'Jacked

Head spinning like a chaotic whirly-gig, Jazz swam back to consciousness. Body still screwed into his nightly foetal position he felt the habitual disappointment permeate his soul. Not for the first time, he took a minute to curse the day he’d taken the job from the stranger in the black hat with its band of silver dollars around its crown, before he opened his eyes to yet another day of restraint.

Reluctance made his lids heavy as he heaved them open a crack. Unease flickered against his unconscious as his eyes opened into a total absence of light. Unfurling his arms, Jazz reached into the absence his palms out stretched in front of him. For a second, nothing, he wondered if he had at last succumbed to death instead of being forced to serve as its servant.

Palm touched a surface of cut splinters the texture a burr against his skin. He flexed his legs. Knees and toes both came to a stop against the hard surface. He rounded his back and felt the confinement press against his spine.

Why am I in a crate?

Stale air and rot gut sweat, burned in his nostrils. Now awake he felt the pinch of muscles curled in one position too long.

What happened last night?

Jazz searched his memory. The night was the same as all the others, spent in his luddite saloon. Stuck on a rock surrounded by dirt worshippers, basking in the dying light of the weakest star in the system, a place not linked into the network. The only way temptation could burn, never to be satisfied. A century ago, he’d gone cold turkey. The only way a tech junkie could guarantee detox.

Rot gut whiskey, a card game, a tenderfoot raking in chips and enmity.

Jazz remembered watching from the corner, as he sipped and longed for the days when he could make code sing as the keys flew under his fingertips. The days when his unguarded touch didn’t brush tendrils of virus through circuitry. When he was a cyber-God, not cyber-Death.

Movement awakened a new pain, a new flash of scent, the bumps and knocks sounded into a hollow abyss. If there had been watchers waiting for his consciousness to re-surface they would have reacted to the noises by now. He drew his knee as close back to his chest as he could and punched a kick into the box with his foot. The dull thud of sole against leather and wood; pain radiated through his neural network. He repeated the action, again, again, again.

At last wood cracked, splintered.

He squirmed until he could work on the break in the wood with his hands. Splinters bit into the soft flesh of his fingers as he tore at the weakened plank.

Perseverance, fuelled by a refusal to spend his unwanted immortality inside this box, worked the nails loose, until board by board, he pried enough planks free, to wriggle through the gap. Grunting with effort he manoeuvred himself around to emerge feet first. Stomach scraping against the edge of a plank, he popped out of the crate, and dropped several feet on to his haunches.

His hands automatically sought the floor to help maintain his balance. Horror slid daggerlike into his belly as he felt metal beneath them, and through the metal a vibration of power tremble. Under his fingertips. His gloveless fingertips.

He snatched his hands from the metal; the damage already done.

A century of caution. A century of dirt worshippers. A century of denial. Gone.

Where are my gloves?

The crate was perched on a stack of other boxes. The whole space was crowded with freight except for a narrow walk way down the middle of the rectangular space. Each end terminated in a riveted metal door with a raised circular wheel set into its middle. The roof mirrored the floor below, metal, with sunken rings for access panels and freight obscured lighting strips.

He was on a train?

Jazz looked up at his crate, put his hand up to touch the edge of the broken wood, lucky he’d chosen the right side. His eyes fell to his fingers grazed, rough with splinters and blood from where he’d ripped open the boards of the crate.

His corrupt hands.

He waited for the wounds to close, the splinters to sprinkle the floor as they were pushed out of his flesh. Nothing happened.

A glimmer of hope sparked in his gut.

Jazz took a deep breath and listened past his soft exhale and the rumble of his stomach, for the flicker and hum of corrupted circuitry, of misfiring computer synapses. Nothing.

Tearing off his shirt, he ripped the fabric in half and wrapped his bloody hands to protect the metal handle from his touch, as he moved to one of the doors, took hold of its wheel and twisted.

The sounds of iron bars retracting from the doorframe back into the door was accompanied by the pop of an atmospheric shield snapping into place as it swung away from his hands.

A translucent blue lattice maintained the atmosphere inside the room, as he stared out into the beauteous symphony of light and shadow. Stars danced, comets strobed, nebulas creamed and foamed streaming in their wake.

Tears ran down Jazz’s face; his eyes gorged on the heavenly kaleidoscope.

After the consuming fire of his re-birth aboard the freighter, he’d sworn he would hence forth only ever experience this sight with his heels planted in the dirt. He held enough souls on his conscience. Leaning his forehead against the elastic blue lattice, Jazz looked down expecting to fall into the yawning dark heart of the universe.

Bright silver rails emerged from beneath the overhanging edge of the doorframe. Each a blur of light and current etched against the black velvet folds of space. Now seen, he could feel the thrusting forward movement radiating from under his feet, the sway of his body as the locomotive leant into the curve of its tracks.

Jazz raised a hand to the door frame, to steady his galloping heart and noticed pale skin wrapped in silky fabric, patterned with cartoon animals, cavorting on an eye watering lime back ground.

For a second memory flashed, to a dim corner of the bar, the same lime green, as the Tenderfoot made his way to Jazz’s table, a tumbler of rot gut in each fist.

“Not my hand.” An unfamiliar voice emerged from his vocal cords.

Hope bubbled in his throat, as he reached to touch the brand burned over his heart, the symbol of The Horseman, of his servitude.

Only smooth skin.

Shedding the fabric wrapped around his hands Jazz, explored his face. Eyes too wide set, high forehead, no widows peak in his hair line, the sharp metallic intrusions of circuits laid under the skin.

“Not my body.”

Strands of hair running through his fingers like silk. Behind his right ear, a port.

‘Jacked, Fried, Ghosted, Fridayed. The terms rolled through his thoughts as joy billowed into his soul. That little shit Tenderfoot had ‘jacked him. Ripped his consciousness from his body and swapped it into another.

His new knees refused to hold him up; he collapsed to the floor of the carriage.

A smile spread across Jazz’s new features.

He was free.

He closed the door of the caboose and turned towards the far end of the carriage. Questions raced through his mind, he pushed them all away determined to embrace this twist of fate. This chance for life.

The why’s and wherefores didn’t matter.

As he neared the air lock at the far end of the car, the door slid open revealing a woman in a rail company uniform. Her red hair hung loose around her shoulders, an e-cigarette hung from her bottom lip, her eyes raised from the communicator in her hand to him as she stepped over the threshold into the car.

“Xenon, what are you doing fucking around in here?”

“Ahh.” Jazz shrugged and stalled as he wondered just what Xenon owed this woman. Staying on the train long term was going to be a balancing act.

“Don’t you think I know you slunk off to the nastiest dive you could find on that two-bit supply outpost and just made it back on the train. Did you find the guy you were looking for?” Her attention divided between him and the screen of the communicator she held in her hand. “Can we go forward with the plan or not?”

“The plan?” Jazz aimed for a gormless expression, as he tried to gauge the relationship.

Her eyes flicked to him, anger flashed in their depths, “We changed all our plans because you couldn’t break the security. We diverted to that dirt ball because you said you knew a way we could get round them.” She pulled a wickedly curved blade from a sheathe under the back of her jacket and stared him dead in the eye, as she stepped forward putting their faces inches apart. “Tell me why I shouldn’t cut your throat right now.”

The knife kissed his skin. He felt a sting of pain and then a trickle of warm liquid.

“You’d miss me if I was gone.” Jazz gambled, his heart pounding, in anticipation of death.

For a long heartbeat, she nailed him with a squinty look.

“I told Viridian that we shouldn’t trust you.” She said, as she pulled him forward, her mouth finding his in a bruising kiss.

Panic injected adrenalin into his veins, his body buzzed with an awareness of mortality that he had not felt in a century. Just as he worked out, he wasn’t going to die, she pulled back.

“If you screw me over, I will hunt you down…”

“…and kill me.” Jazz finished her sentence as relief coursed through his body.

“No, I won’t kill you, what I’ll do will be so, so, so much worse.” She pulled him back into another aggressive kiss and then pushed him away from her. “Did you find the guy?”

Jazz shrugged.

She sighed, and slid the knife back into the sheathe under her jacket, “Okay so we forget the train, and just take the money.”

Jazz nodded in assent.

“I’ll find Viridian and tell her that the plan has changed. The old bitch has a new guest, she’s busy with him in the saloon car. Put on your uniform and tell Magne we’re moving to plan B, then prep the dropship.”

They moved towards the airlock she flashed her ticket; the door swished open.

“Don’t take too long.” The red head cautioned as they stepped inside, “Either way it goes down tonight.”

He nodded as she pulled him into another violent smash of their mouths.

“You only need to prep life-support for two.” A nasty smirk quirked the corner of her mouth. “We only need the others to grab the cash. We’ll be light years away before they realise, we’re gone.”

Jazz forced a matching grin onto his new face. She turned and strode away from him to the next airlock door and disappeared inside.

For a second, Jazz closed his eyes to gather his thoughts as his fingers rose to his throat and felt the nick, seeping blood. Opening them, he stared for a second at his red tipped fingers, who the hell was Xenon? Why had he ‘jacked Jazz? What was he up to?

Around him luggage was pigeon holed into cages labelled with names of people each one secured with a scanner and key pad. As he walked down the central aisle Jazz read the names on the labels without recognition.

At the far end of the carriage, he stopped in front of a cage labelled staff only. He allowed his fingers to drift over the keypad, mind idly deconstructing code as he stripped security and opened the cage. Whoever designed this system deserved to be hamstrung.

Jazz opened lockers until he found one that contained a uniform which fit his new body. Smaller and more tightly muscled than his own, skin pale exposing an unfamiliar tracery of blue veins at wrist and elbow, he decided he kind of liked it as he looked into the small square of mirror taped onto the door of one of the lockers.

The piercings, and inlaid circuitry at the hairline and down the right side of his throat felt emblematic of a phoenix rising from the ashes of his former existence. A few swipes of the med-scanner from the first aid kit he found in another locker and his hands were as good as new. He flexed the newly healed skin and relished the feeling of not wearing gloves.

Taking a comb from the shelf of the locker, he pulled his thick dark hair back into a sleek nub of a pony tail and used a charcoal smudge stick to create a dark mask across his dark eyes.

Jazz the hacker, removed from him by the arbitrary stroke of death so many decades ago, stared back at him from the silvered glass.

So what if he was now Xenon, colossal shit, con man and thief? That only lasted until he could get off this train and reboot.

Let the ‘jacker have his body, the responsibility, Jazz preferred the upgrade.

Shrugging his shoulders into the uniform jacket of a conductor, Jazz slipped the bronze buttons home and walked out of the staff luggage cage.

Time to find the drop ship and get the hell out of here. He stood in front of the door to the next carriage, his eyes on the screen as green code flashed.

Scan ticket.

He didn’t have one.

The pads of his fingertips hit the keypad, as his mind blew through the security code like a hot knife through butter.

Behind him the blue strip lighting flickered.

A glitch in the code winked at him and was gone.

The door slid open and he stepped through the airlock into a bustling kitchen, the noise and delicious scent an assault on Jazz’s deprived senses.

Pans clanked, steam hissed, liquid roiled. White coated kitchen workers moved, adjusting heat, draining pots, knives flashing against cutting boards.

“Move you maggots!” A booming voice, rose over the clatter.

The pace in the kitchen ratchetted up a notch. Bodies worked in seamless harmony. Jazz moved through the organised chaos, careful not to draw attention by bumping into any of the workers, or disrupting processes.

A few lifted their eyes to give him a curious look as he passed by but none of them challenged him as he moved through to the end of the carriage.

His fingers were on the key pad to the next airlock, when the same booming voice from before sounded over his shoulder.

“Xenon, what the fuck are you doing in here? You know the reg’s.”

Jazz turned, to look at the massive man standing behind him. Over six foot tall, sleeves rolled up to expose hairy forearms bulging with muscle, Magne embroidered across the breast pocket of his stained chef’s jacket, apron strings tied round his thick waist and trembling upon his corpulent stomach, he stood brow furrowed in confusion as he stared at Jazz.

“What’s with the makeup?” He asked, stepping forward into Jazz’s personal space.

With no idea how Xenon would respond to this challenge, Jazz’s thought flashed like lightening. Cocky.

He tipped his head to the side and stepped into the big man. “I like it.” He added just a note of challenge to his voice, his eyes never leaving the other man’s face. “I was sent to tell you plan B.”

A smile spread across the big man’s face, as he leant in towards Jazz and whispered between them, “Finally. Don’t forget we’re going for that drink, when we pull this off.”

Jazz felt the other man’s fingers graze his own in a light touch that spoke of current or promised intimacy between them. His lips curved into a smile as he responded with a touch of his own, “I’m looking forward to it.”

The big man straightened and raised his voice, “Don’t let me catch you sneaking around in here again.” He leant around Jazz and pressed his security pass to the key pad.

“We’re going to be rich.” The big man said quietly as Jazz stepped into the airlock between the carriages.

Jazz winked as the door closed and the door behind him opened into the empty first-class dining car.

He emerged from the butler’s pantry into a car filled with elegant tables set with antique crystal, silver and linen. At the far end of the car was a maître d' console veneered to simulate some ancient wood. The car was quiet except for the faint ring of crystal vibrating in response to the locomotives speed.

Jazz trailed his fingertips over the dense thread count of the linen table cloths as he wove through the arrayed tables towards the far door.

Through the wood he could feel the faint vibrations that had activated the crystal and wondered if this was part of the simulation of an ancient train journey. Did the rich patrons of the service pay extra for the authenticity? It didn’t matter, find the drop ship and leave, start anew – Plan J.

Through the next airlock, a pianola was playing ancient rag-time, as several groups of people lounged in clumps of antique parlour chairs, reclined at an angle so they could watch the vast expanse of space through the open roof as they socialised. As particles of space dust hit the atmospheric forcefield crackles of blue scattered over head.

Jazz moved through the low murmur of conversation, his mind on escape, as unease flickered at the base of his spine.

“Xenon dear where have you been?”

A voice stretched by age to the texture of worn film, caught his attention. He turned to regard a voluminous elderly woman seated in the plushest corner of the car, photographic equipment set to capture the space beyond on a tripod before her.

“They, said you had jumped the train back on the last out-post, but I knew that it couldn’t be true. Why would you maroon yourself in such a backwater – ridiculous, I said.”

Her skin hung in crushed linen wattles from her chin jowls and biceps. A thick gold necklace set with diamonds the size of grapes nestled in the folds of décolletage that bulged from the tight corset of her strapless navy evening dress.

“You know me.” Jazz smiled, “I like to keep everyone on their toes.”

A dusty giggle escaped her, her fingers fluttering at her throat. In that moment Jazz could almost see the young woman that still lived inside the Grand Dame.

She beckoned him closer.

In fascination Jazz complied.

“Meet my newest guest.” She tittered, tilting her head to the seat obscured behind the tower of ancient photographic equipment.

Jazz lifted his eyes, to his own face.

An unfamiliar smirk stared back at him. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Xenon wearing his old body held out a hand in an age-old gesture of greeting.

Jazz stared at his gloveless fingers and palm. Stupid, cocky Hack.

His eyes flicked to the atmospheric force field over their heads, the only barrier between them and the voracious void of space.

Oh shit.

Refusing the offered hand, he dipped his head in greeting.

In a faux whisper the Grand Dame pouted, “Xenon, why is the train going so fast?”

Jazz raised an eyebrow, “Is it?”

“My equipment was perfectly calibrated, frames per second to capture the cosmos, now look at the rubbish it’s producing.”

Jazz ignored her companion and dropped his eyes to her view screen. Each of the images was marred by a halo effect around each of the heavenly bodies captured in its lens.

“Pretty.” He observed.

“If I wanted to sell wall paper stills and aesthetic mood VR experiences,” she snarked, “as you know I created this train so I could continue my work in comfort. Every image for the last three hours is unusable.”

She slipped a communicator from the satin folds of the skirt of her evening dress, “I’ve been trying to raise the driver on this but it is not working. Be a dear and go tell him to slow down to the regular speed or I will have his head.”

The frost in her eyes, communicated this was not an idle threat.

“Your wish is my command.” He said as he began to draw away from her.

“Get it done quickly and there’ll be a bonus in it for you.” Her hand on his thigh and flirtatious tone left him in no doubt as to the nature of the bonus.

He ignored the weight of the other man’s eyes on him, as he gently removed her hand and straightened up.

“I’ll get right on it.” He assured her.

Jazz resisted the urge to look back, to register the faces of the other people in the car as he moved towards the airlock door. Everyone on this locomotive was already dead, he didn’t want to be aboard when they discovered their fate.

Once inside the airlock he hacked the door scanner and pulled up a schematic of the train. As he worked, he now registered the slimy tendrils of Virus colonising clean code, the corruption stain spreading through the subsystems. It was moving fast, barely behind the pace of the new code he was writing. Fast and dirty splices designed to stave off disaster until he reached the ship.

There! Docked on the roof of the engine.

Jazz opened the air lock, and abandoning any pretence of calm sprinted down the deserted corridor of the next two sleeper cars and airlocks before he hit the fortified air lock door that led into the engine.

He tried the same hack he’d used on the other doors.

Scan ticket.

Flashed in green lettering, before pixelating and falling down the screen as electronic detritus. Jazz’s heart pounded in his chest, static buzzed in his ears. There was no time.

“Calm down,” he told himself as he forced his focus onto the key pad not his impending doom, “You eat programs like this for breakfast. Calm down.” He closed his eyes and took a deep slow breath. Underneath his feet he felt a shudder travel through the floor.

When he opened his eyes, he lifted his hand to the keypad. His fingers flew as he began to shape the code to his will.

Tap, tap, tap; Exhilaration filled his ears with the pounding of his heart, beneath him metal popped. Behind him the airlock door opened, he heard raised voices, the pounding of footfalls.

His fingers finished the code and the lock on the door before him spun, retracted into the surface of the door and it slid open before him.

He stepped through, and turned to see a woman with dyed fluorescent green hair toting a laser cutting rig racing towards him, followed by the red head from the caboose, a heavy backpack strapped to her back.

“Xenon!” The red head called, “Hold the door.”

Jazz felt nothing as he pressed the door close.

“Xenon!” Jazz turned and began work on the lock behind him.

Thunk!

He looked over his shoulder and saw the head of the laser cutting tool wedged between the door frame and the door. A sliver of the red heads face appeared at the open crack.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Jazz ignored her as the door in front of him opened. He stepped through into the Engine. Once inside he could hear the scream of alarms signalling failing systems. He was aware of peripheral movement ahead as lights flashed red, turning the whole space into a Hellscape.

Eyes on the roof he moved forward until he found the access hatch. Ripping off the cover he fitted his hands into holds on the side of the wall and began to climb up.

He felt the electric hum of the wheels on the rails through the wall underneath his hands. The stutter and slide as they caught, he slammed into the wall, the metal hand holds biting into his fingers.

“Dammit!” He swore as he dragged himself up and surged into the access hatch.

He hung onto the wheel of the airlock transfer into the drop ship his feet wedged into the last handholds, as he wrenched on the metal. Another jolt from the body of the train, the sound of rending metal. Jazz imagined the atmospheric shield suffering catastrophic failure as corruption spread across its hexagonal structure.

The metal wheel in his hands turned and locked open as he felt the rush and suck of the atmosphere of the Engine being drained as the airlock between the carriages failed.

Hanging on to the metal ring for grim death he struggled to pull his feet up out of the Engine. With a final heave he pulled himself fully inside the hatch and jammed it closed. Terror made his fingers thick as he worked the key pad of the door to the drop ship. Each beat of his heart in his chest made his ears ring, his breath tearing from him in gasping pants.

The door slid open and he floated into the zero grav interior of the drop ship. No time to waste on checks, Jazz dragged himself to the flight chair, strapped himself in and hit the launch sequence.

As the clamps disengaged from the speeding Engine beneath him, he lifted his eyes to the view screen.

The train was a blur of movement as it raced away. Along its length it was venting atmosphere, where the saloon car had been now was an open topped frozen tomb, objects and people being shed by the train’s momentum like confetti in its wake.

As he watched, the airlocks at either end of the car failed and the cars on either side imploded.

Heart rate still in the red zone, Jazz, turned his attention to the controls, fingers moving, his eyes searching the code for any sign of infection. Nothing.

He let out the breath he hadn’t realised that he had been holding.

For once in his life, he’d gotten lucky. He programmed the craft to locate and route to the nearest space port. Auto pilot laid in the course, thrusters fired and he felt the engines come on line.

Leaning back into the flight chair he stared at his view screen and watched the ghost train career across the universe, metal tracks disintegrating behind it.

Weeks later, pop-synth strobed around the room, personalised for each of the patrons of the bar, resulting in an unpleasant clamour unless you had state of the art aural implants and an account with the bars net provider. Or were a cyber-God, thought Jazz, as his mind combed code directly via his neural interface, strictly bespoke and illegal, he’d been working on the design for the last century and it was worth every minute.

On the table in front of him, a shot glass of synthesised rot gut, and a deck of antique playing cards, not that anyone in this room would know what to do with them. He lifted the whiskey to his lips and felt the not quite right burn as it worked its way down his throat, to not quite warm him.

A presence standing beside his table, drew his attention from the network, to the real world. He registered the boots first. Black with silver heels.

Dread turned his guts to water as his eyes climbed the man standing beside his table.

Black jeans, pearl handled guns holstered on his belt, black shirt, black duster, black hat banded with silver dollars, underneath the brim the familiar face of Death.

The Horseman’s eyes met his.

Hope evaporated.

“Jazz.” The Horseman nodded in greeting as he reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a pair of black gloves. He dropped them onto the table top beside Jazz’s limp fingers. He slipped a silver coin out of his duster pocket, turned Jazz’s left hand over and pressed the coin to his palm.

Jazz screamed.

The brand burned white fire into his soft skin.

The Horseman, removed the coin and slipped it back into his pocket. The brand, healed, was a stylized horse inside a circle. “I have a job for you.”