Do Androids Dream Of Electronic Tickles? - Part 4 (Non-tickling, Adult)

Author's note - After some damn good ideas in Part 3 for how to handle this, I've decided on this format unless anyone really complains. As there's a LOT of plot stuff that has nothing whatsoever to do with tickling, I'll post alternate parts (tickling, non-tickling etc) in whatever length they happen to come in at. Sorry to all those of you that ain't interested in the plot stuff, I'll try to make up for it once I'm done with this story (should be about christmas 2004 at this rate...)

Part 4

Eventually Fiona cried herself out and lay silent against Steve’s shoulder. Gently he lifted her up slightly and eased her back against the sofa.

“Now, what’s wrong, and does it have anything to do with why you want to hurt me?” he asked.

She hesitated before replying, suddenly aware of just how silly she was going to sound. “You, you programmed that, that thing into the sim and it wasn’t what I wanted, it was too much I couldn’t take it, just too much and…”

“Shhh, slow down lass, one sentence at a time and remember to breathe, it’ll help.” Steve said, doing his best to keep her calm. “About the only bit of that I caught was about something being programmed you didn’t want?”

“Yes, that man, what he did to me, to her…it was…” Fiona trailed off, her mind threatening to shut down as the events of the previous night tried to rush back.

“Ummm, I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but I never put anyone, or anything in that sim other than what you asked for. Just you and Nicole, that was it.” he said, confusion clear on his face.

Fiona felt her anger spark again, grabbed the memory stick from her jeans and thrust it at him. “Here, take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me,” she snapped. Steve reached out and took the recording, turning it between his fingers with an action so well practiced it was practically reflex.

“Okay, give me a few minutes to look at this, feel free to make yourself at home.” Steve said, heading for the door.

Fiona heard the door to what she assumed was the bedroom shut and the faint whine of a computer coming on-line. She found herself restless and started looking around the room. It was a pretty normal living room by most standards, a large plasma screen dominating one wall, flat speakers hung next to it, with a matching set on the back wall. A large bay window gave a view of the small, neat garden and bookshelves and cupboards dominated the rest of the wall space.

She walked over to the shelves and started flicking through the movies and books noticing they were stored in a seemingly random order. The movies where what she’d have expected for the most part, sci-fi and action flicks, with the occasional deeper, thought provoking film mixed in, although she realised that, somewhat to her surprise, they were all normal films, not VR titles. She would have expected it to be the other way round, considering what their owner did for a living.

The books were more of a puzzle, there was seemingly no pattern at all to them, and they covered a vast variety of subjects, from military vehicles and combat tactics, through music and art, to the sciences of physics, mathematics and what seemed like every computer discipline under the sun. All of them were well used, and had that familiar half-worn look that suggested they were used as reference books for the majority of their life.

Her eye was drawn to a small set of shelves at the back of the room. Unlike all the others this one had a glass door, though there was no lock to prevent curious visitors prying into its contents. Inside there was an eclectic collection of objects, several books lay on the bottom shelf, the middle two were taken up by a couple of photographs in frames and the top held what looked, for all the world, like a sword.

Her curiosity got the better of her and she opened the cabinet and carefully removed the sword from it’s stand. It was what she thought of as a Samurai sword, long, thin and gently curved, the handle bone white and a small round guard between the handle and the blade. It was surprisingly light and the balance was amazing, almost as if it was simply an extension of her own arm. She pulled the sheath a little way off the blade and saw this was no replica, the edge gleamed as if it could cut through time itself, in fact she half expected it to glow. Moving as quickly as she dared she put the sword back in its place and looked closer at the other items.

The photographs were odd, one of a young woman in her early or mid twenties, dark red hair framing a pretty face that was, in the timeless moment captured by the camera, locked in an expression of pure joy. The other picture was of a sea, perfectly flat without a ripple or wave to be seen. The sky was pitch black and from maybe two thirds of the way from the left edge of the picture a perfectly white bolt of lightning connected the water and the heavens, like the finger of god himself.

She moved her attention to the books and noticed immediately that they all had one thing in common, the author. All were written by a Steve Franklin, she presumed the same Steve that was currently working in the next room. Two were fiction books, written about ten years ago, one a sci-fi story with a picture of spaceships dog fighting in an asteroid field on the front cover, the other was called Bloodhounds, the title written in red on a black background that had been designed to give the impression of fabric caught in a breeze.

The remaining books were more recent, all written within the last five years and dealing with various aspects of VR. A quick check of the titles showed they covered pretty much everything, from security and military applications, all the way through to AI design and graphic modelling. She flicked through a couple, but the concepts involved were way beyond her knowledge and she slid them back into place. Stepping back she shut the door and turned round, before jumping almost out of her skin as she saw Steve standing at the door, watching her intently.

“How long have you been there?” she demanded, angry and embarrassed in equal measure.

“Not long, I just wanted to make sure you saw everything you wanted to before disturbing you. I think you need to see this.” He replied, his usual good humour replaced with an expression of worry. Fiona followed him through into his bedroom, and stopped dead as stepped through the door.

There was a bed and wardrobe at the back of the room, but every other inch of space was dominated by computer equipment. One wall held racks of components and systems in various stages of repair, the other what looked like a cluster of working kit that put the systems she’d seen in work to shame. A desk dominated the remaining wall, flat screen monitors mounted to the wall behind it, four keyboards scattered on the wood in front of them. It looked like a mad scientists wet dream, like you could create any doomsday device you wanted without ever leaving the room, and it was a formidable sight.

Steve was already at work, calling up a set of diagrams on one monitor and a still shot of the mysterious man she’d encountered in her program in another. “Umm, just before I get going on this, how much do you know about VR, how it works I mean?” he asked.

“Not a lot, I kind of know the basics, how the suits work, the usual safety stuff but that’s about it.” Fiona replied, still slightly shocked at the contents of the room.

“Then grab a seat and I’ll try to explain this as best I can. All objects in a VR world have three main parts, doesn’t matter if it’s a character or a plank of wood everything’s built the same way.” As he talked Steve’s hands flew over the keyboard, creating a basic white outline of a person on the screen.

“First there’s appearance, that’s the easiest part to get right, especially if you’ve already got a set of reference images. Provided there’s a complete image of the character from all angles the computer can put together a pretty convincing representation.” On screen the outline became solid, filled in with the image of the man she’d seen. A few more key presses and the image seemed to fade out, becoming almost transparent as she looked at it.

“Under that there’s the physical attributes, in this case things like bone and muscle structure and their basic physical properties, how they interact with each other, their density and composition, that sort of thing. These days that’s pretty simple, at least for standard images like people, as there’s a huge library of examples to borrow from.” The image changed, adding the internal structure of the man over his physical appearance, then that too faded.

“And finally we have the real magic, the personality matrix. This is what governs how that character or object will behave, how it will react to other objects in the world, including real people. That’s what takes the time to build, and what separates the good from the bad when it comes to programmers. With me so far?”

“I think so, yes. Though I find it a bit hard to believe that a rock has personality.”

“Believe it, there have been some really weird occasions when someone’s loaded the wrong personality into the wrong object and a bunch of trees tried to do the can-can.” Steve grinned as Fiona burst into giggles next to him, he wasn’t at all convinced she was over what had happened so quickly, especially after reviewing the recording, but at least he could take her mind off it.

“Now when we put it into VR what we end up with is something like this…” he said, manipulating the image, turning it into a simple 3D outline on the screen with three layers of colour across it. “The red layer is the appearance, the blue the physical structure and the green the personality matrix.” He said, pointing out the detail as he did. The red band was a thin layer around the outline of the image, the blue a thicker one underneath it. The green was a tight sphere in the middle of the figure, with two thin white lines reaching out to connect it to the blue layer.

“What’s the white layer?” Fiona asked, her curiosity peeked.

“The white lines show the input/output pathways between the personality and the rest of the object. Think of them as the equivalent of nerves in your own body, carrying data about the outside world, in this case the VR scenario, to the mind and passing the commands back out to act on that stimulus. Of course the mind in this case is the personality matrix, and it’s really only approximating the actions of a human mind, but the idea’s much the same.”

“Hang on, if they’re nerves why are there only two of them, I mean, there’s thousands of them in our bodies, right?”

“Ah, there you hit on the real problem with VR. You see, running these scenarios takes a huge amount of processing power, even generating the graphics on a flat screen like these would have been beyond most computers ten years ago. Now we’ve got a lot more power to play with, but at the end of the day it’s still limited in what it can do. See the more data you feed to a decision making process, which is effectively what the personality matrix is, the more processing power you need to process it. In fact it’s exponential, double the data and you’ve got to quadruple the power.”

Steve paused for a moment before continuing. “Basically, all computer design is a trade off between what you want and what you can get. In VR the compromise was in creating believable characters who seemed to genuinely interact with the user and realistic environments to fool the brain into believing it’s actually in a different place than it was a few seconds ago. This was the solution they came up with, and it works pretty well. There’s enough of a data pathway there for an object to pull in as much information as you do through any two of your senses. The trick is it’s a switched system.”

“Okay, now you lost me.”

“Think of it as a two way, one lane road okay? Traffic can move along it in both directions, but only one vehicle at a time. If you’ve got two cars wanting to use it at one time in different directions one of them has to wait until the other has gone through. It lets an object respond quickly enough to fool the user into believing their acting spontaneously, and get enough data to make sure that response is appropriate, without needing ridiculous levels of processing power to do the job.”

“Now, let’s break down your mystery man shall we?” He hit a few keys and the still shot of the man blurred, turning into the same basic 3D shape as shown on the other monitor and Fiona gasped. The red and blue layers were the same, though slightly thicker on this version. The green layer was almost five times as large as that on the original display, almost touching the inner edge of the blue band. But that wasn’t what had caught her attention, overlaid across all this was a mass of white lines, like lightning frozen inside a storm cloud, more connections than she could possible count.

“Now that, ” Steve said, voice low and hushed “is not your standard VR character.”

“What is it?” She asked, her own voice wavering as she tried to understand what she was seeing.

“Honest answer? I don’t know. It’s not human, we don’t show up the same way in VR, at least not to the system itself. It could be a program, but there’s two problems with that. One, the time and effort needed to create that size personality matrix would be almost inconceivable. Two, there’s no computer on earth that could process that amount of data in real time. Now either of those problems pretty much rules out the option of it being a program, which doesn’t leave a whole hell of a lot of options.”

“So what do we do now? I mean, this…whatever it is, came into my sim, my system and tortured me half to death. I’m not exactly in love with the idea of meeting it again, you know?”

“Okay, I think the first thing you’re going to do is to get some proper rest, you look exhausted lass. I’m going to make a few calls, see what I can find out about your system, who could have accessed it, how they could have got in, that sort of thing. Then tonight we’re going to make a call to the market and see what we can find.”

“The market? What’s that?”

“Hmm? Oh, it’s the kind of simple, doom-ridden name the geeks of today like to use to give their activities that little hint of danger. Don’t worry about it, it’s just a meeting place for the less reputable members of the computing world, pretty much the most dangerous thing there is exposing that many geeks to someone as beautiful as you at the same time. Hell, it might help cut down the computer crime rate if some of them realise there’s a life outside of VR.”

Fiona smiled and half turned to hide her blush. The comment had been made off-hand, but she had to admit, hearing this man refer to her as beautiful was not entirely a bad thing. Steve showed her to the guest bedroom and made sure she knew where everything was before leaving her alone. She looked around the non-descript room, surprised at the contrast between this and Steve’s bedroom. She flushed again as she found her thoughts lingering once more on the bed part of that sentence and laid herself down on the single bed. She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.

Continued

The day passed and as twilight fell on the city Steve led Fiona into the car park in front of his flat. She was somewhat surprised when they passed the row of flashy sports cars, past the gleaming ranks of metal and the polished Porsche and Ferrari badges into what seemed like the more mundane part of the car park. Steve pressed a button on a remote and the hazard lights flashed twice on a black coupe, sleek while at the same time having an undoubted sense of sturdiness and practicality to it. Steve noticed the look she was giving him and turned with a half smile on his face. “Not what you expected?”

“Well, umm, no not really. I figured you’d have something like, oh I don’t know, something a bit more…sporty I guess.”

“You mean like one of those overpriced, hard to insure, temperamental pieces of exotica over there?” Steve said, gesturing to the handful of sports cars lined up at the front of the car park. “Sorry, but I like my cars to be a little more reliable than that. Besides, know the right tuning people and you’d be surprised at what you can do with something a little more discrete.”

She opened the passenger seat and dropped down into a black leather seat that seemed to be perfectly sized to her body, holding her tightly without being uncomfortable as she stretched her legs out into the footwell. Steve was already in the drivers seat and after checking she was comfortable fired up the engine and eased them out onto the street, the lazy burble of the engine barely penetrating the cockpit of the car. They drove in silence through the city streets for maybe thirty minutes until he took a right turn into a series of narrow alleyways. A few more twists and turns and they were parked up in a small space just off a crossroads of alleys.

They climbed out and Steve retrieved a long black leather coat that fell almost to his ankles from the boot before locking the car. As they walked away Fiona glanced back and just for a moment saw the car ripple and then seemingly fade away in front of her eyes. “What the hell?” she said, the surprise evident in her voice.

“Latest toy to come on the market, a flip paint that tries to blend in with the background. It’s still being tested for use on production vehicles but I know one of the people that invented the stuff and she supplied me with some of the first batch. Doesn’t work that well really but it’s pretty good in the dark or against solid backgrounds and it’s cheap enough to be worth doing. I did tell you it wasn’t exactly standard my dear.”

Fiona nodded, once again finding herself re-evaluating the man walking next to her. There were a number of things that just didn’t seem to add up about the guy, and she resolved to keep a close eye on him, just in case this was all some kind of elaborate hoax. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

“Well, I checked your system and it’s pretty good in terms of security. Not unbreakable but you’d need some pretty specialist tools to break in, and that sort of thing don’t come cheap, or for that matter, easy. If we can find out who’s bought that kind of equipment in the last few weeks, we should be able to at least make a start on tracking whoever did this down. While we’re here I want to run the scan of the man from your sim past a couple of acquaintances, see what they make of it.”

“That’s it? Just ask for that sort of information and these guys will give it you?” she replied, scepticism almost dripping from her voice.

“Not exactly, but I know the right people here, and most of them owe me some pretty big favours, enough so we should be able to get what we need. Oh, and while I remember, would you mind leaving the talking to me? You pick up the theory behind all this stuff pretty damn quick, but the folks in here are pros and they’ll know you’re not legit the first time you try to bluff them. I’ll just introduce you as a client and they’ll let it go.”

“Sure, though if you think it’d be better I could pretend to be something else…” Fiona said, taking a half step to her right as she walked to brush against him suggestively. Steve’s grin was clear enough, even in the blackness of the alleys as he turned towards her.

“Appreciated lass, and believe me I’d love to be seen with you on my arm, even if only for an act. But I’m going to need to concentrate and, well, frankly you’re more than a little distracting at the best of times, start curling up to me and I’m gonna be useless to you, ‘least as an information gatherer.”

Fiona laughed quietly, slipped her arms round him and lent up to kiss him once, quickly, before pulling back. “Then we’d better let you concentrate, at least until we’re somewhere a little more private.” She started walking again and marvelled at her actions, wondering where that impulse had come from. This man was here to do a job for her, that was all, so why was she taking her flirting this far, hell, why was she flirting at all?

She had no time to ponder the question though as Steve turned to face what seemed to be a wall and pressed a small device up against the brickwork. There was a faint buzz, and a section of wall rolled back and out of the way, revealing a narrow metal staircase leading up into the seemingly deserted building. She followed him up the stairs until they emerged in a large open space, big enough to hold a good size concert in if all the obstructions were removed and she looked around in amazement.

The general atmosphere of the place was electric, literally. Everywhere she looked there were people working on computers or other electrical parts, some hooked into VR suits, others working with keyboards and monitors. The floor was divided into irregular rooms, none of which had ceilings and she was reminded of the cubicle farm in her own office building. Here and there winding spiral staircases led to an upper level of offices and storage rooms, a metal grill floor giving an almost prison-like feel to the place.

As they walked through the chaos Steve lent over and whispered to her “This used to be one of the big Microsoft offices in the country until they missed the VR boat and went under. No one wanted to take it over when the street crime went through the roof, so these guys made use of it. Just watch your step if we go upstairs, there have been reports of ‘accidents’ happening when people stepped in the wrong place.” Fiona nodded and sculpted her features into her normal business mask. Steve stopped behind a short man, dressed in black jeans, white shirt and short black jacket who seemed to be on edge as he talked to the young couple in front of him.

“Look, you bought it sold-as-seen, it’s not my fault if you didn’t check which end goes where, okay? No refunds after sale, and sure as hell, no refunds after it’s been used, especially on that sort of accessory. Now get lost before I call security.” The couple seemed about to argue before they caught sight of Steve standing behind the salesman with a look on his face that made it very clear their problem, whatever it was, had just been bumped downwards in terms of priority.

The seller suddenly seemed to sense someone was behind him and spun around, finding himself on an eye-line with Steve’s chin as a hand wrapped around his in a manner that, to an observer would seem casual, even friendly, but was in fact a pretty much unbreakable grip. “Hello Nick, long time no see.” Steve growled quietly, all trace of his previous easygoing manner wiped from his face.

“Steve, now look, I heard what happened with those memory chips man, and I swear it wasn’t my fault, I was assured they were good. My guy managed to get lots mixed up and sent you a returned shipment by mistake, if I’d known earlier….”

“Nick, don’t bother, I’ve heard it before and I rather suspect a lot of other people have as well. Besides, don’t worry about it, I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not?”

“Hell no, in fact I thought you might need some persuading so I even did you a little favour to prove there’s no hard feelings.”

“Favour? Really?”

“Yeah, I did your book keeping for you, and good news man, it all balanced out, at least after I’d deducted the refund you owed me, oh, and the usual 50% inconvenience fee of course. No, no need to thank me, just thought I’d save you the time and trouble. After all I know you’re a busy man and, hey, time costs money right? And believe me…” Steve jerked his grip, causing a jolt of pain to go through Nick’s shoulder as he yanked him close “… you couldn’t afford that much trouble.”

“Right, you’re right, thanks man, it’s appreciated” Nick babbled, trying to pull his hand back from Steve’s grip without much success.

“I’m here on business Nick, and I think you can help me out, providing of course I can trust you to deliver this time?” Steve asked, releasing Nick’s hand without warning as he yanked backwards, almost causing the shorter man to fall over from his own movement.

“Of course, whatever you want man, and as a gesture of good faith, whatever it is, you can have it at cost.”

“Good, it’s not a big job anyway so it shouldn’t take you long. I need to know who’s been buying this equipment.” Steve said, passing over a printout of several part numbers.

“Hmm, this stuff ain’t gonna come cheap, and it’s going to take a while to pull it all together. Figure five thousand and about a week, and that’s only because of our special relationship.”

“Come on Nick, who do you think I am, a newbie punter building their first VR rig? Try five hundred and ten minutes and you’ve got a deal, anymore than that and I might as well go find it myself.”

“Alright, alright, tell you what, seven fifty and thirty minutes, how’s that?”

”Make it fifteen minutes and we’ll call it a thousand, deal?”

“Deal, where do you want it delivered?”

“To me, in my hand, in fourteen minutes and fifty five seconds or you’ll be looking for your fingers, or isn’t that clear enough?”

“Right, right, I’m on it, no problem.” Nick said, turning and hurrying to a free terminal to start the data search. Steve waited a moment then turned away and started walking towards a large cubicle at the back of the room, Fiona close behind him. She was once again trying to work out exactly who she was dealing with, the attitude change had been so complete it was like watching a stranger and that scared her. After all, how could she be sure which was the real man, and which was the act?

Reaching the door to the cubicle Steve tapped on the small metal plate attached the fabric with a knuckle and waited. A few seconds later a man who was almost Steve’s mirror image walked out, took one look at him and stopped dead.

“Steve, haven’t seen you in a while, how’ve you been?” the man asked, obviously wary.

“Good man, look can we talk, I’ve got something here that might interest you.”

“Yeah of course, come on in.”

They followed him into a workshop that looked like an explosion in an electronics factory. Steve cleared a couple of chairs for himself and Fiona and sat down.

“So, what have you got for me?” the man asked, eyes flicking from Steve to Fiona and back again.

“Two things. First the good news, I got him Tim.” Steve said, pulling a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and passing it over. As the man unfolded it Fiona caught the words ‘arrest record’ on the top of the paper, then the man was looking at Steve with a huge smile.

“You’re serious, you managed to nail this bastard?”

“Right to the wall, by the time he gets out of jail we’ll have been conquered by aliens my friend. I’m just sorry I couldn’t do more.”

“Hey, that’s alright, I mean, well, thanks man, I never thought I’d see this scumbag get what’s coming to him, it means a lot you know?”

Steve caught a glimpse of Fiona’s confused look and raised an eyebrow at Tim, nodding slightly in her direction. Tim hesitated for a moment then nodded. “Tim, this is Fiona, a client of mine. I’m trying to figure out who managed to break into her system and thought you might be able to help me out.”

“Fiona, this is Tim, a mate of mine from way back. Used to work together for a while doing bits and pieces for different clients. This bastard,” here he indicated the picture on the arrest record “framed Tim for causing an explosion at a company we were contracting for, cover for a robbery attempt. Only problem was there was a group of researchers working late, they, well, they didn’t make it. Tim went into hiding and we’ve been trying to track this guy down ever since. Finally managed to pull together enough evidence to set the police on him and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“A history that will, if there’s any justice in this universe, involve a long and intimate relationship with the inmates of the hairy serial killers wing of the nastiest prison in the country.” Tim joined in, passing a bottle of beer to Fiona and a coke to Steve to let them toast the occasion. “That’s one guy who deserves everything he gets. Hey, you said you had something else for me?”

“Yeah, I was wondering if you could take a look at something weird that turned up yesterday, I can’t figure it out and you’ve always been better than me at the matrix side.”

“True, okay, you got a copy handy?”

Steve passed over a memory stick with the scan of Fiona’s intruder and waited while Tim popped it into his computer. As the image came up on screen Tim whistled “What the hell? You sure this isn’t a corrupt image?”

“Positive, I pulled it from the original recording myself, it’s genuine. Any ideas what we’re looking at here?”

Tim paused, leaning back in his seat, fingers pressed together in front of his lips. “You know what this reminds me of? Remember that natural AI program we worked on a while back? This would match the core of that almost perfectly, least in terms of size if not in the pathways.”

“Yeah, the thought did occur, but I don’t see anything particularly unique here, if this was a super AI matrix of some sort, they’d have hit the same scaling problems we did. Besides, you’d need more power than I’ve ever seen in one place to run something like that, and this was on an isolated home machine, not a super computer in a lab.”

“Wait, where did you find this?”

“It turned up in a scenario I wrote, and I guarantee it’s nothing I put in there. I even checked the source file, it ain’t on there.”

“So where the hell did it come from? You sure that’s an isolated machine?” Tim asked, turning to Fiona now.

“Yes, I’m sure, I’ve got another machine for all my internet stuff, the VR box isn’t even connected to a home network, let alone the outside world.”

“Interesting. Steve, if I didn’t know better I’d swear this was a program, but short of a quantum computer…”

“Which no-one’s invented as far as we know and if it had been done it’d be all over the planet by now.” Steve interjected.

“… I don’t know how you’d do something like this. Hey, wait a minute, have a look at this…” Tim said, zooming the image on the boundary between the red and blue layers of appearance and physical aspects. Between the two, frozen in the image but clearly visible, was a thin layer of green, a separate matrix than the one at the core and between the three layers was another set of white ‘nerves’.

“What the… am I am completely off-base here or is there no way that should work?” Steve asked, staring at the image as if mesmerised.

“The system should just throw it out, unless, hmm, unless it’s being hidden as something else, maybe a new physical attribute something like that?” Tim said, equally fascinated by what was on the screen. “Either way, this is some major code Steve, whatever this is I wouldn’t go messing with it lightly.”

“Unfortunately I don’t think I’ve got a lot of choice in the matter. Don’t worry though, we’ll go loaded for bear.”

“Good call, look can you leave this with me for a while, I want to do a deeper analysis on it if I can, see what other nasty little surprises this thing has up it’s digital sleeves.”

Steve looked across at Fiona. “It’s up to you lass, the entire recording’s on their but if you don’t want to let it out we can find another way of getting a closer look at this thing.”

She paused for a moment, torn between her own embarrassment at what she knew was on that recording and a burning desire to find out what had done this to her. It really wasn’t much of a contest. “Okay, you trust this guy, then so do I. Just don’t copy it to the net or anything.”

“It doesn’t exist.” Tim promised, pocketing the stick. “Hey, you waiting for Nick?”

“Yeah, why?”

“He seems to be heading this way, and I thought he knew better than to get within ten feet of me.”

“Don’t worry, this won’t take long, just a data lookup and as much as I hate to admit, that slimeball’s much better at that sort of thing than either of us.”

“Yeah, it’s amazing what knowing half the crooked programmers this side of the Baltic Sea will get you when you’re in a rush.” Tim muttered under his breath, prompting a grin from Steve as he looked round at the approaching data cracker. Without a word he held out a credit chip in his left hand, the right extended to receive the data file Nick was offering. As Nick went to pull the credit chip away Steve tightened his grip and looked long and hard at the shorter man.

“Hey, look, it’s all there, every sale of every item on that list. Come on man, you know I wouldn’t be stupid enough not to do this properly right?”

“I hope so, for your sake. You’re on your very last chance as far as I’m concerned Nick, pray you never loose that chance.” Steve growled, releasing the credit chip and turning back to the other two people in the cubicle. Nick muttered something under his breath that none of them could quite catch, then turned and started walking back to his terminal. He hadn’t got more than ten steps when the whole place went straight to hell.

Continued

An explosion ripped up the staircase into the room, scorching the ceiling and setting the nearest equipment on fire. Immediately behind it came the sound of running feet, then a hail of gunfire ripped through the air as figures dressed in grey boiler suits charged up the still hot stairs into the room.

“Down!” Steve barked, throwing himself against Fiona and carrying her behind the partition wall as Tim hit the ground beside them. “You carrying?” He yelled over the noise to Tim, and got his answer as a short, black metal automatic weapon was pulled from underneath the desk.

“Any bright ideas on how the hell we get out of here?” Tim yelled, scrabbling around in a drawer for a couple of spare ammo clips.

“You mean aside from shooting our way through what looks like thirty or more bad guys with one gun between three of us down a single file staircase into a small street that’s probably a kill zone by now?” Steve yelled back, eyes scanning the room for inspiration.

“Aside from that, yes.” came the somewhat testy reply.

Steve’s eyes landed on the window about ten feet away. “This place still got a fire escape running round the outside?”

“Yeah, I think so, provided no-one’s ripped it apart for scrap metal yet.”

“Great, then I think we’ve got a plan.” Steve crawled forward, pulled one of the chairs towards him and grabbed a case of computer parts from the floor. Digging through the clutter he started dropping the heaviest items he could reach into it. After a few seconds the case was full and he shut the lid, using a long power cable to secure it to the chair.

“Okay, here’s what we do. Give me some covering fire, I’m gonna heave this through that window then we execute the all purpose contingency plan.”

“You mean we run for it?”

“Exactly. Unless you’ve got a better idea of course.”

“Sadly, no. Okay, on three you go and we’ll be right behind you. Dive behind that last partition, then we’ll go from there to the window when we’re all together. One, two, THREE!”

Steve bounced to his feet and ran, half carrying and half leaning the chair on his shoulder towards the large floor to ceiling windows. Behind him the staccato retort of Tim’s weapon rang out, forcing the intruders to keep their heads down for the few vital seconds he needed. As soon as he was within range Steve pitched the chair with all the force he could muster at the window and, as he dived for cover again heard the shattering of glass that was one of the most comforting sounds he’d ever heard. Landing hard on his right side, he turned over to look back the way he’d come, just in time for Fiona to land practically on top of him as she dived to safety, Tim close on her heels.

“Well, that seemed to work well.” Tim said, swapping out clips on his gun as he talked. “We’ve got a nice big hole, we’re only a floor up and no-one’s come in through the hole, which suggests they’re being dumb and focusing everything they’ve got on the front entrance to this place.” He stuck his head out for a second and yanked it back in just ahead of a few well aimed rounds. “We also seem to be attracting attention, I think it’s time to go.”

“Agreed, on three folks.” Steve said as they all got their feet under them for the last dash. “One, ” there was a strange metallic clinking noise and Steve looked down to see what looked very much like a grenade hitting the ground and rolling under a desk. “Fuck it, run for your life!”.

They took off and within two seconds they were all lying on the metal of the fire escape, Tim landing just as the grenade exploded behind them. The flying glass from the window passed harmlessly over their heads and they scrambled back to their feet.

“Okay, time for you guys to bail.” Tim yelled, sending a burst of fire back through the hole. “I’ll give you a head start then catch up”.

Steve’s gut churned at the thought of leaving anyone behind, but he knew the logic behind that order, he had someone to take care of and was unarmed, it was indeed time to leave. “Okay, but no heroics man, give us a few seconds then get gone.”

“Fine, fine, just go would you?” Tim replied sending another burst into the building.

With a last look back, Steve pushed Fiona ahead of him along the metal catwalk and down the spiral staircase to the street. They raced along the alleyways, heading for the car, only to hear the sound of a motorbike engine revving close behind them. Steve shoved Fiona into a doorway, pushing her down before matching his body to hers and covering them both with his coat. The bike engine grew louder, then roared past and continued into the distance. After a few seconds Steve stood up and helped Fiona back to her feet. As they ran she panted out a question. “How did that guy not see us?”

“The coat’s painted in the same stuff as the car, blends in with the background. Get below someone’s eye line and they can go right past without noticing.” Steve replied, reaching into a pocket for the remote control. They raced round the next corner and he hit the button. The car seemed to appear from the shadows, the doors opening on their own to let them jump in. Fiona barely had time to hit the seat before They we’re pulling away, the doors swinging shut on their own.

They raced down the alley, hanging a tight right at the end and bursting out onto the main street. As they hurtled down the road she wondered if they’d got back in the same car. The engine, so quiet before, was howling like a formula one car, every corner was taken as if the car was glued to the ground and the lights outside were becoming awfully blurred. Suddenly she realised she could hear another noise over the engine’s scream and she glanced down at the passenger side mirror. There, barely feet from the rear bumper were three green and yellow cars, slightly smaller than theirs but all emitting the same sort of banshee howl.

“Great, just great” Steve muttered, dropping down a cog on the six speed gearbox and concentrating on avoiding the more solid parts of the scenery. “Why couldn’t they have had those things in the shop tonight?”

“Who are they?” Fiona yelled over the noise.

“Same lot that burst into the Market, street gang, call ‘emselves the Daredevils. Don’t know what they want, and frankly I’d rather not find out so let’s see how well they know these streets.”

With that Steve hit a button on his steering wheel, leant over and flicked a set of toggle switches down. There was a low powered hum and a small video screen lit up in the middle of the dashboard, showing the view from the back bumper in a wide angle shot that covered the whole street. A small red light lit up above it marked GPS. “What’s that mean?” Fiona yelled, as she hung on for grim death as Steve threw the car around a small roundabout on what she’d swear had been a physically impossible line.

“GPS jammer. I know this part of town, but it’s a good way from their usual turf. Only way they can keep up with us like this is to be using a GPS signal and mapping software. This scrambles the signal, makes it useless within about twenty feet of the car, should give us an edge. Now if you’ll excuse me for a moment I’ve got some work to do.”

So saying Steve turned the car almost on it’s side making a ninety-degree right hander onto a road running alongside the river. The traffic was thicker here and he had to keep dodging in and out of oncoming traffic to stay ahead of the three cars that seemed to following his every move. A major junction loomed ahead, a crossroads leading either left back into the heart of the city or right over the bridge to the industrial part of the city. Steve set the car up and started a long, sweeping right hander, determined to carry as much speed as possible into the turn. The cars behind started to follow, and as soon as he saw they were all committed to the turn he pulled the handbrake up.

The backend of the car slid round and he got back on the power, tightening the turn to an impossible degree, turning it into an almost tear dropped shape about face. Two of the other cars managed to duplicate the manoeuvre, albeit further onto the bridge. The other couldn’t quite manage it and lost the back completely, spinning at high speed into the side of the bridge before bouncing back out into the middle of the road, his left side stove in and the car un-drivable as Steve headed back into the city.

Foot flat to the floor they raced up the three-lane carriageway, moving from left to right trying to deny the pursuing cars any chance to overtake. Steve glanced in his rear view mirror and Fiona saw a smile tug the corners of his mouth. He started moving left, then darted back to the right, allowing a blur of motion to pass in the gap on the left. The blur slowed slightly and pulled alongside Fiona’s door, becoming recognisable as a figure on a motorbike, the engine screaming at the very top of it’s rev range as the rider looked in through her window. She thought she recognised Tim’s face beneath the visor, then the bike pulled away and started to harass the car on the left, the rider pulling a small pistol from a holster on the bike and firing, somewhat inaccurately, at the car behind him. He eased the bike over to the left and the car, it’s driver enraged by the nerve of this bike riding lunatic, followed him. A second later both bike and car were gone as the left lane became a motorway sliproad, leaving a straight one on one battle behind them.

“Alright, let’s see exactly how brave he is.” Steve muttered, setting the noise of the car straight ahead and backing off the throttle slightly. The other car pulled alongside, then dropped back slightly as Steve pushed his own throttle to the floor. Fiona could do nothing other than look straight ahead, at the distant glow of lights that indicated a busy crossroads that was coming rapidly closer.

“Hang on” Steve said, reaching for a pair of red buttons mounted on the steering wheel. Mashing them down there was what sounded like a small explosion behind them and the car leapt forward as two bottles of Nitrous Oxide were dumped into the fuel system, four foot long flames shooting from the exhaust. A second later there was a matching road from behind them as the other car brought it’s nitrous into play.

Touching one hundred and ninety miles an hour they raced towards the crossroads, neither driver willing to flinch. Fiona closed her eyes, there was no way they could make it through that traffic safely, and she didn’t really want to see the car that would kill her before it hit the door panel. Both drivers were staring straight ahead, locked on the obstacle, neither moving an inch. Until Steve reached down and, in one lightning fast motion, yanked the handbrake up while wrenching the steering wheel to the left.

The car swapped ends and was suddenly heading backwards towards the junction as Steve buried the throttle to the carpet. The smell of burning clutch and rubber permeated the air as the car screeched in protest at trying to drive tyres that were now travelling backwards at over a hundred and fifty miles an hour in the opposite direction. There was an earth shattering crash from behind them as the other car pilled into the junction and was collected by a monstrous 18-wheeler truck, but it was almost obscured by the shriek of tyres and engine as they worked to overcome the laws of physics. With a jolt the car came to a stop, the back bumper parked neatly on the white line of the junction box for a moment before Steve headed off down a side street at a more normal pace.

Fiona opened her eyes and looked about in confusion. “Umm, not that I’m complaining, but shouldn’t we be sitting on a cloud having harp lessons about now?” she asked, her voice trembling as the excess adrenaline of the last few minutes got dumped through her system.

“I’m more of a guitar man myself.” Steve replied, trying to ignore the demands his own body was making to pull over and throw up. “Besides, I look awful in white.”

Fiona laughed at that, the sort of laugh that isn’t really about humour, more a release of tension, a way of reassuring yourself that everything’s all right, that you’re still alive. The laughter dissolved into giggles, and that was about all she could do for the next few minutes as Steve concentrated on putting as many turns as possible between themselves and any possible pursuit. Eventually she laughed herself out and they travelled back to his house in silence. Once there they collapsed onto the sofa and stayed there for a good ten minutes just staring at the wall, each lost in their own thoughts.

It was Steve who finally broke the silence. “Well lass, I don’t know about you, but I think it might be a good idea to keep moving. I don’t know if you can sleep, but I sure as hell can’t.”

“No, no I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. Any ideas on where we go from here?”

“Yeah, I want to see if we can spot anything out of the ordinary in that recording now that we’ve got a better idea what to look for. You up for that?”

“Umm, what does that involve exactly?”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll go in as observers and just watch what happens. We’ll skip the first part when everything’s going normally and start with the appearance of that man. We’ll be able to manipulate the program but none of the characters in it will be able to see or hear us. And, umm, I guess I should have mentioned this earlier, I took the liberty of distorting your image in the recording, you know like the do on the police reality shows? I didn’t think you’d want people seeing you like, well, in that compromising a position.”

Fiona stared at him for a moment, wondering again what she was getting in to. One moment he was dodging bullets and intimidating low-life thugs, the next he was doing something like this to preserve her modesty, she didn’t know how to read him at all and she had to admit there was nothing like a mystery to make her attracted to a man. She settled for a quick nod: “Okay, let’s do it.”

Very nice story! A good story, tickle-oriented or not, should always have some good solid content to hold it together. Great job, man!!!

Thanks guys, the next part was meant to go up tonight, but a 15 hour work day just shot that down. On the plus side I got major league bored waiting for an engineer so finished maping out the story properly, I think I actually know where this one's going (now there's a first) so with a bit of luck I can try and get the bulk of it written this week and next weekend. Out of curiosity is it a good sign when a story makes you want to write it so you can read it, or just a sign it's time to go speak to a shrink?

Spike - had a quick hunt around and found your posts, only had time to read one of 'em (umm, buffy/spike in series 6 I think?) but colour me impressed, great stuff man. I'll hold off comenting properly though until the brain settles down and the caffinated elephants go away. Oh and cheers for the Terminator ref, made my day that one

Oh, forgot to mention, my 'Needs To Get Our More' prize of the week goes to the first person to get the move that supplies one of the 'action hero quips' during the shoot-out scene.