“But officer,” I pleaded in only a half hearted voice with Officer Todd, “I was only going forty over. That’s not that bad is it?” I would care more if I didn’t already plan on being early. Now I’ll just be fashionably late. Julie doesn’t know when I’ll be there anyways, so it won’t be a big deal.

I was batting five for five for being pulled over while I was out driving. I guess when you have the ability to make decisions at the speed of light and have super enhanced reflexes, driving fast is only natural. To say Officer Todd was large man would be like saying that Mars is kind of far from New York. He had a body of an athlete, probably a boxer of wrestler from the looks of it, very strong but very lean as well. Oh well, I wasn’t planning on fighting the guy. Why fight when I have so many better ways of getting rid of him? He had just taken my license and registration chips from me, and was now doing the standard pat down. I always liked a little small talk when some guy was groping my secure hardware.

“Hey pal,” He came back in as harsh a tone as Officer Todd could muster, “be happy I’m not citing you for reckless driving,” didn’t bother me, “and hauling your butt into jail. I have half a mind to give you a full spectrum narcotics test, so just the hell shut up.” Now that did. The method of giving those narcotics tests was to take tissue samples from specific parts of the body that hold traces of the drugs well. It turns out that the optical fluids can contain traces of the drugs for several weeks longer than just about anywhere else. They don’t show how they do these tests on the feeds because the censors don’t allow it. The only reason I know is through a little encounter like this. It’s a very uncomfortable procedure to say the least. I decided at this point I should just let him do his job. I needed to be ending him away anyways.

Officer Todd returned to his police cruiser, leaving me standing outside my car, presumably away from dangerous things I could use, such as a weapon or perhaps a wireless deck to hack in and mess with his cars integrated network systems. It’s a good thing that actually touching my things has never been a requirement to using them. I closed my eyes and reached back into my head through my external. I can’t pull the full sensory immersion system through my external, but I can still do a good amount of work through it. I brought up a view of all the signals going into and out of the area, isolating the police frequency. A little magic and a few executables, and I was done buying time. I could hear the cop cussing violently at his system as it refused to log into the central police database. He’d be trying to figure out what’s going wrong with that for a good five minutes, five minutes I could use to engineer something better.

Since I didn’t have full immersion out here, I couldn’t pull enough information down to actually log onto the supernet. I would overload my external’s processors and probably fry my brain. This is where planning really makes the difference. I always have a couple of full contingency programs set up in this kind of situation. I reached back farther into my head and pulled up the information I was looking for. I kept all the private information I had, including all my spells, under the strongest encryption algorithms I could find. I reached over and pushed a button on my watch, looking at it as if Officer Todd was making me late. What I was actually doing was unlocking the set of spells I was going to use. I have found that forcing part of the unlocking process to be activated from the physical world makes it much harder for people to steal your information. I quickly searched through my list spells, looking for something to send Todd away with. A couple of seconds later and I Todd would be gone shortly.

Officer Todd’s radio started buzzing to life with calls from other police. It wasn’t long before it was clear that something was going very wrong very close by. Todd popped out of his vehicle and shouted, “I’m going to give you a warning this time! Don’t let me catch you speeding like that again!”

I doubt he heard me as I replied, “Of course not. I wouldn’t think of it.” As I spoke he jumped back into his car, causing the whole car to shift to the right with his body mass pushing it. He started his car in record time, disengaging the brake and slamming the accelerator to the floor. His tires screeched like a GCAR racer as he peeled out and sped off. I couldn’t be happier to see him go.

I was still debating on whether to just send him away or give him some real work to do until his little comment about the narcotics test. I decided Officer Todd didn’t have enough to do if was able to threaten poor hapless speeders on the road like that. The spell I invoked set off all the alarms in a whole neighborhood of houses. Every single resident would have to have the police out to see if there was actually a break in and file a police report. The program I sent would have them going off intermittently for days, each time making it appear like a real criminal to the security monitors who watch the houses. It would take weeks to sort the whole mess out.

With that taken care of, I headed off to meet Julie. There probably wouldn’t be another cop on the road tonight, so I could drive as fast as I wanted now.

* * *

The car ride over was otherwise largely uneventful. I was headed to Kansas City, where’d be meeting up with Julie to discussed what happened on the little raid. We succeeded, but we spent too much time and energy on that raid to get caught like that. We should never have been seen, period. And having her lose a drone like that was simply too much. It’ll take weeks before she’ll be able to pull off another raid, and that’s assuming that she didn’t lose anything more with that damn corruption virus. Damn it was careless. I guess I’d have lots of time to think about it in the next few weeks.

I pulled up into the Tony’s parking lot about 10 minutes late. It didn’t really matter that I was late, Julie wouldn’t say anything. I just hate being late. Tony’s was an old building, built sometime earlier this century. It was nice because it was made of brick and had EM shielding in the walls. Tony was an associate of mine, so he had some of the same healthy paranoia that a person in our line of work tends to hold.

It’s not that I, or anyone else who engages in such practices, truly believes that there is actually some person whose sole purpose in life is to see our downfall, to watch us choke on our own blood and laugh and piss on our corpse once we have died an awful, painful death. It’s more that when you can see the kind of power that you are capable of wielding with a simple execution of a program, a mere thought, you tend to want to prevent that sort of thing from happening to you. I can rip your memories right out of their head, with out a trace of them ever to be seen. I can make you forget you mother and hate your father. I can steal your money, your identity, your body, your life. I can trap you in a torment where you are conscious, but you can’t move your own body with out help, or I can simply leave you a tomato out in the sun. That’s just the beginning of the things that I can do to you before you’d ever even realize it had happened. All of it is simple manipulation of information, a push of a button, an exchange of data points. Of course there are very strict laws against such practices, but to say that I’m not capable of them is not just a lie, a quaint fantasy that belongs with the children of Peter Rabbit and the Easter Bunny.

But even more freighting than this is the realization that anyone who has the time, patients and brain power to wield this technology can, and do. People, people much more frightening than me, are out there wishing to cause harm to others. The more you know, the more you realize what you can do to people, the more you desperately want to protect yourself against some crazy who might do the same to you. Or maybe not even the real crazies, the pathological murders and sadists out there, but protecting yourself from the 10 year old with his parent’s deck and a stolen barrier breaker from god knows where. I know that those programs exist, hell that’s how I got my start in this business. No, I won’t let myself be the victim of something like that.

So you get yourself the best protection you can get, you make the plans, the preparations, the contingencies. Anything I could possibly do to someone else, and there is a long list of things I can do to people, I make plans to prevent against it. Then you make back up plans, and back ups to the back ups, and you alter your schedules, you plan on meeting only at ultra secure locations, you change your entire life to stop some unknown enemy from doing god knows what to you. Once you start doubting good luck and providence to come through for you, there is no end to the length you can take you paranoia and security. Is it healthy? Probably not. But is it safe? Not 100%, like I said once you start doubting. But it’s as close to that unreachable limit as a person can be.

I knew before I walked in there who was inside, where they sat, and where everything was. It was an Italian restaurant with a bar on one side. It wasn’t very big, with only 14 tables in it, and poorly lit. I think Tony thought it looked cool or something, like a restaurant you’d seen out of the 1900s with a mobster smoking a big fat cigar and his goons playing cards in the corner. Not that anyone would be smoking a cigar; it had been illegal to smoke for almost 50 years. It was eight o’clock on a Friday, but Tony’s was almost empty. Tony’s food left something to be desired. Of course the food was not why I was going there. I scanned the place just to make sure my equipment was working. As I knew already, there was a group of three girls in the back, being giggly like the teenagers they obviously were, completely harmless. They carried PCDs, actually rather nice commercial ones the spoiled brats, and one of them had a nice jack in the back of her head, but otherwise nothing even remotely electronic. There was a man at the bar that looked to be about in his mid forties, wearing working clothes. I’d seen him there before and knew he worked construction. He was also harmless.

The only other people in the place were a couple sitting in the back making eyes at one another. The girl was about as technologically armed as I was and simply bristling with high tech gadgetry, some of which rivaled my own. She was attractive, but not like those little teenagers were. She was older, more refined, beautiful. She was a blond probably in her late twenties wearing clothes that were nice but also serviceable. But it wasn’t her clothes or her face that made her so attractive, although they were both quite nice. It was the way she talked, the way she moved with grace and confidence. She was a brief breath of heaven in my banal existence. That was Julie.

I promptly sat down at the bar and waited for the bartender to come serve me. I didn’t dare look at Julie more than in passing. As far as anyone was concerned, we didn’t even know each other, and almost certainly we didn’t. I couldn’t tell you her name or anything about her and she most certainly didn’t know anything about me. Once you start doubting…

It was a couple seconds before the server came out from the back to her station behind the bar. She moved in a slow, halt jerk manner typical of zombies. Well that’s not the polite word to use, most refer to themselves as living their second life, but mostly that you didn’t say anything at all. She was the daughter of Tony, but only in thought and in spirit. Sometimes, more often then should in my opinion, people get fried doing stupid things on the net. Some kid stumbles into the wrong part of a bad server and gets fried. It happens. Well that person’s body is just fine, kept on support by the deck, but clinically brain dead. The next of kin can decide to donate, or sell, the body. Then a ghost, someone who has forsaken their body to live on the net or had their physical body die while they were on the supernet, can download themselves into the vacant body, making a zombie. Unfortunately not all bodies are made the same. The neural path ways that worked from one individual doesn’t always work quite right for another. It’s like the effects of having a stroke. There is sometimes trouble with speaking or moving. The very first zombies that popped up really did act like a horror movie, dragging their feet and the vacant look. Now, especially with a good codemonkey, these effects can be minimized and reduced, but there is still usually some physical side effects, but that’s not really the worst of it.

For the family of the body, it’s a terrible ordeal because the person sounds and looks like their loved one, but all the memories are different. Similarly, the family of the spirit of the deceased would only recognize her manners and maybe her memories if they talked to her, but the face would be completely different. It usually means the person has to start a brand new life somewhere unless the family is extremely understanding. Sara, the bartender, I personally wrote the code for her second life. I don’t know where Tony found the body, and I didn’t ask, but I owed Tony a number of favors, so he cashed in. She still walks with a slight limp and her hands are shaky, but her voice is almost perfectly clear. I’m rather proud of the work I did on her.

“Hey suga, I ha’en’t seen you ‘round here lately,” well she spoke as well as she could before, “anythang special, or just th’ us’al?” I’m not sure where she got her accent from; I guessed from her spiritual mother, but I didn’t ask Tony. I knew as much about Tony as I did about Julie, for many the same reasons. You can’t give up information you don’t know. The fact that I knew he at one point had a wife and has a daughter is already more than he is probably comfortable with, but I helped save his daughter, so he has to deal with it.

“I’ll just take the usual Sara, you know what I like.”

“comin’ right up, suga. You gonna hafta gimme a couple a minutes though.”

“Oh no, take your time. It’s alright.”

Now that I settled in, I could get down to business with Julie. I looked over at her and looked up and down. I messaged through my external hey baby, why don’t you drop that loser and hang out with a real man. I’ll show you how to use those little toys you got with you.

She looked at me sourly and came back with a message that when opened gave a load of nuerostatic that feels like getting your brain dumped in a vat of acid. It goes away after about a second, but it’s really quite painful for that second. It really is quite a clear message when you think about it. I cringed in pain and returned my gaze to its rightful place at the bar.

Buried in the text of the message I was sent were the pass codes to the encryption and bands I was using. The static from her was really just to complete the little scene we acted out, although that was pretty strong for her. I wondered if she was mad at me. The building effectively let us work on a private network. I liked the security. Not even Tony could listen to our conversation if he wanted to.

I gave it a couple seconds and then logged into the private net we had setup. Again, I couldn’t pull enough information through the external to get the full immersion, but we could talk and transfer information between each other easy enough. Julie was using an external similar to mine, so both of us could have a complete conversation in our heads with each other, while still having a complete conversation in real life, and probably drive a car and do a crossword at the same time if we were so inclined. I enjoyed the freedom to work undistracted from trivial things like talking.

At first I thought the net might have problems or I had some how logged on the wrong network. It took me a couple seconds to realize that she was there, she just wasn’t talking. This was not good.

You there, babe?

I knew she was, I just couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say. She seethed with anger a little more. That corruption virus must have done a number on her.

Babe? Julie?

I should fucking fry your brain and leave you for dead right here for screwing up like that back there, She said with ice in her voice. If I wasn’t sure that she needed me for my talents and the fact that we had been working together for years now, I would think she meant that. Rarely was she so mad. I wonder if that was more than a simple corruption virus. The angels don’t mess around like that.

I’m sorry, I said with all honesty, I didn’t know they had that virus. You know how the angels are, they use as many underhanded…

She cut me off before I could finish babbling an apology. SIX! She shouted at me. Six of my drone systems were lost! And not just the software, a full hardware fragging as well! It’ll take me months to repair the damage! She was near hysterical screaming at me.

Julie was more than a graphics artist, although she certainly had a talent for that as well. She was also a conjurer, a master of drones. Each of her drones was its own AI system and had its own processors to work with. Each AI was powerful enough to back us up and perform complicated tasks that normally couldn’t be handled just by a computer program. She had probably 10 to 12 drones she worked with from what I could tell. Losing six like that was a major blow, and plus she didn’t just have recode them, which took endless amounts of tweaking, but now she’d have to replace hardware on them too.

But it was more than just the loss of hardware, or the amount of time she spent with them. Her drones were her friends. The drones were sentient. They were a mix of pet, guardian, and best friends. She poured her soul into those drones, and to lose them so viciously was probably quite painful. No, she was right to be upset at me.

This was YOUR run! She continued her rant, this was YOUR grab! You should have known about this! You should have had a cure ready for it! You should bring them back dammit!!

I’ll make it up to you, I pleaded with her, Calm… Calm down. I’ll help you repair the damage.

You’re god damn right you’re going to help me repair them! You’re also going to pay for the hardware! You owe me BIG For this run.

Okay, I’ll give you my back ups of their personality files I have. I also have a partial memory for them from the hard-line. I can’t recover all their memories, but I have a partial for everything you lost.

That seemed to calm her down some. There was a conflict of emotion inside of her. It was as if she was deciding how she should feel about that.

How do you have back ups and partials for them?

Well shit, I already said it, no use backing out now.

I’m an information miner, and a damn good one. You know that.

Well yes, but why something so trivial as someone else’s personality files and partial memories?

I’m paranoid and I you never know when such things might be useful. Like now.

Do you have anything I should know about? I had thought I secured those files.

I’m sure I have nothing more than what you don’t have on me.

I put myself out there saying I had her files. Both of us collected info from the other. It was simply how we operate. If she didn’t collect from me, she wouldn’t be worth even looking at. She was as paranoid as I was, especially about these things. Of course she knew I had those files, but to say it and volunteer that I had them is something completely different. Now that she knew what I had, she could figure out how I took the things I took and she could change the things I took so I would have to find them all over again. It was also completely against all those paranoid tendencies to voluntarily give someone a look at how you get information. It was a great show of trust for an information miner to give up information for free. Of course I really was sorry for happened. She was right, I owed her big, and this is how I pay her back. I probably saved her about 2 months of work of reengineering her personalities.

Personality files are large, so it doesn’t make sense to take them normally. They are personally engineered for a set of systems, and ones as complex as Julie’s were massive. The partial memories were the same way. A partial memory is just bits and pieces of what you were experiencing, as opposed to full sensory memories, which were much larger. To save someone else’s partial memories is generally a waste of time simply because you can simply record your own memories. But to save someone’s drones memories would be ludicrous, normally. Like I said, I’m paranoid.

I’ll put them on the safe box for you to retrieve. You right I’ll also pay for brand new decks for the damaged drones. Who was is it that got hurt?

My main line: Achilles, Odysseus, Apollo, Hermes, Eros, and Demeter. I’m not sure if Achilles is recoverable, most of the main processors are dead. I’ll have to recode an entirely new deck with Achilles on it. I might as well start over…

No, I should have enough to get him back on a new deck. Although you’ll have to let me dive on to it to recode the processor myself. I’m better at the art form of the processor better than you. You may be the goddess of AIs, but I’m still better at some things.

Okay, I can allow that. I think once you do that I may be able to forgive you someday. She was still angry with me, but I put myself out there for her. I was willing to completely revamp her system. In fact, I’m considering maybe not even taking the opportunity to mine her systems when I’m in there. Maybe.

Well, since we’re here and all, I might as well give you what we got. I think you’ll find this a very nice package. I haven’t looked through all of it, but there is some nice stuff on the angel’s core AI programming. Good stuff.

I sent over the data I had just mined from safe. She spent a few seconds skimming it over.

“Here’s you us’al, suga. Just the way ya like it.”

I had to shake myself a little. I can do a lot of things at once, but I still sometimes get a little too focused. I guess I was thinking too much about what happened.

“Thanks, Sara. You always know how to treat a man right.”

Julie came back, she was done reading. Your food’s here and I need to work tonight. Send me a message when you want to work on Achilles.

Alright, I’ll see you around. I closed down the closed network, logged the files back on my personal servers and then erased any evidence that there was ever a closed network here.

Julie got up with her companion, paid her bill and left. As she was leaving I made sure to give her a thorough looking over, like any sane man would.

Nothing to indicate that we had ever spoken.

“You a’ight, suga? You look like death warmed over.”

“I’m fine, just… a long day a work.”

“I unda’stand. If you need anythang just holla.”

“You know I will babe.” I smiled back to her.

It really was a long day at work, but for now at least I can rest easy. I think I may take a little break form the excitement. Of course I say that every time after a big raid that goes bad.