The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

B2/Chapter 16/Miss Foresworn

Through the power of sneaker-net I had made an appointment with the hacker group calling it's self Anonymity. Sensibly they wouldn't really talk online the machines would be watching. We had finally agreed to meet in public. The National Geographic Hotel was a massive old hotel on the edge of the city. Once millions of settlers had stayed here for a few days before moving off to bioms all over the planet. Now it was a dusty antique of its former glory. We knew the staff and the surveillance was weak. They had a large F**K cafe at one edge of a ball room. We hadn't known it but but today they were having a 'Tea and Dance' for the over 90's. Old people were slowly dancing, well shuffling, to old time favorites like Red, Shake it off and I knew you were Trouble. The old timers were so old they still called themselves colonists.

John had watched the members of Anonymity come in and wait. We had been through this a number of times. Checking each other out, not turning up, seeing if the place was surrounded by attack robots. Uriel, John and some others had gone in and sat watching the two men one huge, Martian-fat long unwashed hair and the other one small, dark black. We were excited to finally be meeting up with the real resistance. With any luck today we would join up with the adult resistance. Their disguises were good. You wouldn't suspect these guys of anything except a comic book trip to Firstfootprint city. I was wearing a wig, and enough makeup to fool automatic face recognition software. I thought it made me look older which was good.

I had approached them. We had got passed the pleasantries and the secret code words ( 'Flax' and 'samizdat' if you must. You try putting them into a sentence and not sounding lamely obvious your dropping code words).

"So you're the Shadow?" said the large one who called him self Bennie.

"Me ? No" I lied "I report to him. He trusts me. I can make deals for him."

"Hot girl like you? Are you like his girlfriend bud" said Bennie. His light hair bouncing like his chin when he talked.

I looked a Bennie.

"No," I said automatically in a just what slot package did you come from ? way.

"Does this mean your single?" said Bennie.

I looked at him for a second. Well, I guess he was direct and equally out of the ball park.

"We want to meet him in person," said the other small man.

"You don't meet him, he meets you," I said thinking I was really getting the hang of this talking tough stuff. I wasn't going to give anything away until we had more trust.

"I hear you guys are responsible for sneaker net?" I said.

"Yes we are," said Bennie proundly the other one put his hand on Bennies hand which was waving over the remains of a FIRK cake.

"We are also intermediaries," said the small one acting like a Maffia boss.

"Marko, I told you not to touch me yakwim. You don't touch the Bennie ever" Bennie said.

Marko turned to Bennie rolling his eyes "you used my name life form!"

"You used mine first bud!" said Bennie.

All I could think was if they ever made a film of this moment they would have to have subtitles on these guys. I was Eye born but with their south pole accents even I needed subtitles.

"If you noticed you used it first and I was using it like it was a fluteing code name,..." said Marko. Fluteing - they were so from southern Mars. I guess the resistance was strong there.

"Well I was using yours like a code na..." Bennie started.

"Look you guys have a long journey back to the southern rim " I said moving back to get up.