elysium. It was 4:15 am, but she would sleep through the next day. A fresh surge of adrenaline hit her system, and she was eager to find out what her new utility looked like. She opened the tiny, 50 pixel by 50 pixel door, and her icon stepped through.
The Elysia were the haven of saborujin everywhere. Computer programmers, most of them young males in their teens and 20s (or so the latest in fashionable computer e-zines said), most of whom possessed more curiosity than was socially acceptable… all of them flocked to the Elysia. In the physical reality, in the so-called meat world, it amounted to little more than a collection of metals and wires and electrons and plastics, sitting somewhere in a city in the North American continent. There was one that was rumored to be somewhere in Boulder, but no one had found it yet. In the reality that was the WorldGrid it was a city in and of itself, a city that this young woman in particular knew very well.
She walked through the city quickly and efficiently, not stopping to pick up any of the latest news-bytes from the automated 'byte-boys' and ignoring the dealers who stood at the street corners (much like their meat-world counterparts) peddling second-rate saboru utilities and programs. Her eventual destination was Elysium itself. The last vanguard of the truly elite saborujin.
She looked around at the signs of decay; every street corner and store-front, where there would have been the stylized and carefully configured icons of her brethren, instead there were now the fuzzy and crackling icons of thrill-seekers.
She had been one of the last to withdraw, and had not done so completely. She still, more often than not, logged in to Athens and wandered for a short while before entering the computer club, rather than logging directly into Elysium as most of the saborujin did. She never stayed very long in Athens proper, but she did visit, and kept an eye on more of the happenings than most of her compatriots would have thought or cared to think about. She, however, would have called it good business if she were ever asked why she did something so meaningless.
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She walked through the rotating doors on her way into the club, ducking reflexively as they flipped another, less welcome 'net-rider, out. It was later than usual, at least for the ones in this free city. Athens was usually populated by the Eastern seaboard, and it was late enough that even the most persistent 'net-rider should have long since given up and gone to bed. Well, maybe this one was more persistent than most. It might even make a halfway decent saborujin someday.
Her usual table was waiting. She smiled slightly as she sat down at the construct lit by pixelized candlelight. The saborujin or saboru-gumi who had designed this Elysium had evidently been fans of the film-noir style. Toggling the split-view, she coded herself a quick locator program that masqueraded as a cigarette-and-holder. Her friends were in here somewhere, she just had to find them.
"You're up late."
She looked up. The man standing in front of her, although clearly recognizable as the icon of one of her friends, had evidently been here much longer than she had. He was dressed accordingly, dangling a champagne flute from his fingertips, and his tie tack glittered in the flickering light from her table. It was the tie tack that really gave him away. Vain as he was, Naginata could not resist his trademark symbol that marked him as being on what he termed the 'bleeding edge' of technology.
"So are you." She took a long drag on her cigarette, casting her digital senses around. No one else she knew was in here. Well, he was right, they were up late. "I finished a new utility."
"Oh?"
"There's only one problem. I don't know what it does."
"Ah. Yes, that's generally a problem." He peered closer at her. "You were doing that programming by Zen thing again, weren't you?"
She chuckled wryly. "Caught. Yes, I was. I think I was making some sort of encryption utility, but I lost track about halfway through. It seemed to finish without a problem, though."
He shook his head, laughing softly. "One of these days, Ghost, you are going to get yourself in trouble with that."
Ghost shrugged. "It's what I do. Are you going to look at the thing or not?"
Naginata chuckled and stepped back, holding his hands up in surrender. "All right, all right. No need to get all hostile and icy."
She shook her head and pulled from her purse a small puzzle box. Naginata took it from her hands delicately, without making contact even with the tips of her fingers. His eyes flickered with light from data-trails as he examined it, running it through his own diagnostic programs.
Even the icons that they used weren't sophisticated enough to convey the slight widening of the eyes or gasp of inward breath that accompanied surprise, but Ghost saw something. She was known for picking up quirks like that. "What?"
"Do you know what this is?" he asked in a tone of voice she'd never heard him use before.
"Why don't you tell me…" Underneath the table she reached for her revolver, a swift-attack program that she usually kept hidden. She'd never expected to use it here, in an Elysium, but…
"Well, it's not an encryption program. Not really. It's a decryption program, and a highly sophisticated one…" Before she realized it, she was staring down the barrel of his revolver, which looked remarkably large and intimidating despite her knowledge of its non-existence. "And I'm afraid I'm going to have to walk away with this."
Her eyes narrowed. She should have known better than to test a program on Naginata, even as remote as the chances were that he would want it. To preserve his reputation he would take the program, and reduce her own unit to slag and ashes so that any copies she might have kept on it were destroyed, along with her capacity to write new ones. He would then possess the only copy, and stay at the top of the food chain.
Unacceptable.
"Ikimashiyo," she said, and blue lightning shot out of the corners of the room, igniting Naginata where he stood. As his body arched backwards the puzzle cube went flying out of his hands, and she caught it neatly. "Made." The lightning shot back, and he dropped to the floor. Around her, everyone was staring at them. She knelt down beside the semi-conscious icon.
"You forgot something, Naginata. I was one of the first saboru on this grid. I was among the first ones to create these poli. And I coded this Elysium myself. Don't ever try to take what is mine from me in my own home. Ever."
She looked more closely at the icon. It was flickering in and out, as though the line from which it was being generated was fading. "Then again, I doubt you'll be taking anything from anyone. Goodbye, Naginata."
Ghost left the dying man twitching on the floor, exiting the club as quietly as she'd entered. The puzzle cube still firmly clutched in her hand, she walked down a few streets and into the alley before logging off. Once in the meat world she pulled the goggles off of her head and sat there shaking. It was 5:32 am.
Somewhere, on the other side of the city, maybe even the other side of the country, or the other side of the globe… somewhere, a man had fallen to the ground. Bleeding from his ears and nose, he would hemorrhage and die within fifteen minutes. Ghost sat there breathing heavily for a few minutes, wondering. Finally she typed in an activation code which would track Naginata's icon to its source and dial an emergency call out from that location. If he was smart and hadn't tried that stunt from the middle of nowhere, he would survive to annoy someone else another day.
Ghost set the goggles on top of the unit box, and both on top of her bedside table. It was far too early in the morning already. She'd sleep through the day, and check on Naginata later that evening. And then she would speak to the keepers of the Elysia about what had happened. Something had turned up those lightning generators to lethal levels. She hadn't had them set that high when she'd coded them in. Someone, some saboru skilled enough to decrypt her code, had decided that those who violated a certain code of conduct deserved not simply a head-splitting logoff for their pains, but death. Ghost intended to find out who that was, and deliver an object lesson.