Fred Hesser

[My schedule has not been kind to me lately, but hopefully I’ll have the time to write the next part of the Tale of Ayla within the next week. Here’s the first page of an idea I’ve been messing with]

Aboard the Rondôn

Morning on the Rondôn is much like any time of day. There is an official fleet clock that says when it’s morning, midday, night and so on, but in reality the concepts have lost all meaning to the passengers. We still observe them, acknowledge them, out of simple human stubbornness or because we’ll need to be in the habit of day/night cycles when we finally get there. Not that we will ever get there, but our children’s children’s children (ad nausea) will. Eventually.

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Morph was a beast, man!

He was the biggest, baddest runner ever set foot in the midnight city. This guy could deck like you wouldn’t believe. He’d walk up to a public terminal, cool as a cucumber, and jack in with nothing but a noob’s gear. He’d dance round the net for a spell, as if he had nothing better to do than look at funny cat gifs. Then he’d get down to business.

Well not quite yet he wouldn’t. First he’d post on the net exactly where he was hitting. As if inviting other runners to watch and take notes, or inviting the corps to try and stop him.

His targets were…I believe the word is “eclectic.” He’d make a run on a fast food join’s corporate HQ cause his burger was cold when he got it. He once hit a freaking zaibatsu just cause he didn’t like the font one of their subsidiaries used in an ad campaign.

He made sure they knew why he was there too. Always left a sort of calling card. It was a little cartoon dragon from some kids show ten or twenty years ago (though Morph had altered its…”endowment”). It would pop up all over their network after he was through with it. For years. Every time they’d think they had it fixed, that all the damage was repaired, BAM! Cackling cartoon dragon!

The man could crack ICE like nobody I ever seen. I’m not talking public system ICE, I’m talking military grade Black ICE. The kind of stuff they use to guard nuclear missiles. Though I never saw him go after a government office. Well…except the parks department this one time when they cut the hours for dog walkers. The man didn’t even own a dog.

Course, even the best deckers in the world ain’t bulletproof. He had to know this stuff was gonna come back to bite him. Some multinational offered him a sweet job, and even Morph had to eat.

When he showed up to deal, that’s when it happened. Right between the eyes. BANG! They leaked video of it to the net, to send a message to other runners who think they don’t have to adhere to the unspoken code.

It was a sad day.

Anyway, my point.

It doesn’t matter who you are, or how good you deck. Doesn’t matter who owes you favors, or who pays you to run. If I’m paid to kill you, you can’t hack your way out of my bullet’s path.

Morph couldn’t

My brother died today.

It wasn’t an accident. No technical failure in his bod, no misfire of code, no glitch or bug.

It wasn’t murder. No vandalism by pro-meat protesters, no killer in the night, no terrorist attack or act of war.

My brother died today. He killed himself.

He wasn’t actually my brother. We weren’t related by blood, as we don’t have any. We were both copies from the same OP though, so we thought of ourselves as brothers. We all did at first, but they warned us/him/me before the copies that each copy would change and become a unique person as it gained more personal experience. Most of the others were gone now. Not dead, but changed, no longer brothers, and that was ok. Even our OP wasn’t a brother anymore. He’d changed too much too.

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