[Felix - 8] The Resistance of Memory

This was probably not the smartest idea I'd ever had. I tried to think of which things I'd done that were dumber than this, but I was drawing a blank. Admittedly that was only about 5 years of time to draw from, but in that time I think I acted mostly logically.

I hadn't been able to shake Daphne's interview and questions since it occurred this morning, and after working some other cases on higher priority, I had an idea. Now I was looking at the building where Travis truedied. And by that, I mean I physically went to the spot.

I am not a field investigator. Vanessa and Jason were, and even they usually didn't do this sort of thing. But I was suppose to keep quiet about the investigation, and get more details. So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that meant I should go and check out the building in meatspace. I requisitioned one of the travel auditing kits. They came in a large metallic tube, maybe 13 centimeters in diameter and nearly a meter tall. It had a carrying handle I used when walking, as that was more comfortable than the weird shoulder sling. I think a package magnet grip would be better, but I guessed since the kit was sensitive they didn't want to use that.

The autocab dropped me off a few buildings away, since there were no traversable paths to the entrance. They were just the narrow winding corridors between the residential buildings. Presumably days before, Travis had walked this same corridor. It was a cluttered area, one that didn't get the same amount of cleaning drones as my sector, and was hubward and low, with little air current to move things. Container boxes piled up outside of brushed metal doors, codelocked to keep people out, but not worth enough to put inside the cramped living environments. These were as close to slums as the sprawl had, to my knowledge.

It was a place where less Corp interaction occurred, so less Federation happened. Most of the people living here were probably transplants from another sprawl who got the short stick, or they were non-corp citizens in need of housing or on long work rotations without Corp backing. Some were non-federation integrants, people from the frags who wanted to be brought back into the fold, but had to fight through bureaucracy first.

Since they were low value and low priority areas, it was little shock that they only had DNA marker scanners active in this area. No imaging devices or disturbance trackers. These trackers weren't even aligned to triangulate, either. It was more for tallying up the people who traversed the area. More like a bare minimum appeasement of some regulation than part of the normal sprawl monitoring systems.

Tracking my own movements from the Autocab to the building helped me assess what sensors would have been seen. After wandering a few of the corridors, I found that there was only one path from the last sensor tagged by Travis to the place of death.

I finally walked into the building and found, as I feared, they had already restored and replaced everything inside. The hidden room had been removed for storage. A cursory scan with the device yielded nothing useful. Some residents passed me and gave me a wary eye, but most ignored me once they saw the investigation badge and equipment. After the initial battery of tests, I packed up the instrument. There was nothing to be found here that wasn't already noted.

But I had another thought. I walked back to where I could hail the autocab, and spent a few minutes tapped into Novost resources scouring for similar floor plans. These fabricated buildings hubward weren't likely to be unique architectures. There may be dozens of this exact same model. At least 3 of them came up as being the same build type, but much like this one, no current floor layout was recorded. I checked if any had minimal sensors, and set my destination as the closest that met my criteria.

~~~

86-12 NNW sector held a dingy apartment block called The Heavenly Greens. Dust and debris cluttered the edges of the walkways and door frames, and there were signs of disrepair on the buildings. This was clearly a worse area than where Travis was meeting, and I decided to start recording my surroundings, in case something unfortunate happened. I'd never found a place of Epsilon sprawl that was disconcerting until stepping into this alley. I'd heard rumors of gangs and other syndicates within the sprawl, but this was the stereotyped area it would be in, if movies meant anything.

Of course, I was also standing here in Novost gear, holding an investigation kit. So I was also hoping I was right. I set my head unit to record what I saw, and tapped into the sensors in the nearby radius. Just DNA and a few movement trackers. At least if a battalion of armed mercenaries descended on me, I'd have a few minutes to react. I found the building shape I was looking for, and used my investigation override to get in the door. It was all audited, but there was at least a 48 hour window before anyone came asking me questions.

My breath caught a little. Ahead of me was a thin corridor, which then turned to go down the main hallway of the unit. Based off this layout, it may still have that service closet behind the wall. I set up the investigation kit, and scanned for the entry pad. I hadn't realized how nervous I would be while I waited to see if this was the same or not. The glasses showed me the progress, and provided the overlay of the foyer and architecture. Initial sensor sweeps were highlighting the walls and frames, then surface penetrating scans swept the room, a soft hum grew from inside the tube, which was now splayed open on a tripod base. Visual queues updated, and I saw the outline of a door, hidden in the wall. My breath caught in my throat. If this was another deal room, there could be something happening right now. I looked about nervously, but the area was empty. It was the middle of first shift for the city, and I guessed most of the people here didn't linger about unless they had to. I changed the scan order and called up thermal imaging next, to see if there were any bodies in the room.

Various service pipes illuminated in the walls and floors, but nothing humanoid appeared in the room. From the scans, it looked like the only thing in the room was a table. Not even chairs to go along with it. Whether it was bravery or curiosity, I'm not sure, but I decided I had to see inside that room. There could be information there invisible to the scans that would shed much needed light on this case. So I called up the scans, pieced together the data, and found a likely spot for the controller interface. Just next to the door outline was a pressure pad, with some key entry system. Thermals showed nothing useful about the pad, so I decided to give in and tap the pad. Nothing happened at first, nothing to show it wasn't just a piece of the wall. I tapped a few more times, and then a faint numeric keypad appeared. Zero through nine, in a 2x5 horizontal grid. There was a large number of permutations if it was a 4 key combination, and even more if it was arbitrary length.

But the good news is that humans are lazy creatures, so I tried the simple patterns.
0-1-2-3-4? Nothing. 5-6-7-8-9? Nothing. 9-8-7-6-5-4... and with a click, the edges of the door revealed themselves and recessed faintly. I cautiously pushed it opened, expecting sirens or explosions, or any number of horrible events. But the door swung noiselessly inward. Not even a pocket door, but a hinged door! A rarity around here.

I folded up the scanner, and stepped into the room, checking the back of the door and found a simple metal rail on the back side that looked to act as the opening mechanism. If I got trapped, at least there was signal and I could call for backup. I'd have to explain how I got in such a ridiculous predicament, but I suspected if I said it was for the PATs all would be forgiven. That was my hope, anyway.

I pushed the door shut, gingerly. Waiting again for explosions or Klaxon horns. When nothing happened, I surveyed the room. It was empty, save for a simple fabricated table. Nothing on the walls of interest, no signs of contraband or illegal items. Just some basic lighting along the ceiling.

No, that's not true, I thought. There was clearly some sound dampening in this room. Something here prevented external sound from bleeding in. I'd guess it was a dampener material in the walls. Maybe the previous report had something about that, but it didn't strike me as familiar. Now I wondered if it was shielded by something. maybe my IR scan was a false readout.

I propped up the field kit again, this time next to the table. I didn't trust the table just yet, so I avoided touching it. I'd let the scan tell me if it was safe or not. After extending the tripod and initiating scans, I found the room was a little less spartan than I thought. The table had embedded electronics, and the walls contained extra sensors and equipment for scrambling external readings. I saw now that the room was warmer than external scans showed, and now everything beyond this room was opaque to me.

I'm starting to think these aren't transaction rooms, but interrogation rooms. I tried my comms, and found that I was still able to reach the outside world. Maybe it required something be activated to get it into full lockdown mode? I checked the handle on the door. It didn't immediately open, and I started to panic. The door shimmered, and a vague outline of the exterior hall appeared. A hunched figured was walking down the corridor, headed for the exit. There was a red light near the handle, where my hand rested. I watched, and after he stepped outside and the door behind him shut, the light went green, and the exterior feed died. The door clicked open smoothly. I checked the hall, found it empty, and shut the door again.

At least now I had an explanation for why these weren't located before. It's not perfect secrecy, but it's a lot more effort than most people would put into units in this area.

I tapped back into the kit, to check it's scans. Nothing in here stood out as specifically dangerous. Even the small implants in the walls were just for deflection and hiding. Nothing analyzed as explosive. I tapped the table, but nothing happened. Unlike the door, it looked like this required some type of near-field authentication. The kit didn't provide anything interesting. It did it's initial scan of the connections but found nothing open. The table was locked. This would be the point where some more specific teams could start to dig in and assess it.

Though this building wasn't Novost property, to my knowledge. So maybe the PATs would have to be the ones to assess and bag it. I folded up the kit, and labeled some of my review of the room. I should probably send it to Daphne now, but I wanted to take it back to my workstation and review it first. See if there was anything of interest before the PAT stepped in and took away my data.

I folded up the gear and had just put my hand on the kit when the door swung open. A gangly man, with subdermal piercings resembling horns above his eyes stepped in. He and I exchanged bewildered looks, assessing each other. While he looked at my Novost uniform, I looked over his pleather bouncer suit, white tie with shifting symbols flowing across it, and dermal tattoos lining his jaw and leading up to the horns, before disappearing beneath his neon purple dreadlocks.

When the shock wore off, his expression darkened, and he twisted his right arm behind his jacked to grab the handle of some weapon. Adrenaline kicked in, and I rushed forward, pinching him in the doorway. It pinned his arm long enough for me to swap my grip on the kit, now wielding it like a club. He pushed the door open, bringing out a deep grey pistol shape, simplistic outer cowling that hid whatever type it was. I cracked the kit into his gun elbow, making him wince. He was already grabbing for my arm with his free hand, and I felt him clamp on to my upper right shoulder.

I replanted my foot, spinning my shoulder away from him which pulled him off balance and over my center of gravity. Using the kit as leverage, I put my other hand at the bottom and pushed across his chest, checking him into the other side of the doorway. This time his head made solid contact with the metal frame, jarring him enough to knock the gun loose. I kicked it away, and dropped just slightly downward before punching him in the kidney. The quick reflex took me out of his recovering grip and attempted bear hug. Sensing an opening, I pushed the kit against the side of his jaw and quickly kneed it from below, sending a sharp impact into the hinge and knocking him out. I dropped his lump body to the ground, breathing heavily.

My enhanced endocrine system providing the energy and adrenaline for me to check the hall for others, pulling up scans of how this guy could have gotten so close without me noticing, when I realized he wasn't appearing on any of the DNA tagging machines either. I scooped up the pistol and pulled the body into the room. This was a untagged person! My adrenaline flood stopped, and I wobbled on my legs, shooting out a hand to grab the wall and steady myself.

There lay a person who knew about these rooms, still alive, if bruised and unconscious, and I had just somehow managed to defeat him in hand-to-hand combat. How did I know how to do that? Was he-I combat trained?

I looked over the gun. I'd never seen one of these before, that I remembered. Aside from some basic training at Novost, weapons were new to me. I looked at the pistol, the unconscious man, and the room.

It was time to call Daphne.

Net Alignment: SegmentNet

[This is a short story because of the recent Net Neutrality vote by the FCC, and discussing government if it switched to Agile. It is not part of the other ongoing stories, nor in the same timeline.]

I waited until the surveillance drone passed before I pulled the Faraday blanket off my computer again. Thick clients were heavily audited in this current economic climate. Depending on how this sprint's elections went, there may be relaxed costs next cycle, but since each week the power could shift, I stayed in the habit of hiding my computing node.

I had a good 3 hours before the next audit sweep would occur, and I planned to get some more programming done during the window. I hooked up a power converter to my machine. It's voltage signature masked the computer, so my power company wouldn't charge me more. For the three hours, it would appear like a crock pot instead.

The compute node was black market, now. Decades ago you could have bought one in thousands of stores, but now these machines were hard to come by. They didn't have TMs, or Trust Modules, like they do now. My communicator had one. If there was any tampering, it would sever the connection and brick itself, and snitch on you. Jailbreaking was a criminal offense now, especially if the communicator were tampered with enough to bypass paywalls.

The paywalls kept the SegmentNet auditable. Each week they'd tally and bill you for the segments accessed, and the volume. Calculated bundles would be applied to the account, rollover credits, various buzzwords designed to make it sound like features were applied to the bill. Usually they'd coincide with the latest election sprint, to help favor particular policies and votes. Or when a topic was detrimental, they'd cut all access and you'd have to hear about it word-of-mouth from others.

I smirked. 'They.' it was a term I'd come to use more lately. Like a shadowy syndicate, they were the SegmentNet Providers. SNPs we're the unofficial monopolies. There were four of them now, dividing the country up into regions. Antitrust when the SegmentNet was first passed kept them from unifying, so they made an agreement. They withdrew from competing markets to minimize conflict. The arrangement worked well for them because with the sprint governance, no formalized suit could cover collusion on price setting, and by mapping their variations to the cycles, they kept the populace at rest. So yes, when I say "they," I really picture a dark smoke filled room of shadowy figures conspiring.

But this compute node, it was my escape plan. Most of the tech giants moved offshore when SegmentNet went live. They became their own independent non-nation organizations, with representation at the United Organizations, which rebranded when it was no longer just nations. And when those tech companies moved, they built their ocean data centers with massive uplinks, broadcasting to peering points. I lived too far inland for direct access, but The Mesh is what I've built this to access. NeoARPANet, more often just called The Mesh, is the new interconnected network. It's peer to peer, anonymous, and antiTrust Moduled. Part of the connection assertions look for TM signatures and avoid it if present. Much like how SegmentNet only replies if the handshake is proper, The Mesh won't respond to a TM handshake.

Getting online was difficult. With audit machines scanning for rogue access, I had to study the routes and connect only when it was safe. But with the last update I got from The Mesh, there is a new program that let's you monitor the patrols and go silent when a scan comes. Tracking the trackers is trivial, it turns out, especially for some of the other data giants. At one point leaflets were smuggled into our city, sponsored by one on them, to inform us of how to connect to The Mesh. The leaflets were made with a special ink that was uninterpretable by cameras and scans, due to printing a veneer of metallic ink across the whole sheet. Human eyes could decipher it, though, and that's how I got my first connection to the outside.

After lots of covert communications, I was able to buy a 1NPH, "one node per human," and get connected. Since then, I'd learned programming and how to integrate and improve my systems. My node was a heavily augmented one, using the original model as a foundation for expansion. I got interfacer goggles and gloves, and the power modulator to accommodate it.

The programming tonight was to get my node synced up with the drone sweeps. I couldn't be a full mesh relay until that was resolved. Throwing a Faraday cloth over it every 3 hours worked when I was just a consumer, but now I was a distributor. An enemy of the hegemony, and a symbol to the oppressed people.

From the Mesh, I learned about the Segment vote, the alignment of the peering points, the death of IP, and the birth of SNP. It was sad to read this and learn everything I was taught was the false story made up by the Victor. Accessing cryptohistory was incredible, seeing authoritative bodies outside our oligarchy attest and sign for these events was like having the veil torn from my eyes. And I saw the real world.

So now I distribute the leaflets after a government SCRUM, I attest to new nodes, and I subvert the monitors to bring information to my peers. Because we are not human resources to a machine, but individuals that use machines. We just have to squeeze out from beneath the current power to get ours back.

Knight To A5

[Previous: http://www.apocalemniscate.com/2016/05/knight-to-c6.html ]

He walked the dusty path west, AugR navigation giving a readout of the distance to Dennen. The AugR provided other useful data, like optimal walking paths, recent telemetry data, environmental factors, and biometrics. It was a frag town, not allocated to one of the federations, so regardless of it’s attempt at being Fed-linked, it wasn’t. And that’s why he liked it.

[Felix - 7] The Resistance of Memory

The night after a stimshow, especially a synesthesia one, is hard to recover from. Limbs don't move right, neurons firing randomly, and time doesn't feel like it flows in one direction, or at a consistent speed. By time I mastered enough limb coordination to get out of bed, Vanessa was gone. She might have been called for all I knew. Nothing paged for me though.

I had some impressive chemical compensators inside me, but the stims used in those shows circumvented a lot of them. Guess he wasn't worried about being poisoned. Or hells, maybe he was a stimshow addict, and made sure it would not be affected. Or maybe he'd never even been to a stimshow. If he– If I came from the wastes, maybe I'd never experienced one.

Though I still didn't think I was a wastewalker. I didn't have the tanned skin that was common. Unless that's just the stereotype, or something removed during my rebuild. Maybe more people have normal skin, they probably have some contained cities. I ought to look that up. Or maybe I had and the stims were just affecting me that much right now. It was hard to remember what happened before. I sighed, and started at the blank ceiling. No visual augments were on, so instead of a false sky or unnatural ceiling, I had a drab plastic expanse over my head.

The boring ceiling wasn't the cause of the sigh though. Waking up with slight amnesia after a stimshow was unnerving to me some days. It was like that first time waking up after being reconstructed. Waking up as Felix. And every time I did I wondered if when the memories came back, would even more return? It was an unanswered wish so far. I've walked this mental street before. It hasn't changed, and it's not helping. I needed to snap out of it.

With the PATs stepping in, I was back on routine investigations. Which meant I was also going back the office. I did my normal morning routine, shrugged off the lethargy and cleaned up, then summoned an autocab to take me to work. From my housing unit, it was a 45 minute cab to the Novost Insurance wing. It was just west of the central transit tower. The autocab sped easily through the city. Even in heavy commuter congestion the streamlined transit network optimized routes to ensure nearly perfect transport times. I think the longest commute I'd ever had sent me though the north outer wall line, and only added maybe 7 minutes to my commute time. The traveling salesman would have been pleased, if he still existed.

It was peak times, and I was on a popular line. Instead of a two-seater efficiency cab, I met a multidecker at the stop, with 5 other people there as well. I never looked up their names, but I'd seen them all before. Some had been here since I arrived, and had fairly predictable transit schedules. They were also Novost workers but no one in my department. Occasionally I'd see tall blonde talk with stout grey, and they were cordial, so I assumed they were peers. Close enough to acknowledge but not close enough to befriend. We embarked quickly, guided to designated seats for optimal positioning. Transit was the most efficient tech in the sprawls. It's part of why the federacies functioned. If they hadn't provided infrastructure, we'd probably all be out in the wastes still. 

My normal routine getting to the office was fine, until I approached my workstation. There was an unfamiliar person sitting there. Sometimes they shared out our workspace but this woman was dressed differently. In fact, she didn't even have Novost attire on. And the few others around the cubes were on edge. I guessed she was a PAT.

"Hello Felix" she said, not taking her eyes away from the screen. Now that I was closer, I could see she was wearing overlay contacts too. I had no idea what could be projected on her retinas, so maybe she had camera feeds, or maybe just great senses.

"Hello.. uh.. PAT?" I inquired, unsure how else to reply. She gave me a dry, mirthful smile. She was older than me, maybe late fifties if I had to guess based on normal aging. A little out of shape, based on her sitting posture, but still looked capable of a sprint in a pinch. Her hair was dyed a metallic white, either to hide age or provide false age. Her clothing looked like an older version of the Novost field suit, but with a long skirt and matching leggings, with a fitted top and jacket. The collar of the jacket was thicker than normal, laden with some perception tech was my guess. Maybe that's where the camera feeds came from. 

"Yes, though Daphne is my name. But if you prefer the term, you can just stick with PAT. I'm here regarding your investigation. We have most of the information we need already, but I want to ask you about some of these assessments, and to get your perspective on it." She stood up, with an air of authority, and turned to leave the room. There was some strange note in her voice with the word "perspective," but I couldn't quite sense what. "Follow me, please, so we can have privacy for this debrief."

The back of her coat was the insignia I expected to see at some point, but as a small lapel. Instead, it was the majority of the jacket back, a set of six interlocked hands with ribbon around them, stylized with equations and an outline of the planet. Across the top read "Propagation Adherence Team" with the initial capitals strangely prominent. All the eyes in the room followed her out, including me, trailing like a chastised pet.

Novost had an impressive investigation wing, with some modular rooms that would adapt to however many occupants you needed, within reason. But we passed all those. I had always used those rooms. Even if they were rarely the same shape, they were familiar. Instead we went to the lift, rode up three stories to a floor of never been on before, and I was greeted by a field research wing. Vanessa had never mentioned this, so I'm guessing it didn't get used as much. We would through some hallways, Daphne being tagged for access and approving a visitor. I heard her speak a few times to that end, but I never saw what prompted it.

Finally, we came to a conference room. It was one in a line of four or five, I thought. With a clear glass pane on the door revealing a cozy room inside. Daphne gestured me in, and when she shut the door behind her, the glass frosted over and became opaque. That was the first sign. My data feeds cut off afterwards, a slow whine of white noise spun up until nothing outside the room was perceptible. A tingling feeling swept my skin as a mild electric current was run through the air. If there were any listening devices on me, they were useless now. This was a lot more precaution than I expected.

"Alright Felix, now that it's clean, what do you know of the deceased in this case?" She was more animated in asking than I had seen her so far. The change in demeanor was unexpected, and this isolation room made me suddenly aware of how different this was. What I was afraid would be an interrogation was a discussion, and I didn't know how to react.

"Uh, sorry. What do you mean? You want me to replay my case notes?"

"No, I want your insights into these notes. There were three bodies in an unknown room. This is a fascinating case, and I'm sure you've collected some observations that go beyond the case work. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to see what small details you've thought of. Those are the things that make investigations."

This was not at all what I expected this to go like. The descriptions of PATs I had gotten made me think it was a black bag job. They'd step in an the problem would disappear. But they wanted my feelings? Was this some psychological warfare to see if I was in league with the dead people? That's possible, there were strange connections here with me. Certainly PAT wouldn't pass those up.

"I think they may have been brokering a trade. Meeting in an undocumented room, with what we assume is non-sprawl humans, means it was an unsanctioned trade. But I also think there's something specific to the area, like Travis favored this place or something. If they're non-sprawl, it would be much easier to meet off-sprawl. From the profile of Travis, it seems odd that he would put himself into a dangerous place like this, especially for an illicit trade.

"To what I know if them, this goes for the unions as well, I think they found a way around the DNA markers. Marker tracking was the only thing nearby here, and those two didn't show up. Maybe that's what Travis was selling, and it was a functional display?"

Daphne interjected at that. "Interesting. You mentioned the tracking, but not that it would be a sales tactic. I also saw your request for marker tech. That's classified data, but what were you looking to know?"

That tingling feeling returned. Was this an interrogation now? Daphne sensed my hesitation. She sighed, and adjusted her posture to a more relaxed form, before continuing softly.

"Agent Felix, this is not a meeting for self-incrimination. It is not illegal to query. I am offering that I can approve requests if I deem them relevant to this investigation. We need to know how a kinetically active person was able to get inside of the sprawl. I'm sure you've heard a great deal of whispers about the PATs and what villains we are, but I am just here for the same thing you want: answers. The difference is that my position allows me to open doors yours can't. So work with me here, help me find answers." She looked at me, imploring visually now too.

"Alright. My theory is that Travis had some extensive biotherapy, and was no longer showing up to DNA markers like he used to. I know, I know, I've been told that it's impossible to fake the markers, but I'm thinking there's some other possibility, like providing an alternate set of markers, or notifying the system to ignore certain patterns. We didn't recover any functional marker equipment from the splatters, but if they lacked sequencers, how would they have gotten through the building gates? I think there's something that lets them drop off the grid when desired, which is why I queried."

Daphne leaned back, steepling her fingers, which were well worn by time, bony and wrinkled, looking much older than she did. "Ah. Yes. That is a difficult question. As a primary identity system, asking how to bypass it raises some red flags. This line of inquiry has some strong merit. I also see why you left it out of your report. What else?"

I blinked. 'What else'? I was already surprised she even cared about this much, let alone my other musings. "At this point... well, at this point that was my next step. Without knowing more of the building, the residents, any of that, it's hard to posit much else."

She motioned to me to stand up as she also leaned forward to get up. "Unless you have other thoughts, I want to address this concern about the markers with my team. You should find out whatever else you can about the building and residents, if you think that path will yield anything fruitful. I am not your Lead, so need to work out with Phirenaius what your prioritization is. I will follow up with you in two days to see if you have more for me."

I stood up, trying not to rush, but ready to be out of the room. "I will review my notes and get back to you. And..." I hesitated for a moment,  "maybe this is overstepping, but will you let me know what you find?"

She smiled ruefully, and gave a mirthful snort. "I think you know enough about the PAT reputation to answer that question yourself, agent."

[Felix - 6] The Resistance of Memory

"Congratulations Felix, you've struck uranium." Phirenaius said, as soon as I opened the line. His words, always with a little weight, were obvious to me after all the jobs with him. It was effectively 'good job, bitbodger, you found something that may get you killed if you're not careful.'

"Yeah, I just saw the notice. So one of our splatters is kinetic. Well, was. You think that may be what flash ignited? Maybe he detonated the other guy and used too much?"

Phirenaius cringed a little, and pinched his nose. "This is one of those things you don't quite grasp, nube. Kinetics are banned. Meaning that not only was something strange happening here, but one of the few actual ordinances of Novost, of Epsilon... Hells, of the burning Federacies actually require is no Kinetics. It's the only addendum to the Propagation Treaty!"

Now that one I knew was important. The Propagation Treaty was the foundation of the Federacies. It outlines the ordinances that keeps all the Federacies linked, ensures the ports and railyards connect, and keeps our sprawl unified. Take that away, and Novost would be no different than a fragmented settlement in the wilds. The Propagation Treaty kept certain experiments from being repeated, most specifically anything pertaining to the Glazing. If there was even a risk of another hypercritical event, it was banned. It was designed to keep some structured civilization around on our new horror-formed Earth.

But I had no idea that Kinetics fell under that treaty. From what little I read of it, most kinetics had either so little sensitivity to ambient energy that it never manifested, and if it did, they usually ended up killing themselves. Not intentionally, I'm sure, but if you don't know how to wield ambient energy and quantum forces, there's a very high chance you'll kill yourself before you ever get to learn. So, yeah, most of them died.

Phirenaius continued. "Kinetics are feared because they're instability is classified as potentially hypercritical in the addendum. Which means that all large population centers are terrified that one of these time bomb humans will detonate and glaze them and everyone they've cared about before they know what happened. So when I tell you that you need to stop your work on this investigation, as much as you want to argue, you should instead agree and take a break while further investigation is done by the teams allocated to that work."

My mouth had already opened to argue when I processed his response. I shut my mouth, and tried to work through it a bit more. This whole classification of kinetics as possible hypercriticals seemed like a big jump. From what little understanding I had, it was more like they acted like an energy vacuum than an energy eruption. But since most of the data had been classified and restricted on them, the only data available was part of the untrusted noise of the data vaults. The rants of conspiracy theorists, propaganda from the frags, Markov chain history generations, and some eyewitness accounts added up to a lot of conflicting and untrustworthy information. About the only reliable data I could suss from it was that the kinetic traits appeared during the twenty years following the glazing. So something in that rearrangement of the planet ecosystem opened up this new mutation for humans.

Taking my contemplative silence for assent, Phirenaius elaborated. "There is a protocol for reacting to indications of kinetic traits present inside of the sprawl, and we will defer to the organization that handles that. If they contact you for information, you are to yield data to them as requested, and comply with their needs. Understood?"

"Understood, sir. I will stand down unless requested." Begrudgingly.

Checking the clock, it was growing close to when I needed to meet with Vanessa, and now I was shelved while some new group took over. I certainly didn't want to be sidelined, but until something changed, there wasn't much I could do. Plus the prospect of impressing Vanessa by getting to the restaurant early was inviting.

~~~

Sitting inside of NuRaMin was a visual assault I was unprepared for. The trend with noodle bars had mostly been to approximate traditional settings as closely as possible, fabbing old materials and archaic lighting elements. But this place rejected the premise, and seemed to be trying it's best to duplicate a stimshow. Flickering neon elements were recessed behind metallic shapes all across the room. The tables were extruded metallic mushrooms with iridescent highlights. Near-field projections added non-augmented flair to the already exciting room. Automated arms transferred meals from a kitchen to the tables, depositing them into geometric nightmares that vaguely resembled bowls. Vanessa was more intrigued by the explosions of colors and shapes happening here, but we were both a bit overwhelmed by the ambiance.

"So you are shelved for now." Vanessa recapped, mulling it over while idly twisting noodles onto her chopsticks as though she were knitting.

"Yeah." I sighed, taking a sip of my synthohol. This sweet one was chilled and milky, something to accompany the meal. "As soon as it flagged for the DNA match, I was pulled, and I guess they've handed it over to this new group."

"I've only been on one investigation where that happened." Vanessa offered. "It was strange. They're called Propagation Adherence Teams, and aren't even part of the corp. Thom in my division had worked with them before, and referred to them as 'PATs.' I suspect they're all funded by some transit pool or something, but they definitely act like they own the place. The group I worked work wasn't even based out of Epsilon. They were from Gamma I think? I don't remember. They waltzed in, reviewed all materials, and then in 36 hours they handed it back to us."

"Wow. Was that also a kinetic incident?"

Vanessa shivered. "No, thankfully. It was just for a science experiment. Someone was running an illegal energy shop on the east edge of town. Mostly using it for powering illicit tech and some stim generators, but we found a microcollider there, which triggered an immediate call to the PATs. I'd rather deal with a machine than a human any day."

Again, the same worried reaction Phirenaius had when Kinetics came up. "What is it about kinetics that panics people so much around here?" I ventured.

Vanessa stared at me, wide eyed, like I'd just suggested we try and procreate in the middle of the noodle bar. She started to reply with something caustic, but I think realized that I was in fact born yesterday. "Sorry, it's hard to remember sometimes that... well, you didn't grow up here. Kinetics are the monsters under the bed here. We grew up with the threat that someone may spontaneously combust, turning us to glass if we weren't careful and didn't take precautions. I now realize it was a technique the sprawl used to have peer pressure ensure all people were treated and genetically tagged, but it's hard to get past that ingrained panic when I hear the term."

"So what happened when someone was found?"

"Well, honestly, it never happened for me. I can't think of any instance where the markers came back and they were kinetically active. New people would get marked, and were labeled safe, so everything was fine. This is the first instance I've even heard of it. and I suspect you aren't suppose to tell anyone."

Well, she was probably right on that part. I wasn't given explicit orders not to talk about the results, but I had to find out what the big deal was, and Vanessa was someone who I could trust. Though, maybe a crowded noodle bar was not the right place. I picked up another bunch of noodles while that thought lingered.

Alright, so, if I were sidelined, I could go back to other work. I could also poke more at the side issue of what brought Travis back to Epsilon, or what he was doing in the intervening years. But that also seemed a little too close to the investigation. Maybe it was best to take the break and revisit it once the PATs were done. Hopefully it would be a short delay.

"Changing subjects because we should," Vanessa started, "I think we should do that stimshow tonight. You're shelved, I'm free, and you've blown it off for days. Plus Conrad's working tonight at one of the synesthesia clubs. It'll be good."

I wanted to have a reason not to. But honestly, I couldn't think of any good points. I just had this nagging, longing that maybe something about me would tumble loose if I worked on the case more. But Vanessa grabbed my hand on the table, and between her smile and the hand, I couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather be than by her side for the night. Wherever that may take us.

[Karlos - 2] Open Sesame

I walked out into the garden. It was tiered, a few decimeters in height separated the grass slabs. Whatever engineered grass it was seemed fully content to grow along whatever surface it was adhered to, making for strange walls of manicured grass. ShinKyo didn't skimp on this park. It was lavish, as far as parks went. I had never seen an open park this well maintained. Most of the sprawl parks were concrete or other high durability solids, designed for basic meeting space or synthetic plant life. Real agriculture took time and infrastructure their didn't want to spend. A fairly well kept woman in her late years stood leaning on a cane in the middle of the large grass expanse before me. At the edges of the area bodyguards circled. They were indistinguishable in their riot gear, the masks and large build making it hard to differentiate. I then realized they were also wearing active camouflage ripplesuits. So I couldn't place genders even if I cared. But I didn't. I was more preoccupied by the woman. She was obviously my “Anon” contact. And this meant she was not concerned with recognition right now. Moreover, she picked a very popular park for this meeting. It was to make sure I was completely off balance. No comfort, no position to bargain, just at her mercy. It was brilliant, though I didn't appreciate being the trapped one.

Of course, were I truly trapped there would be no way I would walk in placidly, like I just did. On my way, I contacted Hyathi, who I’ve run with a few times, who could surveil for me while I traveled across the sprawl. Hyathi was good, maybe the best delver I’d ever worked with. They could pull off miracles in minutes, and seemed to always be tapped into city infrastructure. Honestly, I had never met them, it could be a team of people for all I knew. They always spoke like a collective, ungendered, and in terse phrases. If I were superstitious, I’d almost believe the stories that Hyathi was an AI, but I’m not that much of a sucker, contrary to the current situation.

So on the way over, I had Hyathi pull all the feeds from the area. I saw this woman arrive, my new “Anon” who I am pretty sure from digital biometrics and environmental readings was not comfortable with this, but I didn't know why. Yet. Hyathi was still running the DNA markers on Carolyn Aduu, to find out why she was involved in this. If they were going to use my sprawl name, then I was going to use hers. It was mostly to regain some bargaining power. Hyathi gave me great information on this meeting, but there was no way to know what this meeting was about.

I stepped up to her. I’d put my mask back on, a black vulpine motif with red contour lines running from the chin up. My now proper outfit was a tough gray tailcoat, with red trim, and a black pair of sleek trousers with concealed pockets. My boots, top of the line style with every traction option you could imagine, left virtually no imprint in the grass, despite my mass. I wasn’t fat, but I was tall, and stood 38 centimeters above my contact. The boots however worked to redistribute all of the force through modular connectors at the base of the shoes, allowing it to form and distribute against most surfaces, even adhering to some materials. I enjoyed being like a ghost as I approached her. I was still nothing like the active camo bruisers around me though, probably wielding percussion weapons too. She maintained the appearance of calmness, though biometrics showed elevation in heart rate. We were a meter apart now. The park empty save us, but no guarantee who was watching.

“Though I could call you Carol, I would prefer we stick to you being Anon and me being Canisaureus. If you cannot abide, then we should end this contract now.” Like it ought to have ended, I glowered under my mask. Voice modulation controlled my output, removing as many identifiable traits as I could.

“Certainly, Canisaureus. I wouldn’t want to be seen as careless.” The accented voice was surprising, but the rhyming of ‘careless’ echoed my name ‘Karlos’ enough to drive home the point. ‘You having information doesn’t remove our control.’ But I did make it more even.

“The purpose of this meeting is that you've passed the first trial, and we need your expertise for a more pressing matter.” She said, and I was still unable to place the accent. It was another thing that made this whole scenario weird. Accents were rare. There was enough common communication between sprawls that it just didn't vary much anymore. Wastelanders and fraggers would sometimes speak with some slang or accent, but that was rare. This was almost like a generational gap, like she hadn't kept up with the transitions. I made a note to try and place the speech with my recording later. “Consider it as an interview to ensure you had the skills needed. We are now hiring you to track down a different shipment, inside the Sprawl.”

She started walking north from the park, heading northwest. She used the cane to walk, favoring her left leg. I assumed it was part of the theater happening here. No way she wasn't rich enough to afford reconstruction if it were a legitimate injury. I stayed motionless as she started walking, as did the guards. Finally she turned and motioned me to follow. “Reactions like that are why we want you, specifically. I'm sure you've been studying the park too, based off the countermeasures we had on the park surveillance. However it was done was clever, we have no other traces of it, but we know it was accessed. It shows creativity. We'll talk more when we arrive elsewhere.”

She was still walking with the same limp, so even with her seemingly hurried pace, the rest of us were gliding slowly behind her. Guessing from the park design and schematics of the surroundings, I think we were walking towards a larger structure where transit vehicles were stored when out of service. Most of it was automated, so it was an idea place to have a private talk, or to dump a body. Hopefully it wasn't my body they planned to dump. The guards cycled positions, alternating where they were and how they crossed over. They were very tactical, and clearly well trained. I'd venture this was a group that went to the frags, so maybe that was her accent.

The stepped grass gave way to sloped greens, then to flat concrete with a few hedge boxes. Finally it spilled out into the normal digitally-augmented streets. Demarcation guides noted it was safe to cross, as no traffic was routing through here currently. Optimization probably ignored this path when possible, given the routes it connected. I tried pinging Hyathi for schematics of the lot and cameras, but I suspect they picked up that they were tagged. I had a small packed file, which decompressed into a basic map of a few possible buildings and some listening reverse shells. Looks like Hyathi planned ahead and didn't leave me high and dry, but didn't want to keep a line open while I was being monitored.

My Anon stepped up to a flat edge of the support structure. It was fused metal panels, but small notches in the side indicated a maintenance panel. She pressed her left hand to the deeper indentation. Faint light traces occurred in the panel, then the outline of a doorway appeared. The metal door recessed and slid into the wall. Interior lights flicked on, diodes flaring to life and casting a bluish light into the half-sterile room, which abruptly opened into a larger mechanical maw. A complex array of mechanical limbs lay motionless under the half-spilled light. As the first of the guards stepped in ahead of Anon, they fanned out into the open space. Lights bloomed in step with them, always casting illumination as they walked, giving more visibility to the immediate machines and giving hazy shape to hundreds more. I followed in, and we stepped between repair arms and diagnostic probes, around large vehicles in various states, to come to an empty working bay. The large open space was probably 12 meters on each side. The slab floor had divots for equipment, and permanent stains from.various mechanical materials and fluids, though none obviously blood.

Anon went glassy-eyed for a moment, likely giving or receiving commands. Once satisfied with the answer her vision returned tk the lrwn, and she manifest an identifier on the cloth on her arm. “I have critical and confidential information to share with you, and I want you to accept the connection, Canisaureus” Good. She was following protocols now.

“Accepted.” I said as I let my visual AugR interpreter run the sequence and establish connection. Now that the digital handshake was accomplished,. She spoke directly to my channel. She obviously had some good derms, because I saw no obvious uplinks, and yet she was in full language transmission mode without moving any of her body. Again, weird.

“Our client has selected you based off your resoursefulness and the unique importance of this mission. The previous assignment was a test, and an information gathering session. You are our preferred candidate, which is why we are offering you the job, with… certain incentives.”

“Selling my Sprawl name to people who I've crossed before, you mean.” her eyes narrowed, the only indicator that I was taking to her and no someone puppeting the connection.

“it is leverage and insurance, yes.  You will be reimbursed well for your work, but there is equal consequence if you fail.”

“So what could possibly be so important you were going to such great lengths that this was a reasonable course of action in hiring a runner?”

She tapped her cane with her finger, and a blueprint file appeared in our channel. Upon opening it, I was greeted by schematics for something nearly incomprehensible. She guided me to a specific focal area, now more obviously a map of some topographical feature. Based off the data, I'd wager SK was bankrolling this whole thing, but obviously nothing provable. At first I thought it was some subsection of our sprawl, but I’d never seen those strange curving tubes before. They dominated much of the structures, like vines grown around a pillar in some greco-roman fantasy building. But they weren’t just growing, they were distributed. There was mathematical precision to the layout. As Anon guided the display, I finally grasped a sense of the scale, and yet again on this nightmarish day my stomach knotted itself.

Anon must have caught the change. “Ah. So now you recognise the schematics, do you? Now does it make sense why I didn’t establish the normal broker chain? I dare not let any third parties in on this plan. Even their neutrality may be questioned on this sort of job.”

I tried to remain calm. It took all my strength not to put my head in my hands while trying to wrap my brain around this task.

“Can you continue?” The Anon prodded, looking at me in the same dull fashion she did when I first arrived, like she hadn’t just proposed the impossible to me. “As you’ve not rejected the plan yet, I will continue.”

She zoomed more in, showing what now I realized was a long, fat building, maybe 20 meters square on the front, and nearly 100 meters long. Several tubes terminated in the top of it, and latticework cables fanned out from the terminators into various sockets on the building. Several faint cutouts on the building were then highlighted.

“What we are hiring you to do is to find a way to infiltrate those panels. Whether you use a surveillance drone, affix something to the normal couriers, or do it yourself is inconsequential to us. If you can get even a glimpse inside, we will reward you handsomely. And if you can get us a data uplink inside it… well, I assure you that credit will never be a problem for you again.”

That promise snapped me out of the fear. Unlimited credit? If it were SK on the role, it may only apply to this sprawl, but even that is a rather tall promise, and one not to be lightly dismissed. But this, this was the impossible. This was the stuff of rumors, whispered legend. Unsubstantiated lore told of runners who made it inside, finding abandoned cities of wealth, or computing clusters beyond comprehension. They described it like fantasy castles of old, protected by mechanical dragons, wielding biomechanical magic. But when faced with remarkably detailed blueprints, well, maybe it was time for me to try my hand as stealing treasure.

“Well…” I cleared my throat. “Well, if we’re going to break into an Arcology, you’ll need to give me a lot more than a blueprint.”

[Felix - 5] The Resistance of Memory

“You've got quite the setup here, Felix.” Vanessa purred over the music. Snapping me out from my focus, I flinched and shuddered strong enough to slosh coffee on my hand. I looked around, worried my reverie had been in the office, but I was still at home, except somehow Vanessa slipped into the apartment, wearing full work garb. Probably easy to do over the music I'd been blaring. Complex synthesized chord progressions helped me focus on these kinds of problems. It helped me get into the mindset of too many concurrent things.

I muted the music and willed the ripplesuit to clean off my hand. She stepped back and looked around the room, amused. "You do recall ACL’ing me here, right? When you hadn't been in the office for a while I got worried. And then you missed the stimshow you suggested we go to last night." She turned back to me, with a frown now. "You've also been ignoring your display."

When I noticed her eyeing the screens, I blanked them all. She was even more shocked at that, looking to me with questioning, indignant eyes. I preempted the next question. 

"Before you ask, just think about under what circumstances I would not be in the office, I would be hiding theoretical case files from you, and would be unable to discuss what was happening, if that were what I was doing." She paused at that, pulling her hands back to her side.

"I understand," she said slowly, meaningfully, "and I hope you are able to work at the office again soon. If you're not too busy with... things, we should do dinner tonight." Her eyes flitted towards the bed. "Or perhaps just meet elsewhere."

I stood up, leaving the treacherous coffee at rest. This was something Phirenaius hinted at, was that it may cause strain. Whether he knew Vanessa was a friend or an occasional bedfellow, I'm not sure. But seeing the hurt in her eyes when I had to hide something, that started to make me realize just what I had signed up for.

"That sounds great, Vanessa. I'd love to do that. You give me a time and I will meet you there. Or maybe we can meet at your place, if you're so inclined. But for now, I have to... " I trailed off, at a loss for words.

"Yes, I can see you're busy. I'll see you tonight at local 7. We'll go to the new noodle bar." She nodded, then turned to leave. It was a formal tone. I knew the tone, she was annoyed that I was hiding things, but she also picked up that I couldn't say anything. At least her being familiar with our policies she understood why I couldn't. But I know that feeling. I've been on the other side, and it's frustrating.

After she left, I set a timer for an hour before or meeting time, to make sure I broke away and prepared for a meal out. Noodle bars were popular this cycle. Several new food locales switched to it and provided some spectrum of crafted foods. Some specialized in long, thin kinds in a salty broth, and others in heavy thick sheets in a variety of sauces and toppings. This one advertised plenty of odd shapes and custom cooking. I think she chose it just because it wasn't Novost-owned. Independent restaurateurs still started up from time to time, sometimes franchised from a bigger group, other times just a new Sprawl denizen trying to make a living outside of the Novost control. Besides trendy, I think it was high value this round for nutrition scores. Vanessa had been scoring well on her meals lately.

Pulling back up the work screens, I felt a bit guilty. I was looking at this case primarily from how I could learn about me. It's why I sank so many hours and nights into it. But the primary objective was to find out why Travis died now, not five years ago. Vanessa gave me a wake-up call, which was probably her intention. She was also a good investigator, after all. Not answering my messages and such a few days after getting called in, from a party I was distant at? She made the right call.

I cleared my digital workspace, and pulled up the relevant notes from the current case. Travis has been reported dead, along with some unknown number of other people, in the polar south of the city. There were only scattered body fragments left, which was gruesome in its own right, but I had to review it. Preliminary ballistics calculated it was around 12 cubic centimeters of a high-grade chemical explosive. It was enough to carbonize most materials in close proximity, and the rest were charred remnants. From the bio screen we isolated at least two other DNA patterns.

But this is where things get weird. The area where it was found was an unallocated maintenance corridor in a dense residential sector. Most schematics of the area show it as utility space, but it didn't have the normal piping or conduits expected for it. It was also suppose to be walled, and there were no apparent indicators that the previous walls has been removed recently. It looked like the whole corridor has been rebuilt to act as a meeting space. The blast ripped through the walls around the center, blistering out into adjacent units. There was one other bystander who had a limb mangled by it, but he was full resident and was having his leg regenerated. For pain management, they induced a comatose state, and he'd be out for at least 36 hours. So he wouldn't be of help for an interview until then.

The blast pattern and carbon makes it look like the explosive detonated between two of the people, Travis and one of the others. The third was nearby, but not as close. Based off the spread, looks like it was a targeted charge. I queued up some additional blast pattern calculations to see what shape the charge may have been, maybe give a better understanding of what was happening. But there was only so much I could learn from a blast, especially in an effectively sterile room, so I needed to expand the scope.

I tried to pull all the local monitoring segments, see if I could re-create the pedestrian traffic. It was a tight residential corridor, no autocab traffic directly to it, and only winding service halls leading to it. The building wasn't even freestanding anymore, from the densification of the adjacent shops and housing. Most walls were connected, or reinforcing each other. I opened a few of the maintenance notifications for these, but a handful out of thousands wouldn't tell me much. And there wasn't any easily indexable materials on them for this building alone, so I'd need some other pivot point.

Bio scanners were frequent in the area, but none of them were tied to cameras or geotags, so apart from a general vicinity, I had no idea who went where. Taking all of the scanners within a 4 block radius yielded 4,682 distinct genetic markers over the 24 hour window surrounding the detonation, which at least included the hour prior to the detonation when Travis arrived. Still too much volume, and apart from spot checks, I'd need something better to refine it with. I'd filter tenants, but maybe they did live there. It would explain how they knew the corridor was available. But still, that seemed tenuous.

I leaned back in my chair, stretching my hands above my head, getting all sorts of pops from joints. "Huh." I looked at my hands blocking the ceiling, something felt like it was at the edge of reach. "There were no other marker hits for the two other strands."

Genetic markers were odd, they weren't a full genomic sequences, but just a few base pairs that are distinct enough to tag a person. These get categorized and mapped, like a serial number for humans, and stored in the respective federated databank. It was sort of like a hash, collisions were possible, but unlikely. Lots of DNA was repeated sequences, but those didn't make sufficient markers, so the markers were just the distinct portions. Travis was tagged from the remnants found, and reviewing the scanners found the marker presence. 

So maybe the problem was not that they weren't on record, though that was part of it, but that they weren't even marked. Markers were an active thing on a person. They mapped to a system, but they still had to have some physical representation. These two may have blocked their markers, or never even had them. I queried to see where the common marker injection points were for humans in Novost, and other Feds. Hands and shoulders looked like the predictable spots. I requested what they communicated with, but that was flagged as sensitive and Phirenaius would have to approve access. Maybe this is what he meant when the medical results were odd.

In the mean time, if something were blocking more than just theirs, there should be a noticeable dip in the scanner results during that window. I kicked off another job to populate each scanner with active markers by 10 second intervals to see what patterns would emerge. Outliers could be quickly calculated, but those were still prone to error. Math was exact, people weren't.

I stood up and stretched while several screens monitored progress. Usually these were blazingly fast operations, but sometimes they needed to fetch archived data, or go through approval chains. I think those chains were intentionally delayed, but I couldn't prove it. Or wouldn't, since it gave time for a bit of pacing and another cup of coffee, and a quick meal. While the fabbing box prepared a nutrient bar for me, this one flavored and textured like a beef steak and mild cheese wrapped in a pastry, I paced the room.

Vanessa's comment about my setup made me contemplate it again. The room was modest. I didn't find much in the way of furniture to adorn it, but I had plenty of shelves littered with objects. Some from past investigations, others trinkets from parties and trips around Novost. Little things to remind me of events that I remembered. But there was one shelf, on the other side of the room, that held items from the other Felix, or whoever. Those were pieces I had momentary recognition of, where something called to me from it, some cross amnesia synesthesia. Food was my primary trigger, pulling in smells and tastes from something I couldn't place. This steak and cheese thing was one of them. It didn't count for many dietary points, and Im sure Vanessa would criticize me for it, but it felt good. Those liquors did too, but I didn't need that right now.

Some data trickled in, showing me more strange results. But one bit of interest was that there was a noticeable gap where the number of active markers dipped. This was a usable pattern. I expanded the field of search for other intervals with a noticeable drop, to see if I could get some associated camera spots or other trackers. Now that I knew there was some way the bio scanners were being avoided, there was something to work with. Dense housing like this lacked most other visual processors, so proximity scanners were the common solution. It also meant if someone found a way to defeat, or at least mask those, then picking a meeting spot where the scanners could be blinded made for an idea locale.

I added some annotations to the case file. This gave strong evidence that the room was used for unsanctioned trades within the Epsilon Sprawl. In the middle of typing some theories and pulling financial transaction records for Travis to try and correlate things, a new query returned, with a high priority notice. The DNA for the other two humans showed neither were marked, as I suspected, but that one was kinetically-active. That just changed things dramatically, and before I could even review it, Phirenaius was already trying to contact me.