"Okay, Dodo, do your stuff!"
The Nutty Professor was in front of the outer Sosumi Data Wall, picking his moment when there were only a few other Runners out near Sosumi's pyramid. Their icons resembled familiar pop-culture entities, just like his. He was trying to look inconspicuous and not draw attention to his run.
The Spider Murphy Artificial Stupidity Dodo emerged from Nutty's obese icon and stood rock-steady in front of the outer Sosumi Data Wall, pausing as if in thought. A tiny pink copy of itself formed from its body and shot into the wall. After a minute, dozens of tiny pink baby dodos popped and oozed out of the wall, bouncing up and down in front of the mother program, squawking and meeping, occasionally "integrating" with her, exchanging information...
Nutty laughed an Eddie Murphy laugh; this was one species of virus that wasn't going to go extinct in Sosumi 'space any time soon. Next to the Dodo and the swarm of babies, a 3-D schematic of Sosumi was building up, hanging in the air rotating, mapping everything except the innermost core. No baby dodo virus had gotten that far yet; they infiltrated the 'space very slowly on their own, and it was better if Nutty deep-penetrated with the Dodo and left an egg himself. There were many spots marked as holding corporate agendas, but none of them were any more exciting than the drek Nutty had dredged up for over a week. The big payoff was still hidden.
He knew he could sell this. Most spatial maps sold through Fixers or published in the VECTOR VOICE were like a slice of cake: the inside was unknown, with only a thin outer layer of known ICEing. Nutty had a map of Sosumi 'space that went over halfway in, in places. Just for fun he could sell it to Paperboy, and pretty soon there would be a classic Friday Night ICE Fight, as hordes of Runners would leap at the chance to run Sosumi as soon as the Voice was out in Netspace, and before Sosumi had a chance to reshuffle its ICE.
But no; he wanted to finish the job, go right down the line himself. This could be good. He could become even more famous than Xena the Mortician Lover. What a coup THAT had been: some coroner had found an index-card with passwords on it, on the body of an Arasaka exec. A Runner by the handle of Xena was his girlfriend, and she ran Arasaka with it. Her Cyfermeister was not strong enough to breach the high-level, restricted Arasaka Code Gates, and the passwords didn't work either. So instead, she used Datajazz to convince the personnel records that the dead man was still alive and an employee there, and used her Tinferret to imitate his icon. Instantly, the passwords worked again, like keys clicking into every lock she passed. Never before had so much embarrassing Arasaka stuff leaked out to the public! Heads were rolling in the corporation's computer department after that, and likewise in Japan, "necks were flying." Classic.
The baby dodos leaped back into the Data Wall one by one, leaving only the mother Dodo. Nutty proceeded inside layer after layer of Data Walls. A baby dodo stood sentry near each wall, signifying by its presence that the wall was virussed and couldn't see him. Nutty moved his bulk easily through the labyrinth, until he came to a place with a dodo by the wall behind him but none on the wall ahead.
Nutty glanced backwards; the dodo behind him shrugged. "Right! End of the line," he thought. "From now on, I'll have to roll up my sleeves and WORK for it."
The first obstacle was a Toughluckium Wall, with a winged gargoyle embedded in it. The gargoyle raised its arm, hand and middle finger in the classic taunt, muttering "No pasaran!" repeatedly. Nutty nudged his Battering Ram forward, and after a struggle managed to make a hole and pass, pausing as usual to let the Dodo lay an egg inside the wall. Instantly, the gargoyle ignored him.
Next came a couple of Kanpei's, resembling drunken samurai warriors trying to engage him in a drinking contest. "Kanpei! Kanpei!" they kept toasting, holding up their porcelain cups of rice wine and swallowing deeply. Their fingers clawed at Nutty but he tore away, and released his Sugarcubus with the Battering Ram. The Sugarcubus wailed at them in a high- pitched voice, and the Battering Ram leaped and dodged. Pretty soon the samurai were toast, as opposed to making toasts, and lay passed out on the floor.
He moved on, through ICE which was now quite ineffective against his Dodo program: a Yellow Submarine, an I Got A Gun, a Loser Wire, a Shotgun Wedding, and a Rock is Loud. Each time the ICE icon came on strong, and each time the Dodo just turned tail and shot an egg into the ICE's structure. After the last one, when the loud staticky wall of rock oldies collapsed into a skirling, bagpipe version of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Nutty confidently strode forward over the dying ICE's faint bagpipe shards, raising dispirited blatting sounds every time he stepped on one.
Then, around the corner in the clearing of the grid ahead, Nutty noticed the icon of a Black humanoid. This icon was moving around in quick strides, with a twelve-string guitar slung on its shoulder, rendered in great detail. What was THIS?
Nutty's Smartass program softly brayed a warning, and simultaneously the Sugarcubus gently wailed, "Human behavior...human...human..."
It was a dangerous Corp Runner, packing frack-knows-what kind of programs, and Nutty hid behind the corner until the Smartass was sure that the icon was gone.
Nutty stepped out into the open plain, cautious, ready to jack out with his Dripp at any time. He floated over to the other side, to a featureless Data Wall which appeared to be feeling the effects of being virussed, from the cross-referenced effects of a dodo in a different sector somehow. Behind the wall, Nutty could see files for some kind of Corp agenda linked to Information Dry-Cleaning, but again this one seemed to be small potatoes. Another agenda visible elsewhere was a program of Employee Belittlement, but again Nutty didn't care.
"Where is the GOOD stuff?"
Nutty couldn't find anything of value, and was nervous about hanging around; that Corp Runner was close. He thought of penetrating deeper, but the icon had walked inwards, deeper, as well. Nutty sidled along the wall slowly -- until his Smartass program nipped him gently on the shoulder and flicked its nose at a section of wall he had just passed. A hissing sound emanated from the wall now, and Nutty activated the Battering Ram once again.
The wall fell to the Ram's horns, revealing a crawlspace with a multitude of tiny video screens along a side wall, each one flashing nothing but static. Nutty crept inside the room. "Odd," he thought, "What could this be?"
Thinking the snow on the screens meant some kind of encryption, Nutty launched his Lizard's Book as a decryptor program at the inner wall. The green iguana rezzed from the leather cover of the Lizard's Book, and held still for a moment. It then leaped off, and scampered back and forth along the floor in front of the wall of video screens, tail raised, sometimes climbing up and then leaping back down. Nothing happened. The iguana leaped back on the book that Nutty was holding, shook its head and shrugged, and merged with the cover once again.
"How come it didn't solve it?" Nutty thought. He looked closer. Each video screen was about ten centimetres across, and behind the wall it was connected to other screens by a fine tracery of red neon grid, with static running through it...
It suddenly hit him. Like the cable vid! Nutty laughed another Eddie Murphy laugh. "Oh, man! This is IT! I could be more famous than the Mortician Lover, even more famous than Bart Rachemoss!"
Nutty glanced at his Dodo, and the Dodo looked puzzled for a moment, but then nodded its head. Stalking up to the wall of video screens, the Dodo proceeded to lay the biggest egg ever, with a tremendous squawk. It rezzed at over half the Dodo's size, and the Dodo was left sitting on it, its legs in the air as the egg rocked back and forth. The Dodo climbed off and rolled the speckled egg into the video wall with its beak, where the egg was instantly absorbed.
Nutty, giggling outrageously like Eddie Murphy again, derezzed all of his programs and faded, jacking out...
"I felt something!"
Gunther looked up from his desk, to where Hootie's brain was stored. He removed the flannel cloth and spoke into the tinny speaker embedded in the glass jar. "What happened, Hootie?"
"Just for a moment! A visual discontinuity on my monitors in all of Sosumi Netspace!"
"An illusion? Like the viruses that did in the AI?"
"No, it didn't FEEL like any illusion. It's like everything flicked out and was instantly replaced by an exact duplicate. It's all there, it's all real, and yet something has CHANGED somewhere. I can't explain it!"
Gunther didn't like the sound of that. Normally Hootie could describe things very analytically, and illustrate with profuse charts and diagrams in VRML. But Hootie was getting agitated; he was spooked.
"Listen carefully, Hootie. I want you to rez all reserve ICE for the next twenty-four hours, and go on full alert. I want you patrolling the Corp 'space, splitting your consciousness as much as you can. I'll join you as much as possible during my up-time. We've got company, and he hasn't come just for the Happy Hour..."
"Chang, you're jerkin' me!"
Nutty sat on a rickety stool in the country & western bar, trying to ignore the loud twangy music blaring fuzzily from a jukebox, and looked at the Nomad straight in the eye. The meat eye.
"I kid you not, Roadie! I've really done it!" Nutty grinned broadly.
"Well, whu' does that mean, 'xactly? Whu' does that have to do with the price o' corn in Iowa?" The leather-clad biker propped one leg onto the bar's foot-rail. He was wearing shin-guards, and bits of armor-plate tied to his leather jacket, and looked doubtful.
"It means protection," Nutty whispered, counting off on his fingers, "It means you can move around freely, unseen. It means I can ghost you all the way in, and no one is the wiser. Ten, even twelve of you! After you loot, we all split to the Coast, waiting for Sosumi to lose its tags on me. Long Beach, Malibu, Aztlan, anywhere. Have some fun for a month; money's no object! I'll go fifty-fifty with you and your clan. You could come out with something big and juicy, like their entire week's payroll, or a week's profits, or something!"
The Nomad scratched at his beard, sipping his whisky with the other hand, his good eye and his cybereye fixed on Nutty. "Enough to buy farmland back from the agricorps, maybe? With lots o' crops and electrified fencing all the way around to keep out raiders? No more ridin' around the highways?"
"Every Nomad's dream!" Nutty affirmed, "Back to the land, for all your clan!"
Roadie smiled, and Nutty thought he could hear the beard rustle with the unaccustomed movement. "Adam Chang, you got y'rself a deal, good buddy! Skin Contract!"
Nutty was unaccustomed to Roadie's slang, but got his meaning. They shook hands.