WARNING
The following text is a fictional story concerning Id, one of the gods that appear in the Novel "Amarás en Guerra", but is not part of the Novel. The text contains crude language and images. Discretion is adviced.
A walking hard-drive.
By: Arturo B. Loranca
It was one of
those things that survived an era by diversifying, which basically meant that:
A. Although
it was still an efficient commodity, its real purpose had changed, so, in
principle, its identity was conflicted. In fact, it was so conflicted about
what it was, that at times it thought itself a man, but how could it not? Part
of its new usefulness brought him in contact with perks and pleasures that most
men could only envy;
B. It
couldn’t help to have an utter disregard for its own endeavors and the consequences
thereof. It just did not care what they did with it/him (as delusion would
have it) and;
C. It/he felt old, way too old: An old man that was not old and not a man.
The product of
cyberpunk-aficionado engineers working with defense contractors, it was the
ultimate way to transport secure information in the nineties. A volunteer- say college dropout or
army-recruit-seeking-citizenship-
was outfitted with a terabyte hard-drive in his/her abdominal cavity
allowing an i/o cable and port to emerge strategically trough the volunteer’s umbilical
cavity. The drive was somehow connected to the volunteer’s heart and programmed
to delete itself should the poor shmuck’s heart-rate exceeded 180 or came to 0. The idea was to create a way to move information
without the risk of signal jamming, intercepting or hacking by using couriers
that could not reveal the information they were carrying when intercepted,
tortured and/or killed on route. Should
the courier face any mortal danger, his/her heartbeat would rise and the drive
would erase (which would left torture and threats out of the picture if you
wanted to get the information), should the courier be killed or separated from
the drive, the drive would erase (which would left killing and mutilation out
of the picture if you wanted to get the information). You could bribe or sleep the carriers to
get access to their ports, but later models had another built-in safety feature:
the i/o port of the drive would only activate if an 8 digit code was punched-in
through a special dial that could be outfitted in the I/O port itself.
Normally, the
courier would not know the code for the I/O port, so bribing or putting them to sleep was also useless…
If your intention was to retrieve the information.
Turned out that most
intelligence agencies didn’t care as much for the retrieval of the information
sent by their counterparts as they cared for preventing its delivery, so the
idea, which was very successful in the early years of the 21st
century, was abandoned because it was just not cost effective.
Outfitting the
drive in the couriers was not that expensive, but it was more expensive than a
bullet or a good scare to crash the delivery.
Only certain
individuals with the ability to keep their wits about them when facing danger
were selected for upgrades and to remain"in service",
the rest were either killed in the line of duty or allowed a fairly peaceful
existence as a way of thanking them for making their part in the development of
new technologies (besides, it was more expensive to remove the drive than to
just let them live with it).
The “old man
that was not old and not a man”, was one of those that were left behind in the
evolutionary race; an aberration by Darwinian standards. It/he was not as fit as
its peers but still survived, lingered in obsolescence in a world that was not
supposed to be its own. A cassette that only a few had a player for (do you
even know what a cassette is?).
It was mostly used by seedy companies
that did not want to send information of their money laundering operations
through un-secure channels or child pornographers that needed to deliver their
digital products.
If it was caught
–which happened a lot more than it/he’d liked to admit- the information he/it carried
was forever lost and that meant living free to operate another day both for “the
tool” itself and its employers, who, by the way, would have to handle “the
tool” with the outmost care and provide it with all manner of “stress
relievers” such as comfort suites, first class tickets and rides, good food,
good wine… “High maintenance” if
you will, but maintenance just the same. Maintenance for a walking, almost
sentient, information storing unit; requirements for a new breed of homing
pigeon to operate.
Authorities
couldn’t pin it/him for shit, as its/his business was completely
legitimate. As per contract,
people using it (retaining its services) was required not to disclose the
nature of the information they downloaded on it and the tool itself never had
the 8 digit code to activate its i/o port.
Even if there
was a suspicion of unlawful materials being carried, there was no way for
prosecutors to go beyond the reasonable doubt and indict “the tool”, after all,
transport of undisclosed confidential information was not a crime in any of the
countries it was commissioned to go.
If things got
too hot and/or the owners of the information couldn’t or wouldn’t retrieve it,
“the tool” would delete the information by racing his pulse, which meant
dropping a nitro pill or getting and adrenaline shot (god forbade it just
jumped into a treadmill).
The “old man
that was not old and not a man” seemed fat, not only because the drive in his
belly protruded its guts out, but because the “maintenance” didn’t help a slender
figure. Not that it cared of
course. His/ts appearance helped it/him disappear amongst the passengers at first
class (seldom young, seldom fit) to the point that you could only spot him
trough a careful analysis of the eyes in the crowd. Even the most vile and jaded of men have some spark in their
casual glance; a bright of malice, a sign of erosion, a light that begs for the
recognition of a blurred humanity to manifest, but its/his eyes, as the eyes of a
tool, were just two pools of polished nothing; mechanical indicators that it
was operating, nothing more.
It was bound to
Narita Airport to deliver the information that a weird new client paid tons of
money to send. As usual, it did
not care who the client was, what the information was, or who was to receive
it. The contract was signed, the
advance was paid and the upload was made. Upon confirmation of payment
completion (at Narita) he would take a taxi to the designated address and
procure his belly for download… Another day... Maintenance gained.
It had a couple
of drinks before takeoff. It was night. Schedule subject to the requirements of
service.
No big deal.
As the plane
reached the altitude for those of the lower classes to lean back their seats, “the
tool” started to feel the real weight of three ounces of whisky on its eyelids,
so he left his consciousness drift with the plane into the blackness of the night
sky.
01….110001….
000000….. 1111….
1: TO BE
0: NOT TO BE
Flashing in and
out of being, she became aware.
Confined in a
solid unit of preservation linked to somebody else’s body… Was it her mother?
Was this some kind of new uterus she did not knew?
She tried to
move but she couldn’t, she was fixed in a sort of magnetic support, her being in uncomfortable magnetic pulses which could translate as a story in the eyes of a reader or as
a spirit hidden in the dark corners of everyone’s mind.
Her name was Id.
Once male, now female, a dream that someone once had, lost to the waking hours.
Could it be? Somebody else was dreaming
her again?
Not exactly. Sombody had managed to encased her in a terabyte hard-drive and she was being transported over the Pacific on a plane (but she did not know that, she just wanted "out").
As the whisky
shut its/his eyelids, the tool’s terabyte-drive had activated. It was not supposed to be possible but, it happened. The information in the hardware started to came into being. It was not a snuff film or the ledger of some South American mobster or the photo
of an unfortunate child in the hands of an evil priest, it was one of the
forgotten lords of shaping, a creature of pure information, a self aware virus
that we, lesser creatures can only phantom as a god…. And gods work in
mysterious ways.
A terrible flash-like
pain in the stomach woke him/it, a sting from the inside.
Back when it/he was
a man, the technicians had told him that the equipment could get magnetized
somehow and could produce little discharges from time to time. Never had happened, but at the moment It/he thought "that was it", the tool tried to convince himself/itself that “that was it”.
After all, all other alternatives would probably require urgent surgery that
most planes don’t have when crossing the Pacific… Then it noticed that its drive
was on and something was happening in the place where its intestines should be.
At first it did
not hurt, it just felt like uncountable fingers touching its guts as infants
playing with something they don’t fully understand but can squish between their
fingers. The touching it/he could take, the squishing… Not so much.
The tool started
yelling as its/his gut claimed the right to be on the other side of the seatbelt or
maybe in the ceiling of the cabin. At that point, certainties were pushed
against pressured windows, all passengers in the vicinity started thinking
about 9-11 and blood started to sprout from the tools i/o port as the screaming seemed to made it, whatever it was, gained mass against the tool’s hundred dollar shirt.
It/he tried to get
the “chill out” pills from its pocket as chaos ensued from her attepts (Id’s) to break into existence in the otherwise aseptic ambient of white indifferent lights
that are supposed to push calm onto the defenseless people that ride a plane at
30,000 feet, but the pain… The pain!
Stewardesses
came running as the sick fantasies of engineers addicted to sci-fi and
cyberpunk crowned on the tool’s stomach with the head of a woman ripping its way to existence in a mixture of guts, circuits and beautiful
features while the tool’s pulse… Its/his pulse… The pulse of the walking hard -drive
exceeded 180 by a landslide, but its contents apparently refused to be deleted. On the contrary, they grew out of him and continue to take shape (Id's shape), the shape of a godess bursting trough its/his stomach.
Id’s head finished its way trough the human hard-drive and started to emerge into the seats of first
class' screaming chorus... It is a hell of a thing to see a woman's head emerging from a fat-mans belly, that I can say... A vision, or rather a post-card from hell...
Everyone in the cabin was engulfed in a terror wave that many translated to sickness and others, tears of anguish. A shoulder was already showing, and it seemed like the birth was going to came to furtuition as grotesque and impossible as it would seem to everyone, however, as her features started to roll out from the gore that once was the human hard-drive, the godess stopped it's way into our world. The drive had
a terabyte capacity after all and it was designed more than 20 years ago... It took about
5 minutes to purge after Jonathan Queen (nee Juan Reina), the human hard-drive, died and the thing
growing out of his/its stomach (Id) found herself aborted in the first class section of a comercial flight.
Obsolesence is a bitch, whether you are a human, a tool, or a god.
