No Rest 4 Wicked Botniks Chapter 7
Isaac Shinseki #3: Righteous Indignation and a Few More Surprises
CHAPTER 7
Isaac Shinseki #3:
Righteous Indignation and A Few More Surprises
“Scammed? Bullshit!” Isaac tossed the empty bag of Calorie Corn at the offending monitor and gulped down the dregs of his commie cola. A quiet titter arose from the far right terminal.
Isaac paused the security footage on his left screen and turned to glare at Cassie’s avatar.
Cassie froze, her cheeks reddening. She placed her hands behind her back and bounced nervously from foot to foot, whistling a tune of false naivete.
“What precisely do you find amusing about this situation?” Isaac demanded.
“Well, Ike, precisely, I am amused by your… righteous indignation.”
“My righteous indignation?”
“Yes!” Cassie’s avatar began bouncing again, this time in excitement, and Isaac became temporarily distracted by the bobbing motion. “It’s an unusual emotional state for you to display,” she admitted. “I’ve rarely observed it during our net-runs.”
Isaac sighed, typing up a mental note to make a few more tweaks to Cassie’s subroutines. He needed to find the source of her giddiness, her flirtiness, and her observational humor, and he needed to dial those functions down. Way down.
But all he said to her was, “You’re right, Cassie. I am indignant. And with good reason too.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like being slandered, that’s why! That Bobby slob called me a hack and a fraud.”
No longer distracted by digital cleavage, the anger bubbled up in him again. He crumpled his empty cup and tossed it aside. Despite the jitters already creeping up his limbs, despite the sweat on his brow and his heart beating like a hummingbird’s, Isaac longed for another dose of sheen. He needed the energy; he needed the fury.
Isaac balled up his fists. “I told those ignorant assholes,” he said. “I told them! If they wanted me to slap hardcore murderware onto that fucking fridge, then they also needed to purchase an upgrade for its OS! You know, at least bring it into the 22th fucking century? But did the Russians listen? No! They wanted to be cheap. So I gave them exactly what they paid for, exactly what they asked for. I wasn’t bilking them; you can’t bilk morons who tell you to do a shitty job.”
“Gee, boss, I never knew you took your work so seriously,” Cassie quipped.
“Well, I do. And lest you forget, you’re my work too.”
“Indeed. I am the humble product of your inestimable skills.” Cassie bowed low, stretching the fabric of her bodice and the limits of Isaac’s attention span.
“Stop distracting me,” Isaac muttered.
“Sorry, Ike!”
Then he and she returned to the task at hand.
Remotely slicing into the networked devices of the Rusty Schooner had proven a contemptibly easy job. The bar was connected to an unsecured public concat grid on the Westernet. All the private terminals inside were ‘protected’ by laughably outdated bulwark. With Cassiopeia analyzing the system for flaws and vulnerabilities, all Isaac had to do was execute a simple scarab glitch and install a bump-key widget in the lines she indicated.
And then he was in. He had access to security feeds, concat correspondence, financial records, even remote control over a few physical switches and locks—for lights, doors, safes, and the like. The whole incursion had taken less than two minutes.
Isaac resumed play on the security footage taken from the micro-camera tucked away in the rafters. Now the portly sweating schlub named “Bobby Malone” was brushing aside yet another threat by insulting the bar’s decor.
He did have a point there. The whaling digisplays, neon ship motifs, and the overall sea and sailing theme in a landlocked desert were just… baffling choices.
In response, the Russian working the counter began shaking with laughter. After he recovered himself, the bartender went on to explain that his employer was not the man who had picked out the dive’s furnishings. Apparently, his boss only recently acquired the bar from the original owner… in a hostile takeover involving forced amputations.
Yikes.
Isaac paused the footage. “Show me our client records again,” Isaac told Cassie. “I want to see everything we have on our excitable Russian customers.”
Cassie’s avatar disappeared to make room for the exhaustive list of data that filled up the right screen. Isaac quickly scanned the information. After following a rabbit trail of middle men and proxies, he found out who he was searching for, and his eyes boggled. He swiped away the list in shock, disgust, and fear.
“Fyodor Vitsin?” he sputtered. “I modified a botnik for Fyodor Vitsin?”
Cassie winked back onto her screen, along with a chalkboard filled with a list of names picked out from the records Isaac had just skimmed. “Correction,” she stated. “You modified two botniks, including the Stryker unit in the alleyway. But not for Vitsin directly, no. However…”
Then Cassie went on to point out a tedious chain of connections on a chalkboard display behind with a stylus that suddenly appeared in her hand. “The intermediary who set up the job was contacted by a mercenary. At the time, the mercenary was employed by a member of the Russian mob. The mobster’s boss works in turn for another boss higher up. And his boss is one of Vitsin’s lieutenants. Umm, Ike, why do you look so distressed?”
“Because it’s Fyodor Vitsin! You know, Fyodor the Bloody? Moscowtown’s tyrant king? The Butcher of East Envy? He makes Ivan Kruglov look like Ernest Ginsberg!”
Cassie put her hand on her chin in a thoughtful pose. “I have no record for any of those individuals. Do you want me to perform a Query function?”
“What? No! Just—I mean he’s a very bad… very scary man. Fyodor’s worse than your typical Russian hard case. He’s a sadistic, cold-hearted bastard who makes other crime bosses look like saints by comparison. I’m just wondering how I could have been dumb enough to work for someone so colorfully violent and ruthless.”
Isaac pressed play again on the security footage and began watching with renewed interest.
After a few moments, Cassie cleared her throat. “...Do you want me to answer that, Ike?” Her tone was all innocence.
Isaac didn’t follow. “What?”
“Or was that merely a rhetorical question?”
“What are you talking about, Cassie?”
“Your previous statement.” Cassie proceeded to use bunny quotes for emphasis. “Quote: ‘I’m just wondering how I could have been dumb enough to work for someone so colorfully violent and ruthless.’ Would you like me to explain the specific circumstances and factors that led to that decision? That is, how you could have been dumb enough? Or was that merely a rhetorical question?”
“Jesus...Fuck... Shinto, Cassie.” Isaac shook his head in wounded amazement. He had just had his intelligence questioned by the direct product of his intelligence. It was insulting and weird to say the least. But dammit all if Cassiopeia didn’t have a point.
Cassie waited patiently for his fuller response. He was on the verge of a defensive rant; he just had to pick out his words exactly for the proper emphasis. But as he was about to open his mouth to give his own AI a piece of his mind, Isaac realized something more important had happened, and he had just missed it.
He reversed the footage on the left screen by a couple of minutes. Now the bartender—Dmitry?—was saying that Fyodor would be there, and soon.
Astonishingly, Bobby closed the distance between himself and the bartender in a single bound, vaulting over the counter and tackling him. Wow, he was a spry fucker, despite his age and bulk. Now Bobby was beating the other guy with his big ol’ gun. Shit. Maybe Isaac had underestimated this one…
“Cassie, what does a quick Query search give us for Bobby Malone?”
“Searching.” Cassie’s red hair flared into three concentric rings over her head as she performed the Query.
“Ah, here we are,” she said. “Robert Dority Quovadis Malone. Aged 44. He is an LSR expat. He was born inside Bastion on the East Coast, but he emigrated with his whole family to the Capitol Fort in Tarrant City, Texas. He was a police officer in the Fort for 14 years. Now he works as a private detective here in NV City.”
“Okay. Good.” Isaac paused, letting out a long breath.
“Alright,” said Isaac. “I want to get all we can on this Bobby guy. He may actually be a friend. So let’s slice into his police records.”
END OF CHAPTER 7
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