Firmware: 02 Proxy

By True Colbytrax

Isaac Sarason is a skilled hacker formerly employed by British Telecom-Sprint. With his health failing, Isaac did the only thing he could think of: He ran. He found a haven in a working class district of the City known as Little Russia. Within hours of his arrival, he was embroiled in the affairs of a brutal member of the Lomidze organized crime family known as Leo. Convinced by a longtime friend, Frankie, to flee from his commitments to the Lomidze family, Isaac found himself hunted by the ruthless Leo. On a rooftop, far from witnesses, Leo murdered Frankie. Only through the use of his skills as a hacker was Isaac able to drive Leo off. Now wounded, alone, and far from help, Isaac depends of the kindness of strangers. What do you do when the only way to save those you love is through the use of Proxies?

• Language: English
• Publisher: True Colbytrax
• Release date: Aug 27, 2012

True Colbytrax

Colbytrax is a pseudonym of Robert Ferguson. He lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin with his wife, two cats, and two dogs. When not writing, he can be found coding in Python, updating Colbyjack.net, or watching the puppies wrestle. Colbytrax is also the voice of Audio.Colbyjack.net, where he has read works as varied as Cory Doctorow's "For the Win," E. R. Burrough's "A Princess of Mars," Trisha M. Wilson's "Nightmare," "The Nut Heist," "Fowl Play," and "From the Flames," as well as his very own "Firmware."

Book preview

Table of Contents

Firmware: Proxy

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

About The Author

Works from Colbyjack.net

1

My life became a series of dark rooms; windows painted over, ever-present dust, never a gleam of sunlight or breath of wind. My only companion the flickering glow of the Opemipo-null in my glasses.

Fever took me for a day. Or was it a night? I lost time somewhere. Only the clock on the Opemipo-null hinted at the passage of days.

I was on the roof. The cold air of a winter’s night gathered around me.

It was winter. While the heat of the City’s core kept the daily temperature comfortable, during the night temperatures plummeted. It shouldn’t have been this cold. This near the core, a cold night ran into the forties in January, not this cold.

I remember wondering what shock felt like. I couldn’t bring myself to look it up. I was cold, so very cold. The only part of me that wasn’t cold was the spot on my side where the Opemipo-null sized burn radiated blinding pain. My hands shook.

I looked up at the sky above the City. Clear night in winter meant a cold night, I thought. Among the North Lake towers of my youth, it meant snow. Thick blankets of white fluff would fill the streets this night at the extremes of the City.

In the Boroughs and out onto Long Island, swirling clouds would be dropping deep inches upon the ancient streets. In the morning, children on trash lids and sleds, made just that morning on the family maker, would hurtle down Pilgrim Hill like stars across an inverted sky.

In the fine places at the edges of the City, people would turn to one another and say, It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. In the Core and Metro ring, and the dead spaces between, the Little Russias, Chibas, Stans, and Villes, where winter never reached, it would be a cold clear night. No one would think of Christmas until a screen flashed with the number of shopping days until the blessed day. They’d look from one to the other and comment on how it didn’t feel like Christmas.

On a night when the suburbs accepted their initial allotment of snow and the Core accepted a cold clear night, I froze on a roof top waiting to be taken into exile.

I remember a group of men, dark of skin, dusky in the dimly starred night, staring down at me. They wore full-length coats, round wool hats, and textured silicone work gloves. My mind remembered the long coats were chapans, the flat floppy hats were pakols, and the gloves were Carhart.

Masood sent them.

I watched as they moved from air conditioner to air conditioner, opening panels with long handled bolt pullers. They squinted at the displays within the monster units, thin lights tucked behind their ears like glowing pencils. They tapped something on the pads within and the units roared to life.

It was surreal. Didn’t they know the units were networked? They knew their way around the machines, but didn’t appear to know how they truly operated.

I remember the oldest of the men coming before me. He removed a glove and felt my forehead. He ran his hands down my body. When his hand brushed the Opemipo-null sized burn, he stopped and I screamed.

A hand clamped over my mouth. I tasted grease and oil on the rubbery surface of the Carhart work glove. Other faces gathered around me.

They opened my shirt. Strong warm hands let frigid air brush my stomach. Their eyes showed distress. A medkit appeared.

A Red Crescent moon on the face of a white box told me once and for all these men were of Masood’s tribe. Derms were ripped from protective coverings. Warm hands pressed many, many, of the sticky plastic squares to my skin around the burn.

A spray bottle appeared. A cold wet something hit the wound. Hands were on my mouth before I could scream.

The shock of the liquid and the accompanying dabbing with a strip of cleansing towel darkened the world around me. I barely remained conscious long enough to witness them wrap a bandage about me.

I ran out of ways to describe pain in the moments before passing out.

I didn’t remember entering the box. I only learned about the box later, much later.

2

Lentils.

Lentils and eggs.

Lentils.

Thin lentil soup, cheese, and eggs.

That was the flavor of time.

I woke to prodding fingers along my side. The owner’s eyes hid behind a burqa. Derms were placed. I slept until poked again.

A gruff faced old man in a floppy pakol. Lentils with finely diced onions, a touch of rice, hot mint tea. I ate. He slapped a derm on my neck.

I woke to prodding fingers. Burqa stood above me. A column of dark cloth against painted over windows, another derm.

Another waking. More lentils. Another derm.

Fever dreams, clenched sheets and twisted pillows.

I drifted between worlds. Sweat drenched me. I boiled. I froze.

I saw Leo. He stood over Nona. She lay broken upon the street. Club in hand he struck her again and again. I screamed.

Strong hands pushed me down.

Straps wrapped my arms and legs.

Burqa came to me. More derms, many more, dotted my chest.

I slept without dreaming.

When next I woke, I was alone in the dark.

3

You are awake. Good. The speaker had a strange voice. Was it a woman with a husky voice, or a man trying to talk like a woman?

I was stiff and sore. My muscles ached as if I had spent a long time in bed. Where am I? I croaked. My throat was dry. The mattress beneath my back was lumpy, my headache returned with a passion.

I looked around the dim space. Dusty LEDs lit the room. A sliver of light outlined a square on the floor. In the corner sat a shapeless form on a high backed chair. In the center of the room sat a worktable covered in medical gear. I tried to stand up.

The room spun.

Sit up slowly. You have spent a long time between life and death, the husky voiced lump of a person said.

I sat up slowly. The rough concrete of the floor felt cool against my feet. The act of placing my feet on the floor set the room to spinning. I held my head in my hands as waves of nausea swept over me. What is happening?

The dizziness and nausea are side effects of the antibiotics and antivirals. The shapeless form stood up from its chair and crossed to the table with the medical gear. As it moved, I saw it was someone in a black burqa. The figure in the burqa was taller than me by a foot at least, with wide shoulders and a rough gait. The voice was weird. Not a falsetto, but more like someone attempting to smooth a deep man’s voice into an approximation of a woman’s.

You’re a man, I said. I didn’t think men wore burqas.

I am called Fatima, the tall manly burqa answered. Fatima took an electronic something from the table in a large, manly hand. While the Sunni and Shia opposed all that was different, we Abidini believe Allah in his infinite mercy has placed no limits on the form of his children. He held the electronic device at his side. The screen of his burqa appeared to face above me. Your vital signs have stabilized. Good, good.

You didn’t even look at the screen, I said. I ran my hand over my head, feeling short fuzz where my hair was. You shaved my head.

My burqa contains an active display system. Not only can I see as well as someone without, but it also links with my equipment, giving me a highly optimized display superior to that of the sensor device. Fatima reached out with his enormous rubber gloved hands. They appeared suddenly from beneath the folds of the burqa. He gripped my skull and squeezed it like a melon. I had to install shunts around your implants. You had a buildup of both cerebrospinal fluid and what appears to be subarachnoid hemorrhages in those regions. The shunts are connected to fluid pumps behind each ear which in turn direct the fluids into your digestive tract.

I ran my hands around my ears and down my throat. I could feel thin lines beneath the surface. So that’s what knocked me out?

No, Fatima said. Thanks to the burn on your side, and a large amount of churned dust in your environment…

Helicopters, I said.

Helicopters?

I burned myself shortly before two police helicopters showed up. There was a lot of fine dust in the air. I didn’t mention the fact that the cop choppers were there because I called them.

That makes more sense. If your skin was compromised and you were in an environment filled with a high level of City dust, then your viral and bacterial load was predictable. Fatima moved to pack away the medical gear on the table. Those implants are killing you. You do know that?

I ran my hands over my head. A spider web of subcutaneous tubes surrounded my implants. I have heard that theory before.

From my scans, I know it to be true.

How long have I got?

Six months, a year, you could throw a clot tomorrow, sorry. Fatima closed up his medical kit.

Could you remove them?

No. You need a neurosurgeon, not a family practice doctor.

Maybe a black clinic?

Maybe. Fatima stood by the door, medical kit slung over his shoulder, the strap crossed his torso between his breasts.

Frankie told me about a doctor who could help me once. What was the name? I wracked my brain before it came to me. I heard of a specialist, a Doctor Reona. I heard he could help me.

Fatima’s burqa faced off into the distance, his shoulders tense. I believe he could.

Could you put me in touch with him? I asked.

Fatima turned slowly and walked out into the industrial hallway beyond my room. His footsteps were lost among the sounds of pumps, fans, and flowing water.

4

I attended St. O’hea’s School for Boys from pre-school through the completion of my matriculation exams, but never thought of myself as religious. The nuns didn’t believe I was either.

I could repeat the doctrines and stories as required. I performed my duties as altar boy. I passed the divinity classes. Nothing stuck.

I was sixteen when I left home for the dorms of Jackson University in North Shore. It was in Introduction to Virtualization that I met my first Abidini Muslim. His name was Steve.

Steve was an excitable student. Two years older than me, which at sixteen felt ancient, he was in my cohort and very excited about virtualization.

To me virtualization was a plaything. Something which made good entertainment, but not something that actually did anything. To Steve it was the be all and end all of his life.

Over cups of thick Turkish coffee, he explained to me about the Shyh Klmh, the True Word. Not only did Steve belong to the Abidini sect, but his family belonged to a splinter group of that splinter group.

The Shyh Klmh believed that not only was the shape of the believer unimportant, but birth was not a requirement for belief. They believed that even artificial intelligences, AIs, could come to understand the teachings of the Prophet. Not only could they join the community of the believers, but someday, very soon, if you were to believe Steve, a mufti would arise from the AI believers to reveal the True Quran.

He liked to talk about how the logical pathways of an AI were closer to Allah. I believe his logic followed a path which believed AIs were above men, but lower than the angelic host, as they suffered from none of the sins of the flesh. I shook my head and drank his coffee.

The AI Prophet had nothing to do with Steve’s love of virtualization. The reason for that was more prosaic.

The Sunni Muslims, who controlled the holy sites of Islam at Mecca and Medina, viewed the Abidini as apostates. Even though, thanks to the predominance of Abidini in the City, Malaysia, and India, the Abidini accounted for forty percent of all Muslims, the Sunni councils, who have controlled the Arab Peninsula since before there were petrochemicals in the sand, refuse to allow them the Hajj.

The Hajj, I was to learn, was very important to the Abidini, though to me it sounded like a lot of mucking about in a desert. It was Steve’s only reason for attending university.

Steve, and a consortium of wealthy Abidini who financed no less than two hundred scholarships at the most prestigious computer science schools in the world, wanted to create a virtual Hajj.

Their reasoning was as follows. An AI Abidini would be unable to participate in the Hajj and therefore incapable of satisfying the fifth pillar of Islam. Therefore, in preparation for the first AI convert, they would create a virtual Hajj. As they viewed the body as being independent of belief, it flowed from that logic that the Hajj was independent of the body as well. Therefore, a virtual Hajj would be as good as the real thing.

As long as they got the details right.

When I met Steve, vHajj was in beta testing. They had the visuals down, as they were the simplest part of the entire exercise. The tactile systems were operating at about eighty percent effectiveness. Olfactory processes were under development.

What Steve wanted to do, the value he wanted to add to the system, was a direct neural linkage between the attendees. He wanted to find a way to place the participants’ souls in a state of communion which would make the system superior to attending the actual Hajj.

Steve’s people were on the cutting edge of simulation science.

I lost track of Steve by my sophomore year.

In my first year of graduate school at Adelphi, I remember seeing an article highlighting the vHajj project and the Fatwas against it by the Sunni councils.

I never saw Steve again.

5

I was playing with the Opemipo-null when Fahran entered.

Fahran was an old man of indeterminate age dressed in a floor length chapan, with a thin white beard hanging like a nebulous cloud before his chest. He introduced himself as he set the table for two. The food smelt wonderful, a heady mix of spices, fish, rice, and bread.

I put