Cadence

Creed walked dejectedly through the streets, the meeting with the Admiral had not gone well. He had been threatened with the removal of all implants and a life ban on new ones. Who would he be without his implants? What would he do? Even the laborers needed implants to work, he would be useless.

He walked through the streets flipping through programs watching them change from medieval to renaissance to Greco-Roman. He snagged a code out of the air and played with it, finding a pattern that made it work twenty three percent more efficient. He set it back in the air and let it go watching it join the stream of other programs.

And there was no need for it anyway, the bridge was only mechanical, devoid of programmable devices. This code could interrupt the daily lives of the people but it wouldn’t stop the ship. The Captain was maneuvering the ship now to bring more systems online, or at least that is what the Admiral said. They would clear the cryotank chambers and start filling them with food and air suppliers. It would be cramped but most of them would survive.

He rounded a corner and barely dodged out of the way in time to avoid a collision with Ted. He started to speak but was interrupted by Ted.

“Have you seen Bill, he has to have headed this way. I cant find him anywhere. We got the rest of them fixed but we had one spray left and he wasnt anywhere to be seen.”

Creed was puzzled by this, he had no idea what Ted was talking about.
“Slow down Ted, start from the beginning. What is going on?”

“The program took Bill over, it lodged in his head and used the emergency protocols to take over his motor functions. Kelly and I rescued the other boys but he was gone by the time I got back with help. We have to find him.”

“What do you mean he was taken over, our implants dont control us.”
“Yours do not, laborers can and do. That way if something dangerous happens the computer can take over and guide us out of the way, even works when we are unconscious.”

Creed thought quickly, there was only one place he knew of where a program would need a host to access. It would not even need to circumvent quarantine wipes because there was no systems to access anyways.

“We need to go to the bridge,” he said.

Ted looked at him confused but Creed simply took off running in the direction of the bridge.

Then Creed made a decision, it might cost him but if this program was able to affect people like this then he needed to do something, no one else had any solutions. He didnt know if it would be better to be alive without his implants but he knew that these people were counting on him and he was not going to let them down.
He called an aircab pulling the program from the emergency codec and picking the two of them up it raced across town towards the bridge. When they arrived they saw that the guards were unconscious, the program had over loaded the circuits and incapacitated them.

Stopping for a brief moment he duplicated his antivirus and shunted it into Ted’s implant.
“That will keep it from infecting you.”

They walked through the corridor and stood on the bridge.

Bill was at the control, twisting dials and pushing buttons. Alarms were going off all around them.

“I cant stop myself,” Bill cried out, “I swear I cant”

Ted rushed forward and tackled Bill. They scuffled for a moment before Creed rushed over and grabbed his arms. Quickly Ted stuck the hypospray to his neck and Bill stopped struggling. It was over.

Creed called a medic cart and gave the controls to Ted.

“Bring him to the medic center, they will take care of him.”

With that he ran out the door.

He called another aircab and got in. He quickly set his coder to duplicate the antivirus as fast as he could throwing them at programs as he flew past.

Creed fiddled with the code, pulling parts out and running simulation after simulation. Suddenly he started forward examining the code closely.

“I’ve got it! I can stop the virus!”

Vernon looked up from his display and walked over.

“What did you find?”

“I changed the code so that it doesn’t multiply and spread but will still stick in the program and keep anything else out”

“That doesnt fix it! How will we do program updates? We are constantly fixing programs or streamlining them. We cant block all of the ports.”

“I know that sir, but we also cant afford for things to keep shorting out. We really cant afford for people to keep waking up. If we put this program on the capsule they will stay frozen instead of waking back up. I know its not a fix all but it will give us the time to come up with a better sollution.”

“That’s out of the question, what if your program is flawed and it starts messing with things as well. We don’t know who programmed the original virus but whoever did made one heck of a mistake. “

“I don’t believe it was a mistake sir, there is no way that a program could affect so many systems in such specific ways unless it was programmed to do so. We need to take this to your boss, we need permission to start making and distributing these.”

“No Creed, we will not be making these. These viruses break all of the rules of programming. If we even suggested that we make these we would have our implants removed and we would be re-implanted as laborers. You need to think about your future Creed, this will start it before it starts.”

Creed stared at Vernon dumbfounded, he knew that Vernon was a climber, but to risk the ships safety over concern for his career was a new low. Creed had no intention of stopping however, there was too much at stake.

He shut down the counsel, wiping the program schematic from the display but downloading it to his memory. If Vernon looked closely he would see that Creed had already made an antivirus and stuck it in his core implant. Vernon didnt see, maybe he could not fathom a move that would so obviously hurt his career.

Creed set out to find the Admiral, only he could make the decision that needed making.

---

Ted jogged to where Bill and the others were working. They were supposed to be sorting boxes and delivering them to various places around the plaza but instead they were walking in circles limbs twitching erratically.

“Dont come any closer,” Bill called out, “There is something wrong with out implants, we cant control our limbs or send a message. I barely got that flash out before it sealed me off.”

Ted danced backwards, putting distance between him and the boys. He knew that laborers implants were more invasive, they had saved his life during the explosion by reorienting him as he fell so that he didn’t hit his head or break an arm. But this was way more than he expected they oculd do.

He clicked a message to emergency services telling them the situation. They clicked back that this was impossible and to not waste emergency services time with prank calls.

“I will be back you guys, I need to go get help.”

Ted quickly ran back across town to where he had been talking to Creed.

“I need help,” he panted as he ran into the building, “there is a code taking over laborers bodies. Its making them do strange things. Please help me”

A lady walking down the corridor stopped and looked back. “What did you say?”

“My group was infected and they have lost motorfuntion. They are walking in circles and they cant stop. I just left them for fifteen minutes, I dont know what happened.”

“We will get this sorted out, have you called emergency services?”

“Thats the first thing I did but they thought I was lying to them. They refused to come and help.”

“Ok I am here now, we will figure this out. My name is Kelly, what is your name.”

“My name is Ted”

“Ok Ted, how many of them are there?”

“There are fifteen of them. Please hurry.”

“I am hurrying dear, I need to know how many hypo-sprays to bring. “

She quickly walked over to the counter and told the secretary to give her the emergency wipe kit. She pulled fifteen hypo-sprays out and they set off.

When they arrived she handed him half of the sprays and showed him how to administer them.

“Dont let them touch you, I am not sure how the virus works and I would Hate if it jumped to you.”

It was not a hard task, they were moving slowly and it was a simple matter to walk up behind them and inject them in the back of the neck.

When they were all down Ted walked over to Kelly.
“Glad that is over with.:

“Me too, I thought you said there were fifteen of them.”

“There are fifteen.”

“I have an extra hypo-spray. We are one short.”

Ted looked around at his crew. She was right there was one missing. He quickly scanned their faces to find out who was missing. Bill was missing.

Creed stared steadily at the program drifting in front of him. He had been studying the program for weeks now, weeks of fruitless study. Disasters were happening more and more often now, the food shortage, the explosion, and now one of the cryotank safety areas was malfunctioning releasing people who had no business being released.

There was not enough food for this many people, especially since they had another ten years before they arrived at the Kepler-62 system and all of their additional support units were safely packed away, waiting to be deployed on world.

They would never make it on world at this rate. They were wiping each tank as it malfunctioned and putting people back in but it was turning back off almost as soon as they were refrozen. People were getting seriously upset about being frozen and thawed so many times. There might actually be a mutiny soon if things did not get better.

Creed turned away from the hologram and started for the door. He needed to think.

As he made his way through town he saw several boys standing together talking. Creed had been so busy with his apprenticeship and studies that he had not made many friends. As he got closer he saw that they were laborers and nearly turned back, some laborers were extremely touchy and would mock those in the higher social strata.

Instead he walked over, ordered a drink and sat down with them at the food bar. They looked over at him briefly and then returned to their discussion.

“Are you serious, people are waking up?”

“No way, the programmers made sure that couldn’t happen.”

“The programmers couldn’t even get the taste of grape soda right, messing up the wake cycle isn’t that big of a stretch.”

The last was said by a snarky looking boy of around thirteen.

“Enough of that,” the oldest boy said, “there is nothing we can do about it and all this bellyaching wont help. We have work to do, about time you got to it.”

With a groan the boys stood up and started to walk away.

“Havent we done enough Ted,” said the snarky one, “We been busting all day getting things back inorder after that last mess.”

“No Bill we haven’t done enough, not by half. I am telling you there were people waking up and if that is the case we are going to have to feed and house a bunch of people that we were not planning on feeding and housing. We are not set up for it but if we all do our bit we might make it through without too much damage.”

Bill turned away and jogged down the street to where the other boys were disappearing around a corner. Ted turned to the vendor and paid for everyone’s drinks.

As he walked away Creed called out to him, “You saw the people waking up?”

Ted turned and looked at him, “Yes I saw them, and then I was questioned about it for three days, just got out of their holding cell last night. Acting as if I let them out. As if I didn’t wipe my code before I went in there, as if I could get past their security without sitting in the chairs and letting it wipe me.”

Creed groaned in sympathy, “That sounds annoying, I was one of the first to get the slippery virus from that food stand. The same thing happened to me, debriefing after debriefing. Still studying it to figure out how to stop it.”

“What apprenticeship did you get, I’m in labor and movement.”

“I’m in diagnostics and repair”

“A smarty eh? I thought you all had your own private food courts, what you doing slumming down here with us?”

Creed laughed, “we dont have our own food courts, we eat the same things you do. I got tired of looking at that program and decided to take a break and clear my head. No matter how I look at it I cant figure out how to pry it out of the programs. It just sticks in there and wont budge. Even the highest level grip program wont grip it. So slick it doesn’t even budge. Enough to make ones head spin.”

“Arent you afraid it will infect you, being close to it? I’d not like that.”

“Oh no, this is completely safe. Its an inert program, all the parts there but not activated. Perfectly safe. I could show you.”

“You sure, I’m not really the kind of person they let into those kinds of places, though I would like to see it.”

“Thats settled, lets go.”

They walked off together talking about their lives and what they did when not working.

They arrived at Creeds work and walked into the display room.

Ted leaned forward and then pulled back, “you sure it cant get me?”

Creed laughed, “Of course I am sure, I wouldent be withing thirty feet of that thing if I wasnt sure. I dont want to get wiped again.”

Ted leaned in, watching the thing swim through the air.

“Can you simulate it entering a program? Maybe see how it does it in slow motion and then learn how to pull it out?”

“I’ve done that a dozen times but we can do it again.”

“Why did you bring me here, nothing I can do to help.”

“I need a fresh perspective, you were handy.”

Ted watched the program move, slowly sticking into the programming table.

“Can it root itself out? I heard that there is no way to stop it from entering.”

“huh, havent thought of that,” Creed said.

He quickly brought up another sim program and directed it to infiltrate the table where the first sim program set. It couldent get in.

“Well that is a wash”, Ted laughed “Too bad you cant block all the programs with this sim, then the real one couldent get in.”

“Yeah but neither could we.”

“At least it wouldn’t explode, “

Creed thought about that, “Maybe that could work.”

Ted got a message flash from Bill, asking for some help.

“Got to go, duty calls”

“Thanks for the help, if we can strip that out we might be able to stop this thing.”

Ted took off at a jog, Bill never called for help unless it was a complete disaster.

Ted worked steadily through the numerous rows of cyrotank, quickly checking each one to make sure that the power flow was steady and that there were no leaks around the openings. It was a slow mindless task and it was hard not letting his mind wander. A lot had happened in the last two weeks, and nothing good. After the explosion there was a series of unexplained glitches in the program that controlled the supply distribution modules. They had spent a lot of time tracking down where everything was and getting it back to where it was supposed to be. Then the food processors quit working entirely, there had been no food for three days and everyone was getting both worried and cranky. Ted did not tlike to think about what might happen next. Someone needed to get these glitches under control, maybe find their source and isolate them.

As Ted rounded the corner he thought he saw movement down the row. It was at the edge of his vision probably just a mirage, the endless rows sometimes made him think of an optical illusion he saw in a book once.

He continued his work, nothing out of the ordinary yet. He was halfway down the row when he saw movement again. Marking his position in the nav computer he started down the rows to check it out. Looking to the left he stopped in his tracks. There was a person out of their cryotank.

Ted felt dread rush over him, there must be something wrong with the cryotanks. Lurching forward at a half run he closed the distance between him and the girl he saw at the end of the row.

“Where am I,” she said, “Are we there?”

“Not yet, what are you doing out of your tank?”

“I dont know why,” she said in a small confused voice, “I suddenly woke up in the cryotank and thought we were there. But there was no one to greet me. I waited for a long time but no one came. I tried to open the door but the over ride command was not working. I finally had to shove the tank open to get out. “

“Well you better come with me then. I’ll take you to the waiting area and go get someone to sort this out.”

“Cant you just call someone,” she asked, “I dont want to be left alone again.”

“I’m sorry but I cant, the designers did not want there to be any chance the code could be glitched in here so they built a bunch of redundancies into the system to keep any information from getting through. I cant let you come through either, you dont have clearance to go into the main compartment of the ship.”

They walked together in silence for a while, “Oh, I never asked your name, my name is Ted.”

“My name is Wendy. I cant believe this is happening, I was not supposed to wake up until we are there. What if they are not able to get my cryotank working again, Ill never get to see my family again. At least not until I am older than they were when they were frozen.”

“Dont worry, we have some really good programmers and debuggers on board, I am sure they will figure this out in no time.”

They had arrived at the waiting area. Ted said goodbye and pushed off into the void and landed at the door exit, he typed his 73 digit alphanumeric code into the reader and pulled himself through the hatch into the intermediate hallway.

Wendy sat alone. At least it was not dark in here. She scanned the dead space between the main ship area and the cryotank storage. She was not sure she could have made that jump, even knowing that the gravity had been turned off in that area. It was dark and deep like staring over the abyss into nothingness.

Disturbed she turned back and nearly squeaked in surprise, there was someone else moving through the cryotanks

As Ted exited the quarantine corridor he turned to the security guard on duty and saw that it was still the lieutenant from earlier.
“Hey could you call emergency management for me, my implants have not been turned back on yet and this is urgent.”

The lieutenant, Ted couldn’t remember his name, glared at him, “what did you do, break something. I hope they put you on waste disposal for this.”

Ted worried that the lieutenant would cause more problems but apparently he needent have. The lieutenant called emergency management and handed a portable communicator to him.
Ted quickly spoke into the device, “This is Apprentice Ted from Labor and Maintenance, I was inspecting in the Alpha 2 Cryotank storage area and I found a settler out of her tank.”

There was a long silence, Ted was just starting to wonder if they had heard him when the speaker clicked, “I have dispatched a unit to your location stand by.”

A few minutes later two dozen Emergency Management personnel landed next to him and pushed their way into the corridor. Ted tried to follow them in but the last EMp turned to him and said, “This area has been restricted until further notice. Please report to the Emergency Management area and make an official report.”

Without another word the EMp closed the hatch and moved down the corridor.

With nothing else to do Ted started walking across town, worry clouding his face. If even the Cryotank area was malfunctioning they were in for some serious trouble. There was no more secure place on the ship unless it was flight control. Ted shuddered at the though of something going wrong in flight control. If the engines turned off they would all freeze to death within a week.

Trying not to think about it, but not succeeding, Ted started off at a jog towards the Emergency Management area.

Ted moved gingerly down the street, the bruising had been extensive and he was not up to full strength yet. His supervisor had put him on light duty, doing a cursory inspection of the cryotanks.

When the Government had received word from the colony exploration team sent to the Kepler-62 system there had been something of a renaissance in the old pioneering spirit. Nearly everyone under the age of 35 had applied to be among the future colonist. Obviously the Americas Unified Monarchical Government couldn’t sent everyone. In the old days before the Monarchy had been created the Democratic Republic would have held a lottery for who got to go. That is how Mars, Venus, and Europa had been colonized. That is also why they had nearly failed on so many occasions. This time the AUMG had designed a contest; anyone wanting to go would have to pass a number of stringent tests and then outperform everyone else in their category. Unfortunately the trip to Kepler-62 would take around fifty years, there was no way to keep all the colonist alive on such a long trip. Not awake anyways. So the top 1% of the 1% had all been frozen for the long trip. A skeleton crew had been kept awake to do repairs, monitor conditions, and to file paperwork for the beuracrats back home.

When he arrived at the passageway to the cryotanks he was stopped by a cadre of security personal.

“What are you doing here,” the leader, a lieutenant, asked gruffly, “No one is allowed in or out with these glitches going on.”

Ted was momentarily stymied, he knew he had to do the inspections, it was in the planned log to inspect each pod once every three thousand ship hours. To deviate from this would put the whole colony in jeopardy.

“Inspections have to happen lieutenant. Even if the world outside is going crazy. The safety protocols are robust enough that no errant program will enter and effect it.”

The Lieutenant did not look convicned and said so, “Look I have my orders, I know its not your fault but I can not let you in there.”

In answer Ted opened up his communications array and called into repair dispatch. “Hey Cyntas could you patch me into director Vance please, Im having problems with some security personal.”

“Right away Ted. Please hold”

“Who is it,”a ruff voice called over the headset “what do you want”

“Sorry for interrupting you director but I’m having a problem with the security personel. They wont get out of my way so I can inspect the Cryotanks.”

“What!,” the director exploded, “Let me speak to them.”

What followed was a furious exchange between the director and the lieutenant. The director hung up and a few minutes later the lieutenant answered his communicator.
‘Well you have clearance to go in,” the lieutenant said sullenly, “Get in there before I change my mind. “

Ted suppressed a grin as he walked down the hallways to the change over spot. Sitting in the Torchar machine he experienced the moment of loss as all of his programming was wiped clean. He stood up and stumbled down the hallway towards the next platform. This path was designed with redundancies in mind. At each station, six in all, he sat in the machine and had his implants erased. Finally he got to the end of the corridor and had new programs installed. Old programs. Clunky programs.

Pushing off of the entry platform he drifted through the void surrounding the cryotank enclosure. Landing softly he initiated his magnetic boots and started walking up and down the many rows of colonist. This was going to take forever.

Vernon did not known whether to punish Creed or reward him. On the one hand Creed had stopped an extremely dangerous program. Just looking at the handful of things it had accomplished before Creed had found it was astonishing. Most programs were designed to affect specific systems but this one had jumped from system to system spreading chaos. If it had been self duplicating the city would have been destroyed in short order. With that thought ringing in his head Vernon shuddered. It had been so long since such dangerous program had existed, much less been set loose on the city. On the other hand Creed had lost it because he failed to call for support.

Vernon did not know what would affect his career more, stopping a prodigy who was destined for great things or letting him loose on the city. Tired from the mental struggle Vernon stood up and started walking home. These things tended to sort themselves out in the end. He would leave Creed alone, neither punishing him nor rewarding him.

As for the missing program, hopefully any further problems would fall in the hands of some other supervisor.

---

Creed worked quickly, doing his best to imitate the instructor in front of him. He had his Program Creation 1 turned on and was going through his first lesson. They were not doing anything especially interesting, building a message received program to accompany a message. These were usually just self duplicated from the message center and attached to each individual message. Creed had groaned when he heard what he was making, which brought a sharp rebuke from his current instructor. A tall thin man named Ethan. Ethan had taken him aside to chastise him for his disrespectful behavior.

Creed chaffed at that, it was not like he had been trying to be disrespectful, he just knew it was going to be a boring class. He already knew how programs were structured, he had been taking them apart for months now. Ethan was taking no risks however with this class. If someone built this program wrong nothing worse would happen than someone would receive an empty message received.

When class let out Creed was the only one to have finished his program, he had even added an additional element to his program. Not only would it scan the registration of the individual accepting the message it would also take his photo.

Creed headed for the door, time for a quick lunch and then back to his apprenticeship training. As he neared the door he heard his name called. Turning he saw that it was his instructor.

Creed returned to where Ethan stood in the middle of the classroom.

“You called sir.”

Ethan signaled him to wait.

Ethan busied himself around the room discarding half used pieces of code and putting each finished piece in the creators individual files. Once he had sealed them and looked around to ensure the room was empty he turned to Creed.

“You can not modify codes like that, not before you are trained in how to make them. This is not at all like code repair. If the wrong element is added to a program, or the right element in the wrong order, it can have a disastrous effect. I am teaching you the rules of coding, slowly so that you have time to understand their subtleties. If you rush ahead you may finish more exciting projects but you are also liable to really mess things up.”

“Excuse me instructor but I have been repairing codes for months now. I understand how they are supposed to be shaped. That is why I am in this class, my supervisors want me to learn this quickly so that I can help them.”

“They want you to learn to soon Creed, you pick things up quickly but I am afraid you do not see the whole pattern. Yes you can quickly understand a program, Ill admit I have never seen anyone grasp it so quickly, but that only means you understand that particular code. Each code is unique, follows different principles. If you do not have a thorough understanding of them you will cause disaster. “

“I want you to think about this Creed, what is to keep you from building a bad code that will destroy what you are trying to make. We get reports every day of things going wrong, just this morning I saw a shoe maker that was trying to lace the shoes upside down because of a bad patch. We cant afford to have shoddy coders Creed. You have to study more.”

“Yes instructor Ethan. I will work harder to learn the lessons you have for me. ” Creed did not particularly feel this emotion, he just knew it was the proper thing to do. What he really felt was anger towards a man who he felt was holding him back. If he didn’t cow-toe to him however Ethan was exactly the kind of instructor who would petition to have one of Creed’s implants turned off.

Ethan dismissed Creed and resumed tyding up the class room.

Creed accessed his internal clock and realized he did not have time to stop at home to eat. He instead walked over to the nearest restaurant and ordered a pa/t\e to go. The waiter hurried to the back and brought back a couple of hardened gruel squares and handed them to Creed. Creed scanned his hand over the display to simultaneously pay for the food and to upload the program that would make these food squares taste good. He walked out and started eating one. It tasted horrible, like it had been burnt. Swallowing hard he took the square out and examined it, there was nothing visually wrong with it. He smelled it and it smelled delicious. He took another small bite, again it tasted like burnt Pa/t\e.
Creed arrived at work a moment later. Setting the food blocks on the counter he tried to pull the food court code to look at it. He couldn’t pull it out. It was resisting him, it was almost like it was slippery.

“Hey Vernon,” he called over to his supervisor, “I am having trouble with this program, could you give me a hand?”

Vernon walked over, “what seemes to be the matter.”

“I cant pull it out sir, it keeps slipping. I bought some Pa/t\e at one of the food stalls and it tasted burnt so I was trying to pull it out to see what is wrong.”

“Hmm, let me see” Vernon pulled at the code but couldent dislodge it. He then scanned the code and created an inactive simulation.
“Thats weird, it seems like this was intentional, I cant pull it out or access it. I cant even open the duplicate. Lets get you to diagnostics to see what is going on.”

They walked into the back of the building and Creed sat in the diagnostic chair. As it whirred to life he felt his implants coming to life and reacting to the chair.

“Can you stop your implants,” Vernon called out, “I cant get a reading.”

“I’m sorry, I cant get them to stop. I dont know whats going on.”

“Hey Kelly. KELLY. Can you come here for a second.”

Kelly hurried over,”What seems to be the problem”.

“We were trying to find out what is wrong with this program but we cant pull it out and it is making his implants go crazy. Any idea on how to get at it?”

Kelly looked at the code scan and grimaced, “That is a digging code, I haven’t seen one of those outside of level twelve debugging training. The penalty is too high no one makes them any more. The only way to get rid of it is to turn his implants off, wipe them, and then recode them. Where did he get the code?”

“I picked it up at a food cart in front of the school building.”

Kelly looked sick and rushed over to the phone. Picking it up she dialed a long series of numbers and then said, “we have a priority digging code. Released from sector 2-5-5. Its being distributed from a food cart.”

Kelly hung up and then turned to Creed, “Sorry about this hon but we have no choice.”

She took out an emergency kit and took out a seditive. Putting it into the hypospray she quickly injected Creed and then stepped away.

“Sometimes these can be infectious, spreading from person to person or machine. Cant take a chance.”

Creed sagged forward feeling his implants turn off one by one. It left him feeling empty and alone.

Creed balanced precariously above the city streets. Programs and settings raced by in a blur giving only momentary opportunity for a cursory inspection. Sweat drenched his face ,he knew there was an aberrant program here; somewhere in all of this mess. How did they expected him to find it, much less repair it without interrupting the entire stream. He could have called in for help, there was no shame in that, but he held off willing himself to see the cause of the disturbance. A stealth code had been enacted that was causing chaos in the city below. Programs changing sporadically. All of these could be fixed of course, but unless they fixed the base code things would just keep getting worse. Just as he was getting ready to signal for help he saw something different at the edge of his vision, a misshapen code. It was twisted in on itself in away that would be hard to see if not viewed at the correct angle. He brought his fixer codes online and paced the errant program. Switching on a mobile platform he glided out into the congested stream setting a course that would keep him close to the program. He reached out and gripped the program with his fixers, trying to peel it open to expose the base code.

Suddenly it peeled off, veering off down a side alley. Creed raced after it, desperately trying to keep it within his sight. He caught his fixer programs, they were slow and sluggish and no use in a chase. Suddenly a program rushed out and attached itself to his mobile platform disabling it. He threw a fixer code at this new program as he fell, it latched on and he started to work. He twisted in the air as he worked, landing with a roll, and took off after the original program. He worked quickly dismantling the hindrance code as he scanned the sky for the source code. Spotting it leaving a food processor he threw his second fixer through the window as he ran, the fixer scanned the processor and uploaded the design to his user display. He quickly scanned it and started the fixer working to repair the damage before the food processor was ruined. It was building up a dangerous amount of heat and friction. Twisting and turning the processor code as he ran after the source code he straightened it out and patched it up.

Ahead he saw the aberrant source code, risking everything he threw his last fixer at it from across the busy intersection. It bounced off of a passing code and landed in the middle of the road way. Creed took a running start and threw himself at the source code, catching a hold of it with one hand as it hurtled past. It shot off heading nearly straight up, twisting and turning trying to shake him off. Holding on tight with one hand he started to dismantle the code, pulling apart the protective shell and ripping out the code that was within. He dropped like a rock, much to high to land safely. He twisted the source code, exposing the core. Creed ripped it out and slammed the casing closed. He slowed dramatically as the flight codes came back online, desperately fighting to avoid crashing into the street. He landed hard and at a bad angle, he bounced and rolled holding onto the two codes in his hands. He rolled to a stop. He took a deep breath, accessed his body telemetry, and scanned for damage. Lots of brusing and several scrapes and cuts but nothing broken. He had been lucky.

Slowly he picked himself up and dusted himself off. He opened a holding code and placed the damaged code inside of it. Triple layers of protection ran throughout the code preventing bad code from escaping. Craig twisted the protective shell and looked at the code. Smiling he found its twist off point and pulled, it disintegrated into meaningless data that dissipated quickly.

Picking up his fixer from the middle of the street Creed stifled a groan. That had been a bad fall. Suddenly two medics dropped out of the sky in front of him, asked him if he was all right. Seeing the blood they summoned a stretcher and raced him off to the medic center. Arriving at the medic center they took his belongings and set them to the side.

“Drink this,” one of the medics said, “It might make you groggy or confused but it will make you feel better.”

Creed drank the liquid feeling relief wash over him, at the same time he felt his implants turn off one by one. Finally all he was left with was his psy-vision.

“What happened,” he stamered, “everything just switched off.”

“Dont worry,” the medic said, “its just temporary. Wouldn’t want you doing anything while you are sedated.”

Creed understood this but it did not make him happy. He had grown used to having the implants, he used them for everything. Now he was normal, helpless, nothing. Even though it was temporary he hated it, hated his impotence. He needed his implants. He tried to summon them, to turn them on but couldent. He straigned against the restraints, thrashing around wildly.

“Hey, calm down”, The second medic said, “this will only take a minute.”

“Better give him a stronger sedative, he will hurt himself even worse like this.”

Creed felt a pric in his arm and then calmness washed over him, why had he been fighting? Everything was great now.

Looking relieved they brought him over to a second machine that whirred and buzzed above him. He watched as his bruises slowly faded and his cuts scabbed over and then fell off. He slowly drifted off to sleep as the machine worked.

Waking slowly Creed tried to remember where he was. Sitting up he looked around, why was he in the medic center. What happened?

“Hey your awake,”

Creed looked over, it was his supervisor.

What was his name? Creed felt like he should know it.

Vernon.

Next to him was Vernon’s supervisor.

Bill.

Creed’s thinking was speeding up, the grogginess was wearing off.

“That was some great decoding,” Bill said, ” though it probably would have been better if you had requested back up. That was a nasty code and if it had gotten away who knows how much trouble it would have caused.”

“Where is the code now. We looked in your stuff but we couldent find it.”

“Its in the lock box. I put it there before they brought me to the medic center.”

Vernon and Bill looked at each other started.

“There was no lock box.” Bill said slowly, ” Are you sure?”

Creed walked over to the box full of his stuff and rummaged around in it. The lock box was gone. “