The customer who had called for the deletion was Assembly
Member Clarence Greddych; he had been carrying on an affair with Miss Desyre
Maloney, but with the upcoming election, he wanted to prevent her from coming
forward about it, since family men had a better chance of reelection than philanderers.
He had breakfasted with his wife that morning, and prepared to leave for work
at 11:30, but when he had returned to the sitting room to bid her farewell at
11:15, he found her rigid and cold, the victim of neural paralysis as a result
of involuntary receptive disconnect. Autopsy revealed that she had, in addition
to the receptacle at her hairline—the high-fashion, subcutaneous sort so lately
developed—she had a second one, an older model, though more recently installed
than the first… secreted at the nape of her neck… named “Desyre Maloney.”
Adam LaRouge was tried for the collateral cybercide of
Martha Greddych, since it was cybercide that resulted in her death. Since it
wasn’t direct cybercide, and no one wanted to dredge up the info on Desyre Maloney,
nor Mr. Greddych’s involvement, Adam was not officially convicted, only
stripped of his credibility by the Head of National Security, Captain George
Whitaker, and ordered to remove himself from the Cloud effective immediately.
“Come now, LaRouge,” The Captain said, grinning as he
played with the cred card between his fingers, knowing there was little the man
could do about the impending discredit process, “this whole situation wouldn’t
have been so messy if you’d taken the time to know your subject’s face. Mrs.
Greddych could hardly be mistaken for a common mistress!”
“You know well enough how blind the ambitious Members can
be to status when someone gives them what they want, don’t you… Captain,” Adam growled.
Captain Whitaker winced; Adam knew he’d scored a hit. Now
the Captain knew that Adam held secrets about his own life that no one else in
the world could have access to; but where would a man like Adam hold such
valuable information? Surely the card in the Captain’s own hand might contain
links to the information, if the records themselves, whatever amount of detail,
were too much to bear in a simple receptacle. What would Captain Whitaker do
about it? Even the Chief of National Security was bound by restraints and
parameters of the law. There was only one thing he could do.
With three quick swipes, Captain Whitaker had completely
erased the credibility of Adam LaRouge. He stood, clenching and unclenching his
hands nervously.
“Adam LaRouge, you are hereby stripped of credibility and
banned from the aethernet. Should your name or information find its way into
the General Network, you will be severely punished. You have permission to
return home immediately and disconnect from the Cloud.”
Disconnection and banishment, the new form of “prison.”
Without the connection, he was no better than a Streetwalker. He was worse,
because at least the Streetwalkers shared the aethernet with the High-Flyers.
Banishment meant that Security Officers would be regularly patrolling the
aethernet from now on, and at the least mention that Adam LaRouge was still
active, they had the authorization to commit cybercide, and if necessary,
homicide with impunity.
A thin smile returned to Drake’s face. A detachment of
Security Officers had followed him back to his house, and waited outside with
receptivity monitors, tracking his connection strength as he disconnected his
receptacle. For all they knew, once he disconnected, the vacant receptacle
would send his brain into a series of seizures, and he would either collapse on
the Streets below, or wander, literally empty-headed until exhaustion and
starvation claimed him.
What they didn’t know—what brought the smile now—was that
Adam LaRouge, who disconnected people for a living, had been preparing for just
such a day. He had a series of safety measures in place, to allow him to live
on, anonymously. The only thing he could not predict is whether he would be
able to perform them in time…
The Security Officers watched the signal strength meter
dip below the “WARNING” line, and continue to drop until the screen read, “NO
SIGNAL.” It was usually at this point that most people would come wandering out
their doors, where a waiting Descender would take their writhing bodies down to
the Streets, where they usually ended up dead, fodder for the passing
Streetwalkers. They waited, but Adam LaRouge did not emerge. The commanding
officer sighed. Some, like this man, chose to remain in their houses—or were
physically incapable of exiting, due to the force of the disconnect—unable to
eat or control physical movement, until death brought an end to their quiet,
insidious suffering. The Descender arrived, and the Security Officer led his
detachment away, figuring that the House Cleaners would appreciate a vehicle to
remove his remains when they disinfected the house for the next occupant. Adam
LaRouge was now legally dead.
Inside the house, the nameless, identity-deprived
occupant—once Adam LaRouge, and not quite somebody else yet—winced and tried to
maintain consciousness in the pain and vacancy of a disconnected receptacle. In
his right hand he clutched his last tether to this earth, a single multi-series
memory chip. He struggled to his feet. The seizures were beginning, but the man
had already trained his grey matter beyond them. Keeping his eyes focused on
the front door, he laboriously tripped and stumbled his way through a rolling
visual kaleidoscope toward the portal spinning and turning in front of him. At
last, the portal evaporated to the twisting, swirling, over-stimulating view of
the outdoors. A Descender dipped and wobbled, first below him, then directly at
his eye level. Apparently, he had fallen, and now fought to roll himself onto
the narrow platform without falling off it into the bottomless abyss below him.
The looping, turning circles of light and movement above him as he descended
were too much for his eyes. He tasted bile, and only realized after the fact
that he had actually turned his head and vomited over the side of the
Descender. His superficial nerves—the sense of touch, of pain, of hot and cold,
of movement—were already desensitized. Even his hearing was fading already. He
saw, through the warped haze of seizing vision, the movement and bustle of the
Streets, but could not hear anything. He saw a pair of legs enter his line of vision,
and his head elevated to about the same level as everyone else, but the two men
carrying him—having received the prearranged signal just before Adam LaRouge
“went offline”—did not register in the gaping wasteland between his ears.
Suddenly the sharp taste of soot and the smell of filth
and trash disappeared, and the Disconnected Man knew that it was only a matter
of time before he was completely and irreversibly dead. His fading and
distorted vision kept him only partially aware that he was now inside a small
room, sprawled on a couch. An unused comp-unit booted up—he saw the swirling
spot of light it introduced to his vision—and he was aware of long
appendages—arms—reaching toward his receptacle just before everything went
black…
Drake sighed; the re-boot process had been more painful than
he had anticipated. Every inch of his nervous system had reconnected with the
force of a pile-driver. The sensation was like being re-born. Light was
disorienting; he could not comprehend the sounds around him; voluntary movement
was impossible for about three hours, then it was a long several months of
re-learning how to walk, how to move, how to eat, how to bathe. The family who
had saved his life, Hannery, his wife Gwynn, and their three children—sons
Archie and Blaine, and daughter Eillwyn—patiently guided the man-infant Drake
Ross through each stage of his recovery.
The re-boot had been Stage 1 on the memory chip. Once he’d
resumed much of his normal human ability, Drake re-connected to his brand-new
personal comp-unit and initiated Stage 2—Skill recovery. While he could not
completely resume the identity of Adam LaRouge (that would forever remain
stored in the digital files of his comp-unit), he could re-imprint the memories
of his former self, the skill sets, the training, all into his—Drake
Ross’—receptacle. It would take a few years to be able to transfer all that
information into his reconstructed grey matter, but Drake did not care. As far
as he knew, no one else in the world had survived a re-boot; he didn’t mind
taking as long as he needed.
Once all that was accomplished, the newly re-created Drake
Ross needed to complete one more task to seal his identity and begin rebuilding
the credibility he had lost. On September 22, 2068, Drake Ross stood on the
porch of Hannery’s hovel and breathed his first gasp of aethernet since the
disconnecting of Adam LaRouge. He did not remember much of his old life, but
with that gasp, he tasted hints and clues on his tongue. He knew his old name;
the fact that his banishment resulted in a tremendous boost in Captain
Whitaker’s credibility convinced Drake that he was destined to be a canker in
the Captain’s side for the rest of his life. Captain Whitaker was the best
Security Chief there ever was? Well, Drake Ross would be the best freelance
Mercenary there ever was. Laws and restrictions were only minor details to be
bypassed. Drake had been acquiring credibility and exploring already, as Adam; now that Adam
was disconnected, Drake had merely to redeem the credibility from the Cloud
that bore his name, and he received a new lease on life and a career.
Hannery found him a cement-block bunker slap in the middle
of the maze of Streets, and Archie and Blaine were his “faces” to acquire the
necessary equipment for Drake to resume business. He became an application
junkie; no job was too dangerous or unlawful, and if it brought him closer to
discrediting Captain Whitaker and his cronies, so much the better.
The Red Dragon had risen—and he would rain fire upon his
enemy.
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