Unstable Prototypes (24 page)

Ma fumbled at the slidepad. After it slipped
from her grip a second time and had to be tugged back within her
reach, Garotte heaved a frustrated sigh and reached across to
secure her a bit more appropriately to the chair. Once a leg
restraint was holding her down to the seat on its own and both of
her paws were free, she selected a message.

"Proxy purchase accounts will be made
available to you for all necessary expenditures. I shall make the
determination of which expenditures are necessary."

"I rather think that I'm the better equipped
to make that particular determination."

"You should have thought about that before
you chose to illustrate your questionable judgment."

Garotte scowled. "You are a good deal more
controlling than I remember from my last visit with Karter."

She swiped at her slidepad. "Doubtful. I have
always been controlling. I am a control system."

"I seem to remember you following orders back
then."

More swiping. "The context of my role at that
time was to service the requirements of my facility, my creator,
and my guests. The current context requires that I assure the
timely removal of my creator from harm. Obedience is thus
contingent upon an assessment of the wisdom of a request and its
ability to further this end."

"Well your refusal to be helpful is
endangering the mission."

"This is an inaccurate assessment of the
current situation. I shall make the determination of which
expenditures are necessary," she stated, swiping to add, "If you
refuse to show me proposed expenditures, you are at fault."

"Fine," he grumbled, working at his own pad
until he'd drawn up a list. "There, does this meet with your
approval, your majesty?"

After his device was placed before her and
she had read through carefully, she selected one item – a high
powered military data radio – and doubled the requested amount. She
then added an item to the list.

"Expenses approved," she said.

Garotte looked at her addition.

"A dozen eight-conductor, double-shielded
transmission cables, terminated with type MOL-7 micro polarized
connectors? Why, may I ask, do we require those?"

"They will permit the data radios to be
attached to a hardwired data port, enhancing data transfer speed
and bypassing wireless-specific security measures. Additionally,
because I said so."

Garotte cast a long, measuring glare at the
bizarre creature/device in the navigator's seat. It was beginning
to become clear why Lex had shown the tendency to treat it like a
woman. It certainly acted like one. The question was, how much more
of it was he willing to deal with before the time came to find a
way to remove her from the equation?

Just over a day had passed and Lex was once
again sitting in a landing queue. This time he had even managed to
remember to use his actual registered transponder code, since this
was one of those rare trips that wasn't under a false pretense.
Despite the fact he was carrying no illegal materials or
passengers, and as far as he knew was not currently wanted by any
law enforcement agencies, landing on Tessera had him just a bit
nervous. It wasn't that it was a shady planet. To the contrary, it
was a veritable paradise. Tessera was one of only two planets
discovered in the earliest days of FTL exploration that required
virtually no terraforming to be made habitable. That meant it had a
very long history, and its spectacular climate made it a favorite
for resorts, corporate headquarters, universities, and anything
else that could benefit from a nice view. Even better, since it was
developed after the "trial and error" phase of industry, it was run
by extremely environmentally friendly technologies, and thus had
remained fairly unspoiled despite its population and popularity.
Anyone who did any traveling at all on an interstellar scale would
end up there fairly often, be it for sightseeing, attending a
concert, visiting a museum, or just kicking back for a while. Lex,
on the other hand, had avoided it for the last eight months. Why?
Because the last time he was here, he hurled himself off the top of
a train station into rush hour traffic.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

That stunt, like so much in his life these
days, had been the result of the VectorCorp fiasco. The
circumstances of the aftermath had led to any lasting records of
his behavior being wiped from public record, but no amount of
covering up could erase him from the memory of the people whose
cars he'd dented up that day. Yes, it was a massive, heavily
populated planet, and yes, he was currently heading toward an
entirely different continent. That did little to quiet the voice in
his head that was convinced that as soon as he touched down, he
would hear someone yell "There he is, get him!"

To take his mind off of it, he decided to
call Michella to let her know that he'd arrived. After a few
moments of establishing a connection, a face popped up on his
slidepad. It was a man with dirty blonde hair organized into a
meticulously disheveled coiffure; the sort of hair that one styles
for an hour to achieve the "Just rolled out of bed" look.

"Hello, Mr. Alexander," said Jon, Michella's
assistant.

"Hey, Jon," Lex replied.

The first few times he had called Michella
and a man had answered, it had been an unwelcome surprise, but now
it was par for the course. She was so frequently on camera, on
stage, or otherwise in a situation in which she should not be
disturbed, Jon was her slidepad's official keeper. As a result, Lex
spoke to his girlfriend's personal assistant almost twice as often
as he spoke to her. Now that he though about it, it was kind of
sad.

"Mitch around?" Lex asked.

"Well, it is 4:15 PM local, so she's at a
meet and greet for the next hour and forty-five. You're here
already?"

"That I am. 4:15 PM? Oh, right, Tessera's
days are a weird length..."

"Don't I know it. How did you get here so
fast?"

"Trade secret."

"Well, Miss Modane has added you to her
room's access list. That's room 1553 at the McKenzie Pavilion. It
is on Richardson Road, right at the north end of the Millennium
Convention Center complex in the center of Rackton."

"I'm sure I'll be able to find it."

"Did you get your VIP credentials for the
convention?"

"Let me check... Yeah, I've got the message
right here."

"That should get you into the meet and greet
if you like."

"Actually, I'm just a wee bit ripe after all
of the travel I've been doing. For Mitch's sake, I think I'll take
advantage of an actual, factual shower."

"You're all heart, Mr. Alexander."

"That's what I keep telling her. And I keep
telling
you
to stop calling me 'Mr. Alexander.' Every time I
hear that it is paired up with 'Your payment is overdue' or 'We
would like a word with you privately.' Stick to Lex or Trevor,
please."

"I'll try to keep that in mind, and I'll let
her know you're here. Take care," Jon replied, motioning to hang
up.

"Wait! Uh, Jon... I know this is going to
sound weird but... Does Michella talk about me?"

"Does she
talk
about you? What do you
mean? Does she badmouth you?"

"I mean does she bring me up in any way,
shape, or form, Jon. Is she at all aware of my absence?"

"You never struck me as the insecure
type."

"Just answer the question, Jon."

He smirked and rolled his eyes. "Let's put it
this way. You know how much she talks, right?"

"Do I ever."

"Well, when she's talking to me, about half
of that is Trevor Alexander. Is it true that one Valentine's Day in
college, you-"

"That'll do, Jon. Thank you."

He quickly ended the call and shoved the pad
in his pocket. The landing queue finally started to move, and
without the need to bluff his way through a cover story, he was
into the atmosphere without anything particularly eventful
occurring. Thanks to the general wealth of the residents and the
strictly enforced laws, you couldn't simply land on the surface.
Typical visitors were expected to leave their ships in an orbital
dock and ride the shuttles down. If you wanted the honor of
actually letting your ship touch their soil, you had to cough up
for a landing permit. Lex always did. Call it paranoia, but he
hated the idea of his ship being on one side of the atmosphere and
himself being on the other. In exchange for the fee, he was at
least treated to a flyover view of the city of Rackton.

If you were going to make a brochure for
human civilization, Rackton is what you would put on the cover.
Every aspect of it was carefully planned out in advance and
immaculately maintained. There were vast stretches of emerald
green, perfectly manicured grass. Surface roads were completely
absent, replaced with skyways with mandatory autonomous vehicle
piloting. No human controlled vehicles meant no cutting people off,
no speeding, flawless alternate merging, and no traffic congestion.
The laws were enforced with an enthusiasm that fell short of a
police state, but not by much, and kept walls graffiti free, dark
alleys safe, and property values high. The architecture leaned
heavily on the artistic side of the sliding scale of form vs.
function. For one thing, the opera house, in accordance with some
sort of unwritten law that states such a structure must never be a
simple box, was an angular, arching sculpture of a building, based
on a fractal. Rackton was a shining example of what many would feel
is the best that a city could be. Not bad for a place that sounds
suspiciously like it was named after a Swedish shelving unit.

The other building that dominated the
landscape from the air was the McKenzie Pavilion, his destination.
It was a gleaming work of art, the entire exterior appearing to be
a smooth, seamless glass shell. Like the opera house, a simple
"four walls and a roof" design simply wouldn't do. Instead it was
shaped like a cresting wave, starting almost flush to the ground
and rising in a smooth curve until it climbed hundreds of stories
into the air, where it actually curled over and produced a scenic
overhang, then a steep slope back to the ground. It was
breathtaking. Of course, evidently the shiny surface and smooth
curve had a habit of focusing the reflected sunlight from the steep
side of the building into a dangerously intense beam at certain
times of day, and said beam had been scorching the grass until they
installed a strategically placed reflecting pool, but such are the
costs of art.

In keeping with the city's aesthetic, it had
a handful of shipyards, but they were all underground facilities,
and they all sat at the perimeter of the city. Normally Lex didn't
mind mass transit much, but his journey thus far had allowed for
little in the way of personal grooming. Between a face that hadn't
seen a razor in a few days, hair that hadn't seen a comb in a few
days, and clothes that hadn't seen an iron... ever, Lex was feeling
a tad self-conscious about standing on a tram beside the galaxy's
social elite. He kept to himself, avoided eye contact, and quietly
hoped that the pseudo-hygiene products one relies upon during
marathon space flights had done as good a job as the commercials
promised they would.

His arrival at the hotel did little to
restore his confidence in his appearance. Lex had stayed in places
like this before. The kind of people who got a room at The Pavilion
didn't do it so that they would have a place to sleep. They did it
so that they could inform others that they were staying at The
Pavilion. It was a status symbol, the equivalent of a college
diploma for the rich and famous. If you were able to stay there,
you were somebody. He had stayed there exactly once, a few weeks
before the Tremor Grand Prix and his subsequent fall from grace.
Returning here now, after all of this time, was an unwelcome
reminder of how far down that fall had taken him. The last time he
walked through these doors he'd been greeted by name and offered a
complementary gift basket. This time...

"I'm sorry, sir, but the service entrance is
on the side of the building," said a snooty doorman in a uniform
that made him look like he should be playing the triangle in a
marching band.

"Believe it or not, I'm here with one of your
guests," he said, pulling out his slidepad and showing the access
privilege email.

He glanced over the credentials, then Lex's
wadded up wardrobe.

"My apologies, of course. The elevator is to
your right. And do tell Miss Modane that, in the future,
interviewees should be cleared with building management before
being given access to the premises."

"I'm not an informant, Jarvis, I'm her
boyfriend," he growled.

"Of course," he said, holding the door
open.

Lex endured one final uncomfortable journey
of judgment, this time on the elevator, then found Michella's room.
She had still not returned, which was good, because Lex was already
starting to strip down for the shower before the door was even
finished closing. He opened the door to a room that looked more
like an enchanted grotto than a bathroom; all marble and brass with
potted plants and waterfall faucets. After figuring out the shower
head, which had more settings and modes than his sound system, and
finding the soap, which contained more fruit than he'd eaten in the
last month, he finally got down to business. Twenty-five pulsating
jets of water quickly convinced him it had been worth the wait.

#

Meanwhile, in a freshly purchased Mobius
Armistice, Garotte was stroking at his slidepad, working at the
built-in art application. Most of the previous day had been spent
in silence. Ma had become a savvy enough judge of human nature to
know that the engaging discussions she shared with Lex would not be
nearly as fruitful with Garotte. As for him, at no point during the
time had the thought of engaging the creature in conversation even
occurred to him. He hadn't considered chatting with the control
panel of the ship, either, and for much the same reason. After a
few hours of sleep drifting in the weightless interior of the cargo
bay, he had begun assembling and preparing the documents and
equipment he would need for the next stage of the mission. This had
begun with the negotiation of the purchase of the Ma-approved
equipment list. As luck would have it, one of his suppliers was
still in business, and he was able to contact him through the
elaborate notification system that had been put in place to prevent
their communications from being tracked. It involved making a
carefully worded post in an entertainment forum. Seven minutes
later there would be a reply that contained a link to a game. For
the thirty seconds immediately following the post, the user with
the third highest score would be the login to a third site, and the
score would be the password. This site would provide the contact
info for a go-between, who if he deemed you to be trustworthy would
pass you on to the real contact via a random jump, high encryption
connection. If the military thought that they had the most secure
communications system in the galaxy, it was only because they'd
never seen what the black market had come up with.