Freedom Incorporated by Peter Tylee (me reader .txt) 📖

it wouldn’t matter which one they modified. An intra-nano-net connection linked each database server to its piers. It was essentially a single database copied three times, split into a complex array of sub nodes and highly sophisticated reference and record structures. UniForce had implemented it so that the database engine could retrieve information in nanoseconds. Even the complex searches, which had taken minutes to complete on older systems, took mere microseconds on the latest generation technology UniForce had used.

Cookie found it enthralling. The others were just impatient, but they knew better than to hassle him while he was working.

“Okay, I think I know what we’re looking at.” He squinted in concentration. Only his subconscious mind was enjoying the tender strokes that Samantha was lavishing on the nape of his neck. After a flurry of keystrokes, he triumphantly slammed the enter-key. “I see it. This is it, here.” He tapped a finger to the bird’s nest on the screen. “It’s not so much where we can find the bounty hunter records, that part’s easy. It’s a question of which search terms we need to feed to the engine to get the records we want.”

Silence.

Jen ventured into the hush with an intrepid question. “So you’ve got my record then?”

“Not a chance,” Cookie replied cheerfully. “But now I know how difficult it’s going to be to find. It’ll be trial and error until I can construct something similar to the front end they’re using to access the data. From there it’ll all be smooth sailing.”

Dan stifled a yawn, the first indication that his developing pattern of poor sleep was catching up with him. “And how long is that going to take?”

Cookie shrugged. “Could be twenty minutes if I get lucky, maybe a day or two if I’m not.”

“So are you feeling lucky?” Jen asked. She definitely wasn’t.

He slipped back into his semi-trance and fired a series of simple requests at the database to see what sort of garbage it would return. A delighted frown unfolded on his forehead - Cookie loved a challenge. Besides, he was still euphoric over single-handedly surmounting the barriers to the UG7-rated network.

Samantha preferred to stay close to her lover while he worked; she enjoyed feeling the warmth of his body. She’d spent many evenings with him this way, while he worked on various projects. Prior to the hack he’d been constructing the tools required for the billboard jam. She still hadn’t fully recovered from that, and the repeated late nights weren’t helping. Samantha didn’t understand how Cookie could keep going when his buttocks were numb and his fingers and wrists ached so much. She knew they were sore, she could tell by the way he flinched with each keystroke. She’d seen him pop an anti-inflammatory pill during their short interlude and hoped for his sake it’d kick in soon. Is he that motivated? Sometimes she wondered where he drew his strength. She knew she could never endure the physical demands or the psychological strain of pitting herself against a seemingly insurmountable foe. Maybe the challenge really does turn him on. He’s always joking about it, but… Personally, she preferred it when he was doing something in the workshop, which was really just an extra desk they’d squeezed into their room. Samantha and Cookie slept in the master bedroom because they paid two-thirds of the rent, but it still wasn’t huge - the extra desk barely fit.

The exhaustion was catching up with her and the lines on Cookie’s monitor were blurring. A yawn escaped and it triggered a yawn-wave that spread around the room. Yawns are like that. She smiled, her bubbly outlook shining through her fatigue. Then she gently lowered her head to Cookie’s shoulder, not heavily enough to prove a burden, just enough to let him know she was there. She looked forward to a time when they didn’t have to hide their thoughts or political ideology. And when Cookie and I can be alone again. They hadn’t truly been alone for weeks. Sure, they’d frequently been the only people in the room, but that wasn’t the same as being alone, not when she had to share her lover’s attention with a computer.

Cookie, for his part, was only semi-conscious that Samantha was even there. He did love her, and he regretted that he couldn’t pay her more attention, but he knew she understood the importance of what he was doing. A few more days, then I’ll take you out for a romantic celebratory dinner. He lamented their lost time and wished their lifestyle was more conducive toward a relationship. But hacking was a bit like the ocean, he would’ve been unwise to turn his back to it. Once he started a hack, he had to stick with it until the end, which meant days if not weeks when he was tackling something as complex as a UG7.

His thoughts soon spun to marriage. When? How? He knew Samantha was the only one he wanted but he’d never plucked the courage to ask her how she felt about it. Not while we’re at uni. He wanted to wait a year or two, so he had plenty of time to worry about that later. Or so he thought.

Focus, focus! He berated himself unnecessarily for the momentary lapse in concentration and delved deeper into his meditation-like state. He’d isolated the first part of the fetch-command structure with a lucky guess. Well, it wasn’t so much lucky as educated, but Cookie enjoyed thinking himself lucky. He whittled away at the rear of the problem with as much gusto as he’d attacked the front, but UniForce had customised it so much it was barely recognisable as a mainstream structure. Damn.

Jen sat nervously on the couch, uneasy with the silence but unable to think of anything to say.

Dan came to her rescue by saying, “I failed a psych evaluation.”

“Pardon me?”

“You asked how I could go from a cop to a-”

“So I did,” Jen said, briskly cutting him off. She wanted to shield her friends from his true profession. Then, when she looked closer at his eyes, she realised he was allowing her a peek into his tormented soul. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Dan shrugged. “Something happened to me that…” Even cryptically he had difficulty talking about Katherine’s death. “It really disturbed me.” He spread his hands, palms up. “I was on distress leave when they called me in for an interview with the shrink. I’m not surprised I flunked. After that they turfed me.” Images of the interview flashed through his mind and along with them came details of his wife’s death. It angered him, though he hid it well.

“You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to,” Jen said gently, without the earlier snappiness in her voice.

“Yes.” He forced a smile. “I think I do. You deserve to know how I ended up working for the devil.” The jest was too close to the mark to elicit a smile from either of them. “I suddenly found myself without a job, nothing to do, and far too much time to think about what’d happened.”

Jen was curious to know what had reduced such a proud man to this, but she dared not ask. She didn’t believe she had the right to an answer, and besides, she thought she might prefer never to know.

“I was a good cop,” Dan said, his eyes drifting out of focus. “I never took bribes, although plenty of people offered them.” He grunted. “I never wanted to do anything else.”

Jen waited in silence.

“I accepted UniForce’s standing offer because I needed something to take my mind off my problems.” Dan felt profoundly depressed and his confession wasn’t helping. He distantly wondered why the Zyclone wasn’t propping his mood above a lethargic flat-line. “It’s intense work, it keeps me occupied and keeps my mind busy.”

Dan was sitting in the single-seater and Jen leant forward to understandingly touch his forearm.

The warmth of her touch surprised him. It scalded his skin and he nearly flinched away until he realised it was pleasurable. He focussed on her fingers. Her hands looked like Katherine’s and he had to suffocate a sigh.

Just as Jen’s warmth had startled Dan, the chill of his skin had startled her. It felt dead.

“You don’t need to stay at UniForce, do you?” Jen asked in a low voice, wondering whether Dan was beyond salvation.

“I suppose not, but I can’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t return to the nine to five slog, I’m not cut out for it.” He faked a smile. “That probably sounds lame, eh?”

She shook her head. “No, not lame.” The thought of spending 30 years working for a multinational sent a spasm of revulsion through Jen’s body. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for it either. I admire people who can do it though.”

“Maybe if I-”

“Hey you guys!” Cookie’s shrill voice sliced through the air and severed their touch, leaving them with a spark of remorse and a pang of guilt.

“What?” Jen vaulted the couch and resumed in her usual position next to his chair, gazing at the monitor. Dan remained seated and wondered why they bothered, nothing on that screen made sense to him and he was tired of pretending it did. He watched from the relative comfort of the single-seater.

“I found your record.” Something in Cookie’s tone forewarned that it wasn’t all joyous news. “And this is your current status field.”

“And?” Jen prompted impatiently.

“They’re using encryption that I can’t reproduce from here. If we change any of the data, we’ll trip an alarm. They already know we’re sniffing their doorstep but modifying anything in the database would totally give us away. They might even discover where we are.”

“You mean track us here?”

“Right.” Cookie pouted, wondering what they’d want him to do next.

“There’s no way around it?” Jen asked despondently.

“Not unless you get me a copy of their front end. Maybe then I could reverse engineer it and forge a seal, but that’s a very big maybe.” He sighed resignedly. “They’ve protected all the keys. There’s absolutely no way we can change that field from here. At least, not unless we give ourselves away… and that would kinda negate the point, wouldn’t it?”

“Hmm.” Jen frowned. “Maybe we should go for plan-B.”

“What’s plan-B?” Samantha didn’t like the tone of Jen’s voice, it frightened her.

“We order you all a new identity and you disappear,” Dan answered from the corner. “We’ll set you up with a new life.”

“Or I turn myself over to UniForce,” Jen said, providing her teammates with an alternative. She was willing to sacrifice herself for their wellbeing if that’s what they voted.

“No.” Samantha flatly refused.

“Hang on a minute,” Cookie said. “I’ve got another idea.”

Something tingled on the edge of Dan’s mind and the hairs on the back of his neck stood upright. And he knew: Something’s wrong.

*

He fawned at the glorious orb, basking in the light and sulphurous fumes that billowed from its gluey skin. Give me the sign, he urged. I need it now… give me the sign. The Raven was on his knees, begging for a taste of freedom, even if it were temporary.

The vibration buzzing at his temples was nearly unbearable and, as usual, it spread to his back teeth. Then the omen said what the Raven wanted to hear before fading to black with a final splutter of jelly. The Raven recovered quickly and got to his feet, flexing his fingers around his Redback before trekking stealthily to Jennifer Cameron’s apartment.

*

“We’re out of time.” Dan drew the curtain back an inch to get a better look outside. “We can’t wait - he’s coming now.”

“How do you know?” Jen wished she knew what to do,