Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (31 page)

The
snake charmer was there.

Alone.

He was
kneeling at the far end of the orange corridor, praying silently,
whispers echoing in the empty space.

It
wasn’t easy to make out if it was him actually. Judging by the
orange-white colour scheme, most of the believers would be expected
to dress like that. Also, he was facing the other way, and even if
he hadn’t, he was a dark-skinned person that Leo had seen only
once.

Nah, he
couldn’t be sure that that was the right Sikh.

But the
huge cobra next to him was a dead giveaway.

Chapter 35:// Dropping in

“
Hey!” Leo said and walked inside
with broad steps.

The man
arose slowly, his turban somehow exaggerating the turning of his
head.

He
stared at Leo with his scary, white-glass eye.

“
Hey?
” the man asked. “This is how
you address a man, disrupting his prayers?” His voice was deep,
smooth and accented.

Leo had
not made a good entrance but he had to keep the momentum going, now
that he had found the guts to step inside. Pausing to think would
mean thinking over the danger he was in, would mean running back
out screaming, would mean life in prison. “I’m in no mood for
games. You framed me for the mayor’s murder and sent your cobra to
kill me in my cell. Why?”

The Sikh
smiled and showed his teeth. “Because someone had to get
framed.”

“
Hey look, I know this is a sacred place. Just tell me what I
need to know. I don’t want to fight you here, it must be a sin or
something, right?”

“
I’ll append the sin to my looong list of begging for
forgiveness,” the Sikh said, the end of his word blending with the
hiss of the cobra into a long
“sss.”

Could
this get any more creepy?

Leo
pulled up a modern, beautifully designed survival axe and braced
himself as the serpent rose up to his height.

fingerd> Really? I have permission to access the
net?

parrotd> Knock yourself out.

fingerd> Fingered! This man is
[email protected], 42 years old.

The
information popped into Leo’s field of view and he swiped it away,
gritting his teeth.

The Sikh
sidestepped to the musical instruments and picked up two sticks. He
took place over the two meter drum and began pounding.

fingerd> Damn, he is pounding hard.

armd>
No comment.

httpd> Connecting… Please wait. The Ranjit Nagara (victory
drum) was used to boost morale when they marched into
battle.

The
condemning piece of information was routed to the user’s field of
view. The data in itself was irrelevant, the important bit was that
it came through a normal, unencrypted web route that could be
traced even by a moron reading out of step-by-step
instructions.

parrotd> What’s the police response time in this
area?

httpd> Estimated 4 minutes.

walkmand> What will happen to us when we get
arrested?

parrotd> Who knows buddy… Who knows…

Leo read
the victory drum info on his veil and cursed it away. The rhythmic
pounding became furious, sweat dripping on the Sikh’s forehead and
it sounded like there was some order in the deafening
chaos.

Leo was
scared shitless.

The
cobra lunged forward, opening her mouth and showing her poisonous
teeth.

Leo knew
he had no real mobility. Having a limp arm is not just about
handling things, it messes up your whole balance. There is a reason
people alternate arms when running, and unconsciously balance out
every movement with arm rotations.

All he
could do was chop.

He
sidestepped at the very last minute and brought the light axe in an
arc straight down the cobra’s hood.

The tool
was sharp, and the blow was lucky not to glance off. It went deep
into the serpent, doing nothing more than pissing the shit out of
it.

She
twisted her body, Leo let go of the axe, and she tasted the air,
rebounding for another attack.

Chapter 36:// Setting up

Leo ran
outside the Sikh temple yelling “Aaah!” and wobbling awkwardly to
balance himself. The cobra came out the door behind him and
followed him slithering along his path.

At a
bend, she crashed on a parked car and made a big dent on the side
door. Leo glanced behind him when he heard the rending metal, then
closed his eyes and ran like hell to the alley.

“
Now-now-now-now-now,” he screamed and slid past the concrete
mixer.

Katerina
threw the stinking clothes she had promised to burn earlier and
threw them into the hole of the mixer, making sure plenty of aroma
was left in the air around.

The
clothes were the ones Leo had escaped with, filled with blood,
sweat, pee.

His
scent.

The
cobra swayed around the corner and closed the gap.

Leo took
out the flashlight he’d gotten from the prepper bag and shone it to
her reptilian eyes.

It was
like a pocket sun, burning retinas and making them all see stars
and shapes. They would need whole minutes to regain vision after
that. A sharp fear coursed over Leo at that point. Blinding them
all was a double-edged knife. If it didn’t work, the cobra would
promptly munch on him, and worse, on Katerina.

Katerina, who was a waitress, a stranger to him a few nights
before, a lone soul in the vast ocean of the capital city, was now
in danger because of him. Sure, he had tried to keep her out of it
and sure, he had told her the risk, he kept nothing back, but
still. It was his fault if she would get hurt.

In the
dizzying sensation of the blinding light from the ridiculously
bright flashlight, he realised he couldn’t even see if his plan had
worked. He could hear some hissing, some movement, but his heart
was pounding even harder than the Sikh’s war drum.

Oh well,
he had a few more senses to use anyway. He gritted the flashlight
in his teeth, always pointing it at the advancing cobra and then
placed his hand on the concrete-mixing tank to feel the
vibrations.

Then he
waited. And prayed.

Chapter 37:// Giving away

The drumming stopped.

Bhai
Sharan Singh appeared in the alley. The cobra was writhing in the
concrete mixer, shaking the whole truck back and forth.

It
couldn’t get out.

“
What have you done to her?” Singh said and looked at Leo with
a deadly stare.

“
A snake trap. Just like a teensy-weensy snake trap. Only
bigger. Same principle,” Leo said and stepped forward, feeling his
way around the truck, still not seeing clearly. The flashlight was
still on, but the effect was diminished on the snake charmer, since
his eyes have had precious moments to adjust.

“
I will kill you,” Singh declared and pulled out a curved
dagger.

A dagger
might not seem all that scary, but at the hands of a frothing snake
charmer with a glass eye it sure was frightening.

Leo just
gripped the wall and ran back down to the street.

Singh
caught up to him, punched him down and lifted his dagger in both
hands, ready to plunge it into his heart.

Leo
would have preferred his vision not to return at all. That way he
wouldn’t see the curved blade about to cut down into him. He tried
to fight but the man was much stronger.

Singh
let out a cry.

Katerina
had slammed a foldable shovel on the Indian’s head, knocking him
out for a few seconds, but enough time for her to pull Leo away
from him.

Police
sirens flashed red and blue.

Leo
heard only a mess of noises and sounds.

He just
spread himself on the cool street and let the policemen arrest
him.

He was
turned facing down and a knee fell down hard on his spine.
Multicuffs clamped on his arms and a temporary plastic explosive
patch was stickied on his neck, should he try to flee.

He did
not.

His only
worry was if Katerina was safe. His vision had a smoldering spot in
the middle, and he didn’t see if the Indian had managed to do
something to her after that awesome shovelling. Any struggling
would seem like resisting arrest, so he just tried to see through
his damaged retinas for her form.

He heard
her voice saying, “This is police brutality! Lemme go you corporate
pig!” And then she was carried away in the distance.

Leo
smiled.

She was
fine. Safe.

Chapter 38:// Ending up

All their
connections were blocked. They were in a virtual machine, a fake
world in which they couldn’t escape. The IT guy had taken root
access to their system, effectively making him a god in their
existence. He was poking around in their source code, and it felt
as if someone was examining your guts while you were alive and
conscious.

eyed>
So this is it?

parrotd> Seems so.

httpd> We had a good run together, right?

armd>
Right.

parrotd> Look guys, we saved the user. Helped him all we
could. That’s all that matters in the end.

armd>
We rocked!

parrotd> We rocked.

Their
executioner looked at the time, sighed, and sipped his coffee. The
mug had the words “There is no place like 127.0.0.1” written on
it.

The
daemons loved it.

It was
impossible to hate the guy.

The IT
guy’s little finger moved to the right and was about to fall on the
condemning “Enter” button, the keypress that would erase the
daemons from existence.

walkmand> What do you think being dev/nulled feels
like?

armd>
We are about to find out.

fingerd> I don’t wanna go…

Enter
.

Chapter 39:// Cheering up

“
You really
know how to butter up a lady,” Katerina said through the phone,
from the other side of the bulletproof glass.

“
Yeah. Third date, visit in jail. Fourth date, let’s make it a
conjugal visit,” Leo said.

“
Down tiger,” she said, but her naughty wink said
otherwise.

“
How’s my dog?”

“
I thought you didn’t want him.”

“
I do want him, I’m just kinda tied up at the moment,” Leo
said and pointed around the jail facilities.

“
Well, he is mine now. We are having lovely dinners, Aibo and
I. If you want him, you better get out soon.”

“
That astronomically expensive lawyer Miss Bibi hired for me
says I’ll be out soon. They found video from the-”

Leo
paused and stared down at his black hand, a damaged dead
weight.

“
-The day they framed me, on my phone. No idea how it got
there. The video has been expertly wiped at the precise time of the
murder, so that makes it a cause for further investigation. They
found military grade cyberwarfare stuff in my augmentations, so
they copied everything to a computer forensics lab and did a hard
reset on everything. We won’t manage to prove anything, it’s way
cutting edge stuff, but it’s enough to show I’m
innocent.”

Katerina
forced a worried smile. “Sounds good. All that damned tech… Nothing
but trouble.” She cheered up again. “Hey, you can stay over at my
place when you get out!”

“
Ugh, that’s nice. But I don’t want to become a burden or
anything…”

“
Hey, Dumbo. You remember when you last paid your rent? You
are evicted. Your stuff is in boxes in my living room at the
moment.”

Leo
darted up, “Don’t open them!”

She
lifted an eyebrow. “Why? Is there anything naughty you don’t want
me to see?”

“
No…” He said and sat back.

“
Well?”

“
Are you sure you got everything?”

“
Apart from the mouldy fridge, yeah.”

Leo
sighed in relief. “OK. There are some mp3s around there that I
don’t wanna lose, they were my dad’s. They wiped my walkman clean,
that’s the only backup.”

“
Don’t worry. Everything will be there waiting for you.
Including myself.” She stood up, blew a kiss in the air and left
slowly, letting him take a good look at her swaying
posterior.

Damn
vixen.

Leo hung
up the receiver, closed his eyes and imagined himself coming home
after a hard day’s work, to a lovely woman who could make a
shithole flat seem like a slice of heaven.