Tag: Guardians of Liberty

Guardians of Liberty: Part 9

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

9.

Ra710NaL3:

A Digital-Aquifer Manual

N1T3 sat before his computer.

He’d come up with the title in a half-second, but he stared it down for an hour before finally stepping away to do something else. By then the name had taken hold. With it were the mental-images of his creation, its uses.

Brewing since he’d parted with Ket, those images had worked their way into his subconscious. They continually shed viral vectors, forming bits and bytes rapidly giving shape to something grander: data, information, jigsawed bits of scrap-data that formed an image greater than even he could fully comprehend.

He knew Ket well enough; once he saw the Aquifer again, it would be pressed and dressed. Reduced to a pair of computers. One regular screen. One large one. The rest of it would be put to work in the background, interlinked to form the backdrop of her burlesque-like routines: those moments of mingled affluence and ambition when she dazzled for business or pleasure.

She’d never need the manual, of course. She knew how to do custom work herself; knew what she needed to run her “show,” could envision it. Because of her intelligence, she could build it too, but it was N1T3’s brainchild first, and he’d deserved the honors.

Most times, she just drew precise diagrams and paid craftsmen.

That was business, and Ket knew business. She knew time-to-profit ratios, took them to heart. If you weren’t breaking down hours into dollars and cents, you weren’t building, only sustaining. That was perfectly fine for some. Not her.

But the manual wasn’t for her. That was important to remember.

Sure, N1T3 would give it to her. She’d even read it. But it wasn’t for her. It was for all those people that came asking for explanation, to be directed to something specific: something a host like Ket could summarize. A manual.

Then, when pointed to, that manual could be easily and accessibly explained for free. In both plain and advanced language, building on itself therein via net-like structures, interlinking, so as to be understandable. Article-by-article, but also, articles-by-articles. It needed the same redundancy, ease of use and modularity as the servers.

It needed to be a product of its time and nothing else.

To do that, N1T3needed time. Not much, but enough. The safest way to ensure it was lying low, but he remained in need of supplies, and worst, a fugitive. Or at least, Martin Black was. Any and every thing now required more care and attention.

Above all, careful required relying solely on Ket. He’d been okay with everything thus far, didn’t find himself disturbed by the idea, but still didn’t like it. Mostly, because he hated sitting idly. To be told to– by one he viewed as a superior, no less, felt an insult.

He knew then, his fears were his own doing: He didn’t like sitting idly, but Ket would never have presumed superiority. She was, of course, an apex creature who’d found its niche and worked it like none other before, but it wasn’t superiority that drove it. Contrary, in fact. It was her knowing of herself, her kind, so thoroughly she became the arbiter of their nature.

But in her, and a select few others’ minds, she and N1T3 were equals. Peers. He’d simply been absent ‘til now.

Rather than feel shame, as he expected, he relaxed. It was a sign of his slow caution manifesting. He’d learned to take things as they were long ago, but implementing it was another story entirely. It was enough to catch some of the less-obvious Human-character defects: tension, its erosion on logic. That information was important when such ignored-defects could easily get one killed.

It was then that he sat down, not to write, but to plan the writing.

He needed resources. Food and water were covered. As he was well-enough hidden, his attention turned elsewhere: what he needed to live. Even Spartans still required simpler things; toiletries, consumables, things neither luxury nor necessity but that the world ignored and largely covered regardless.

But N1T3 was a fugitive. Or Martin Black was. Someone with his face, anyhow.

Anywhere corp-affiliation ruled was out of the question. Meaning somewhere to get in and out of quickly, where he’d be kept him from recognition. If he stockpiled, he’d be less worried, could focus on sustenance, but bulk-buying could draw unwanted attention.

Even if it required physically mapping the best routes, times, and places to simply buy stuff. He’d put something more-permanent in place.

He settled on a well-known convenience store he’d never entered before: a place he knew, but didn’t know him. The clerks there were Indian, the last of caste-less descendants trying make names for themselves by ferrying families into so-called promised-lands. These days though, no-one gave two shits how things ran, so long as they kept running.

N1T3 sympathized: the programmer’s eternal plight inherent their struggle, fractalized like all things to the whims of time and chaos.It was sheer luck he knew the few, particular places nearby that were that way as well. Whomever couldn’t be paid off, could be knocked off easiest with proper sleight of hand.

He’d hold the latter in reserve, obviously, but it wasn’t off the table. The resources were there. He needed them bad enough. The people involved knew why they could not offer them. Either they were willing to take some cash, lie, or were willing to look the other way while he robbed them. Anyone else was part of the problem, however unfortunately.

All anyone needed these days was an excuse to act. How or what-for mattered not. The few foolish enough to miss the connection between a refusal and later theft would only suit his purposes. Otherwise, they’d understand when they learned their resources were guaranteed, and his emphatically weren’t.

Sure, N1T3 could knock off a clerk without him ever knowing. But wasn’t it easier for him to lie, say it didn’t happen, then go through dealing with corp-sec? None of them owned the shops. Not really. Not anymore. Corporate banks did. They owned the land and deed, did nothing but extort. Why risk exposing one’s own, dirty secrets to help them?

When secrets were otherwise harmless, but enough to bullied or blackmailed over, it was guaranteed they would be. Way N1T3 saw it, he could pay you or they could. At least his didn’t come with strings wrapped around your throat.

Besides, who looked for a fugitive in a public place?

So long as N1T3 remained careful, he could pull it off. It was all about timing. He didn’t have to be idle. What better way to write a manual on an obsession than being forced away to engage it analytically? If its power were truly worthy of obsession, could be repeatedly proved as such by analysis, could it truly be a negative to do so?

Only by repeatedly analyzing it could one be certain, although N1T3 guessed there wasn’t truly an answer. Like many things in the post-digital world, it wasn’t the outcome that mattered. Rather, it was the system producing it, whether it functioned properly.

The penultimate manifestation: Humans would always make mistakes, but are not so bound to learn from them. What better way to find the true worth of anything than to force its confrontation and analysis? To make a social call-check, so robustly invisible, save to that all-seeing-eye of reductionism: Science.

N1T3 could think of no better explanation of the duality of need and desire than that of perfection-vs-its attainability. In the end, what it reduced to was irrelevant without the processes reduced. The reduction, or conclusion was simple; perfection was unattainable.

But the process of understanding why, of learning through experiential knowledge, was the reduced. Reductionists– scientists among them, knew that.

Thing was, reductionists were people like N1T3 and Ket. People eternally in the twilight between youth and the middle-age, vat-grown and incubated via trickled-prosperity. The elder brothers and sisters of N1T3’s generation had gotten it so near-to-right they would come round in time, but could not be the force necessary to change. Thus, it fell to the rest.

Likewise, the vibrance of youth spawned of the times and their effects, were too ingrained in their world to do more than conform. In that, they would do so spectacularly, N1T3 sensed. But it was N1T3, Ket, their ilk– those middle children between the two extremes that would dictate change. The rest would fall-in-line or fall-out completely: from understanding, rather than need or want.

The wrongness of the mentality that datum– information– didn’t matter was unacceptable in a postdigital world. It was an outdated, old set of ideas, predigital and in no way compatible with newly discovered reality. It came from a world of sensationalist tabloids and ailing print subscriptions– places where information went to die.

Now, information was the only thing.

Digitally, people no longer transmitted or received, they idled. Always. Whether it was in the form of text or imagery data, video or audio, all of the above and more, their brains transmitted to their bodies which then reacted according to specification. Their brains re-encoded the reactions into the aforementioned, re-transmitted it, and through the adapters they used to interface, linked to the net.

That was the net. Everything around it. Its interfaces.

Forays had been made into the world of advanced sensory stimulation; VR, pulse-feedback, electro-stims, all to various effects and uses, and for good or ill. Problem was, everything was proprietary, impossible to build alone or innovate easily on.

In simplest terms, closed hardware and software systems could only be developed by its creators. That unfortunate fact stifled any system. Sometimes however, it was necessary, if only for security’s sake. The instances where it was not, were obvious in their intent.

For instance, N1T3 personally knew of several, closed government networks remotely impenetrable. The physical levels of security betweendigital access and its repositories was so daunting that, though possible to overcome, there was no reasonable value to the effort to most.

A foreign agent could infiltrate their facilities themselves, work the systems just as easily. What did governments need people like N1T3 for then? The flip-side was though, who remained most in demand when the agents failed? Hackers. Mercs or loyalist fools, or outright ferals. Didn’t matter which, they were just the vessel through which the code flowed.

That was the double-edge blade forcing the Governments to cede territory– both literal and non, to the corporations: they refused to incorporate hackers. N1T3 knew of at least two, London-local deals signed in the last week by the Met, ceding area-security to local Corp-sec.

Aries and Warhound were at each other’s throats for those contracts. One’s militant overamped machismo against the other’s tech-junkie turned warrior-merc. The smoke of the first volley against the factions hadn’t even cleared yet, and already, they were on each other. If the general public had realized what was really going on, they’d have hardly believed it. It would’ve been confined to the province of man’s collective memory. That place reserved for myths and legends, and little else.

Technology was too powerful to be duped though. N1T3 reminded himself this was war; in times of caution, err on the side of caution. This war then, war if not for technology, through it. Thus, if through it, then for an idea. An idea that also happened to be the culmination of a species’ path from tree-hanger to zero-g orbiter.

Everyone wanted to feel that zero-g now. Better, everyone could. They knew if they’d all just shut up, pull together an agonizingly long moment, they could. Then, they’d never have to worry again. Humanity, in general, would never have to. This would secure their legacy. Their legacy’s legacy: a redundancy fractalized on micro and macro-scales and required for existence to continue. In this case, Human existence: postdigital as it now was.

And eventually, for a collective epitaph that read; despite each individual’s flaws, they gave their all and thrived. And for N1T3, his people– the postdigital ones, that thriving was via the idea that, overall, one could succeed because Humanity saw success as a foundation to herald its next, collective expansion. Its next Golden Age, but secured until the end of lifetimes and beyond, due to its effect.

History might not remember N1T3 or Ket, or any names forever, but it need not either. Knowledge of N1T3 and his ilk might become so commonplace as to become utterly obscure. The electricity in the light: there, but only for those looking deeper.

Meantime, that knowledge itself was redundant, archived due to the enormity of their contribution and its revision to base knoweldge.It didn’t matter who they were. It mattered what they did. The best way to do that, was to make them memorable, elevate them to Paragons. Not by lying about misdeeds, but honoring persistence over adversity in spite of them.

It was within the same, conceptual grounds not as stealing a fish to feed oneself, but as stealing a fishing pole to feed a village. Equal in micro scales, not macro. One was far more effective and worthy than the other.

And morally defensible.

Human society, on the whole, had lost something of that balancing in the trasition between pre-and-post digital. The digital age, such as it was, formed a blur of incessant, blazing, and stupefying revision. Like all things digital, it was bulk information relevant only to a certain subsection of the populous– and only at a certain time. Only target information mattered, and only to those it was relevant to, and only in the moment of relevance.

In a roundabout way, that made all potentially relevant information important. Always. Estimating what would or could be important was pointless, thus collecting as much as possible and safeguarding it became crucial.

That was the truth in the lie the Governments– and eventually Corps– fed to people about the importance of data collection. Difference to reality was– especially to the technologically clairvoyant, it was obvious the data collected wasn’t important to any beyond a specific, predatory subset of vicious entities.

In the end, history didn’t give two shits about where you bought underwear, or jerked off to. So, who did?

The reality was obvious to Martin Black even during adolescence, when he and his generation watched their parents rise for work, each day older and more agonized, less happy and telling themselves it would change. Told to learn from their parent’s mistakes, each thinker traced their lines of unhappiness inevitably to society’s holds, its damage.

N1T3 was one of them.

After decades of meditation on the subject, N1T3’s generation had finally decided there was but one way to avoid the damage of the system; avoid the system entirely. At least until it was fixed. The question was, how to fix it? It took N1T3 years longer than he ever hoped to figure it out, but he did.

In the meantime, his approach made him a fugitive. The only saving grace was that its timing couldn’t have been better. Now he had an excuse to bring it to a grinding halt. He damned well knew he would, too.

Guardians of Liberty: Part 6

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

6.

Ain’t That a Bitch?

He was kicked back in his cot, thinking. He did it often enough to have formed a routine with it. Usually, before puzzling out bad code or troubleshooting something. This time, its origins eluded him.

At first, he figured it for his parting from Ket. Her words rang clear long after she’d left. They stung, but he’d expected worse. Only while breaking into his new rations, eating, then sorting them to to be stashed through his safe-houses, had he begun to understand her words’ true source; grief.

His and Ket’s relationship dictated she got last licks. Especially after the way things went afterward. Simple fact was, he knew Ket. Everything she did was carefully planned, executed. She’d expected their reunion all along, however uncertain of its particulars.

He also knew she phrased certain things in certain ways, however unafraid to speak her mind. Anyone but N1T3 might have missed the subtle reality of what she’d said. Then again, she always said more with what was left unsaid.

It was only then, flipping mental switches at random in aimless thought, that it came to him: she had loved Martin Black. Did not love N1T3.

A few of the million, random switches in N1T3’s head flipped together randomly. Right place, right time: Loved. Past tense. Not. Present. She had loved Martin Black because of his passionate love for her, but that had long since ended. Martin Black no longer existed. The man that had taken his place was N1T3, and she did not love N1T3…

But that did not mean she could not.

N1T3 was something more than a man now though. More than a symbol, even. He was an actuator of change. The lever identified and appropriately fitted to ensure the system(s) he was part of functioned properly, nominally. Who could love that? What was there to love?

Transactional. Business-like. A cog in a machine. It’s what he’d become. The thing he’d always feared being, hated having to be. Then again, there was no guarantee he would forever be that way. He might, provided he made it through the madness to come, find the Human within again.

Until then everything he– and thus they– did, would be transactional, passing.

The wound was deeper than he’d thought, yet he lived. Because he lived, he learned. So long as those two things continued, so would he. Whatever that meant about Ket couldn’t be known yet.

With that, he rose from the bed and flicked off a message-alert. It had been 22 hours since they’d first met. Impressive, even for her. Though he admitted that meant he’d somehow underestimated her. He didn’t like the idea; it meant he’d miscalculated somewhere.

That only happened if you slacked off. Cut corners. Like the hacker kid that started the raids.

There was a way to cut corners right, of course, but you had to know what you were doing. You needed to be so far beyond recognizing you were doing it that you’d come back ‘round to forgetting it again through muscle-memory.

With code, it was keeping something structured so it never exceeded the line between small and large, project and undertaking. That was easy if you knew what you were doing. Easier, if you were experienced enough to know how to do it.

But miscalculation meant errant thoughts. Broken code. Unforeseen consequences. It meant the systems in question had begun to run rampant and unguided by their parameters. The digital equivalent of cancer; viral injections riding collective missteps and spreading disaster with quiet, insidious corruption in cells at a time. Cell-by-cell. Bit-by-bit. Byte-by-byte. Until all required erasure and reset.

Except in this case, that corruption was mental. The consequence, death– or near enough.

N1T3 was immediately certain of the misstep’s source. He’d written Ket off as a variable. One for whom constance did not exist. The truth was, Ket would always be a wildcard. Even when and where he least expected it.

Most people would’ve been stopped at the gates of understanding Ket, never even allowed in the grounds. Martin Black had made it in by sheer grace of fortune and luck. Now, because of his transformation, N1T3 was not only within, but part of the heart of the mansion. There were no deeper secrets to be known. He, like a reserved few others, had reached the very core of her palace of arms, traps, and facades.

More than that, he’d been led in. By virtue of his past applied to the present.

He’d been cast from Eden for feeding Eve a poisoned apple. Rather than blame her for the rest of history, he left and returned a wiser man, prepared to accept his mistakes. It was a conformity– the same thing the corps wanted– those now hunting him and sworn as his enemy, but he accepted it. Irony dictated it run deeper than anything the corps could have reached, and that made it different, acceptable.

It was the difference between love and sex. Passion and commitment. 0 and 1.

Corporate marketing knew all about that difference. Their PR and ad departments had been trying to sell sex that didn’t exist for decades. Now, people were finally tired and irritated by it, unhappy. N1T3 had seen it everywhere; in shambled economy, the crippled markets, the greed-laden stock and media manipulation. It was outright propaganda and failed control measures take to extremes.

People world-wide had already been battered by war for a decade and more. Then, their governments failed them. Back then, it was people like N1T3 hardest hit. People that found themselves out of options. Society had herded them through educational degradation and indirect, ethnic cleansing, and let them out into a desolate, barren pasture expecting them to graze.

No-one knew then whom to blame, but postdigital children like N1T3 and Ket had been watching. Now, they were figuring it out. Fast.

In the end, they realized, it couldn’t be the governments. Governments were too big. Even then, they were too indebted globally and locally from wars; prison industrial complexes they’d built up; black-market bazaars they were half-fighting, half-funding. They were already drawing blood from people. There was nowhere deeper to go.

Not for them, anyhow.

The next logical source was politics as a whole, but in effect, politics had never changed. The game had always been the same. Although the source seemed perfectly political, it wasn’t until shortly after that the source’s politics– and lack thereof, truly revealed themselves.

That was done through legal bribes, lobbying; via third parties effectively laundering said money through themselves to their politicians of choice. Again, nothing new, but the reasons and intent behind it were. Entirely.

N1T3 remembered sitting in the now-rundown apartment with Ket the night the DCA had passed. It was then they knew the days of the net were limited. They’d begun stock-piling then, squirreling away bits and bytes in their own little ways.

It was never so big then as it became, but few things so volatile remain stable.

He and Ket both knew the future was bleak, regardless of whether they shared it or not. For those moments they loved, they loved deeply and madly. They were storing motivation, joy and euphoria, to sandbag them against the coming storm.

Then, when it came, it damn near drowned them. The aftermath left them seeking joy and euphoria elsewhere. The greater storm collectively growing though, the one that came about once a century, had already begun through them; revolution was incubating in them.

It just so happened their own revolutions coincided not only with one another, but with the world’s. That, above all, ensured the next one would be done right, or not at all.

In the end, he found that as the source of his misstep; thinking he could outwit a system he was the product of. The programming had been done, the system engaged. Now, the output was coming through.

Yet all of their worth and aligned stop-bits meant nothing in the face of what he was planning. He, and the others like him. Without him, they would fail. Vice-versa. The question then became, she could love N1T3, but could he love her?

Caution and delicate finesse. He wasn’t very good at it, but he was learning.

He found her waiting for him again. She had a habit of that; everywhere early, appearing to have nowhere to be. Like you weren’t important. Weren’t worth more than a passing interest. Fact was, if you were smart, you knew she wasn’t that way. That was Ket’s facade. The one she wore regardless of company. Taking it off was simply too time-consuming, too pointless.

If you knew her, and she was there, it mattered. If you were a fool in love, you were torn between worlds. If you ‘d been the latter and were now the former, you were in as deep as you could get. All the same, there was distance. No kiss today, but then nobody’d tried to kill him yet.

Herself included.

She kept to the outer edges of the main room, circling like a stalking predator. She did it subtly, slowly enough it was only obvious to one whom knew her so well. N1T3 didn’t bother following her with his eyes. It was an intimidation tactic meant for the facade-goers, the ones come to see the show; Vampirella. Bride of Frakenstein. The Tigress pacing her cage.

It wasn’t meant for the people whom actually knew her. Whom knew the act was required to keep her in the motions. That the show could easily be ignored, the information retrieved through it anyway otherwise.

But then, what was the point of being there?

She circled in aural-stereo. Her voice and essence orbited his head. His eyes fixed ahead and glazed, speaking volumes without words as he voluntarily submitted. The very air hinted at questions and immediately answered them. He recalled just how much a force of nature she was, and felt comforted by the momentary obscurity she provided.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said finally, decisively.

“Can it be done?”

She circled back in front of him, stopped. “Nothing’s impossible. Not with the right tech. You know that, N1T3.“

“I don’t follow,” He admitted.

She stepped away before stopping to about-face like a headmistress. “Tech is like every force; it is dictated by referenced levels of rules interacting via context. For minerals, in markets, it’s rarity. For gems, its clarity and cut.” He nodded, catching on. “For tech, it’s revisional history and progenitor.”

He knew what she meant; all progress was the culmination of thousands of next-generation, referential changes. In essence, successively refining a variable-based system with each new iteration. It was a brute force hack beginning at 0000 and ending at 1111, each time stopping to check for a solution. That was society. History. Existence. It was cause and effect. Karma.

But that was it. There was nothing beyond it. The extent of its supposed divinity was its order in the chaos that ruled the universe otherwise. Tech though, wasn’t a benevolent manifestation of divine connection. It was an indifferent variable in an equation. Not even numbers could define it as more.

Tech was merely a mechanism of action. The rest was up to chance. Really, it was all up to chance, but try explaining that to billions of people over the net.

Simply, in tech; be it in design or sales, some things were variables and others, constants. Their output decided by the type of system involved, its internal components and their arrangement.

Ket was a variable; even within her own, personal constants. It was the reason she’d scoffed at his supposed offer of payment for food, never wrote him off otherwise. N1T3 was the opposite; a constant despite his own variable; such as the part of him that had loved her, even if now a newborn phoenix risen from ash.

He made no inclination otherwise toward it. He didn’t need to, They were still tailor-made for one another, but by way of mass-production’s interchangeability rather than artisanal want or desire. The difference was a want-or-not of illusion, delusion. Their lines therein.

Ket was theatrical, grand. She needed movement. Martin Black had been fine without it; with wallowing, daydreaming. She wanted to show, to display, always. He wanted to watch, admire. All of that was different now. Then, he’d not recognized his own part in the play. Nor its purpose. Now, he did.

And he’d come to play it because it needed to be played. Otherwise, there was no telling how many more would die.

Guardians of Liberty: Part 5

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

5.

*Ahem*

“Never would’ve thought you had the balls to contact me again.” She said, rightfully.

He didn’t move. Her fingers thrust her switch-blade deeper into his side, blade still retracted.

“I swear to you, Martin, I’ll do it.” His steady silence conveyed his belief. The blade eased back, though by no means away. “Convince me not to.”

“Five confirmed hits. All corp-sec. I was one of the lucky ones. We’re off-grid. Wanted. Hidden. But they’re coming for all of us, Ket. You’ll be later. All of you.”

She sucked wounded air through her teeth; a sign of the last vestige of hatred for he and his eternal rightness escaping. Her grip remained firm. “Putting me under fire’s your response?”

“You’re smarter than this, Ket. Our past is behind us. Our future is dark. I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t need you. And I wouldn’t need you if this weren’t bigger than myself or us alone.”

Another hiss, albeit quieter. Her panthera purr in full-effect, “What makes me care, Nite!?”

Addressing his persona directly said was willing to deal. However quickly that could change was another matter.

“Ket, Corp-sec’s murdering hackers.”

“An33$a.”

“And Clockwork. Five hits. Two deaths. Three others that made it away, including me.”

She finally eased off. It was subtle, but the knife retracted. Noticing was as important as it was civil. Ket was the kind of woman who thrived off the smallest measures of affection. If ignored or shunned, things went haywire. It extended elsewhere to her personality, of course– and especially in his presence, was lethal if not given considerable attention.

He knew that now. He hadn’t before, but now he was older, wiser, considerably more flexible in mind if not body. That was fine, she was enough of the latter for both of them, even if he couldn’t enjoy it himself presently.

She knew he’d sensed the easing, and with it, sensed his attempts at maturity. Too many years and too many missed opportunities had passed for them to deny the spark’s existence. Besides, the spark was never the problem, the idiot trying to control the fire was.

“Turn around,” she said, easing to full height.

He found her presence more gracefully imposing than he remembered. She was Venus Di Milo; larger than life. Eternal. He knew it. She knew it. He was her love; she, his. Yet their time together had taught them that, then at least, they couldn’t stand being together.

All the same, he saw her again; the olive skin, muscled as some ancient warrior goddess. Like every other time, it was as if the first time. She threw herself at him, kissed him deep, hard, wet, sloppily. He submitted fully.

A moment later it was over and the world was rushing back.

As if nothing had ever happened, she retook her rigid grace and led him forward into shadows. She spoke like a General meeting a trusted informant, on-edge but openly-so; from the severity of circumstances surrounding their very meeting, if nothing else.

Ket was business-like. N1T3 allowed her to set the tone. To her credit, she spared him further groveling. “Everyone saw what happened last night. No-one’s surprised it happened. Just at how.”

She led the way between a pair of old buildings, weathered by time and soot-blackened from an eon of pollution. N1T3 suddenly understood how the original torries felt. If this what they pined for, they could keep it.

N1T3 knew where she was leading him, but refused to believe it until he arrived. He’d only just seen her again, after years, and it seemed nothing had changed.

Well, almost nothing.

She led and conversed with gestures completely unaltered despite the years. Two conversations still took place at once. The surface one, audible and obvious; the other in a subtext of shared memories and memetic resonance from shared, mental-wavelengths.

Ket was doing it on purpose of course, as much for his sake as hers. Looks and gestures were easier than unnecessary words. Losing that had been one of the realities of their relationship that made her detest him so. He doubted she felt any hint of intimacy now, regardless of the kiss. It was a simple effect of being glad he’d survived; more Human than personal.

She turned transactional, business-like despite the obvious intimacy belying their words. Ket was little if not a career-woman at heart, however it manifested. It was that world that raised and bred her, taught her how– if need be– to take it out.

She, like N1T3 was one of those stop-bits. The 1s ending binary-strings of 0s; referential identifiers– embodiments of society via their existence at particular points in space and time. In effect, they were two of the postdigital-world’s first fully-digital children, formed and perfected en-masse whilst in-transition between worlds– the pre and postdigital.

But like N1T3, Ket was more than just that. Everyone that knew her, knew it. She could do whatever she wanted in both worlds; the remnants of the old and the blossoming new one, that was knowingly building itself in her image.

She had connections, money, property. Wit and clout to keep and protect them, illicit or not. Was the prototype chosen for mass-production, knew it, and used it.

And everyone let her.

She led N1T3 inside a neglected building, through it to an apartment. Even then, part of him refused to believe reality. He ignored the disbelief, knowing it would transform eventually.

The place was considerably more rundown now, partially reclaimed by nature. Otherwise, it was empty and undamaged enough to have kept anyone from squatting. It might still be reclaimed by one determined enough, but no-one would be.

The place meant nothing to anyone. Even those that knew of it most intimately. For any, it was merely another reference point. A place of known-congregation, now abandoned but capable of purpose. Any purpose– and thirsting for one at that.

That was one of the things Corporate lifestyle never understood. Mostly, because it required feeling. Not necessarily intense feeling, but any feeling.

The place felt as a refuge or sanctuary might, via obscurity; through a want of steel and stone to sing so its inhabitants might breathe again beneath it. Those feelings were what gave credence to Japanese Shinto Kami, their sister belief-systems dictating spirits resided in all things.

In a way they were right, however unwittingly after thousands of years of proven science, via electron microscopes, advanced physics and metaphysics. What Shinto called soul and energy, scientists called matter and energy; the effects of super-strong bonds formed in infinite ways, and radiating properties like auras; hot and cold, powered or not, 0 or 1.

Ket led him into their old room, a padlock already removed from it. They’d taught each other a lot over the years. Nothing consciously of course, but over the same half-telepathic link that had kept her from killing him only moments ago.

She let him, shut the door behind them.

It was smaller than he remembered. What wasn’t these days? He figured it an effect of age. After you’d seen so much, a single room could never be so large again– save if containing a live nuke. Then again with Ket, there was no telling; it very-well might– especially given the rather large, tarp- covered pallet in the center of the otherwise-empty room.

He hesitated just inside. She pushed past, whipping the tarp off. There, in three tiers, were a series of Rations purchased in bulk.

“You knew?”

“I had them stashed years ago.”

He stepped forward to examine them, squinting at her, “For me?”

“Yes,” she replied curtly. Then, “No-one’s surprised. I know you too well. It was this, or you’d be dead. Either way, I’d move ’em.”

He eyed her, searching for anything beyond the business-like facade she’d put on, finding only it. She was on now, thus he needed to be. Otherwise, he might as well have ended with the blade. He produced a flash-key.

“I’m insulted,” she remarked.

“Not for this,” he corrected respectfully. “I need something else. Two things. Actually.”

She wiped off her smugness and pricked up her ears. He produced a list. “This. Quantity there.” “And something… defensive.”

She eyed him through a squint, “Dangerous.”

He said nothing. What could he say? He knew it was dangerous, but the whole world was dangerous. Especially now. And especially for him. Yet he’d take the risk over losing the chance. Way he saw it, he’d be murdered or die going out. The responsibility to his mission dictated he protect himself if necessary, though if only to an extent of attempting to protect it.

Ket caught the wave of his thoughts, his mind-frequency attuned to hers. She folded the page, took the flash-key. “Two days. Meet me here then.”

“If it takes less?” He asked, only internalizing the, “where will I find you?”

She eyed him levelly, a fairly-injured party still nursing its wound, however potentially forgiving. “I never left.” He winced. She expected as much. “Let me make one thing clear; I loved Martin Black. I do not love N1T3.”

Guardians of Liberty: Part 4

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

4.

Supply Lines

It was four hours before N1T3 returned to reality again.

Those four hours passed in the same, formulaic haze of micro-instants his escape had. Blocks of code meant chunks of time spent forming and refining structures, running simulations.If he didn’t, when the time came to put things into motion, the whole damned machine would freeze. It would smoke and grind its gears, disassembling through a cock-up cascade of unequaled proportions.

He’d written what was needed, prepped it to go on old SBCs he’d stashed for just such occasions. The systems themselves were small, cheap, could fit practically anywhere and ran on virtually no power. Alone, they weren’t much, but chained via wireless networks they could used for anything, if executed properly.

Cloud computing on a burgeoning scale few had yet to imagine, fewer still to recognize as already upon them.

Before N1T3 could turn anything into a permanent refuge– digital or otherwise, he had to secure himself supply lines, avenues of aid and support. First and most formidably crucial, was food. For the time being, he had running water and enough stashed filters otherwise to last a good while.

Cheese cloth and fish-filter charcoal could purify even the most questionable water. In the mean time, he’d begun filling old bottles and jugs collected from the environment. He’d plan further ahead later, covered now barring some unforeseeable incident.

Chiefly, getting food meant bulk-buying. Sending a massive load of ration-style nutritional meals somewhere unsuspecting was the only way. From there, N1T3 could stash it in chunks at a time– squirrel it away between safe-houses around the city, outer and inner.

It would require false IDs, creds, Darknet supplies no-longer available on the Darknet. Which meant finding them on the black market. Not a difficult task, but not exactly safe when hunted like a dog who’d just mauled a sniveling child.

N1T3 needed someone he could trust. Someone that worked markets like a pro, knew how and when to burn someone or not. At that, it needed to be someone self-aware. At least of the war that had begun. Burning N1T3 now wouldn’t make sense for anyone invested in that world. The digital realm was under siege, and those aware or concerned about it were honor-bound to aid one another.

Those not were far too dangerous.

N1T3 knew of only one person that could run markets like he needed, was invested, and still in the game. Unfortunately, he also knew that one person was just as likely to welcome him with a hand-shake as a dagger to the gut.

He dreaded the idea but saw no options; he was up a creek without a raft– paddles weren’t even ideas.

He hovered over his keyboard with unnatural hesitation. The Digital realm was his. No-one disagreed. Like other board-jocks, he was an avatar of something bigger, deeper; a networked intelligence operating as any logic entity would.

The R-L realm was entirely different.

The flesh-verse was no more or less genuine than the digital one, but you were more likely to survive encounters in one than the other. Especially if one of those encounters happened to be someone that had as much as sworn a blood oath to do you in as anyone could.

He sucked it up and hit “Enter.”

A half-hour later he was closing combo-locks along the main doors. More tricks he’d learned over the years; low-level social hacks. Good deterrents were never meant to be impassable, but rather so simple as to be deceptively manipulative. In effect, poorly securing certain places meant discouraging tampering via hacking passersby into believing nothing of import could be stored so insecurely.

Anyone determined enough would get in, regardless. Those doing so knowingly, most of all. Simple dual padlocks of average, nondescript nature were much more organic to an environment still pre-digital than touchscreens and glowing LEDs. Especially in an area already abandoned, they were simply more, forgotten refuse.

It was society-hacking through the medium of the mind, as coding through a keyboard.In the event anyone did find the place and was determined to get in, they’d find themselves unable to do much more than scrap gear, pilfer stored rations, or wait to be caught.

Aside from trash, N1T3’s safe-houses were empty. His clothing was disposable enough to be unworthy of mention.He had little else. In spite of that nothingness, N1T3 still had valuable bit-currency.

Like… a lot.

Way more than he could ever need, and spread through various unnamed accounts capable of being transferred into any currency necessary. He could buy and sell through anything through any anonymous contact. Even if he needed to build an ID profile first– nothing for a hacker.

That brought him back to task.

N1T3hustled along the alleys of an outer London ‘burb, nearly lost for where he was. The once-historic skyline was gone, now replaced by light-polluted skies and miles of drab concrete. Perma-overcast hinted smog-buried sunrays that never cut through the filth. What remained of once-prominent structures were unrecognizable, or altogether hidden.

London was what Ancient Egypt might’ve have been without their culture; average, boring, poorly infrastructured and superbly scrambling to compensate. Just like the rest of the world. Just as the Corporations wanted them; so they were spun, easier to manipulate.

N1T3 crossed a street, unconcerned with hiding. Gray haze hid him from distant observers. Besides, no-one was hunting him here. Not in the immediate sense. Corp-sec was still cooling its heels and no-one that might’ve seen him otherwise could’ve connected him with Martin Black. Not yet.

N1T3 hadn’t even awaited a reply. There was no point. The message was sent. Received too, he sensed. In a short while he’d either be making a play, or dead. Either was equally likely. Such uncertainties lent credence to theories of divinity, but fate was really always dead-even odds of alive or dead.

That was the universe’s way of maintaining balance between limitless reference points: Ultimately, everything always resolved back into a simple yes or no, on or off, 0 or 1. No matter how complex.

N1T3 emerged from the shadow of an old awning and leaned beside a battered wood-shack. The place had once been a public park before inflation took over and drove municipal governments into destitution. Nature had since taken it back. The park’s once-lush and primly groomed grounds were overgrown like a Congolese jungle. The former suburb and its centralized patch of neglect hell-bent on reclaiming what it called its own.

N1T3reached his destination, almost certain he was dreaming. He figured then he’d been killed, was living out his final moments bleeding out on a rooftop somewhere. Then, a smell hinted the air; earthen, fertile. It sliced through the smog like a Katana, utterly ignoring the wet-death clinging to the cool air, and cut straight through him.

He realized then why he’d loved her, would always love her. She didn’t need sight, or sound. The very air sang of her presence. She was, as she’d always been, a force. Wild. Untameable. Eternally unchained and radiant. Above all, unending. He loved her…

And she hated him.

Sometime after their first few months, things went south. Fast. Neither’d known why. N1T3, then Martin Black, had acted a fool in love unable to accept change. Like one too, his stupor damaged an otherwise delicate-yet-crucial piece of their relationship through simple jealousy.

Feelings aside, Martin’s own youthful foolishness exacerbated otherwise immature-but-harmless tendencies. He smothered her, in doing so, crushing a part of her reliant on extreme delicacy to function.

And continued making it worse by acting like an ass for far too long afterward.

It was over a decade ago now, but it remained Martin Black’s “Most Infamous Hour.” Mostly, as the result of a long, slow road getting there. Passion meant nothing if one side blundered into love through it. Then it became obsession. Passion was a force, like her. Love was a contract, a system. A cold world of yes and no. He was young and foolish, and in love worst of all.

Now, he was forced to go crawling back– at least, that’s what it might look like. If he weren’t careful. Ultimately, he’d do his best to control himself, but he could never make promises. It wouldn’t be wise or fair anyhow.

Yet she was on the air, already intoxicating him. He felt his muscles relax. All of his once-anxious energy gone. Those fears, the very ones that had torn them apart, so damaged their relationship, withered to agony and dust from their decade of separation.

But the sudden feeling in his back was her knife. Unopened. Vertical, spring-driven blade.If he didn’t answer sufficiently and sincerely, she’d kill him. He strained for a breath, but the slight twitch ready to launch itself into his kidney forced a pause.

She was giving him one last chance to think clearly. Now or never.

He took it, if only to show his complacency. Heat on the wind said she felt something too. Still.Hated it. Hated him for it. Like a cursed sculpture refusing to be finished. She’d tried to eradicate the feeling from her life. Tried with all of her might to erase him, couldn’t. She hated him– everything about him, too.

Most of all, she hated herself for loving him back.

Martin Black had wounded her so deeply no healing aura could repair it. Yet the heat, breath, and scent on the wind told him he could play it right if he tried. If he really cared to. He couldn’t be sure he wanted to. Not yet. Not really. There was too much to be done. Too much more important than them, bigger than them. They’d have to look past their past mistakes, focus on the present, or die.

She hated them both for that, too.