(C) 2008 Zoe Blade. Distributed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
From the roof of the legal bookstore, I have a clear shot at my target,
Jon Russell. He's sitting down at a table outside a cafe where
Chancery Lane meets Fleet Street, sipping a cardboard cup of coffee. I
briefly ponder how ironic it seems that he's actually bought a drink;
it must be for show, although there's no way that he can tell that
right now he has a very specific audience.
Even in the sunshine, the guiding beam of my tripod mounted rifle is
brightly illuminating a thick circle of skin on his neck, just below
his white beard, but even if any of the passersby can see infrared as
well as I can, they won't have time to do anything even if they notice
it. My eyes are already over two years old now, but they were expensive
enough at the time to still be considered detailed even by today's
standards. With their magnification, I can see the circle of light on
his neck clearly, growing steadier with every passing second as a
familiar cocktail of drugs calms my metabolism.
I try not to let the laser's fan distract me. The guidance beam's one
thing, but the main laser, the one that generates the lethal pulse,
gives off heat like you wouldn't believe. With the midday sun shining
straight down on me, the laser needs all the cooling it can get, and
the fan sounds like someone's standing next to me, drying her hair.
Once I can hold the laser still enough, I brace myself. For just a few
precious seconds, I let myself ponder the consequences of what I'm
about to do. I'm about to execute this guy, but although he's broken
the law, I'm no sheriff. I think about the effect that what I'm about
to do will have on people who look up to Jon Russell, and that makes me
nervous. I have nothing against them; if anything, I actually
sympathise with their cause.
I put the thought out of my mind. It's unprofessional, a pause at best
and a hindrance at worst. It's far too late to start developing
emotions at this stage of my career, after months of training and
almost three years of missions.
I pull the trigger, just for half a second, my eyes momentarily
shielding themselves from the visible end of the beam on his neck.
There's no recoil on my weapon, giving it the eerie feel of a
simulation. The only sign that it's firing is a loud popping noise
like someone squashing a bag of crisps. It's over in an instant. I
can almost convince myself that I haven't done anything wrong, but not
quite.
The bright circle is instantly replaced with a gushing stream of blood,
pumping out in rhythmical bursts. His cardboard cup drops to the
floor, and I unscrew the rifle from the tripod, duck below the top of
the brick wall of the bookstore, fold up the tripod and put everything
in my holdall, hidden beneath a pair of jogging bottoms.
In a fleece, t-shirt and designer jeans, I hopefully pass for someone
on her way to one of the gyms scattered around the legal district,
where people who help corporations sue their customers for a living
would feel far too inconvenienced by taking a detour on their way home
just to stay in shape. I put on a pair of designer sunglasses to cover
up my designer eyes, as if anyone could spot their telltale trademark
without being close enough to kiss me, then I pull the scrunchy out of
my hair and tie it in again, keeping my dark brown ponytail as taut and
professional as it is glossy.
By the time anyone can work out what happened to Russell and where the
brief burst of energy came from, I'm already half way down the fire
escape. By the time anyone's dialed the emergency services, I'm
already briskly walking down Fleet Street and out of the scene.
"Remind me why I had to kill Russell." I drop my bag onto the desk of
my boss, Mike Vegas, and it lands with a satisfying thud. Frankly, I'm
glad to be rid of the evidence, if only until tomorrow.
"Because it's your job." Mike slides the bag under his desk without
even glancing at its contents, then finally looks up to meet my gaze.
His facial expression looks as blank as usual to me, but a piece of
software I installed on my eyes starts flashing up a translucent yellow
warning sign, pointing out that he's making tiny involuntary
movements--a momentary flicker of the cheek here, a curl of the lip
there. Nothing a human could consciously spot, but my eyes have a
sufficient refresh rate and resolution to pick up that sort of thing.
The bottom line is that he's uncharacteristically uncomfortable, for
whatever reason.
"You know what I mean," I continue. "He was hardly violent. Don't you
think that actually having him taken out was kind of overkill on
Godin's part?"
"It's not our job to question our clients' motives, only their ability
to pay. Besides, he was a liability. Copyright violation is one of
the most serious crimes there is these days, given the structure of our
fragile economy." He gets up and makes his way to a shelf filled with
various photos and figurines, where he pours himself a shot of whiskey
from an expensive looking decanter.
As he glances back at me, I decline his offer of the same with a subtle
shake of my head. Call me paranoid, but in my line of work, I never
could feel comfortable if I was anything less than a hundred percent
sober.
"They couldn't just have him running around pirating their intellectual
property," Mike continues.
"But it's _food_," I protest. "It's not like it's a rich kid's luxury
like music or films. There are homeless people I've seen eating decent
meals thanks to him."
"There are plenty of public domain staple foods. The homeless can eat
the same handouts as the starving children in Africa: rice, grains,
vegetables, pulses. No one's trying to stop people from eating. They
have more than enough to live on." He takes a sip of his drink. "All
Godin want to do is ensure the uniqueness of the very specific dishes
served in their chain of five-star restaurants, so don't give me any of
that melodramatic bollocks about starving homeless people just because
they have to eat boiled rice and steamed vegetables instead of _foie
gras en brioche_."
"It still doesn't feel right."
"Which brings me to my next point. Have you given any more thought to
my offer? Most people would kill for another free synaptic implant."
"That all depends on the implant. The uplink to the Mesh and the map
are all well and good, but I'm still not sure about suppressing my
emotions. It just seems so... inhuman."
"As opposed to all the drugs you take to calm you down as you make the
hit?"
"At least they wear off after a few minutes." I walk past the shelf
and look out the window at the scenic view of the city, taking a moment
to watch the clouds drift along in the summer breeze. The trees are
such a vibrant green this time of year, they look somehow unreal, set
against the pale grey concrete blocks that people waste their lives in.
I quickly inspect all the nearby rooftops, making sure nobody's on any
of them. Old habits. "You know, I've been thinking a lot lately, and
between the implants and the drugs, I'm beginning to feel less and less
like a real woman and more and more like some kind of machine, just
efficiently fulfilling her job role and nothing else."
"Efficiently?" I hear Mike practically choking on his drink.
I turn back around to face him. "Is there something wrong with my
performance?"
"I've been running over the encrypted video feed of the hit that your
eyes sent me."
It wasn't exactly a secret he kept from me that when I was on the job,
my eyes sent an encrypted live broadcast straight to the office, hidden
in the Mesh's entropy. Talk about your body betraying you. I had to
take Vegas's word for it that he couldn't spy on me when I was off
duty. It was something I tried hard not to think about every time I had
a shower. Just the thought gave me the shivers.
"You stalled. Your heartrate had slowed down just fine, you were as
calm as a cow, and yet you didn't fire until almost five seconds later.
Why the pause?"
"He was drinking a cup of coffee at a table. I could tell he was going
to be there for at least another two minutes. It made no difference."
"I didn't ask you if you thought it would make a difference. I asked
you why you paused. I hire you because you're the sort of woman who
knows better than to take unnecessary risks. Why did you wait so long?"
I let myself sigh. "OK, so I felt a _little_ empathy towards the
target. He'd never hurt anybody. I mean, I read his profile. He was
essentially a good man."
"Which is exactly what I'm talking about. We can't afford to let your
personal opinions and morals slow you down when you're at work. Those
profiles are there to help you to better understand the targets, to
better predict them, not to make you feel an emotional attachment
towards them. You can do whatever you want at home, donate your wage
to charity, I don't care, but when you're out in the field, I need you
to be there for me, performing at a hundred percent."
"Yes, sir," I say reluctantly.
He talks into his glass as he swishes around the remaining dribble of
whiskey, as if he has trouble meeting my eyes for once. "Someone will
meet with you on your way out."
This takes me by surprise. I don't need the red warning label that's
suddenly superimposed over my vision to tell me that something's wrong.
"Who?"
"A doctor. I'd like to run a few checks on you, just to be on the safe
side." If he's not outright lying, then my software's convinced that
he's at least hiding something from me.
"Checks?"
"Yeah. Checks." He takes another sip of his drink.
My paranoia starts to kick in as I realise how easy it would be for him
to kill me, just as long as he took me unaware. For all my jacked up
reflexes and painstakingly learned skills, in light of the new wholly
artificial employees our rivals have been raving about, I'm starting to
look a lot like an old Decca television set in a room full of Sony
projectors. In all likelihood, Mike would have had me killed months
ago already if I wasn't still so damned good.
"And Suzi?"
"Yes?" Our eyes meet again, at last.
"Do yourself a favour. Don't get emotionally involved. It's just
business."
"I know." I walk out the door, not looking back.
"Well, all your tests show you're operating within specs," says the man
that Mike claims to be some sort of medical doctor.
"That's a relief," I say sarcastically.
"Nevertheless, I'm still concerned about these certain imperfections in
your performance. I just can't seem to find a neurological or
physiological source for them."
"Did it ever occur to you that I'm only human?"
A grunt serves him as laughter. "Isn't that your main selling point?
From what I hear, you're Mike's poster girl. Maybe even the whole
industry's." He looks me up and down, and I fight the urge to pull out
the knife I'm carrying and gouge his inferior eyes out. "Shame no one
knows what you look like." Perhaps sensing my obvious discomfort, he
changes the subject. "You know how few of you there are left in your
line of work?" By 'you,' I assume he means humans. "Less than a
dozen, by our estimates. Worldwide. You're a rarity."