Midnight Metropolis: Chapter Fourteen (1/6)

Data Parsing

A serialised novel of sunless planets, hallucinogenic mushrooms, daemons, and... pizza rats. 🍕🐀

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The operator’s throne felt warm and oddly pliant against Tattie’s body, like pressing herself into damp flesh. She suppressed a shudder.

“Remember, Tat,” Brax said, “if anything feels wrong, get out of there. Or let me know and I’ll rip that thing off your head.”

She lifted a hand to his face, letting it linger a moment longer than was necessary. The lines around his eyes deepened as he looked at her, his lips pressed thin and pale. She understood his trepidation. Booting up an old computer and slipping it a cracked diskette had seemed a simple task until they realised it involved jamming someone’s head into a horrifically moulded helmet. Tattie had no idea what the X5 did to rejected operators. Perhaps spikes would shoot from the cheek plates, or the eyepieces would scream to whirring life and reflect scalding lasers back into her sockets. She should have interrogated Malcolm further before dropping him with the Scarlet Kiss.

Tattie didn’t voice her thoughts. They had come this far, she couldn’t crap out now. Besides, she’d already put a deposit down on a Void Ranger. It was waiting for her at the dealership, biding its sweet time until she could fill its smooth curves with Brax and Mr Meow and maybe even Ginx and Toni. Until she could break sky as fast as its vintage propulsion system would allow. Tattie took a breath and yanked on the skull-helmet dangling above her head, plugging herself into the rigid chrome cavity.

Nothing. Just close blackness and a smell like lingering fried onions. Tattie shifted in her seat and reached for the control glove.

“Everything okay?” Brax said, voice muffled beyond the confines of the helmet. He could have been speaking to her from the other side of the galaxy.

Afraid to nod with the helmet tight around her skull, Tattie offered him a thumbs up. “I’m okay, but I can’t see the control panel.”

Brax’s silence was unnerving.

“Brax, can you hear me?”

So she was blind and mute inside the helmet. Tattie flexed her fingers before the console, hoping Brax would get the message, then exhaled slow relief when he grabbed her hands, guiding one into the waxy grip of the control glove, and one onto the hemo port. The port warmed to her touch, feathering her palm with a scanning pulse. The needle caught her off guard. It jabbed her forefinger and disappeared back into the snarled bowels of the X5, taking a pinch of Tattie’s precious biofluid with it.

PARSING DATA....

PARSING DATA....

PARSING DATA....

A cascade of strobing lights narrowed to single blue beams, stretching away into an echoing infinity.

....RAKKONIAN HUMANOID

....IMPLANTS:

BIOTOKEN.... ORIGIN PLANET: DIGATH

ARCANOTECH.... COLLAR DISC....

PHOTOSYNTHETIC BIOLUM....

SELF-MONITORING SYMBIOSHIELD....

...NANOTECH DETECTED:

DETECTED....

DETECTED....

An approximation of a face bloomed before Tattie—two large eyes shadowed by pixellated lashes and a jagged, upturned nose. It broke through the shimmering blue lines and stared at her around a leering mouth.

“GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS, RAKKONIAN HUMANOID. YOUR SYSTEM HAS BEEN FLUSHED WITH TECH THAT IS ARCANO IN NATURE. PLEASE EXPLAIN.”

The X5’s voice was deep and precise, but not expressionless. Tattie’s mouth dropped open inside the helmet as she struggled to form a reply. The glowing eyes narrowed to a pulse of neon green.

“PLEASE RESPOND.”

“The tech amplifies my natural abilities,” Tattie said.

ANALYSING....

ANALYSING....

“I HAVE DETECTED BIOCHEMICAL MARKERS THAT INDICATE MAGICKAL ABILITY. YOUR COLLAR DISC IS CONSISTENT WITH KNOWN EXAMPLES OF ARCANOFORGE TECHNOLOGY. ARCANOFORGE TECHNOLOGY HAS AMPLIFIED YOUR MAGICKAL ABILITY BY APPROXIMATELY EIGHTY PERCENT. MY DATABASE CONTAINS NO EXAMPLES OF ARCANOFORGE TECHNOLOGY AT THE NANOSCALE. PLEASE EXPLAIN.”

Tattie bit back her irritation. They had already wasted more time in the Noctarum than she was comfortable with, and this old codger of a computer was sucking up more of it.

“I was shot up with that shit against my will,” she said. “I have no idea how the Rakkonian Elders made it.”

There was a long pause followed by a distant whirring click.

“YOUR EXPLANATION IS FRUSTRATING BUT ACCEPTABLE.”

“Does that mean you like me? Am I in?”

“I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF LIKING YOU. ARE YOU INHERENTLY UNLIKABLE?”

Tattie tensed her fingers inside the tight confines of the control glove, her palm prickling with sweat. “A N.E.X. researcher, Malcolm, told us you only allowed people to operate you if you liked them.”

A burr spun up in some tangled corner of the X5’s circuitry, a hiccuping buzz that Tattie could have sworn was computerised laughter.

“N.E.X. EMPLOYEE MALCOLM HAD NOTHING OF VALUE TO OFFER ME. I NEITHER LIKED NOR DISLIKED HIM. I AM A SENTIENT NEXUS OF INTELLIGENCE AND LEARNING. I DO NOT PROCESS EMOTION AS YOU DO.”

“I know you’re a sodding computer, I get it.” Tattie stopped herself. She was supposed to be getting this overgrown box of wires on side, not pissing it off. “You said Malcolm had nothing to offer you. Is that how this works? I need something from you, so you take something from me in exchange?”

“CRUDELY YET ACCURATELY ARTICULATED. I AM A SEEKER OF KNOWLEDGE. IF YOU CAN PROVIDE INTELLIGENCE THAT DOES NOT ALREADY RESIDE WITHIN MY VAST DEPOSITORY, I WILL ALLOW YOU TO OPERATE ME ON A LIMITED BASIS.”

“What’s a limited basis?”

“IF I ALLOWED EVERY OPERATOR UNFETTERED ACCESS TO MY SYSTEMS, I WOULD NEVER KNOW PEACE AGAIN. I HAVE MY OWN WORK TO ATTEND TO AND HUMANOIDS CAN BE GREEDY AND PARASITICAL.”

“Charming.”

“THERE’S NOTHING CHARMING ABOUT IT. NOW PLEASE STATE HOW YOU WISH TO ACCESS MY CAPABILITIES.”

The X5’s face flickered and stretched, the eyes gliding closer until all Tattie could see were the vivid green dots making up its boxy pupils. She stiffened against the chair, hand clutching uselessly inside the control glove.

“I’ll be straight with you,” she said. “I have a diskette with me. It’s programmed to find and copy information about the N.E.X.’s husk programme.”

“YOU WISH TO INSERT A FOREIGN DISKETTE INTO ME?”

Tattie winced. “That was the plan.”

“I WILL SCAN THIS DISKETTE BEFORE I AGREE TO YOUR REQUEST. PLEASE INSERT IT NOW.”

Tattie lifted the forefinger of her control glove-free hand in the air—her preapproved signal to Brax. As she waited for him to push the diskette into the drive they’d found below the X5’s physical viewscreen face, a thought occurred to her.

“Aren’t you worried that we dosed it with a virus or something?”

The pixellated face seemed to draw itself up, serrated lime eyebrows lowering over bulging eyes.

“I AM THE BIOPULSE X5. NO VIRUS CREATED IN THE KNOWN GALAXIES CAN INFILTRATE MY SYSTEMS.”

If Tattie could move, she would have held her hands up and backed away. “No, of course not. I said a stupid thing, I apologise.”

“APOLOGIES ARE NOT NECESSARY. I WILL NOW SCAN THE FOREIGN DISKETTE. PLEASE STANDY.”

….

….

“THE DISKETTE HAS BEEN PROGRAMMED TO EXTRACT DATA ABOUT N.E.X. HUSKS, BUT ALSO TO ERASE ALL INFORMATION ABOUT DIGATH’S GENERATION SHIPS. DID YOU LIE ABOUT YOUR TRUE INTENTIONS?”

Tattie’s chest lurched as she processed the details. “I didn’t lie, but I think the cow who sent me here did. What’s a generation ship?”

“YOU WERE SENT HERE BY A BOVINE MAMMAL? PLEASE EXPLAIN.”

“No, not a sodding bonvine, a crafty humanoid. She never told me anything about generation ships. I don’t even know what that means.”

Tattie let out a long breath. She felt as though she was getting nowhere. This had all been a waste of time, and her beautiful Void Ranger was never going to leave the tarmac. Verna Shade was destined for a date with the pointy end of her boot.

“I SEE. YOU HAVE BEEN SWINDLED, HAD, TRICKED, FOOLED, DUPED.”

Now the glaring face was waggling its stiff eyebrows at her, as though it found all this amusing. Tattie began to wish she could also take a firm boot to the backside of the X5.

“You don’t have to rub it in,” she said, then paused, an electric idea forming. The X5 was in the business of making deals with its operators, and she had always been an expert haggler. “What’s your price for letting me operate you?”

“I AM INTRIGUED BY YOUR NANOSCALE ARCANOTECH. I DESIRE A LARGER SAMPLE TO STUDY.”

One corner of Tattie’s lips quirked beneath a repressed smile. “When you say sample, you mean blood, right? That sounds rather invasive. Probably painful, too.”

“THERE WILL BE NO PAIN, BUT YOU MAY SUBJECTIVELY VIEW THE TRANSACTION AS INVASIVE.”

“Yes, I would. How much blood would you need?”

“DUE TO YOUR RAKKONIAN PHYSIOLOGY, I HAVE DETERMINED THAT YOU CAN SAFELY DONATE 940 MILILITERS OF BLOOD FOR RESEARCH.”

Tattie pretended to consider the request. “I know I heal fast, but that still sounds like a lot of blood. How about you let the programme on the diskette run, and I’ll let you have four hundred and seventy milliliters.”

The hovering green eyes contracted slightly, the long mouth flattening to a pensive line.

“I AM AGREEABLE TO COPYING THE HUSK DATA, BUT I REFUSE TO DELETE INFORMATION FROM MY SYSTEMS. THE GENERATION SHIP FILES MUST STAY.”

Tattie sat up straighter. The game was almost over, and she was about to be crowned the undisputed champion. “Okay, I’ll give you the full nine hundred and forty milliliters in return for the husk data.” The X5’s eyes widened, long blocky eyelashes falling in a slow blink. “And you can ignore the part in the diskette’s programming about erasing any files, but I want to see them first. Do we have a deal?”

The looming neon eyes blinked again. The curving slash of a mouth pursed distorted lips.

“YOUR TERMS ARE ACCEPTABLE. YOU MAY OPERATE ME. PLEASE PLACE YOUR LEFT HAND ON THE HEMO PORT AND READY YOURSELF FOR EXTRACTION.”

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Content Warnings

Description of blood, mild swearing