The Genius

Martin trundled the old Transit van through the township. There was a rattle above him as the boots of some poor decrepit corpses hung across the street, bounced along the roof of the cabin. He stuck his head out of the window and caught sight of the familiar crest of the Luddi People’s Republic. Martin tutted loudly, and shaking his head pontificated to no-one, “Well, that’s what you get…seceding from the web. What a bunch of cunts.” He spat a great globule of oily spittle out of the window, hacking afterwards, the remnants of the ant mother burrito still churning around his mouth since lunch, soaking into his beard. He wiped his face, rubbing his hand on the leather tactical waistcoat.

The digi-map guided him to the destination via a series of narrow, abandoned roads. It was a quiet area of the district. Though people didn’t tend to come outside much anymore, particularly on days when the ping was this strong. Corporate jobs were the best. When the bars were high, the suits always got excited – any excuse for more labour. They crammed back into the cubicles, trying to churn as many work hours as possible. Martin stopped the van outside a grey breeze-block of a building, and fiddled with the dashboard module. Activating the signal sonar sent satisfying ASMR vibrations coursing through him as it always did. A low pitched choral tone broadcasted his arrival.

He monitored the readings. Payload: good. Offset: 88 bits. Traffic: even. Traceroute: nominal. Martin nodded, impressed. He ran his scanning protocols. thirty-four machines. That’s ten more than he was told about for this callout. “Must be dropping like flies,” Martin chuckled to himself. He activated the beacon, adding another three bars to the signal tether. There was a scuffle of feet outside the van. “Oh here we go,” Martin rolled his eyes and activated the railgun battery. Within seconds, the hydraulically powered weapons array shot out from the top of the van. It rotated a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees vaporising the three children in one smooth motion, their smart pads falling to the dusty ground. Martin honed in on the IP addresses and the twinkling intro music to “Spud The Wonder Grub” cut out – failing to buffer.

“Fucking Leechers.” growled Martin.

Shifting his weight out of the cabin, Martin rounded the van to the rear doors. Cracking one open he retrieved his satchel and tools. He undocked his smart pad from the device cabinet and placed it in the rubberised tech holster. The railgun battery continued to swivel and monitor the area. The green guidance laser occasionally visible in the dust as it locked onto potential threats. Martin shut up the van and trudged towards the entrance of the building.

Inside the glass doors stood a Guard™, Martin pulled his multi-pocketed field pants up by his tactical belt, holding in his gut slightly as he approached the armoured enforcer. “Is that the uh…TS-800 Crowd Displacer”, Martin boasted knowingly “I had a go on one of those once. Hit headshot from nine-hundred metres…pretty good bit of kit – in the right hands obviously.” The Guard™ stood motionless. Martin made a face.

“Hello, hello! Thank goodness you’re here!” It was a suit. He walked briskly towards Martin, adjusting the tie around his forehead. He had a gangly effeminate manner that on-sight activated Martin’s Tolerance Chip. “Don’t worry about him, he’s had the mute implant! We insisted. He’s very good, but a few of our staffers just couldn’t bear the thought of small-talk while they waited for the elevator. What a world! I’m Gordon by the way!”

“Martin.”

“So we’re just a few floors up, but before we go I’m going to have to see some ID” Gordon effected a fake gruff tone, placing his hands on his hips and leaning in towards Martin. The dopamine hit from the chip saved Martin the awkward faux-pax of a visible shudder as he day-dreamed about the potential of female suits on the upper floors.

“Not a problem.” Martin unzipped his waistcoat to reveal a faded blue t-shirt emblazoned with the simple white logo. The stalk of the apple had long since peeled away and it looked like an almbino Pac-Man. But Gordon was satisfied.

“Very good – well come on up!” Gordon replied excitedly and led Martin towards the elevator.

As the weights were loaded and the elevator slowly rose, Gordon gave Martin the pitch. “So we’ve been in the building for about six months, we had to clear out the last enterprise but as hostile takeovers go it was pretty easy. We only lost two employees, well one was an intern…Anyway! Our company is a web-based-algorithm-enhanced-hydro-solution-search-function.” Martin grunted. Gordon gushed.“I know, I know! In English right?! I always forget – you know you spend so much time pitching to the Enterprise Council for your business permits, that you forget you have to speak to normal folk like yourself too – oh well, I guess that’s what marketing’s for!”

“You made an app to help people find tap water.”

“That is absolutely right-a-mundo!” Gordon jokingly fisted Martin’s shoulder. Martin’s chip released another hit. He groped himself a little.

The doors slid open and the two of them stepped onto the floor of the office. It was a vast open space save for a few sections of cubicles split up around the room, structured in defensive formations like Roman Army tortoises. A voice bellowed out of the central tortoise.

“Gordon! That guy better be here soon, I need to start mapping the western district and I’ve still got no bars. This is totally your fault Eric. You’ve been jacking onto the Dark Feeds again in the squat area – we can all hear you! It doesn’t take anyone that long to evacuate – and you know those sites take up all the bandwidth. We had to pitch for that bandwidth! That’s company bandwidth, not Eric’s private-fucking-wankwidth”. 
Martin groaned and flexed his shoulders back. “It’s not a bandwidth problem. I did a test before I stepped in the building. Dark Feeds don’t actually leech that much, you’re probably losing more with your cartography scripts.”Gordon pulled a zany face. “Oh Leanne! Leave Eric alone, we’re a modern workplace, I haven’t put any browser locks in place with good reason, I want this environment to feel free...less corpy – more vibey.” He made a wiggly gesture with his hand as Martin stepped away from him towards the cubicle structure.

Inside it was dark, save for the glow of the monitor panels and the blinking diodes of the server blocks. Leanne and Eric sat next to each other. Both wearing the familiar garb of the suit class. Heavy duty slacks or pencil skirts with black webbing holsters. Crisp armour plated collared shirts and open neck blouses with their colourful ties or scarves wrapped around their heads. Each of them was equipped with a H&S Machine Pistol. Martin eyeballed Leanne’s, it was chrome plated with pink enamel. A tiny heart-shaped locket hung from the base of the grip. “Cute” – he thought.

“Nice custom job” Martin pointed at Leanne’s sidearm whilst unstrapping his smart pad.

“Thanks.” Leanne replied curtly.

“So what’s your count?” Martin manoeuvred himself under Leanne’s desk and started fiddling with her CPU Stack.

“19.”

“Oh nice yeah, just starting...I get it.” Leanne rolled her eyes. “Obviously I see a bit more action than you guys, being on the road. I’m up a few tiers – beyond numerical you know?”

“Are you ranked?” Eric interjected excitedly. Leanne just huffed.

“I’m kind of beyond the system now. They won’t let me on the ranges. I just get sent stuff from the companies these days to test. If they’ve got some new tech they want in the field – I’ll get the call.” He pointlessly unplugged and replugged a few optical wires, trying to get a decent view between Leanne’s legs.

“Wow that’s so cool – my brother-in-law was in the last Hyper Conflict and he got to fly a Rail-Chopper.”

“Oh the old Rail-Chopper...yeah I flew a few of those. I reckon the Tracer Mechs are better, they’re not out yet, but the boys at The Armoury let me pilot one. You know, the privileges of being in a certain tier.”

“That’s cool!”

“It was fine.”

“When are you going to be done?” Leanne tutted hastily.

“Well, it looks like your S1 line is completely fragged, I’m guessing your server is overloading from trying to overlap too many archive files. I’m going to have to decommission the operating system and then re-execute it from a different node.”

“Fucking fruits” Leanne muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You use the OS. Guess that makes you a fruit too...”

“Is it going to take long?!” Gordon frantically poked his head around the side of the cubicle. Martin ignored him, standing up from underneath the desk and approaching the server stack. He pulled out the largest cable and started counting under his breath. The monitors went dead. Once he reached thirty he plugged it back in, there was a satisfying thud as the systems bounced back into life.

“Give it about fifteen-minutes and you should be re-connected the main uplink. If it doesn’t work you’ll probably have to look at your equipment. Not exactly top of the line stuff this – you’re at least three cycles behind.”

Gordon frowned, “I knew it. I knew it. I knew we should have gone for fresher models. But we’re a startup! We spent most of our funding on this office. I mean the ammunition alone needed to move in nearly bankrupted us in Q1.”

“Yeah it’s a premium space.” Martin stepped out of the cubicle and looked around. So it’s just the twenty-four machines you’ve got running here right? That’s what the support ticket said.”

“Twenty-four, exactly right.”

Martin groaned, and lifted up his smart pad to Gordon’s face. “Well my scanner here’s picking up an extra ten. You sure you’re the only corp in the building?”

“Yes...we flushed it three quarters back. Could it be leechers?”

“Nah, these’r wired in.”

“Oh. Well. I’m not sure then.” Gordon shifted his weight. Martin pushed his hands through his ponytail, re-tightening it.

“You’re not running a sub-corp are you Gordon? You know the Council doesn’t allow that.” Martin tapped at his smart pad. “I’m seeing a lot of IP activity here, a lot of incoming traffic. Is your site even operational yet?”

“Ah yes...that’s probably testers. We run a pretty rigorous QA.”

“No. No it’s not testers. This traffic has the same attribution matrix as a merchant site. What are you side hustling?”

“Hustling?! How preposterous.”

Suddenly Leanne emerged from the cubicle fortress with her pistol aimed at Martin “Enough questions!” Martin unsheathed an Ejector Tool from his watch strap and spun Gordon around, holding the tip at his jugular.

“Oh what are you going to do – eject his SIM card?” Leanne scoffed.

“This wasn’t made in California. Don’t take another step.” Martin intensified his grip on Gordon.

“Ok ok! It’s a drop ship scheme.” Gordon blubbed. “We’re getting decommissioned white-labeled eye protectors from the Outer Zone, re-distributing them through a third-party decontamination plant, having them solarized and then vending them via an integrated community based merchant system to the upper hemisphere.”

“Sunglasses...you’re selling sunglasses to the solar zone.”

“It’s just until we get the user base higher!” Gordon pleaded.

“Great. Well now I have to kill him” Leanne pulled the hammer back.

“Don’t!” Eric screamed. “He’s certified!”

***

Martin stepped back into the cabin of the van and tossed his satchel onto the passenger seat. It made a squelch as it landed. He chuckled to himself, Suit scalps paid triple, he was looking at a few extra oxygen tanks for this job, maybe a firmware update. He clipped Leanne’s heart-shaped locket onto the keys and fired up the motor.