Revenge for Lychee Read online

  I go back to Axorpa to forget and to remember. I know almost everyone on, even if I’ve never met them in the flesh. In truth, I’d say I know them better as their Avatars, since people are more honest about their true feelings and personalities through their Avatars. They don’t censor themselves, they’re braver and more outspoken. In the System, you will know for real if people are assholes of good spirits. It could be the liberation of your soul, released into the System as your Avatar that does it, or just the total lack of the threat of physical violence, disregarding any black ice. Black ice is only a threat when you’re hacking though, like a firewall but more of an electric fence, striking back at the hacker that dares to try and trespass. There’s no trespassing in Axorpa, because, as I said, everything is free as according to the third Code. Everything unphysical is simply given and received, as it was intended in the earlier days of the System when it was born from the minds of programmers like myself, or so we hope. Axorpa is one of many such as these, but of all the freehold Portals, it’s my favourite. It has been for more than twenty years. Fuck, I’m old.

  I check on Axorpa at the Gate at work sometimes. I work at a small firm, yet another software fixer, one of the hundreds on Scorpio 2, by the name of Soft Fix Electronics. We make some work by order, some small fry freebees to enhance business, but it’s mostly patchwork, Gates on the fritz and broken upload chits with stuff on them like 500 movies, language courses or even sometimes H updates, like profession programming or clear up gear for debugging. We usually send those on, though. AI programming is advanced and the risks with getting it wrong is more than bad, it’s right down dangerous when it comes to the H models. I share the shop with five other people, three hackers, one pretty salesgirl and one do-it-all backup, our boss, who can literally do it all, but prefers to stay at home with his H model. I’ve never seen it, but from what I’ve seen of the H5 sex models, it can’t be that great. The H5 security model was a combat monster in a neigh indestructible hull, and they go for ten times the original price now, but the sex model? Somewhat better than a Floppy Jane I’m told, but he loves his, and is living the sweet life with her in his small honeycomb apartment, mostly hooked up, eating Cheezies and drinking Pro-Tea’ n Juice. Can’t say I blame him. The other programmers, Rin, Tonya and Bammer, are all under twenty-one and all refer to me as “the ancient one”. It’s as much an insult as a compliment to them, it’s a respectful way of calling me an old hacker fart, acknowledging my skills as well as putting me down for not Ghosting at twenty-one. It used to be a nicer term. The salesgirl, Mon-mon, chews glow-in-the-dark bubble gum and fights a lot with her boyfriend, but other than that, I don’t know her. To her, I’m the old nerd. The job is easy, I can do it in my sleep and I’ve put so many worms into the place now I basically can make them think that I do nothing but work like a good boy. I do, mostly. But sometimes, when the darkness comes too close, I go to Axorpa and so I did today. I was cleaning up a spill on the floor from my overturned coffee cup in the morning and as I did I looked under the sofa, finding a tiny, tiny sock. One of Lychee’s socks. As the work I indented to do for the day was finished, that fucking sock and how miniscule it was in my hand haunted me. So off to Axorpa I went. And thus it began.

  I hooked up with the jack at the base of my neck under my left ear. It’s my best jack, and it’s the only one I have that can still do a speed load. The others are so worn or just plain old broken I hardly ever use them. Like I said, I don’t invest in the future, why the hell should I? Anyway, I hooked up, switching my retina screens on, basically just resting my fingers by the keyboard of the Gate until the System loaded fully. I jagged the routes and entered Axorpa using my Avatar and my password, which I still change on a daily basis, just before I exit. Some hackers change it twice, when they go in plus when they go out. One hacker I knew planted a worm in her Gate, changing the passwords at all her Portals at random three times a day, no matter if she’d been at them or not. She fried herself the day before her twenty-first, by hooking up to a mainframe and preparing downloads too big for her. As she hit upload, she shot herself in the heart, and that’s how they found her. I met her at Axorpa, and one of the things I dropped that day, a debugger that fixes the genetic imprint module to a laser gun, reminded me of her. Her Avatar was a salt shaker that kept falling over, cursing and getting back up with cartooned arms and a cartooned cringing face. She called herself J1nxer. Or him, we never met in person. They said “her” about the body when they found it, though. As I dropped the debugger I looked for something to pick up. I still do, looking for games to distract myself, or programs to take home and brush up, just to drop them again next time I’m in. I looked in the piles. There’s no form of order, there used to be, but no one follows it anymore, so you have to scroll yourself through loads and loads of things, knowing how stuff is named, to find what you want, keeping a small eye on the tags to see if it’s a game, music, movie or info file or whatever. As I peeked, one caught my eye.

  DONOTJINXIT.//mail

  J1nxer returned to my mind, and I downloaded it. I usually don’t give a crap about mail, but this is as luck would have it. Luck, chance, whatever. Destiny, fate, the cruel mistress. I took two more files, one music slip and a small game, and exited after changing my password. And I thought that would be my day. I opened it as I returned to the Gate, reading it to kill time. It was ripped, fragmented due to the shitty jagging, but this much was fully eligible.

  “… planting this will be dangerous and hard as hell. We’ll make billions for sure on cures and vacs but we need to know if it works, old info may not be correct anymore, it may have changed. We give it a try-out, like a test group. We check if it spreads and so on, checking the clinics for conformation. For a closed environment, S2 is perfect. No one gives a shit about the babies there anyway, hackers are busy killing themselves before twenty-one so no major loss. But I say again: DO NOT JINX IT. This info stream stops right now until further results. Keep an eye open if people start coughing like hell, though. If travelling adults get it, we may lose control. We keep it to infants first, one plant at a time. Also, people will pay anything to save their children from suffocating. Imagine the tragedy of a million dead babies? We’ll be heroes. / GF”

  The letter was old and I checked the date. It was written a week after Lychee was born. I realized at that moment that my son maybe didn’t just fall sick at all. He could have been murdered.

  devil in the details

  All of this is reduced to one fatal sentence and as I speak it out loud I almost get an out of body experience. It feels like falling.

  -I found a mail that said someone was going to spread a coughing disease among babies, killing them first to make people desperate, to earn billions on a cure.

  Hancry stares at me. Slowly he starts shaking his head.

  -No fucking way. Nu-uh. This is bullshit.

  I shake my head right back at him.

  -It was real, believe me. I checked it, very thoroughly, even ran it through a few programs to identify ware. I can’t go back into Axorpa to find the dropper, it’s one of our major don’ts, I’d risk getting myself kicked out and banned for a month. So I get into the System and looked. I just spent three full hours at work, and two hours overtime, trying to track this shit. Nothing. But I found something else.

  -What?

  I finish my beverage.

  -Since Lychee died, the child mortality on S2 has gone up. Not way up, but up. Before Lychee was born, the yearly infant mortality rate was about 300 infants a year. This year we’re up to 331.

  He shakes his head.

  -So? That’s not much. Ten percent.

  I look at him.

  -We’re in Nov, Hancry. It will be more than ten percent. And even if it stays at that figure, are thirty-one dead babies totally okay?

  He looks right back at me.

  -You really believe this, don’t you?

  Hancry sighs and shakes his head when I refuse to back down in the silence.

&nbs
p; -I’m sorry for your kid, I really am, but the fact of the matter is that this could be all coincidence. You don’t even know if it’s real, this letter. It could be someone just making shit up, or planning stuff that never happened, or even someone messing with you in person. You’re going para, Jer. I’ve read thousands of nicked mails, and most of it is just bullshit, but some are creepy, yes. Aliens, corporate scandals, assassinations, plans to overtake the Universe. But most of that as I followed up, turn out to be bullshit as well. People get off on that. Some write shit and drop it because they know someone will pick it up and get nutto, just like you right now. Forget it, Jer. Just drop it.

  I shake my head at him.

  -I can’t.

  I wish I could. It’s not like I haven’t thought that myself. I have, mulling over those possibilities and then some. Hackers, living mostly in their own brains, often disregard any gut feelings, going on odds or intellectual analysis only. So do I. But still, I can’t leave it alone. His eyes are scanning the room and he nods at someone, getting off his chair and finishing his drink. He’s leaving.

  -Did you check out the cause of deaths on the infants to check why there’s an extra ten percent? Any increases in disease?

  -Didn’t say in the statistics. I may even have to get to the exact death certificates for that, and that is major hacking.

  -Well, even if you do and they did, what does it prove, really?

  I swallow.

  -Maybe nothing.

  -Dude, it proves nothing indeed. Life is fragile and imperfect. I’ve seen kids hopped up so hard they look like walking talking Gates. I’ve seen hackers who prefer to get more surgery rather than spending their money on reject drugs, dying in the gutter, begging for free shots. I’ve seen body mods bragging that they’ll live forever and then dropping down, dead as doornails. And that’s just from the shit we do know that we do to ourselves. There’s so much disease in this world… it’s nuts we live as long as we do, really.

  -Your point?

  He sighs and shakes his head at me, getting ready to go, paying for his drink and adjusting his coat.

  -Most diseases involve cough. Kids die from a number of things. Infants, too. Hackers die from over surgery, babies die of cough. It’s not proof, even if you find it was coughing every thirty-one times. It’s coincidence. Leave it.

  -No.

  He claps a hand on my shoulder.

  -In that case, you’ll need proof so watertight you could wrap your Gate in it, take a bath with it and live to tell the tale.

  I almost snort.

  -I know. I just don’t know how the fuck to get it.

  He almost laughs at me.

  -You’ve been in the System for too long. If I were you, which I thank whatever God there is that I’m not, I’d be looking for hardware.

  -What?

  He starts leaving but adds

  -Hardware. You won’t get anywhere with hacking the clinics if they don’t know shit anyway, which presumably they don’t, so get your ass to the clinic and ask for the samples they took. It’s still your kid. They cremated him?

  -Well, yes.

  -Bet you a billion creds they kept his samples at the clinic. Have them tested by another clinic, get your second opinion and then go to fucking sleep and forget this.

  He leaves me with a final pat on the shoulder. I almost smile at him as the door falls shut behind him. Physical evidence. A second opinion. Why didn’t I think of that?

  -Soft brain.

  I mutter to myself and head off to Prima Care where Lychee spent the last hours of his short life.

  clinic

  I’m on my fourth cup of coffee as I walk into the clinic. Like most of the clinics and indeed all establishments on S2 it’s a twenty-four hour institution and it’s fully open. The hour still hasn’t gone to the night shift though we’re still on the left side of midnight, lest I’d have to make do with just the night staff which is probably at a bare minimum. Doctors often get to choose their hours on these tiny places and they have other things to do at night, such as sleeping and other absurd habits. The waiting room is stale yet clean, all white and green to look professional yet soothing, and the smells are of chlorine trying to cover the few huffs of blood and filth. There are five more people in here, one little old lady, two kiddies who are jacked up enough to make me look fleshy and old, one huge guy with his right shoulder in a freakish angle who’s getting the priority line and one guy that’s definitely a tourist, judging by the fact that he is surgically a virgin and looks at the kids like they’re local exotic animals. They look at him in turn like a religious person witnessing a miracle while an idiot comments the whole thing with “eh, I could see wires”. I grab a number from the machine prompting me to do so and get an hour of sleep, caffeine or no caffeine, in the non-emergency line before my number is up. I almost missed it and have to jog up to the small booth to talk to the nurse before the guy after me in line snags my turn. By the looks of him, he’s a tourist with a bleeding cut on his hand he’s used a hotel towel to cover and he’s not happy he didn’t succeed. He flips me off with his good hand as I yank the door open and slip in before him. I flip him off right back, wishing him to forget all his passwords and dropping the key code to his hotel room in a thieving Portal by accident. The nurse, a green haired girl who seems past her twenty-fifth but still stays fresh and crazy, looks at me like she hasn’t slept in days but has motivation enough still to keep up a good effort.

  -Good evening, what’s your emergency?

  -I, um… my son died here. I’ve come to claim anything you have left of him. For religious reasons.

  It sounds just as vapid as I thought it would but anything else I tried cooking up on the way sounded right down stupid. She nods.

  -I see. Do you have a receipt? Or a date and a PTN?

  I’ve turned my so called home upside down for a receipt before coming here but I think Yun either threw it away or never saved it. She wasn’t the receipt keeping kind of woman. I give her the date of my son’s death and my own Personal Tagging Number. She cringes a bit and starts tapping the keys of the Gate in front of her. After a minute she shakes her head.

  -I’m sorry, sir. The remains of Lychee Star’s tissues were donated by you and your wife to research. The swab samples have been destroyed.

  I blink.

  -Excuse me?

  She nods apologetically.

  -It’s been over a year. Swab samples are only kept for a year. And you donated the remains that weren’t cremated.

  She turns her Gate screen at me and I see my own scrawl on a scanned paper that clearly states that any tissue samples from the remains of my son are now at their disposal.

  -But… we had him cremated. This is all I have left.

  I try but she just keeps smiling apologetically and shaking her head.

  -I’m really sorry, sir.

  -Can I speak to the doctor? Is he still in?

  -Until midnight, sir. I’ll check.

  she nods and taps her dial on the com link behind her ear and then clicks in a message to him through her Gate. After a minute and a few more taps of keys she looks up at me again.

  -The doctor will see you in a few minutes. Take a seat.

  My legs don’t seem to work. The frustrating absurdity of it all is washing over me. The thought that it is paranoia and that I should just go back to my grey misery is almost tempting but I know for the damnedest sure that if I leave this behind I might as well go home and have a bath with my Gate because I’ll never sleep or feel anything even remotely like peace again unless I pursue this to the very last possible point.

  -Could you print me a copy of the case report or whatever you call it in the mean time?

  I ask her. She’s about to object but then does it. The printer makes a crooning sound and then spits out a paper titled “death certificate” and as I get it I force my legs to work.

  I’ve read the paper she printed for me four times now. It’s basically everything the records c
an tell me about my son’s death, in one sheet of paper, ending with the word “unknown”. It’s all cold numbers and statistics, in comparison to the soft memories I have of him and his short life. My beautiful child was born two months early, a tiny creature, weight of a bare five pounds, barely sixteen inches. His skin was so white and the tuft of black head on his head looked like sooty gossamer. We named him Lychee because of his size, pale colour and due to Yun eating lychee fruit to the point of absurdity during her pregnancy. He wasn’t planned. Yun thought she wasn’t able to have kids due to an illness in her childhood and we’d never used protection from the point of “I do” and on. She thought he was why she hadn’t tried to Ghost, that this was what her body had been ultimately waiting for. She’d sleep in a chair next to his crib and ever so often I snuck in to look at them both. His eyes were blue and his little body was so perfect in my eyes. He was committed to the clinic when he was three months and two days old. At that point, he’s been coughing for two days. Three days later, death from suffocation in his sleep. We saw his little body in a room with candles and muted light, and tried to say goodbye. How the hell do you even do that? Yun started sobbing uncontrollably and I couldn’t get a word out to soothe her, I was busy gritting my teeth and feeling hot tears of sorrow and fury leaving my own eyes. All I could do that horrible day was just to hold her, not saying a word. This date is also noted in the record, estimated time of death, as well as when the tissue samples were removed and when the body was cremated at the funeral home Prima Care entrusted it to as per our agreement. The note on the obstruction in his throat that swelled it shut and ended his oxygen supply is cold and pragmatic like the rest of the report, describing unmoving coated swellings that were only mentioned as a light coating and redness at the time of his admission.