aSG: Chalandra Harkness: The Bloodchip Matrix #2

[Gary W. Olson]

                         CHALANDRA HARKNESS:
                        THE BLOODCHIP MATRIX
                 (a tale from altiverse 998SUPERGUY)
                              Episode 2
                             "The Deal"
                                 by
                            Gary W. Olson

                                 +++

     Chalandra Harkness took a long, slow sip from her mug, regarding
the man who was sitting across from her, at a table in the center of
one of San Francisco's less savory cafes.  Percy McFae's face was
light, but not pale, and he returned her gaze with studied patience,
showing no indication that he was concerned about his surroundings.
The nostrils of his small, cherub-like nose twitched slightly, as an
acrid scent drifted from a table nearby.
     He was clearly not immortal, she decided.  No fangs, no pallor.
No hot, sweet radiance, no sense of the presence of a fellow predator.
Yet, he did not seem mortal, either.  There was warmth, but just a
perfunctory sort of warmth.  Blood pumped in his veins, but it did not
call to her, did not whisper of the joy and the terror of being alive.
     She wondered if she was dreaming, if this was the someone she
feared.
     "Bloodchip?" Chalandra asked, setting her mug down.  "Let me
guess.  Someone's pet tech toy, right?"
     "After a manner of speaking," McFae said.  "How did you know?"
     "You don't give bigass names to your run-of-the-mill chips,"
Chalandra responded.  "And when you said 'small' and 'paper-thin', I
guessed that it wasn't a potato chip."
     "Ms. Harkness, are you familiar with Red Sky Systems?"
     "No more than most of the planet is," she said.  "I have one of
their memory banks in my head, and a compstation back at the office.
They're the ones that developed DarkNET, wired the world for
information."
     "And if I told you that it's CEO, Vedrik Temekhan, was a
vampire?" McFae prompted, his eyes never leaving hers.
     She puffed on her cigar for a few moments.  "I'd ask why you're
telling me old news."  She blew a smoke ring into his face.  He did
not flinch.
     "Vedrik was right," McFae said.  "You do know things."
     "I have sources," Chalandra said.
     "Precisely why I have sought you out," McFae told her.  "And why
you may be the only one who can find the Bloodchip."
     "Like I said, I'm listening."
     "Temekhan is the godfather of the cybernetic revolution," McFae
said.  "He, and other vampires of like mind, developed the theories,
produced the technologies.  It took nearly a century and a half to
build Red Sky.  And you know why he succeeded, don't you?"
     "Genius minds, forever in their prime," Chalandra answered.  "No
death to cut their work short.  They could afford to be patient, to
design a development program in terms of decades, rather than quarters
of years.  All that time to learn, to refine, to test."
     "Yes," McFae went on.  "The Bloodchip represents the culmination
of his work.  For it goes beyond silicon and neurolink tech, beyond
the net itself."
     "The suspense is killing me," Chalandra said, sardonically.
     "The chip carries the only fully functional wetcode trigger in
existence."
     Chalandra smoked her cigar for a few moments.
     "Hate to admit it, but you got me on that," she said.
     He smiled, just a little.  It was the first sign of emotion she
had seen since he had arrived.
     "A wetcode trigger," he said, "is a program designed to trigger
specific genetic responses within an organism, to, in effect, re-
engineer the organism according to the program specifications."
     Chalandra lowered her cigar, registering his words.
     "You're talking about genetic engineering," she said, quietly.
"I thought that nonsense died out in the last century."
     "The 'nonsense' which you refer to was only the play of some
mortals who were experimenting blindly, for purposes that were
oblique, at best," McFae responded.  "What I am talking about is
something much more focused, more radical."
     He paused, studying her reactions.  Chalandra raised her cigar
again, and regarded him coolly.
     "The chip does not work on its own," he said.  "The organism to
be altered must be prepared to receive and interpret the programmed
instructions, to manipulate RNA and DNA sequences precisely, to induce
the body to produce the exact amounts of the right chemicals for the
exact amount of time needed.  We call these alterations 'the Bloodchip
Matrix,' as they will be the means of storage and transmission for the
program."
     "The chip doesn't direct the engineering?" she asked.
     "In a limited manner," McFae said.  "It directs the writing of
the program into the larger computer into which it is implanted - the
mind itself.  From there, the mind will obey its new directives, and
will implement whatever changes have been encoded, through the
Matrix."
     He paused, waiting to see if she had more questions.  Seeing that
she didn't, he went on.
     "This chip has been stolen from Red Sky, Ms. Harkness," he said.
"We believe it may be in the possession of a man named Fekesh.  Are
you familiar with that name?"
     "Vaguely," Chalandra said.  "He's supposed to be the boss of one
of Tokyo's crime syndicates."
     "The Dying Sun," McFae informed her.  "Split off from the Yakuza
ten years ago, and the only splinter group big enough to cause them
problems.  Has ties to the Shodani Group, which would be very
interested in taking the lead in genetic tech."
     "So you know, or think you know, who's got it, and where it's
going," Chalandra said.  "Red Sky isn't short of pocket change.  Why
are you calling on me, when you can afford to buy top drawer corporate
eyes?"
     "Ain't how it works in Tokyo," McFae answered.  "Red Sky has some
weight in the city, like everywhere else.  But it's Shodani's city.
Red Sky sends investigators, they'd be stonewalled cold.  Or killed
outright.
     "But you're different.  You've lived in the city before.  You've
breathed it's air, tasted it's flesh.  And you know people there.
People we can't get close to."
     "How do you know that?" Chalandra asked, her eyes narrowing and
focusing on McFae.
     "We have our sources," McFae told her, his face still
emotionless.
     She paused, lifted her mug, finishing her Sangria Sunset.  She
set it down again, and locked his eyes with hers.
     "Very well, Mr. McFae," she said, smiling darkly.  "You've just
hired yourself a vampire."

                                 +++

     The stars were out again, and their tears of blood fell silently
around her.  She looked at the stars, seeing them clearly, despite the
blood.
     She wondered where the haze of pollution was, where the banishing
glare of light had gone.  The stars had been lost to most on Earth for
decades, behind the veil of night.  What the sprawling technopolises
themselves did not obscure, the light and heat they generated did.
     Chalandra allowed a drop of blood to roll into her mouth.  She
could not taste the drop, nor feel its substance.  But she could feel
it roll atop the tip of her tongue.
     The machinery hummed around her, it's song shaking her, making
her body resonate.  She felt the pulse of the machine, it's hypnotic
melody striking a chord in her.  Someone was coming.
     She had seen those stars before.
     There was a flower, growing from the metal floor.  It glowed an
electric blue, and drank the blood that fell like rain from the stars
above.
     Someone arrived.  She awoke.

                                 +++

     The flower was a new touch, Chalandra reflected, as she glided
upstairs, toward her office.  She had had the same dream for months,
with no variation.  Now, a flower.
     When she saw the blue rose in McFae's suit pocket, she nearly
dropped her travel bag.
     "I'm sorry, did I surprise you?" McFae asked.
     "No," Chalandra said, recovering quickly.  "I was expecting you."
     "Good," McFae said.  "You're ready to go?"
     "Lead on, MacDuff."
     "McFae."
     "Sorry.  McFae."
     McFae opened the door, and Chalandra stepped out, into the
darkening light.  McFae followed, closing the door.  Chalandra swiped
a chit through the lock reader, and a light changed from green to red.
     "A rather...modest office," McFae said.
     "I make a rather modest income," Chalandra said.  "Surely, your
sources told you that."
     "Of course," McFae said, blandly.  Chalandra looked at the faded
Harkness Detective Services logo, suspended above the door,
illuminated by a fluorescent lamp a meter above.  It hadn't been the
classiest of places she had lived, but it gave her a place to reflect,
to restore her energy following a tumultuous part of her life.  The
occasional case she had taken paid for the few things she needed, and
what could not be paid for she simply took, as necessary.
     Now, she was going back.  To the tumult she had escaped.
     "Ms. Harkness," McFae prompted.  Chalandra turned, and saw the
taxi that waited.  McFae stood by the rear passenger side door,
waiting for her.
     The ride to SFX seemed to go in a blur, to her.  The neon hills
and noise of a few million blurred into a discordant kaleidoscope of
perception.  Chalandra ignored McFae, who stared straight ahead, not
venturing to make any comments or ask questions.  There would be time
for that later.
     She had just barely tasted the flesh of the city, in the decades
she had called it her home.  She had not partaken of its essence,
lived in its bloodstream, merged with its fabric.  She loved it
desperately, but it was not what she craved.
     Tokyo.  She had tasted Tokyo, and had been consumed by it.
     "We've arrived," McFae announced, as the taxi stopped.  They
emerged, and McFae ran a credit chit through a slot.  The doors closed
automatically, and the taxi drove off, into the neon smoke in the
distance.
     "Our flight will take full advantage of the darkness of night, as
it moves eastward, across the Pacific," he said, as they began walking
through the lot, towards the passenger terminal building.  "We might
even have time to see Temekhan himself, before dawn there."
     "He wants to see me?" Chalandra asked, surprised.
     "To answer any questions that I, because of my obligations,
cannot," McFae said.
     Chalandra started to respond, then stopped.  She cocked her head,
looking around the lot with wariness.  McFae stopped, looking at her
curiously.
     They heard the first one, before they saw him.
     "Alright, girl.  You too, buzzhead.  You wanna live, do what we
say."
     The boy stepped out, from behind one of the Transit busses that
lined the lot.  His hair was short, black, and spiked, and his skin
was almost bone white.  He had a practiced scowl on his face, through
which Chalandra could see sharpened teeth.
     "Vampboys," she said to McFae.  McFae nodded, no sign of emotion
on his features.  "Six of 'em."
     "How young are you, girl?" the vampboy asked, as more of his
fellows emerged, barely visible in the light cast from the passenger
terminal building.  "Twenty?  Twenty two?"
     "Six hundred twelve, boy," Chalandra hissed.
     "Yeah," the boy said, laughing a little nervously.  He looked at
his fellows, and at her again.  "That'll end here, girl.  We're going
to take your blood, and tear you apart.  Your boyfriend here, too."
He signaled, and the vampboys surged forward.

(to be continued...)
--
Copyright (c) 1993-2010 by Gary W. Olson.  All Rights Reserved.
--
Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
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