The Epic of Doitzel, part 1
_
Introduction
“Least I have chicken.”
-Leroy Jenkins
There are many days where I feel like Leroy Jenkins; a man with determination, aggression, and many, many friends who would not hesitate to blindly die for my own stupidity. That’s not to say that they wouldn’t harass me incessantly for it of course.
The following tomes are a tribute to myself, my friends, and my most sinister enemy, though I think mostly myself. Haters gonna hate.
Though this is not a special story, not one of the great legends relayed over the internet. This is merely the tale of a few months in the life of Radical Doitzel, the story of why I will not take vacations anymore.
So sit back and lend forth your ears and nerdy perspectives and I will tell you a tale like none other. The tale of a man skilled in the ways contending, the wanderer, harried for months on end, before he rose to his height of power and plundered the stronghold of the Gambler. This is the epic of Radical Doitzel.
Chapter 1 – Earthside
“Welcome to Earth.”
-Will Smith, Independence Day
“I swear by Bowie’s glamour I’m gonna kill that scrawny little shit, Kalingkata,” I vowed to myself as the customs official registered me in as Crossant-wich von Cheesespread Dessau.
“That is your name isn’t it sir?” Asked the customs official, oblivious to the lifetime of torment she was tempting me to bestow upon her. I took a deep breath of the clean, recycled air.
“I’m afraid not, I’m a different Dessau, his nephew, please check the ID again would you?” Before her fingers touched the board I could already see her monitor through my left eye. The hack job was cake, I could have rewritten my whole identity in the eight seconds it took her to run that search again, but of course I didn’t have to, sometimes I wonder if I’m letting myself get lazy.
“Oh, my apologies, I’ve never had that happen before. Mr. Bismarck, I presume?”
“That’s me, and tha-“
“Yes, well, I’m afraid you cannot enter Earth’s sphere, sir, CGC regulations.” She said cheerily.
… “and why the hell not!?” I stuttered.
“It says here that you are nine months over due on you maintenances, corporate (both local and provisional), resource, and consumption taxes.”
I had forgotten that the very air you breathed here had to be paid for. Twice actually, resource took care of cleaning the air and consumption taxes were compensation for using it. I’d say it had been too long since I been back to the homeland, but at this moment I was beginning to think another year couldn’t have hurt.
I felt a tug at my jacket. Little Mikey was there, a plate in his hand, the remains of a cupcake on it, a single, sad bite he held towards me.
“Wud u like the last bite?” he asked. Despite his innocent words, his eyes gestured to the man in line behind us who was becoming increasingly impatient.
“What’s the holdup here, he scowled. I should be halfway to the Cinncinatti Plex by now.” I didn’t have to read his mind to know the kind of jerk this guy was. I did however have to read it to steal his account number.
“I left u some fwosting.” Mikey pleaded.
“No thank you Mikey” I affirmed, “I’m sweet enough.” My eye peered into the ion stream as it sped by.
“Oh, well, look at that,” the customs official said, matter of factly, “It would appear that your debts have just been paid for by a third party. You are free to enter, Mister Dessau.”
“Call me Doitzel.” I said, readjusting my carry-all as I moved on through. I looked down at Mikey who had finished the last of his cupcake.
“And that Mikey is the one tax this planet doesn’t have, and were it to impose, would be the most lucrative. The asshole tax.”
A short cab ride later we found ourselves at the front step of iCom headquarters for the Northern Hemisphere in the Los Angeles Plex. The cab fare was higher than I had calculated. The price of gas must have gone up during the course of the ride and the fare adjusted accordingly. I paid the man and Mikey and I got out into the freshest, cleanest smog I’d tasted for a long time. I don’t think that all the air scrubbers in the universe could ever fully clean the centuries of funk inside the LA Plex, but it wouldn’t stop them from trying. It was probably the only city in the world that they enclosed to keep the air in. I walked confidently through the doors.
“What are we doing here?” asked Mikey, “and why can’t we go get some cake?”
“It’s as the great prophet Bowie declared; ‘we infiltrated business cesspools hating through our sleeves.’ It is not wise to go against the word of God, Mikey.”
Chapter 2 – Bedlam Business
“When push comes to shove, you gotta do what you love, even if it’s not a good idea.”
-Hermes Conrad, Bureaucrat
It was four seconds after the alarm went off that the first gun was in my face. Not bad response time, not great, but not bad. Granted I bet a few of those sentry cameras had a bead on me right away, I saw at least ten of them, and my ping returned another ninety devices that I never managed to identify. Then again I hadn’t had too much time; I simply walked into the first door I saw that said “Authorized Something Only.”
I waited for six of them to be sticking guns in my face before I gave my demands:
“I come in peace. Take me to your leader.”
The gun barrels didn’t budge. They never do things the easy way, they always choose the fun way.
The ion stream flowed over my eye in all its beautiful splendor as one by one the automated sentries whirred into action, firing with precision at their new targets. The lasers flew past, inches from my face, I could feel their heat on my cheek, hear their quite hum.
I left the least moronic looking guard (which believe me, was a tough call to make) on the cameras’ friendly list. It looked like he still hadn’t figured things out by the time he was the only one not charred on the floor. Maybe I called wrong on his intelligence, but there was no going back now. I repeated my demands to help clear things up for the poor bastard:
“I lied about the peace. Take me to your leader.”
The regional CEO wasn’t quite what I had expected, she was plenty charismatic sure, but there was still something odd about her, like she was always standing at a strange angle or something. I could tell she had already seen the camera footage and was less than pleased with what she had seen. She had two guards close to her who had gave me the creeps, which is usually a sign that they aren’t half as stupid as someone with their job should be.
“Who the hell are you and how did you do that to my sentries.” She asked, as one hand inched ever so slightly closer to the pen in her lapel.
I found myself all too ecstatic to say “My name is Doitzel, motherfucker, maybe you’ve heard of me! And what’s more, you are in luck, I’m temporarily unemployed!”
She gave a slight grin, “I have to say that I have heard of you, and I’ve heard that Csyn has been looking for you as of late. Why shouldn’t I simply turn you in to them?”
“I’ll tell you what, well have a contest; you start dialing Csyn, and by the time you’re finished with that I’ll have your latest line of public advertisements showing the iCom logo to the tune of Gongen’s national anthem. I’m sure that would turn some heads in Time Square. Last one to be thrown into prison wins.”
She paused for a minute, considering the odds.
“Very well, we could always use a hacker of your caliber, but I’m afraid there will be a catch.”
“Oh?”
“You have a reputation, Doitzel, if we are to make any sort of deal we are going to need proof that you won’t do something stupid, like place a bugged AI in our network.” At that moment the doors flew open and a dozen armed guards burst into the room with Mikey. There was a hint of fear and urgency on most of their faces, and the rest had deep claw marks on theirs.
“You should be thanking us really,” she said, “the way he started flying around the lobby and drawing cats on the ceiling, he should be on an autopsy table by now. Subtlety would suit a kisen of his nature much better.”
“Yes, but not a person of his nature.” I gave him a quick glace to see if he was alright. Aside from looking annoyed that the guards had disrupted his powers, the means of which I couldn’t pin down yet, he seemed alright, but I was pissed all the same. I thought I had deleted the camera footage of us when we walking in together, but I guess they had a backup.
“You can’t hide your concerns from me Doitzel, she said, when you’ve been in this business as long as I have you can see through anyone, I can read you like a data file. You’re little friend will stay safe as long as you follow orders, are we clear?”
“Light-Screen,” I replied, trying not to grit my teeth in anger. “I’ll play, but know this; I guarantee that you’ve never read a file like me before.”
“Very good then, perhaps I was in luck today. I’ll alert the research and development department that they will be receiving a new arrival in five minutes.” She motioned to the guards, who grabbed me by my shoulders and started to lead me out of the room.
“One more thing,” I added, over my shoulder, “don’t forget to feed Mikey, you don’t want to see what happens when his blood sugar drops to normal levels.”
“Then I guess you better work fast,” she replied, still grinning from ear to ear, “so that there will be no accidents.”
“Doitzel,” Mikey grumbled, “make this lady pay a great big asshole tax.”
Chapter 3 – Corporate Chaos
“There’s always something cleverer than you are.”
-Merlin
The head of the research and development department, which by the way is a fancy way of saying “guys who steal shit” department, was a buffoon. I bet the moron didn’t know binary from hexadecimal, but at least the supply closet was well stocked, and clearly someone else handled the mission specs which were solid. And of course the dumber they are the harder they fall for mind control. My stay there was not at all uncomfortable and within a couple days I found myself in a moment of déjà vu as I stood before General Robotics’ corporate headquarters in the Berlin Plex.
“Alright,” I muttered to myself, “this time for real.” And again I walked through the front doors.
People always get the wrong idea of what it means to be a professional poison pill. It not all crawling around in air ducts and wearing cool goggles, though okay, yeah I do usually wear goggles, but that’s because I’m awesome. No, most of the time you walk strait in the front door. Check in at the desk. Flash a fake ID. Say hi to the other employees like you’ve been there all along. They always reply “hi there… you!” Meet a contact. Steal the data when no one’s looking (or better yet when they are looking but think you are supposed to be handling it). Leave at the next work break. Cut and dry, easy as lying.
That would be my routine for the first month. They didn’t trust me enough yet to send me on the cool, sneaky sort of stuff, but after almost four weeks of perfect results, they decided to give it a shot.
So there I was, clad in black once more having the privilege of wearing cool goggles on my head, sitting in the dark, waiting for the next shift change. I pulled up a video on my eye to pass the time. I hadn’t heard the Space Pope’s latest sermon yet, but Kailingkata told me I’d like it:
“There’s a Star Man, waiting in the sky, he’d like to come and meet us, but he thinks he’d blow our minds. There’s a Star Man, waiting in the sky, he’s told us not to blow it, ‘cause he knows it’s all worthwhile. He told me, let the children lose it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie. The Gospel according to Saint Bowie. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, we look up at the sky above our noble red marble each evening, or early morning when the sun has yet to lick us with its sweet smile, but do we see the Starman? Do we remember that we are never really alone? Unfortunately, we don’t. We look at the cold reality around us, the plain and boring creation of machines and dust, and we forget to boogie. We let the caveman fight on the dance floor, and we stand on the sidelines and let our heads hang. But that isn’t what God wants for us. God calls us out to the dance floor, to foxtrot across his stars and dance his magic dance. But we doubt. But we are not alone. The Starman is still there. When Jesus called Peter across the water, and Peter doubted and fell into the water, Jesus reached down and grabbed his hand. Even though he failed, he still reached into the water and saved him. We blew it, but he is still there waiting for us. As Saint Bowie said, “If we can sparkle he may land tonight a ‘ight.” And so we must boogie, dance the magic dance, and wait for that moment when we have so fulfilled the Starman’s promise, that he doesn’t blow our minds.”
Oh, Space Pope, John Paul VIII, saving your life was one of the best decisions I ever made.
The alarm on my wrist-comp went off. It was time for some thrillin’ heroics. I hacked through the security locks on doors at the shipping docks and in I went. The job they had for me was simple enough, but I was there on my own mission. I knew CISyn had been tracking my efforts for some time now and it seemed like a good idea to erase what records they might have on me here at their main database, so with business out of the way I decided it was time for some fun and crept my way towards the server array.
As I slipped into the server farm I noticed a figure at a terminal at the far end of the room. I quickly ducked for cover in the shadows. Who was that? There shouldn’t be anyone working the server farms this late at night. Was it security? Was there a leak?
“You’re late.” A familiar voice droned. “I expected you to get here about ten minutes ago, and that was will some generous considerations.”
I looked up to see the iCom CEO who had hired me standing angrily over me, looking down. She must have been a plant all along and a damn good one too.
I stood there in shock, frozen in stupefying disbelief, until I finally managed the words “Oh, you have got to be shitting me!”
“Afraid not, Doitzel.”
“Who are you?...really.”
“Ah, and you now see the greatest difference between you and me; I am not the sort of poison pill to simply drop my name and boast. I am what a poison pill should be; I am subtle, I am clever, I am precise. In layman’s terms, I am not you.”
“Yeah… about not boasting…”
“Spare me; I don’t want to have to listen to your snarky banter and more than I have to. I don’t care what the fools of the net say, you are only mortal, and here your legend ends.”
She tossed a data disk at me.
“Here’s what you came for right, consider this as your last request, because I’m not going to grant you any other. Proof of the fact that you aren’t even able to keep yourself hidden much less the ones you care about.”
And then it hit me.
“Where’s Mikey!?”
She smiled. “Ah, Mikey, you know Doitzel, that may be the one thing I envy about you, you do have a cute kid. He’s fine, but you weren’t kidding about the sweets, there isn’t a power in the ‘verse that could stop that boy from eating cake as long as it lasts.”
I paused for a moment, the nerdy reference sinking in slowly into my brain as I raced over my options. I had to figure out who she was if I was to have any chance of fighting her, but then again, it would be a shame to kill anyone who quotes River Tam. The thought of brain diving such a strong willed person made me nervous, but on the other hand it looked like Mikey had already got to her, I’m so proud of that boy.
What I needed now was time, I had to stall long enough to fish the data out of her mind.
“What was my part in all this?” I said as I ran a telekinetic sweep over her. Her thoughts and memories should have peeled open like a book cover, but instead I got nothing. Was she able to keep her mind completely blank?
“The doop of course. Someone has to take the fall for this sort of thing.”
“For deleting my own files?” Still no thoughts, this didn’t seem possible.
“No silly, for giving the rest of this wing a half megaton push straight to hell. I have my own job to do after all.”
I dropped the sweep. What she had just said definitely merited my full attention.
“Goodbye, Doitzel, you must have known it had to end somewhere.”
And just like that she vanished. I recognized this sorcery immediately;
Oh fuck me, she has a cloak, I thought.
I had to think fast before she got away, but as I spoke I came to realize how screwed over I truly was when I suddenly lost vision in my eye and my arms and legs turned slow and heavy;
Oh fuck me, she’s hacked my brain! Who the fuck is this girl?!
And as if she could read my thoughts, which at this point I was not willing to rule out as a possibility, bright green text ran over the dead screen in my eye:
“You’ve been had by Chess Mistress Hex.”
“Not like me my ass,” I screamed, sluggishly pulling my pistols from their holsters, “that’s my signature move you bitch!”
I quickly focused my mind, and the invisible treads of consciousness surged over the fabric of space and time across the room in an instant searching for sentience as a predator does its prey. I was pinging her mind, and I was going to tear it to apart.* But there was no response. No other consciousness in the room.
Was she out of range already? No, there’s no way! How could she be doing this?
I started firing wildly all over the room, has fast as my heaving arms could bear. I was losing it, I knew I was losing it, but as far as I was concerned this could be the end of everything and it seemed like the perfect time to panic.
The text appeared over my eye again;
“Now let’s see what was in this noggin of yours…”
“Oh no, oh shit no, oh fucking hell, she had hacked into the encrypted files of my brain.”
Now for those of you folks in the audience who haven’t stopped reading out of confusion yet, allow me to shed light on the significance of this one particular situation. All the finest bits of data I come access do not end up left on a data disk or a hard drive. No, no, my favorite stuff, the stuff that could topple governments in the wrong hands always ends up in my cyber brain. Stuff like proof of corruption in the Tenryu Party, currently pending military ops, state of the art technology, and, oh yes, the identity of the fucking Gambler!… And now this crazy lady was taking it like it was nothing more than eye candy. This was officially very, very not good… And now back to our story:
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD, YOU PSYCHO BITCH, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING?!”
“Just having a little fun. ;)”
And then everything exploded.
Chapter 4 – Suddenly Pandora
“This is not my best day ever.”
-Malcom Reynolds, Firefly
The floor shook beneath my feet as the first of the bombs went off outside the room. Obviously the server farm was not little Miss Mindfuck’s target since no bomb had gone off inside, whoever hired her wanted CISyn’s archives in tact. Flames were raging outside the window, but the walls stood solid, these rooms are designed to win in a head on collision with a commercial liner. And by the same principle I assume that I wasn’t the target either, though come to think of it she never specifically mentioned killing me herself.
But I didn’t really care where she was now, besides, she definitely wasn’t here anymore. Revenge could come later. Now I had to get the hell out of this place in one piece before personnel started arriving on the scene. Easier said than done; I took a look at the inferno outside and perked my ears. I could already hear the fading hiss of the air venting out of the room. In less than a minute this room would be a near perfect vacuum, the ideal protection against fire damage. Wow, this really sucked.
“It’s alright Doitzel, you’ve had worse days,” I lied. “Allons-y, one potentially deadly thing at a time.”
Summoning up all my strength I tried to urge the dead weight that I formally called a body towards the failsafe by the door. That nervous system enhancement seemed like a good idea at the time, but then again I had never considered what would happen if it was ever hacked and reprogrammed to pull me down. My own spine had become my worst nemesis. As I lurched across the floor I ran a quick diagnostic check, if she hadn’t had time to delete any systems data, then it might be faster to get my innards back on line first rather than trying to cross the room like this.
The boot up sequence ran over in my eye, my body was still heavy, but it was a good start.
“Alright, I might just get out of this yet!” I muttered as if it could give some motivation to my legs.
And her virus kicked in. I am going to kill that bitch so very, very hard.
She must have figured I’d try to reboot and set a trigger for it. The sight in my eye turned over to color patterns so brilliant that a hippie would have to wear earplugs to look at it. It was like that drug trip I saw in that movie while I was on that drug trip. It’s a good thing that my nervous system was slow on the boot sequence, I’ve heard of what a bugged nervous system enhancement can do its user and it’s not pretty.* I had no choice at this point but to shut down my cybernetics all together and try to do this without any science at all. The thought of it made me shudder. The microcomputers in my brain powered down, my eye went blank again and I could taste ham. But at least now the cybernetics weren’t resisting me, I could move almost like a regular person.
I hadn’t been keeping track of how much time I had already wasted, but the air was getting very thin now. I ran as quickly as I could for the terminal by the door. I reached it. It felt like I was breathing oil; it was almost gone.
I don’t remember much between when I started hacking the pass code for the failsafe and when I passed out, but presumably I pulled it off because the next thing I knew I woke up… in what was very obviously an interrogation chamber.
I was tied to a chair and cuffed, which at this point I might as well consider as common a part of my day as breakfast. A hulking shadow of a man sat staring at me on the other side of the room, next to a table where I could see a knife, a type 3 battery with jumper cables, and a cheese grater. There were more than a few other objects there, but my vision was still pretty blurry, if I had to guess I’d say that the nice man over there had already taken the pleasure of pistol-whipping me a few times while I was out.
“I think you know what part comes next” he said picking up the knife.
“You’re going to kiss my hand gently and give me a corsage?” I smirked.
He put down the knife and picked up the cheese grater.
Stay tuned for the next installment of the EPIC OF DOITZEL!
“Least I have chicken.”
-Leroy Jenkins
There are many days where I feel like Leroy Jenkins; a man with determination, aggression, and many, many friends who would not hesitate to blindly die for my own stupidity. That’s not to say that they wouldn’t harass me incessantly for it of course.
The following tomes are a tribute to myself, my friends, and my most sinister enemy, though I think mostly myself. Haters gonna hate.
Though this is not a special story, not one of the great legends relayed over the internet. This is merely the tale of a few months in the life of Radical Doitzel, the story of why I will not take vacations anymore.
So sit back and lend forth your ears and nerdy perspectives and I will tell you a tale like none other. The tale of a man skilled in the ways contending, the wanderer, harried for months on end, before he rose to his height of power and plundered the stronghold of the Gambler. This is the epic of Radical Doitzel.
Chapter 1 – Earthside
“Welcome to Earth.”
-Will Smith, Independence Day
“I swear by Bowie’s glamour I’m gonna kill that scrawny little shit, Kalingkata,” I vowed to myself as the customs official registered me in as Crossant-wich von Cheesespread Dessau.
“That is your name isn’t it sir?” Asked the customs official, oblivious to the lifetime of torment she was tempting me to bestow upon her. I took a deep breath of the clean, recycled air.
“I’m afraid not, I’m a different Dessau, his nephew, please check the ID again would you?” Before her fingers touched the board I could already see her monitor through my left eye. The hack job was cake, I could have rewritten my whole identity in the eight seconds it took her to run that search again, but of course I didn’t have to, sometimes I wonder if I’m letting myself get lazy.
“Oh, my apologies, I’ve never had that happen before. Mr. Bismarck, I presume?”
“That’s me, and tha-“
“Yes, well, I’m afraid you cannot enter Earth’s sphere, sir, CGC regulations.” She said cheerily.
… “and why the hell not!?” I stuttered.
“It says here that you are nine months over due on you maintenances, corporate (both local and provisional), resource, and consumption taxes.”
I had forgotten that the very air you breathed here had to be paid for. Twice actually, resource took care of cleaning the air and consumption taxes were compensation for using it. I’d say it had been too long since I been back to the homeland, but at this moment I was beginning to think another year couldn’t have hurt.
I felt a tug at my jacket. Little Mikey was there, a plate in his hand, the remains of a cupcake on it, a single, sad bite he held towards me.
“Wud u like the last bite?” he asked. Despite his innocent words, his eyes gestured to the man in line behind us who was becoming increasingly impatient.
“What’s the holdup here, he scowled. I should be halfway to the Cinncinatti Plex by now.” I didn’t have to read his mind to know the kind of jerk this guy was. I did however have to read it to steal his account number.
“I left u some fwosting.” Mikey pleaded.
“No thank you Mikey” I affirmed, “I’m sweet enough.” My eye peered into the ion stream as it sped by.
“Oh, well, look at that,” the customs official said, matter of factly, “It would appear that your debts have just been paid for by a third party. You are free to enter, Mister Dessau.”
“Call me Doitzel.” I said, readjusting my carry-all as I moved on through. I looked down at Mikey who had finished the last of his cupcake.
“And that Mikey is the one tax this planet doesn’t have, and were it to impose, would be the most lucrative. The asshole tax.”
A short cab ride later we found ourselves at the front step of iCom headquarters for the Northern Hemisphere in the Los Angeles Plex. The cab fare was higher than I had calculated. The price of gas must have gone up during the course of the ride and the fare adjusted accordingly. I paid the man and Mikey and I got out into the freshest, cleanest smog I’d tasted for a long time. I don’t think that all the air scrubbers in the universe could ever fully clean the centuries of funk inside the LA Plex, but it wouldn’t stop them from trying. It was probably the only city in the world that they enclosed to keep the air in. I walked confidently through the doors.
“What are we doing here?” asked Mikey, “and why can’t we go get some cake?”
“It’s as the great prophet Bowie declared; ‘we infiltrated business cesspools hating through our sleeves.’ It is not wise to go against the word of God, Mikey.”
Chapter 2 – Bedlam Business
“When push comes to shove, you gotta do what you love, even if it’s not a good idea.”
-Hermes Conrad, Bureaucrat
It was four seconds after the alarm went off that the first gun was in my face. Not bad response time, not great, but not bad. Granted I bet a few of those sentry cameras had a bead on me right away, I saw at least ten of them, and my ping returned another ninety devices that I never managed to identify. Then again I hadn’t had too much time; I simply walked into the first door I saw that said “Authorized Something Only.”
I waited for six of them to be sticking guns in my face before I gave my demands:
“I come in peace. Take me to your leader.”
The gun barrels didn’t budge. They never do things the easy way, they always choose the fun way.
The ion stream flowed over my eye in all its beautiful splendor as one by one the automated sentries whirred into action, firing with precision at their new targets. The lasers flew past, inches from my face, I could feel their heat on my cheek, hear their quite hum.
I left the least moronic looking guard (which believe me, was a tough call to make) on the cameras’ friendly list. It looked like he still hadn’t figured things out by the time he was the only one not charred on the floor. Maybe I called wrong on his intelligence, but there was no going back now. I repeated my demands to help clear things up for the poor bastard:
“I lied about the peace. Take me to your leader.”
The regional CEO wasn’t quite what I had expected, she was plenty charismatic sure, but there was still something odd about her, like she was always standing at a strange angle or something. I could tell she had already seen the camera footage and was less than pleased with what she had seen. She had two guards close to her who had gave me the creeps, which is usually a sign that they aren’t half as stupid as someone with their job should be.
“Who the hell are you and how did you do that to my sentries.” She asked, as one hand inched ever so slightly closer to the pen in her lapel.
I found myself all too ecstatic to say “My name is Doitzel, motherfucker, maybe you’ve heard of me! And what’s more, you are in luck, I’m temporarily unemployed!”
She gave a slight grin, “I have to say that I have heard of you, and I’ve heard that Csyn has been looking for you as of late. Why shouldn’t I simply turn you in to them?”
“I’ll tell you what, well have a contest; you start dialing Csyn, and by the time you’re finished with that I’ll have your latest line of public advertisements showing the iCom logo to the tune of Gongen’s national anthem. I’m sure that would turn some heads in Time Square. Last one to be thrown into prison wins.”
She paused for a minute, considering the odds.
“Very well, we could always use a hacker of your caliber, but I’m afraid there will be a catch.”
“Oh?”
“You have a reputation, Doitzel, if we are to make any sort of deal we are going to need proof that you won’t do something stupid, like place a bugged AI in our network.” At that moment the doors flew open and a dozen armed guards burst into the room with Mikey. There was a hint of fear and urgency on most of their faces, and the rest had deep claw marks on theirs.
“You should be thanking us really,” she said, “the way he started flying around the lobby and drawing cats on the ceiling, he should be on an autopsy table by now. Subtlety would suit a kisen of his nature much better.”
“Yes, but not a person of his nature.” I gave him a quick glace to see if he was alright. Aside from looking annoyed that the guards had disrupted his powers, the means of which I couldn’t pin down yet, he seemed alright, but I was pissed all the same. I thought I had deleted the camera footage of us when we walking in together, but I guess they had a backup.
“You can’t hide your concerns from me Doitzel, she said, when you’ve been in this business as long as I have you can see through anyone, I can read you like a data file. You’re little friend will stay safe as long as you follow orders, are we clear?”
“Light-Screen,” I replied, trying not to grit my teeth in anger. “I’ll play, but know this; I guarantee that you’ve never read a file like me before.”
“Very good then, perhaps I was in luck today. I’ll alert the research and development department that they will be receiving a new arrival in five minutes.” She motioned to the guards, who grabbed me by my shoulders and started to lead me out of the room.
“One more thing,” I added, over my shoulder, “don’t forget to feed Mikey, you don’t want to see what happens when his blood sugar drops to normal levels.”
“Then I guess you better work fast,” she replied, still grinning from ear to ear, “so that there will be no accidents.”
“Doitzel,” Mikey grumbled, “make this lady pay a great big asshole tax.”
Chapter 3 – Corporate Chaos
“There’s always something cleverer than you are.”
-Merlin
The head of the research and development department, which by the way is a fancy way of saying “guys who steal shit” department, was a buffoon. I bet the moron didn’t know binary from hexadecimal, but at least the supply closet was well stocked, and clearly someone else handled the mission specs which were solid. And of course the dumber they are the harder they fall for mind control. My stay there was not at all uncomfortable and within a couple days I found myself in a moment of déjà vu as I stood before General Robotics’ corporate headquarters in the Berlin Plex.
“Alright,” I muttered to myself, “this time for real.” And again I walked through the front doors.
People always get the wrong idea of what it means to be a professional poison pill. It not all crawling around in air ducts and wearing cool goggles, though okay, yeah I do usually wear goggles, but that’s because I’m awesome. No, most of the time you walk strait in the front door. Check in at the desk. Flash a fake ID. Say hi to the other employees like you’ve been there all along. They always reply “hi there… you!” Meet a contact. Steal the data when no one’s looking (or better yet when they are looking but think you are supposed to be handling it). Leave at the next work break. Cut and dry, easy as lying.
That would be my routine for the first month. They didn’t trust me enough yet to send me on the cool, sneaky sort of stuff, but after almost four weeks of perfect results, they decided to give it a shot.
So there I was, clad in black once more having the privilege of wearing cool goggles on my head, sitting in the dark, waiting for the next shift change. I pulled up a video on my eye to pass the time. I hadn’t heard the Space Pope’s latest sermon yet, but Kailingkata told me I’d like it:
“There’s a Star Man, waiting in the sky, he’d like to come and meet us, but he thinks he’d blow our minds. There’s a Star Man, waiting in the sky, he’s told us not to blow it, ‘cause he knows it’s all worthwhile. He told me, let the children lose it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie. The Gospel according to Saint Bowie. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, we look up at the sky above our noble red marble each evening, or early morning when the sun has yet to lick us with its sweet smile, but do we see the Starman? Do we remember that we are never really alone? Unfortunately, we don’t. We look at the cold reality around us, the plain and boring creation of machines and dust, and we forget to boogie. We let the caveman fight on the dance floor, and we stand on the sidelines and let our heads hang. But that isn’t what God wants for us. God calls us out to the dance floor, to foxtrot across his stars and dance his magic dance. But we doubt. But we are not alone. The Starman is still there. When Jesus called Peter across the water, and Peter doubted and fell into the water, Jesus reached down and grabbed his hand. Even though he failed, he still reached into the water and saved him. We blew it, but he is still there waiting for us. As Saint Bowie said, “If we can sparkle he may land tonight a ‘ight.” And so we must boogie, dance the magic dance, and wait for that moment when we have so fulfilled the Starman’s promise, that he doesn’t blow our minds.”
Oh, Space Pope, John Paul VIII, saving your life was one of the best decisions I ever made.
The alarm on my wrist-comp went off. It was time for some thrillin’ heroics. I hacked through the security locks on doors at the shipping docks and in I went. The job they had for me was simple enough, but I was there on my own mission. I knew CISyn had been tracking my efforts for some time now and it seemed like a good idea to erase what records they might have on me here at their main database, so with business out of the way I decided it was time for some fun and crept my way towards the server array.
As I slipped into the server farm I noticed a figure at a terminal at the far end of the room. I quickly ducked for cover in the shadows. Who was that? There shouldn’t be anyone working the server farms this late at night. Was it security? Was there a leak?
“You’re late.” A familiar voice droned. “I expected you to get here about ten minutes ago, and that was will some generous considerations.”
I looked up to see the iCom CEO who had hired me standing angrily over me, looking down. She must have been a plant all along and a damn good one too.
I stood there in shock, frozen in stupefying disbelief, until I finally managed the words “Oh, you have got to be shitting me!”
“Afraid not, Doitzel.”
“Who are you?...really.”
“Ah, and you now see the greatest difference between you and me; I am not the sort of poison pill to simply drop my name and boast. I am what a poison pill should be; I am subtle, I am clever, I am precise. In layman’s terms, I am not you.”
“Yeah… about not boasting…”
“Spare me; I don’t want to have to listen to your snarky banter and more than I have to. I don’t care what the fools of the net say, you are only mortal, and here your legend ends.”
She tossed a data disk at me.
“Here’s what you came for right, consider this as your last request, because I’m not going to grant you any other. Proof of the fact that you aren’t even able to keep yourself hidden much less the ones you care about.”
And then it hit me.
“Where’s Mikey!?”
She smiled. “Ah, Mikey, you know Doitzel, that may be the one thing I envy about you, you do have a cute kid. He’s fine, but you weren’t kidding about the sweets, there isn’t a power in the ‘verse that could stop that boy from eating cake as long as it lasts.”
I paused for a moment, the nerdy reference sinking in slowly into my brain as I raced over my options. I had to figure out who she was if I was to have any chance of fighting her, but then again, it would be a shame to kill anyone who quotes River Tam. The thought of brain diving such a strong willed person made me nervous, but on the other hand it looked like Mikey had already got to her, I’m so proud of that boy.
What I needed now was time, I had to stall long enough to fish the data out of her mind.
“What was my part in all this?” I said as I ran a telekinetic sweep over her. Her thoughts and memories should have peeled open like a book cover, but instead I got nothing. Was she able to keep her mind completely blank?
“The doop of course. Someone has to take the fall for this sort of thing.”
“For deleting my own files?” Still no thoughts, this didn’t seem possible.
“No silly, for giving the rest of this wing a half megaton push straight to hell. I have my own job to do after all.”
I dropped the sweep. What she had just said definitely merited my full attention.
“Goodbye, Doitzel, you must have known it had to end somewhere.”
And just like that she vanished. I recognized this sorcery immediately;
Oh fuck me, she has a cloak, I thought.
I had to think fast before she got away, but as I spoke I came to realize how screwed over I truly was when I suddenly lost vision in my eye and my arms and legs turned slow and heavy;
Oh fuck me, she’s hacked my brain! Who the fuck is this girl?!
And as if she could read my thoughts, which at this point I was not willing to rule out as a possibility, bright green text ran over the dead screen in my eye:
“You’ve been had by Chess Mistress Hex.”
“Not like me my ass,” I screamed, sluggishly pulling my pistols from their holsters, “that’s my signature move you bitch!”
I quickly focused my mind, and the invisible treads of consciousness surged over the fabric of space and time across the room in an instant searching for sentience as a predator does its prey. I was pinging her mind, and I was going to tear it to apart.* But there was no response. No other consciousness in the room.
Was she out of range already? No, there’s no way! How could she be doing this?
I started firing wildly all over the room, has fast as my heaving arms could bear. I was losing it, I knew I was losing it, but as far as I was concerned this could be the end of everything and it seemed like the perfect time to panic.
The text appeared over my eye again;
“Now let’s see what was in this noggin of yours…”
“Oh no, oh shit no, oh fucking hell, she had hacked into the encrypted files of my brain.”
Now for those of you folks in the audience who haven’t stopped reading out of confusion yet, allow me to shed light on the significance of this one particular situation. All the finest bits of data I come access do not end up left on a data disk or a hard drive. No, no, my favorite stuff, the stuff that could topple governments in the wrong hands always ends up in my cyber brain. Stuff like proof of corruption in the Tenryu Party, currently pending military ops, state of the art technology, and, oh yes, the identity of the fucking Gambler!… And now this crazy lady was taking it like it was nothing more than eye candy. This was officially very, very not good… And now back to our story:
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD, YOU PSYCHO BITCH, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING?!”
“Just having a little fun. ;)”
And then everything exploded.
Chapter 4 – Suddenly Pandora
“This is not my best day ever.”
-Malcom Reynolds, Firefly
The floor shook beneath my feet as the first of the bombs went off outside the room. Obviously the server farm was not little Miss Mindfuck’s target since no bomb had gone off inside, whoever hired her wanted CISyn’s archives in tact. Flames were raging outside the window, but the walls stood solid, these rooms are designed to win in a head on collision with a commercial liner. And by the same principle I assume that I wasn’t the target either, though come to think of it she never specifically mentioned killing me herself.
But I didn’t really care where she was now, besides, she definitely wasn’t here anymore. Revenge could come later. Now I had to get the hell out of this place in one piece before personnel started arriving on the scene. Easier said than done; I took a look at the inferno outside and perked my ears. I could already hear the fading hiss of the air venting out of the room. In less than a minute this room would be a near perfect vacuum, the ideal protection against fire damage. Wow, this really sucked.
“It’s alright Doitzel, you’ve had worse days,” I lied. “Allons-y, one potentially deadly thing at a time.”
Summoning up all my strength I tried to urge the dead weight that I formally called a body towards the failsafe by the door. That nervous system enhancement seemed like a good idea at the time, but then again I had never considered what would happen if it was ever hacked and reprogrammed to pull me down. My own spine had become my worst nemesis. As I lurched across the floor I ran a quick diagnostic check, if she hadn’t had time to delete any systems data, then it might be faster to get my innards back on line first rather than trying to cross the room like this.
The boot up sequence ran over in my eye, my body was still heavy, but it was a good start.
“Alright, I might just get out of this yet!” I muttered as if it could give some motivation to my legs.
And her virus kicked in. I am going to kill that bitch so very, very hard.
She must have figured I’d try to reboot and set a trigger for it. The sight in my eye turned over to color patterns so brilliant that a hippie would have to wear earplugs to look at it. It was like that drug trip I saw in that movie while I was on that drug trip. It’s a good thing that my nervous system was slow on the boot sequence, I’ve heard of what a bugged nervous system enhancement can do its user and it’s not pretty.* I had no choice at this point but to shut down my cybernetics all together and try to do this without any science at all. The thought of it made me shudder. The microcomputers in my brain powered down, my eye went blank again and I could taste ham. But at least now the cybernetics weren’t resisting me, I could move almost like a regular person.
I hadn’t been keeping track of how much time I had already wasted, but the air was getting very thin now. I ran as quickly as I could for the terminal by the door. I reached it. It felt like I was breathing oil; it was almost gone.
I don’t remember much between when I started hacking the pass code for the failsafe and when I passed out, but presumably I pulled it off because the next thing I knew I woke up… in what was very obviously an interrogation chamber.
I was tied to a chair and cuffed, which at this point I might as well consider as common a part of my day as breakfast. A hulking shadow of a man sat staring at me on the other side of the room, next to a table where I could see a knife, a type 3 battery with jumper cables, and a cheese grater. There were more than a few other objects there, but my vision was still pretty blurry, if I had to guess I’d say that the nice man over there had already taken the pleasure of pistol-whipping me a few times while I was out.
“I think you know what part comes next” he said picking up the knife.
“You’re going to kiss my hand gently and give me a corsage?” I smirked.
He put down the knife and picked up the cheese grater.
Stay tuned for the next installment of the EPIC OF DOITZEL!