CyberpunkErotica (6 page)

“What?” he spluttered. “How could you possibly know?”

“If it is recorded, I can access it,” I replied as I scanned dozens of files each minute. “I can access everything. I know you are all aware that the laboratory next to this is producing the cheap sauces used by the Highlife Burger Company, despite the fact that the side effect of the ingredients is an increase in cancer rates. Yet, none of you do anything except say how terrible it is before looking away, not speaking out.

“I would ask how you sleep at night, but thanks to the surveillance files and credit card receipts, I know exactly how you sleep. In comfortable beds, in good neighbourhoods, cut off from the street in wealthy seclusion. Yet, you all want more. You all want to live in the inner steel city, where the elite are. No wonder you have no problem with one of your colleagues torturing a test subject.”

Suddenly, I laughed.

“What’s funny?” demanded Andrew petulantly.

“A fact I’ve just stumbled over in the data files.
Corps
was originally used as an insult, back when the corporations started to take over the world in the twenty-first century. It echoed the word corpse, and thus interrelated a corporate employee to the dead. It refers to someone with no imagination or creativity, who exists just to crunch numbers and make profit. The term has been in use so long, this is hardly remembered. It’s now just seen as a normal term for a corporate worker. That’s what you all are. You’re all dead inside.”

Chapter Twelve

“She’s a danger,” raged Anna. “She is an anarchist socialist! She must be disconnected from the project immediately!”

I raised my eyebrow at her. Making sure I had her full attention, I summoned a pulse of power from the generators in the lower basements and sent the surge up to the lab, directing it to the neural stimulation controls, which exploded as the power went through.

“You cannot disconnect me, your calculations are wrong,” I said.

“My God, she’s right,” said Taylor, the truth of my words hitting him as he checked the readouts on the neural link.

“I can block any scan you try to make,” I smiled. “I can stop this experiment right now by simply refusing to allow you access to my mind or by refusing to talk to you.”

“We can access your mind with a scalpel,” snapped Anna, glaring at me in hatred.

“In which case, you will learn nothing about how the link works with living tissue. Your theories on the matter are only twelve per cent correct,” I replied. “I reconfigured myself to survive and to link with the neural net. You have no idea how I did it. You need me alive and in a cooperative mood.”

A worried glance went around the group as they checked their computers and realised I was telling the truth. They needed me to cooperate if they were to succeed in their experiment.

“What a shame you never predicted this,” I continued. “You just saw the danger of me accessing your data and using it against you. So, you had the neural stimulator installed as your failsafe, to burn my mind. You never foresaw you would need my mind in one piece to cooperate.”

“I think you are over stimulated,” said Holloway soothingly, trying to win my trust, though treating me as though I were a naughty child was not the best way to start. “You have access to all the facts about us but not the nuances. We are not monsters. We are all responsible citizens. The facts alone, looked at a certain way, demonise us. You do not understand the complexity of our real situation here.”

“That doesn’t matter,” snapped Anna. “She is a danger. If she talks, she could raise questions. She could raise an investigation!”

“Which would not really intrude on your work too much,” I pointed out. “After all, you influence the companies that do the investigations so they always turn in a positive report containing nothing more than the odd comment about procedures needing to be monitored more effectively.”

“I think a wider view would benefit Zara,” continued Holloway in his best medical manner. “We need more data, and if Zara refuses to cooperate, then we will be back to square one. I suggest that young Andrew should take Zara under his wing and show her that we are not evil, that we have good values that we live by. See our world, Miss Mason. See that we are genuinely trying to help humanity with our work here. Then, you will understand.”

Professor Holloway gestured for Andrew to join him in a corner of the lab. I tuned into another security camera and listened to their conversation.

“Persuade her of our good intentions. Otherwise, this whole project will be a failure,” said Holloway, tightly keeping control of his fear, anxiety and anger. “If we can’t replicate this, we’ll be closed down and fired. Make the bitch cooperate.” Suddenly, his composure broke and the animal within snarled. “This could put us on the fucking top floor, for God’s sake! Make her tell us how she did it! If you fail, I promise you, I will destroy your life completely!”

By the time Andrew came back to me, he had smoothed his face into a warm, open, caring smile, though he was still pale from the professor’s threat.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, okay, Zara,” he said, his voice too loud. Stress and fear modulated with paranoia and hatred in his tone. It was all I could do not to laugh at him as he uncoupled me from the equipment and restraints. “Let’s show you around, let you see the truth of what we do here.”

He activated the key code to open the door, covering the pad with his other hand as he did so.

“Four, three, one, one, seven, eight, two,” I said, not looking at him.

He swung around and stared at me in shock.

I ignored him as I walked past him and through the door. We were back in the long corridor I had been marched down barely an hour earlier. Now, I was seeing it through new eyes, my senses unnaturally heightened. I could summon up the architects plans for the building and overlay them on my vision. I could smell the plaster, the paint, the floor polish. I could see the joint between each section of the wall.

“Let me show you the infant health lab,” said Andrew eagerly, trying to lead me down the corridor.

“Where you create vaccines for children but only within the guidelines set up by the finance and marketing departments,” I replied, accessing the relevant files. “You have been sitting on a vaccine for three years that would eradicate Grey’s disease in the third world, but because the third world is poor, you have never released it.”

“I, that’s, I didn’t know,” spluttered Andrew.

“Monitored conversation between yourself and Anna Grant on the third of March, one year ago, where she mentioned in passing that this was the policy decision of the company. You replied,
They know best
, before talking about the weekend’s upcoming tennis tournament.” I watched in contempt as he spluttered afresh.

“I don’t need to see the rest of this place, I know what you do here,” I snapped. “I want to see the steel city. I want to see New London.”

Chapter Thirteen

As we flew through the steel city, my ability to access the neural net faded and grew depending on whether we were close to a transmitter. As such, I had difficulty in locating any historical data on revolutions. One thing I did manage, however, when in range of a larger transmitter on a street corner, was to access the internal security system. I could
see
all the heavy gates that kept the city separate from the street. Smiling, I mentally overrode the gates at the northeast side of the complex, causing them to swing wide open, before turning my attention back to Andrew.

“I have a dinner engagement tonight,” he said. “I’d better cancel.”

“No, I want to meet the people who live here, see what they’re like,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“I was told to find the nuances of your lives here. What better way than at the dinner table?”

“Do you often dine with friends?”

“I do a mean pasta.”

A look of contempt flitted over Andrew’s face before he smothered it. “I mean proper dining, at a table, with three courses, wine, cutlery?”

“Your job is to suck up to me, yet you still patronise me for not being from the right background,” I observed. “Don’t worry, I’ve just accessed all the files on how to behave at the dinner table. I know to hold the spoon in my right hand and sip from the edge, never the end. I know to pass the salt and pepper even if someone only asks for the salt. In fact, I probably know more about etiquette than you do.”

Andrew flushed. “There’s more to it than just reading up on how to behave from a manual,” he muttered. “You have to
know
how to behave.”

“Oh, so breeding is innate?” I said in contempt. “It’s not accessible to anyone from the wrong background?”

“You’re putting words into my mouth,” he mumbled as the hover car landed in front of one of the huge steel and glass tower blocks. Unlike the tower block I lived in, this one was clean, wasn’t covered in barbed wire and billboards, and it didn’t stink of vomit and piss. The wealthy certainly did live differently.

We rode up to the tenth floor in the spacious lift. It was the sort you only get in really classy establishments, the sort that go sideways and drop you actually inside the apartment, as long as you have full security clearance. Another contrast between his world and mine. As was the pot plant which stood in one corner of the lift, and the walls which were padded with a soft, velvet-like material. I reached out to touch them.

Andrew looked at me as the doors opened and we stood facing a group of three people.

They were very like Andrew–affluent, well dressed, all clean and healthy. I ignored them to respond to Andrew’s sneer.

“In my tower block, the lifts are made of grey iron.”

“I suppose they have to be iron because of all the low-life thugs who punch and kick the surface when drunk or high or bored,” replied Andrew in a superior tone.

“And no doubt those sort of lifts are also used as urinals,” said the grey-haired man in the room, looking at me in distaste. Clearly, he could see no further than my piercings, my tattoos and my dark biker gear.

“There are always a few who spoil it for all,” I replied, uneasily aware that the lifts were indeed abused this way. Anger at the judgemental glances I was attracting replaced the unease. “Treat people like animals, they’ll become animals.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your…companion, Andrew?” asked the silver-haired woman as she took Andrew’s coat.

“Yes, sorry. This is my mother and father, Gwen and Henry,” replied Andrew. He then gestured at the young woman who was glaring at me in hostility. “This is my fiancée, Eileen. Everyone, this is Zara, from work.”

Chapter Fourteen

“When Andrew says I’m from work, he means I’m being experimented on by Vine Corp,” I said as I strode in. Given the looks I was getting, I saw no reason to be polite or sympathetic. Thankfully, the apartment contained a slim, powerful Data Net transmitter. I mentally hooked up to it and found my head full of information, anything and everything ready to be pulled down. I also checked the security monitors. The citizens of the street had, by now, noticed the open gates at the far end of New London and were pouring through into an area they had never been allowed near. I smiled. This was the start of the revolution.

“Oh, that’s nice,” said his mother uncertainly. “Andrew, why have you brought her here?” she added in a low tone.

“I’ll be sacked if I don’t keep an eye on her,” snapped Andrew bitterly.

I almost felt sorry for him then. He clearly resented the role imposed on him by Professor Holloway, and more than that, I suspected he was having second thoughts about his career and aspirations. Had I woken something within him?

“Believe me, I didn’t want to bring her sort here,” he added, so I guessed I probably hadn’t.

“I need a drink, then we can eat,” said Andrew’s father. He hastily replenished glasses before turning to me. “Would you like something?” he asked in a patronising manner. “We’re enjoying a rather nice Saint-Émilion.”

“Do you drink Saint-Émilion often?” asked Eileen, a smirk on her face.

I looked it up on the Data Net. “Saint-Émilion, originating from the Bordeaux wine area in France. Specifically, the Libourne. Right side of the Dordogne. No,” I continued, “I don’t drink it often, but I know a damn sight more about it than you do.”

“Don’t worry,” muttered Andrew morosely, as he quickly sank a glassful, showing a certain disrespect to the Saint-Émilion as he guzzled it down like cheap beer. “That’s the experiment. Zara has been linked to the Data Net. She has it all in her head, so she has access to everything, but she doesn’t really understand what she’s saying.”

“I’m not surprised,” sneered Eileen. “That takes class.”

“I suppose you were born knowing such things, were you?” I snapped. “You never had to be taught how to sit at the table, because you just knew how to do everything like that from birth, is that right? Please, do enlighten me.”

“It still takes breeding,” muttered Eileen sullenly. “Something you clearly lack.”

“What’s your problem? Worried I’ll be stealing your spineless, useless fiancé from you?”

“How dare you?” hissed Eileen. “Andrew works hard and is on the verge of promotion! In any case, he’d never be interested in anything as common as you!”

I saw then, without the benefit of the Neural Data Link, that Eileen was suffering not only from snobbery, but also from good old-fashioned jealousy. She didn’t like the fact that Andrew was working so closely with another woman, regardless of the situation.

“Don’t worry, I prefer men, not worms,” I answered. “Worms who grovel to the boss and do nothing when they see corruption or immorality because they’re so desperate to climb the career ladder.” Even as I spoke, I wished that I did actually know someone like that. Wrecker was no different from Andrew, really. Both were proven disappointments. Andrew was a spineless toady, while Wrecker sponged off a series of girlfriends of which I was just the latest. And I was dumb enough to let him get away with it.

“You don’t understand the way the world works,” slurred Andrew, who was still hogging the Saint-Émilion. His face was red and sweating. “It’s the only way. Riches and recognition. How else are we measured? Isn’t that right, Father? Status is everything. Never let the neighbours know we missed a meal, just as long as we can pay the monthly instalments on the beach house and the car and the TV!”