Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World
- Автор: Мосли Уолтер
- Год: 2001
- Язык: английский
- Год: Aspect / Warner Books
- ISBN: 978-0-446-52954-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World». Краткое содержание книги:
Sella looked away and said, “How would I know?”
Ninety seconds, Bits thought. When the time comes that’s all I got.
For the next hour M Lamont and Sella read the data transferred to the computer system from Bits’s snake. The triple-chinned shapeless Lamont grunted now and then. Finally the grotesque med got bored, walked away into the distance, and disappeared.
Bits waited for what felt like an hour more before injecting the stinger sack into his left buttock. The pain was exquisite and instantaneous.
“Doctor,” Bits said through gritted teeth. “I seem to be developing a hard lump on my left buttock.”
“What?” Immediately she turned to the screen.
“Please look at it, Doctor,” Bits said with the urgency of pain in his voice.
When she turned to look from the prescribed eighteen-inch distance Bits lunged and grabbed Sella’s hand, squeezing so hard that he could feel bones snapping.
Before she had time to yell he said, “Tell me your access code. You have twelve seconds or I kill you.”
“Sella-118,” the woman gasped.
The count going off in the back of his mind had reached twenty-seven.
A red strobe flashed.
“WARNING IN OP-ROOM,” boomed a mechanical voice.
Bits dragged Sella to the console and saw that she was already signed on.
“Tell it manual,” he threatened.
“Manual,” the woman whimpered, and a typing console with an audiophone unit appeared from the bowels of the machine.
Bits socked Sella in the jaw and began punching numbers furiously. The fire in his buttock was almost unbearable. Words began to appear on the screen: Vid access, Sydney, electronic transfer line...
“WARNING IN OP-ROOM.”
The red light flashed faster.
Bits punched in 14-76T-1187-222.
An image of a green circle appeared on the screen. It broke into eleven equal sections. Twenty seconds went by, thirty.
“Bits displacement system active,” a feminine computer voice announced. “Voice pattern Vortex invoked.”
“End alert status of current system,” Bits said.
The flashing light stopped.
Bits tore off sheets and bound Med Sella to the bed. Then he collapsed on top of her and breathed slowly while the automatic medicine from the snake pack worked to stem the pain and damage from the baby tiger scorpion’s sting.
Later Bits located a tranquilizer pistol in Sella’s bag. He made sure the gun was loaded and then ordered his virus program to summon M Lamont.
Stiles’s eyes lit with amazement when he found that the orange and brown line he’d been ordered to follow brought him to a vast white room where Meds Sella and Lamont were seemingly unconscious and tied to the foot of a bed while Bits sat above them ordering images on a computer like he was a king.
“What the f?” Stiles said.
“We did it, white boy,” Bits said.
“The fuck you say, nig.”
Bits smiled, thinking that a statement like that would have driven him wild with rage in the world outside.
“Truce?” Bits suggested.
“What is this shit?” Stiles replied.
“The alacrity of justice,” Bits said dramatically, “has turned wise men into fools.”
“Say what?”
“I went to Hammerstein the memory man and everybody thought I was going to get my memory erased. But I knew that in his earlier experiments with mem-erasure the good Doctor Hammerstein only succeeded in temporary removal. I got that service. So when they asked me what I knew I could say I knew nothing because that was the truth. I got most of the memories back now. They came as monsters in a dream.”
“So?” Stiles said.
“The scorpion sting froze up the snake pack and gave me time to grab Sella’s computer access. I called a number, downloaded my master virus, and took over the system.”
“That had to set off an alarm somewhere,” Stiles said, looking over both shoulders as he did so.
“Only temporarily. My virus is sophisticated. It translates the current system to its own code and then makes me the master.”
Stiles’s eyes hardened.
“You know why I declined to meet you in the gladiator’s circle, Stiles?” Bits asked.
“Why?”
“ ’Cause I’ve always known that you could kick my ass.”
“Then maybe you made a mistake callin’ on me now,” Stiles suggested, taking a step forward.
“Before acting on that will you let me explain something about this system?”
Stiles held up his left wrist and tapped it with a smile.
“Max screen three up,” Bits ordered.
The infinite white wall behind Bits turned bright blue with thousands of small orange boxes broken into various sections.
“Population reports for Angel’s Island,” Bits said. His voice was greatly amplified and seemed to come from all around. Fear crept into Stiles’s eyes. “To the left are the majority of the inhabitants — convicts. Bring up Jerry Tierny.”
Immediately a large overlay appeared in the middle of the convict area. It was titled with the convict’s picture and name hovering about a series of file tabs with the labels criminal history, incarceration history, experimental studies, current status...
“I can tell you where he is, what he’s doing, his physioemotional state, and whether or not he has to go to the toilet. I can also activate any function on his snake pack, including the death option.”
“Who’s in those boxes on the right side?” Stiles asked meekly.
“Everybody here is wearing a snake pack, Stiles,” Bits replied, though his godlike voice did not seem to come from his mouth. “The guards, the chaplain, meds, and even Roger.”
“What chaplain?”
“We have a chaplain who prays for us regularly. He comes into our cells when we’re unconscious in our beds. The board of directors of Angel’s Island Inc. are Christians and they ordered a chaplain to be present at all times.
“He has a snake pack too; they all do. It’s why you can’t attack a guard without being shocked silly. The snakes talk to each other.”
“And you’re in control?”
“Do we work together, white boy? Or do you try to jump me and get put in a coma till I say you can open your eyes?”
4
Bits called a general inquisition with twelve convicts, chosen by the qualifications of their files, from all over the prison. He chose those prisoners not deemed homicidal or violently antisocial. He had six Negroes, three Hispanics, two of other races, and Stiles, the international Nazi, to represent the white race.
“We should kill M Lamont and that bitch,” Lines Retain, a credit counterfeiter from the Twin Cities proclaimed. “They killed at least four people I know of. And if you let us see the files, Bits, I bet there’s a lot more.”
There were some grumbles of agreement.
Bits knew that almost five hundred research-related deaths — murders — had been committed by prison officials. That data from these medical experimentation deaths had been sold to research facilities around the world. But he said nothing.
“Escape is our only priority,” argued Nin el Tarniq, the Eros-Haus pimp from Miami. “Killing them will just make the law look harder.”
Bits stifled a cough and said, “The files are mine and I respect their security. I will not let anyone commit murder here.”
“Who made you king?” Edward Fines, a fellow hacker from Cincinnati, wanted to know.
“I did!” Bits replied in an amplified voice that was loud enough to instill terror into the panel of twelve.
“When will the guards start worrying about us?” Stiles asked. “We can’t stay in here forever.”