Illustration by Joi Rudin.
Yeah, I used to be a runner too—proper hacker boy—but I had to quit. Medical condition, bad knees. I mean, my mind was sharp; my code was good, but back then, almost all gigs were on-site. I just couldn't keep up with the legwork. I looked into having some Schäfer & Schäfer enhancements done, something to help me stay on my feet, but my name was too hot to go anywhere near a treatment center. I'm sure they would've picked me up as soon as a security camera saw my face. I was paranoid they'd kill me while I was under anesthesia. I was already retired by the time S&S surgery was available on the black market. But I was good, I'm telling you. And I liked the running scene, that's why I'm doing this job, you know, logistics, helping runners do their thing behind the scenes. The money isn't bad, and I get to see my kids a lot more.
Oh, you think I'm full of shit? Son, you don't know who the fuck you're talking to. I don't blame you, though. If I was some hot shot runner and an old fart driving me to a safe house started telling me stories, I wouldn't believe him either. But I'm telling you, if I had been a Guild Member, I could've been a big cheese in that organization. I'd be living the life. I was good. The code spoke to me.
Reminds me of a job I did back in the day. Ten; or thirteen years ago, I got hired to do an extraction job: get in, bypass security, get a physical, paper intel file on some big-shot executive, and get out. You know, the usual. Turns out the place is a French WDI subsidiary, one of the shell companies they use to launder money or kidnap homeless people, whatever the fuck those bastards do. Company was called Zulemon, or Zabaione, something like that. Anyway, I make some calls and get a local team sorted out. I get two other guys: one was Jean Claude, an alpha whose main task was to case the joint and gather intelligence. Cool guy, smart, a real console prodigy. The other guy was Henri; big fucker, over two meters tall. He was there just as muscle, making sure things went smoothly. You know, a proper gunman in case everything went to shit. These were all fake names, in case that wasn't obvious. My job was dealing exclusively with the vault's electronic lock and with any ICE that might show up during the job.
So, anyways, Jean Claude says there's a time window that's ideal for us, he sets the day and the time, and he gets us some fake uniforms so we can blend in. The big day comes around and I fly over to France. I get there early and we spend the morning going over everything. We look at the schematics and the blueprints, all that stuff. When we're done, we still have a couple of hours to kill before showtime, so we go out for lunch. We start walking around the neighborhood looking for someplace to eat. Henri and Jean Luc go for some baguette sandwich or something like that, but I've got a proper appetite, so I decide to go someplace else, for something sturdier. I walk a few extra blocks and I see, for the first time in my life, a Karaguchi shawarma joint. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd seen Karaguchi products and stores in every country I'd ever visited, but I'd never seen the shawarma ones. You know the ones I mean? The ones where they load a spool of synthetic meat on a vertical cooker. Looked creepy as fuck, but I was just curious, so I went in. The bloke behind the counter was turning the meat around and around, the fat was dripping and the smell of cooked lamb was intoxicating, I'm telling you. So I says to the man to give me one with everything. The man turns around and, from his apron's pocket, he pulls up the handle of a knife. Just the handle. Then, he presses on the butt of the handle and a fucking plasma cutter turns on. I shit you not, that man cut the lamb paper thin with that plasma blade. A fucking artist, is what he was. I'd never seen one of those plasma knives before; I'd seen plasma machetes, but nothing as small as that, as precise as that. I was taken, honestly.
So, anyways, I devour the thing, and I get back with Henri and Jean Claude; we go back to the safe house, we change into the security guards' uniforms, and we go into the place to do the job. It was an office building, really shoddy, really unkempt. Old cement front, dirty windows. Jean Claude leads the three of us, he's just walking like he owns the place, very in-character. We swipe our magnetic cards and just like that we're in the restricted area. The server room's on the fifth floor, so we need go up there, plug ourselves into the electronic lock's physical keyboard and upload the polymorphic program I wrote to make the lock think we're admins running maintenance but not pop any notifications anywhere else in the system. That's the plan, anyways. And you know what they say: no plan survives contact with the enemy. Only this time, the enemy was within. Literally.
The moment the elevator doors close, I get a rotten feeling in my gut. My mind is going full speed, trying to figure out what the problem is, why I am feeling like everything is going to go to shit and soon. Is it Jean Claude? Is it Henri? They came highly recommended by trustworthy connects, so they couldn't be the problem. The magnetic cards? Those worked like a charm, and they're copies of actual cards, they're just as good as the real things. Why is my stomach turning? And then it hits me, like bam: this rotten feeling in my gut, is my actual gut feeling rotten. The fucking shawarma. Yeah, you laugh now, but I was clenching like there was no tomorrow, son. If you soil yourself during an undercover on-site gig, you might as well turn yourself in. They're not gonna make you out by your looks; they're going to be able to smell you!
Anyways, the elevator door closes, and I turn to Jean Claude and tell him, "Jean Claude, you need to tell me where the nearest toilet is, man." The man looks at me like I'm joking, but once he looks into my eyes, he knows something is wrong. He goes, "Our window closes in eight minutes, are you shitting me?" I says, "if you don't tell me where the nearest loo is, I promise I will shit you, all over you." He didn't like that, and Henri was starting to get nervous, so I says, "Listen, you have the polymorphic program too, just plug yourself in and the program will do the rest. If anything comes up, I'll remotely log into your console and fix it. If I start stinking the place, I promise you our window will get a lot shorter." Now, he isn't happy about it, but Jean Claude pulls up the blueprint in his console and tells me, "nearest bathroom is on the other side of the aisle."
Elevator's doors open, they go right and I go left, as fast as I can without looking suspicious. I thought I wasn't going to make it. I open the door and start feeling the cold sweat on my brow. This is the dirtiest fucking bathroom I've ever seen, and I spent six months living with a Punk community in the ugly part of Nueva Buenos Aires, so that's saying something. Five stalls opposing a mirror so grimy you couldn't even see your nose. The stench was so bad it made my eyes water.
I open the first stall. A fucking modern art installation: shit overflowing the bowl, paper and piss all over the floor. Disgusting. I move on to the second stall. Even worse than the first, someone had missed the loo entirely and repainted the wall behind. Behind door number three? A fucking crime scene. Vomit all over the place. Fourth one had an out-of-order sign and the door wouldn't even open. Door number five was almost acceptable, just a lonely turd floating on bright orange water. I figure, this is as good as it's gonna get.
I drop my trousers and let go. The sound is like a fecal shotgun, man. All I can think of is that fucking shawarma seller. Fucking Karaguchi synthetic lamb. I empty myself, feeling the slightest relief. My mind and my guts start clearing a bit when my console receives an incoming call. Jean Claude says there's an extra security buffer layer, that the polymorphic program isn't even making contact with the lock's computer. I need to come up with something fast. My mind starts racing, I go over every trick I know to deal with this, but my brain is fixated on the fucking shawarma vendor, on the meat spool. On the plasma knife. It was so subtle, so precise in separating slices of meat. And something clinks in me, man. What if I could slice the extra security buffer layer like fat from a piece of meat? I get my console in programming mode and I tap away. My insides keep turning, but I can see the code clearly in my mind's eye. It's so simple. I just need a program precise enough to cut a way for my polymorphic to do its thing. Jean Claude is about to go into a full panic attack because our window is closing. I finish my code and log remotely into Jean Claude's console. I execute the thing and it works like a charm: it removes the extra buffer layer with precision the likes of you've never seen, friend. I'm telling you, fucking surgical. Jean Claude confirms the lock is disabled, and they go in to get the files. While they're in there, I asked Henri to grab a few extra physical files, any of them. He's confused; he says the contract was only for one specific one, and the client ain't gonna pay for it. I says, "The client might not appreciate it, but I will: there's no toilet paper here!"
Oh, you think I'm full of shit? Son, you don't know who the fuck you're talking to. I don't blame you, though. If I was some hot shot runner and an old fart driving me to a safe house started telling me stories, I wouldn't believe him either. But I'm telling you, if I had been a Guild Member, I could've been a big cheese in that organization. I'd be living the life. I was good. The code spoke to me.
Reminds me of a job I did back in the day. Ten; or thirteen years ago, I got hired to do an extraction job: get in, bypass security, get a physical, paper intel file on some big-shot executive, and get out. You know, the usual. Turns out the place is a French WDI subsidiary, one of the shell companies they use to launder money or kidnap homeless people, whatever the fuck those bastards do. Company was called Zulemon, or Zabaione, something like that. Anyway, I make some calls and get a local team sorted out. I get two other guys: one was Jean Claude, an alpha whose main task was to case the joint and gather intelligence. Cool guy, smart, a real console prodigy. The other guy was Henri; big fucker, over two meters tall. He was there just as muscle, making sure things went smoothly. You know, a proper gunman in case everything went to shit. These were all fake names, in case that wasn't obvious. My job was dealing exclusively with the vault's electronic lock and with any ICE that might show up during the job.
So, anyways, Jean Claude says there's a time window that's ideal for us, he sets the day and the time, and he gets us some fake uniforms so we can blend in. The big day comes around and I fly over to France. I get there early and we spend the morning going over everything. We look at the schematics and the blueprints, all that stuff. When we're done, we still have a couple of hours to kill before showtime, so we go out for lunch. We start walking around the neighborhood looking for someplace to eat. Henri and Jean Luc go for some baguette sandwich or something like that, but I've got a proper appetite, so I decide to go someplace else, for something sturdier. I walk a few extra blocks and I see, for the first time in my life, a Karaguchi shawarma joint. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd seen Karaguchi products and stores in every country I'd ever visited, but I'd never seen the shawarma ones. You know the ones I mean? The ones where they load a spool of synthetic meat on a vertical cooker. Looked creepy as fuck, but I was just curious, so I went in. The bloke behind the counter was turning the meat around and around, the fat was dripping and the smell of cooked lamb was intoxicating, I'm telling you. So I says to the man to give me one with everything. The man turns around and, from his apron's pocket, he pulls up the handle of a knife. Just the handle. Then, he presses on the butt of the handle and a fucking plasma cutter turns on. I shit you not, that man cut the lamb paper thin with that plasma blade. A fucking artist, is what he was. I'd never seen one of those plasma knives before; I'd seen plasma machetes, but nothing as small as that, as precise as that. I was taken, honestly.
So, anyways, I devour the thing, and I get back with Henri and Jean Claude; we go back to the safe house, we change into the security guards' uniforms, and we go into the place to do the job. It was an office building, really shoddy, really unkempt. Old cement front, dirty windows. Jean Claude leads the three of us, he's just walking like he owns the place, very in-character. We swipe our magnetic cards and just like that we're in the restricted area. The server room's on the fifth floor, so we need go up there, plug ourselves into the electronic lock's physical keyboard and upload the polymorphic program I wrote to make the lock think we're admins running maintenance but not pop any notifications anywhere else in the system. That's the plan, anyways. And you know what they say: no plan survives contact with the enemy. Only this time, the enemy was within. Literally.
The moment the elevator doors close, I get a rotten feeling in my gut. My mind is going full speed, trying to figure out what the problem is, why I am feeling like everything is going to go to shit and soon. Is it Jean Claude? Is it Henri? They came highly recommended by trustworthy connects, so they couldn't be the problem. The magnetic cards? Those worked like a charm, and they're copies of actual cards, they're just as good as the real things. Why is my stomach turning? And then it hits me, like bam: this rotten feeling in my gut, is my actual gut feeling rotten. The fucking shawarma. Yeah, you laugh now, but I was clenching like there was no tomorrow, son. If you soil yourself during an undercover on-site gig, you might as well turn yourself in. They're not gonna make you out by your looks; they're going to be able to smell you!
Anyways, the elevator door closes, and I turn to Jean Claude and tell him, "Jean Claude, you need to tell me where the nearest toilet is, man." The man looks at me like I'm joking, but once he looks into my eyes, he knows something is wrong. He goes, "Our window closes in eight minutes, are you shitting me?" I says, "if you don't tell me where the nearest loo is, I promise I will shit you, all over you." He didn't like that, and Henri was starting to get nervous, so I says, "Listen, you have the polymorphic program too, just plug yourself in and the program will do the rest. If anything comes up, I'll remotely log into your console and fix it. If I start stinking the place, I promise you our window will get a lot shorter." Now, he isn't happy about it, but Jean Claude pulls up the blueprint in his console and tells me, "nearest bathroom is on the other side of the aisle."
Elevator's doors open, they go right and I go left, as fast as I can without looking suspicious. I thought I wasn't going to make it. I open the door and start feeling the cold sweat on my brow. This is the dirtiest fucking bathroom I've ever seen, and I spent six months living with a Punk community in the ugly part of Nueva Buenos Aires, so that's saying something. Five stalls opposing a mirror so grimy you couldn't even see your nose. The stench was so bad it made my eyes water.
I open the first stall. A fucking modern art installation: shit overflowing the bowl, paper and piss all over the floor. Disgusting. I move on to the second stall. Even worse than the first, someone had missed the loo entirely and repainted the wall behind. Behind door number three? A fucking crime scene. Vomit all over the place. Fourth one had an out-of-order sign and the door wouldn't even open. Door number five was almost acceptable, just a lonely turd floating on bright orange water. I figure, this is as good as it's gonna get.
I drop my trousers and let go. The sound is like a fecal shotgun, man. All I can think of is that fucking shawarma seller. Fucking Karaguchi synthetic lamb. I empty myself, feeling the slightest relief. My mind and my guts start clearing a bit when my console receives an incoming call. Jean Claude says there's an extra security buffer layer, that the polymorphic program isn't even making contact with the lock's computer. I need to come up with something fast. My mind starts racing, I go over every trick I know to deal with this, but my brain is fixated on the fucking shawarma vendor, on the meat spool. On the plasma knife. It was so subtle, so precise in separating slices of meat. And something clinks in me, man. What if I could slice the extra security buffer layer like fat from a piece of meat? I get my console in programming mode and I tap away. My insides keep turning, but I can see the code clearly in my mind's eye. It's so simple. I just need a program precise enough to cut a way for my polymorphic to do its thing. Jean Claude is about to go into a full panic attack because our window is closing. I finish my code and log remotely into Jean Claude's console. I execute the thing and it works like a charm: it removes the extra buffer layer with precision the likes of you've never seen, friend. I'm telling you, fucking surgical. Jean Claude confirms the lock is disabled, and they go in to get the files. While they're in there, I asked Henri to grab a few extra physical files, any of them. He's confused; he says the contract was only for one specific one, and the client ain't gonna pay for it. I says, "The client might not appreciate it, but I will: there's no toilet paper here!"
Written by Espeche, original idea by AlvaRythm.