Wetware

“Any time now, Sable!” 

Gretch’s voice was climbing to an all time high. He must really be worried.

Sable took a second to dodge a blast of frag data before responding. “Having trouble, Gretch?” she said. “I thought you said you lived for this.”

“I’m serious, Sable! This agent is kitted up, and I don’t know how long I can shake him!”

“Yeah? What’s he packing?”

Gretch’s voice came in fast and frantic. “Armor, it might be powered, I don’t know. He might just be a big sonofabitch. Some kind of clearsight visor for sure. And Sable… I think he’s got a smartgun.”

“Oh, shit.” Sable straightened. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The time for grace was over. Whirling, she drew together strings of streaming code into a whirling snarl. The improvised program tore through the antibodies in a blazing line; crude, but effective. By the time security regrouped, she was already gone, compressed at lightning speed down silicon highways to the next system.

Intellipistols, colloquially known as smartguns, were a revolution in medium-range combat. A small camera at the barrel’s tip sent real-time data wirelessly to an on-site beta-class AI. That AI sent back data to the gunman’s visual augments: identifying threats, painting targets, and recording combat data for later review. If the smartgun were to fall into the wrong hands, the AI could engage the safety, or even remotely destroy the weapon.

Of course, the AI was locked behind some of the best security money could buy. But if it were cracked… well then, one could get into all sorts of mischief.

“Help me, Sable!” All the bravado had drained out of Gretch’s voice. 

Sable ran full pelt down the hallway, ducking fire. She was in a surveillance system now: in the display nodes suspended in cyberspace along the system’s walls, she could see Gretch doing the same. 

She could see the agent, now, too; a juggernaut in bulky black body armor. He moved stiffly, but inexorably, like a robot. Like the goddamn terminator. He held the smartgun like a new toy.

Gretch was fast, and lucky too, but he’d been caught on the back foot in all the worst ways. Every move he made, every trick he pulled, just tightened the noose a little more. As it was, the situation was painfully clear: death by gutshot was not a matter of if, only a matter of when.

Unless, of course, a new factor entered the equation.

Sable blasted a few antibodies into loose code for some breathing room, then darted to the major manipulator node. A quick access routine cracked it wide open, and then she had control of every automated process in the room.

Which, to be fair, wasn’t a whole lot. Not for the first time, Sable cursed modern architects and their chronic failure to mount autoturrets on every wall. Something with servos would serve; she’d once used an articulated robot arm to tie a fed into a pretzel from the safety of the dive. But the corridor remained stubbornly devoid of machinery. 

Which meant she would have to get creative.

It was amazing how everything these days tied into the dive. The heating pipes, for example. The agent leveled the smartgun, then ducked as a blast of superheated steam nearly took his head off. He twisted, bringing the pistol up again, only to dance backwards as the nearest door swung open at disconcerting speed. That, of course, put him in the perfect spot for a projectile cabinet to smack him in the back of the head.

As a final touch, Sable triggered the fire control system, flooding the hallway with microfibrous pseudoasbestos fog. It wouldn’t fool the smartgun, of course, but any distraction was a welcome one. By the time the agent pulled himself together, Gretch had disappeared.

She’d bought him a few seconds, but it was a stopgap at best. Sable pulled back from the manipulator interface, then fragged it for good measure. Then she was running again.

You didn’t see Alpha AIs around anymore, not since the Icarus Incident. The Turing Association burned them out of the net, decades ago in a glorious crusade. Nowadays, all you got was Beta AI: shackled, castrated creatures, slaving away in the bowels of corporate facilities. 

Still, crippled as they were, they remained formidable. They were born of the dive; they built their bodies from nothing, wove skeins of code into a living skin. A Beta-class AI could wield programs in ways a human couldn’t even conceive.

There were ways to face them, though, if you were prepared. Certain dealers of illicit wares could be sought, at considerable cost, for a bespoke cybernetic toxin. This program preyed upon the particularly mercurial nature of AIs, poisoning them further at every step. It might not kill them outright, but the battle would even considerably.

Sable was paranoid, even for a freelance diver. And she always brought a BetaBane on a job.

“I’m at the node, Gretch,” said Sable. “How you doing?”

“I’m hiding in the storage bay,” Gretch whispered, “but he’s closing in. Hurry up and shut it down!”

“Alright, alright, keep it together,” she said. She pulled up the smartgun interface. There was the live feed, showing a bobbing view through winding corridors, and there was the engage safety function, and there… 

“Hmmm,” she said.

“Hmmm?! Hmmm is not a good sound, Sable!”

“There’s an encrypted function on here,” she said. “Not a marker program, not a safety. Something else. Very shady.”

“Who cares what they’re hiding! Just blow the gun!”

“I’m gonna check it out, Gretch, just hang tight for a sec.”

“I don’t have a-”

She cut the line, and returned her focus to the encryption. It was heavy stuff, with some dirty tricks you’d never find on a white-collar program. Whatever was in this file, it must be stepping on some ethics board toes. But Sable hadn’t been brought onto this job to look pretty; she was a seasoned codebreaker. She clocked fourteen seconds before the file lay open before her. 

REMOTE ELECTROMUSCULAR IMPULSE CONTROL were only the first in a long stream of technical jargon in all caps. She flicked down the sheet a ways. Her eyes widened.

Very interesting.

Some motion caught her eye. On the live feed, there was Gretch, square in the crosshairs. His hands were up, his mouth working furiously; trying to cut some kind of deal, most likely. The agent’s hand tightened on the pressure-sensing ergonomic handgrip, steadying his aim for the killshot.

Sable stabbed a finger at the program, and an electric shock pulsed from the intellipistol through the agent’s arm, forcing muscles to spasm. The arm jerked; the shot went wild. Gretch dove for the sanctuary of the crates. 

Sable played with the control scheme. The control was remarkably fine: with just a little practice, she could wave the man’s arm in any way she pleased. She could see him trying to pry the gun away with his other hand, but a steady flow of electricity kept it clutched in rigid fingers.

She paused. Really, at this point it’d be easy enough to take out Gretch. She’d get double the take, and she could always blame the agent. It’d be clean.

The thought floated for an instant, like a snowflake, before being vaporized by the blowtorch of tribalist rage. Gretch was her own. And the agent had come at him.

As her fingers danced across the interface, Sable’s eyes were locked on the screen, watching the agent struggling to fight as the slaved hand slowly moved the gun under his chin, and pulled the trigger.