FUNCTION-L₃ #19

In a metasensory flash you detect Akiko’s attack--you recognize it immediately, having been on the receiving end before. A glance into the top level of Marimo Noriko’s system shows the ports of her sensory input smothered with a flood of contradicting data, mathematically canceling everything her eyes and ears would send her. The program expands in a shockwave from Akiko in the near-æther, affecting each of the moss-cloaked technopaths in turn.

Coordinating her comrades by encrypted internal messages, Noriko backs off, leading the others to retreat from the alley, stopping at the edge without leaving you any escape. Akiko prepares her defenses for a counterattack, while Noriko and the other Marimo siblings try to reconfigure their systems to bypass Akiko’s sensory lock.

Noriko feels around the moss on the wall, then strikes a spot with a contact on the end of her staff. You feel a slight sense of induction in the full-body antenna stretching across your body. Then a black cloud covers your vision. You try to compensate, but the attack hits your body’s cough reflex--every breath is fire in your throat, your sinuses. Akiko crouches low, and you follow, reflexively trying to clear the air with your hands.

2255-01-16 16:02:30 Aydan > they’re hitting my respiratry control! can’t stabilize my bioreflexes!

2255-01-16 16:02:33 明子 > no, this isn’t technopathy!

You receive a sensory link request and connect to Akiko’s eyes, closing your own. Her thermal vision mode shows the enemy clearly, blocking your escape at both ends of the alley. In between, along the walls, you see several swirling clusters of powder flowing from along the path of a wire, concealed beneath the moss but glowing with warmth after the trap was triggered.

2255-01-16 16:02:37 明子 > puffball mushrooms triggered with an electric shock, never seen anything like it even in Reina’s garden

2255-01-16 16:02:40 Aydan > be impressed when we can breathe again!

2255-01-16 16:02:44 Aydan > are you sure it’s wise to fight such an unknown enemy here in their own terrain?

2255-01-16 16:02:47 明子 > I’m already sure it wasn’t! why did I provoke them!

2255-01-16 16:02:51 Aydan > I haven’t made them mad at me, maybe I can get them to stand down if you will

2255-01-16 16:02:56 明子 > worth a try! I’ll release the hearing lock on the leader

“Hey! Marimo sisters and such!” you shout in your best Japanese, “How about a truce? Let us get to fresh air and she’ll give you your vision back!”

“She struck first! Now you want to negotiate?!” Marimo Noriko shouts back. “Terminate all active processes in your systems and we’ll talk!”

You translate the auditory communication to Akiko into remote tactile sign through the open sensory link. Coughing and fighting for breath in the dense cloud of fungal spores, she responds:

2255-01-16 16:03:08 明子 > I don’t see much of a choice...we’ll be at their mercy but my body’s survival reflex won’t let me keep going here...

You feel the layers of Akiko’s technopathy drop from the æther one by one, ending with the closing of the channels between you. You comply, letting down your own defensive programs.

Akiko takes your hand and leads you out of the alley, toward Noriko, until the spores grow thin enough for you to take a breath. Your opponents back off to let you out of the cloud, but still keep a tight semi-circle blocking you from leaving.

Noriko waves the tip of her staff around Akiko’s head as she catches her breath.

“Don’t try to trick me, kid, it won’t work! I said all technopathy,” Noriko signs to Akiko.

“I can’t let that one go! Trust me you really don’t want--” Akiko signs.

“All, I said!” Noriko signs, sending instructions invisibly to her comrades, who tighten up the circle around Akiko and you.

Akiko sighs. “As you wish...”

The moment her final program terminates, she stands up, shaking her head, finding her balance. “Finally...” she signs, but something is off about the inflection of her sign. “Finally something interesting and she wants to keep me out of it?” She reaches a hand down to you, keeping her eyes fixed ahead, glowing red. “Come on Aydan, let’s have some real fun!”

“Oh no,” you say.

“You’re surrounded, hopelessly outnumbered and without your technopathy! You didn’t seem this foolish to me, Akiko of some corpo!” Noriko signs.

“Akiko’s out of our way now!” replies Akiko’s headmate, Anko, as the LEDs in his eyes go dark. He reaches into a pocket in Akiko’s skirt and draws a small handheld rod--swinging it outward, it grows, an expandable baton. With no hesitation he rushes at Noriko, striking hard. She evades him, and evades his next strike, watching his moves as she circles around him, until she sweeps at his legs in the middle of his next attack, at his moment of least balance. He hits the concrete floor--Noriko and another Marimo girl pin Anko down by his wrists and disarm him.

You move in to help, but the others have crossed the alley, and now surround you. One of them reaches for your neck, and you struggle, trying anything to pry her hands away from the core of your interface. But an enby beside you launches a program--through your lowered defenses, you feel a tightening sensation all over your body until your legs grow too weak to stand on, and you hit the ground next to Anko, your vision fading to harsh visual noise.

When your vision refocuses and your body can move again, you find yourself in a different spot--lying on a stone wall on the edge of a pond, its waters dark green--you can’t make out the bottom, you can only see the silhouettes of a multitude of mossy spheres under the water. Next to you lies Akiko--or Anko, breathing, but unresponsive. Turning your head spinward, you see the green-cloaked collective, one examining your interface collar in her hands, another looking over your terminal. Another admires Akiko’s coat, also removed from your body. You feel the outside of the pockets in your skirt, and breathe a sigh of relief as you feel the outline of ÆON’s root device, undisturbed. But without a functional interface, even ÆON can’t help you.

“‘Property of Redshift Security,’” says the girl with your terminal, reading the warning messages that flash on its display as an unauthorized user handles it.

“You think they’re CLI kids?” one girl says.

“No, this much trouble only comes from Translunar Academy,” a boy next to her says.

“It won’t be easy to get through this thing’s security,” says the one tampering with your terminal.

“Give that back!” you say.

“Oh, you can come plunder our city, but we have to respect your property?” she says.

“If you don’t, my company will send much stronger technopaths than me to find it!” you say.

“You’re right,” Noriko says. “And that would be such a bother. But we’ll hold onto them for you until we decide what to do with you.”

“I was just trying to stop this pointless fight,” you say. “This got way out of hand, we were just trying to--”

“To go down there, yeah?” Marimo Noriko points down with her staff. Looking down at the base of the wall you’re lying on, you see an open pit in the broken concrete floor--you can’t see the bottom. “I wonder how far a fall it is? It’s about 0.52G here on level 2. And who knows what kind of hard corners the coriolis force could carry your head into on the way down...”

“Can I just pay the toll now?!” you say.

“We already took our toll,” Noriko says.

You look down at the hand where your ID chip is implanted. It isn’t unthinkable that a technopath could have forced an unsecured payment from your account while you were incapacitated, but you can’t know whether it’s true without your interface and terminal. “Then how about letting us go, call it even?”

“Unfortunately, you chose the hard way. Now we have to decide how to send you where you so badly wanted to go ‘exploring.’”

“Hey, Noriko! I wonder how waterproof these pro-type systems are these days?” says a girl standing on the other side of the pond.

“What do you think, little...hmm...”

“Aydan! Aydan of Luna, of Redshift Security,” you say.

“Aydan... As you wish, we’ll send you down to level 1. You can take your chances with the pit, or you can take your chances with the water. Either way, you might get there, or you might die. What will it be?”