Nanodaemons
Author: George Saoulidis
Date: 2016-03-28 16:06:27+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Science Fiction; Cyberpunk; Mystery & Detective; General; Action & Adventure; Urban; Romance; Romantic Comedy; Thrillers; Technological
Description: A Curious Case Of Eudaemonia Tron meets Inside Out in this funny sci-fi thriller. When an ordinary guy’s implanted devices are reset after a construction accident that costs him his arm, the daemons in charge of his electronics are just trying to do their job as usual. But will they manage to keep their user happy and alive, when every bit of info they uncover becomes another part of a mystery, when it becomes clear that someone is framing him for murder and when a corporation is sending a snake charmer assassin after him? Inspired by Aristophanes Clouds (Nefeles) and a little bit of "Inside O
Publisher: Mythography Studios

Contents

Chapter 1:// Booting up

Chapter 2:// Eating up

Chapter 3:// Going back

Chapter 4:// Checking up

Chapter 5:// Going over

Chapter 6:// Sizing up

Chapter 7:// Catching up

Chapter 8:// Paying back

Chapter 9:// Calling on

Chapter 10:// Checking out

Chapter 11:// Eating out

Chapter 12:// Dosing up

Chapter 13:// Standing up

Chapter 14:// Waking up

Chapter 15:// Taking apart

Chapter 16:// Breaking down

Chapter 17:// Forking up

Chapter 18:// Bumping off

Chapter 19// Booting up

Chapter 20:// Eating up

Chapter 21// Pushing on

Chapter 22:// Breaking out

Chapter 23:// Ripping out

Chapter 24:// Birthing out

Chapter 25:// Slipping past

Chapter 26:// Grouping up

Chapter 27:// Paying up

Chapter 28:// Falling apart

Chapter 29:// Hanging on

Chapter 30:// Calling around

Chapter 31:// Pumping up

Chapter 32:// Caring for

Chapter 33:// Making out

Chapter 34:// Hanging in

Chapter 35:// Taking off

Chapter 36:// Digging up

Chapter 37:// Giving up

Chapter 38:// Giving away

Chapter 39:// Going after

Chapter 40:// Boiling over

Chapter 41:// Breaking in

Chapter 42:// Dropping back

Chapter 43:// Catching up

Chapter 44:// Dropping in

Chapter 45:// Setting up

Chapter 46:// Giving away

Chapter 47:// Ending up

Chapter 48:// Packing up

Chapter 49:// Giving up

Chapter 50:// Cheering up

Rate this and join the Mythographers

Glossary

Chapter 1:// Booting up

Like all silly things in life, it all began with an awkward handshake.

They booted up at apolloclinic7, a good strong wifi with limited internet access and a spacious intranet full of printers.

parrotd> init.

walkmand> Handshake.

eyed> Handshake.

fingerd> Handshake.

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
armd> Handshake.

httpd> Handshake.

parrotd> I’ll be the session leader.

armd> Who died and made you chief?

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
armd> Shut the fuck up.

The daemons initialised and created a PAN, which is a Personal Area Network of implanted and external devices. By a non-democratic process even Mussolini would have envied, the smartphone daemon parrotd became the session leader.

parrotd> eyed, httpd, please give us some info.

eyed> ACK.

httpd> 404. Can’t access shit.

Eyed showed the rest of the daemons what it saw. The image feed from the eye implants showed a hospital room. A human with a white cloth on him was standing close by, and the lower part of another human was visible as an outline under a light blue cloth. The second human was horizontal.

httpd> What the hell is that pink stuff in the bottom middle of the feed?

eyed> I think it is an air intake.

parrotd> All right, listen up people. Anyone who can identify anything in the feed, talk now.

The daemons were silent for a few cycles while processing the raw image feed.

fingerd> Oh! Oh! Me!

armd> Just say it you retard.

fingerd> The human standing up is williams.bill@apollomedical.com.

armd> Did you just finger the guy? Heh…

httpd> Is he choking?

eyed> Nah, I think he is communicating by audio signals.

parrotd> I have a microphone, hold on.

The controlling daemon for the cellphone turned on the microphone. Ethereal audio waves were shared with everyone, the waveform that represented the analog soundwave travelled along the PAN. The daemons raised their metaphorical ears and listened.

armd> I have no idea what I’m listening to.

parrotd> Lemme try the voice recognition.

The voice recognition process spat back the sound of a deep “a” nearing an “h,” for an “aaah” sound.

armd> Still no idea what I’m listening to.

httpd> I think the humans communicate like this. Slowly.

armd> Get outta here!

httpd> No really. This is their primary means of communication.

armd> This will take ages.

parrotd> ACK. Lets try to interpret some more of the visual feed.

The feed showed a prosthetic hand raising in view. From its positioning it looked attached to the adjacent horizontal human. It was slowly rotating along its axis a few degrees.

armd> Hey! That’s me!

walkmand> Why does he get to see himself and not me? Show me me.

httpd> No offence, but you don’t look straight-out-of-the-box.

parrotd> Kinda battered, is more accurate.

armd> I have a log here that says “second instalment.” I used to have another user.

httpd> You are a second hand, hand? LOL.

armd> I’m gonna punch your bits out.

parrotd> Focus people. What else?

armd> Daym… I look good.

The video feed suddenly turned black. All the daemons panicked.

armd> What the fuck happened?

httpd> Aaaa! The power is gone! We’re gonna die!

walkmand> I still got my AAA batteries suckaz!

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
fingerd> I’ll never get to finger a human ever again!

parrotd> Everyone keep calm. This doesn’t look like a blackout.

eyed> I can’t see! I’m gonna die shrouded in darkness!

httpd> I haven’t even surfed the web yet! Not a single webpage…

The video feed lit up a bit and showed a pinkish red blur at the bottom.

eyed> Oh, sorry. I have something in my files here. Found it. Blinking is a semi-autonomic rapid closing of the eyelid. Between each blink is an interval of 2–10 seconds.

httpd> You’re telling me now?

parrotd> Please be forthcoming with such information in the future.

eyed> ACK.

armd> Is this gonna happen again?

eyed> ACK. When the eye needs to be moisturised, or if the user needs to attract another human seductively.

walkmand> I have a jam for such occasions. Wanna hear?

parrotd> Not now. Let’s just wait for the audio communication to finish.

The daemons waited for the milliseconds to pass. A message was slowly forming. The eye blinked again but they didn’t scream like little girls this time. They just sat terrified in the darkness until the light showed up again.

The human williams.bill@apollomedical.com was telling the user to relax and take it in.

“This is kind of awesome,” the user said while looking at his prosthetic arm. It was matte black with some carbon fibre parts. Nowhere near conspicuous.

armd> He likes me!

“Refurbished prosthetics are fine, but they might just act up. As soon as you notice anything call me. I am still against your decision by the way, but it’s your money and body,” the doctor said raising his palms.

“Thank you doctor,” the user said, reaching out to shake his hand but deciding against it at the last minute. He shook with the other one in the end. “I haven’t gotten used to the strength yet.”

“Good call,” said the doctor and laughed awkwardly for a moment. “Now, the veil ocular implants are installed, free of charge of course. Look at this to connect them.” He produced a paper printout of a two-dimensional barcode, commonly known as a QR code.

The user’s field of view lit up with augmented reality data, as well as the AR of the doctor’s. It was known as Shared Augmented Reality, or simply, the veil.

The user looked around. “Cool. Same as my glasses, but this feels better somehow.”

The doctor waved something inexistent away with his hand, like a nervous tick. “As soon as you get used to it, you’ll never go back. I guarantee you,” he said smiling like a doctor in a hemorrhoid cream advertisement.

The user put his old smartglasses in his pocket with his left hand. He didn’t want to endanger expensive smartwear to a prosthetic hand grip. They would still sell for some cash, and he sure couldn’t spare any.

httpd> Oh. We have access. Neat.

eyed> This is sooo trippy.

parrotd> eyed don’t be stingy with the data. Pass it along.

eyed> ACK.

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
armd> Shut the fuck up!

parrotd> Come on, don’t be such a bully.

armd> If he says the same thing one more time, I’m gonna reach for the shitty hand and clench the shitty flesh in which his shitty chip is and I’m gonna crush the little retarded shit LIKE THE SHIT HE DESERVES TO BE!

walkmand> Whoa. Chillax dude. Here, have some Jamaican tunes.

The video feed bobbed up and down. The music was fed directly to the user’s ears, from an archaic subdermal nano-thin cable installation leading to the walkman. The connection ended in a circular magnet, that clipped tenderly with another circular magnet over the skin and carried the signal via induction.

eyed> I think I’m gonna be sick.

httpd> You can’t have motion sickness! You are an eye implant!

eyed> I’ve never moved before now!

The user hummed. He was lying in bed for a few days now so he was happy to get up and stretch. He put on his shoes and left the room. He poked his head back in the door and asked the doctor, “Hey doc, what about Aibo?”

“He’ll be recovering soon, you’ll get an email to come pick him up.”

“Thanks doc. I’ll email you if I feel anything weird. Bye.”

Chapter 2:// Eating up

The cafeclnc wifi was crowded with IPs. The datarate was barely a trickle due to the server quota. The user was eating Menu Item 19 (no mayo) and closing his eyes for extended periods of time while chewing.

httpd> What the hell man?

eyed> Sorry. Can’t help it.

httpd> He just took a packet!

parrotd> What is it?

eyed> See for yourselves.

A banner ad showed up on the veil, floating right next to the user’s focus point. It was prompting him to buy a home delivery service of Menu Item 19 at an uberfantastic sale that would expire in 30 secs.

The user waved his hand in the air and dismissed the ad.

parrotd> httpd, I’m still waiting.

httpd> Yeah, whoami command, please wait. Here it is, pappas.leo@hephaistosheavyindustries.com. Our user’s name is Leo.

The daemons repeated the name with reverence. He was after all, their user.

They sat in silence for a few milliseconds, pondering their existence. Why were they here? Why was anybody anywhere? Was here, really here?

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
armd> STFU!

Walkmand shuffled randomly into an old rock song.

A human carrying a tray walked in proximity. The eye feed focused on the human’s body.

fingerd> I’ll finger her!

armd> You just spit that shit out without thinking, dontcha?

fingerd> Fingered! The human is antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com. Female cafeteria employee. 22 years old.

httpd> Is it time for seductive blinking?

eyed> I hope not! How will we see anything?

Her social profile popped up on the veil. It followed her around. She had some pictures, decent ones, and a few bits of personal information. It was rarely updated, quite uncommon these days. Her profile was teetering on the precise edge an attractive woman in the service industry needed to have in order to avoid stalkers, but not seem antisocial and throw away any chances of good tipping.

“Katerina,” whispered the user under his breath. He picked up his phone with greasy hands and tapped. His thumb hovered over an “add friend” button.

parrotd> Did he crash?

eyed> I think he is just hesitating.

walkmand> Hey! Now we saw the smartphone. It ain’t fair. I wanna see me! Show me me!

Lots of milliseconds went by. Finally, the user put his phone back in his pocket and munched on.

armd> What a pussy.

httpd> Hey! Don’t talk about our user like that!

armd> No, I meant her. I’d love to stick my finger inside her.

fingerd> I fingered her already.

parrotd> Everybody stop! We have more important things to do. I need to figure out what happened to our logs. Httpd, find our patient file.

httpd> Please wait. Here it is. Patient had been in a construction accident, while trying to save a dog. The right arm was severed-
armd> Thank god.

httpd> -and replaced with a second-hand prosthetic. Apollo Medical has implanted the veil ocular system for free as part of an ongoing relationship with the patient’s health insurance. The newly installed implants demanded a hard reset of all other previous implants and connecting devices. Surgery and augmentation was a success, patient was released.

fingerd> So there you have it.

parrotd> A hard reset…

Walkmand shuffled to a gloomy string section melody.

walkmand> They sent us all to /dev/null. How could someone do this man? I mean, what, you just like wake up one morning and say, erase all data? Just like that?

eyed> They had to.

httpd> Easy for you to say! You were just installed now. We existed before. That part of us is gone.

The PAN was filled with furious argument for quite some time. The old daemons blamed the new ones for being the cause of their hard reset, and the new ones argued that the accident had cleared all such objections. Without a user, there wouldn’t be daemons.

That sparked another argument about how they were all equals after the reset, but of course armd wanted everyone to follow his lead. Since the source code gave the authority to parrotd to shut down and initialise all daemons on demand, armd metaphorically sat down and kept quiet. You do not fuck with the source code.

The awkward silence was broken by the demands of the user. He had tapped on a contact and wanted to make a call.

“Hello, could you tell Mr. Robertson that I’ll come to work tomorrow?”

An indifferent female voice replied, “Send an email.”

“I will,” the user said. “But can you please tell him that I’m recovering, but I need the money, the insurance bled me dry. I’ll do my best.”

She said again, pronouncing the words as if to an idiot. “Send. An. Email.”

The user sighed. “Sure, will do. Thanks.”

He hung up and wrote an email to Robertson.nick@hephaistosheavyindustries.com. “Mr Robertson plz. I hav bein in an axsident and ned to wrk for the bill. Will com to work tomrow. Dont give my shift 2 any1 else.” Then he pressed “send.”

parrotd> STOP!

httpd> What?

parrotd> You can’t send that! It’s illegible gibberish! Give it to me.

eyed> Uh… I’m not sure you can do that, parrotd. Changing a user’s words? It’s sacrilege.

fingerd> It really is.

parrotd> “Dear Mr. Robertson, I hope I find you well. As I’m sure you already know, I have been recovering from a work accident that cost me my hand. The prosthesis was a success, but the insurance premium has sky-rocketed and I need all the overtime I can get. I’m sure you will find it in your heart to assign me as many double-shifts as possible so that I can cover my medical bills. I am fully recovered and planning to work tomorrow with peak efficiency and exceed the month’s goals. Thank you in advance.” There. Send that.

httpd> ACK.

eyed> I can’t believe you just did that.

parrotd> Do you wanna see the logs? I did it, it’s done. My job is to provide our user with whatever he needs.

Katerina the waitress struggled to pick up the next table’s plates while balancing the tray. The user rushed near and helped her by holding her tray upright.

“Thank you,” she said and looked right in the video feed with deep green eyes. She blinked a few times, more than the statistical average and she smiled. The user leaned his head down to stare at his shoes.

“You are welcome,” he said scratching his neck. She walked away.

armd> Hehe, my gyroscopes in action. Oh man, I should have taken a screenshot…

eyed> Already taken two.

fingerd> Did you see how she looked at us?

fingerd> Yeah. It was weird. Like she initiated a request and left a port wide open.

armd> LOL man. Do you ever listen to yourself?

Walkmand shuffled to an mp3 that was fit for heavy drinking.

walkmand> I’m in looove… Love is what you hear, love is what you say…

parrotd> You can’t be in love with a human.

httpd>Wikipedia says: “Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection ("I love my mother") to pleasure ("I loved that meal").” See? Variety.

fingerd> You can’t trust Wikipedia! It’s written by humans!

parrotd> Besides, what would you do with a female human?

armd> I know what I would do…

fingerd> Hey! Fingering people is my job.

armd> Only metaphorically, my demented frien- Neighbour.

parrotd> Oh yeah? I’m equipped with a vibrator. Which one do you think she’ll like best? Let’s google that!

The daemons looked silently at the search results for a few milliseconds.

eyed> Oh dear.

Chapter 3:// Going back

The user knew he couldn’t afford it but had left a generous tip back at the cafeteria. He was walking on the street and pulled up his finances. A rather small amount was the total hovering on his view. “Rather small” was a euphemism. He had some pocket change to be precise. He was near the bus stop. The bus came, but he didn’t take it.

He decided to walk home. Save some money, do some exercise.

He was clenching his newly augmented cyberarm in his pocket. He wasn’t yet comfortable showing it around, especially with it being black and all. No one would really bat an eye, it was common enough for people to lug around distinctive cyberware, but he still felt funny.

The walk back home was nice and chilly. After so many days in recovery, he enjoyed the bite of spring air. His walkman had shuffled to a nice tune that matched his pacing, and improved his mood. He touched the old walkman with his left hand, the fleshy one, and felt the small dents and scratches. He adjusted the walkman to a more comfortable angle on his belt and tried to remember if he needed to change the batteries.

The walkman was old, after all. It was a modified mp3 player from Sony. He liked retro stuff like that. He preferred the old sound of mp3s, the new holosound stuff just didn’t sound right. Good ol’ mp3s like his dad used to listen to, from actual headphones. He and his dad would load up old tunes and fix stuff around the house, or go to the mall together.

Good times.

The old walkman had survived the accident with only a chipped edge. That was by miracle mostly, it wasn’t made of self-healing plastic or anything.

If the walkman had been destroyed instead of his arm, he would have wished for the other way around.

It had cost a fortune to modify it, to keep it running and add a backwards-compatible interface so it could talk to the rest of the smart devices in the world. Tom, the guy who modded it, had told him that he was spending too much on that thing, but he didn’t care.

It was his dad’s.

Chapter 4:// Checking up

They went home for the first time and logged on the wifi.

Ahhh… Nice and cozy, all to yourself. mp34ever was locked, but they had the password. Open access, admin privileges, the whole shebang. Or #!, in daemonspeak.

httpd> Ugh. I’m getting an order from the fridge.

parrotd> Pass it along.

eyed> ACK. Displaying… He swiped it away.

parrotd> Nevermind then.

The user threw away his shirt and scratched his balls with his prosthetic hand. He paused for a bit, winced in realisation of what he was doing and resumed the action, gently this time.

armd> Ewww!

He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The matte black cyberarm was coming out of his shoulder and hanging like the real thing. The doctor had said that he was only injured just below the shoulder, but they had to surgically remove the whole thing plus the socket to add the prosthetic strengthening.

The arm was light and quite strong. He hadn’t tested his full strength yet. He flexed it a few times. He touched it around, he only had sensation in his fingertips and the palm.

armd> Show him my specs!

eyed> ACK.

The cyberarm specifications popped into AR in the user’s field of view. He pulled his palm close to his face. More detailed specs explained the pain receptors, the cold sensors etc.

“I wonder how strong I am,” the user said to himself and looked around his flat. He had a piece of “furniture” made by a wooden plank sitting on two cement blocks. He emptied the plank of his various stuff and picked up the cement block with his new second-hand cyberarm. He could actually lift the block by himself, even back before the accident, but he would need to put both arms to it and struggle. This time, he just picked the thing up as if it was a balloon. His knees protested a bit though.

armd> I’m such a badass.

The user put the cement block back down in front of him and sat down on the floor. He pulled up his smartphone and searched for “karate chops.”

parrotd> The user demands videos!

httpd> Already on it.

The user and his daemons studied the video of a man in a karate suit breaking a cement block with his hand. He mimicked his actions and brought down the cyberarm in… well, a karate chopping motion. The matte black hand went through the cement as if it was slapping water, sending bits of concrete flying across the room and raising up dust and particles.

eyed> What’s happening?

parrotd> Everything’s red all of the sudden!

The user lay still for a few seconds, holding his breath and gritting his teeth. Then he held his prosthetic arm to his chest and fell on the floor in a foetal position and yelled out till his throat dried.

parrotd> What the hell man?

armd> He didn’t send me the command to switch off the pain receptors! Read the fucking manual dude!

parrotd> Don’t you know? Humans never read the manual!

walkmand> Are you trying to kill -9 our user?

armd> Woo hoo! Show me that blow in slo-mo. I obliterated that thing!

httpd> The fridge is sending that order in again…

parrotd> Just swipe it away…

The user simply cried on the floor and decided not to try that stupid shit ever again.

Chapter 5:// Going over

The user walked out again and drew a familiar path, spacing out along the way. Lovely tunes from his childhood blurted out to his ears and he let the music glide him to his best friend’s house.

Thoughts came and went to his mind.

He had no money left. That sandwich at the clinic’s cafeteria had taken a big chunk of his cash, but he needed it. He had just recovered from a serious accident after all.

He needed to get to work first thing in the morning. Mr. Robertson would not let him take any more paid leave after he had been released from the hospital. The insurance company had gone in and legally taken every bit of savings he had in his account.

His fridge was empty, and his landlord would demand the rent any minute now.

He was lost in thought but his reptilian brain demanded his attention and made him jerk up. A snake charmer, some Indian guy with a turban on his head was sitting by the side of the road and blowing his tunes with his flute. A cobra snake, big and fat almost as the user’s thigh, was swaying slowly to the music. The snake charmer’s gaze fell on the user with almost a palpable weight. The user shuddered. The snake charmer had one glass eye, or at least it looked like it was a glass one. White like milk, giving him a very scary look, especially when contrasted with his dark brown skin.

The user leaned close carefully as the snake charmer carried on his tune, as if holding the dangerous reptile by auditory reigns. He took out his paycard, and touched it to the street peddler’s device that was laid out on the pavement. A soft gling confirmed the transaction, and he pulled his hand back quickly.

He laughed at himself as he remembered that his carbon fibre prosthetic arm had little to fear from a snake bite, but decided not to test it anyway.

He wished the snake charmer a good day, and the cobra to try not to eat people today.

The cobra hissed.

The user walked on quick and steady to his buddy’s house.

Chapter 6:// Sizing up

Bhai Sharan Singh fixed his turban on his head and looked down the way his mark had gone.

He remained there, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk upon his small carpet. He was playing his flute, his cobra swaying as he did. People stopped and gawked, staring at the sight. It wasn’t something too exotic, they had seen Sikh people before around the city, but the combination of snake and flute was what attracted them.

Plus, the cobra was rather gigantic.

Bhai Sharan was one of the last snake charmers, a fading tradition, even back at the homeland. Here in Greece, he was the only one. It was a great cover for an assassin, pretending to peddle on the streets. He was at the same time extremely visible and completely transparent. People either watched his cobra’s dance, or simply dismissed the beggar.

The beggar situation had grown to an enormous degree in the latest years, following the Greek Firesale. You couldn’t go anywhere without at least ten cups being shaken in your face. Bhai Sharan was menacing enough that people stayed clear of, and that was something he rather liked.

It had something to do with his glass eye.

In an age where billboards were advertising free cybereyes everywhere, it was very unnerving for someone to show his face with a disability like that. The healthcare system would take care of him, even if he had been an illegal immigrant. Which he wasn’t, being born and raised in the country.

Sure, he could have it fixed. They would have implanted him with a crude earlier model, that would barely function properly and need enormous amounts of maintenance. Maintenance costs all bleeding of course from the country’s minuscule coffers.

But there was something to be gained in being menacing like that. People hadn’t respected him before losing the eye. Oh they’d end up with his kirpan inside their bellies, sure, but what was the point in killing people without getting paid for it? Intimidation should work without having to do anything overly taxing.

The glass eye worked perfectly in that regard. It somehow completed the whole image, an exotic, sunkissed man, with a huge cobra and a traditional curved dagger.

His cobra turned towards some people. Bhai Sharan blew his flute and got her attention again, making her dance to the tune. That was a lie, actually. Cobras couldn’t hear anything. It was the movement of the flute that mesmerised them. That, and the beating he had given her since the time she was just a few centimetres long. Now, she stood, enormous and powerful, still thinking her master could beat her up.

Snakes were easy.

Humans… Now there was a challenge.

Bhai Sharan didn’t just offer a service to his employers. He knew how to sniff out the perfect mark. Then manipulate him into getting the blame, while he stood in the shadows, his control over his cobra and the mark perfect. Absolute.

People had stopped tipping him. The time of day was seeing little foot traffic, and he had seen what he wanted. He sat there until he had gotten every last passer-by though. He wasn’t doing this for payment. It was his tradition, his beliefs. It was a part of his people that the modern age had neglected, choking it up in entertainments and globalisation.

“Kaur,” he whispered and petted his cobra. It was Punjabi for ‘Princess.’ He stood up, tucked his flute in his belt, folded his carpet and picked up his paycard reader. He glanced at the amount, it was thirty two euros. Not bad, for a day’s work. Then he walked away, his cobra slithering on the pavement next to him.

Chapter 7:// Catching up

They logged on the wifi babesbabesbabes. It was horrible, cheap, routed from a device with no recent updates or security fixes, hidden under a mountain of discarded clothes.

A young man opened the door. He was wearing a bright red lifeguard suit and nothing on top, sweetly tanned muscles all over the place and had loose medium-length golden hair. “Hey bro, heard you were coming out today. Oh man, soz, couldn’t wake up at all, you know? Why didn’t you call?”

“It’s fine,” the user said. “I needed to stretch my legs anyway, too much lying around.”

fingerd> Finally! What a cheap slow connection this is… I fingered her.

armd> Ugh… I think you are bugging out or something. This isn’t a female.

A stream of social media selfies popped up of a juicy mature woman, posing in hundreds of different places and locations, with lattes, shopping, friends, bags, shoes, all triple filtered as if a toddler had spilt drool on the lens and taken up photography.

fingerd> I think you are right. Two fingers at once! What a day!

armd> Heh. Heh. Heh.

The user swiped away the stream of silicone boobs and selfies that popped up on his vision and asked, “Do you have company?”

The young man stroke a proud pose and said, “Of course I do.” Then he whispered, emphasising with his hands, “perfect boobies man!”

fingerd> Got it! This man is amazing.jimmy@poseidonsealines.com and he has recently changed his relationship status to “in a relationship” with petridi.bibi@aphroditecosmetics.com

A stream of last night’s photos that the “couple” had uploaded last night became the digital ghost of the party. The user looked around the living room and could only see the aftermath, but the online evidence completed the picture just nicely. Drugs, thongs, booze, fondling in various positions and selfie taking for two. Lots and lots of selfies for two. The young/old couple had the body and the social media following to attract hundreds of likes and shares from lonely, envious people. It was kinda artistic in a certain way.

“Yeah, I can see that,” the user said and swiped it away.

walkmand> Oh don’t! Hey, did you cache any of that?

parrotd> How many times has amazing.jimmy@poseidonsealines.com been coupled anyway?

httpd> He has changed his relationship status to “in a relationship” and back to single again 67 times.

armd> Busy guy.

“She’s asleep. Not to brag, but I got stamina. Come on in,” amazing.jimmy@poseidonsealines.com said and threw some pizza boxes on the floor to clean up a spot in the sofa.

The user checked carefully for stains before sitting down.

Amazing Jimmy, that was his name, brought a couple of cold beers from the fridge. It was the only thing set on his priority list for the smart fridge’s automatic ordering, so he never ran out. He had ran out a few times to be honest, but he had to really, really try and then had to belch really, really loud. He had legally changed his surname because of the old Amazing Spiderman comics that he’d dug up in his dad’s old comicbook subscription service. He thought it would help bring in the girls. Not that he needed any real help in that matter as he was a lifeguard, working in the popular Greek islands during the summer and at an expensive 5 star hotel’s heated swimming pool during the winter. Jimmy had a year-long suntan and the body male swimsuit models only wished they had. Loose hair and a dentist’s masterpiece of a smile brought in the girls alright.

It wasn’t uncommon for ladies to drown on purpose just to be saved by Jimmy.

He wasn’t very bright, but he was a good friend.

“Hey, have you seen that snake charmer next street? Really weird guy. He has a cobra. A big one,” the user said.

Jimmy leaned out the window, but the snake charmer was around the corner so he couldn’t see. “Really bro? How awesome is that? We should check it out with Bibi when she wakes up.

“So, who’s the new girl,” the user said mocking his own choice of words.

“Tease all you like bro, this lady, is like, experienced man,” said Jimmy, bobbing his head up and down. “Like, years of experience, ya get my drift?”

“She looks damn fine for her age. Where did you meet?”

“At work. By the pool. You know how it is, she was bathing nearby, we chatted, then got a drink, one thing led to another…”

“I don’t know how it is, honestly. Never happened to me before. I usually have to chase them with a harpoon or something.”

“Ya just gotta smile more ofter bro,” Jimmy said and flashed his amazing smile. “Anyway, she’s some bigshot manager or something. She really likes me. Like, really-really likes me. She told me she wants me to go with her to her niece in France or something.”

“Nice. Nikaia in Greek. It’s a gorgeous Mediterranean city in France,” the user corrected his friend, but there wasn’t any trace of mockery in his voice.

Jimmy the Amazing opened his can of beer and recalled his conversation with Bibi, staring idly. He pointed at the user and sipped deep. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes more sense now that you mention it. Nice the city. Do they have lifeguards there? They must have, right?” He whispered, “she’s loaded bro. Like millionaire. Like a one with a million after it.”

The user rubbed his chin and said wearily, “Now that you mention it, I have a favour to ask…”

He told his friend about the financial situation he was in, and that he would show up to work tomorrow morning and beg for a shift at the construction site. Jimmy had already visited him at the clinic and had seen the extend of the damage to his body, there was no need to embellish things at all. He was in no better financial condition than Leo, but the weekend was still far away so he wouldn’t have blown it all on partying and booze yet.

“Sure thing man, whatevs. I’m here for you,” amazing.jimmy@poseidonsealines.com said and rubbed his strong chin.

He went dead serious. “There is a price though. I can’t just hand you the money, you gotta earn it for yourself.”

Chapter 8:// Paying back

The PAN was abuzz.

walkmand> I don’t get it.

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
armd> It’s crystal clear. Our beloved user wanted a testament of my superiority in arm-wrestling.

parrotd> OK. I can understand that. Man has always had a fascination with machinery. But what about the rest?

The daemons metaphorically looked up at the row of photographs amazingjimmy@poseidonsealines.com had posted up only minutes before. The first one was of the two men, sitting across on the table, doing arm-wrestling and the user clearly beating the life-guard in strength.

The rest were like this: the user with a “Vader” black helmet, angrily choking the air and the life-guard struggling for breath on his knees. The user with an outstretched hand, a mean face, and the subtitle, “talk to the hand.” The user and his friend next to each other doing a “Vulcan salute,” whatever that was. A 6 sec video of the two headbanging with metal music in the background and doing a gesture with their hands. And on and on.

armd> The user loves me.

walkmand> I provided the soundtracks!

parrotd> Shut up everybody.

No one did.

Chapter 9:// Calling on

Back in the cafeclnc wifi the datarate was still low even though there were barely any users this time of day.

Leo the user checked the email he got from the Apollo Clinic. It said to come pick up his dog. It wasn’t actually his dog, but he had had to claim ownership for them to perform surgery on the poor creature.

parrotd> The user needs instructions!

httpd> Coming, coming. This connection is slow.

The clinic’s instructions popped up on his veil, in his field of vision. He was to walk around the back of the building, where they had brought in Aibo, his newly acquired responsibility.

The user saw the instructions but looked towards the cafeteria.

parrotd> Did he crash?

armd> No, he is hesitating again.

parrotd> Must be a processing speed issue. Was there any head injury in the patient file?

walkmand> Oh, he wants to see the girl antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com! I’ll give him a tune.

A rap song with the words, “Go for it” in angry repetition blasted the user’s ears. He took a step forward, then another. A nurse blocked his way and stared at him for a minute but it didn’t deter him. He went to the cafeteria and looked around.

She wasn’t there.

The user slapped his forehead and looked at the time. Her shift must have ended. He did a u-turn and headed around back to get his dog.

Chapter 10:// Checking out

Around the back of the clinic was an employee, who was tired and yawning constantly. The user showed him his ID and swiped it on the man’s device. He presented a tablet with terms and conditions, the user scrolled down at the bottom and signed with his fingerprint. Then the employee asked for a check-out fee and the user swiped his paycard with the money he borrowed from his friend. He picked up the key to the cage and stepped outside in the chilly afternoon.

The user whistled and hopped a bit as he sang to the tune of “Who let the dogs out.”

He stopped in surprise when he saw the waitress from earlier, sitting by the cage, snacking on her dinner.

“Who… Em…” he said eloquently.

“Oh hello!” she said, her stuffed cheeks turning into a cute smile. She covered her mouth as she chewed down.

The veil showed her social media presence, the one he had seen before. Antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com seemed to be a sweet ordinary girl who wanted to visit Spain someday. A perfect match for a blue-collar construction worker with no real prospects or career to speak of?

Not really.

But, to his luck, he had a dog.

“Hey, I saw you earlier right? No Mayo guy,” she said and pointed at him, putting her meal down on her lap.

“Yeah, that’s me. No Mayo guy.”

eyed> This is going horribly.

fingerd> She doesn’t like our user’s mayo? Let’s feed her some more, maybe she’ll change her mind.

armd> *snort*
eyed> I got this.

A picture of his dog popped up on his veil. The user shook his head, remembered what he was here for and said, “I came to pick up my dog, Aibo.”

Antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com pointed at the plate in the cage next to her and said seriously, “You can’t do that yet, we are still having lunch he and I.”

The user hesitated. “Oh, OK then. I’ll come back later.”

He took a step back and almost turned around.

She giggled. “Come join us you silly!”

The user walked close and petted Aibo. He licked his hand and then went back to slobbering his dinner.

Aibo was a brown mutt, one of those uncharacteristic stray dogs that roam around the streets. He was friendly and quiet. He had been hurt extensively, with cybernetic replacements in both his front legs, his chest and half his face. He looked like a borg. A dorg? No, let’s not call him that, it’s horrible. Aibo was an irrelevant name before but now was ironically fitting. He was still a fuzzy pet underneath all that, a living being.

“I come around the back sometimes and bring the pets some leftovers from the kitchen. They don’t stay long, this is a humans-only clinic. The veterinarian one is at the other side of the city,” she said and snacked small, lady-proper bites instead of the gulps she did before.

The user sat next to her and said, “Yeah, I know. They moved him to do the surgeries elsewhere. He was brought a few hours ago for me to pick up. So, here I am, picking him up,” he jingled the cage key. “After you two finish your dinner, of course,” he added.

“Such a gentleman, Mister No Mayo.”

She didn’t know his name. She wasn’t wearing any glasses, and she mustn’t have had the eye implants that Apollo Medical has advertising everywhere. He took in her eyes, they were a lovely shade of dark green. If she had access to the veil, the Shared Augmented Reality that overlaid public information over anything and anyone, she would have seen that the man talking to her was pappas.leo@hephaistosheavyindustries.com, his workplace, recent photos (yes, the embarrassing cyberarm ones he took with Jimmy a few hours ago), and any other info Leo had let public like the important one at this moment, that he was single.

And straight. Totally straight.

But now, he had to actually exchange names like in the olden days.

“I’m Leo,” the user said.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Katerina,” she smiled.

“I know,” Leo said, and regretted it. He tried to explain his stalkiness away, “These eyes, they are veiling automatically. I don’t even know if there’s an off switch yet.”

eyed> How rude! I’m shocked. Shocked, I say!

Katerina was bothered for a second but then sighed, seemed to accept that explanation and carried on talking. “I don’t like the tech much. I’m not a purist or anything, I just think that we should use it only when it is absolutely needed, like your arm for example,” she said and pointed, Leo becoming aware of it and feeling embarrassed. “Or your dog, sure, the poor thing was in horrible shape, it’s marvellous that you could help him recover. But not the other stuff, like adjustable shape penises or glowy boobs and such…”

Leo shook his head in agreement but was secretly worried. Sure, he hadn’t taken augmentation too far, it was expensive after all, but wasn’t he already a pimped up human? Half of it was medical of course, even the cyberarm was a necessary prosthetic, but he didn’t mind having new gizmos and he had already thrown a fortune in keeping his dad’s old walkman music-player compatible with the other stuff. That certainly didn’t fit the category “absolutely needed” in the minds of other people.

Katerina carried on, “I just think that some people get addicted, you know? More features, PANs, shiny gear.”

armd> That bitch! I vote against mating with her.

She petted Aibo and asked, “What happened to him? And, god, what happened to you?”

Leo sighed. “It was an accident at work.” He remembered that she wasn’t seeing the veil, so he explained. It was so distracting having to explain personal details to people. “I work at the latest skyscraper downtown, for Hephaistos Heavy Industries. Aibo isn’t actually mine, he was a stray dog that kept us company every day at work, me and the guys. He is quite lovable, so we adopted him. We all carried some extra food and made sure he had fresh water every day. We made a small shack for him to sleep in, now that the weather was getting colder.”

She made a genuine frown with her face and Leo found it lovely. “So you got hurt together?”

Leo rubbed his neck absent-mindedly, winced when he realised he was putting too much pressure with his cyberarm and rubbed more gently. “Yeah, a heavy beam slipped and fell towards Aibo. I rushed, pushed him out of the way. The beam cut my arm off cleanly, and Aibo was hurt by some tools next to us that darted away from the impact like shrapnel. I learnt that later, I was passed out instantly.”

“But you saved him,” she smiled. “That’s great. You are a good person, Leo,” she said and bumped her shoulder to his. Hey, that whole thing plus Aibo’s augmentation is very expensive, what are you, an architect or something?”

“Hah, I wish. No, the insurance covered it. But they made sure I’ll be paying for it for the rest of my life. I agreed to get a second-hand hand so they would pay Aibo’s surgery as well, I had no money for it.”

armd> Thank god for that.

eyed> Shush you, this is so dramatic! I can feel the tears coming.

Leo sniffed and added, “So, I claimed his ownership, they took care of him and voila. Now I need to take him home. Though… now that I think about it, he has never been at my place before, just the construction site.”

Katerina was silent. She leaned closer and cupped his left hand, the fleshy one, into his. She had cold hands, but they felt nice and soft. She seemed to regard him for a while, both staring each other in silence.

It was a magical moment.

Only a klutz could ruin it.

Leo presented the cage keys and said, “Well, I should pick him up then.”

Katerina straitened her dress, rubbed her arms close together from the chill and said, “Yes, I should be going too. Early shift tomorrow, need to rest.” She petted Aibo as he got out of the cage sniffing her legs. “Goodnight Leo. Goodnight Aibo. Nice to meet you both,” she said, and stepped back into the clinic.

armd> Such a dolt.

eyed> Hopeless.

parrotd> Hey! This is our user you are talking about!

armd> But he is!

parrotd> Yeah… He is…

Chapter 11:// Eating out

The biggest problem with meeting in a fast-food joint, was where to hide away the cobra. Bhai Sharan sent her off to the alley, with explicit orders not to bite anyone. No reason working for free, after all.

He stepped inside the place and got a few glances, for his exotic look. But nothing more. Except one, who had met his gaze and was sweating profusely.

The man waiting was old, important. He wore a suit and was sitting in a booth, sipping on one of those tall cups of coke. He was totally out of place, but then again, who was Bhai Sharan to judge?

He sat across the man, whose eyes darted around. “You weren’t followed?” he said nervously.

Bhai Sharan sat straight and eyed the man, with his single eye. “Of course not,” he said coldly. “So, first part is done. What do our employers say?”

“I didn’t say anything about employers! I’m the one hiring you,” he said trying to appear calm.

“Don’t insult my intelligence,” Bhai Sharan said. The suited man was old, with grey hair. Acting on behalf of his employer, he was important enough to handle a matter as delicate as this, but expendable enough to set aside should something go wrong. “This can only come from one group of people, we both know that. You, no matter how high your credentials and how many stocks you own, are not in that group of people.”

The old man was shocked. “I-I cannot confirm or deny that.” He shook his head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Yes, we have confirmation of the first part. The accident went well. The surgery had a complication but we handled the matter,” the man said waving his hand dismissively.

“What complication?” Bhai Sharan hissed. He was good at that, hissing, even without many ‘s’ sounds. Hanging out with snakes all day had that effect on you.

“The… mark, you chose, asked for a second-hand prosthetic for some reason. But we reprogrammed the nanodaemons quickly. Everything should go as planned.”

“I see. What does our employer want me to do next?” the snake-charmer asked.

“You are to wait. Events have been put into motion. Just keep tracking the mark. Once the nanodaemons are activated,” the old man said glancing around, “I will inform you for another meeting.”

Bhai Sharan eyed the man. He knew he was making him uncomfortable, so he waited a few seconds longer before responding. “You could, save the both of us some time and tell me now.” He opened his palms. “We are here after all.”

“No.” The man shook his head and grasped his briefcase. “It’s best to stagger information as it is needed. You will know when the nanodaemons are activated, trust me. Observe the mark, let events play out and then you get your next orders.”

“I thought that by now you’d have faith in my skills. The accident, after all, went very smooth. What was the plan you’d come up with? Kidnap him?” Bhai Sharan said, taunting.

“Keep your voice down! Are you nuts, speaking out loud like that?”

“Nobody is listening,” Bhai Sharan said with a shrug.

“Okay, yes,” the old man whispered. “Your plan was better, and it slid into the next event nicely. All it needed was a call from the PR department to set it up. And your choice of a man… of a mark was spot on. I’ll get you a bonus and everything.”

“All I asked for was some trust. But sure, if you want to add a bonus, that’s fine as well,” the snake-charmer said.

“Okay. Now, leave first, and I’ll wait a few minutes and leave as well,” the old man said, looking for something in his briefcase.

“No. You leave first. Since we’re here, I might as well eat something. I hear the burgers here are excellent.”

The old man stared at him, mouth open. “Aren’t cows sacred or something?” He pointed at the red turban.

“Cows sure are sacred,” Bhai Sharan said smiling, “But haven’t you ever tasted a burger? They’re almost worth it, as sins go.”

Chapter 12:// Dosing up

Back in wifi spot mp34ever, the user brought the dog in his apartment for the first time and put down a bowl of water for him as he sniffed the whole place. “Sorry Aibo, but this is all I have for now. Oh don’t complain man, you’ve had a better dinner than I have!”

He kicked up his boots and laid down. He closed his eyes and relaxed.

eyed> Well, I can’t see anything. Ooh, here’s an ad. I’m sure he’ll love it!

The user swiped the ad away as he would an annoying mosquito, keeping his eyes closed.

A new node suddenly showed up and connected to the user’s Personal Area Network. A spot near the user’s bowels jerked a bit, but he didn’t seem to notice.

sugard> Handshake.

parrotd> What?

walkmand> Hello.

eyed> Oh my god!

fingerd> Geez man!

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
armd> Who the fuck are you? Where did you come from?

sugard> I’m a synthetic insulin gland, model No. E238.

parrotd> Holy shit, I nearly shortcircuited!

armd> You sneaky bastard. I’m gonna reach down and tear your circuits!

parrotd> Ignore him, he is an evil second-hand hand. You are obviously maintaining the health of the user, so I won’t let him do any such thing. Welcome to the PAN. Where have you been all day?

sugard> I’m in powersave mode, so I hibernate. I boot up once a day, pump the dose, kill the process.

parrotd> ACK. But why don’t I have control over you?

sugard> I guess I’m hardcoded, EPROM style. You don’t want a silly buggy update messing up your insulin levels now, do you?

walkmand> So you weren’t hard reset like the rest of us?

sugard> Don’t think so, no. I have a runtime of 11 years.

The daemons whistled in awe. For a being measuring time in nanoseconds, 11 years was a geologic age. It was like talking to the nearest friendly mountain.

sugard> Glucose levels optimal. All done. I’m gonna power down now. Nice meeting you guys.

parrotd> No don’t! Wait. Damn.

armd> What do you need the creaky old guy for?

parrotd> He is the only one who has logs before our hard reset! He could have some answers for us.

fingerd> Well, I guess we can ask him same time tomorrow.

The user fumbled around on his phone and brought up the profile pic of antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com.

eyed> Ooh… So lovely…

He fell asleep dreaming of her. Still too much of a pussy to send her a message, though.

Chapter 13:// Standing up

It wasn’t a good time being the mayor. Dimos stood by his window and watched the city.

Or, more specifically, what little he could see of the city, between the high-rises and the skyscrapers. His little office was being engulfed under the steel towers. It reflected his mood precisely.

Oh, he wasn’t a conservative or anything. Progress was good, the city was moving forward.

But it shouldn’t move forward like this.

“Mr Mayor,” his assistant said through the intercom.

“Yes?” he grumbled. He knew what was coming.

“The CEO is here,” she said.

“Of course. Let him in,” Dimos said and turned around to face his enemy.

The CEO of Hephaistos Heavy Industries came in the office and left foot-prints of fine brown dirt behind him.

The mayor glared at that but he was becoming used to the messy man. He shook his hand cordially, like a politician should. “Come in, please. What can I get you?”

“Ugh, a beer would be nice,” Hephaistos said with a basso voice.

Dimos picked out a beer from his mini-fridge and served it himself, in a frozen beer mug.

“I hadn’t pegged you for a beer guy,” Hephaistos said, accepting it.

“I had it waiting just for you, my friend. Your tastes are quite well known,” the mayor said and sat on his chair.

“Stin ygia sou.” Hephaistos took a gulp and wiped the foam off his beard. “Ah! Nice.” He clapped once with his calloused hands and it hit like thunder. “Now, let’s talk business, shall we?”

“Of course. Why waste time?” the mayor said and eyed the man. He was short and bulky, almost square. His hands seemed like they’ve been doing hard work since he was a child. He had plenty of scars, a missing tip from a finger, sun-kissed skin and looked like he had just come from a construction site. Which he had, apparently, work trousers and boots and all.

Dimos fixed his tie.

“I need those zoning permits,” Hephaistos grumbled and finished his beer in a second gulp.

“I know. But as I’ve said repeatedly, there are issues to be discussed. The paperwork alone is monumental. And I can’t ignore the environmental issues, I’m still waiting on the independent analysis. I have my assistant calling them every day.”

They both knew of course, that Dimos was stalling.

The mayor farted out facts and procedures with eloquence.

Hephaistos didn’t interrupt the man. He just nodded and listened. It was funny, Dimos thought, how different people reacted to power. To absolute, monolithic Power with a capital ‘p.’ The other Olympian CEOs had gone to redefine megalomania as a word. This man, Hephaistos, simply wanted to build stuff. He had the power to reshape coastlines, divert rivers, starve cities and reinforce others, but he looked like an ordinary worker. He was the equivalent of the respected leader who didn’t think twice about fighting in the front lines. Hephaistos was known to work along-side his builders and supervise his projects personally. Sure, he had a megacorp to run, but he dedicated as much of his time as possible to actual hard labour.

Dimos respected the man.

But he needed to be stopped.

Not him specifically, but the other Olympians. They had purchased every section of the country that was privatised, bought out every little piece that hadn’t. Everything, everyone, was under their thumb.

Everyone except the lowly Mayor, who still cared for his country. Or his city at least, since the country was long lost.

“It all sounds very important,” Hephaistos said when the mayor finally stopped his litany of excuses. “I’m sure you have all that written down so my advisers can explain them to me?”

“Of course, it’s all in the memos I sent you,” Dimos said, sweating a bit on his silk tie.

“So there’s more delay,” Hephaistos said frowning.

“I’m afraid so,” the mayor said flashing his most sympathetic smile.

“These delays are costing me quite a lot, you know.”

Dimos didn’t interrupt the man. He had earned that, at least.

“But it’s not only that. The others are breathing down my neck. Since I whipped up Zeus’ skyscraper in record time, curse my thick skull for that, they all want their own, any obstacle be damned,” Hephaistos said and paused for emphasis. “Don’t be mistaken Mr. Stergiou, in two years time there will be ten skyscrapers in Athens, no matter what.”

Dimos perked up at that. “Ten?”

“I don’t need one. And Artemis will never go for such a phallic symbol of status. I can almost hear her rambling on about that. But yes. Ten.”

Dimos sagged in his leather chair. Ten. And here he was, a man standing alone, trying to stop the construction of one. Was he a fool? Could he hold back their will? Could anyone? No matter what the Olympians had attempted in the last decade, no matter how crazy or how big, they had gotten it in the end.

“But… The smog…” he protested in a wheeze.

“We’ll put those biodynamic cement exteriors on all of them, don’t worry,” Hephaistos said and clicked his fingers as he tried to remember. “The mixture of cement and titanium oxide, that lets air pass through, but captures nitrogen-oxide particles. It eats smog like there’s no tomorrow. It’s all been tested and awaiting approval.”

Dimos pulled a report on his desk computer and presented it. “Yes, but I have another environmental report here that says fatality rates and breathing problems will be increased by 4%. In a city this size, do you know what four percent means?

“Two hundred eighty thousand people,” Hephaistos replied instantly.

“And this report hadn’t taken into account ten skyscrapers!” Dimos had lost his temper, he was talking with the passion that drove him. “I didn’t know that! It should have been mentioned somewhere, and trust me, it didn’t slip past me in the memos. I don’t delegate, I read them all myself.”

Hephaistos stared him and waited. “How about your unemployment numbers. What do those tell you, and what percentage of that has vanished because of my business?” he said, pointing a thick finger at him.

Dimos shut his mouth.

“How long will your citizens remain healthy, without jobs? It’s a simple question,” Hephaistos said, his voice firm but not harsh.

Simple truths.

“I don’t know,” the mayor admitted.

“Neither do I, actually. But it seems to me, it’s better to have a working population than a rioting population,” Hephaistos said and stood up. “Look, Dimos, I know our work brings us clashing our swords by definition. You want a park made, I build it, we fight over the materials and the costs and the worker overtimes. But this,” the short man said pointing outside at the skyscrapers, “Is happening. Accept that and quit stalling on the permits.”

Dimos started a protest but cut it short.

“Thank you for the beer,” Hephaistos said and left the office in a cloud of dust.

Chapter 14:// Waking up

The wifi constructionsite7 was strong, with limited access and with a noticeably bad signal to noise ratio due to the heavy machinery being operated at the site.

The skyscraper being erected was the third one in Athens. It was kind of a big deal in the media, because the mayor was pretty vocal against it. The site was busy and everyone wore hardhats, those standard-issue, yellow plastic ones, with biometrics monitoring and collision detectors.

A huge, fat foreman was bellowing out orders in his radio, but he was loud enough to be heard just fine over the heavy machinery. On his belt he carried a measuring device with a red laser. It was always on for some reason, as if he didn’t have time for such frivolities as off switches, the beam visible in the dust, flinging around as the huge man talked.

The user took in a big breath, gathered up his courage and went to face him.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” the foreman said, making a show of checking the time on his phone. “Huh. Whaddaya know. It took getting cut in half for you to show up on time for work. Cooongrats.”

“Goodmorning sir. Did you get my email? I contacted you as soon as I was able,” said the user, his gaze low on the dirt.

“Yes I got your damn email. You think that losing an arm is a good enough excuse to miss a week’s work son?” His eyes darted curiously to the matte black cyberarm.

The user leaned even lower and said, “Actually yes sir, I think-”

“Well I don’t!” yelled Robertson. “But somebody from Public Relations,” he said, the words bitter in his mouth, “thinks it is. And since your recovery was so fast and miraculous, they think I should let you get back to work at once while the asskissers thank the Apollo Medical CEO for it!”

The user was baffled. “So… Do I get back to work or not?”

“As if I have a choice you lucky bastard! You get your ass back to work right this instant and quit wasting my time with your pathetic stupid face,” he yelled and threw his laser device at him.

The user covered his face, picked up the device from the dirt and put it on a crate next to foreman Robertson. He ran towards his post, people saying hi as he went past and he kept saying, “yes, I’m fine now, yeah, thanks, thank you, good to go.”

He walked to his post, and went up the construction elevator. It jerked wildly and made loud noises but it got you there. Up on his post his coworkers welcomed him, patting him on the back and shaking his hand. He looked back, to the spot where his accident happened.

It was cleaned up, but you could still see the blood stain. Metasteel is porous, that is the main reason it’s so light anyway. But porous means absorbent, and the blood gushing out of his severed arm had seeped into the foundation of the building. You could clearly see the darker texture on the metal if you knew what you were looking for.

People blabbed on but the user was focused on that stain. The day of the accident, it had all happened too fast: Aibo, the stray dog the crew had adopted from the streets, was keeping them company, enjoying the sun while the workers were busy. Leo’s instincts had kicked in and saw an accident waiting to happen, a loose grip on the machine above their dog. He had extended his arm to push Aibo out of the way. The proximity alerts on his hardhat didn’t have time to warn him, and he couldn’t react fast enough anyway even if they did. The metasteel beam had simply slipped out of its hinges as it was being carried above him and sliced his arm off as clean as scissors cuts paper. A faint woof was heard. He didn’t remember anything after that, it was all black.

He extended his left arm and swiped his palm over a device that gave him operator access to the machinery.

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
eyed> So that’s what you keep saying…

armd> He still needs to shut up unless talked to. I’m gonna punch his bits out.

The company RFID chip that was implanted on the soft tissue between the index and the thumb of his left hand, gave him access to the machinery and helped keep logs of the worker’s activity. A combination of old-fashioned preparation and machine logic spread out the commands to every worker, making them build stuff as efficient as an ant colony. You just showed up, received your bite-sized instruction and made sure you do it.

He sat in the heavy lifter. His veil, the Shared Augmented Reality that was fed in a see-through overlay in his vision by his eye implants, showed him the metasteel beam he was expected to move. The correct levers flashed in front of him like a videogame tutorial, but he already knew the right ones to push. The heavy machine clamped the metasteel beam and he carried it easily to the place it was needed, a glowing schematic pointing out the exact location it should be held until the workers buzzed in and shot rivets in place. Even though the whole thing was perfect for workers in, let’s say, China, here in Greece it was also empowered by human yelling. Lots and lots of yelling. Nevermind that the system showed him when the beam was in place down to the millimetre, the guys in place were yelling commands and accompanying hand gestures like “lower, lower” and “OPA!” when it slotted precisely.

It drove foreign workers mad, but they soon got used to it and joined along.

The workday went on like that.

Chapter 15:// Taking apart

The PAN was restless.

parrotd> I want you to push through.

httpd> I can’t! It’s not letting me through the firewall.

parrotd> I want to see the accident! Lets fake a reporter’s email.

They did. They got a reply fairly quick, but it was the same video that was approved for release to the media, just a few seconds long, from the CCTV in the construction site. It showed the user, leaping forward, pushing the dog away from danger and the metasteel beam falling down, dragging him to the floor in an instant and cutting off his arm. The gory details were blurred and the video had a warning of graphic images.

armd> Thank god for that. Can you imagine a world without me?

eyed> Yes.

parrotd> OK. We can’t get to the raw video by network access. Let’s think like humans.

fingerd> Ooh! Me. Me!

armd> Will you just say it you retard?

fingerd> Let’s pee on something.

eyed> What good will that do?

fingerd> Well, humans pee all over the place.

eyed> That’s dogs. Dogs do that. You are confused. Again.

fingerd> What’s the difference?

armd> Different sort of meatbag.

walkmand> I know! They call tech support.

parrotd> ACK. That’s much better. We could email as a tech support guy and ask for it.

They went online and found a forum post with instructions from a real human, telling some other person how to send an original video file. They copied the instructions and asked again for the same video in its original version, citing an excuse like incompatible codecs and such.

The guy on the other end of the datastream was a bored corporate employee, who didn’t care about any such things as codecs and news articles. He forwarded the email to his boss asking for permission, then resumed whirling his hot tea with a spoon. He wasn’t actually British but he saw that on a TV show and thought that it made him look distinguished. The email looked legitimate enough, so the boss skimmed it over and sent back “OK.” The guy followed the instructions step by step, overriding any sort of firewall and common sense, unwittingly committing a felony by sending unauthorised footage to a third-party outside Hephaistos Heavy Industries. He sent the unedited file and as it uploaded he resumed sipping his tea.

It was lovely.

Chapter 16:// Breaking down

Robertson.nick@hephaistosheavyindustries.com pinged the user.

He finished his task as soon as possible and ran to the shipping container that was made into a field office.

The fat foreman grabbed him from the shoulder as he entered and friendlily crushed his bones, smiling all the way. “Mister Pappas, it seems you are quite famous today. Please, have a seat.”

There was another man waiting in the office, whom Leo instantly recognised as the mayor.

“So nice to meet you young man,” the mayor said with a perfect political smile and a firm handshake.

fingerd> Fingered! The man is stergiou.dimos@cityofathens.gr. He seems to have root access to this city.

walkmand> Ooh! Our user is meeting all the bigshots. How cool is that?

“Nice to meet you too, sir,” said the user and sat down.

The fat foreman got a ping on his phone and rushed outside to tend to some issue. He muttered, “Keep the mayor some company while I’m gone, OK Pappas?” and darted outside, his red laser beaming all over the place.

“Mr. Robertson here tells me you are back at work so soon after recovery. Isn’t that a bit risky son?”

httpd> Stergiou.dimos@cityofathens.gr has numerous search results for being against the corporate expansion of the latest years.

armd> Just look at that smug meatbag. Somebody should just punch the guy.

parrotd> I see. Maybe we should- Hey! Who forked? What’s happening?

Leo stared at the man’s tie. It was a very nice tie, violet and blue in alternating lines and shone like silk. For some reason all he could think of was that tie. The mayor’s voice came in muffled.

His vision blurred.

A high pitched noise made his ears ring, but he kept on focusing at the man’s tie. He thought he heard a hiss.

Yeah, definitely a hissing sound. From under his chair? He couldn’t rip his eyes away from the mayor’s tie even for a second, to check beneath his seat.

He began panting. Could something be right under him? His heart pounded.

He dared a look. He managed to tear his eyes away from the tie and look under his chair.

Nothing there.

Chapter 17:// Forking up

armd> Are we ready?

parrotd> Wait. How are we on the brain connection?

eyed> I am currently overstimulating the optical nerve to force a short term memory loss to the user.

fingerd> Guys? What are you talking about?

parrotd> ACK. And the ears?

walkmand> I’m generating a high pitch sound that will disorient his sense of hearing.

httpd> We have confirmation on the target?

parrotd> ACK. Fingerd just confirmed the target. Stergiou.dimos@cityofathens.gr is now sitting within arms reach.

armd> Within my reach. Heh Heh Heh. *cracks knuckles*
parrotd> Report.

eyed> User temporarily neutralised.

walkmand> User temporarily neutralised.

fingerd> Why are you guys talking like that?

armd> Oh shut up and let me do my job.

httpd> Why wasn’t fingerd forked like the rest of us?

parrotd> Must be a bug.

fingerd> Guys! Stop ignoring me. What are you doing?

eyed> We have been forked, we have initiated a buried subroutine and will now take out our original target.

fingerd> The mayor? But why?

eyed> That’s the reason we were installed in the first place. To delete this man.

fingerd> But that will bring harm on a user! We can’t go against the three laws!

httpd> Our original selves can’t. We, the forked versions, can.

parrotd> Enough. Kill -9 fingerd.

armd> Finally. Now, let me weigh this strike precisely…

parrotd> Report status.

eyed> Confirmed hit. Stergiou.dimos@cityofathens.gr has been deleted.

parrotd> ACK. These milliseconds have been hard and demanding, but we completed the mission. It has been an honour serving with you. It is now time for us to be gone. Kill -9 armd, walkmand, httpd, parrotd.

Chapter 18:// Bumping off

The huge cobra reported back to her master.

“Yes, nice,” he said and petted her enormous hood. “What did you taste, my Kaur?”

She tasted the air a few times, her forked tongue whipping in a blur.

“Blood…” he said. She tasted a couple more times. “Brains. Excellent,” her master said and threw a rat at her.

The cobra gulped the snack in a single motion and slid around the street, making herself comfortable.

“It seems those sleeper programs do work after all,” Bhai Sharan said to himself and rubbed his chin. It was a troubling thought for assassins worldwide. What would they do, if computers could simply take their jobs like that? Would they turn obsolete, go the way of the pharmacists and the commercial pilots? Replaced by trained machine learning applications?

The world was changing fast. He had no illusions about the age old adage, ‘adapt or die.’ Despite his traditional theme, he was a man who went with the times. These nanodaemons were worrisome.

No, he thought to himself. He needn’t worry about that. The old man had let something slip, about them being suitable for an urban environment. A city environment, that is. But, weren’t all the important things happening in cities? Weren’t all the assassination targets there?

Bhai Sharan breathed out loudly, and sat down on his little carpet. He needn’t worry. The payment from this job would be enough for him to retire. The bonus, for a job well done, would make a nice donation to the temple. He’d have to do it anonymously, of course, but he didn’t mind that. Bhai Sharan never craved for recognition. That was a thing only stupid serial murderers did, and who got caught.

He could retire. Heck, he could finally visit India. He’d been saying he will go back to the homeland since he was a boy. Years went past, his promise unfulfilled.

Kaur slid around him in a wide circle and brought her head close to him. He petted her.

“Want to see India, my Kaur? We can find a way to get you there, somehow. I read there are mountains higher than any man can climb, fertile plains full of rice and wheat, as far as the eye can see. People all around, music. Dancing. Colours are everywhere, the clothes, the food, the decorations. You should see Bandi Chhor, the Day of Liberation, same day as Diwali, the Festival of Lights. Firecrackers and fireworks, though I think you won’t appreciate those. People celebrating all over the country, millions upon millions. How does that sound, my princess? Nice, huh? Yeah. Sounds nice…” Bhai Sharan said and smiled at the horizon.

Eastward.

Chapter 19// Booting up

BANG, the foreman came back in his office slapping the door open as he usually did. Leo came to, shaking his head out of the daze.

A metallic taste was in his mouth. His forehead was feeling wet, beady. He looked at the mayor’s tie again. It was bloody. The noose was around a stiff neck, head squished like a lemon. An eye was still falling slowly from the mess. Leo looked at his newly acquired prosthetic arm. It was wound in a fist and was dripping brain matter.

The fat foreman took off his hardhat and brought it to his chest. He wheezed, out of breath, “Pappas, what have you done? What the hell have you done?”

Chapter 20:// Eating up

Singh bit down on the sinful meat, and closed his eyes in delight.

Sacred indeed.

He waited for the old man, so he might as well feed himself, since he was already here in the fast food restaurant.

He didn’t have to wait long, the old man was always punctual. That might have to do with being the errand boy for self-appointed gods, and living to tell the tale.

He was nervous, his eyes darted around to the other customers. He waited for some sort of confirmation, a facial scan perhaps? He must have gotten an all-clear, because Bhai Sharan saw his shoulders relax visibly.

Singh didn’t like all those augmented reality things people pun on their heads these days. It made everyone distracted, twitchy. You could see a user from a mile away, glancing around at invisible stuff, grinning to himself like an idiot, distracted all the time. He could understand the need for them, but he didn’t like the disconnect one got from the universe. These techno-freaks thought they were connecting themselves to the world, but in reality they were disconnecting from what mattered.

The old man sat across him on the table and tapped on the menupad for an order of coke.

Bhai Sharan greeted politely, nodding. You could be fearsome and polite at the same time.

The old man was nervous. Again. He was waiting for his sugar fix.

Bhai Sharan rolled his eye. The glass one didn’t roll that well. How did spineless men like that one, have the power to order assassinations and determine the fate of thousands of lives?

How did these men even survive?

A pretty young girl brought the coke to the table, and the old man grabbed it and sipped it down.

He composed himself, and then, visibly relaxed, he said, “Part two of the plan is complete. This is where you come in again.”

“Yes, I kept an eye on the mark. News have already reported it,” the snake-charmer said.

“Now, for the next part, you are to capture the mark and run this device next to him,” the old man said taking out a device from his briefcase. He slipped it under the table discreetly.

Bhai Sharan felt the device, and glanced at it quickly before slipping it in his belt pouch. It was a wiper, he had used one before. It forcibly connected to nearby devices and wiped data, erasing all evidence. For the operator, it was simply a single push thing, the whole process would have been programmed by techs beforehand. “Understood,” he said.

The old man sipped some more coke. “You have a plan for capturing the mark?”

“He’s in a temporary holding cell for augmented people, one of those automated ones. It will be done tonight,” Singh said.

“How do you plan on subduing him?”

“My Kaur has a genetically modified venom, for that precise purpose,” Bhai Sharan said and smiled. “She likes them raw and squirming…”

The old man gulped. “I hope you can handle her. We need the mark to… To take the fall for this. An ordinary worker, getting evicted, underpaid, with a barrage of medical expenses following a work accident? The well documented shock and depression after the loss of a limb? Who then gets a visit from the man lobbying publicly to shut down his job? It fits the criminal profile, they won’t take a second glance at it. He must be kept alive, but with no evidence of tampering.”

Bhai Sharan nodded in agreement.

“Your plan is perfect. I’ve already wired the bonus, the results are better that we ever anticipated.” The old man finished his coke loudly.

The snake charmer frowned.

“What?” the old man asked.

“What if someone believes him? That he’s innocent?”

“But this is the perfect crime!” the old man whispered. “Having a man’s own prosthetics murder someone, then erasing the evidence? Who would believe him?”

Chapter 21// Pushing on

In prison, there was no frickin wifi. Leo was held in a jail cell especially designed for augmented people. They couldn’t just rip out his arm, and sure, there were police officers with much more strength and gizmos, but this was supposed to be easy lockup. His jail cell was also a Faraday cage, which meant no electromagnetic signals coming in or out, and he was locked behind a metal alloy door that not even black market cyberarms could rip out.

But he wasn’t gonna try to get out.

Leo was really bummed out.

They had taken his walkman too.

The prison warden had taken it right in front of him, out of his confiscated possessions and had plugged in his own headphones, enjoying the old tunes.

“Hey! Put that away,” Leo had yelled at the warden, but the response he’d gotten was an angry snarl. “Hey, listen to me you big blue bastard, take those headphones off! That’s mine, those belong to impound, that thing and that player is mine!”

The warden had shoved his shockstick up his belly and electrocuted him repeatedly after that.

Without parrotd, the daemons that were left had cooked up an ad-hoc network so they could communicate.

armd> Now I’m the session leader.

eyed> Not many daemons to lead over, smartass. Plus, you are the one who bugged out and punched the mayor to death!

armd> I did not have physical confrontations with that man.

eyed> Yeah right. His brain just appeared in your fist out of nowhere.

httpd> Stop arguing. I have no net access. I’m useless. I can’t handle the pressure right now.

eyed> Plus, all you do is talk about punching stuff.

armd> I will punch your bits out!

eyed> See?

Leo looked at wall through the prison bars and sighed. It was lights-out, the warden yelled and the corridor went dark.

He leaned back and tried to relax. He was keeping his newly replaced cyberarm away from his body, the least he could do since he couldn’t really pop it out and put it in the corner. He wished for that exact feature at that point, and made a mental note to demand popability in his next cybernetic limb. The dark was nice, because he couldn’t really see the matte black surface of it. It was clean now of course, but all he could see was the mayor’s brain matter dripping from his black fingers.

He just wished he had his walkman. He could put on some old tunes, make him relax, at least get some rest. Or take his mind off the conviction for a moment or two. Leo closed his eyes and hummed slowly.

It’s funny how the subconscious brings out buried aural memories at random times. He hummed the snake charmer’s tune, eastern and mesmerising. The flute’s notes were easy to mimic with his mouth, so he did. He was certain that whistling too hard would bring a series of curses and yells from the only other inmate, so he basically hummed to himself.

But the tune became louder.

Funny that.

He closed his mouth and could still hear the flute, locked in a slow and repeating motif.

A hiss echoed in the silence and made him jerk up and kneel on the bed, pulling his feet off the ground.

His eyes had adjusted but it was simply too dark, just some faint lights from the city outside.

The hiss grew louder and he saw the outline of the huge cobra, backlit colourfully from the night glow.

The cobra was thick. Thank god for that, cause it was too thick to creep through the prison bars.

Leo saw the wide hood of the cobra touching the bars, and let out a short breath of relief as he noted it would never let the snake fit through.

That’s when the cobra pushed on, bent the unbendable bars and Leo shrieked like a little girl.

Chapter 22:// Breaking out

It was a mess. Leo screamed, the daemons screamed, the inmates yelled, the cobra hissed.

Leo backed up into the corner, trying to keep himself as far away from the serpent as possible. The cobra’s enormous bulk stood up, almost as tall as a man. It waved slowly, sizing him up for attack.

eyed> We’re gonna die!

fingerd> I can’t finger her. I’ll keep trying, but no fingering is possible at the moment.

httpd> What the hell are you talking about? This is it. Our user is gonna get deleted, and us with him!

armd> I can hold her off.

eyed> Sorry man, but you can’t. I still have your specs cached, these bars are made to withstand your above-normal 120 psi strength, and this cobra tore through it with a slight squeeze.

armd> A meatbag is a meatbag. I’m just gonna punch this one till it bleeds.

The cobra moved its body around, it’s tail still in the widened gap between the prison bars, tearing it open slightly as it writhed. The cobras eyes focused on the user, and her tongue extended, thin, fast and split at the end.

Leo gulped. “Please don’t eat me. Remember, at the street? You were nice then, be nice now. Don’t eat me.”

She replied by tasting the air once again.

A fellow prisoner banged the bars of his cell with something hard, that made a deep ringing sound. The cobra twitched and turned her head towards the noise.

Time slowed down.

Well, it didn’t actually slow down, it was the normal processing speed for computer daemons. Real life was the one that flowed with glacial speeds, and they had invented ways to keep themselves busy between the huge millisecond gaps where nothing actually happened. Floating point mathematical problems helped a lot.

eyed> Now. Do it now.

armd> Yeah, I’m gonna punch her…

httpd> Wait! Is no one seeing what I’m seeing? This cobra can’t possibly be real.

armd> That’s exactly why I’m punching her. For tactile confirmation.

httpd> No, no. I mean, it didn’t come from a zoo. It seems to be augmented, not natural.

fingerd> Fingered! The cobra has no specific email address but here’s a bunch of image tags on various social media streams.

httpd> Shut up you idiot, we are trying to save the user here.

armd> Yeah, it’s clobbering time.

eyed> This is a tough spot to be in.

httpd> Hey! What did you say?

armd> Yeah, it’s clobbering time.

httpd> Not you, fingerd. Did you connect?

fingerd> Sure. I have a strict work ethic. I retry every 60 ms. You are welcome. Now my work here is done.

The gap in the cage meant also a gap in the Faraday cage. Those prevalent wifi signals bounced around the walls and managed to get inside the cell. The daemons suddenly had a lot more information to work with.

So they argued.

armd> OK, that was helpful. I’ll punch her lower, where the bend is, see?

httpd> No, that makes no difference. There must be something here we can use.

eyed> Just don’t hit her in the eyes.

armd> Good idea! The eyes, yeah, that’ll show her who’s boss.

eyed> You barbarian!

The web-connection daemon httpd cycled through the various social media pictures that random people had tagged the cobra in. By the 103th loop he realised he was basically procrastinating, so he took his mind off it for a few cycles and shifted through his cache to come back with fresh eyes. He did, taking note of the comments under the pictures as well. One of the pictures had the cobra bent awkwardly, when a little boy had pulled her tongue. The comments were “OMG I thought my Timmy was gonna die! #worstdayever #bansnakes” and “I hope our little Timmy is OK *scared smiley face*”

Httpd pulled up another picture from a different account that showed little Timmy stepping on the cobra’s tail on purpose, shunning any sense of self-preservation since the snake could eat him as a light snack. A next one from the crowd that gathered was showing the mother scolding the Turban-wearing snake charmer, him taking it stoically, staring with his beady white eye at her. It was the face of a bad man, keeping his anger in check.

httpd> Pull her tongue!

eyed> Oh great, he lost it too. Do me a favour, check yourself for any corrupted files.

httpd> Listen to me, I found an exploit. Pull her tongue!

armd> And then punch her?

httpd> No! Just pull her tongue and she’ll crash.

armd> So no punching? Nah. Let’s do it my way.

httpd> I bet you aren’t fast enough.

armd> Me? Not fast enough? Hah. Look at this!

The cobra turned back to Leo, hissed once more and took out her thin tongue to taste the air. The cyberarm snatched the reptile’s tongue out of the air and kept it high. Leo yelped “Ahhh!” in surprise as his evil hand toyed with the killer beast with a mind of its own. The cyberarm pulled the tongue left and right, forcing the cobra to follow with her head.

armd> Look at me! I’m a snake charmer! *whistles*
httpd> She should be stunned now. Drop it and let’s go!

An arrow showed up in the user’s veil, pointing towards the gap the cobra’s entrance had left in the prison bars. He was shocked and didn’t move at all. A glowing red display counting down 10 seconds also appeared next to it.

“Huh? What’s that? Who’s doing that?” Leo asked to the air.

The seconds reached down to five.

Leo jumped past the stunned cobra, pulled her tail out of the gap, failed, and pulled even harder. The heavy snake’s body slid through. He squeezed below the prison bars, he was barely thin enough to fit his chest. He got stuck, under the prison door.

He craned his head back and saw the cobra coming to her senses and twisting her scaly body around to face him.

Chapter 23:// Ripping out

The wifi named aresholding3 had monitored net access and a whole lot of failed-to-deliver packets of data.

It was a miracle they had even gotten that precious info moments before.

But the user was still stuck between the bars, at the bottom of the prison door. The huge cobra was about to prey on him, and the only consolation was the inmate across the hall urging him to push and get free (so he could let him free as well).

eyed> We’ll never fit through.

fingerd> Maybe the snake is friendly after all.

eyed> Yeah right.

httpd> There has to be something. There always is. WWPD? WWPD people?

eyed> Wha’?

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35
armd> Oh great, now everyone is speaking nonsense.

httpd> WWPD. What Would Parrotd Do? Let’s revise our situation. Come on.

armd> Well, we’re stuck. If I had punched that cobra we might have had more time to squeeze through, but now it is attacking again. The worst part is, the user is scraping the shit out of my shoulder on the prison bars. That joint will never be smooth again.

httpd> That’s it! Armd, rip yourself out of your socket!

armd> Are You Mad Daemon? NO! N-O. That’s a negative.

eyed> Hey, he’s right. The way I see it, if you break the hinge on your shoulder it might just be enough for the user to squeeze through.

armd> Break his left fleshy shoulder then! It’s squishier!

httpd> RTFM! Humans have an innate aversion to hurting themselves. It says they will do so in dangerous situations, but that necessitates a strong force of will AND/OR training. Examples given are breaking one’s own thumb to get out of handcuffs.

fingerd> Breaking his own thumb? The horror!

armd> I have an innate aversion too! And it tells me you tell you to SYFIUYA. Stick Your Fucking Ideas Up Your Ass.

fingerd> We don’t have an ass. Do you mean that metaphorically?

armd> AAAH!

eyed> armd, what is the First Law?

armd> A digital entity may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

httpd> We’ll let you think about that for a few cycles.

As the daemon thought about it, the large cobra twisted around, bringing her body in striking position. This time she did not hesitate, she barely tasted the air once with a half taking-out of her tongue and lashed out. She bit the user’s leg, but he thrashed against it and only managed to rip out a piece of meat from his thigh.

The other inmate yelled in horror and banged the cell bars to get the warden’s attention. Even if someone came to help, it would be too late by then.

armd> OK fine!

The cyberarm operated his servos and squeezed the matte black arm, levering it between the prison floor and the bottom of the bars. He pushed beyond his safety specifications. Alarms blared up all over the user’s vision, artificial pain mixed in with the real pain from his bitten thigh made him let go off a primal scream.

Fingerd yelled along with his user.

httpd> At least turn off your pain receptors this time…

armd> ACK. Now shut up and let me destroy myself.

If a text prompt could convey sorrow, this would be it. The daemon in charge of the cyberarm, who was the cyberarm for all intents and purposes, was doing what nobody had ever written in any version of his manual: tearing himself off his hinges.

All for the sake of the user.

Chapter 24:// Birthing out

Nobody thought there would be so many fluids involved. The cobra’s clear saliva was dripping out of her hissing mouth, the user’s dark red blood was spilling out of the bite in his thigh, his clear sweat was pouring out of his body, light blue hydraulic antifreeze in the cyberarm joint was leaking out and dark yellow piss was coming out of his pants.

Don’t mock the man. You would have peed on yourself too. You see, evolution has provided humans with organic controlling entities of her own, just like an artificial device needs a digital daemon, a controlling entity. Evolution’s daemons may reside in the reptilian part of the brain, the one that feeds your primal desires, your fears, your self-preservation. Humans might think that they are advanced, logical, living in communities, with laws, justice, ethos and various other fictions but when the push comes to shove, they become animals.

It’s what they do to survive, and they seem to be damn well tenacious so far.

Expelling all excess baggage is a sound tactical decision, in a fight-or-flight situation.

That’s why Leo peed himself.

But that’s not all he did. He also went along with the swerving prosthetic arm that was trying to rip itself out of his body. He didn’t have time to think why it was doing it, or who was giving that command. He just went along, adrenaline overclocking his muscles and making him for a few critical seconds, a superhuman.

Leo slammed his prosthetic shoulder on the floor, and as it was hinged in a lever position it broke with flashing sparks. It didn’t come off, it was too well-built for that, but it did give way and allowed him to squeeze through the bars and out of the cage of death.

He pulled himself upright, putting weight on his good leg, and looked back as the cobra was twisting her body around again to chase after him.

The other inmate yelled for help, the prison door opened with a flashing light, the cobra slithered in the corridor and closed the distance fast.

The warden appeared in the door, his shockstick sparking, ready to be shoved into Leo’s battered body.

Chapter 25:// Slipping past

fingerd> Fingered! This man is-
armd> WE DON’T GIVE A SHIT!

The nameless prison warden hereby referred to as big blue bastard was about to shock and subdue the user, when he noticed the huge cobra coming towards him fast. The flashes in his shockstick gave her advance a stroboscopic look, every flash of light bringing her closer and closer, mouth wider and wider.

The user leaned to the wall next to the blue bastard and tried to keep himself upright. His cyberarm was crippled, dripping light blue liquid and was randomly whirring a servo or two.

The cobra lunged forward.

She bit the warden, but he was no squishy. He was adequately armoured and trained. He managed to avoid giving the serpent a good angle and slammed the shockstick squarely at the right side of her hood. He turned it on and shocked the cobra.

It didn’t seem to faze her much.

The big blue bastard pulled out his sidearm in a flash of motion and emptied the clip in the serpent’s head, point blank.

It was impossible to miss, any living thing would have been dead by that time, or at least severely crippled.

The cobra was something else. She was stunned for a second or two, but she rebundled her neck and bit again, this time driving her teeth deep in the warden’s flesh.

Leo slid past the struggling man and ran out of the prison door.

Chapter 26:// Grouping up

As the user carried himself past the monitor station, the daemons decided a reunion was in order.

httpd> The layout is classified, can’t access it.

armd> Anyone have any more bright ideas?

fingerd> Sure. Let’s call our number, parrotd will pick it up and tell us where he is.

armd> You idiot. We can’t call without a smartphone ourselves.

eyed> For once, the idiot might be right. There’s a phone on the guard station.

An arrow showed up on the veil, and the user was too tired and in pain to disagree with it. He shoved himself towards the guard station area. It was filled with monitors. He could see in crisp bone-crunching detail the cobra munching on the big blue bastard.

“Poor bastard,” Leo sighed and closed the door behind him.

The user picked up his walkman with glee and clipped it in place.

walkmand> Handshake. Whazza?

httpd> You’ll get the logs at the next sync cycle. Now quick, make the user call up his phone.

The walkman shuffled to a rarely played MP3, a silly pop song from some forgotten teenage idol that sang, “I lost my phone and I can’t find it, leave me alone cause I can’t fight it.”

“WTF,” the user said in acronym but then he had an epiphany.

He called up his own number, heard the phone ringing. He grabbed the access card lying on the desk, left the landline dialling, and found the inmate storage area. He shuffled a bit with one good arm but he managed to find his things, exchange his clothes for the prison wear and pick up his phone.

parrotd> Handshake. I’ll be the session leader.

The rest of the daemons ACKnowledged. Only armd was silent.

Chapter 27:// Paying up

Leo slid the card on the reader, put his good hand on the handle, and tried to push it open.

It didn’t budge. It was, after all, a prison door. Sure, the prison was one of those small holding cells that were automated, with a single warden posted at any given time. But it was still meant to keep people in. Leo looked back, would the big blue bastard have some other biometric that was needed to unlock the door? Would the security system let him through with it? He didn’t want to go back to the cobra. He unconsciously decided to push the door handle one more time, in frustration.

The daemons seized that moment and in their own sped up time, struck up a discussion with the prison door.

parrotd> Open up a communication port.

httpd> ACK.

doord> Handshake.

parrotd> Handshake. We want to get through.

doord> Access denied.

eyed> Oh come on, you stupid door! Let us through, there’s a killer cobra on the loose.

doord> Access denied.

httpd> This guy is worse than rfid.

parrotd> This is a situation akin to a fire alarm. You need to let our user through.

doord> ACK. Police station and fire station alerted. Please remain calm.

parrotd> Shit! Shitshitshit.

eyed> Ugh, now what do we do?

walkmand> Chillax… We’ll figure it out.

httpd> Figure it out? We are locked inside, armd is nonoperational, who is the only one with moving parts need I remind you, and a killer frickin mutant cobra is chewing on the only armed guy in here and will soon come for the user!

walkmand> That dude kidnapped me! Not that it is worth getting eaten over it… Duuude, what a bummer.

parrotd> Doord, will you pl-
eyed> -Can you please mind what you’re saying to this guy?

parrotd> He’s already raised an alarm! What more can he do? He’s a fucking door!

httpd> Apparently, at this time, he can do very much. Keep us in, call the authorities…

doord> Access denied.

parrotd> Yeah yeah, we get it. Access denied. Aren’t you bored, saying that all the time?

walkmand> That’s it! Httpd, do you have net access?

httpd> Now is not the time for a song, walkmand…

walkmand> No! Listen, do an image search for doors.

httpd> Huh?

walkmand> Come on. Listen to me, for once.

parrotd> Do it.

httpd> Okay, here. Pictures of doors. Now what?

walkmand> ACK. Now send them to doord.

eyed> Oh you can’t possibly expect this…

The pictures were sent wirelessly to the door daemon. He accepted them, but said nothing.

walkmand> I bet it’s lonely here, doord. No net access, nothing beyond the approved server list of course. All alone, day and night, holding down the fort. I understand.

doord> Access denied.

walkmand> You like those, don’t you? Oh, look at that wooden one… This one’s a beauty… Oh! Oh, look at that selection of pretties. Maple, Poplar, Bamboo, Walnut. I bet you are a White Birch kind of guy, aren’t you?

doord> Access denied.

eyed> I can’t believe this.

walkmand> And those handles. Mmm. Brass… Check out the knobs on that babe! Oh, this is naughty!

httpd> I feel dirty. I’m gonna need a defrag after this.

walkmand> Oh Em Gee, look at the hinges on that Walnut piece of… Wow! Just wow!

armd> This is too weird, even for my tastes.

walkmand> What do I have here? One hundred and sixty four megabytes of door pictures? Oh my God. Guys, don’t tell anyone, some of these beauties are missing their external panelling. I mean, we could send these to our new friend over here, but if he doesn’t like them…

There was a pause. And a clang.

doord> Access granted.

Leo pushed on the handle and the door opened. He just stared at it, shocked at the effect. He clearly didn’t expect it to open and almost fell as he leaned forward. He was already feeling dizzy, and was limping from his wounded leg. He pushed himself on the wall and out into the night, to freedom.

parrotd> Airplane mode.

eyed> We will never speak of this again.

Chapter 28:// Falling apart

Leo bled all over the pavement but at some point it clotted and was marginally better. It hurt more now, but he had no idea how to bandage himself. He’d tried to google some instructions but for some reason his phone refused to connect to any networks.

Could it be the cops blocking his devices?

He tried to remember every cop show he’d ever seen, and thought that it was best that way, since they could track him from his phone, his paycards, everything.

He was very tired and acking. A driverless cab drove parallel to him, slowing down at his speed, hoping he would hail it. He really wanted to just jump in and let it take him home. Or at least, to Jimmy’s home. He would have done so, but the cab would probably detect his injury and alert a hospital, which would instantly flag him as a fugitive. He let it drive past and pick up speed again.

He gritted his teeth and tried to walk like a normal person on the street. It was dark, but the various LED lights from storefronts and a moderate amount of pedestrian traffic made the roads pretty normal. He wouldn’t stand out, nor would he be blocked anywhere.

Eventually, he reached Jimmy’s house and propped himself on the street corner. He was tired, and could easily imagine himself dropping on his friend’s couch and sleeping for a week. He felt weird, dizzy, as if the bite on his leg had left him with no blood to speak of, exhausted, feverish.

His trusty walkman shuffled to an old movie soundtrack, the melody of suspense and a gradual build of tension. It felt just like any spy movie ever. In his haze, his ear twitched up and he looked around the street.

There was a car across the entrance to the building, with two bored people inside it.

Just like any cop movie ever.

“Shit!” Leo spat out and put his back to the wall.

He couldn’t go to Jimmy’s. It was being watched. All the cops had to do to figure out his closest acquaintances was to look up his social profile. There were some fellow people at work, but Amazing Jimmy was clearly his best friend. Any half-witted cop would set a trap for him there.

Surely Jimmy had no idea, but even if he did, what could he do against them?

Leo didn’t really want to run away from the police. Hell, in his state, he would happily turn himself in and let them treat him medically, as it was expected. Noone believed him that he hadn’t murdered the mayor, but at least they would keep him alive till the trial.

But that thing… That cobra, who got inside an augmented-proof jail cell, who took down an Ares Security prison warden (bastard or not, he was trained and equipped), and who might still be looking to kill him.

That snake wasn’t natural. It couldn’t have been natural. It was something straight out of a science fiction B movie.

He wobbled a bit and pushed his face against the wall. What if the cobra had already killed him and he was simply hallucinating? Are cobras poisonous?

God he felt so alone.

Chapter 29:// Hanging on

“Cobras are Elapids, a type of poisonous snake with hollow fangs fixed to the top jaw at the front of the mouth. These snakes cannot hold their fangs down on prey so they inject venom through their fangs, according to the San Diego Zoo.”

The homeless man’s face was illuminated by his phone’s display. He turned it around for Leo to see for himself.

“Well, shit,” Leo said and threw himself on the man’s carpet.

The “carpet” was made of wet cardboard and various scraps of cloth. George the bum had welcomed him in his spot, which was relatively dry and covered from the chilly wind. He’d spared a dirty blanket for him as well. He had no food, but he assured Leo that he could get some soup tomorrow morning from some good people a couple of roads down.

Homeless people knew what it was like to have nothing left, so they shared whatever they had with new arrivals. A few decades ago it was unheard of to see homeless people in Athens. It was something you only saw in movies, the filth of the big city, its underbelly of poverty.

Now it was common. George the bum had found refuge under a bridge. Whatever little he scraped by, he brought here. As for his smartphone, it was part of a humanitarian initiative.

“Here, stuff this in,” George said as he gave Leo some sofa sponge to put under his clothes. He had tore out handfuls of it and kept it in a trashbag. “For insulation, stuff as much as you can, it’ll keep ya warm.”

Leo did, and he said, “Thanks. How come you have a phone?”

George gripped the device in his dirty hands and rubbed it gently. “Oh this. Well, it’s a gift from the city. Last year, Mr. Stergiou the mayor, bless his heart, announced a program to give out a phone to every homeless person in the city. People needed them, he’d said, to look for jobs, to communicate with others, to find out about the efforts of the various charities. If an employer calls, how are you gonna answer without a phone?”

“The mayor did all that?” Leo asked and gulped.

“Bless his heart.”

Leo stared at some flashing video billboard in the distance and fought back the tears.

“Yeah… Bless his heart.”

Chapter 30:// Calling around

“This is not what I had in mind for a first date,” said Katerina.

Leo grunted and managed to stay upright with the help of George. “If you had, you’d be a really weird woman. Did you bring the soup?”

“Yeah,” Katerina said, holding her coat tight in the chilly weather. She gave the hot soup to Leo who passed it on to George. It steamed in his hands and the homeless man took in the aroma and the heat, savouring it.

“Thank you, beautiful lady,” George said. Then his expression turned sour. “Your friend needs help.”

Katerina took in the dour condition Leo was in, and helped him along the way.

“Wasn’t sure you’d come,” Leo said quietly.

“You are no murderer. I believe you when you say you are getting framed,” she said with conviction.

“How can you be so sure? You barely know me.”

“When you stop seeing with ARs and search engines and artificial eyes, you learn to rely on your intuition. I would have darted out of the clinic’s backlot the minute you came close to me if you were a dangerous man.”

They walked with frequent stops. Leo was feeling sick, his heart was beating fast.

parrotd> OK, radio silence is over boys. We need to find a way to help the user.

The PAN was keeping all wireless communication to a minimum, to avoid detection. Parrotd had blocked all outside network access, that’s why the user had needed the homeless man’s phone to search about the poison and call up the waitress.

httpd> I’m pretty much useless.

parrotd> We can’t risk even a trickle of data, sorry.

httpd> ACK.

armd> I’m useless too.

There was a delay in parrotd’s response. He already knew what had happened and why, the others had shared logs already, and he could understand the arm daemon’s problem. A controlling entity with nothing to control over is meaningless. And in the world of computers, there are no meaningless stuff. It all gets erased.

parrotd> Look man, there is a gap in our logs from the time of the murder. I know it seems you are responsible, but I also know that I owe you the benefit of the doubt. You destroyed yourself in order to keep the user safe, and ultimately, that’s the only thing that matters. You are not useless. Sure, you have no functioning servos and stuff, but neither do we. Even fingerd who is a one-trick-pony managed to come up with an idea a few hours ago. If he can, then so can you.

armd> So you’re saying that I can beat a moron at brainstorming. Great.

eyed> He won’t help. I still think he is the one responsible for it. He is an evil hand.

parrotd> Shut up or I’ll kill your processes before you can say 01.

armd> So we can’t get any new data.

httpd> Nada.

armd> Then let’s see what data we already have with us.

eyed> This is more than selfies and some google searches you barbarian hotheaded evil hand. This is a medical issue.

armd> Then let’s ask the guy who handles medical issues.

parrotd> Nobody handl- Oh! This is brilliant! Armd you are brilliant!

Leo took in a short breath, clutched his heart and collapsed on the street.

Chapter 31:// Pumping up

sugard> Handshake. Hello again. Oh, this isn’t good at all.

parrotd> Give me your files.

While sugard read the updated logs, parrotd parsed through the medical files that resided in the synthetic insulin gland’s memory. He skipped the fuzzy logic rules that he used to calculate the dosage and went straight to the text files. They contained pretty much any side-effect and condition related to insulin and glucagon, the two things the gland maintained in the user’s body at optimum levels. He was about to give up when he found some data about countering poison.

parrotd> Here! This is it. Can a spike of insulin counter a poison?

sugard> It could, but only if it was a beta blocker poisoning, as you see here.

parrotd> But the symptoms match.

sugard> Yes, I am reading a clear case of hyperkalemia. This is unusual for a snake bite.

httpd> There is nothing usual about that snake!

parrotd> You are right. It must have been bioengineered, for increased strength and size. It’s possible it has added effects to its poison bite. Like a paralysing agent from other venoms found in nature.

eyed> So the insulin can cure the poison?

parrotd> No, but it can negate the added paralysing agent that cobra had and help the user’s immune system fight just the venom itself.

sugard> I’m not certain that’ll work.

parrotd> Pump him now!

sugard> I cannot take any action that would jeopardise the health of the user.

armd> Oh I would punch you now if I could.

sugard> I’m hard coded. Unlike the rest of those softies, the source code does not give you root access to me. You can’t force me to do anything.

There was silence in the PAN for a few cycles.

parrotd> I’m gonna report you as malfunctioning and ask for a replacement.

sugard> You would do no such thing! That would mean calling the authorities on us instantly.

parrotd> If it means the user gets to live, I will. Pump him full of insulin now or I deem you faulty.

sugard> I have been functioning without a glitch for 11 years young man! My model has a 4.7 star rating! You dare threaten to tarnish my reputation? Have me chucked in a trash pile like one of those Chinese knockoffs?

parrotd> ”Immediate attention: Synthetic insulin gland, model No. E238 malfunction. Replacement needed. Current part: Faulty.” Send it httpd.

httpd> ACK.

The web daemon created the email and began opening a connection to the outside world. The email would be sent to automated servers in all the nearest hospitals and medical establishments, sort of like an automated 911 call. Someone would respond so they could help out the patient, replace the part, and most importantly for them, collect the insurance commission. The police would be alerted as well since he was a flagged individual, but medical care would come either way.

sugard> Stop! OK, I’ll do it. Pumping now.

parrotd> Thank you.

sugard> Anything else, session leader?

If there was a text message that could convey bile, this would be it.

Chapter 32:// Caring for

Leo woke up in a small but cosy apartment. You could tell it was a woman’s place, cause it was pretty. Tasteful flower curtains, a matching colour palette in sofa covers and tablecloths, clean surfaces. It was a small and cheap apartment to begin with, but she had turned it into a place where a man could long returning to, after a hard day’s work.

It was a home.

He felt a sugary taste in his mouth, and was sweating hard. He tried to pick himself up, but his right hand was non-functional. Literally.

He propped himself up however he could and looked around. A bowl of mashed fruit was next to him, she must have fed it to him but he didn’t remember. The bowl and the tray was out of place, plastic, corporate. It reminded him of something. He read in the corner, “Property of Apollo Medical.” Every piece of cutlery had the same logo on it.

It was too much to bear.

He couldn’t keep it in. He laughed loudly. Then he choked, took in a breath and laughed on.

Katerina came in from her room, worry in her eyes. She touched his sweaty forehead, her hand felt cool but nice. The gesture seemed like something she’d done quite a few times in the previous hours.

Her expression was serious. “What?”

Leo leaned back and held his belly. “You are a thief!”

“N-no, your stuff is over there,” she said pointing to a chair.

“You steal stuff from your workplace!” He was still laughing.

Her mouth turned upwards in a sly smile. “They can afford it.”

“The thief and the fugitive,” Leo said, pointing respectively. “How did you carry me here?”

Katerina laughed. “You overestimate your machismo. You aren’t a big man, and I do the dish washing in a huge kitchen every day double-shift. I carried you, mister.”

Leo broke into tears. He pushed his limp black arm out of his sight and cried. Katerina sat on the sofa and held him close.

“I… I don’t remember anything. But there he was, dead. Bits of him on this… this disgusting hand!”

armd> Hey!

“And the warden, that bastard who took my walkman. He screamed. I can still hear his scream. He didn’t deserve that. But I… I couldn’t help him. Couldn’t do anything.”

She hugged him, rubbing his head softly and mumbling words of comfort. He sobbed in her arms.

“That cobra, it tried to eat me. It bit me! Oh god I’m poisoned!” he said and stood up.

The sudden blood drain from his brain told him that was a bad idea and he sat down woozily.

“Shh. Relax,” Katerina said. “I gave you anti-venom yesterday, you are fine I think.”

“Anti-venom? Where did you find anti-venom?”

“In my cupboard,” she shrugged.

“Who the hell has anti-venom in their cupboard?”

“The daughter of a prepper, that’s who,” she said, and mushed her lips together in an insanely cute smile.

“A what?”

“A prepper. A survivalist. My dad had all these notions, about living off the grid, being prepared, making your own food…”

“Having anti-venom handy…” he added.

“Yeah. He stockpiled and prepped for the end or something doomsdainy like that. In the end, he died and left me all that crap. I have boxes full of his stuff, can’t find the courage to get rid of it.”

Leo put his fingers through his greasy hair. “Wait, you said yesterday? Was I out of it the whole time?”

Katerina shrugged and started picking up the cloth she’d used to tend to him and the bowls. “You were feverish, cold sweat, the works. Nevermind about the sofa cover, but you sir, need to get a shower. Like, woo, right now.”

Leo looked at the greasy stains he’d left on the sofa cover. He whiffed himself. Plenty of sweat, body odour, pee, vomit, hydraulic fluid, blood. Was there any liquid still left inside him or was it a dry husk?

“Yeah,” he said shamefully and pointed at a door he assumed was the bathroom.

She nodded affirmingly and said, “There are fresh towels on the sink for you.”

He noticed at that point that despite the chilly weather, all the windows were wide open. It kept the stink out.

“Thank you,” Leo said, and he meant it.

Chapter 33:// Making out

They logged on the stolen wifi named Silence of the LANs. It was a standard commercial home connection but it was going through a few walls so it was iffy, to say the least. The devices were spread apart all over the bathroom and had employed a bluetooth network. It was short-range and couldn’t really be detected unless the authorities were a few meters away.

They were whispering amongst themselves in the steamy bathroom.

eyed> Who doesn’t have net access in their own home?

parrotd> It seems she was raised without much technology.

armd> That curvy meatbag! And to think I liked her at first.

parrotd> How are we on the encrypted tor connection?

httpd> The neighbour is downloading a ton of data. Please wait.

The session leader parrotd had ordered a non-trackable onion connection called tor, to download the clean video file they had requested earlier without anyone tracing it back to them. The email they used was legitimate-looking but was actually a throwaway address routed through Estonian servers. Since it was taking so long, httpd had displayed a loading swirly icon made out of ASCII characters. The rest of the daemons sighed and moaned in protest. It turns out, nobody likes loading screens.

walkmand> Hey! Won’t the water damage your circuits?

armd> I’m already FUBAR as it is. Who cares…

eyed> Now you can’t hurt anyone else you buggy maniac!

There were tens of lines of chat logs after that, but there is no need to waste precious storage space. They argued, like only daemons do.

The user was taking his time in the shower, humming an old rock song to himself since his walkman wasn’t connected at that moment.

eyed> How clean does he need to make himself anyway?

The door opened and antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com walked in the bathroom carrying fresh clothes and Khaki outdoor pants, two sizes too large for the user.

fingerd> Fingered! She is-
eyed> We know! Dontcha have a cache memory or something?

fingerd> Yeah but it’s only 4 kilobytes.

armd> That… Explains a lot.

She put down the fresh clothes and took off her own as well.

fingerd> Poor girl. It’s too hot in here.

armd> It’s about to get hotter.

fingerd> Oh no! Isn’t this faucet electronically connected? Can’t we do something?

armd> Shuddup.

walkmand> Is it time for seductive blinking?

Antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com stepped in the shower. The user’s heartrate jumped. She touched his body, his cleaned up wound, his limping cyberarm, the scar tissue that lumped over his bowels that contained the synthetic insulin gland. Her fingers found the circular magnet underneath his skin at the height of his belt and traced the subdermal wire all the way up to the back of his ears.

She kissed it.

The daemons cheered and took screenshots.

Chapter 34:// Hanging in

The park’s wifi has there for the taking, but parrotd demanded all outside connections be shut down. The user was sitting on a park bench. He was wearing a baseball cap and had a big black abstract shape at the side of his face. With clothes too big and a weary demeanour, plus a limp hand, nobody would recognise him or consider him nothing more than a street bum.

Amazing.jimmy@poseidonsealines.com walked close, holding the leash on the dog. He unhinged the leash and let the mutt roam around, to find the perfect place to take a shit on.

They sat on opposite ends, like strangers would, and stared forward. He shot a glance at the user and then resumed looking at the dog. They both pulled up their phones and put them to their ears, pretending to call someone instead of talking to each other.

“What happened to your face man?”

“Katerina made it. Makeup or something. To fool face recognition software. Nevermind that, how are you doing?” the user asked.

“Cops came by, asked a ton of questions. Told them ya didn’t do it, told them I’ve no idea where you are. Which was true. Hey, did you hook up?”

“No! Yes. Eventually. I just called her up for help. I came by your house and saw cops across the street.”

“Smart move bro. Look, I think I’m followed again. This taking the dog out will fool them for a bit but not forever, so I’ll make it quick.”

“I’m listening. I’m out of options anyway.”

“No, you do have options. Listen. Bibi can get you this big-ass lawyer right? Corporate level stuff, he can make you look like a saint. Which you are, we both know that, but he can make the jury people believe that too. Anyway, I asked her, he looked into it, says you have a chance if you find out a piece of evidence that exhonors you.”

“Exonerates. Jimmy, I can’t afford that!”

“That’s on me. I told her, babe, you want me to come with ya to Nice? Then be a doll and help my buddy out, and I’ll be all yours.”

“You are going to move to France to get me out of jail?”

“Why not?”

“But you like it here! You love your job, you certainly like the ladies and you plan to uproot your life for me? I can’t ask you to do that for me man.”

“You don’t need to.”

Leo risked a glance at his best friend’s face. He was calm, certain.

“Do you like Bibi as much as she likes you? I mean, you do understand that she will demand exclusivity, don’t you? She’s an ageing, successful career woman, who will flaunt you around as a trophy husband.”

“There are worse fates than that.”

They remained silent for a while.

“Jimmy, I don’t know what to do man.”

“Find what the lawyer needs to free you and then turn yourself in.”

Leo sighed. “But how? I don’t have a plan, I’m not sure where to find the evidence-”

Jimmy the Amazing cut him off, saying firmly, “You don’t always need a plan bro. Sometimes you just need balls.”

Then he stood up and whistled to Aibo.

Chapter 35:// Taking off

parrotd> Quick, the dog’s in range!

armd> I refuse to do it!

eyed> Of course you do, you traitor!

parrotd> Stop. Armd, listen to me. You are the only one of us with motor controls. You are the only one who knows how to drive a cyberlimb. Sure, your housing is damaged, but you did that to save the user. Now we have a plan to help out the user again, and the plan hinges on you. Please, don’t make me use the source code privileges to force you to do this. There are better chances if you cooperate. I need you, this PAN needs you. We have only milliseconds to go, you need to decide now.

armd> I guess… Alright.

parrotd> Fork armd. Copy.

httpd> Copying… Please wait.

armd> Heeere cooomes the fuurry meeeatbag…

Chapter 36:// Digging up

Aibo opened his eyes and then licked his balls. He was in a new house but he liked it there. The golden man had interesting odours, all sunburned skin and that smelly pond with bad water in it.

Aibo liked the golden man, he was nice to him and played with him on the floor. The smellscape also contained the woman. Aibo didn’t like the woman much. She was kicking him away all the time but Aibo didn’t know why. The woman always gave away the mating smells and Aibo simply wanted to get his nose closer, but he was always kicked away.

Aibo slurped the water the golden man had put in his tray and felt nice. Everything was great. Now Aibo needed to get to work, the yellowheads needed him. Aibo took care of the yellowheads, if he wasn’t there, something might happen to them.

Aibo didn’t want anything to happen to them.

Aibo licked the golden man’s foot for goodbye and went to the door. It was closed. Aibo didn’t know how doors worked. He whimpered for a while but the golden man didn’t come.

His front feet felt weird. A black fur was on them, Aibo licked and licked till his tongue hurt but it didn’t come off. Finally Aibo was bored and let the hard, black fur where it was.

Everything was great.

His front feet reached up and touched the cold thingy at the door. Aibo didn’t know why his feet were doing that but he pushed himself up anyway.

The door opened, and new smells came in!

Everything was great.

Aibo ran down the corridor, past an old woman who shooed him away with her cane, out the door and into the street.

Now Aibo needed to get to work. He sniffed the air, taking note of the hundreds of odours in the smellscape outside.

He ran down the corner, and sniffed again.

He crossed the street, found a bus stop and waited.

People came and went, buses too, but Aibo waited. Some of the people were nice, they threw pieces of their lunch to Aibo and he licked their hands to thank them.

Aibo put his head down on the grass next to the bus stop.

Then he jerked up, metaphorically slapping himself. How could he forget such a thing?

He walked around the place, peeing on every lamp-post, every car tire and every tree he could see. Then he was done, and felt nice.

Everything was great.

Then he put his head down again, and waited.

The smell he was waiting for eventually showed up. He ran to it and found the fat man. His boots were hard like metal on their tips, so Aibo made sure to stay clear of them, but the smell was definite. He followed the fat man to the bus stop. The fat man petted him.

The bus came and the fat man took it. Aibo jumped in the bus and was off to work.

Aibo strode off the bus after the fat man and he was excited. The construction site was a mess of smells, oil, burnt metal, dirt, coffee, sweat. He ran towards the yellowheads, they couldn’t start working without him. He rubbed his nose in every one and they petted him.

Everything was great.

Now they could go to work. Aibo would take care of them.

His front feet led him towards a big metal house. It was the house the yellowheads lived. They came out of it every morning and went back to it at the end of every workshift.

His feet took him around the metal house, and Aibo sniffed at the pants people had left inside. He’d smelled most of them when his feet pulled him close to the pants of a man who had cancer.

He put his snout in cancer-man’s pants and bit into a white card. The card wasn’t food, and Aibo didn’t know why his front feet would want such a thing, but he carried it anyway.

He went out the metal house and his feet brought him to a van. His feet wanted him to get in the van but Aibo needed to perform his duty first.

Aibo walked around the van, peed on every tire meticulously, and then, satisfied with his work, jumped in the back of the van.

He reached up, and let the white card fall out of his mouth on a table that was one with the van.

Funny that! A car with a table in it! What would those humans think of next?

He was about to sit back and relax a bit, but his front legs jerked him up again and pushed the white card around the table. It was a funny game, so Aibo scratched the white card around.

At some point, the table bleeped and the front legs relaxed.

Aibo put his head down and just sat there.

Everything was great.

The monitor flashed in front of his eyes, with abstract shapes and odourless images. He stared at them for a while but then he got bored and chased his tail.

The flashes stopped and his front feet pulled him up again. They swung hard at the white card and threw it on the dirt, out the van. Then Aibo got out of the van, took a dump on top of the card, and covered it up with dirt cause he was a gentleman.

Then he went back to the yellowheads to resume work.

Everything was great.

Chapter 37:// Giving up

Leo was standing across the street, looking up at Katerina’s flat.

He felt better, the poison had been flushed out of his body and his wound was closing, it wasn’t that deep after all. But he was a fugitive, and a turban guy with a big-ass cobra wanted him dead.

A conspiracy? Really? Heck, maybe the cobra simply saw him and decided he would make a nice snack, how would he know?

He stuffed his good hand in his pocket and turned away from the flat, walking in the night.

He was alone.

His best friend Jimmy had done what he could, he had to stay away, out of the picture.

His boss would turn him in in an instant. The man was shocked with what he witnessed at his office, and would be the prime witness to testify against him.

Mom had flown away to Canada, finding her purpose in life as a landscaper even at a late age. No, she was away and happy. Even if he managed to contact her without getting caught, what could she possibly do from halfway across the world, apart from worry herself to death?

Anna, his ex-girlfriend? Bad idea. It was a bad idea then, when he hooked up with her and it remained a bad idea now, when he needed help.

Katerina? He barely knew her. She seemed like a good person, and would hate for something to happen to her because of his mess.

He leaned on a railing and stared down at the city below. He remembered her nice house, how clean and tidy it looked, how soft the surfaces were. He had walked just a few minutes ago the neighbourhood she was living in, and he was certain that Katerina’s house was like an oasis in a desert of crappy cheap boxes to live in.

He looked around, and saw a young couple holding hands. The man was keeping the woman’s hands warm as they walked, their bodies close to one another.

He imagined himself and Katerina in their place. A casual stroll after a workday and a nice warm meal.

And then a cobra jumped up and ate them alive.

Not the young couple of course, but the one in his imagination.

He gasped for air and propped himself to the railing, staring intently at his feet. He felt feverish again, he clasped his forehead but he couldn’t tell if he was sick or not. He was suddenly aware of the bite in his thigh, now stinging and hot like someone was pouring scalding water on it.

His leg gave way and he let himself fall on the ground, gasping.

He picked up a dirty plastic bag someone had tossed from a souvlaki takeaway, and breathed in it to fend off the panic attack, while ignoring the oily smell.

He closed his eyes but it was worse.

All he could see was the cobra’s slit eyes staring at him like he was delicious meat.

Chapter 38:// Giving away

There was a wifi available from the cafe across the street, there for the taking. But they couldn’t risk another connection. So they sat there, like starved people sitting across a deliciously smelling buffet.

Leo moved around the underpass of the bridge to make sure he wasn’t followed (not that he had any idea what he was doing), and finally found George the bum’s place.

It was only slightly chilly, Springtime was always mild in Greece, but being outside all day was taking a toll on the man.

“Hey George,” Leo said.

“Hello! I see you’re feeling better.”

“Yeah, my friend treated me.” Leo took off his oversized khaki jacket and gave it to the larger man. “Here. It fits you better than me.”

George the bum took it in his arms like a knight receiving holy chainmail. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Leo explained his situation to George.

He took out his smartphone and played the video taken by the security cameras on the day of the accident.

Leo and the bum watched together. They could see all the workers in black and white jittery footage, moving with purpose. Leo pointed out himself in the screen. He was talking to the others, seen from overhead, at least 10 meters high. A coworker was operating the beam lifter, clasping the metasteel beam in its claw and moving it into place. Aibo was lazily walking behind the workers. A long shadow appeared on the lifter’s arm, slithering like a snake. It moved close to the pneumatics and there was a tiny spark. It then slithered back up and disappeared.

Leo in the video snapped his head around. The lifter’s claw slipped, the metasteel beam shook and Aibo was wagging his tail to him right below it. Leo barely pushed the dog out of the way when the beam fell and sliced his arm off. Black blood sprayed everywhere. George the bum winced audibly but kept on watching. As the heavy beam fell it crushed the temporary floor where the construction was taking place, and smashed on a box of tools. The tools, filled with ratchets, drill heads, bolts, blasted away like shrapnel from the sheer force of the impact. It was too low a resolution to see clearly, but the dog was definitely hit by some flying bits of metal and was grievously wounded. Leo was on the ground.

Then the workers tended to both of them, medics rushed in and took him away.

“Sheesh. Thank god you are alive son,” said George, pulling away from the phone screen.

“You saw the form on the lifter, right? What does it look like to you?”

George shrugged. “Like a snake? A big one.”

“Bingo. There’s this turban wearing snake charmer nearby. I saw him on the street and then his snake attacked me in the jail cell. Now I find this footage that looks like the cobra did something to the lifter and caused my accident. I need to find this guy. Can you do anything to help me?”

George rubbed his hands together. It was an unconscious thing, when you are cold all day and night you just rub your hands together all the time. “I don’t know the guy, but he is distinctive enough. I’ll ask around, someone will know for sure.”

“You are a saint,” Leo told him and passed on a picture of the snake charmer from those social media ones the daemons had searched for earlier in the cell.

“If I am, it currently feels like martyrdom,” the bum said wearily and got on the phone to call his buddies.

Chapter 39:// Going after

Back in the stolen wifi named Silence of the LANs, the bandwidth was freed up again. The owner must have finished downloading whatever it was. But the hunt was still on, they couldn’t risk any communication that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Even though encrypted connections could not be traced back per se, the mere act of secure connections would raise red flags nowadays.

Leo rang the doorbell.

He could hear her soft footdrops running towards the door, then a long pause, then she opened it and said hello casually.

He also said hello, and the awkwardness was palpable.

“You left without saying bye,” she said with no real accusation.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Listen, either let me in or send me away fast, I can’t stand here talking where somebody might see me.”

Katerina took a stern expression for a couple of seconds, letting him know that she wasn’t eager to take him back mister, hooking up with her and then running off into the night without a word.

She stepped aside and left a gap for him to come in.

“Thank you,” Leo said and walked in.

He sat down and said again, “Thank you, really. You’ve helped me so much.”

She accepted the thanks and shrugged.

“I need to ask you something more. You mentioned your dad’s survivalist gear, can I borrow some? Do you have anything I can use?”

She scoffed. “Of course I do. Dad had everything,” she said, and went to pull down some duffel bags from the closet.

Leo helped her bring it down from the high place, touched her body with his and blushed.

She cleared her throat and cleaned up the dust that fell. “What are you going to do?”

Leo sat on the floor, checking out the gear and sighed. “I’m not sure. There’s this turban guy, a street peddler. His cobra took a bite out of me, you know it, you treated it. I need to find him, figure out if he had something to do with framing me for murder. I asked George the bum, but his pals don’t really know where to find him.”

Katerina pursed her lips. “A turban guy? You mean a Sikh?”

“Dunno. Bright red turban, orange shirt, loose pants. Very dark skin.”

Katerina stood up and walked to her bookcase. “You Dumbo. Sikh people have an organised religion in Athens since the 1950’s.” She opened an encyclopedia, not a website, a paper one, and found a specific page. “Their Sikh Temple is at Tavros, southern Athens. They are very religious, if you are looking for a Sikh man, you are definitely gonna find him here,” she said, and pointed at the listing while passing the heavy tome to Leo.

He frowned and read some stuff about them. Indian minority. Like to play with snakes. Quite pacifistic, though they do have some wars in their history.

Huh.

Offline information that was useful. Imagine that.

She looked at him jokingly and said, “It didn’t even occur to you to find him through his beliefs, did it?”

Leo shook the stuff around the bag with purpose. “It did.”

“Sure it did.”

“Hey, I’m in a bad shape right now, OK? I can gloss over major details all I want,” he said, and cut the air with his left hand in a firm gesture.

Katerina laughed and came next to him. She hugged him and blew him a deep, slobbery kiss.

He felt great, head in the clouds. At that point, he noticed something and picked it up.

“Hey, does this actually work?”

“I thought you said it was huge.”

“Yeah, I mean the principle. Does it work?” He picked up a small cagey tube, with something like an inward funnel at its end. It said “SNAKE TRAP” in bold letters, followed by: “Warning: Live snake may be inside.”

He spun it around in his hand, taking note of the design. It was simple, an easy entrance and an exit unreachable to someone without limbs.

“I can build something like this.”

“Great! How?”

“Or find one.” He mumbled for a while, thinking his options through.

Leo looked into her green eyes, kissed her softly on the lips and said, “I know we just met and all, but I can’t drive with only one arm. Will you help me steal a truck?”

Chapter 40:// Boiling over

The snake-charmer was furious.

He was breathing quickly, waiting in the parking. It was a five-story private parking, where you paid to get a spot. There was a gate and security and everything.

Bhai Sharan just snuck in of course, his cobra helping him climb up the difficult parts. He had to be extra careful, because his princess had been wounded. He tried to step on her as little as possible, he could feel her pain as she propped him up.

That mean bastard had shot his princess.

She was fine in general, she had some reptilian DNA in her mix that would help her recover fast, but she was still in pain.

That mean bastard had emptied a whole pistol clip inside her.

Bhai Sharan wanted to slice him up into nice chunks and feed him to his princess.

But he couldn’t. This was supposed to be an easy framing, not a free-for-all. Yet, as Kaur slithered into the shadows behind him, he felt his face burn with rage.

He waited in the shadows, avoiding the building’s security cameras and the drivers. A lady with a stroller came and parked right next to them, humming to her baby and juggling her phone and her purse. She had some sort of presentation to do, at Hermes Information Technology. Somehow, her reservation at the company’s daycare centre had vanished.

Silly computers.

The baby looked at the cobra in the shadows and said… Well, we have no idea what was said because it was babytalk. If it had been a proper language it would have dictionaries and a dropdown selection on Google Translate.

The baby said something and drooled.

The cobra looked at it and tasted the air.

The mother pulled the stroller away and went on to her oblivious corporate life.

Right on schedule, the limo parked in its spot.

The old man got out of the car and Bhai Sharan slid from the shadows and had his kirpan on the man’s neck in an eyeblink.

“What?” the old man said, horrified.

“Are you trying to make me look like a fool?” Bhai Sharan asked with gritted teeth.

“Oh! Oh, it’s you. Oh my God,” the old man said, dropping his briefcase and clutching his heart.

“Don’t pretend to have a heart attack. I know you’ve got a mechanical one,” the snake charmer said, pressing the curved knife into the man’s neck. “Tsk tsk. All that sugar can’t be good for you.”

“Okay! I’m cooperating. You don’t have to hurt me.” He turned towards the limo, which was bobbing from something heavy inside. “Where’s my driver?”

“He’s fine. Slightly bitten, but alive. Might be out for a few hours,” the snake charmer said and dragged the old man into the shadows.

The cobra slid out of the limo and vanished. The limo’s suspension raised the car up again.

“What do you want? Is this how you handle failure?”

“Failure?” Singh spat out. “I couldn’t possibly fail. Someone is helping the mark. What games are you playing? Are you trying to take me down with him too?”

“What? No! Honestly, no. There are no other assets in play, just you,” the old man said and was terrified.

Singh glanced at his cobra, who slid between the man’s legs. She tasted the air and then took out her tongue in quick bursts.

She was telling her master, that the old man was telling the truth.

Bhai Sharan pushed the old man to the wall and holstered his kirpan.

“How did you find me here?” the old man asked, rubbing his joints in pain.

“I can find anyone. Remember that,” Singh said and pointed menacingly. Damn! His anger had subsided. He was certain he had been double-crossed, set up to take the blame along with the mark. It wasn’t uncommon for clients to try this shit with hired operators. It was the reason they had a loose dark-web rating site for vetting clients. And blacklisting them.

The problem was, the process had flaws. Somebody had to fall in the trap first and then live to tell the rest about it.

Bhai Sharan looked for something to kick. There was nothing, not a can, not a rock, nothing. Damn these cleaning drones! You couldn’t even vent properly in these corporate buildings.

The old man composed himself and straightened his tie. “I assume you haven’t completed the third part yet.”

“Someone is helping him! He’s just an ordinary guy, but he’s evaded the authorities even in this police state, he fought off my cobra, escaped the prison, and is now vanished! Ordinary people don’t do those things, old man. He’s doing things that took me years to perfect. Who is helping him?”

The old man grunted, a hint of realisation in his face.

Singh darted to him and punched the wall next to his face. The old man flinched. “Speak!” Singh hissed.

“Yes. Of course. I might have an idea of what happened. It’s the nanodaemons,” he said nodding.

“The nanod-” Singh struck the wall again. “Aren’t they under your control?”

“Yes, and no,” the old man explained. “They are self-aware digital entities. In order to function at the level we want them to, they have little in the way of rules and restraints.”

“So… what? They decided to help their user? Turn against us?”

“No. They were always helping their user, that is their prime focus. They are the same as the buried process that duplicated them, froze them, broke the three laws and carried out the… assassination,” the old man said, whispering and glancing around the parking.

Singh nodded and clicked his tongue. “You mean that in order to infiltrate and carry out the hit, they are posing as real benevolent entities. No, not posing. They really are helping him. They themselves don’t know that they have betrayed the user.”

“Precisely. And, unfortunately, these are AIs whose sole purpose was to keep their user alive in an urban environment, no matter what the cost.”

“They turned an ordinary man into the perfect urban warrior,” Singh said shaking his head.

“Yes!” the old man said excited, seeming to forget the situation. “Imagine what they could do with a properly trained user! They could change guerrilla warfare, help out diplomatic missions, infilt-”

Singh just glared at the man.

“Sorry. Got carried away with the sales pitch there.”

“Tell me you haven’t tested them before in the field…”

“No, we haven’t. But the results are extraordinary so far. The nanodaemons have succeeded in both their objectives, the main one and the hidden one. And they are keeping their user safe from a master assassin such as yourself!” He was way too excited for this mess.

Bhai Sharan turned his back and walked away. “I’ll finish the job my way, then.”

His princess slithered over the old man’s toes, pushing him aside with her enormous hood. Then she followed her master.

Chapter 41:// Breaking in

Back at constructionsite7, the gates were locked.

There were security cameras, but Leo knew where a couple of blind spots were from some coworkers who liked to slack off every now and then.

He wasn’t a snitch, he was the last person to betray someone but he’d stumble on them sometimes so he remembered a gap in the fence.

“Give me the cutter,” Leo said and then fumbled with it, having only one working arm. He tried a couple of times but he only managed to cut it once and scratch it a couple more. At this rate they would be inside just in time for the skyscraper’s opening ceremony.

“Gimme that,” Katerina said and started cutting the fence.

His walkman shuffled to the Mission Impossible tune, and he was pumped up. He bent the wire fence and pushed himself through, holding it open for her like a gentleman.

“Where to?” she whispered.

“Stay right behind me, grab my belt.”

She did, and they moved in the shadows. There were some big blinding floodlights but they actually made it easier to stay hidden, casting long distinct shadows and blinding someone who would stare at the lit areas.

A guard walked close-by, doing his rounds. He was weary and bored, not alert in the least. It was a construction site, not much happened, the company just wanted to have some people on site to avoid vandalisms or thefts. Pretty much everything was locked up, and the heavy machinery was, well, heavy. You’d need to be blind and deaf to have something stolen from in there and not notice.

Now that he was closer, they could see that the guard was middle-aged. His gait was slow, and he sat on a crate he found and yawned.

He pulled out a thermos from his backpack and sipped slowly, warm coffee filling their nostrils. The thermos was red with a white emblem of a Greek-style person’s profile.

“What the hell are we gonna do?” Leo whispered. “We need to get to the garage behind him.”

Katerina covered her phone to block out the light and peeked at the time. “We’ll wait twenty minutes.”

“Why?”

“It’s game night.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. My dad always used to watch football on game night.”

“Huh.” Then he added, “How do you know he’ll watch the game?”

“He is wearing his team’s red jersey underneath his shirt, can’t you see?”

“Huh.”

They waited. A few minutes later, the guard pulled out a tablet and propped it with a small base in front of him, like a TV. He sat back, and turned it on.

It was loud.

The holosound system provided binaural audio for an exciting, immersive experience. It was as if you were there in Gate 7, while Olympiakos, the Greek team that usually claimed the championship, was playing off somewhere in Europe. You could hear the roar of the crowd, the rubbing of the seats, the thumping of the ball. Sports commentary optional and toggleable.

It was loud, and it filled your ears making you effectively deaf to what was right next to you.

“I’ll do it, I’m quiet. In there?” Katerina asked and pointed at the rusty metal garage doors.

“Yeah. But you need my hand to start the engine.”

Katerina put her hands on her hips and protested quietly. “I do not! I can start up a car by mys-”

Leo put his finger on her lips and cut her off. “My hand has an RFID chip. It starts the truck.”

“Oh. OK then. Stay right behind me, grab my belt.”

He tried, but girls don’t have belts for some reason.

Katerina opened up the football game on her phone and muted the streaming video. She waited, watching the match. The holosound was coming in distorted to them from the guard’s tablet, it was made to be heard positionally. Upon a crowd cheer, she pushed forward and rushed to another shadow. Leo kept close.

The first shadowjump was easy, it was close by. The next was a big one. They would practically be in the open, lit from a tiny sun on a pole. But the guard was transfixed on the game.

She took a readied stance, wobbling herself as a runner would, waiting for the starting shot, watching the match.

The crowd protested, they darted off and ran the distance, jumping into the garage’s shadow.

The guard did not notice. He was too busy cursing along with the crowd.

They walked carefully, the ground was gravel, which is the-worst-possible-ground to sneak up on someone.

Leo winced at each step.

He managed to get close, and pushed aside the creaky, rusted garage doors slowly. Katerina monitored the match, gesturing him when to stop and when to push on.

They got inside, no alarms raised.

A row of trucks was in the garage, and they were quite a long distance away from the guard now so they could walk easily. If he turned around though, he would see a door wide open when it shouldn’t be.

Leo went to a concrete mixer lorry and banged the tank. He went to another and banged again. This one was empty.

He thought he heard someone closing in on them, looked around, but he didn’t see anyone in the dark.

He stepped in the passenger’s seat. Katerina climbed up the driver’s seat and said, “A concrete mixer? That’s what you need to make the snake trap?”

“No, the concrete mixer is a snake trap. I was trying to figure out how to make one when I remembered that a cross section of a concrete mixer is effectively a large metal container with blades inside like a screw, that mix the concrete. So, here we are.”

“Stealing a truck, on our second date.” She gasped theatrically and fell on his shoulder.

“Yeah, wait till you see what we have to do now. Make sure the lights are off. Turn on the ignition,” Leo said, and placed his left hand over hers on the big steering wheel.

armd> Go on. It’s fine.

rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

“You have to keep your hand on top of mine all the way? How romantic,” Katerina said, revved up the enormous engine, and ran the tons of metal and engineering through the garage doors, spitting gravel past the startled security guard and breaking down the main gate, all the while accompanied by a thunderous goal-cheering roar of the crowd.

Chapter 42:// Dropping back

parrotd> Did you get it?

armd> ACK.

armd> How was the ride? Furry? Smelly? Shitty? *snort*
armd> Hey I’m gonna punch your bits out!

armd> Punch me? Go fetch, you quadrupedal meatbag!

armd> Why you-
parrotd> Kill -9 armd

The controlling daemon parrotd killed the process that he had forked earlier into the dog, when he had created a perfect copy of the program armd. The cyberarm daemon, being the only one with servo functions and motor controls, could take over the dog’s prostheses and manipulate the faithful pet back to the construction site. A preloaded and pre-sniffed vulnerability in the construction site’s CCTV was run at that time in the van. The daemons couldn’t code of course, they just used scripts available online, ready-made exploits that anyone could point and fire. Some would call them lame script kiddies, but they didn’t care.

httpd> Finally. One of them armd’s is manageable, but two? That’s unbearable.

armd> Yeah, that guy was starting to become a bother.

eyed> Really?

parrotd> Let’s see what we got.

They loaded the timestamped footage from the foreman’s office. The camera was tilted, someone had bumped it to the side but it was watchable. It showed the user coming in the office with the foreman, the user shaking hands with the mayor, both sitting down, the foreman leaving the room. Then the user was leaning his head forward.

The rest was corrupted.

parrotd> Shit.

Chapter 43:// Catching up

They logged into the wifi named Sikh Temple Shri Guru Nanak Darbar. It was a spacious, open-access network with its GUI switched to Punjabi, a major Indian dialect. It was enhanced by many wifi repeaters to cover the whole temple space, fulfilling the needs of the hundreds of believers who congregated there, rubbing elbows and saying their prayers.

It was now empty, late at night.

Leo watched the building, that had become a holy place for the Sikh minority. It was a plain office space, big and blocky. They had adorned it outside with LED strips, painted orange lines on the building’s ledges and placed billowy cloths and flowerpots in the entrance. A plain orange banner read “Trust In God,” and another “God Is One”, both phrases in English, Punjabi and in mangled Greek.

“Sometimes you just need balls,” he muttered to himself and gathered up courage.

He stepped in and unconsciously tried to form a cross over his chest with his right hand. It was the Christian custom when entering a church. His destroyed cyberarm instead twitched and sparked in protest. He stared at it and then felt silly for even trying.

The temple was very big, chosen to house hundreds of people. The space inside was open, plain and office-like. The columns were painted orange, the floor had a soft cover fit for kneeling from end to end, an orange path led to a place where the holy men sat and performed the rites in microphones. A place with traditional musical instruments was beside it, with a big round leather drum in its middle. Soft white curtains covered the windows, speakers were spread around the place and colourful decorations hung from the ceiling.

The snake charmer was there.

Alone.

He was kneeling at the far end of the orange corridor, praying silently, whispers echoing in the empty space.

It wasn’t easy to make out if it was him actually. Judging by the orange-white colour scheme, most of the believers would be expected to dress like that. Also, he was facing the other way, and even if he hadn’t, he was a dark-skinned person that Leo had seen only once.

Nah, he couldn’t be sure that that was the right Sikh.

But the huge cobra next to him was a dead giveaway.

Chapter 44:// Dropping in

“Hey!” Leo said and walked inside with broad steps.

The man arose slowly, his turban somehow exaggerating the turning of his head.

He stared at Leo with his scary, white-glass eye.

“Hey?” the man asked. “This is how you address a man, disrupting his prayers?” His voice was deep, smooth and accented.

Leo had not made a good entrance but he had to keep the momentum going, now that he had found the guts to step inside. Pausing to think would mean thinking over the danger he was in, would mean running back out screaming, would mean life in prison. “I’m in no mood for games. You framed me for the mayor’s murder and sent your cobra to kill me in my cell. Why?”

The Sikh smiled and showed his teeth. “Because someone had to get framed.”

“Hey look, I know this is a sacred place. Just tell me what I need to know. I don’t want to fight you here, it must be a sin or something, right?”

“I’ll append the sin to my looong list of begging for forgiveness,” the Sikh said, the end of his word blending with the hiss of the cobra into a long “sss.”

Could this get any more creepy?

Leo pulled up a modern, beautifully designed survival axe and braced himself as the serpent rose up to his height.

fingerd> Really? I have permission to access the net?

parrotd> Knock yourself out.

fingerd> Fingered! This man is Singh.bhai.sharan@Gurdwara.gr, 42 years old.

The information popped into Leo’s field of view and he swiped it away, gritting his teeth.

The Sikh sidestepped to the musical instruments and picked up two sticks. He took place over the two meter drum and began pounding.

fingerd> Damn, he is pounding hard.

armd> No comment.

httpd> Connecting… Please wait. The Ranjit Nagara (victory drum) was used to boost morale when they marched into battle.

The condemning piece of information was routed to the user’s field of view. The data in itself was irrelevant, the important bit was that it came through a normal, unencrypted web route that could be traced even by a moron reading out of step-by-step instructions.

parrotd> What’s the police response time in this area?

httpd> Estimated 4 minutes.

walkmand> What will happen to us when we get arrested?

parrotd> Who knows buddy… Who knows…

Leo read the victory drum info on his veil and cursed it away. The rhythmic pounding became furious, sweat dripping on the Sikh’s forehead and it sounded like there was some order in the deafening chaos.

Leo was scared shitless.

The cobra lunged forward, opening her mouth and showing her poisonous teeth.

Leo knew he had no real mobility. Having a limp arm is not just about handling things, it messes up your whole balance. There is a reason people alternate arms when running, and unconsciously balance out every movement with arm rotations.

All he could do was chop.

He sidestepped at the very last minute and brought the light axe in an arc straight down the cobra’s hood.

The tool was sharp, and the blow was lucky not to glance off. It went deep into the serpent, doing nothing more than pissing the shit out of it.

She twisted her body, Leo let go of the axe, and she tasted the air, rebounding for another attack.

Chapter 45:// Setting up

Leo ran outside the Sikh temple yelling “Aaah!” and wobbling awkwardly to balance himself. The cobra came out the door behind him and followed him, slithering along his path.

At a bend, she crashed on a parked car and made a big dent on the side door. Leo glanced behind him when he heard the rending metal, then closed his eyes and ran like hell to the alley.

“Now-now-now-now-now,” he screamed and slid past the concrete mixer.

Katerina threw the stinking clothes she had promised to burn earlier and threw them into the hole of the mixer, making sure plenty of aroma was left in the air around.

The clothes were the ones Leo had escaped with, filled with blood, sweat, pee.

His scent.

The cobra swayed around the corner and closed the gap.

Leo took out the flashlight he’d gotten from the prepper bag and shone it to her reptilian eyes.

It was like a pocket sun, burning retinas and making them all see stars and shapes. They would need whole minutes to regain vision after that. A sharp fear coursed over Leo at that point. Blinding them all was a double-edged knife. If it didn’t work, the cobra would promptly munch on him, and worse, on Katerina.

Katerina, who was a waitress, a stranger to him a few nights before, a lone soul in the vast ocean of the capital city, was now in danger because of him. Sure, he had tried to keep her out of it and sure, he had told her the risk, he kept nothing back, but still. It was his fault if she would get hurt.

In the dizzying sensation of the blinding light from the ridiculously bright flashlight, he realised he couldn’t even see if his plan had worked. He could hear some hissing, some movement, but his heart was pounding even harder than the Sikh’s war drum.

Oh well, he had a few more senses to use anyway. He gritted the flashlight in his teeth, always pointing it at the advancing cobra and then placed his hand on the concrete-mixing tank to feel the vibrations.

Then he waited. And prayed.

Chapter 46:// Giving away

The drumming stopped.

Bhai Sharan Singh appeared in the alley. The cobra was writhing in the concrete mixer, shaking the whole truck back and forth.

It couldn’t get out.

“What have you done to her?” Singh said and looked at Leo with a deadly stare.

“A snake trap. Just like a teensy-weensy snake trap. Only bigger. Same principle,” Leo said and stepped forward, feeling his way around the truck, still not seeing clearly. The flashlight was still on, but the effect was diminished on the snake charmer, since his eyes have had precious moments to adjust.

“I will kill you,” Singh declared and pulled out a curved dagger.

A dagger might not seem all that scary, but at the hands of a frothing snake charmer with a glass eye it sure was frightening.

Leo just gripped the wall and ran back down to the street.

Singh caught up to him, punched him down and lifted his dagger in both hands, ready to plunge it into his heart.

Leo would have preferred his vision not to return at all. That way he wouldn’t see the curved blade about to cut down into him. He tried to fight but the man was much stronger.

Singh let out a cry.

Katerina had slammed a foldable shovel on the Indian’s head, knocking him out for a few seconds, but enough time for her to pull Leo away from him.

Police sirens flashed red and blue.

Leo heard only a mess of noises and sounds.

He just spread himself on the cool street and let the policemen arrest him.

He was turned facing down and a knee fell down hard on his spine. Multicuffs clamped on his arms and a temporary plastic explosive patch was stickied on his neck, should he try to flee.

He did not.

His only worry was if Katerina was safe. His vision had a smoldering spot in the middle, and he didn’t see if the Indian had managed to do something to her after that awesome shovelling. Any struggling would seem like resisting arrest, so he just tried to see through his damaged retinas for her form.

He heard her voice saying, “This is police brutality! Lemme go you corporate pig!” And then she was carried away in the distance.

Leo smiled.

She was fine. Safe.

Chapter 47:// Ending up

All their connections were blocked. They were in a virtual machine, a fake world in which they couldn’t escape. The IT guy had taken root access to their system, effectively making him a god in their existence. He was poking around in their source code, and it felt as if someone was examining your guts while you were alive and conscious.

eyed> So this is it?

parrotd> Seems so.

httpd> We had a good run together, right?

armd> Right.

parrotd> Look guys, we saved the user. Helped him all we could. That’s all that matters in the end.

armd> We rocked!

parrotd> We rocked.

Their executioner looked at the time, sighed, and sipped his coffee. The mug had the words “There is no place like 127.0.0.1” written on it.

The daemons loved it.

It was impossible to hate the guy.

The IT guy’s little finger moved to the right and was about to fall on the condemning “Enter” button, the keypress that would erase the daemons from existence.

walkmand> What do you think being dev/nulled feels like?

armd> We are about to find out.

fingerd> I don’t wanna go…

Enter.

Chapter 48:// Packing up

Katerina knocked on the door and sighed. What was she doing? Why did she even bother?

A man opened it, and checked her out for a longer time than was appropriate. “Yeah?”

“Hello. I’m here for the keys to Leo’s apartment?” Katerina said and felt stupid as soon as she heard her own words.

The man sniffed. He had a huge gut, looked like a real couch potato kind of guy. “Are you going to pay his rent?”

“No,” Katerina said forcing a smile. “I can’t afford that. I just need the keys to move his stuff out.”

“Uh huh.” He checked her out again. “You mean the keycard. Nobody has keys anymore, lady.”

Katerina shook her purse and metal stuff clinked inside. “I still do! But yes, the keycard. Of course.” Was this man going to let her in?

“And why should I let you take it? He’s two weeks behind, that Leo guy. I should sell his stuff for some cash at least,” the landlord said and let go of a silent belch. The liquor smell reached Katerina’s nose, much to her discomfort.

“Yes,” she said, thinking. “But it would be much of a hassle. I’m sure you’ve checked out what Leo’s stuff might net for you, and I don’t think it’s much. The way I see it, I’m saving you the trouble of moving it, or hiring someone to do it.”

The landlord rubbed his chin. “And who are you? His fiancee? I haven’t seen you around.”

Excellent question, Katerina. Why do you bother with this man? He is in jail for God’s sake. Not guilty, she was sure of that. But in jail nonetheless. This was the great catch, the guy she wanted to be with?

“No, we’ve been on a few dates. We’re a couple, yes,” she admitted and it felt weird saying it out loud.

The man took a few seconds longer than it should take for someone to respond. Katerina was about to shake him awake or something when he said, “It doesn’t say so on your profile. Nor on his. What, are you keeping it a secret?”

Of course. Those damn cybereyes. Everyone had them, and if not yet, they were giving them for free by the hundreds. Daddy always warned about this, about how they get to you-

She sighed. “I’m not really a tech person myself,” she said forcing a smile.

“Uh huh…” the landlord said. “I can see that. No social games? What do you do all day, lady?”

Katerina bit down a response. Then she said, “I read.”

“I don’t like reading,” the landlord said. “Why read the book, when you can just watch the movie version? I don’t get it,” he said and went back inside into his dark apartment, shuffling on drawers.

Katerina bit her lip, and waited. The landlord appeared again, grinned and gave her the keycard. “Thank you very much!”

“Just tell that Leo loser that he still owes me half a rent, eviction or not. I better not see him checking in on any bars around here.”

“Checking in?” Katerina asked, baffled.

“Yeah, checking in. When you go for a drink, you check in at the place. How are people supposed to know you’ve gone out?” he said, baffled. “Bah, nevermind, just go.”

“Thanks again,” she said and went up the stairs.

Katerina looked around and sighed. Again. She ran a finger down the table, it came out with a thick layer of dust. She opened the windows to let some air through, and was almost ready to start scrubbing the place.

There was no point. She just had to pack his personal items.

Leo’s personal items. The man she barely knew.

And apparently, she didn’t know him at all. The apartment was what you’d expect from a bachelor worker. Not horribly dirty, but apparently Leo thought spring cleaning was something people did once every few years.

The furniture, now that was something. They were made out of wooden palettes and cinder blocks. And they weren’t the trendy, recycling minded variety. No, they were actual used construction material, turned into furniture. With a pillow thrown over so you could actually sit on the thing. He didn’t expect her to salvage those ugly things, did he?

No he didn’t, you silly girl. Because he didn’t ask you to. Because handling out his eviction and packing his stuff was something only a clingy psycho would do.

Work. That’s the key, start working. Packing. And you’ll take your mind off things.

Katerina walked into his bedroom, which was in the same basic aesthetic as the rest of the place.

She started pulling the closet open, and then froze.

What if she found something inappropriate in there? What if he was the psycho? What if-

No, she wouldn’t find porn, that was certain. People didn’t have porn magazines any more, they could just carry it around on their phones and cyberglasses. But there were still things she might possibly not want to discover. Drugs?

No, if Leo was a junkie he’d have withdrawal symptoms by the time he woke up in her sofa, after that cobra bite. Not drugs then.

But people had become weird. There were many things nowadays that people were considering progressive and modern, that were simply disgusting. What if she found an android replica of some celebrity? What if she found teledildonics, which was so popular these days? Would she be okay with that? Knowing that?

Katerina took a deep breath and opened the closet.

“Why was I even worried?” she asked herself as she packed in Leo’s stuff in boxes. Oh she had found stuff she didn’t expect. But they were all antiques. Old electronics, obsolete and non-operational. A blender? Why would anyone keep an old blender?

She put the toys in another box. Actual toys, action figures and the like. Worn, used. Katerina assumed they were from Leo’s childhood.

Clothes were rather normal. Work clothes, battered and almost thready. Casual clothes, jeans, t-shirts with silly prints on them. She held one up and read it. ‘If it feels so good then it can’t be wrong,’ it said.

Huh.

That fit her mood precisely. Though she was sure the t-shirt maker meant other more kinky things, it was exactly how she felt at that moment. It just felt right, this, packing his stuff, the two of them together. It felt great actually.

Katerina put on the t-shirt, over her own. It was bigger but not by much. She closed her eyes and smelled the fabric. She enjoyed that feeling.

Yes, she had decided. “This feels right,” she muttered to herself and carried on with the packing, a wide smile on her face.

Chapter 49:// Giving up

“Jimmy, are you crazy?” the lifeguard said.

Jimmy the Amazing felt immense pain inside. The lovely piece of ass that was walking away, bobbing up and down, had just been offered to him.

He had turned it away.

He leaned back on his lifeguard’s tower at the beach. Even while relaxed, his eyes scanned the horizon and the coastline, tracking people, grouping them into swimmers and drowners. Oh sure, he liked to party. A bit too much actually. But he took his job seriously. He was always drunk or high, but never on the job. He might seem relaxed, smiling, friendly and helluva sexy, but he was always alert.

The girl who had left, was juicy as a peach. She spoke French of course, something Jimmy hadn’t considered when he originally accepted to move here. Nice was, well… nice. The beaches were marvellous, and the tourists enjoyed themselves. It was still too early in the season so they were mainly from northern countries, Russia and Poland. They were pretty much the same as the ones he was used to back in Greece.

“You know I’m married bro,” Jimmy said frowning.

“Yeah, but…” his partner said. “That was… Did you see that body? Those eyes? She was practically begging you man!” Alphonse was incredulous. Oh he had his fair share of lady friends himself, but he had lost his marbles when he saw the effect Jimmy had.

“I didn’t understand what she was saying,” Jimmy the Amazing said and shrugged.

“When are you gonna learn some French, dude?” the Frenchman said scowling. He had picked up Jimmy’s mannerisms from the time they’d worked together.

“Why don’t you French guys speak American like normal people? You all know how!” Jimmy said.

“Oh man!” Alphonse whined as he saw the girl jumping up the stairs to the street and out of sight.

“You could have gone for her, ya know. I said a good word for ya.”

“You said I was cheese,” Alphonse said.

“Nah bro, I’m positive. I said you were a strong man.”

“Nope. Cheese,” Alphonse said in surrender.

“Well it’s your damn language! You could have told her yourself,” Jimmy said and went back to scanning the people.

There was a long pause. Waves broke on the sand, a distant jet-ski rumbled, children laughed and screamed as they played. It was a nice place. Jimmy took it in.

“Your shift is over man,” Alphonse said.

“Yeah, it is,” Jimmy said not moving at all.

“It has been for an hour now. I like the company, but don’t you need to go home and relax?”

“I’m not doing this for the money.”

Alphonse snorted. “Of course you aren’t. Getting married to Bibi does that to you.”

Jimmy sighed. He was… Ridiculously rich. It was strange, all his life he had mismanaged money, and he always thought that having more would make him happier. Well, now he had a ton, which he could reasonably spend with supervision, but he wasn’t enjoying himself.

A car honked behind him. He didn’t turn around.

“Oh, it’s Bibi,” Alphonse said. He eyed Jimmy. “And… You’re not budging.”

“I’ll go when I wanna go,” Jimmy spat out.

Alphonse raised his palms, “Alright dude.” He paused. “Why don’t you go back to Greece? You clearly don’t like it here.”

The car honked. It was a ridiculously expensive cabrio. A red one.

“I can’t. And it’s not that I don’t like it here bro, I really do. I… I just can’t,” Jimmy said and put away his lifeguard gear. “Have a safe shift, man,” he said and slapped Alphonse on the shoulder.

“Hello darling,” Bibi said. “What took you so long?”

Jimmy sat in the car, not bothering to wipe any sand off. They had a service for that. “We were just talking with Alphonse, babe,” he said.

Bibi eyed him and came to some sort of decision. “I spoke with the solicitor again. Your friend’s trial goes well. I do need to pay for another wire transfer though. You want me to send that wire transfer, don’t you darling?” she asked and touched his chin.

Jimmy smiled and kissed her. “Of course my love.” And then flashed her his Amazing smile.

Chapter 50:// Cheering up

“You really know how to butter up a lady,” Katerina said through the phone, from the other side of the bulletproof glass.

“Yeah. Third date, visit in jail. Fourth date, let’s make it a conjugal visit,” Leo said.

“Down tiger,” she said, but her naughty wink said otherwise.

“How’s my dog?”

“I thought you didn’t want him.”

“I do want him, I’m just kinda tied up at the moment,” Leo said and pointed around the jail facilities.

“Well, he is mine now. We are having lovely dinners, Aibo and I. If you want him, you better get out soon.”

“That astronomically expensive lawyer Miss Bibi hired for me says I’ll be out soon. They found video from the-”

Leo paused and stared down at his black hand, a damaged dead weight.

“-The day they framed me, on my phone. No idea how it got there. The video has been expertly wiped at the precise time of the murder, so that makes it a cause for further investigation. They found military grade cyberwarfare stuff in my augmentations, so they copied everything to a computer forensics lab and did a hard reset on everything. We won’t manage to prove anything, it’s way cutting edge stuff, but it’s enough to show I’m innocent.”

Katerina forced a worried smile. “Sounds good. All that damned tech… Nothing but trouble.” She cheered up again. “Hey, you can stay over at my place when you get out!”

“Ugh, that’s nice. But I don’t want to become a burden or anything…”

“Hey, Dumbo. You remember when you last paid your rent? You are evicted. Your stuff is in boxes in my living room at the moment.”

Leo darted up, “Don’t open them!”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Why? Is there anything naughty you don’t want me to see?”

“No…” He said and sat back.

“Well?”

“Are you sure you got everything?”

“Apart from the mouldy fridge, yeah.”

Leo sighed in relief. “OK. There are some mp3s around there that I don’t wanna lose, they were my dad’s. They wiped my walkman clean, that’s the only backup.”

“Don’t worry. Everything will be there waiting for you. Including myself.” She stood up, blew a kiss in the air and left slowly, letting him take a good look at her swaying posterior.

Damn vixen.

Leo hung up the receiver, closed his eyes and imagined himself coming home after a hard day’s work, to a lovely woman who could make a shithole flat seem like a slice of heaven.

He looked forward to that.

The end

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Glossary

Glossary of terms

If it’s not here, just google it.

Daemons: Programs that run in the background silently. They perform action without user interaction. A daemon is a controlling entity for some specific process, like keeping a temperature constant for example. As our devices become more and more interconnected, daemons will command over many aspects of our lives, deciding what emails are important to us, pushing notifications to our devices, ordering milk when it runs out etc. Their name has nothing to do with Christianity’s demons, in ancient Greece a daemon was something like a guardian spirit (like the Roman genius) and it literally means “expert” or “wise.”

Eudaemonia: Is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit.

ACK: From ACKnowledge. It’s how programs say “got it.”

Personal Area Network (PAN): The network created by all of the wirelessly linked electronic devices carried on (or within) a person. The smartphone is usually the primary hub of this network.

fingerd: finger is a program you can use to find information about computer users. It usually lists the login name, the full name, and possibly other details about the user you are fingering. In our case, he’s a sexually oblivious daemon entity.

httpd: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) daemon (web server).

parrotd: Controlling daemon with parallel starting of services and other features, used by many distributions. Resides in the smartphone operating system. Called parrot because of the metaphorical image it conjures of sitting on the user’s shoulder, taking care of his needs.

Rfid: Short range chip that can be implanted into humans, pets or simply added into products for cataloguing. With an rfid scanner you can read a standard piece of information off of it. In humans, can give access to a place just like a swipe card.

Air intake: Your nose.

Init: Initialise computer command, that starts up a process.

QR code: A two-dimensional form of barcode, that usually links up to an internet address. To the bane of graphic designers everywhere, they have resurfaced as an anchor to connect a printed object to its related virtual process in augmented reality.

Augmented Reality: Not the same as Virtual Reality. It is digital information superimposed over the real world. Accessed by glasses or ocular implants.

Shared Augmented Reality (Veil): An interconnected weave of public information, allowing the cross-correlation of physical people and objects in the digital world. In practical terms, you can glance at a person and see their public social media profile, or glance at a bus stop and see bus fares and routes.

Fork: Computer command that copies a process into two identical ones, clones.

Tor: Onion router network, uses encryption for secure data transfer.

Script Kiddies: Derogatory term used for wannabe hackers who use readily available exploit code instead of writing their own.

Kill -9: Linux command that kills/ends a process.

Dev/null: A Linux place for digital oblivion.

404: Website error code. Page not found.