Binary Storm Read online

  Exiting the house, the second tway opened his eyes. The pair resumed side-by-side walking, again flanking Nick. To the men and women huddled around the bonfire at the end of the block, their foxrat feast consumed, nothing would indicate the presence of a Paratwa. Just three regular men, albeit one of them unusually diminutive and the other two either twins or clones.

  “I’ll accompany you back to the border,” one of the tways said.

  “No need. I’m sure you put the fear of God into every mokker in this part of the zoo, at least for tonight.”

  “Mokkers aren’t the only dangerous humans roaming these streets.”

  “Just get me as far as the alley. I’m good from there.”

  They walked in silence, encountering only a few people. The sole potential threat came from a gang of teen boys. Perched on a crumbling stoop, they were well-inebriated, judging by the empty bottles of PlusPlus. The concentrated beer amplified with a modified oyster sperm derivative was said to be a powerful aphrodisiac.

  Several of the teens rose to block their path, eyes flashing with that peculiar blend of malice and lust inherent to PlusPlus drinkers. But something in Ektor Fang’s double glare convinced them not to make trouble. They quietly backed off.

  Nick couldn’t get the Du Pal’s revelation out of his head. If indeed true – and he’d been given no reason to doubt Ektor Fang thus far – it had monumental consequences for the world.

  They reached the alley. The mokkers were gone. The surviving one, no doubt nursing a sore crotch, likely had scrambled out of there as soon as Nick and Ektor Fang had left. No evidence remained to indicate what had happened to the bodies of his two mates. As was the case throughout the globe’s unsec areas, corpses contained value. Not only could they be stripped of attire and weapons, but their organs could be sold or traded, their flesh abused or consumed.

  Nick pressed the fob implanted beneath his wrist, pointed it toward the doorway of the abandoned building next to the alley. There was a ripple of light as the optical camo deactivated to reveal his old Chevy Destello. The vehicle resembled an early twenty-first century Segway but with space for two riders, one behind the other, and with a pair of rubber spheres instead of tires. It boasted all-weather shielding to protect against precipitation, thrown rocks and low-end projectile weapons.

  He hopped on the Destello. The vehicle confirmed his identity and hummed to life. It extended a back cushion for him to lean against and take some of the weight off his legs.

  “Till next time,” he said.

  “There may”

  “not be”

  “a next time.”

  Nick didn’t take the words seriously. Ektor Fang had said pretty much the same thing after every one of their previous meets. Sooner or later, he’d secretly contact Nick to institute another rendezvous. These clandestine get-togethers were more than just an opportunity to pass along intel. He suspected that they provided the Du Pal with a kind of emotional fuel, that they met some deep inner need that Nick had so far been unable to fathom.

  “Remember your promise,” one of the tways warned. “For the ears of your director only. And he must promise to keep the intel in the strictest confidence.”

  “You have my word.”

  Nick extended his right hand. The Paratwa sandwiched the palm between his own right hands.

  Ektor Fang broke the three-palmed grip and stepped back. Nick pressed the accelerator. The Destello rolled down the street, picking up speed until it hit forty-five mph, its maximum speed. By the time he glanced at the rearview cam display, the Du Pal was gone.

  Three

  Nick’s twentieth-century stabbing had been one of the best things that ever happened to him. Weeks in the hospital had altered his perspective. Being a gangbanger lost its macho coolness. After being released from medical care and doing a short stint of five-oh-rehab – three months in Camden County Jail – he’d migrated to the other side of the country. First stop had been Seattle, where he’d wormed his way into a programming gig at one of Bill Gates’ secret development groups. His computer skills had served him well in that era, as they did in 2095.

  His mind returned to those enjoyable couple of years at legendary Microsoft as he drove the Destello back to Philly-sec. It had been a relatively carefree period in his life. Although technology had changed immensely over the past century, no one had yet invented a time machine capable of transporting a person back to the days of his youth. Too bad.

  The ride back took twelve minutes. There was little vehicular traffic this time of night, not that there was all that much in the daytime either. Foot-power ruled. The zoo had its own generating plants but they were old and suffered frequent breakdowns, and electricity was often apportioned. Keeping streetlamps bright and cars fully charged was a challenge, as it was in most unsecured regions.

  Nick zigzagged the Destello from one shadowy street to the next, avoiding the same route he’d come by to lessen the chance of muggers who might have tracked him on the ride out and set up slip chains to ambush his return.

  He raced past several groups of dicey individuals, including a gang of juvenile urchins who slingshotted paint bombs at him. The Destello’s translucent shielding repelled the colorful bombardment. It also kept a pack of wild basbucks who chased him two blocks from biting his legs.

  The ungainly mahogany-furred animals, crosses between basset hounds and buckeye chickens, were surprisingly fast. Native to Philadelphia, their ancestors had been crafted by a South Street arts collective back in the 2050s, that decade of unfettered and often crazed genetic experimentation. In addition to basbucks, the Fifties had produced such aberrations as megalions, winged tortoises and saber-toothed cockroaches the size of puppies. On a more ominous note, it was the era that had given rise to the first binaries.

  He reached the transit station. The one-story round building squatted like a pancake in the midst of an expanse of land denuded of foliage and structures: the DMZ. The narrow demilitarized zone was flanked by a six meter high wall that extended in both directions as far as the eye could see. Not even landlines connected the two realms, although there were frequent attempts to hijack power and telecom from Philly-sec via burrow drones threading cables deep underground.

  Razor wire topped the wall but was mainly for show. A formidable appearance was meant to discourage zoo citizens without permits from attempting to cross over. The real deterrents were drone patrols, detection grids and sat surveillance, all linked to lethal geo cannons that would be used in the event of a worst-case scenario – Philly-sec’s greatest fear: a mass invasion by those occupying the lower rungs of the pyramid.

  Beyond the wall, moonlight illuminated the towers of center city. The cluster of glass and steel skyscrapers, some linked by aerial walkways, resembled Disney’s Tomorrowland on steroids. Tonight’s rare atmospheric conditions were already starting to wither. The farthest towers took on a murky appearance as the omnipotent smog mass crept back up Delaware Bay.

  The tallest buildings, temples of the global corporate and governmental infrastructure, topped out at one hundred and forty stories. Even with the smog, their heights could provide an impressive view of the region. Nick rarely had the pleasure of such views, however. He worked in E-Tech’s more modest fifty-seven story building. And although technically his workstation was in Intelligence on the forty-ninth floor, which had a few windows with decent views, he spent the majority of his days underground, in the tombs on Sublevel 3 with the other hardcore programmers.

  The E-Tech skyscraper on Filbert Street had been the organization’s international headquarters for the past seven years, following destruction of its original offices, along with most of Washington DC, by a nuke smuggled into the city by a still unidentified terrorist group. Fortunately, the former US capital had received advance warning that a detonation was imminent and most of the citizens had been able to evacuate. There had been less than twenty thousand casualties, far less than the mega losses suffered by Bogota, Karachi, Pittsburgh a
nd other cities that had suffered nuclear attacks.

  Philly was the new US capital, a bit ironic considering that it was the original one back in the era of the American Revolution. Today, the city had far better protection against the threat of nukes than DC and those other unfortunate metropolises. Still, Nick knew that no defensive measures were perfect.

  The transit station parted a door as he approached, its scanners having done a preliminary read that he matched the description of personnel authorized to enter Philly-sec. Nick parked at the entry lot. The Destello would be scanned and processed separately and be waiting for him on the other side.

  He entered the massive anteroom, which was crammed with two thousand utilitarian chairs. During morning and evening rush hours, it would be packed with commuters waiting to be processed.

  Most would have permits for entering the secured part of the city for daily work in the low-paying manufacturing industries just inside the perimeter walls. Some of the commuters would be licensed beggars, hoping to score enough empathy handouts to feed their families back in the zoo. A smaller percentage would have access to the homes of wealthy residents who employed human servants rather than mechs, either for compassion’s sake or, more frequently, snobbish bragging rights.

  Oh, my dear, in our home we only use humans to wait on us, Nick had overheard a society woman recently boast. Mechs are so… well, you know, mechanical.

  At this hour the anteroom was nearly deserted. Only a handful of people were waiting to go through customs, all bunched at the far end near the sole active ingress portal. Nick ambled over to join them, aware that hidden sensors were tracking and reconfirming the initial ID scan.

  He sat beside a gangly teen boy whose skin was decorated with subcutaneous gold swirls, an expensive dye job favored by contemporary gays. If Nick were to guess, the kid was returning from a clandestine rendezvous with some zoo-bred bad boy his rich parents didn’t approve of.

  The teen was popping lime-green crackers in his mouth as if they were food. The inorganic digestibles were baws – blast ad wafers – marketing freebies distributed by corporations. Each baw contained a dozen or more advertisements that the consumer would experience as subliminal brain flashes. The teen was literally ingesting more than a hundred ads per minute, most of which he wouldn’t be able to consciously recall.

  “I’m shopping for a new fridge,” Nick said to pass the time. “Any suggestions?”

  “The Pyrochill Five-X-Five is one of a kind!” The baw warped the teen’s face into a salesman’s smile as he uttered the product’s promotional slogan. “All-temperature freezing and heating will ice your budget even as it warms your heart!”

  Subliminal advertising had certainly existed when Nick was a teen in the 1990s. But the crowd he’d hung with back then wouldn’t have volunteered to become full-bore commercial memes, at least not without financial compensation. Many people today seemed willing to accept levels of emotional manipulation by corporations, governments and individuals that citizens of a century ago would have found appalling.

  Then again, he was probably being a bit hypocritical. He practiced his own variety of devious, behind-the-scenes influencing.

  It took three minutes for customs to process several of the others before Nick’s chair beeped. The system’s nonlinear selection system had chosen him ahead of the teen. As he stood, he gave the boy a pat on the shoulder.

  “Kid, here’s some free advice. Only put things in your mouth you’re willing to swallow.”

  Not waiting for a reaction, Nick made his way through the portal to face the battle android in the next room. The BA was a hulk, two and a half meters high, and designed to look as threatening as possible. Its hunter green metallic body had sensory nodes in lieu of a face. Chest panels revealed compartments for confiscating contraband or carrying weapons and supplies when in the field. Hips were studded with the retracted barrels of energy and projectile weapons.

  A builder plate on the left upper torso identified the BA as a product of the bio-robotics division of Moscow-based Voshkof. Nick didn’t like that it was built by a company that also supplied one of the deadliest Paratwa breeds, the Voshkof Rabbits. But history was rife with corporations arming both sides of a conflict.

  The BA ran a remote DNA scan while checking his permit, which authorized a single back-and-forth crossing to visit an aunt and uncle. His real ones were long dead, the permit a clever fake.

  He stood immobile with arms and legs outstretched while the android scanned him. It reached a three-fingered claw into his overcoat and withdrew his safak and the other mini flashbang, that one hidden in a vial of lip balm.

  “Purpose of these devices?” the BA demanded, its deep-throated male voice programmed for menace.

  Nick was tempted to reply that the safak’s tool assortment was meant for disassembling battle androids. But he held his tongue. Should the BA’s capacity for registering sarcasm be less than hoped for, he didn’t relish being locked up for making terroristic threats to machinery.

  “The safak and flashbang are for self-defense and urgent medical care,” he said.

  “Proceed.” The android backed up against a wall and went into freeze mode until the next victim arrived for intimidation.

  A wall compartment slid open. Nick retrieved his handgun, a slimline Glock 36 that he’d picked up in a vintage weaponry store a few years back. He tucked it into a shoulder holster sewn into his overcoat.

  The station’s inner door parted, emptying him into a street flanked by row homes. Style-wise, they were similar to those found in many parts of the zoo. But most had legal occupants and were better maintained.

  He sensed his implanted attaboy becoming active again as he entered Philly-sec. It was always unsettling to be off the grid during his treks to the other side. But there was nothing to be done about that. Sewers, caverns, subway tunnels and basements throughout the zoo were so packed with hidden jamscram devices that it would take a monumental effort to eliminate them.

  There was little incentive for anyone to do so. The zoo’s impoverished masses were rife with smugglers, gangbangers, revolutionaries and a host of other screw-the-status-quo types, most of whom preferred conducting business in the electromagnetic shadows. As for the denizens of Philly-sec and other secured cities, comfortably segregated from the rabble, they saw no upside to spending their wealth on such projects.

  His Destello was waiting for him in the parking lot. He hopped on and drove the several kilometers to his apartment. It was in a vintage three-story row home with a dormer window protruding from the top floor. Its strip siding was less than a year old but was so weathered and stained that it appeared to have been installed centuries ago. Like the owners of many private dwellings, Nick’s landlord wouldn’t spring for weekly steam cleaning, one of the few methods for countering the corrosive effects of the world’s increasingly acidic and polluted atmosphere.

  He parked the Destello out front. There was no need to turn on the camo. Vehicular thievery wasn’t unknown in Philly-sec but when it did happen, the thieves would likely use camo-busting hardware. In any case, the chances of anyone wanting to swipe such an old ride were slim.

  He headed up the stoop into the entry hallway. A sensor array ID’d him as a resident and the inner door clicked open. He proceeded up the staircase to the top floor, where more sophisticated sensors of his own design handled access to the compact two-room apartment. Even after several years here, he continued renting on a week-to-week basis. In the unstable waning years of the twenty-first century, with secured cities fearful of being overrun, vaporized or beset by a dozen other calamities, he figured it was best not to put down roots.

  The door confirmed his identity and swung inward. An old LED floor lamp turned on as he entered, spilling amber light into the living room.

  He threw his overcoat across a chair. “Hey Sosoome, where ya hiding?”

  “Lemme alone,” an abrasive male voice replied from under the sofa.

  “Any messa
ges while I was out?”

  “Whaddya think, Mister ‘Oh, I’m so goddamned special.’”

  “Wow, we’re in a mood tonight, aren’t we? Anything important?”

  “Only if you’re looking to purchase bionuke shelters in the Australian Outback or discount K&R insurance.”

  The marketing of shelters in isolated regions against what many perceived as a coming global apocalypse was, at best, chum to lure preppers, and at worst a total scam. And Nick already had a standard kidnap and ransom policy through E-Tech.

  Sosoome wormed his way out from under the sofa. He’d been crafted to resemble a domestic calico cat, with a mottled coat of fake fur in tortoiseshell and white. His head was slightly larger than a real cat’s in order to contain a hodgepodge of sensors. Only in the shadows could he be mistaken for an authentic feline.

  The little mech glared up at Nick. “Wanna tell me where the hell you’ve been?”

  “Late night business meeting. Worried?”

  Sosoome erupted into a caustic laugh that sounded like sandpaper being rubbed together. He dashed into the kitchen. Bounding onto the countertop, he extruded a set of wiry fingers from within his paws and stood on his hind legs to open the liquor cabinet.

  “Dude, you want a vodka and tonic?”

  He nodded. Sosoome’s 360-degree sensor array read the signal without turning. Fixing the drink, the mech trotted back to the recliner Nick had settled into and hopped up on the armrest.

  “Thanks,” Nick said, taking the proffered glass.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Sosoome grumbled. “You know how much I just love being an indentured servant, Master Nick.”

  Off-the-shelf serving mechs were programmed for attentiveness, grace and civility, which to Nick’s way of thinking meant they had about as much character as a twentieth century vacuum cleaner. He preferred interacting with an edgier personality to keep him mentally sharp. He’d recalibrated Sosoome’s biocircuits to enable the mech to respond with mild contempt and inventive sarcasm.