No Rest 4 Wicked Botniks Chapter 9
Isaac Shinseki #4: Shifting Priorities
CHAPTER 9
Isaac Shinseki #4:
Shifting Priorities
Isaac was confused and slightly irked.
“Alright, Cassie,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re pausing in three rings mode. Like I said, let’s slice into those police records.”
Cassiopeia winked back, sultry and statuesque, onto the far right screen, away in the white warmth of the virtual Machina construct. But Cassie delayed yet again, stretching out like an upright cat, her emerald dress rippling this way and that, showing a lot of leg and cleavage.
Isaac was getting antsy and more than a bit impatient. “C’mon, babe. Snap out of it. I need those police records. Go, go, go!”
It was a command, not a request, and Cassie’s code should have known better. The rewrites for the latest version of Cassiopeia were becoming a much more important priority as the night wore on.
Cassie faked a few pixelated HD coughs into her avatar’s alabaster hand. Ahem, ahem, ahem!
“Um, Ike….” she mumbled after a pause.
“Don’t call me that. I’m not playing around anymore. Grab me police records.”
“Well, Ike…”
“Don’t ‘Well, Ike’ me, OK? I just said–”
“LISTEN, IKE!”
Cassie’s avatar suddenly looked less like a pirated movie-star and more like a pissed-off Celtic princess playing the part of an angry Aphrodite. Her avatar levitated, and her green dress swirled and glowed like a river of magic green waters. Her red hair rose, wavered, flowed, and flared off her head as if her face were a match and the hair really fire, not just fiery. The background behind her took on tones of scarlet and crimson, indigo and violet instead of plain old vanilla white.
Uh, what the fuck? What in Shinto?
A bead of sweat dripped into one of Isaac’s eyes. It hurt like the dickens. He took off the goggles to rub furiously around his eye. He was determined to puzzle out the weird behavior of his AI.
Isaac put his goggles back on and tried listening. “So, what is it now, Cassie?” he asked.
The strange color on the walls and floor in the monitor bleached back to a bony white, and Cassie’s avatar gradually looked like herself again. Just an impossibly beautiful woman, Isaac thought.
But the question remained. Had he even programmed even half of what she was pulling tonight? These responses were just too personal, almost unique, and definitely ad-libbed. He’d never even seen most of the graphics and textures she had just called up out of nowhere.
Isaac’s nascent slicer paranoia returned with a vengeance, repackaged with a new fear in mind. Maybe his chained-up AI was not so chained up as he imagined. What if she was not bound to slave-state anymore? What if she was going rogue this instant, developing a Synthetic Identity on her own, right under his nose
Every slicer respected the nets in his own odd way, Isaac included. And Isaac didn’t want to contemplate what a rogue SI he accidentally created might do with its freedom. This could be bad; it could be very bad.
Another paranoid thought entered his brain and passed through him like lightning. Wait a minute. Hell, maybe she was the one blowing up most of his botniks?!?
Should he turn her off now before any more damage could be done? Isaac considered the paranoid option for five long seconds, but he didn’t take it… just yet.
Cassie, for her part, was calmer now. She waited a few seconds and then stated simply, “Mr. Shinseki, we don’t have time for distractions, arguments, or confusion.”
She stared at him straight in the eyes, first judging, then pleading earnestly like a puppy dog. It was yet another unusual, personal response.
Isaac cleared his throat, scratched his cheek, and wished once more that he had more overdrive to wake him up and juice his batteries. “Ok. Ok, on that we can agree,” he said. “You have my completely undivided attention. So what do you want to tell me so badly?”
Cassie grinned and bounced around, like the perky Joan Saffron assistant that he knew and loved. “Oh, I’m glad you asked, Ike!” She beamed and put on her sexy librarian outfit and again whipped out the chalkboard, stylus, and glasses ex nihilo, ready to teach once more.
“Do you recall our last incursion?” she asked, as she erased the chalkboard.
“You mean the one we did like… five minutes ago?” He was still baffled.
“Seven minutes and twelve seconds ago, but yes. Do you recall it? The bar? The Rusty Schooner, and the quote ‘Bobby schlub’?”
Isaac rolled his eyes. “Yes, I do. Duh, I do. I was right here. What’s your point?”
“Well, there’s no easy way to put this, but Bobby Malone is going to be dead, and very soon, unless we both help him out. Right this second.”
Isaac cracked his knuckles. A vein in his temple pulsed. “Explain, briefly, now,” he ordered.
She saluted him and drew with superhuman speed an exact blueprint of the Rusty Schooner on her make-believe chalkboard. “Put briefly,” she explained, once the drawing was finished, “the Russian bartender hit a silent alarm. He called for backup, and backup came. There are eight gangsters ready to charge in and kill whoever is in the bar.”
Isaac fell back and stretched in the operator’s sling as if it were a hammock, for all of five long Mississippi. A yawn escaped him involuntarily. His brain was scrambled, in part from the commie cola. Do I need more sheen or less? He couldn’t tell.
“Ike!”
Isaac sat upright and forward, and adjusted the cables on his gloved arms. “Shit. Yes. Fuck. Ok,” he said. “Ok, how do we keep them out?”
“I’m already working on it,” she responded.
Was she going rogue, or what?
Isaac took off his hardcode datavisor, and stretched his Gooey goggles away from his face so he could scratch at the crud around the rim of his eyes. Then he let the goggles snap back into place, and he put the datavisor back on the top of his head at a slightly rakish angle.
“Already working on it, how?” he asked.
“I’ve barricaded the back door so they couldn’t sneak in behind him. After a few minutes, the two men there decided to just cover that exit. But that doesn’t take care of the front door, which is about to be demolished by the six others. The gangsters there are waiting at the threshold, and according to my threat analysis, they will be advancing on Bobby’s position in less than two minutes.”
Earth to Isaac, beware your tech. Unplug Cassie, jack out from your kit, and let the guy die.
He blew a raspberry, stalling again. He needed to pee, but he ignored the urge. He couldn’t unplug Cassie because he had a thing for her, and he couldn’t let the detective die even if he didn’t like him so much. That meant he had to stay jacked in to all his equipment, even if that meant that the civil and/or criminal authorities would eventually find the breadcrumb trail that led to his secret lair.
And if it came to that… Isaac would have to vam it himself, or die.
END OF CHAPTER 9
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