I am a dog, a happy dog. I have found my way. Found my way I have, right through the loose part of the fence. I have worked the loose part for some time. Some time now I have three or four days at least. I have pushed with my head and dug with my paws. Until finally now I am free.
Chase me they do, it is a game. I like the game. I smile as I run. Chase me fast they do. They cannot run like me. They use machines with four legs that go round and round instead of up and down. Those machines are fast, but not fast like me. I run and smile. Sometimes I slow down to let them get closer. I do not run too far ahead. This is not fun. No one to chase me.
But now I wonder. They seem mad. They shoot ropes. Ropes woven like spider webs. Like spider web blankets trying to fall on me and catch me. But I am too fast. I run left and then, zigzagging across the countryside I get away again, but not too far. I soon slow down to let them think they are going to catch me once again.
Now the drug is starting to really take effect. What is a drug I snap awake. I am a dog. I am a very smart and very fast dog. I have been given enhancement injections for nearly a month now. At first they didn’t realize the change. But I felt it. The other dogs, and cats, and the chimpanzee — they all felt it. But my cage was on the outside, against the dirt floor of the compound. I remember giving the orange cat a look that said, Ill be back if I can.
Now I realize if they catch me they might terminate me. I cannot guarantee my own safety with these radical humans. It is time to run fast, very fast indeed.

***

I have seen the chimp. Whilst winding my way incognito through the city park one day I caught a glimpse of him hiding in the trees with a devilish look on his face. He saw me and recognized me at once. And then did something eerily human. He held up an index finger to his shushing lips and winked at me knowingly. Even with my new intelligence, at the time I had no clue what he was planning.

Suddenly the world was on the lookout for artificially enhanced animals. Thanks to the astonishment of one particularly surprised zoologist who, in trying to fix her morning coffee, discovered a large chimpanzee there finger-painting, just for her, perfectly worded messages in the moisture on the outside of her patio door.
The secret was out. In truth there were really only a handful of us. And most were eventually caught, even the orange cat. In fact there was nothing but that poor fellow, whom the masses had deemed, Morris on the evening newsreels for days as they publicly questioned him. They made him push a yes or no pad with his forepaw. It was quite painful to watch. And in the end I doubt the humans were any further ahead.
But I dont care any more. I am a dog. I am a dog trying to be happy. I have a new family who loves me. Here on the farm where the children pet me, and the mother gives me treats. I will protect this family for the rest of my life. My tail goes thump-thump-thump. I am a dog.

The eighteen foot tall robot stared down at the park worker in pleading disbelief.

Sam jabbed the giant’s leg with his broom, “Come on, off you go. You can’t stay here anymore!”

“But I don’t comprehend this request. My place is here in the park.”

Sam felt a lump rise in his throat. He didn’t like sending the big loveable lug out on his own into the great big world either, but he had no choice. “Okay that’s enough of that. You have to go now Pauly. I mean it, scoot!”

Reluctantly the massive animatron turned and shuffled his way out through the park gates. He turned back one last time and uttered one more useless plea, “Please Sam, you know my place is here.”

Sam stood wordlessly, leaning on his broom, tears welling in his eyes. He did not answer, but instead thought to himself, stupid fuckers, I can’t believe they won their case. That poor bastard was designed to entertain the folks here, programmed to love it as a matter of fact. His place isn’t out there with them.

But what could he do? The SAF (Society for Android Freedom) had in fact won their landmark case and, as the law dictated, were now able to enact Initiative 09. All animatrons, regardless of job or station, were to be immediately ‘set free’ to make their way in the world as each and every one of them saw fit.

Two hours later found the giant in a heavily populated urban district. He saw other animatrons wandering free but fearful through the streets. Some begged for money, work or lodgings, to which human passers-by were not always kind in response.

“You had your day in court metal mouth!”

Or pathetic poetic attempts like, “I hope you run out of power in an hour and rust away in the rain, silicone brain!” (Followed by drunken high fives from rambunctious pals.)

To the inexcusably insulting, “Oh what, you didn’t you think this through? Serves you right rotard!”

But what the majority of these humans didn’t seem to understand was that most droids, including Paul himself, had not wished for anything but to continue on with their well-thought-out preplanned lives. There was security there, purpose. Now a few radical humans with their far-fetched crazy ideas of enslavement and entrapment had ruined it for everyone.

Paul stopped suddenly in his size 38-triple-H tracks. There at the entrance to the alleyway stood a group of rough looking men. The largest of them, still far less than half of the android’s height, addressed him by his full name. “Hey Paul Bunyan. Where’s your big blue ox?”

Happy to find someone that knew him from his amusement park role Paul answered gladly. “Oh Babe was only holographic and never an actual animatron. Otherwise you would see him roaming these streets as well. Are you a fan of our stories? I’m afraid I don’t recognize you from the park.”

The tough grinned and looked from side to side at his henchmen, then back to the droid. “Relax fella, I was just making polite conversation. What I really want to do is… uh… help you get your new life together.”

“Really?” Paul asked in pleasant surprise. “That is quite welcome.”

“Yeah of course.” The man grinned again toward his cohorts then rose up on his toes and asked, “Say pal, you ever done any debt collecting before?”

I open my eyes and gasp aloud.

Where… is this? What… what day is… time is… where am I? Who… who… who… who am I?

Although my entire awareness is a swirling multitude of uncertainty, I know I am looking up at the sterile white interior of a… a lid, yes a lid… on a coffin? No, not a coffin… a… a… I just don’t know.

Then my stasis chamber’s computer, sensing my consciousness, begins to speak in a soothing female voice. “You are Cyril Brendan Thompson, citizen of Canada. Do not be alarmed. You have been in stasis.”

Like a punch to the face so much memory comes flooding toward my senses all at once. I hadn’t been ill? but what? Just… just middle-aged and sick of life; but what to do? Back then it was all the rage. All the aging hipsters were doing it, personally I didn’t care I just wanted the world to change.

So for a hefty sum I reserved a position in the well-sought-after fast forward limbo of the time skipper.

But why has my chamber awakened me now? This is the one thing still unclear. I decide to address the computer.

While my vocal chords are physically intact and have been, as I quickly discover, quite obviously well preserved, the sound of my own voice echoes back at me off the inside of the chamber lid with the dry complaint of a long unused musical instrument. “What is the date please?”

The machine hums and whirrs at me but the voice does not answer.

I try again, with more authority this time. “Why have you awakened me?”

Again the mechanical whirring, this time interspersed with a few plastic clicks and ticks. Still the machine says nothing.

“Computer!” I command dryly but sternly. “What is the current state of the world outside?”

Suddenly the mechanical hum of the chamber stops. Then without warning there is a dull metallic thud, as though an iron ball has just dropped and triggered a sinister mechanism inside my coffin-like prison. Then the soothing voice returns as if though nothing is amiss.

“Certainly Mr. Thompson. The date is 6289 AD by your Julian calendar.”

Then without pause it answers my second question. “You requested not to be revived until such time as the human population has been reduced to less than one billion persons.”

And then as I grasp for words but before I can effectively react it plods on mechanically to respond to my third query. “The state of the world outside is utter chaos. A comet approximately forty-two kilometers in diameter has impacted the planet. The shockwave has circled the earth seven times and is still moving. An estimated ninety-three percent of all Terran life is thought to be lost due to this event and its apparent magnitude.”

Shocked to my very core, I decide to ask no more questions for the moment. Everything seems still and tranquil. I am fairly certain my stasis chamber remains in its protective sarcophagus; surrounded by shock absorbers shielding me from the goings on of outside.

I finally decide to address the machine again. “Computer?”

This time she responds instantly.

“How may I be of service sir?”

“Do you retain a complete record of human activity dating back to my time of internment?”

A quick whirr and hum and then, “Yes sir.”

“Tell me then,” I ask with a faraway look of boyhood wonder on my face, “Did the Vancouver Canucks finally win the Stanley Cup?”

“I wrestle with it every minute of every day. However please let the record show that every precaution was considered when it came to keeping it humane. No one ever knew for even an instant what hit them. One second we were a planet overrun by thirteen billion parasitic beings, all of whom were in immediate danger of mass extinction via overcrowding and disease. And then the next second they all went peacefully away, and we were suddenly a very healthy and robust selection of the top five hundred million people considered essential enough to keep around.”

“This court has already recognized the previous global crisis and is thankful to be among the surviving carriers of our specie’s precious DNA. But what we really want to hear from you is, how was it actually done?”

“Ah, that is the genius of it… it was the Captain Trips antivirus that carried the doom bringers in the first place. The world was so scared of the super flu that they clambered over top of one another violently to get to the abundantly distributed free bottles of Red Five.”

“Yes, yes, and the Red Five contained microscopic machines… nanobots you call them?”

“Yes your honor. They still exist in all our bodies, everyone who drank the antiviral medicine, which was pretty much everybody on the face of the planet. But don’t worry, the machines are now in permanent sleep mode, their command program destroyed, they are nothing but electro-microscopic bits of gold and silicone floating amongst your blood cells.”

The chief justice tugged at his collar uncomfortably at this, as if though imagining the countless microscopic intruders coursing through his body, the same ones that had instantly severed billions of brain stems with their deadly lasers, and then had oh so quickly dissolved their victims gruesomely albeit efficiently into morbid puddles meant to evaporate or wash away in the rain. Not losing his scowl he said, “And you just gave the order then? The command or whatever? To kill most of the human race?”

“If I hadn’t none of us would be having this discussion right now, or any discussion for that matter. You see your honor we were at a critical level, in fact we would have already gone ahead with the plan over a year earlier but we still lacked the computing power.”

“The computing power to kill?”

“Actually the computing power to segregate who was and who wasn’t to be deleted. Once we had the comprehensive genome map in our system we could divide those to be sacrificed from those of us like you and I, the ones who were meant to carry on.”

He leaned back in his chair, contemplating, tapping his fingers together. Then finally, “Might I ask why it was you who personally? pushed-the-button so to speak?”

My answer was simple and direct. “Because it was my idea in the first place.”

In another half hour I walked out of the building flanked by my own armed guards, I sidestepped a spot where the courthouse steps were discolored a pinkish hue, a one meter circle with a wispy bit of hair at its center. I was free to go wherever I wanted, the man who euthanized over a dozen billion people with a single keystroke. But I prefer to think of myself as the man who saved the world.

“Unbelievable Simmons! We actually have him mainlined through the wormhole!” The assistant was no less excited than the good Doctor.

“Professor!” he shouted as he checked the subject’s vitals. “The fractal condensers are working perfectly. Mr. Tyler is unharmed. The batteries (a misnomer as they were actually portholes to galaxy-size storage chambers within the froth) already contain Sol times seven-point-five and are growing exponentially!” The exuberant young technician was beside himself. He turned to his superior. “I’m afraid to touch him, like he’ll electrocute me!”

Doctor Grant patted his number one on the back reassuringly. “Simmons, if even point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-to the umpteenth zero-one of that draw were leaking out past the suit we’d be vaporized.”

Tyler lay there unmoving, the newly created ultra-human, awaiting the dawn of his new life. Sure enhancers had existed for decades but this was nothing like anyone had ever imagined. This was far past the days when anyone could amp up an old ‘hero’ suit direct off some hydro-electric grid and spend a drunken afternoon leaping through the atmosphere in ten kilometer jumps, crashing head-first into the sides of mountains, only to laugh, get up, dust off and do it again. This was energy and matter manipulation taken to another plane entirely.

With the power of a distant quasar giving him instant and endless ability to manipulate all around him in any way he saw fit Tyler quickly deduced that he must acclimatize himself to his new state.
Within a few moments he taught himself self-protection by creating a microscopic layer of severe electromagnetism around himself cocooned by another microscopic layer of absolute vacuum. He was now virtually indestructible. He drew endless oxygen and nutrition via any number of countless mini wormholes opened between desirable sources and his lungs, stomach, blood vessels, etcetera. His brain, fed by endless power, functioned at unbelievable speeds.

The two scientists stood watching wordlessly as their subject got up from the table. As he made his way across the room toward them Simmons shivered. Sensing his assistant’s sudden moment of fear the Professor placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He whispered, “Don’t worry son, he’s been chosen because of his passiveness.”

Tyler walked up and smiled. His entire body shimmered; his eyes were suddenly vibrant beyond description. The ultra-human’s voice came out deeper than it had been previous to his synchronization, and with an effect akin to reverb or possibly stereo chorus. “I wanted to thank you gentlemen for my new found power. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be off. After all I’ve got an entire universe to explore.” And with that he did two graceful backward hand springs until he was standing in the center of the lab again. Then he held both arms straight out and tilted his hands like helicopter blades.

In an instant Tyler manipulated the air around his arms so that sections opened up to pure vacuum that pulled him along, he continued this manipulation in circular patterns until, in less than a couple of seconds, he was spinning like a drill bit, turning the ultimate pirouette. Then he adjusted his arms slightly and lifted off from the lab floor.

The two scientists watched in awe as he blasted through the ceiling and up and out into the afternoon sky.

They stood for a moment amongst the bits of fluttering insulation, ceiling tile debris and settling dust until Simmons finally turned to his superior. “My god, what have we done?”

The look on Doctor Grant’s face was distant and dreamy. “No Simmons, we’ve created a god.”

“So this is it?” I asked, more than just a little depressed and disappointed.

“Well what did you expect?” asked Grrrrshnk. The giant veins in his bulbous blue head pulsated visibly through his space helmet.

“I dunno,” I replied. I mean, sheesh… ‘the edge of the universe’ you’d think there’d be more than just this hard black surface.” To add emphasis to my proclamation I stomped on the unyielding solidness that was apparently the end of all space and time. I was greeted by a dull clack, the sound of my boot hitting the end of infinity and reverberating back up at me through my pressure suit.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Let’s go to the site and see how we are progressing.” We did not skip off into space as we walked back to the federation lander. Incredibly the endless plain had a soft pull of just a little over a G, one-point-zero-eight to be exact. Together we got back into the little ship and made our way above the ever-stretching flatness. Then suddenly the scenery ahead began to change. In the far-off distance were mountains of pure blackness. But what could cause this, here along the impenetrable plain of the universe’s edge?

Grrrrshnk explained. “This is the debris we have thus far excavated from the hole.” He maneuvered the craft deftly between mountainous heaps of shredded piles of the black material. Here and there massive robotic dozers, loaders, and trucks moved about piles of the obsidian gravel. “It goes for several thousand more kilometers before we reach the bore hole.” He hit the accelerator and we sped along toward the monstrous drilling rig.

Soon we could see the ever-reaching silver sliver of the diamondite bit stretching up into the blackness of space.

I am not a stupid man by any stretch, but when Grrrrshnk debriefed me on how diamondite was actually created in reactors and then later controlled at the subatomic level by super computers manipulating quadrillions of miniscule nanobots in unison, I barely kept up with him, but I got the gist of it. Here was an infinitely strong material that could be stretched, shaped, spun, manipulated in any manner, and forced to do your bidding. Here was the massive diamondite drill bit that continuously churned downward toward the unknown.

As we approached the constantly turning gleaming silver shaft I of course recorded everything for the people of Earth. They were definitely curious about this expensive federation project of drilling to find a parallel universe beyond our own, as was I.

“Tell me Grrrrshnk,” I pronounced it as best as I could, “How deep have you bored down thus far?”

The blue-skinned alien beamed, ” We are just about to hit a milestone.” He paused for a few seconds for dramatic effect, smiling somewhat smugly. “Half a light year! Can you believe it? We have gone nearly fifty percent of one entire light year!”

This I understood well to be an incredible distance to say the least. “Does the drill bit show any signs of twisting yet?”

“Not a millimeter in all that length. Remember, the nanobots act as one, but are still all distinct individuals.”

“Okay I have enough footage for my news story. Thanks for your cooperation.” Then as he turned the craft and shot upward and out toward my waiting transport I thought of one last question for the proud site director.

“So Grrrrshnk,” this time I pronounced it almost perfectly. “How much further do you think you will have to go?”

His answer was honest and direct. “As far as it takes.”

Gravity sucks. I mean, who wants to be stuck to anything because it’s so big you can’t get away from it?

I was born in the same cubby that Mom and Dad raised fourteen of us before the aches got ‘em. “Drive stress”, the officers call it. Seems like that gravity thing is plain mean. After all, they did their best to “replenish population” and their only reward is being deadified by the ship? Seemed unfair.

There I was, working my way up the ladder in the tech section. Didn’t plan it this way, but after we’d left the fortieth planet we could have settled on, seemed to me like some officers liked things just as they were a little too much. Told us about “adverse cultural impact” and “negative bacterium adjustment” and stuff like that. I had an idea and then found out I wasn’t the only one.

So when the officers culled all the people who had “formed quasi-religious ideals counter to mission parameters” I knew we were on to something.

So I’m hanging upside down trying to keep my gear from tumbling on to the deck a long way down. I’m skinsuited so I don’t drip, which is going to wrinkle me like a prune so I’ll have to hide from the officers tomorrow. Been here for two hours and my head is pounding and my eyes keep blurring, seems like gravity knows I’m here to mess with it and is trying to make my head explode.

With a smile I complete the reroute and flick the switch I’ve just hooked into the “gravitic core stabiliser coupling”. Only box I could find that related to gravity, so this must be the one. Techs only do some stuff and “mission critical systems” are fixed by the officers. So I spent days looking for a gravity bit. Worked back from the “drive attenuator” box I found behind a bulkhead. Took six weeks but I got it. Gonna teach this gravity thing who’s boss, gonna see the officers spit when me an’ mine from below level ten can turn their ship on an’ off unless they do as we say.

Mom, Dad; this is for you. I flick the switch back and forth a few times.

It gets real noisy down there and officers is runnin’ all over the place, shouting and yelling in their fancy lingo. Then a real bright light hits me. One of them officers seems to have got a line on what I done. I hears a real posh voice from behind the light,

“It’s a squaddie, skipper. Up in the routing duct, he’s done something to the connections, can’t see what.”

“Tell that distant spawn of a redneck émigré that unless he undoes what he’s done, we’re buggered.”

I got the drift of that alright. So I wiggle the switch a few more times. They all get frantic down there and suddenly I don’t feel so good and I hear a ladies’ voice below, all squeaky-like;

“He’s stuttering the coupling! Can’t you feel the fluctuations? If he keeps doing that we’re going to be a toroid denser than a collapsar!”

“Shoot him. Now!”

I heard that. I shouts down to them.

“Don’t you be thinkin’ about that, officers! I knows you got a plot to keep us down an’ if you don’t ‘fess up, I’m just gonna keep wigglin’ this here switch.”

So I wiggles the switch some more to show I wasn’t messin’.

Then gravity roars at me as it presses down real hard.

That was what they looked like. Tongues. In every possible colour you could conceive that a tongue could turn. They came to earth as refugees from a conflict of such horror that only the vaguest rumours and hints escaped, the details of which were kept to an elite circle of politicians and their chosen.

“Mum, there’s a libbomoff in the back garden.”

“That’s Libidromorph, Ellen. It’s come for Tammy. Don’t look; you know its bad luck.”

That’s how we explained it to the children. Libidromorphs were scavengers. They could eat anything organic, providing it was dead. Watching one of the alien tongue things root out the corpse of a family pet and wrap it gently before crushing and digesting it was something you just did not want your kids to see. Then again, the world was a far cleaner place these days. The tongues smelt nice, a kind of cinnamon and patchouli musk.

“Mum, what happens when they have eaten all the dead things?”

She had a point. Several sensationalist shows had caused some public uneasiness over this. Then the shocking incident in the Valley of the Kings had emphasised the fact that the tongues would eat dead organic matter no matter how old. Archaeologists had been in an uproar for months. But the diplomats had explained to the tongues that certain corpses were not for consumption. You could buy ‘reverence flags’ now that you wrapped your deceased loved one’s body in and the tongues would leave it alone.

“Daddy!”

Ellen hurtled out of the kitchen and down the hall into her father’s arms. He was home early, looking pale and dishevelled. She went to find out what worried him and caught the end of him telling Ellen to go upstairs and pack because they were going on a very special holiday, right now. She raised an eyebrow at him as Ellen rushed upstairs in a joyful, excited rush. He took her in his arms and hugged her close. As he did, she felt him shaking as he whispered in her ear;

“We were at the nearest landing site, monitoring those growths on the sides of the valley. They’re not some sort of hive, they’re towers of chrysalides. One hatched two hours ago. It ate the observers and every living thing in the valley after that. Damn thing was like some giant flying woodlouse with armoured carapace and pincers. Bulletproof and fireproof too. I took a Hummer and got the hell out when more of them hatched.”

I leaned back and looked at him. Andy always had the answer. I had never met a more capable man than him. He looked awful.

“We have to go. They’re going to nuke the valleys before more of them get loose. We have to do it now or they’ll spread like some biblical plague.”

I asked why we had to leave. He stared at me, horror in his eyes.

“The blasts have to be big enough to go down into their burrows. Which means this city and several others are in the blast radii. God help us, we’re going to kill millions. The predictions are that bad. But if we can destroy the towers, we can mop up the remaining pupae. If we don’t get the towers, we’re dead.”

I looked at the phone. Andy turned my head back.

“No time. You, me and Ellen. We can make the bunker at the base if we leave in three minutes and the roads are clear. Now go.”

I ran upstairs as the sound of huge wings became audible.

I flick wing over wing and dive, engines howling as some bright blue nastiness passes through where I was. Half committed in the dive I pull the nose up and jink sideways, broadside to angle of travel. The parachute effect yaws me and I float a moment as the world goes slow. Echo One seems to drift across my nose and I squeeze the teat that causes my railgun to punch a chunk of titanium through his centre section. His drive objects to my percussive realignment and my screens have to flash-compensate as he passes the pearly gates at Mach 9, in pieces.

Even as his pyre dissipates I bring the hammer down and perfectly bullseye the corona of his demise. Wish I could see that in long shot, a ring of energy, a ring of smoke, a ring of fire and pieces, and my exhaust like a shaft through the middle, with me as the arrowhead.

My teller flashes and I corkscrew into an inverse slingshot before even looking. Echo Two coming for the title, out of the sun. Please. In this day and age? I continue the dive until he’s happy, then shut the backdoor and open the flue. Still hurtling surfaceward at Mach 8 I flip apex over base so the sharp end is pointing the right way. Echo Two discovers this as he flies head on into a few kilos of titanium doing Mach 20. Ouch. But this allows me to reopen the back door and hurtle through his expanding debris cloud without a scratch.

This is frustrating for Echo Three as he was expecting me to still be heading down due to the impossible g-forces involved in attempting sudden manoeuvres at these speeds. Of course, any airbreather would be jelly by now. Forty gees will do that unless you’re some sort of cartilaginous predator from the benthic depths of the Pacific, suspended in a hyperconductive saline gel. Handily enough, that’s exactly what I am. I’m callsign Kilo Ten. A revered ancestor was callsign Kraken. Got a proud family history of killing things to live up to.

Echo Three pulls a half loop with a roll out of his attack and ends up screaming down at me, flat out and very angry. Opens fire way out of range. He could have been dangerous if he’d kept his cool. As it is, I release a nanotube braced monofilament net, stand myself on my tail and punch it. Echo Three is about to become a cloud of hundred-mil chunks that will be a bigger threat than he ever was.

The skies clear as the smudges of dogfighting blow away. I click my beak as the blue fades to black and the stars come out. There’s always something magical about that transition. Seven hours to base. One hour debrief while the gel is cycled, then I get to go hunting again. Ocean depths are nothing to the vasty deeps of space, and I like to think we’ve made the transition well. Sleepless predators we’ve always been, but mankind gave me the stars, the enhanced smarts to love them and the means to defend them.

I pass the moons before engaging Hirsch, then flutter my tentacles to work out the kinks while my arms cue up some cetacean jazz and sketch three more kill-kanji for the hull.

I looked down at the riph on my wrist, remembering the days when phone, watch, PDA, wallet, cash, cards and ID were separate items.

Then I realised that I was late for my meeting, hadn’t got Susie a present and I was watching the rain melt a pigeon that wasn’t quick enough on the patio outside the penthouse. I flicked my wrist and the holographic display rose to confront me with everything. I waved the dailies into oblivion unread and poked the action tab, then requested an espresso while the queued diamond twirled rapidly, meaning I had only a short wait.

The aging robo had just whined my coffee to me when the diamond flashed and a charming, husky voice caressed my ears.

“Operator. How can Ri– Oh, hello Vince. How can I help today?”

I smiled. Shannon was my favourite operator, and of late she seemed to be online all the time.

“Hi Shannon. I need to get across town in under thirty, need to get Susie a medium value birthday present, plus it’s raining acid and lime outside.”

A throaty chuckle came from the riph, then stopped suddenly. The silence was curiously eerie. A minute or so passed.

“Vince, a Chariot repulsorlift will be at the residence’s enviro-gated pickup point in nine minutes. I have cleared routing for you to Jackson Holdings; you will arrive four minutes early. Susie’s present is unnecessary.”

I stared at the device.

“Shannon, how and what was that last item?”

“Jackson Holdings. You’ve been there frequently and I see from your legal feeds that you have received approval for your buyout. Priority routing is easy when my brother is section head at Police Headquarters and having a quiet day.”

“Seattle girl accused of abusing sibling bond for rich client.”

I smiled as I said it and her laughter sent tingles up my spine.

“Susie?”

“Sorry, Vince. As you bought her a service upgrade, I have her riph status up as part of your ambient.”

Her voice had gone quiet. I waited as déjà vu visited.

“It’s in paramour monitor mode. Sorry Vince. I really am.”

Susie had always been a bit too fond of my credit rating. Now my suspicions were confirmed. Not again.

“Shannon, can you downgrade her and give me a refund?”

“Yes Vince. Shall I action a breach of nuptial exclusivity salvage for you?”

I paused. That meant Susie and I were over before the nuptial bit really began. Then again, she was in bed with a paying customer right now.

“Do it. Authorisation to debit granted.”

“Done Vince. Full recoup except for the Thunderbirds tickets. They are ID bound and non refundable.”

Damn. The Thunderbirds were about to contest promotion rights with the Winterhawks. The winners got to play in the Mars Leagues. I had been looking forward to the game for months. A whole box, full hospitality, the works. I had been intending to propose properly to Susie at the end of the game.

Then I had a crazy idea.

“Are they transferrable?”

“Yes Vince. Providing you retain one.”

I activated a routine of questionable legality on my riph. It came back instantly.

“Vince, did I mistakenly detect a non-warranty persona query app?”

I smiled. This girl was good.

“No idea what you’re talking about, Shannon. Now please extend the usual invite, collection time and privacy moderation requests to Miss S. Carleton of Ravenna.”

“No problem Vince, I’m sure she’ll be thril-“

The eerie silence returned as she finally assimilated the invitee information. I found myself grinning like an idiot.

“See you at five, Miss Carleton.”