The F.T.L. drive whined to life just as incoming signals flashed to life on the other side of the planet.
“Must go faster!” The blond urged the blonde.
“On it!” The engine hit its highest pitch. The blonde pushed forward on the throttle; the mid-sized Astromobile jolted across the cosmos.
“That was hoo-boy close,” the blond remarked.
“I know,” the blonde agreed.
“They’re getting closer.”
“I know.”
“Chickens are ruthless trackers.”
“I know.”
“We need to—”
“I know, I know. But what choice do we have?” The blonde slammed a fist against the steering wheel before regaining her composure. She turned with renewed sincerity to her companion. “So long as they’re only finding the fake transmitters and not the devices, we’re good. We have to keep going.”
“I know,” he answered.
•••
The wanderer pushed open the de facto door to Phreaky Pete’s, a small saloon-style joint in the Badlands.
The Badlands weren’t so much a planet as a series of bad URLs, unclaimed domains, blocked pop-ups, and other Infi-Net flotsam and jetsam clustered together like hair stuck in a drain. Here squatters, claim-jumpers, transporters (both legal and otherwise), refugees and outlaws made their home.
Phreaky Pete’s took all those and more. Today’s crowd was small, just Old Flinchy, Rascal, Beth-Anne, and Pete himself. They all stopped what they were doing to look up at the stranger. Her head was covered like a shroud; her one-piece jumpsuit almost entirely concealed behind a long coat.
Old Flinchy and Rascal put their cards down and reached for the same glass. Money was tight so they were sharing their spirits today.
Old Flinchy was a trader by… trade. Too old for this new-fangled Infi-Net, but his son-in-law had insisted he needed to join the modern world. Now here he was on the edge of nowhere, bodiless and unemployed. He hated his son-in-law.
Rascal was a short-term scam artist who mostly dealt in World of Age of Groghammer Gold. A business once booming now bust. That stuff was worth more than “real” money these days. Nobody traded with him anymore.
Beth-Anne pretended to be washing cups. She’d been worrying at the same spot since the stranger stepped in. She was 12 going on 50 for all the trouble she’d been through. A refugee, her parents were killed in a crossfire between Googol-Men and the One-Cup Army. The things she’d seen… she couldn’t unsee.
“Can I get you, stranger?” Pete asked, trying to get a glimpse under her makeshift shroud; she turned away just enough to deny him.
“Information,” she produced a shining plat and showed it to the now-captive audience before slapping it down on the bar.
Without taking his eyes off the money, Pete interrupted the silence, “Beth-Anne, at least turn the cup a bit.”
The tween girl jumped for the attention, and dutifully pretended harder by rotating the glass.
“What kind of information?” Rascal put the cup down so Flinchy could take his turn.
“Let’s have drinks all around.” The wanderer rotated her finger in the air. Beth-Anne straightened up. “Water in a clean glass for the girl.” Beth-Anne’s shoulders fell.
Old Flinchy and Rascal didn’t need to be invited twice to elbow up to the bar near their new best friend. Petey snatched up the coin and inspected it closer to determine its legitimacy. He actually didn’t know what he was looking for, but he bit on it for show because he saw that on TV once. It tasted real he seemed to decide.
Now that she had their attention—well, shared it with their freshly filled cups—she deigned to speak. “I need to find the end of the Infi-Net.”
Silence followed.
A silence interrupted by Old Flinchy’s slurping as he gulped down his drink. He hoped for a second round before they told this bint she was moonshit-crazy.
Unfortunately for Old Flinchy, Beth-Anne had no such compunction. “Ain’t no end to the Infi-Net,” she protested innocently scoring a trio of dirty looks. She sipped her water, “Think that’s why they call it that.”
Petey held up his hand to silence the girl and tried to recover, “What’d you do if you found such a thing?”
The stranger held everyone’s attention as she took a sip of her own drink. Finally, she responded, “Leave.”
That sent everyone into curious asides and furtive glances.
“C-can… can you do that?” Rascal looked to Flinchy who noisily put down an empty cup in hopes that the debate was ongoing.
“My body is out there. Presumably all of our bodies are out there somewhere.” She watched as the notion visibly sunk in with her audience. “Ergo, it’s possible.”
Pete caught enough of the woman’s face to see her jaw was set, her conviction clear. She may be a lunatic, but she believed herself, straight up. “Girl already said there ain’t no end to this place,” he tilted his head over to Beth-Anne—rapt with the wanderer—before continuing, “but there’s a Kendrite Church a ways further on a 404 drift. They’re always on about how that little girl and the goober what blown her up, transcended the digital plane.”
“Kendrite?”
Seeing an opportunity, Old Flinchy leapt in to volunteer, “Children of Kendra they call themselves. Run by that—whatchacalled—girlboy what cried on the Infinitube.”
Not to be outdone, Rascal suddenly felt a rush of charity coming on, “You know, a lady can get hurt out in the Badlands. I could take you there, if—” The door swung wide, the goldmonger caught his tongue.
Googol-Men.
Two of them.
If Rascal had anything else to offer, he wisely forgot it.
“Evening, scum.” The one in the lead chewed noisily on air.
His partner with the thick porn mustache snorted a laugh.
Pete looked to the stranger. Mysterious wanderers were exactly the type to be dragging the law behind them; she showed no reaction. “What can I do for the G-Men, today?”
They sauntered up to the bar, the partner openly brandished a sub-machine mood alterer. “That’s Googol-Men, pally. Show some respect.”
The wanderer moved, and Pete tensed.
She only raised her glass to her lips and sipped. Oh shit, what if she was the champion of the underclass, wandering samurai type? He was totally going to inherit two dead Googol-Men any minute now.
Old Flinchy suddenly remembered something he had to do… anywhere else, and left in a hurry. Rascal was too dumb to rationalize a similarly hasty exit.
“Starts with a G, don’t it?” Pete winced as Beth-Anne piped up. This is how it starts.
The leader spat on the bar in front of Beth-Anne. “Why don’t you use that mouth for something more useful,” he invited by grabbing the crotch of his jumpsuit.
Pete took a step away from the bar.
“Yeah boss, you get that one, I get this one!” Porn-stache snorted his last snort as his hand came down on the wanderer’s shoulder.
She wrung the man’s arm like a wet towel. A stomach-churning crack, followed by horrible bellowing.
The leader was in mid high-five swivel when his throat came down with a case of the elbows. His Adam’s apple stuck to his spine.
The woman’s head cover slipped to the floor, her dirty blond hair trailed her deadly arc.
A handful of dove’s took flight.
Her follow through delivered a swift mercifcul death to the screaming, mustachioed soldier.
Their bodies hit the floor with heavy thuds. The officer gasped like a dying fish… until he died… like a dead fish.
Pete massaged the bridge of his nose and nodded. He hoped she was the noble pay-for-the-damages kind of samurai wanderer, not the kill-the-witnesses kind. He let out his breath as he heard some metal hit the bar with a clink.
The stranger wordlessly recovered her shawl and strode toward the door.
“Who are you?” Beth-Anne called after the woman she very much wanted to be when she grew up.
“I’m a Shadowstory.” R.T. found herself taken aback by how quickly she identified herself with her erstwhile group. She was pretty sure she still worked for Googol—although it was admittedly unwise to own up to that affiliation at present. She’d have to have a talk with Brin about recruitment standards. When she found him. If she found him.
“Like from LiveDiary?” Beth-Anne asked cheerfully. She didn’t know girls could be Shadowstories too.
R.T. cocked her head at the refugee. “Like who-what now?”
•••
Sunshower didn’t feel so good.
Her head was all woozy, and hurty. Plus, her left drag foil was rubbing against her anterior drive coupler. She didn’t even know she had a left drag foil. Was she floating? Suspended?
She looked through the dangling shroud of her bright, blond hair. Sure enough, she was hanging in the air by an array of tubes and wires.
“Shush-shh-shh-shhh,” a voice whispered in her ear, brushing her tangled hair and microfilament wires off of her neck. Brin? What was going on here? “You’ve been promoted,” Brin answered her unspoken question. “Now you’re the Vice President in charge of getting us back on the Infi-Net. He plugged something into the back of her neck; a thrum-thrum-thrum whooshing sound started in the near distance.
When did she get this tattoo?
What did R.T.P. 10002 mean?
