"Next room over" said Esco, shuffling his arms under Poulpe's. The man's eyes were open, staring at nothing, his cracked lips moving slowly.
Together they staggered up and out the door, backing down the hallway. Behind them they heard Nancy chastising the oversized animal.
"Sit!" she said. "Goddammnit, dog, I said sit! Don't you know English?"
Esco kicked the door open and Fox clanked to life, following as they filed into the next room. It wasn't much better than the one Poulpe had been in, but it was clean, a long row of beer bottles along one wall by an ancient cathode-ray screen. A thin metal railing flanked a corrugated metal platform in one corner of the room, a post topped by a black metal box with two buttons on its far corner.
"The lift" huffed Esco, leading the way over to the platform. He dropped Poulpe onto it, ran over to the beds and kneeled to look under them.
"Always check you didn't leave anything" he said, apologetically as he returned to the lift, bag in hand.
He stabbed the green button and the platform shuddered, began to descend. A loud boom shook the doorway and a rush of sulfur-stinking air pushed over them. Nancy appeared in the doorway, the hyena bounding after her like a puppy. Her face and most of her chest were covered in blood, little bits of pink skin sticking in her hair.
"Whoo-hee!" she hollered, jumping onto the lift after them, the huge animal following. The platform squealed loudly, canted to one side as they landed, but kept descending.
"Duck!" she yelled, bending below the rising lip of the floor. They followed suit just as another loud boom shook the room, bits of furniture and broken glass hitting the wall behind and falling over them. Nancy stood and hollered again, a loud rodeo call. She fumbled in her jacket and produced a little silver pistol, its tiny muzzle protruding just past her fist. She pointed it up the well above them and rummaged through a pocket with her other hand. The hyena sat on Tonx's foot, knocking him into the wall. The lift shuddered again, fell a foot and caught, slowly descending. Nancy's long arm pulled out a small round green ball, her thumb catching the metal ring stuck out of one side. She jacked her arm back just under Esco's face, waiting. The sound of stamping feet came down from above just as light broke from below, the lift slowly sliding into the room beneath. Mouse-eyed faces appeared alongside rifles for one short second as Nancy's pistol cracked, deafening them all and echoing through the well of the lift. The faces disappeared and her thumb flicked the pin out and down the front of Esco's shirt, her arm jerking upwards. The grenade disappeared overhead and Tonx wiggled feet-first through the gap. Another loud boom shook the air overhead and a rifle fell on them, hitting the platform butt-first. The left sank to a halt a foot off the ground and they jumped off.
"Conjos" swore Baby, his face slick with sweat underneath his headset. He held a Russian military-issue semiautomatic, and behind him a tall black armored civilian SUV sat facing a big set of old wooden garage doors.
"'S'cool" said Esco, one hand out towards Baby while he fumbled with the control panel next to the lift. It shuddered into life again, going up, half of a Mickey Mouse logo fluttering past it and onto the floor.
"'S'cool my ass, Esco" said Baby, pointing his gun at the hyena. "What the fuck is that?"
"That's my dog, boy" said Nancy, her chin up, chest out as she marched over to him. Her cheeks were flushed, gore slicking her shoulders and the curls of her hair. She radiated crazy like a tesla coil.
"Back off, puta" he said, leveling the rifle at her.
"Don't nobody call me cunt, boy" she said, her glazed eyes narrowing slightly. Next to her the hyena's teeth started chattering together, its ears back, oversized shoulders trembling.
"Chill, people" said Tonx. "We don't have time for this shit. You" he pointed at Baby, "where are we and where are we going?"
"It's an old water channel for the fields" said Baby, pointing at the wooden doors. All my flyers are outside so I couldn't check it, but there's a bunch of open channels like it about a mile south. I figure it connects somewhere, but I don't got the range… "
"Good" said Tonx. "Get Poulpe into the car and let's get out of here."
"No can do. The car's locked tight, no keyholes or nothing. Bulletproof glass, the works. Plus there's no light down there, I don't know how we're going to… "
"Shut up, Baby" said Esco, pulling Poulpe towards the car by his feet. He fished in one pocket and tossed the card key over. "Open the fucking car."
A moment later they were all piled in. Esco rode shotgun, the robot held awkwardly in his arms, head out the window so it could scan ahead. They pulled through the doors and Tonx jumped out to pull them shut behind him, crawling back into the drivers' seat. The oversized vehicle was tricked out and armored tight, and it stank overwhelmingly of musk. He flicked the lights to maximum brightness and kicked the thing into gear. They surged forward, picking up speed.
"How far does it go straight?" he asked.
"100 meters. Can't see more than that unless you turn off those lights" said Baby. Esco reached over and flicked a switch, a HUD tracing the tunnel's edges in light blue over the inside of the windshield. Tonx smiled, turned off the lights.
"How about now?" he asked.
"Better" said Baby. This thing looks clear at least a hundred meters."
A loud roar filled the tunnel, a pale white light shining from behind them.
"Fuck! Turn him over, man! Turn him over!" shouted Baby, scrunching himself down as far as he could into his seat. Esco struggled to roll the clunky robot to face behind them.
"Undo the safety lock, motherfucker" yelled Nancy, stabbing her finger at the window button. Something loud smacked into the rear window and a spider web wound out in the glass from a small dot behind the hyena's hump. It turned and cocked its head, ears raised. Tonx swerved as he reached for the right buttons, sparks exploding as the mirror on his side tore off against the cement wall.
"Stick him out!" yelled Baby gruffly, his viewset on and head buckled against his chest, hands clenching the black controller. Esco poked the robot's head out the car window, holding it by the legs, his own head ducked low. Fox's chest opened and a set of four tiny rockets slid out with a clank.
"Hold 'em steady, conjos" said Baby, and the rockets slipped out and flew away behind them. Another row of bullets sluiced across the back of the car, at least a couple hitting the window. It creaked but held.
Tonx's eyes blanked as he saw something appear in the dim traces of the HUD. He flicked on the headlights and saw a corrugated plastic wall ahead of them, started stomping the brakes.
"Don't" yelled Esco, seeing the wall ahead. "Punch it!"
Tonx took his foot off the brake, glanced at Esco. The top of the robot's head bounced off the wall, almost tore from Esco's hands. Baby howled behind him.
"Fucking punch it, white boy!"
Tonx did. The rear window blew out, glass shards flying everywhere before a yellow glow illuminated the cave from far behind as the rockets hit. Nancy stopped banging her door and turned around, kicking Tonx in the back as she scrambled to shoot down the corridor behind them. The wall resolved into pale green fiberglass, grew wide enough to fill the width of the hall in front of them. Tonx accelerated, the speedometer rising, the car shuddering and bouncing as hot air roared through and they hit
and went through the bright yellow light of streetlight fluorescence cutting into their vision from the big empty space ahead of them. They thundered into the open-air water channel and Tonx hit the brakes again, sliding up the far side before Tonx yanked the wheel, took his foot off the brake. They careened right, almost parallel with the ground before carioles force threw them out and down the channel.
"Where the fuck are we?" asked Tonx. Nancy hollered again, punching the roof of the SUV with one wild fist.
"South" said Baby. "Keep going."
A moment later a big black hornet appeared over the edge of the channel.
"That's us" said Esco, pointing.
"There's a ramp about two hundred meters ahead on your left" said Baby, the wasp-shaped thing disappearing again. "Take it, slow, and then go right."
The ramp appeared as promised, and Tonx slowed enough that they came up it and through the sun-bleached wooden fence with hardly a shudder. Tonx curved right onto the service road that followed it, saw a highway over the field ahead.
"Bingo" said Esco, the robot leaning headless against his thigh. A moment later they were on the eight-lane road, scooping handfuls of shattered safety glass out of their laps, laughing crazily in relief.
"Somebody check Poulpe" said Tonx suddenly, realizing they'd left him in the trunk. Baby shoved the hyena towards Nancy, elbowing his way to the narrow armrest and undoing the latch to fold the seat back. He disappeared into the trunk for a few moment, the stench of urine filling the car over the reek of musk.
"No problems, man" he said. "Not even a hole back there. This thing's built like a tank."
Tonx blew out a sigh. "We being followed?" he asked.
Baby drew his headset back on, stroked his controller.
"Don't think so" he said. "I see a bunch of CAFs running around Senior's, but looks like the mob's finally broken out on 'em. They shouldn't have burned the wall; the bikers got through to their shit. Three CAF cars burning so far."
Nancy smiled, hugged the hyena close before reaching forward and punching Tonx in the arm.
"Those are my boys!" she said.
Esco fiddled with the control panel for a moments and the dulcet tones of traditional Puerto Rican work songs filled the car. Tonx noticed with relief that the fuel tank was full. They drove.
Later that evening they drove through a small town Cessus had scanned and found a Red Cross drop-off point. They pulled out a couple of old futon couches and some wiring Cessus said he could use. Fede slept in the back, the giant freight container empty and rattling as they roared down the highway. Around midnight Cessus woke him up and made him hold a little LED flashlight for him while he wired a power plug and tiny faux-Chinese lamp to the truck's batteries. They'd pulled a bunch of fleeces and a torn sleeping bag from the Red Cross, so Fede was warm enough, and now he had a chance to recharge his comm.
When Cessus was gone he couldn't sleep anymore so he propped the lamp up next to him and logged in. There were a few messages from Tonx, mostly from the night before asking for info about what was going on. He deleted those and found himself staring at his empty email buffer. He liked to keep things clean, to answer his mail and shunt out the replied-to messages elsewhere. He used to feel proud to see his inbox empty, like he'd achieved something. Tonight he just felt empty.
Without an uplink he couldn't very well get the news, or check his 'groups or join a chatroom. His relationships were cut off as firmly as a light with the switch off. He didn't even know where they were going. Instead he pulled up the code he'd written under Cessus's 'guidance' a night ago. He found himself wishing he had some more of whatever Cessus had helped him put up his nose, but that just made him angrier. He'd written this shit, he should be able to figure out what it did.
Eventually he discovered that he'd taken a new approach to the distribution methodologies that relied on the anachronisms of the older architectures used in China. At first he'd thought he would just use the networks they had that were like the ones in the U.S. because they were more robust, but looking back he sort of remembered deciding to do it this way. As he teased out the processes of his code it started coming back to him, loose, fuzzy. He found some custom objects he'd written and discovered some clever genetic algorithms, code that would evolve around a given set of parameters to meet predesignated objectives. He ran some in a closed environment and found that the loops they produced worked very well. He hadn't tested them when he wrote them, he remembered, despite having done only minimal genetic programming in the past. He'd just known it would work.
And it did. But there were problems, too - objects that didn't do any processing at all, just notes about what they should do fleshed with a few lines of code. It was like he had sketched out the whole app at once and then filled in the main parts, one sweep at a time. Details were left out, there was no order to it. It was sloppy. It wasn't like him.
It wasn't like him. The thought kept running around in his head and Fede slumped back further on the futon. The Chinese lamp bobbed and bounced on the other couch, the truck dancing as it went down the road. What was he doing? He needed to produce code that worked, not dick around on spiritual tangents some dread-headed stoner thought would improve his coding.
But the code was there.
Eventually Fede found himself putting in pieces that were missing, running precompiles. He'd been writing code for years, and not doing it went against intense, intentional habit. As he wrote he found the outlines of the program coming back to him, filling itself in, becoming more tangible. The image of the red line came to him, and he chuckled absently.
"What?" said a voice, over-loud over the noise of the truck. Fede almost jumped out of his skin.
"Christ" said Cass, her hands up in mock defense. "Jesus, you really do get into it, don't you?"
He remembered faintly that the truck had stopped, she and Cessus had come in and fucked with the wiring some more. He guessed she had just stayed. He lowered himself into his seat again, spread his arms out and breathed. The code was gone again. No, not gone, just - out there. A little bit beyond his ability to see it. He reached for his chord again. The red line came to center, he tabbed through the code, found the shape of it again. There was a function missing - there. It ran well in the precompile, but the other objects were unfinished. The whole was not yet complete. He wrote.
It was like that for a long time.
When he woke up he was covered in an unzipped sleeping bag and the truck was stopped. He yawned, sat up to see dim light filtering through the translucent paneling of the cargo container roof, the big square shapes of solar panels dotting its length.
"G'morning" said Marcus, the big man rummaging through his bag on the other couch. The dent in his skull stood out with a dark shadow.
"Morning" said Fed, guardedly.
"I think Cessus's got some food out there. We pulled off the highway for a stretch and found a nice spot."
Fede got up, stretched out his knees in his tired jeans. He'd left his legs on again, could feel the chafing where the bruise was. How long had it been since he'd showered? he thought, searching around for his jacket. He pulled it on and wobbled down the length of the container, fumbling a bit with the door before pulling it open.
The morning rushed in like a wet kiss, moist and clammy. Watery sunlight stabbed his eyes over the misty lines of some kind of forestland. The truck was in a small clearing along a service road, a big rock ring littered with aluminum beer cans charred black from use. Cessus and Cass were sitting on thick chunks of tree pulled close to a small fire, a set of white paper bags advertised some kind of fast food. When Fede opened the door Cessus called out;
"Welcome to the land of the living! Come and get some cold and greasy."
Fede eased himself off the back of the truck and to the ground, his legs unsure. As he sat down next to them he found himself eager to be near, missing their companionship. Cass offered him a white bag folded shut, and he opened it to find the ubiquitous silver-wrapped burger and fries combo. He shoveled them into his mouth, unthinking. Cessus handed him a matching white soda cup and he became aware of them both looking at him. He stopped, mouth full of fries.
"What?" he mumbled.
The both looked away, eyes on the ground.
"Nothing, man" said Cessus. "Just making sure you're okay, you know?"
He kept eating. Cass went up to the cab and Cessus began rolling a joint, carefully sprinkling crumbled bits of plant over the length of the thin white paper.
"Where'd you get that?" Fede asked.
"Previous occupant. Thoughtful of him, you ask me" said Cessus calmly. He twisted off the end in a neat roll, held up his work for inspection.
"You been coding?" he asked, touching his tongue to a loose flap in the paper.
Fede regarded him, his eyes flat, pale disks.
"Why?"
"Wondering how it's going after I hooked you up with your meta-mind, that's all."
Fede looked out into the forest, noisily sucked the last of his drink through the straw. Cessus put the joint in his mouth and produced a bic, flicked it to life. Birds chirped in the distance.
"You got any more of that powder?" asked Fed.
"Wouldn't matter if I did. You're inoculated" said Cessus.
Fede stared at Cessus.
"I'm what?" he asked.
"Inoculated. That shit's dangerous, Feed. I told you I wasn't suggesting a habit. It was a one-time offer only. When you crashed out I gave you a shot off an inhaler. Customized cholera virus, contains the same fingerprint as the drug you took. Your body will recognize it as an invader, now, chew it right out of you before you ever get a high."
He smiled, broadly, took a deep toke. He spread his arms wide and coughed, smiling, grey smoke pouring gently over his lips and up his face.
"You couldn't think I'd get my man Tonx's little brother hooked, now would you?" he gurgled.
Fede stood and tossed the cup into the fire. Cessus choked and spat, jumping for it.
"Hey, that shit's recyclable!" he said.
Fede walked out towards the forest, stumbling on the uneven ground, his legs whining. He'd been to the forest a couple times, with his dad when he was younger, but had never gotten used to it. He only made it a short ways off through the clearing before he sat down on the far side of a tree. In a moment he realized the ground was wet, stood up and stared angrily at the moss. He stomped around the tree, seeing nowhere else to go, stopped and peed on the wet pine leaves. As he zipped up he looked back and saw Marcus stretching his huge arms in front of the fire, Cessus gesturing with the half-burnt cup. He looked again. Cass was sitting in the front seat of the cab, watching him.
He considered going back there, considered stomping off into the forest. He did neither. Instead he kicked together a pile of dead brush on the roots of the tree, sat down and thumbed on his comm. Fine. If he had nowhere else to go at least he could be useful. The strange sounds of the forest faded away, and he coded.