23

Sal stood and surveyed the layout. he had not come to Undertown often. As a talented deceiver, nobody was paying for work done near Undertown, and likely no one would. Undertown was somewhat akin to a living fossil. When the holonosphere emerged, almost everyone wondered how they could exploit it for their communities or profit. Undertown had actually had the opposite response. It had categorically rejected any imposition of the holonosphere on its existence. As a consequence, the sort of people who came to live in Undertown was of two varieties--purists, who believed that the world was better off without technology that made matters more complicated when mastery of the existing land and Earth proved baffling enough, and reprobates who had something to hide or a reason to want to disappear from the holonosphere.

The community was subsequently split between these two groups, and there existed a stark contrast between them. One part of the town was dilapidated and dangerous, whereas another part might be welcoming. The problem was that it was difficult to demarcate where these parts stopped and started. One might be on a street that was friendly on one block, and traverse the next one over and find one's self in danger.

Everything in Undertown was subject to the dampening. The dampening was a holonosphereically generated barrier to keep the holonosphere out. The dampening was admired by hackers and also loathed by them. It was admired because it was next to impossible to penetrate, and hated for the same reason. One of the key reasons the dampening had been so successful had involved quantum algorithms coupled with polymorphism.

In the old days, companies or nations would erect barriers in an effort to keep people at bay. The problem was that these barriers were not adaptable. If one erected a barrier and they were successful, then their barrier would still be subject to the ultimate security hole of time. As the physical barrier of the Great Wall of China proved, time is the final arbiter of security as given enough of it, any barrier or security can be overcome.

If a barrier were less fortunate, it would have a security hole that was easily exploitable. Often this took the form of services running on certain ports, or protocols being manipulated into doing something not normally performed. Once someone managed to get past the barrier, they were in. Sometimes barriers had a way of giving those who used them a sense of overconfidence. Once they had implemented the walls, they became careless because they assumed they were safe. Such an approach would likely be better served by having no defense at all because at least vigilance would be higher and likely a better security precaution.

The dampening, though, was the ultimate barrier in that it was rigid enough to keep people out, but malleable enough to change should it detect that it needed to. The old adaptable barriers did not have the advantage of quantum algorithms, or they too might have been successful. Adaptability and mutability have to be at least as free to permute as the imagination of those attempting to circumvent such precautions.

What puzzled Sal, though, was that whoever had hacked through the holonosphere and held the Inner Sanctum man had done so ostensibly from inside this dampening. To circumvent the security of Inner Sanctum was impressive enough, but to also be able to do this through the dampening boggled the imagination. Sal was as talented as a deceiver as there was, but such a task was well beyond his ken.

Sal attempted to access his interface just to see if it would work. He wasn't surprised to find it completely unresponsive. The dampening was working just as it always had.

Sal glanced to the horizon and saw the tall spire of Iron Bastion. the dark silhouette it created in the sky was a stark contrast, much like everything else in this town. Sal knew that his feet needed to convey him that general direction, and he hoped to avoid the bad parts of Undertown to get there.

When Sal had taken the opportunity to run from the Inner Sanctum man, he wanted to go by his apartment to get a few "low tech" items for his trip to Undertown. Something told him, though, that this would be a terrible idea as Inner Sanctum would probably be crawling all over the place if they weren't already. He didn't have much by way of precaution because of this. The only non-holonospheric item he had was an antique knife given to him by a man who was as close to family as he could remember.

Sal had been an orphan at an early age. He learned quickly that the only way to survive was to be cleverer than those around you. Once he had had a loaf of bread and another orphan had asked him for a piece as he was near starvation. When Sal went to break a piece of it off, another orphan seized the moment of his distracted state, dug his fist into Sal's stomach, and took the whole loaf for himself.

An onlooker, by the name of Maltrus Perstorm, took pity on Sal. Maltrus was a moderately talented hacker. He was good enough to pull off the occasional odd job, but not good enough to go pro. Maltrus had walked over to Sal while gently hitting something in the palm of his hand.

When he reached Sal, he placed his empty hand on his shoulder and turned Sal's tear-stained face toward him.

"Do you know why that boy took your loaf of bread?" inquired Maltrus.

Sal didn't reply but stifled his sobs as he shook his head.

"He took it because you allowed him to, boy. In this world, we have to fight for what is ours, or else people will take it from us. If we choose to give them something, we do not allow them more than we wish them to have."

Sal looked up at Maltrus's scarred face. He could smell the faint undertones of what he assumed was leather in the duster that Maltrus wore over his shirt.

"I've got something here for you, boy. I am giving it to you because I expect that you will use it well, and not allow anyone to take it from you. It is a relic these days. My father gave it to me, and his father gave it to him." Maltrus took his hand off his shoulder and opened the blade to show Sal. "You don't take this out unless you intend to gut someone with it, and you don't allow anyone to take it from you under any circumstance. It is yours because I am giving it to you, and because you need it as much as I need to find an owner for it." Maltrus folded the black back opened Sal's tiny hand and slapped the knife in his palm.

Sal stopped crying and stared at the object in his hand. Nobody had ever given him anything before. he wasn't sure what to do. His eyes widened at the sight of the steel. So cold to the touch, but so shiny. How could something so beautiful be so deadly? Sal placed the knife carefully in his pocket, checking to make sure it was secure.

Maltrus softened his gaze. "I tell you what, boy, I could use a little bit of help from time to time. How would you like to be my apprentice for a while?"

Sal wasn't sure what an apprentice was, but what he was sure of was that nobody had been as kind to him as Maltrus had. If there was a chance he could spend more time with this man, he would be more than happy to do whatever being an apprentice meant.

Sal shook his head yes. Maltrus had placed his large hand on his shoulder and off they walked in the direction of Maltrus's living space.

Sal felt around in his pocket to be sure he could feel the familiar bulk of the knife. It was there just as it always was. Funny how despite all the progress the low-tech solutions remain among the most dependable. He cast his gaze toward Iron Bastion once more and set off.

It didn't take long for Sal to find himself on the wrong side of town. The good news was that the wrong side of town, was for Sal, paradoxically the right side of town because it was like where he grew up. He had never visited the darker parts of Undertown. He had heard rumors that people there were like technological vultures. He hadn't really put much stock in it until he saw it for himself.

Many of the people in the darker parts of Undertown had been members of the holonospheric world before. If they were down here, it was probably because something had gone wrong. They might want to run from the holonosphere, but they remembered some of the conveniences it offered. These people would cannibalize bits and pieces of the technology that existed in Undertown in an effort to make their lives a little easier. There was not much by policing in these parts of town. If a person accidentally ended up here and looked like they had some useful gadget, it was a good bet that they would not be leaving town with it. If they were lucky, it would get stolen. if they were unlucky, it would be stolen, and the previous owner would be dead.

Many of the members of this part of Undertown looked like cyborgs as various electronic gadgetry adorned their person. Sometimes what they had would make some sense--like night vision goggles on the top of their heads they could flip down--other times Sal was even hard-pressed to identify what they were doing or why. Sal suspected that there were more than a few items that had been created with the help of the alternet.

The holonosphere was blocked out of Undertown, this much was a fact. Trying to circumvent the dampening was next to impossible. However, it was possible to form one's own independent network INSIDE the holonosphere. This was not expressly forbidden, but neither was it encouraged. The coverage of any home-brewed alternet was spotty and subject to rapid extinction. However, as long as some alternet coverage existed, it was possible to generate certain items within the zone in which it existed which otherwise would not be possible. Because alternets were not expressly approved of, the items produced by them had to appear to be conceivably real--as though they were not generated by an alternet. There were likely more than a few pairs of binoculars that displayed alternet induced data flow. There were probably many watches that could kill a man in various ways as well as tell time. Alternet objects were heavily camouflaged.

For Sal, though, the camouflage was not so important. As an expert deceiver, he had learned to spot falsity. Often it was something very subtle that gave a thing away. A light reflection that was too perfect--an edge that was too crisp. When your life depended on noticing these small details, one could become very talented in seeing them.

As Sal took in the details of the scene, he could feel sets of eyes on him. He hadn't brought anything technologically oriented other than his pocket knife, but the people here could tell he had something to do with technology by his appearance. It wasn't long before someone was bold enough to approach him.

A tall man wearing a virtual panoply of gadgetry jingled toward Sal. He was a man of slight build, but something in the way he moved Sal recognized as potentially predatory. Sal knew how to handle guys like these. It was imperative to stand his ground without looking the slightest bit alarmed. It was better to stare such a man directly in the face than it was to avert one's gaze.

When the man got close enough, he looked Sal up and down.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" he asked in a less than sincere way.

"What we have here is none of your damn business," replied Sal with his jaw set.

"Oh, we've got ourselves a dandy do we? You think you can just stroll into town and come into our side without giving us something for our trouble of keeping the streets clean?" the man asked with a sneer of his mouth.

"All I see in these streets is trash. You, buddy, are just one more piece. I intend to go on up this road, and if necessary I'll clean the streets for you and you can owe me instead."

"Hah hah hahhhhhhh. A spunky dandy. You look awful fancy, kid, but you don't act like you came from fancy. In fact, I'd guess that wherever it is that you came from, it isn't much different than here."

"You want me to fucking chit-chat with you now? Get the hell out of my way." Sal started to take some steps toward the man. Sal noticed the man's hand drop down. Instinct told him he better get ready for some kind of attack. When the man pulled his hand back into sight, Sal noticed that he had made a fist and his knuckles were white. Either he intended to hit Sal with whatever was in his hand, or else he intended to use what was in his hand on Sal. Sal didn't like either option.

"Now, Now," said the man. "Just because you have spunk doesn't give you the right to be rude. You have to pay a toll just the same as everyone else."

Sal let his hand casually brush against the pocket where he kept his knife.

"And you think you are going to make me, do you?" inquired Sal. At the same time he asked the question, Sal took one hand and produced the knife from his pocket, crouched and with his other hand grabbed some dirt and flung it in the face of the man. Almost as fluidly, as though he were in some kind of warped ballet, he moved his weight forward with the momentum of the throw of dirt and unlatched the blade which he held and applied it to the staggering man's throat.

"Now that we are a little closer, I think it's time to get some things straight. For one thing, whatever it is in your hand you are going to drop. For another thing, unless you want to start drawing air through the new ventilation in your throat, you are going to back down, and you are going to tell any and all of your friends to do the same." The man did not immediately release his grip on the object, but a further press of the blade into his throat obliged him to. Sal glanced at the object as he kept the knife in place.

"So you intended to immobilize me with that antique, did you?" asked Sal.

The man grunted in reply, and swallowed hard, the movement of his Adam's apple pushing into the blade and drawing a slight trickle of blood.

"I've changed my mind. Go ahead and pick your little device back up." Sal instructed.

The man looked momentarily confused.

"I said to pick the mother fucker up," Sal shoved the blade even tighter into the man's throat, and what was a trickle of blood was fast becoming a torrent.

The man complied, and Sal kept the knife firmly placed. "Now then, use it on yourself, and if you try anything funny I swear to God I will cut your fucking head off."

The man's eyes widened. "I can't...can't..."

"You got something you want to tell me, because my knife here believes you can, and you better."

"Not an immobilizer. Injector and immobilizer," the man stammered.

"Well well, is the injector lethal?" Sal inquired.

The man didn't reply.

"I guess we are going to find out," said Sal. "Use it on yourself, or get used to your neck having plenty of space on top of it."

The man dropped his shoulders and looked resigned. At the last possible second before using it on himself, though, he tried to make a swipe at Sal. Sal staggered back from the man just in time and managed to catch his arm. Since the swing was so wild, and because Sal had moved so quickly, he was able to use the momentum of the man's own arm to slam the circular device with the minuscule spike protruding from it directly into the man's chest while it remained in his hand. The man looked down slowly at the device protruding from his chest. Then he began to become frantic as the realization of what had happened began to dawn upon him. He moved his arms and hands to get it out of himself, but it was too late as the device had begun to burrow into his flesh like a tick. It sucked down hard into him, and the man hit the ground as he let out an anguished cry. His cry was cut short, though, as presumably the immobilizing part of the device took hold. The man's eyes told Sal all he needed to know. the injector was not fatal, but it would have been kinder if it had been. Right now, in the man's bloodstream were a multitude of nanobots being injected with one object in mind--to inflict as much pain as possible. They would go to the brain centers responsible for the perception of pain and physically rewire it to simulate something like being slowly roasted alive. More than likely, by the time the injector was done, the man's mind would be broken.

Sal considered the man's unfortunate predicament. As close to compassion as he could come was to give the man a fighting chance. Sal took his knife and cut one of the man's wrists horizontally. The loss of blood would not be enough to kill him, but it would be enough to allow some of the nanobots to run out instead of reaching his brain.

Sal glanced back once where the man lay as he made his way toward Iron Bastion, which was now impressively close. When he did, he saw other people striping the man's immobilized body of the motley assortment of technology he wore. Sal found it distasteful, but the man had gambled on the law of the street and lost. When he awoke, provided he survived the torture, he would find himself naked. At the very least, perhaps it would humble the man in the future--provided there was anything left of him to humble.

Finally, Sal arrived in front of Iron Bastion. He gazed up at the tall spires which were here and there pockmarked from various conflicts. He had never been so close to the structure. It was not exactly a welcoming ambiance. Iron Bastion had been the final resting place for many people. If all the bloodshed in and near its grounds could be collected and measured, it would have easily dwarfed the tallest spires of the building.

Iron Bastion had, indirectly, been one of the reasons Undertown had rejected using the holonosphere. When conflicts had arisen in the past, almost everyone found their way to Iron Bastion when things got bad enough and rode out the conflict. Undertown folks figured that if you had a building that was large enough and well-defended, regardless of what might happen in the world, when the world came knocking on one's doorstep, they would have to overcome that stronghold. Since the invaders would not be playing on their home turf, those who were defending would have a slight advantage. It wasn't important, subconsciously then, for Undertown citizenry to be well connected with the outside world. Rather, it was more important to have some impregnable structure in their town, which, technologically, the dampening was. As Sal made his way past Iron Bastion, he noticed a curious little cottage nestled back into a cove. This must be his destination. The cottage itself was a rotund little building, with strange instruments poking up all over it. The whole dwelling was just exceptionally odd. It didn't fit in with the rest of Undertown. Perhaps if Undertown had been some 14th-century shire combined with post-apocalyptic technological advancement, maybe it would fit--but even then it would be a stretch.

Sal checked to make sure his knife was still handy in case this proved to be some elaborate Inner Sanctum trap. The cottage was not in a bad part of Undertown, but then it looked to be in a world all of its own. It was strange that the bad elements of Undertown had not bothered to touch any of the technology so prominently displayed here. The man Sal had seen coming into town had been stripped bare almost as soon as he hit the ground, but here this little cottage sat, seemingly untouched.

Sal made his way up the path, and upon reaching the door was taken aback when it flew open unprompted. He couldn't see anyone, but he clearly heard a voice say "Come in young man, come in!"

Sal patted his knife. The voice chimed again, "You won't need your antique blade, young man. I'm not part of Inner Sanctum."

Whoever this guy was, he might be the most talented hacker Sal had ever met. Sal had never made any of his background accessible via his interface, but he was sure that if someone wanted to dig enough one could piece together his past from the holonosphere--much as Inner Sanctum had done with their time scrubbing mechanisms to locate him. Most of the time, however, the technology to do that was limited to big players in the holonosphere.

Sal stepped across the threshold and tried to let his eyes adjust. As the darkness began to fade into shapes and outlines, Sal felt as though he had stepped into some kind of museum. There were bits and pieces of things from all sorts of ages--things Sal didn't even recognize. He knew some of them from the images he had seen of them on the holonsophere, but the vast majority of the stuff was far beyond his ability to even begin to label.

As Sal was taking this scene in, a man appeared before him., wearing what appeared to be a suit jacket and a fedora. He was of above-average height, and his composure made it hard to tell whether he was young or old. He did not seem as spry as a young person, but he did not bend his back as the old do. When his face came into the light, it appeared to be the face of a man in his 50s. The man extended his hand.

"A pleasure to meet you, Sal Grimone. I see you took my advice and ran. I regret that you had to experience that unfortunate situation with that man before you arrived. Undertown is not inhabited by people with civility through and through."

"Who the hell are you?" Sal snapped.

"Who the hell am I? I think a better question for you to be asking at this moment is who the hell YOU ARE? Are you Sal the orphan, Sal the talented deceiver, or Sal the deceived?" the man let a wry smile cross his lips as he posed the last question.

Sal bristled. "Look, Mr. I don't know who you are, or what you are, but I'm going to bet you bleed, and if you mean me any harm, I intend to prove my theory."

"Ha! HA! This is the thanks I GET! I hold an Inner Sanctum agent for you to get away, you get here and you threaten to draw my blood? What makes you think, young Sal, that if I so desired it you would move your hand one inch?"

Sal reached for his knife on instinct but found his hand immobilized.

The man tipped his hat to him. "You see if I wanted to do you harm, it would already be done, and there'd be little you could do about it, Sal Grimone. Instead, I'm bringing you and a few friends here for a little Pow-Wow, or a get-together. But I'm forgetting my manners. I should probably introduce myself. My friends and acquaintances around here call me The Rogue. If they are being exceptionally specific, they call me The Rogue Scholar."

Sal finally moved his hand, and as he did so, he moved it away from his knife and let his hand fall to his side. He allowed himself time to be adequately stupefied by this Rogue guy.

Just then, as Sal was trying to piece together what was happening, the Rogue took a quick side step, and a bright flash of light indicative of slipstream travel shone forth.

"Ah!," said the Rogue as he punched at the air with his fist. "Right on time! I'm glad to see Reipawn hasn't lost his touch!"

Tangled on the floor in the location previously occupied by the Rogue was on very sick lady. The Rogue curiously waved his hand and then spoke to her.

"Rei Carlotta, so pleased you could make it! I should imagine you have a trifle bit of nausea, which I am sure we can remedy if you will do me the favor of drinking his beverage."

Rei was in no position to object. The Rogue procured a glass with some mysterious liquid in it from a nearby cupboard. Rei drank the liquid and color re-animated her face. She stood up and looked the Rogue in the face, then at Sal.

"Where am I, and who are you two?"

"Hold your questions for now, young lady, if you please. We've another guest who appears to be rather late. I am afraid I might have to fetch him. I think he might have gone and done us the disservice of dying."