Information: Dark Matter Volume 1

Chapter 10

Version of 2023 August 09

A blue message icon flashed in Ari's glasses as she lay napping on the couch in her apartment. Around her boxes were stacked and labeled, waiting for the courier. Not a lot of stuff for her years here. She'd thought about just dumping it all. But no, she cared about some stuff, and while Spaceboy had been generous in his payment, it would still cost a lot to replace other parts. Better to send it to her sister before she hit the road. She didn't want to stay here in Vancouver. So time to move on. Her sister would say shit when all this stuff arrived, but she'd understand. That's the one thing sis was good for—she was understanding.

She sent a mental command to open the message app.

Hello Ari. The text popped into an open box. There was no accompanying ID.

What kind of crap was that? Phish? Legitimate and scraped clean? No one pulled that kind of shit. A legitimate ID was required if you wanted to be taken seriously. There was too much junk floating, run by AI, just waiting for your attention, and then either infiltrate your gear or your brain. So everyone was scrupulous about accurate ID on anything they expected to be taken seriously. Come to think about it, how did it even get past her filters? She turned it off.

The icon flashed again.

Seriously? She opened it again.

Colin says hello. We have more work for you. Still no ID.

Shit, was this Spaceboy and his invisible companion? She'd finished with that, and no more. That was an accident waiting to happen. There was nothing she wanted from him. Well, nothing more than to find out the truth, but security beat truth nine days in ten and this wasn't day ten. But if it was Spaceboy, then how was he doing this? He had her contact details. Why not just call? Why this strange third party weirdness? She thought about it. Was this his fucking alien? If so, what was going on? She hadn't heard anything in three weeks and certainly wasn't expecting anything now.

Also, there was no way that alien had been able to do anything like this. Back then all it had been able to do was send super creepy feelings into her head. If it had gone from that to hacking the communications network and emulating a legitimate device, then that was one heck of a steep learning curve it had just climbed. But if not the alien, then whom?

That was an interesting thought—had he found someone else to work with? He struck her as kind of an independent loner type. Highly sociable people did not normally get implants stuck in their heads—a sure route to being on the outside. Becoming an Auggie was for obsessively competent people who didn't need a lot from others.(!) They did the work on their own. It was what their implants were for. So no, probably it was the alien—an alien with scary-fast learning abilities.

And what did it mean, "more work"? The pay last time had been good. Lots of money was always good and she hated to pass it up—better connect. She dragged herself upright. How should she respond? What did she want? Besides the money? There needed to be something serious in this because it would mean going back into the world of utter weirdness and being chased by unknown organizations with large computers. Put it that way and the answer was, she wanted nothing. There was too much risk.

She laughed to herself at that. Too much risk? For someone who free-climbed? Who was she kidding. But this was not the type of risk she wanted. This was the type of risk she avoided. Fuck. What should she do?

Blackleaks would like to know what was going on. They were already disappointed she hadn't given them more on Spaceboy and what was happening. People had figured out enough to know she was reasonably certain that her client had connected with an alien. This was an important story; a genuinely important story of the type that Blackleaks was determined to make public. Humanity needed to know. If this was the long looked for first contact with an alien people, then there was nothing more important. And if this was proof of a cover-up of a first contact that had been going on for years, then it was a crisis. They wanted more. And she had run away.