The Tokyo Domain

We were at the appointed meeting place early.  I was always early to any appointment.  Ever since I was a kid my parents drilled it into my head.  A lot of the people I used to know were all about the “fashionably late” thing.  Not me.  I was always the first person there.  Better to be the first and recognized, then the last and ignored.  No way around it, I would scope the whole area before they ever had a chance to get there.

Meeting on someone else’s turf was asking for trouble.  They had all the ins. They knew all the code.  You would just be a sitting duck.  Konpyuuta was reading the code, line for line.  She was faster than me, in a way only a machine could be.  She had more processing power; she would notice any small detail.  She didn’t have to concentrate.  That left me free to stalk the grounds, to take a look around.

It was in an old part of the web, a game no one had played for years.  It felt strangely familiar, as if I had been there a hundred times before.  No doubt the server was lost years ago.  Exiled now, to some office-building basement.  Humming away for all eternity, with no one to play with.  The air was clear, and it was day.  The sun hung in the sky like a children’s drawing.  Never moving for a moment, never changing.  The code was primitive, simpler then I would have expected.  The sky was uniformly one color.  It didn’t sparkle, twinkle, no clouds graced its surface.  Just endless blue, that went on for miles and miles. It felt close to me, I could understand it.  It was simpler to breakdown then anything that was up to date.  In a new era of computer representation it was beyond obsolete.  I liked it.

Konpyuuta chan had gone through every line of code, nothing she could tell me I didn’t already know from the place.  We were standing in an old park; a long forgotten playground in a slummy section of New York.  Long forgotten now, the way the skyline cut a profile against the unmoving sky.  The streets were silent, not even the wind stirred.  It was absolutely uninspiring.  I couldn’t even tell if the sun was rising or setting.  It just hung, somewhere two hours before or after noon.  I smiled a little.

We stood just outside of the park, in an alleyway.  They wouldn’t be able to spot us here.  It would give us time to figure them out, give us the drop on them.  Konpyuuta chan went through the final checks. The game was afoot.

“They just logged in.” She raised her head and looked at me. “Three of them.”

“Origin?”

“Looks like…” She paused. “I can’t tell yet, they’re covering their tracks.  They’re pretty good.”  She closed her eyes and concentrated. “Closest I can get you is Eastern Seaboard for sure.  I’ll have a exact location in under a minute.”

“Take your time.”  I looked out at them.  “Here they come, act casual.”  She smiled at me. We hesitated a moment longer.

“Kusanagi! Come out! I know you are here!”  His voice was familiar; probably an old client of mine, maybe an old enemy.  I did my best not to make any enemies on the net.  Sometimes you just couldn’t help it.  He went through the proper channels though; I doubt he was out to get me in some way.

“Umm… maybe we should go now?” Konpyuuta chan nudged me a little, looking impatient.  I figured if she wasn’t worried we would be fine.  They wouldn’t trace us. If we couldn’t trace them, then they picked this spot for that reason.

“Ok, lets go.”  We stepped out of the shadows. “Over here!” I waved one hand to get their attention.  We walked over carefully.  Konpyuuta chan covered our ever move, nothing would get by her.

“Ah, there you are.”  He sounded relieved.  I checked the code; he was covering his tracks like an expert.  Some one was after him.  That or he just didn’t like prying eyes.  I guess he trusted me as much as I trusted him.

“You contacted me?” We stood about ten feet from them, Konpyuuta chan at my side.  My right field of vision was lost to lines of code.  All the important stuff was underlined for me, highlighted for different reasons.  I already figured most of it out; this just let me know what was going on here.  No one would track us.  We were safe from outsiders here, for now.

“Yes, you are a hard man to find you know.  I had my men looking for you for weeks.” I noticed the guy on his left.  It was the guy from the bar.  He nodded at me slightly.  “My associate here says you shot him up pretty bad in some old fifties game.”

“He wasn’t careful, he was making a lot of noise.  Drawing way too much attention to me.  We would have been found out.”  His face remained unchanged.

“Ah… yes well.  I’m sure he had his reasons.”  He reached back taking a briefcase from his other larger henchman. “Your usual fee, along with all the information we have up until this point.”  Konpyuuta chan stepped forward taking the case.  I didn’t move, my hands down at my sides.  I was feeling twitchy.

It must have been that guy from the bar.  If this guy had him working for him he couldn’t be that good.  Rookie or not, from the looks of him he just didn’t know what was going on.  Maybe he didn’t get the net or something.  A lot of people were like that.  They could function fine outside, but put them on a computer and all hell breaks loose.  He coulda been one of those old game jockeys from years ago.  He sure didn’t move like it though.

“I’ve got the trace.” Konpyuuta chan’s voice whispered in my ear.  My right eye flickered.  A 3D real time image of the Earth appeared.  The camera quickly began zooming in on a location.  I flinched when I saw where it was heading.  “It’s New York.”  There it was plain as day, but what were they doing broadcasting out of New York.  My mind raced to find the answer.

New York was nothing like the place of my youth.  It was huge now; it blanketed all of Long Island and stretched across most of North Jersey.  It was a dangerous place.  The corporations sat on their council there.  The last great corporate war wrecked havoc on its streets.  It was notorious.  You were either a criminal or a suit if you were from the city, and they were both bad.  I didn’t have time to think of it now.  I had no time at all.

“What do you need me for?  Why not get somebody else?”  The leader glanced around for a moment, his eyes settling on me.

“You are the only one.”

“There are thousands of runners out there, hundreds of them better then I am.”

“You do not give yourself enough credit my friend.  You are a legend.”  He smiled.  It gave me the creeps.  I fingered my guns.  Konpyuuta chan was running a trace-blocking program.

“They are trying to trace us.”  Her voice floated over the park like a shadow.  “Cut it short we don’t have much time.”

“Mr. Kusanagi, I think you know very well what you have to do.”  One of his guys whispered something into his ear.  “We must leave.  Good luck, I expect to hear from you soon.”  He turned and walked away, each step taking him further into obscurity.

“We better do the same.” Konpyuuta chan gestured with her head. “Come on.”  I followed her back onto the blur of the wired.

“So what do you think?”  Thousands of brilliant circuits flared up beneath us, millions of programs raced by at light speed.

“I checked the case, no bugs, no viruses, no tracers.  That guys really serious.”

“So we trust him?”

“Silly.  The first thing you taught me was to trust no one.”  She winked, and I was standing in my room at home.