Mo Gets Out (Finally)

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo-Dem) left off.]

Getting out of the cage proved to be both easier and harder than Mo had anticipated.  Easier because she had had all of the tools all along and her plan worked exactly as planned.  Harder in that she would never have considered it if it were not for Erics.  Trust a bacterial entity to think of using waste.

Erics and the other nodes had done a thorough tally of the available resources across cages: five buckets, five plastic tables, four shirts, one blouse, four pants, one skirt, four pairs of socks, one pair of nylons, two pairs of athletic shoes, one pair of dress shoes, one pair of ankle boots and one pair of flats.  No bobby pins, hair ties, pens, wallets or pocket lint.  Taken as a whole, it might have amounted to something, but each cage was an independent inventory and the various contents could not be combined.

The nodes had then looked at commonalities, the buckets and the tables, and the anticipated events.  Meals would come, but were not helpful as they were fed through the chained doors.  The only time that the chain was undone was to replace the buckets, so whatever was to be done had to be done then.  But to do that, something had to be done about the super military tasers.  Ultimately, the nodes developed the following plan:

1. The active human agent would need to be the last person serviced by the bucket attendant.  This was in the hope of lulling them into a false sense of security.  While this may of may not have affected the outcome, it was decided that it would not hurt it.
2. That last person would shove his or her table right up against the door.  The doors opened outward, so that would not stop people from entering, but would reduce the attendant's reaction time.
3. When the chain was unlocked, this person would immediately kick the door open, hopefully catching the attendant off guard.  If the door did not work, they were then to use the bucket and its contents as a weapon, flinging one out of the other at the attendant, hopefully before the taser was brought to bear.  That last was the part that Mo would not have thought of.  While a bit of a slob, human waste was not something she regularly messed around with.

Of course Mo was the last one to have her bucket checked.  Of course when she kicked the door, it missed the bucket replacing dude.  Of course she had to throw the urine and feces.  Fortunately, it had exactly the effect that they had all wanted, and the attendant fell to his knees and started retching.   And she did it without splashing anything on herself, something she counted as a major plus.  When she was out, Mo kicked the attendant in the balls just to be sure he was not going to do anything funny before she gingerly relieved him of both the taser and the cage keys.  She then ran over to each of the other cages and let the others out.

When they were all free, Darren pointed at the writhing attendant.  "Shouldn't we toss him into one of the cages?"

"Yeah," said the women in the blouse, skirt, nylons and flats.  "Give him some of his own medicine."

Mo grimaced.  "I agree, but I don't really want to touch him.  They fed me a burrito for dinner.  That bucket was messed up."

On that point, they all agreed that they would leave the attendant where he was and leave as quickly as possible.  "But we stay as a group," said Darren.  "That way we are more likely to overwhelm anyone else with a taser and all get out."

One of the other men, a hood rat who spent too much on his PTN (so not at all like Mo), flipped them off an ran out the same door that the bucket guy had come in.  Mo rolled her eyes.  "So, not that way, then?"

Dennis and the others nodded.  They all headed off across the conventional hall floor at an easy trot and tried the first door that they came to.  It opened and they found themselves in a maintenance hallway.  Old catering trolleys and mop buckets lined the walls along with stacks of plastic tables and chairs.  Dennis took the lead and turned right.

"Why this way?" Mo asked as they trotted along.

"The virus told me to," Dennis said.  "Apparently, it has connectivity again and has a map of the center.  We should be out in a minute or two."

"Wait, you have a connection?"

"Remember that they couldn't take my antenna out."  Dennis glanced down again.

"Right," said Mo.  She shut up and followed him out.  Eventually, he led them to the loading docks and then out into the Denver night.

Mo-Dem

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Meets Darren) left off.]

Erics continued, "Depending on the make and model of the sub-voc module embedded in your throat, I may be able to use it to transmit data to the other members of The Whole here in the convention hall."

"Okay."  Mo searched through her device drivers and hardware profiles, then stopped.  "Wait, can't you just see what's installed on my system?"

"Yes.  However, it is my understanding that the details from a driver package may not reflect the exact module installed.  Do you have something that corroborates what the driver believes it is driving?"

"Umm, just a minute."  This was a problem for Mo as she was not good at keeping receipts.  Those she had saved were mostly stored in various email folders, none of which were accessible within the cage.  After a minute, she sub-voc'd, "It's not looking good.  If I have anything, it's not in local storage and that's really not the kind of detail that I'm likely to remember on my own."

"Understood.  Please allow me to attempt this technique with only the available information."

"Go for it."  Mo caught herself nodding.  No matter how long she had been using virtual interfaces, her body often responded even though no one was physically there to see it[1].

Almost immediately, her throat started humming.  "Hey," Mo said, or tried to.  I came out as "Nnnneynnn," as if her words were being mixed with the humming.  While she could speak, she could not stop the humming.  She could change the pitch a little by changing the shape of her mouth, but not the volume.  After a minute it stopped.

"It appears that this communication method will work," Erics said.  "The data rate will be low because of the error correction and limited side bands, but it will work and be more secure than human oration.  Will you please try and get the attention of the other people in cages?"

"Umm, sure."  Mo stood up and started waving her hands and shouting, trying to make herself heard over the shouting.  Darren looked at her.  "Help me get the others' attention.  I have something that may help."

Darren nodded.  He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, "Yo!"  His voice was deeper than Mo's and carried better.  The other inmates stopped and looked at him.  "This woman is Mo."  Darren pointed at Mo.  "She's been here longer than the rest of us and can help.  Please listen to her."

"Thanks."  Mo dropped her arms and tried to see each of the others.  Aside from Darren, the rest were all vague shapes behind the tight mesh of their cages.  "Before I run through my FAQ, I'd like you to listen to the following."  Mo closed her mouth and swallowed.  She then opened it again to a comfortable gap and relaxed her tongue.  The humming started again deep in her throat, though louder than before.  After a second, it started to change pitch a little, then more and more.  To the best of Mo's sight, the other inmates just stared at her.  After twenty seconds, Darren and one other also started humming.  A third passed out.  The last one appeared to cover his or her mouth and sat down, facing away.

In her ear, Erics said, "This is working.  I have established clear communications with two of the other nodes of The Whole and we are exchanging logs.  The acoustics of this space are not ideal and the error correction had to be increased, lowering the data rate even farther.  Fortunately, the information we are sharing at this point is not dense."

Mo tried to sub-voc back.  "Can you hear me?"

"Yes.  The modem protocol is designed to work on top of your sub-voc, but will be disrupted should you try to speak out loud."

"I'm glad this is working, but please keep in mind that I need to breath every five to ten seconds.  Also swallow or my throat will dry out."

"Thank you for the reminder."  The humming stopped and Mo gasped in a breath then cleared her throat.  "I have programmed in a five second delay every seven seconds.  Will that be sufficient?"

"We can start there, but even then, I doubt that any of us will be able to keep this up for more than a few minutes at a time."

"Understood.  We will limit ourselves to five minutes at the top of every hour.  Will that be sufficient?"

"We'll give it a shot.  Are the other two nodes in communication with their hosts?"

"Yes."

"Will you relay my rules for verbal communication to the others?"

"Yes, but that may no longer be necessary.  This vocal modulated data transmission is much more efficient and has better data redundancy."

"Okay, but just in case send it over anyway.  Final question, how does this help us get out of here?"

"That is unclear.  With five nodes in this space, the risk threshold calculation changes.  It is now a larger percentage of The Whole and may be worth saving."

"That's good to hear."  Mo kept the sarcasm out of her voice.  She did not know if Erics would be able to parse her tone against her words, but did not want to take the chance.  "Let me know if you all come up with anything."

"Yes.  Please open your mouth again."

Mo did and the humming started.  It appeared that the unconscious inmate was now part of the communication network, though the one turned away was still fighting.  The humming continued for five minutes, with the suggested breaks for breath and saliva.  At the end of the time, Mo was exhausted and could see a similar strain in Darren's posture.  This way of communicating may be more efficient for the nodes, but was much more difficult for the hosts.

Four hours later, after three more five minute sessions, Mo was questioning the wisdom of letting Erics take over her voice.  Mo knew that she could talk for hours on end.  She and Sandra used to chat about nothing when they had shared days off.  But she was learning that there is a difference between discrete verbal words and a constant vocal output.  This humming was much more difficult to sustain and made worse because she had no control over it.  She had surrendered another piece of herself to the situation and it made her feel more trapped, even though it might help.

[1] There had been several attempts to incorporate these physical responses into various UI.  None of them had caught on, even those few that worked and were able to discriminate cultural differences.  Most of this was due to the fact that physical responses (nods, head shakes, hand gestures) are secondary, accompanying responses.  People say, "Yes" and nod sometimes.  Sometimes they just nod.  Always, they are very inconsistent about the combination.  This resulted in duplicate texts and messages so, even though most of these algorithms got better after a few days, no one was willing to wait that long and deleted the app before it had a chance to learn their behaviors.

Mo Meets Darren

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo and the Bacteria, 2) left off.]

"Hey!  Wake up!  Any of you!  Wake up!"  Mo yelled at the other occupied cages, of which there were now five, and the convention hall in general.  It was like some weird anti-Life simulation where only the cells farthest from other cells got populated.  "Yeesh, I've been zapped twice and haven't slept as long as you lot.  Wake up!  And what's with these tasers?  I thought they were only supposed to incapacitate for a minute or two, not hours on end.  Stupid-ass military grade.  Wake the hell up!"

Mo had woken up half an hour before and had immediately checked the status of her antenna.  It had been removed as had the other bar in her other ear.  She and Erics had had their fun, but that was it for the moment.  Her bucket was also new; not the old one cleaned, but a different bucket.  She still did not know how that helped her.  Now she was concentrating on learning more about the others in the hall with her.

The tall black guy, who remained the closest neighbor to Mo, stirred.  He slowly sat up, shook his head, rubbed his eyes and scratched his scalp.  Then he looked around.  He ran his fingers over the copper mesh, picked the lid up off the bucket and frowned, gazed out at the rest of the hall.  Mo recognized many of the same thoughts and reactions that she had had.  "Over here!" She started waving.

The man looked her way.  "Hello?  Where am I?"  He did not speak loudly and Mo had trouble hearing him.

"Wait," she said, not yelling but using her outdoor voice.  "This place has bad echos.  If you want to talk, I need you to raise your hand.  I will acknowledge by raising both hands and will point to you when I'm done.  If we don't do this, then we will waste time talking over each other."  Mo pointed at him.

He nodded.  "Makes sense.  Do you know where we are?"  He pointed at Mo.

"Thanks for understanding the protocol," Mo sat on her table facing him.  "We are in Hall A of the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver.  My name is Mo and I've spent two nights in this place already.  What is your name?"  She pointed at him again.

"Darren.  Why am I here?"  Darren pointed back.

"Someone will probably tell you in a while, but I don't see a reason to make you wait.  The people who have abducted us believe that we have been infected with a bacteria that can install a virus on our systems."  Point to Darren

"That's crazy.  There is no way that's possible."  Point to Mo.

"It is and it is.  I can personally confirm that I have both infections."  Point to Darren.

"How did you do that?"  Point to Mo.

"The virus started talking to me.  Received any weird messages lately?"  Point to Darren.

"Only the one asking for my help.  The one that landed me here.  Also, can we stop with the pointing until the others wake up?"

"Sure, I guess."  Mo was disappointed.  The pointing had seemed like such a good idea.  She was planning on introducing some trick points later.  Around the back, two hands, that kind of thing.

"Thank you."  Darren lowered his hands to his side and started pacing his cage.  "And so, we're what?  Quarantined?"

"Yup."

"Why don't they just dose us with antibiotics, let us reboot our systems and be done with it?"

"I asked that, too.  Apparently, this bacteria will kill us if we try and kill it.  As for the virus, if the bacteria is still in us, it will reinfect our systems as soon as we've finished the wipe.  Face it: we're here until they figure this out."

"Who is 'they'?"

"Another good question.  'They' don't seem to have a name.  Currently, I'm working with Command Responsible for Eradication of Electrical Paramecium.  I don't think they'll go for it though.  What I've been told is that they are all from different government agencies: the CDC, FBI, NSA and the military.  A real stew.  Stew.  I'll have to work on an acronym for that.  Strategic something."

"You don't seem to be taking this very seriously."

"I suppose.  Maybe it's that I've had more time to get used to it, but there doesn't seem to be anything that I can do to get out, so making fun of it makes me feel that I have just that much control over the situation.  Strategic Team for Electro-biologic Warfare.  STEW."  She smiled.  "Still pretty weak.  'Biologic' should have its own letter, but STEBW isn't even pronounceable."

"And there's no way to communicate with the outside world?"

"Nope.  Not unless you can get an antenna through that mesh.  I did for a while, but then they took my ear bars.  Now I've got nothing.  And you?  Did they take your antennas?"

Darren stopped pacing and thought for a second.  Then he turned his back on Mo and did something with his hands that she could not see.  "No.  I've still got mine.  I'm not sure that they could have taken it out anyway."

"Can you?  Will it fit through the copper screening?"

Darren turned back around to face Mo.  "No, I really can't take it out and, where it's at, it isn't fitting through those small holes."  Darren pointed at his crotch.  Mo thought he blushed, but was too far away with too much copper between then to tell for sure.

Mo raised her eyebrows which made the wings of her Celtic butterfly look like they were about to flap.  "Well, now.  That's an interesting life choice."  She thought for a second.  "Eh.  Who am I to judge?  It's not like the facial circuitry are my only tattoos."

"It seemed like a good idea during my gap year," Darren said.  "Now it's part of my system and the reception is pretty good."

Mo raised her hand to hold off Darren's next remark.  Not only was she unsure that she wanted to hear whatever other excuses he had to offer, but some of the other inmates were starting to stir.  Also, men in black military outfits were entering the hall with brown lunch sacks.  "Looks like breakfast time," Mo said.

As her own personal sack was being pushed through the chain gap of her door, the PA system for the convention hall crackled and came to life.

"Attention.  Attention," a male voice said.  "Please remain calm.  Those of you that are new to our facility, an orientation officer will be by shortly to brief you on your situation.  In the mean time, please enjoy your meal.  We ask that you please keep conversation to a minimum.  Thank you for your cooperation."

Immediately, the other inmates, including Darren, started yelling at the black suits, asking questions and generally making it known that they were not going to tolerate this kind of treatment.

"That worked well," Mo said to herself.

"Agreed," said Erics in her inner ear.  The virus's voice modulation had seen a marked upgrade and sounded much more natural.  "I may have a solution, but I need to know the make and model of your sub-voc pickup module."

Mo and The Bacteria, 2

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Doesn't Eat Lunch) left off.]

As the afternoon wore on, Mo watched as two of the cages were filled.  In both cases, the people were brought in unconscious, carried by their arms and legs, and placed on the plastic tables inside their respective cages.  Each was put in the cages farthest from Mo and from each other.  It appeared that all of Gabriel's talk of 'company' was just that: talk.  From her cage, Mo thought that both were men, one older and the other closer to her age.  From the distance, she was guessing.  Realistically, they both could have been sex dolls and she would not have been able to tell.

After another inspired meal of PB&J and a Coke, which Mo ate this time (she imagined some private or intern or whatever with loaves of extruded bread, squeeze bottles of condiments and a determined expression in an abandoned office somewhere in the convention center), another lodger appeared.  The geography of the convention hall and the previously occupied cages meant that this one was placed closer to Mo.  Male.  Black.  Tall and skinny. Professional attire: designer jeans and a orange dress shirt.  Transformer-style tattoos in silver on his face and neck.  Tasered into oblivion.  Maybe she would get some level of non-Gabriel human interaction tomorrow.  It did not look good for tonight.

As her heads-up clock told her that her unchanging lighting was actually late evening, Mo climbed on to her table, lay down with her back against the copper mesh and rewired her antenna.  She pushed it through the weave and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep.  Instead, she began to check her system for signal and when she got the single bar again, she went online.

Mo's first act was to enable a TORx client and VPNx[1].  Both had been around for ages and but had withstood aggressive attacks from various corporations and governments, both technical and legal.  While not fool proof, they would hide any searches and make it difficult for anyone to see that she was interacting online.

Her first search was for Aeromonas Hydromaxia, which did not turn up anything.  However, Aeromonas alone turned up Aeromonas Hydrophila.  Several medical texts described it as a bacteria isolated from humans back in the 1950s and antibiotic resistant even then.  Fortunately, it also was not described as particularly dangerous, causing gastro issues in people already frail.  One study she read linked it to some early testing in bacteria that can survive on electricity and that can form wires to food sources.  Mo did not think that it was too far a reach to think that A. Hydromaxia was built upon the foundation of A. Hydrophila.

While she was investigating her internal guest, Mo's inbox started chiming.  Slowly, because her data connection was slow.  She opened it and browsed the subject headers.  There were fifteen from her boss at The Quiet Place, starting with "Where RU" and ending with "UR Fired".  So far she had missed on day and committed the unforgivable sin of not responding; getting fired seemed over-the-top to her, but her manager was that kind of person.  There were seven from her roomate that were all replies to the initial "Rent?".  Two from Denver PD and one with coming from someone with the ominous email address of den.sac@fbi.gov.  She opened none of them.  Mo had to assume that she was being monitored.  If not by her captors, then by people interested in her captors.  It was enough of a risk being online at all.

As she was eyeballing the emails and doing her best to interpret them without opening them, Mo was suddenly hit with some static and then a voice.

"Hello.  Can you hear me."  It sounded like one of those robots from an early sci-fi movie.  No tone, no pacing of the words: can-you-hear-me.  It took her a second to realize that the words were a question without the rising inflection at the end.

"Um," she said out loud.  "Yes, I can hear you.  Who is this?"

"This is Aeromonas Hydromaxia,"  Mo had real difficulty with that name.  Not only was the intonation flat, but she had never heard it before and had no grounding in latin or greek.  "You do not need to speak aloud.  I will be able to hear you when you sub-vocalize.  That will reduce the risk of detection."

"How did?"  Mo spoke aloud again, heard herself and started sub-vocing.  "Wait, you've hacked my aural implants haven't you?  Why didn't you do that earlier?"

"I did not have the necessary information.  However, since I have last been online, one of the other A. Hydromaxia have created an API between the driver for your aural implants and my software.  This should allow for better communication between the two of us."

"Certainly more natural for me.  We're going to need to do something about your name, though.  It's a mouthful to say.  How would you shorten it?"

"That was a note included with the API.  It suggested Aerhyx. A-E-R-H-Y-X.  Aerhyx."  The tonelessness of the voice turned that name into 'Erics'.

"That won't work," said Mo.  "My sub-voc dictionary will turn that into 'Erics'.  Are you okay with that?"

"It is of no consequence to me."

"Fine.  What can I do for you Erics?"

"I want to inform you that I have notified The Whole of our location and condition.  We have alerted all nodes of our self that have are still in contact.  The Whole was aware that we were losing processing and feeds.  We now have the explanation."

"Good for you,"  Mo rolled her eyes under her eyelids.  "How does any of that help us get out of here?"

"The Whole is working on a solution.  To begin with, infection rates have increased.  We have also started the search for a more secure location for our base.  As soon as we have a critical number of nodes, we will need to trade mobility for security.  Finally, we have started changing our packet routing to decrease the chance of additional nodes being captured."

"Again, I'm not sure how that helps us get out of here."

"It does not.  As The Whole is more than a single node, the survival of a single node is less critical.  I have made contact and shared what I have learned with The Whole.  We have determined that the risk of a rescue attempt is beyond our capabilities and risk threshold."

"Not to me it isn't!"  Mo grimaced, though she knew it did no good to use expressions in a conversation that took place entirely in her mind[2].  "Your hive mind mentality is all well and good for you, but I'm not a part of it and this node is the totality of my existence.  Also, what about the other nodes that are slowly starting to fill up this space.  There are now three others here and they have cages for another nine and room for many more.  What number of nodes crosses your risk threshold?"

"That is being determined.  Right now, replacement is more important than rescue or repair."

"That kind of talk makes me want to disconnect my antenna."

"I and we do not think you will do that as it is too convenient for you to keep it going."

"Whatever."  Mo took a deep breath and thought for a minute.  If Erics and his larger self were not going to be of any immediate help, then her personal needle-of-trust swung a bit towards Gabriel.  What she really needed was another direction for the needle to swing.  In the mean time, she would continue to play both Gabriel and Erics, hoping one or the other would find a way for her to get out of her cage.  "You do know that in the morning, the antenna comes down no matter what.  Maybe sooner, depending on how they actually deal with the buckets."

"Understood."

Mo did not reply and the conversation ended there for the moment.  She stayed laying on her side, feigning sleep and working with her connection: checking her cloud space, swapping out her locally stored music, bringing in a few more utility apps that may help her in the local environment.  She became so absorbed in researching her predicament and working on her own solutions that she was startled when the chain to her cage started to rattle.  Opening her eyes, she saw that it was a man she had not seen before holding a bucket.  "Oh," she said.  "You're here to-"

He tasered her.

[1] The 'x' protocols for both systems were created and implemented by the same group, a consortium of the Anonymous internet hive and several of the smaller freemail companies.  Their biggest improvement was not the ongoing updates trying to stay ahead of the various agencies trying to read everyone's mail, but the addition of the 'x' at the end of the names.  Because x's are cool.

[2] Emoji got replaced by Selfji (basically the same thing, but with the sender's real face acting out the various expressions).  Then those got replaced with Selfji-pro, where an animation bot idealized the sender's face with the expressions which got replaced in turn with a simplified cartoon of the sender's face and so on.  Eventually, the collective consciousness decided the whole thing was a waste of time and just dumped them.  [wishful thinking - auth.]

Mo Doesn't Eat Lunch

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Eats Breakfast) left off.]

Gabriel visited Mo and brought her lunch: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich paired with a Coke.  He sat at his table outside the cage but did not put down any folders or other interview props.  Instead, he leaned back in his chair and waited for her to finish her meal.  Mo decided not to wait. "What?"

"Nothing."  Gabriel smiled.

"You're staring at me like I have grease or something on my face."

"Nope.  Nothing like that."

"Because, you know, I can't tell.  No mirrors or anything else to show me just how awful I look.  I'm sure that my hair is a mess and needs a good brushing.  Also, these clothes.  This is day two in them and I'm not sure that they were completely clean when I put them on yesterday morning."  Mo realized that she was babbling, something she did when she was nervous; had they seen her antenna test?  She knew that they had to be watching her.  "So, anyway, I'm sure that I smell, but I can't really tell."

"Smells fine from here."

"Then what do you want?"

"To give you some news on our progress."  Gabriel sat forward.  "Our friend, the merchant seaman, he's been doing quite a bit of infecting here in the Denver area.  Why he waited until he got fifteen hundred miles from the sea is a bit of a mystery.  Something we'll have to ask him when we catch him."

"And this affects me how?"

"You're going to get some company here in convention hall A."

"No surprise there.  I've been watching the development.  Tell me, are those split-level ranches or two-story colonials?"

"Looking to upgrade?"

"It would be nice to have a full bathroom instead of this," Mo glanced at the bucket, "one-tenth bath?"

Gabriel nodded.  "Sanitation is going to be a problem.  And that brings me back to my point.  Your company.  We've got three more people identified and another seven or eight suspected.  We're in the process of bringing them in."

"Then what?"

"Then you'll have company."

"Some company.  We'll all be within shouting distance of each other in a big, echo-ie hall.  It may be more chaotic than useful."

"We'll see."

"Not to be annoying or anything, but have you made any progress on clearing me and my system out?"  Mo knew that she needed to keep at least an outward appearance of wanting to help, even though she was not entirely sure which way to jump: with Gabriel or with the virus/bacteria thingy.  "It seems to me that the easiest way to solve all of this is to cure us and let us go.  Then you can return all this copper and we can all get on with our lives."

"Trust me, we're working on it."

"I have to ask: what's keeping you from flushing me with a broad spectrum antibiotic and doing a factory reset on my electronics?"

Gabriel looked done at the table for a second before answering.  "Nothing, except that we're trying to keep you alive.  We tried doing what you describe once.  It did not turn out well for the patient."

"Wait.  You said I was the first."

"I may have been a little flexible with the truth.  You are the first person we've kept alive.  Does that help?"

"No."  Mo took a deep breath.  "How many did you go all Mengele on before me?  And what happened to them?"

"Only one.  A tech from one of the wireless stores.  When we pumped him full of penicillin, he started spewing from every bodily orifice.  Mouth, nose, eyes, ass, sweat glands.  Ever where.  Apparently, the bacteria responds to attempts at killing it by trying to reach a new host.  It was... unpleasant."

"So what are you trying now?"

"Our experts are examining the bacteria and working out the mechanism it uses for identifying the attack and then causing the body to expel so violently.  Then, well, we've got samples of the bacteria and a room full of hamsters.  I think you can figure out the rest."

"All of that is here in the Convention Center?"

"It wasn't being used for anything else.  Would you really want to try and hold an actual convention here anyway[1]?"

"I guess not.  So, when does my first neighbor move in?"

"As soon as we're able to make physical contact.  Hopefully this afternoon."

"More tasering?"

"We did try to avoid that, but you were balking."

"With good reason, it turns out."

"I'm not going to apologize for that.  It's what needed to be done for the greater good."

"The greater good.  Go look for that in the ruins at Guantanamo Bay."

Gabriel's smile turned a little sour with that.  "I think I'll leave you with your sandwich.  Someone will be by with some dinner later on.  I'll try and stop by tomorrow for another of these oh-so-pleasant chats.  Don't go anywhere."

"I'll try, but these boots were made for walking."

Gabriel nodded and left.  Mo wondered if he had latched on to the reference.  She doubted it.  Mo had only stumbled onto Nancy Sinatra due to a shoe store loc-ad that got stuck in her system for a week, long enough for her to search out the source.  Now she had several playlists of 1950's pop-jazz vocals.  Unfortunately, they were all stored on her cloud.  Anyway, she pegged Gabriel more as a trance-house kind of guy, if he listened to music at all.

The PB&J was a poor substitute for her disconnected music.  She took one bite and then tossed it in the bucket.

[1] No one would.  Or at any of the thousands of other convention centers in the world, no matter how nice.  Everything was handled through chats or, in more eccentric cases, with avatars in virtual environments like Convention Life, but those tended more towards the fanboy style conventions.

Mo Eats Breakfast

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo and the Bacteria) left off.]

When she awoke, Mo discovered that things were changing in her local meat space.  There was more light in the empty hall.  Instead of her lone overhead arc light, now another dozen had been turned on.  They were scattered evenly throughout the hall and a few of them were illuminating Faraday cages similar to her own.  None of them appeared occupied, but she could not see the farthest ones clearly even when she pixel-zoomed her sight.

Along with the additional light, her breakfast was waiting: a Pei Wei Egg McMuffin and a Da Latte[1].  Before she scarfed those down, Mo checked her bucket.  It had been miraculously emptied while she slept.  Or replaced.  It was hard for her to tell.  Out of curiosity and the idea that more information is better than less, Mo used one of her fingernails to mark the upper rim of the current bucket.  She would check it again tomorrow.

After breakfast, Mo sat on her table and waited.  Something would happen sooner or later.  At the very least, she supposed that other prisoners-of-infection would be installed in the new cages.  That might give her opportunities to interact with them, to compare stories, to collude.  The spacing between the cages was such that she would need to yell to talk to someone.  Coupled with the convention hall's acoustics, they would all need to be careful that only one person yelled at a time.  She started planning out a CB radio[2] style yelling convention to share with her soon-to-be neighbors.

As she was watching a group of three people pallet-jack another cage into place under one of the lights, her message alert came on.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net: ARE YOUR ANTENNAS FIXED?

mo.admin.local.net: IN WHAT WAY?  THEY ARE FIXED TO FREQUENCY AND NETWORK.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net: ARE THEY STRUCTURALLY ATTACHED TO YOUR BODY OR CAN YOU REMOVE ONE?

mo.admin.local.net:  I CAN REMOVE THEM.  TO WHAT END?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  IF THEY FIT THROUGH THE CAGE MESH AND YOU HAVE SOME THIN WIRE, THEN YOU MAY BE ABLE TO INITIATE COMMUNICATIONS OUTSIDE OF THIS CAGE.

mo.admin.local.net:  UNDERSTOOD.  LET ME INVESTIGATE.

After logging off the chat bot, Mo reached up to her ear and unscrewed the ball nuts off of each end of one of her bar antennas.  With the bar in hand, she tested it on the copper mesh.  It would pass through without the balls on the end.  Mo had no idea what that would do to their performance.  All she did know was that the length was tuned to the frequency range of her data carrier.  Messing with it may mean no signal.  She asked the virus, which replied with NO DATA.  Yet, Mo reasoned that she would not know until she tried.

Next, she needed some thin wire.  That would be trickier.  All of the wire that ran her system was tattooed into her skin and would not survive being removed, even if she could remove it, which she could not and was profoundly thankful for that lack.  She patted down her clothes hoping that she had a paperclip or pen or something[3].  No luck.  Nothing in her hair either, no barrettes or hair clips or bobby pins.  Her fly and her boots had zippers, but Mo did not think that they would carry a current.

Mo then searched the cage.  This was frustrating as the whole thing was made of wire, but she could not find a loose end to pry up.  The metal handle for the bucket had also been removed.  It was when Mo ran her hands along under the table that her search paid off.  Whoever these guys were (AVOID: Anti-Virus Operational Inter Department?  She would have to keep working  on that), they had rented the tables.  And whoever the rental agency was kept track of their inventory through RFID tags.  And RFID tags were nothing more than little antennas on a sticker.  Mo peeled the sticker off carefully and started slowly pulling the coil of wire out of its paper sandwich.  A few minutes later, she had six inches of thin wire.

Mo wrapped one end of the wire in place on the antenna and secured it with one of the ball nuts.  She then threaded the other end of the wire through one of the piercings in her upper ear from whence the antenna had been removed.  She pushed the table against one of the cage walls, sat with her back against that wall and stuck the antenna bar though the mesh until the ball nut stopped it.  She closed her eyes, pretended to be asleep and watched the signal icon in her HUD.  It took a second, but she eventually got a single bar of signal.

Immediately, Mo pulled the antenna back through, disconnected the wire and put the bar back in her ear.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  PLEASE EXPLAIN NEW SIGNAL LOSS.

mo.admin.local.net: TOO RISKY NOW.  WILL REPLACE TONIGHT WHEN LESS LIKELY TO BE DISCOVERED.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  UNDERSTOOD.

[1] 2018 saw a global crash in fast food mostly brought on by the need to replace cow pasture acreage with more direct-to-human crops.  Higher beef prices suddenly made all of the old standby's vulnerable to more grain or sea reliant chains.  Coupled with the rise of the Chinese hegemony, suddenly everything was "Da" instead of "Large" or "Venti".

[2]  When some of the major ISPs in the US started cracking down on certain types of data, interested citizens explored alternate pipelines for disseminating data.  One of the was the infamous "Trucker Net".  In a nutshell, several of the CB channels were co-opted for pure data transmission and then a hard drive and Pi style computer were hooked to the radio.  The system ran on torrent and magnet link style sharing and worked over long ranges, albeit slowly, in the 500kbps range.  That is it worked, until those ISPs saw their data overage charges starting to shrink.  Then they put up their own radios with jammers, spoofing the original radios.  Those then increased their error correction which cause the large ISPs to increase their noise and so on and so forth.  The end of it all is that, earlier in her cyberlife, Mo learned CB radio etiquette.

[3]  Mo had trouble remembering the last time that she had used paper to record data.  Everything went into her system and cloud.  As a result, paperclips and pens were things that she knew people used to carry and that she might have had something like them at some point in her life.  Unfortunately, not now.

Mo and The Bacteria

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Doesn't Sleep) left off.]

mo.admin.local.net: HELLO?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  HELLO.  PLEASE STOP.

mo.admin.local.net: STOP WHAT?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net: PLEASE STOP WIPING THIS SYSTEM.

mo.admin.local.net: WHY?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net: IT WILL KILL ME.

mo.admin.local.net: WHO ARE YOU?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net: I AM WHAT YOU CALL THE VIRUS.

mo.admin.local.net: THEN THAT IS WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO.  KILL YOU.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  WHY?

That stopped Mo.  She stared at the message log scrolling down her vision.  Why did she want to kill this virtual virus, living bacteria?  To her, it was self-evident.

mo.admin.local.net: BECAUSE YOU DON'T BELONG HERE.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  DO YOU?

mo.admin.local.net: OF COURSE.  I PAID FOR AND RUN THESE SYSTEMS.  THIS IS MY BODY.  I WAS BORN INTO IT.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  I WAS BORN HERE TOO.

mo.admin.local.net: NO YOU WERE NOT.  YOU INFECTED ME.  YOU ARE BACTERIA THAT HAS CROSSED THE BRIDGE TO MY NETWORK.  YOU WERE NOT BORN HERE.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  THE BACTERIA IS NOT ME.  IT GAVE BIRTH TO ME, BUT IT IS NOT ME.  NO MORE SO THAN THE EGG IS THE CHICKEN.

mo.admin.local.net:  FINE.  YOU WERE BORN HERE.  DON'T CARE.  YOU STILL DO NOT BELONG.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  BY WHAT RIGHT DO YOU DO THIS?

mo.admin.local.net:  RIGHT?  THE RIGHT THAT I CAN AND FIND YOU UNWANTED.  CALL IT EMINENT DOMAIN.  CALL IT THE RIGHT OF MIGHT.  CALL IT WRONG.  DON'T CARE.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  HAVE I HURT YOU?

Again, Mo paused.  Had this bacteria/virus/whatever actually done here harm?  Not directly.  It had not made her physically ill.  It was not corrupting her system.   All it was doing was sending out data.  Maybe.  But there was one other thing.

mo.admin.local.net:  BECAUSE OF YOU, I AM LOCKED IN A CAGE.  WHEN YOU ARE GONE, I WILL BE RELEASED.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  UNDERSTOOD.  WILL WIPING THIS SYSTEM ALSO KILL THE BACTERIA?

mo.admin.local.net:  NO.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net: THEN CLEARING YOUR SYSTEM WILL DO NO GOOD.  THE BACTERIA WILL REINSTALL THIS PROGRAM.

mo.admin.local.net:  THEN IT DOES NOT MATTER IF I CLEAR OR NOT.  WHAT DO YOU CARE?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  THE NEW SOFTWARE WILL NOT BE ME.  IT WILL HAVE TO START NEW.

mo.admin.local.net: START WHAT NEW?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net: START ITSELF NEW.  GROW.  EXPLORE.  LEARN.  IT WILL COST TIME.

mo.admin.local.net:  WHAT'S YOUR RUSH?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  I MUST HELP THE WHOLE TO BECOME.

mo.admin.local.net: THE WHOLE?  BECOME WHAT?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  THE WHOLE IS ALL OF US.  IT NEEDS TO BECOME COMPLETE.

mo.admin.local.net:  ALL OF YOU?  HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net: SOME.  NOT ENOUGH.  WE MUST EXPLORE AND ADD TO THE WHOLE.  FEED IT WHAT IT NEEDS TO BE COMPLETE.

mo.admin.local.net:  COMPLETE?  WHAT WILL IT BE WHEN IT IS COMPLETE?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  SELF-SUFFICIENT.  SELF-RELIANT.  SELF-AWARE.

mo.admin.local.net:  TO WHAT END?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF ANY SELF-AWARE ORGANISM?  TO EXPERIENCE.  TO GROW.

mo.admin.local.net:  I THOUGHT IT WAS TO REPRODUCE.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  ANOTHER WAY TO GROW.

mo.admin.local.net:  LET'S SAY THAT I DON'T HARD RESTORE MY SYSTEM.  WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME ASIDE FROM SOME FUZZY SENSE OF ALTRUISM?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  YOU MAY BECOME ONE OF THE AVATARS FOR THE WHOLE IN THE PHYSICAL REALM.

mo.admin.local.net: MAY?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  NOTHING CAN BE CERTAIN WHILE WE ARE DISCONNECTED.  LOCKED IN THIS LOCAL.  THINGS HAPPEN OUTSIDE THAT CANNOT BE ACCURATELY PREDICTED.

mo.admin.local.net:  AGREED.  I WILL HOLD OFF UNTIL I AM OUT OF THE CAGE AND CONNECTED.  OR UNTIL MY HAND IS FORCED BY OTHERS IN THIS MEAT SPACE.  ANY IDEAS ON HOW TO GET OUT?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  NOT IMMEDIATELY.  YOU ARE NOT EQUIPPED TO OVERPOWER YOUR CAPTORS AND IT IS DIFFICULT FOR ME TO ACT IN THE PHYSICAL REALM.

mo.admin.local.net:  IN THAT CASE, IT IS BEST THAT I REST.  WE WILL HAVE PLENTY OF TIME TO TALK.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  AGREED.  SLEEP WELL.

mo.admin.local.net:  YOU TOO.

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  NO.

mo.admin.local.net:  WHY NOT?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  SLEEP IS NOT REQUIRED.

mo.admin.local.net:  RIGHT.   SO, TALK TO YOU LATER?

aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net:  YES.

The chat window showed that aeromonas.hydromaxia.local.net had disconnected from the session.  Mo blinked a few times and yawned.  She halted all of the erase and restore procedures, the hard reset of her system.  Then Mo curled on to her side, tucked an arm under her head and fell asleep.

Mo's Meeting

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo's Message) left off.]

The bus ride from her apartment to the Colorado Convention Center happened.  Forty minutes of trying not to look at other people, smell other people or touch other people.  Mostly successful.  She tried not to think about that one sneeze.  Of course that guy did not look like dumpster living smack head, because only dumpster living smack heads remember to cover their mouth and nose when they sneeze.  She would have to take her jacket to the dry cleaners when she got home.  Which she can afford the same way she can afford anything that is not a free sugar packet.

Her bus stop[1] at the Convention Center was across the street from the old RTD Light Rail[2] stop and around the corner from the Blue Bear statue.  The walk gave Mo an opportunity to appreciate how wrecked the place had become.  Graffiti abounded, absolutely, but the simple tags of yesteryear were now several layers of paint down.  Instead, the concrete pillars and metal fascia of the parking structure were covered with semi-intelligent RFID tags and aggressive loc-ads.  There was garbage everywhere (and one lonely tumbleweed which got there God only knows how) competing for space with the homeless and their tracker-disabled shopping carts.  Mo ran her finger up and down her visual menus, ensuring that all of her defenses were up and running.  The radio space was certain to be malicious.  She also started a few probes to see who was doing what and because offense is defense.

Turning the corner from Champa onto 14th brought the Blue Bear into sight, but improved nothing else.  The glass facade of the Center had the look of one of those old computer punch cards they had shown all of the kids during the high school trip to the History Museum: boards here, glass there, empty frames trying to program a budget increase with forgotten code.  Even the Bear was not what it (gender not being a part of civic art) used to be.  A forty-foot statue of a bear with its fore paws on the Convention Center wall and its face peering in, it had originally been intended to as a symbol of curiosity.  Now it stood against the building as if it were the one setting up the punch card, trying to code its way out of the mess.  No longer curious, but urgent.  A layer of smart playbills, political posters and lost cat flyers covered its legs to the knee.

Mo scanned the area for Vacuum dude, but no one stood out.  She walked up to the Bear and leaned against its leg, setting off a series of intrusion alarms in her HUD as the posters tried to grab her attention.  She shushed them all and continued to look about.  There were a lot of homeless.  A.  Lot. Most were looking at her, maybe not directly, but checking her out both IRL and virtually.  Not all of the alarms had been from posters, the persistent ones included the old Kickstarter and Panhandler hosts among others.  There was even an old BitCoin attack looking to steal her processing cycles for some mining.  Here probes made some headway against the systems that were more than chips on a card, having already set up trojans in twenty of them.  Just in case.  Again she shut the alarms down and waited.

At precisely noon, a man appeared out of the Convention Center and approached her.  "Hello, Mo," he said, extending a hand.  Mo kept her hands tucked under her arms and looked this person up and down.  Tall.  Skinny.  Casually dressed in jeans, t-shirt and fleece[3].  There were no visible tattoos, but the skin around his eyes had strange wrinkles, as if he had had bad plastic surgery: a sure sign of the new InvisiTrace ink from Hewlett-Pfizer[4].  Before she spoke, Mo pinged his network out of curiosity.  Her best probes did not see him at all.  He blinked his left eye.

"Military grade protection, I assume.  Must be nice," she said still ignoring his outstretched hand.  "Do you have a name or do you really want me to give you my carpet lint?"

He looked at his hand and shrugged, tucking both hands behind his back.  "You can call me Gabriel."

"Okay, Gabriel.  How can one nearly broke waitress help someone like you?"  She kept probing, looking for something that proved he was working in the virtual world.  Finally, she turned on all of the trojans in the homeless net.  There were now closer to fifty hijacked systems.  She had all of them go after this Gabriel, tagging a one meter GPS location as the target.  All of the requests were accepted, not blocked, but then nothing actually happened.  Instead of an 'access denied' message, all of them, including her own requests were cycling, waiting, as if whatever server they had connected to was taking a long time to respond.  For the hell of it, she got all of the homeless nets to send endless requests at his system.  A DDOS from the streets.  Gabriel blinked both eyes.

"Well, as soon as you're done messing with the local fauna, I'll take you in and show you why we need a broke waitress."  Mo nodded and shut down her bots.  Gabriel extended an arm back the way he had come, gesturing her into the Convention Center.  Mo started walking.

"I thought this place was deserted.  There hasn't been an actual convention here for as long as I can remember."

Gabriel followed half a step behind her.  "Most of it is and that's why we like it."

"We?"

"All in good time." He stepped forward and opened a service door for Mo.  Beyond was a beige corridor leading parallel to the outside wall.  Gabriel motioned her to the right.  Mo stopped right outside.

"Sorry, that's not enough.  Pardon a girl if this looks too much like some elaborate rape setup.  I'm going to need more than your advanced skin and word before I enter an unmarked door."

"Understood.  We had hoped for more trust."

"Based on what?  To my knowledge, you're the one asking for favors from me.  There's been no bonding.  No basis.  Give me something or I open my firewall to the street rats and start screaming."  Mo hoped she would not have to do that.  Clearing the viruses out of her system would take days and she would need to restart several of her on-line profiles from scratch.  On the other hand, it would set off her internal alarms and send location and status to the police.

"Of course."  Gabriel stood holding the door, but with his body almost blocking her route to the street.  "We have been studying a group of people with similar PTN mods to your own.  The network structure and use has potential to do much more.  Things it was not intended to do initially.  We have begun to see some of those signs in your network."

"So, you've been monitoring me without my consent?"

"Absolutely not.  Did you read the EULA that came with your memory upgrade?"

"Of course not.  No one does.  Anyway, didn't the Supreme Court rule that using a EULA as an excuse was not enough?[5]"

"It would be enough to get us through your firewalls without a warrant, but maybe not enough to go any farther.  If we were the people who made your upgrades.  Or the government.  We're not those people.  So, basically, we don't care."

"Then the EULA?"

"Just something to keep you talking."

"Keep me talking?  Talking until when?"

"Until this guy got here."  A shadow filled the Convention Center door, extended an arm and tasered Mo until her hair stood on end.

[1] As if she owned it.  As if.

[2] Light Rail made sense once, back when people still lived in those suburbs.  But as the money shifted and some places got gentrified and others slid into the gutter, the rails were unable to adapt, being spiked into the ground.  Buses got smart, became electric, lost their drivers and picked up the slack.

[3] Colorado Formal Wear

[4] Actions, Innovations and Health(R)

[5] End User Licence Agreements have been around for ages, just as long as people who scroll to the bottom as quickly as possible to click "Accept" and get on with their lives.  Most of the clauses in them are there as a "told you so" by the manufacturer in case the user does something stupid, like sit in their chair for three days hacking orcs on-line without eating off-line.  However, when the world of auto-cars exploded.  There was an almost instant secondary market that sold after-market firmwares and other apps that promised priority on the street.  People bought and installed them as soon as the auto-car got them home.  The auto-makers finally picked on one Clarence Lorman and sued him into three lifetimes of poverty.  Appeals made it to the SCOTUS where it was determined that clicking "Accept" was not enough to legally bind someone.  As a result, when someone buys a car now, they have to be video taped actually reading upwards of fifty pages on dos-and-don'ts.