Nanodaemons Read online

  armd> I know what I would do…

  fingerd> Hey! Fingering people is my job.

  armd> Only metaphorically, my demented frien- Neighbour.

  parrotd> Oh yeah? I’m equipped with a vibrator. Which one do you think she’ll like best? Let’s google that!

  The daemons looked silently at the search results for a few milliseconds.

  eyed> Oh dear.

  Chapter 3:// Going back

  The user knew he couldn’t afford it but had left a generous tip back at the cafeteria. He was walking on the street and pulled up his finances. A rather small amount was the total hovering on his view. “Rather small” was a euphemism. He had some pocket change to be precise. He was near the bus stop. The bus came, but he didn’t take it.

  He decided to walk home. Save some money, do some exercise.

  He was clenching his newly augmented cyberarm in his pocket. He wasn’t yet comfortable showing it around, especially with it being black and all. No one would really bat an eye, it was common enough for people to lug around distinctive cyberware, but he still felt funny.

  The walk back home was nice and chilly. After so many days in recovery, he enjoyed the bite of spring air. His walkman had shuffled to a nice tune that matched his pacing, and improved his mood. He touched the old walkman with his left hand, the fleshy one, and felt the small dents and scratches. He adjusted the walkman to a more comfortable angle on his belt and tried to remember if he needed to change the batteries.

  The walkman was old, after all. It was a modified mp3 player from Sony. He liked retro stuff like that. He preferred the old sound of mp3s, the new holosound stuff just didn’t sound right. Good ol’ mp3s like his dad used to listen to, from actual headphones. He and his dad would load up old tunes and fix stuff around the house, or go to the mall together.

  Good times.

  The old walkman had survived the accident with only a chipped edge. That was by miracle mostly, it wasn’t made of self-healing plastic or anything.

  If the walkman had been destroyed instead of his arm, he would have wished for the other way around.

  It had cost a fortune to modify it, to keep it running and add a backwards-compatible interface so it could talk to the rest of the smart devices in the world. Tom, the guy who modded it, had told him that he was spending too much on that thing, but he didn’t care.

  It was his dad’s.

  Chapter 4:// Checking up

  They went home for the first time and logged on the wifi.

  Ahhh… Nice and cozy, all to yourself. mp34ever was locked, but they had the password. Open access, admin privileges, the whole shebang. Or #!, in daemonspeak.

  httpd> Ugh. I’m getting an order from the fridge.

  parrotd> Pass it along.

  eyed> ACK. Displaying… He swiped it away.

  parrotd> Nevermind then.

  The user threw away his shirt and scratched his balls with his prosthetic hand. He paused for a bit, winced in realisation of what he was doing and resumed the action, gently this time.

  armd> Ewww!

  He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The matte black cyberarm was coming out of his shoulder and hanging like the real thing. The doctor had said that he was only injured just below the shoulder, but they had to surgically remove the whole thing plus the socket to add the prosthetic strengthening.

  The arm was light and quite strong. He hadn’t tested his full strength yet. He flexed it a few times. He touched it around, he only had sensation in his fingertips and the palm.

  armd> Show him my specs!

  eyed> ACK.

  The cyberarm specifications popped into AR in the user’s field of view. He pulled his palm close to his face. More detailed specs explained the pain receptors, the cold sensors etc.

  “I wonder how strong I am,” the user said to himself and looked around his flat. He had a piece of “furniture” made by a wooden plank sitting on two cement blocks. He emptied the plank of his various stuff and picked up the cement block with his new second-hand cyberarm. He could actually lift the block by himself, even back before the accident, but he would need to put both arms to it and struggle. This time, he just picked the thing up as if it was a balloon. His knees protested a bit though.

  armd> I’m such a badass.

  The user put the cement block back down in front of him and sat down on the floor. He pulled up his smartphone and searched for “karate chops.”

  parrotd> The user demands videos!

  httpd> Already on it.

  The user and his daemons studied the video of a man in a karate suit breaking a cement block with his hand. He mimicked his actions and brought down the cyberarm in… well, a karate chopping motion. The matte black hand went through the cement as if it was slapping water, sending bits of concrete flying across the room and raising up dust and particles.

  eyed> What’s happening?

  parrotd> Everything’s red all of the sudden!

  The user lay still for a few seconds, holding his breath and gritting his teeth. Then he held his prosthetic arm to his chest and fell on the floor in a foetal position and yelled out till his throat dried.

  parrotd> What the hell man?

  armd> He didn’t send me the command to switch off the pain receptors! Read the fucking manual dude!

  parrotd> Don’t you know? Humans never read the manual!

  walkmand> Are you trying to kill -9 our user?

  armd> Woo hoo! Show me that blow in slo-mo. I obliterated that thing!

  httpd> The fridge is sending that order in again…

  parrotd> Just swipe it away…

  The user simply cried on the floor and decided not to try that stupid shit ever again.

  Chapter 5:// Going over

  The user walked out again and drew a familiar path, spacing out along the way. Lovely tunes from his childhood blurted out to his ears and he let the music glide him to his best friend’s house.

  Thoughts came and went to his mind.

  He had no money left. That sandwich at the clinic’s cafeteria had taken a big chunk of his cash, but he needed it. He had just recovered from a serious accident after all.

  He needed to get to work first thing in the morning. Mr. Robertson would not let him take any more paid leave after he had been released from the hospital. The insurance company had gone in and legally taken every bit of savings he had in his account.

  His fridge was empty, and his landlord would demand the rent any minute now.

  He was lost in thought but his reptilian brain demanded his attention and made him jerk up. A snake charmer, some Indian guy with a turban on his head was sitting by the side of the road and blowing his tunes with his flute. A cobra snake, big and fat almost as the user’s thigh, was swaying slowly to the music. The snake charmer’s gaze fell on the user with almost a palpable weight. The user shuddered. The snake charmer had one glass eye, or at least it looked like it was a glass one. White like milk, giving him a very scary look, especially when contrasted with his dark brown skin.

  The user leaned close carefully as the snake charmer carried on his tune, as if holding the dangerous reptile by auditory reigns. He took out his paycard, and touched it to the street peddler’s device that was laid out on the pavement. A soft gling confirmed the transaction, and he pulled his hand back quickly.

  He laughed at himself as he remembered that his carbon fibre prosthetic arm had little to fear from a snake bite, but decided not to test it anyway.

  He wished the snake charmer a good day, and the cobra to try not to eat people today.

  The cobra hissed.

  The user walked on quick and steady to his buddy’s house.

  Chapter 6:// Sizing up

  Bhai Sharan Singh fixed his turban on his head and looked down the way his mark had gone.

  He remained there, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk upon his small carpet. He was playing his flute, his cobra swaying as he did. People stopped and gawked, staring at the sight. It w
asn’t something too exotic, they had seen Sikh people before around the city, but the combination of snake and flute was what attracted them.

  Plus, the cobra was rather gigantic.

  Bhai Sharan was one of the last snake charmers, a fading tradition, even back at the homeland. Here in Greece, he was the only one. It was a great cover for an assassin, pretending to peddle on the streets. He was at the same time extremely visible and completely transparent. People either watched his cobra’s dance, or simply dismissed the beggar.

  The beggar situation had grown to an enormous degree in the latest years, following the Greek Firesale. You couldn’t go anywhere without at least ten cups being shaken in your face. Bhai Sharan was menacing enough that people stayed clear of, and that was something he rather liked.

  It had something to do with his glass eye.

  In an age where billboards were advertising free cybereyes everywhere, it was very unnerving for someone to show his face with a disability like that. The healthcare system would take care of him, even if he had been an illegal immigrant. Which he wasn’t, being born and raised in the country.

  Sure, he could have it fixed. They would have implanted him with a crude earlier model, that would barely function properly and need enormous amounts of maintenance. Maintenance costs all bleeding of course from the country’s minuscule coffers.

  But there was something to be gained in being menacing like that. People hadn’t respected him before losing the eye. Oh they’d end up with his kirpan inside their bellies, sure, but what was the point in killing people without getting paid for it? Intimidation should work without having to do anything overly taxing.

  The glass eye worked perfectly in that regard. It somehow completed the whole image, an exotic, sunkissed man, with a huge cobra and a traditional curved dagger.

  His cobra turned towards some people. Bhai Sharan blew his flute and got her attention again, making her dance to the tune. That was a lie, actually. Cobras couldn’t hear anything. It was the movement of the flute that mesmerised them. That, and the beating he had given her since the time she was just a few centimetres long. Now, she stood, enormous and powerful, still thinking her master could beat her up.

  Snakes were easy.

  Humans… Now there was a challenge.

  Bhai Sharan didn’t just offer a service to his employers. He knew how to sniff out the perfect mark. Then manipulate him into getting the blame, while he stood in the shadows, his control over his cobra and the mark perfect. Absolute.

  People had stopped tipping him. The time of day was seeing little foot traffic, and he had seen what he wanted. He sat there until he had gotten every last passer-by though. He wasn’t doing this for payment. It was his tradition, his beliefs. It was a part of his people that the modern age had neglected, choking it up in entertainments and globalisation.

  “Kaur,” he whispered and petted his cobra. It was Punjabi for ‘Princess.’ He stood up, tucked his flute in his belt, folded his carpet and picked up his paycard reader. He glanced at the amount, it was thirty two euros. Not bad, for a day’s work. Then he walked away, his cobra slithering on the pavement next to him.

  Chapter 7:// Catching up

  They logged on the wifi babesbabesbabes. It was horrible, cheap, routed from a device with no recent updates or security fixes, hidden under a mountain of discarded clothes.

  A young man opened the door. He was wearing a bright red lifeguard suit and nothing on top, sweetly tanned muscles all over the place and had loose medium-length golden hair. “Hey bro, heard you were coming out today. Oh man, soz, couldn’t wake up at all, you know? Why didn’t you call?”

  “It’s fine,” the user said. “I needed to stretch my legs anyway, too much lying around.”

  fingerd> Finally! What a cheap slow connection this is… I fingered her.

  armd> Ugh… I think you are bugging out or something. This isn’t a female.

  A stream of social media selfies popped up of a juicy mature woman, posing in hundreds of different places and locations, with lattes, shopping, friends, bags, shoes, all triple filtered as if a toddler had spilt drool on the lens and taken up photography.

  fingerd> I think you are right. Two fingers at once! What a day!

  armd> Heh. Heh. Heh.

  The user swiped away the stream of silicone boobs and selfies that popped up on his vision and asked, “Do you have company?”

  The young man stroke a proud pose and said, “Of course I do.” Then he whispered, emphasising with his hands, “perfect boobies man!”

  fingerd> Got it! This man is [email protected] and he has recently changed his relationship status to “in a relationship” with [email protected]

  A stream of last night’s photos that the “couple” had uploaded last night became the digital ghost of the party. The user looked around the living room and could only see the aftermath, but the online evidence completed the picture just nicely. Drugs, thongs, booze, fondling in various positions and selfie taking for two. Lots and lots of selfies for two. The young/old couple had the body and the social media following to attract hundreds of likes and shares from lonely, envious people. It was kinda artistic in a certain way.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” the user said and swiped it away.

  walkmand> Oh don’t! Hey, did you cache any of that?

  parrotd> How many times has [email protected] been coupled anyway?

  httpd> He has changed his relationship status to “in a relationship” and back to single again 67 times.

  armd> Busy guy.

  “She’s asleep. Not to brag, but I got stamina. Come on in,” [email protected] said and threw some pizza boxes on the floor to clean up a spot in the sofa.

  The user checked carefully for stains before sitting down.

  Amazing Jimmy, that was his name, brought a couple of cold beers from the fridge. It was the only thing set on his priority list for the smart fridge’s automatic ordering, so he never ran out. He had ran out a few times to be honest, but he had to really, really try and then had to belch really, really loud. He had legally changed his surname because of the old Amazing Spiderman comics that he’d dug up in his dad’s old comicbook subscription service. He thought it would help bring in the girls. Not that he needed any real help in that matter as he was a lifeguard, working in the popular Greek islands during the summer and at an expensive 5 star hotel’s heated swimming pool during the winter. Jimmy had a year-long suntan and the body male swimsuit models only wished they had. Loose hair and a dentist’s masterpiece of a smile brought in the girls alright.

  It wasn’t uncommon for ladies to drown on purpose just to be saved by Jimmy.

  He wasn’t very bright, but he was a good friend.

  “Hey, have you seen that snake charmer next street? Really weird guy. He has a cobra. A big one,” the user said.

  Jimmy leaned out the window, but the snake charmer was around the corner so he couldn’t see. “Really bro? How awesome is that? We should check it out with Bibi when she wakes up.

  “So, who’s the new girl,” the user said mocking his own choice of words.

  “Tease all you like bro, this lady, is like, experienced man,” said Jimmy, bobbing his head up and down. “Like, years of experience, ya get my drift?”

  “She looks damn fine for her age. Where did you meet?”

  “At work. By the pool. You know how it is, she was bathing nearby, we chatted, then got a drink, one thing led to another…”

  “I don’t know how it is, honestly. Never happened to me before. I usually have to chase them with a harpoon or something.”

  “Ya just gotta smile more ofter bro,” Jimmy said and flashed his amazing smile. “Anyway, she’s some bigshot manager or something. She really likes me. Like, really-really likes me. She told me she wants me to go with her to her niece in France or something.”

  “Nice. Nikaia in Greek. It’s a gorgeous Mediterranean city in France,�
�� the user corrected his friend, but there wasn’t any trace of mockery in his voice.

  Jimmy the Amazing opened his can of beer and recalled his conversation with Bibi, staring idly. He pointed at the user and sipped deep. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes more sense now that you mention it. Nice the city. Do they have lifeguards there? They must have, right?” He whispered, “she’s loaded bro. Like millionaire. Like a one with a million after it.”

  The user rubbed his chin and said wearily, “Now that you mention it, I have a favour to ask…”

  He told his friend about the financial situation he was in, and that he would show up to work tomorrow morning and beg for a shift at the construction site. Jimmy had already visited him at the clinic and had seen the extend of the damage to his body, there was no need to embellish things at all. He was in no better financial condition than Leo, but the weekend was still far away so he wouldn’t have blown it all on partying and booze yet.

  “Sure thing man, whatevs. I’m here for you,” [email protected] said and rubbed his strong chin.

  He went dead serious. “There is a price though. I can’t just hand you the money, you gotta earn it for yourself.”

  Chapter 8:// Paying back

  The PAN was abuzz.

  walkmand> I don’t get it.

  rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

  armd> It’s crystal clear. Our beloved user wanted a testament of my superiority in arm-wrestling.

  parrotd> OK. I can understand that. Man has always had a fascination with machinery. But what about the rest?

  The daemons metaphorically looked up at the row of photographs [email protected] had posted up only minutes before. The first one was of the two men, sitting across on the table, doing arm-wrestling and the user clearly beating the life-guard in strength.