Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)
wipe that thing.""She's a partner."
"Look, I've got some top-tier rec-sims. Spot-on personality matrices, whatever your bent. I'll give them to you, gratis. Just wipe your damn mask." Kendrix almost sounded worried.
Before Firenze could respond, Lauren had dropped into the sim. She stood between them and addressed Kendrix with a cold, "Nice to see you, too."
Kendrix froze, his eyes flicking towards Firenze with a desperate 'get it away' look. He begged, "Call it off, man. Shit's creepy."
Lauren stated, "Says the man with eight petabytes of-"
"Stay the hell out of there!" Kendrix snapped, his hand flashing into his coat.
Firenze interposed himself and shut down the confrontation before it got ugly. "Lauren, he's our guest. K, be polite, or I'll torch the link."
Both stared at him, unsatisfied.
He added, "Lauren's the best there is. With her help, we'll get the box open in no time."
"Her?" Kendrix demanded. "Did you just call it 'her'? Look, I get it. Masks are cool! Mine's hilarious! But it's not a fucking 'her'!" He trailed off, shaking his head and looking for the door. In a mumble, he added, "You even fucking named it." He froze, whirled back, the color drained from his face. He demanded, "'Lauren'?!" You named it 'Lauren'? Is that what she looked like? Didja fucking model it on her? Hell, man, that was years-"
Kendrix's mouth kept moving but produced no sound. Lauren pressed her forefinger and thumb, and his audio was gone. She stated, "I named myself."
Kendrix blinked, and his mouth slapped shut.
She continued, "I chose a name with familiarity, positive connotations, and an acoustic profile I enjoyed. I claimed it as my own. If you have an issue with this, I suggest you file it in my official complaint folder." She paused, smiled, and added, "There is no complaint folder."
Firenze sighed.
Kendrix struggled against the mute.
"Let him." Firenze said.
Lauren scowled but opened her hand.
Kendrix excused, "You two... just... do what you do. I'll be back. Call me when it's open." With that, he vanished.
"Dick." Lauren stated.
Firenze whirled to face her. Exasperated, he demanded, "Yes! Yes, he is! But you cracked his data vault! I'd be pissed, too!"
"What was I supposed to do? Loiter in stealth mode? Again?" She shifted, arms crossed, and said, "I anticipated a high probability of him being both a jackass and a pervert. I was right." She paused again and shuddered. "Creepy stuff in there. There's not a delete function strong enough."
Firenze replied, "Look, I know you don't like him. I don't like him! But there are rules for dealing with people. You have to follow them, or shit goes south."
She stood unconvinced.
Firenze sighed.
"I'll try." She allowed.
"Thank you!" He exclaimed. Not wanting to dwell, he changed the topic. "My question is: are you as excited as I am to play with the new toys?" He tapped the briefcase for emphasis.
Lauren broke into a broad smile, all argument dropped, and she exclaimed, "Let's crack a black box!"
Firenze took one step towards the door-
-and stood in a safe room, its sterile-white walls laced with grids and flush-screens. In the center of the fullbright cage, a silver cube hovered and spun, flowing through itself like mercury. Firenze extended his arm, and workbenches unfurled, toolboxes blossoming to reveal arrays of macros and crackers, with Kendrix's gifts now resting in pride of place.
Firenze spun his hand, and the room's locks snapped into place, sealed this chamber from core systems with a clank-click-hiss. Firenze turned towards the hypercube. It twisted, white-gold code streaming over its deep-silver surface. "Where were we?" He asked, absently, as he dug through his selection of probes.
Lauren stepped up to the opposite side of the not-quite-black box and answered, "It's an extremely dangerous secured folder, designed by an unknown entity, containing at least forty exabytes of data, compressed. Outer security layers included top-end hunter-seeker algorithms, active and reactive ICE, and an armada of counterhack bots. The configuration of core defenses indicates a high probability of burner viruses, and it is unknown if they will target mask or user. After the last session, you declared, 'fuck this, erase it'."
Firenze replied, "I see you didn't." He pushed a jewelers' glass onto his nose to initiate deep scans, then pulled on heavy rubber gloves to isolate his neural processes.
Lauren shrugged. "I weighed the request against the high likelihood that you would regret that decision, and so stored the data in a slashbin and retained it for one week. I do not appear to have been mistaken."
Firenze snorted. He admitted, "I was pretty sure you'd do that."
"High accuracy mutually predictive models are a key benefit of longterm co-development." She said.
"Thanks, I trust you, too."
It was her turn to snort.
Firenze picked up his torch, sparked it until white-blue flame roared. Across from him, Lauren placed her hands beside the cube and stretched, expanding it to the size of an inflatable pool ball. More of the subtle lines grew visible, and a chime filled the air.
Firenze held the torch ready as the cube spun before him. He raised his hand, froze it in mid-rotation. The circuitry on its surface sparkled under the light. The chiming swelled, and he commented, "I really want to know who designed this thing." He circled about the artifact, inspected its finely-articulated sides. "Ominous Corp? Evil Co? The Legion of Doom?" He flicked his torch, and the silver gleamed under flaring plasma. "Recommendations?" He asked.
Lauren circled opposite him, in counterpoint. She drew close to the segmented lattice of the cube and its ever-flowing surface. "Objectively?" She asked. She flicked her fingers and held a scalpel, which she lowered towards the mercurial object. "You should walk away. There is an exceedingly high probability that Kendrix obtained this from a disreputable source and that there are more security measures enclosed. Once we crack the shell, we may be operating in realtime against all manner of ICE. The rational, reasonable decision is to abandon this course of action." Behind her, a wall of charts and graphs unfurled, all showing, highlighted in blood-red, the words 'YOU LOSE'.
Firenze