Gunther Doppelkreutz took the glass elevator up to his office on the 53rd floor of Sosumi Corporation. He whooshed past the three floors for Public Relations, the 15 floors for Customer Complaints, and the 34 floors for Legal, until he arrived at the floor combining the Upper Cafeteria and the tiny offices for R&D, Quality Control, Heating and Air Conditioning, and Computer Security.
He entered the dimly lit Computer Security rooms and made his way to his cramped cubicle. His desk was littered with Intrusion Report forms, Project Request forms, Reprogramming forms, and somewhere beneath them, his deck. Gunther took the time to sort out the forms into his usual categories: to do immediately; can be stalled; Corp rivalry involved (handle with caution); tomorrow; never. He hated paperwork, and did his best to clear the tough stuff as soon as possible. His brain ached for the 'Net, and to tour the Corp's cyberspace personally to make sure security was optimum.
"My blood-sugar is down," burbled a tinny sound from beneath a flannel cloth. Gunther pulled the cloth away to reveal the source of the sound: a small speaker mounted on a glass jar, housing a human brain.
"I'll make an adjustment, Hootie," said Gunther, absently tapping a touch-button on the box controlling the life-support tubings.
Hootie had screwed up, big-time. A crack computer programmer with the Corporation, he had threatened to leave even when offered more money. So one night Sosumi's Black Ops kidnapped him, the med-techies turned him into a Pickled Egghead, and then told him he could walk away whenever he felt like it. This was naturally a sensitive subject with Hootie, who now divided his time between patrolling the Corp's Netspace and composing poems on how...REALLY annoyed he was, and the importance of finding another "white knight" corporation before attempting a Self-Extraction.
Discussing Hootie's life-support invariably drew close to the topic of his origin, so Gunther changed the subject. "Any intrusions on our 'space? I get these paper reports from the boss, but the suits don't talk visual like we do."
"We had some weeflerunners at 3 a.m. trying to chip around our West Code Gate, but the Data Wall was hardly affected. Just kids, masking themselves in Saturday-morning cartoon-icons. Not worth a tag'n'bag." Hootie was Sosumi's ace in the hole, on duty 24 hours a day, constantly patrolling as a rare example of roving ICE. His reaction-time was phenomenal, totally focused on manipulating the ICE programs with his mind, or popping up anywhere as an icon of his own: an obscure singer of the last century.
"Plus, we had another visit from The Nutty Professor. It looked like him, anyway. He's using a new Tinferret variant, and he got through two Code Gates and three Data Walls before I jangled his inputs with a Rock Is Loud. I just dropped that ICE onto him when he wasn't expecting. He didn't call up his Battering Ram fast enough, and he lost his own signal to some old Judas Priest music and jacked out with a Dripp. I got no tag; just the usual view of a fat guy dribbling down through a sewer and out of sight. He was also using his I Spew program to leave chunk-markers for easier access next time, but I cleaned them up.
"I got the encounter all recorded in VRML, but printed a transcript for the suits upstairs. It was classic battlechess, man," Hootie said, in a way that Gunther could hear the grin.
Hootie appeared pleased with the encounter, Gunther reflected. It meant he was adapting, taking satisfaction in his job because he couldn't enjoy anything else...except that strange oldie music of his. Shuddering at the thought, Gunther acknowledged Hootie's report, clapped on some headphones playing some nice, modern Mash-Face and the Toxic Trauma Team, and went on with his paperwork...