STARSIEGE
Original Fiction
fic.slicer.doc
By Seung Park
August 3, 1998
Sierra, Dynamix  1998
Proprietary and NOT Public Domain

OUT OF SIGHT (IS) OUT OF MIND
By Seung Park

August 2827, Imperial Standard Reckoning
Datasphere Babylon
Underside

	Three mil cycles to init-op.
	A disembodied voice reached Kennet von Gradwitz, plucking him out of his reverie as he made his way effortlessly through the turbulent flow of the datastream underside the Universal Datumplane.  Blinking with surprise, he re-enabled the until-then dormant audioLayerGeneral and pulled on his clearcom.
	“Enjoying the streamview, Black Widow?” a familiar, almost-mocking voice sneered.
	“Cyb off, Hawkins.  Op’s not for a few mil cycles.”
	“There are some higher up who are… concerned that you’ll back out of this at the last second…” Hawkins’ voice trailed off.  She did not, of course, have to add the other half of the sentence, “like you did on the last op.”
	von Gradwitz had no answer for this, so he instead toggled ALG off again.  Though entirely text-based and almost always too complex for the ordinary webwalker to appreciate, the sheer power that Underside provided a slicer was too good to pass up.  It was strange, so fittingly strange that no matter how many teracycles on end the spinners worked to make the O-Web look powerful and elegant, only Underside provided a glimpse of the true power and brutal elegance that the O-Web embodied all at once.
He thought for a moment of Hawkins – Mercy Salandar Hawkins, her full name was – one of the most talented threadcasters in the Babylon datasphere, and, before she had turned to threadcasting, one of the better fencers on the O-Web.  As a threadcaster, Mercy “Peregrine” Hawkins had gained a reputation for being one of the top team leaders out there.  And, because of the PacRim op that he and the Peregrine had worked together,  Black Widow was in no position to argue this fact.
For a second, he allowed his mind to replay the events of the op, carved in memory as they were.
The OmniWeb slid up, and expanded from its many SNOW nodes.  Following instruction sets tersely given through clearcoms, small teams of slicers began to branch from the main group, towards their original destinations.  Team 42, which consisted of four slicers under the threadcast of Peregrine, had been ordered to 404 a SNOW subnode deep within a PacRim government-affiliated ‘plane.
42 was using a variant of Kandinsky mark four, a time-honored favorite virus/probe hybrid among slicers that is known for its textbook execution of a Slimanov-style ripgate.  Black Widow was responsible for manual control of Kandinsky; analysis of his computer’s logs in the aftermath of the op would show that the runtime on Kandinsky had been unremarkable.  The ripgate was established, and the four slicers translinked in through the blind portal.
…but there was something wrong.  First, the ripgate closed behind them.  Second, the vicinity around them was flooded with snow, making it impossible to maneuver.  Only one conclusion could be made: someone – no, something – was waiting for them.  With near-chainsaw intensity, the thing, whatever it was, began to go after the slicers’ omnitags.  It had almost caught one of the slicers when, somehow, Peregrine managed to recreate the ripgate and then proceeded to ripcord all four of her team members out of there.
Other teams were not so lucky.  More than half the slicers who went in on the PacRim op never came back.  They were probably languishing in prison or had already been executed as per Imperial law by now – for engaging in Cybrid-like activities.  “Treason” and “electronic espionage” were the politically correct terms for it.
von Gradwitz shook his head, trying to clear the smoky but terrifying memories out of his head.  Then he sighed, and admitted it to himself for the umpteenth time: although he hated Hawkins personally, he had to admit that she had a knack for getting her slicers out of tight spots.  Or, in the last few cases, snowdrifts – deliberate traps set by ravelers.
	What worried him was that Hawkins had mentioned someone higher up.  It wasn’t easy to get much higher on the slicer social order than the position Hawkins held; furthermore, it was an unspoken slicer law that higher-ups never be actually involved in the ops themselves.  It was even taboo to speak of them, at times.  The fact that Hawkins had let slip that someone higher than herself would be calling the shots on this op meant that something big – and most definitely something extremely cyb – was up.  Neither of which really appealed to him.
	With a few flicks of the keyboard, Black Widow brought up his absolute location indicator.
	{B201emps[UDP->GLORIA(401,3,2949)]} flicked by in a ghostly overlay.
	Babylon, vector 201… zoning: Imperial…GLORIA?!  von Gradwitz blinked again.  If this ALI read was correct, he was currently underside of one of the larger translinks into GLORIA.  It would probably be a simple matter to create an undetectable ripgate into the seemingly-unprotected area… but from hard experience, the Black Widow knew not to judge from appearances.  He knew that some of the best ravelers there were behind an invisible snow-wall, and were probably watching his every move.
	Better page outta here!  he jerked his Agent around and back up the cleverly-concealed ripcord he had instinctively laid during his meanderings to this point.  He was pleased, gratified, even, that one of the seemingly-pointless laws of slicing was finally paying off for him – always leave yourself an escape route, even when not in an op.  Even though he knew that what he saw before his eyes was an electronic representation of a virtual reality, he could still feel the piercing eyes of a dozen entities watching him behind that invisible snow-wall that he had sensed earlier.  And for the first time in cycles, he felt fear.
--
	1 mil cycles to init-op.
	The time to prepare had come… and it was slipping away from his fingers fast.  He tapped his fingers on the keyboard restlessly, racing through old test runs and other avenues known to him only by memory.  While he knew that such mental preparations were for most part useless – ops being the necessarily chaotic affairs that they usually degenerated into.  It still comforted him, in a strange way, to know that he was preparing as he best could for whatever would happen.
	Even though his ripcord had paged him clear out of the UDP and into his supposedly secure ‘planespace, he still could not shake the uneasy feeling that someone was watching his every move.  Waves of anxiety washed over his still form, leaving him feeling incredibly small, so terribly alone in the vast reaches of the O-Web.
	He had promised himself that he wouldn’t talk to Hawkins.  He and Hawkins just didn’t get along.  But why, by Hunter, why was it that now, after all these years of solitude, did the urge to make contact with someone flare up so bright?  Why did he have to struggle against it as he once, so long ago, had to struggle with even the simplest of antivirus systems?
	Unbidden, as they always were, thoughts of Hawkins filled his mind.  He remembered quite a few things about her, as he had learned through random conversations with her and those around her.  He couldn’t remember ever seeing the same people around Hawkins twice – with her cold and technical personality she seemed to somehow push people away before anyone could truly get to know her.
	She always seemed to be slightly depressed, this great leader of theirs.  Whenever anyone inquired about her depression, she had always laughed it off, saying that a lot of her talent was derived from the hours she spent staring out into a world darkly, with no hints of idealism to hinder her.  He had, in a moment of rage, asked her how much she wanted to die.  What he had gotten back was a flippant “Ought to be fun” that, now that he thought about it, hadn’t really been that flippant after all.
	And most recently – that incredible feat of slicing during the PacRim op.  Most threadcasters in her situation would have dropped the threads and paged into a secure plane.  She, however, had risked detection, arrest, execution – whatever the stakes were on that crazy mission – to get her four team members out of there. At the time, he had been so sure then that Hawkins hated him so much that she would leave him to his fate.
	And yet, driven by some altruistic impulse even he didn’t know he had, he had weaved an impromptu snow-wall in front of that beast and waited for it to be broken, in order to give his fellow slicers a bit more time to escape.  The ripgate started collapsing as the third slicer got pulled out…
	…and then, Hawkins had hurtled into the plane,  roughly “grabbed” him, and yanked him out through the collapsing ripgate with two or three cycles before the ‘gate gave out completely.  She had knowingly breached the unwritten slicer ethic to get him out of there… and she was known throughout the community as someone who never, never broke the rules.
	Black Widow sighed.  Giving in, he flipped on ALG and translinked to where he knew Hawkins would be.
--
	.5 mil cycles to init-op.
	“Yes, Black Widow?  What do you want?” There was a slight edge to Hawkins’ voice.
	“Well – I wanted to check back with you and …”
	von Gradwitz got no further.  “Kennet von Gradwitz, you don’t think I know my slicers better than that?” Hawkins said acidly.  “You of all my slicers have never bothered to check back with me ever, and now you’re expecting me to believe that you’re here on some mission of goodwill towards me.  You don’t expect me to be that stupid, do you now?”
	“I… guess not…”
	“So why are you here?”
	“Well… ever felt like, no matter what you do, where you go, there’s someone following you?  And when you look around, the only thing that surrounds you…” von Gradwitz paused for a moment here, unsure what to say next.  “…the dark.  Nothing, for ‘planes around.  And when it happens, you’re scared for a moment, and then… uh… something colder starts to fill you…”
	“Hmm.”  Hawkins answered.  “Sounds vaguely interesting.”
	“That’s all you have to say, huh?  I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything else, huh?  The lone threadcaster, in her ivory tower, peering over the rest of us who toil down below.  I understand, I guess.”
	There was silence from Hawkins.  He gulped, and realized that he had probably completely alienated his team leader – like her or not.  And yet, something inside him… this dreadful pride?  stiff-necked-ness?  stopped him from apologizing.  He felt that he wouldn’t be able to say a thing to mend a wound if he had hurled the phrases which had caused the hurt in the first place.
	So instead, he started on his standard exit line, something he had employed so many times when he had felt unwanted in a ‘plane or a conversation.
	“Well – I see you’re busy, you have much… ah… more important things to do than sit here and talk to me.  I understand and I…”
	“Don’t care, right?”  Hawkins finally spoke, and in her voice was something von Gradwitz, great judge of character though he thought himself to be, could not figure out.  “You always say how little you care about anything.  Peoples’ feelings, a failed op, an arrested slicer.  What do you care about, Kennet von Gradwitz?  If anything?  Do you even care about yourself, for Hunter’s sake?”
	“I…”
	von Gradwitz stopped here, because he could here Hawkins speaking softly, almost whispering.  She sounded almost as if she were… crying…
	“…Lonely… so lonely… you feel so… so… as if no one will smile at you, as if the whole world goes on and on and on without you…”
	“Hawkins?”
	No answer.
	“Peregrine?”
	Still no answer.
	“Mercy?”
	The silence started to fall around him like so many motes of thoughtless dust.
	“My… friend?” In desperation, Kennet was finally forced to drop his stance of aloofness.
	At the calling of a true name that she had not heard in ages, a soul answered to the kindred spirit that called through the expanses of the O-Web…
--
	10 thou cycles to init-op.
	Unafraid now, and not quite alone, the two came to their positions.  One, for once, no longer had to wear the armor of hard uncaring he had always worn over his all-too human interior.  The other no longer had to feign authority, or to try to gain acceptance by using it.  They exchanged an electronic smile with one another, and then one spoke into her clearcom.
	“Signals are go, Team three.  Hunter go with you.”
	Behind his screen, Kennet von Gradwitz smiled.  He brought his probe to bear, and awaited confirmation of security interpolation success.  As he did, a melange of different emotions arose within him, and for once the smile stayed on his face.  Strange, he thought, all these feelings he was now… allowing… himself to feel… confusing, but definitely, definitely better than the loneliness he had known before.
	“All right, Team 3.  Let’s move out.”
	Init-op.