Polar Orbit

The security scanners had recorded her profile when she walked near the build on the street and then in detail from the moment she had stepped inside the doors, of course. Some of the other companies in this building have even more reason to be paranoid than I do..which is still, admittedly, handy for my business. None of them explained why this particular person – or rather, her type, would come calling. Especially on me. Why I thought she was there for was me…well, a hunch. And in this business, I have learned to trust my hunches.

Yes, I know the sign on my door says “Private Detective”. Frankly, it’s a relic of the last occupants of the office who - after some strings of bad luck and a surprise inspection by the local tax inspectors - were more than grateful for the €3500 payoff for the office and some application of my skill to keep the feds off their backs…for a while anyway. The sign on the door was there to keep out the merely casually interested. My virtual receptionist gets rid of most of the rest.

My inner office is a fortress, of sorts. I paid a lot for the security I run, and only two trusted virches can get in without asking. Given they’re two of the three most experienced virches in Manchester to my, excellent, knowledge trying to keep them out from even my datastack would likely be pointless anyway. Still, by keeping good with Razorwire and Teller I get a lot done.

A few keytaps later and the visual scanner tracked our little visitor. Between jobs, I ‘m always more than happy to take in a good profile and even as I switched between cameras to get the full shot I couldn’t find a bad side to her. The clothing was absolutely perfectly, and the hair was a nice touch. Definitely money, and trying not to show it. Badly.

Rich don’t go slumming much in these areas. The area, in itself, isn’t dangerous of course. We’re inside the barriers, and just far enough inside that very little gets past security even if there is a flicker. I usually get the types who have enough money to want more, and are hungry for it. I usually consume a good portion of their money…some go away with more, having come to me with a good guess. Some come to me on a fools errand and go away broke. A few cases I even do for free, for certain causes.

The lady was, however, rich, and the fine-scan I had long ago piggybacked into the building security was telling me interesting things about her neural system. She could of fooled even the visual light scans exterior had she been so inclined, and avoided the door security altogether although most of the companies in the building would of spotted her as she went in their own doorway. Even my electronics, fine as they are, can’t do that. Of course they’re also designed primarily for things…other…than stealth.

Two of the less bright company security AI’s would of attempted to disable her. I don’t think the SeriesSoft security would of worked – it would of just assumed she was trying to hide and their scanner would simply become a pile of cheap fried electronics - but AriaSystems could of bankrupted themselves in a hurry by trying to fry her. Sure, she might have taken peripheral neural damage before they realised their mistake, but with her cash, regeneration would be downright easy to obtain.

She took the stairs. That’s not unusual, I guess, for my clients. Usually from a general distrust of technology they didn’t control or a desire for fitness. But the hunch that she was here to see my solidified. It became a rock-solid certainty when she turned onto the third floor. Only I, Aria and Alpha-74 have offices here, and the meeting rooms were all empty. I didn’t see her going for sub-standard music software or a shady clone bank’s front office, anyway. She walked to my office, and came in without pausing. If she knew what I was, that took poise.

A faint hum I more felt then heard told me that the VR rig in the outer room had engaged. I wasn’t surprised. Although most of my clients have the interface to run limited VR – at least visual and audio - the full-VR environment my newest client had stepped into smacked of a whole-body VR-wire. While they’re not precisely rare - I, for instance, have one – they are certainly very expensive. This client was, indeed, money. And I couldn’t help shake the feeling she was a lot of money. So why risk coming to see ME, of all the people she could of…

-

It was then, I guess, I recognized her face. The details had changed, in the way the rich remold their soft parts to their own whims, but the basic bone structure in the frozen picture on the screen leaped out at me. It had been a long time indeed, and when I’d last seen her, she had been rich. By now…I shook my head. She was wealthy enough to be powerful. Which made her presence here make even less sense than before.

A soft chime echoed through the room. My VR software had cleared her to see me. I wasn’t surprised. Katya had managed to put one over me a dozen years before, and I doubted she’d got anything less than better since. She’d been…what…25 then. And didn’t look a day older now. Certainly enough money to be powerful for that to be the case. My eyes flicked to the mirror on the wall. If you knew what to look for, my age showed. Of course, I’d been older before I’d had any of the treatments, but still…

I took my feet off the desk, and my VR control space shifted as I focused. The displays on my desk flashed and blanked and the VR windows on the side walls became portraits of my client. The windows behind me projected a faint view of Seattle, where we had last met. My subliminal links are the best and as inconvenient some people find them, I can’t live without them. My subconscious is my best weapon.

She walked into the room, and smiled slightly. I gestured to the chair on the other side of the desk, and she eased herself into it. I concealed a slight grimaced, as the chair’s scanners read a null. It took very expensive gear indeed to block the sensors in it, and gear which blocked it relied on scramble which would eventually be broken, but she was using them for this. Which was interesting in itself…it wasn’t that it was expensive, it was that even for her it would be hard to obtain and one-shot.

I waited for her to speak, but her red-glossed lips remained still. I leant back slightly, and the room’s lights altered as I did so, keeping my face in shadow. Not that I thought it was worth the effort – it’s trivial have the lenses to see in the dark of course – but simply for the effect. And I sighed. Patience is where I allways fall down, when dealing with clients.

“Miss June”, I said; “I believe I told you in Seattle that I would never again do business with you. And yet you are here. I must assume you have a very pressing reason indeed.”

She tossed a datachip onto the table. It bounced slightly on it’s polished wooden surface and I raised an eyebrow. I reached under the desk, and came up with a handheld reader. I’m old fashioned about security in some ways, and the twitch of the lips of my client showed she had more sense than to be offended by what some would construe as a gross insult. I’ll take insult over meta-viral system contamination any day.

I read it intensely, ignoring her steady gaze. I imagine she still wanted me, but the high and mighty have never had any attraction for me. I raised an eyebrow as I read through it.

“I agreed to this”, I said, shaking my head; “I must have been having a bad day. Very well.”

I leant back. She reached a hand out, placed it over mine, and our systems talked. Something pulsed between us, and a false memory dropped away. Understandable, really… when there’s a secret you can’t keep, you can give it to someone else – and hide it in their brain. And when you need it, you go and get it. There’s just one little snag…

The shock of the memory removal stunned me. I say for a moment, because then my muscles pulsed once, hard and then relaxed. I slipped to the floor almost gently, with my face in the pile of the rather good carpet on my office floor. Which, I noted, needed cleaning again.

Then she spoke for the first and last time since entering my office.

“And thank you for holding onto my data for me. I owe you a favour”. And then she was gone, just like that. I rolled over and lay face up on the floor, the shock tingling through my nerves, for several minutes before sitting up slowly. I had one hell of a headache and decided, after a bit of reflection, that perhaps her profile wasn’t so good…