Nano Bytes - A Collection of Short SciFi Stories

Rogue, by EvaOxum

When you've been on this job as long as I have, nothing surprises you anymore. Not the rotting corpses of kids forced to make snuff Holos before they're put to the knife. Not the flayed leftovers of entire crews still clinging to life in ghost ships hovering in the emptiness of deep space. Not even the artwork of that sick Martian fucko who'd stacked his victim's dismembered bodies in a gallery and had the audacity to charge admission.

Nothing, except...

"That's nasty!" The DockMaster almost vomits into her VacSuit's helmet. You know it's bad when even a Dyeuan doesn't have the stomach to handle something this vile.

"Yep," I say. Three hundred and sixty-two Gaian souls crammed together like worthless cargo under a rickety mosca's floorboards, data slaves packed tight. No space to breathe or eat or shit or even to be human anymore. Their final hours of life spent plugged in, their brains strung out and intertwined to create a Data Node of living computers, their neural Core® strained beyond the point of flaming out. And for what? More processing capacity for the Blockchain? Better quantum computing power for mining CryptoCoins and running cat videos on the Vine?

This is more than just nasty. More than just fucking sick. All these people, men and women, babies too young to be off their Momma's tits yet they've got more BioJack processors in their bodies than actual human cells. In some places, members of the Node are still linked together, their brains clumped as one, limbs and innards pocked and bubbling like stew on the cooker. How horrible were their last hours? Huddled together like this, dying all over each other, waiting for their BioJacks to flame out as their bodies filled to bursting with fluids.

The animals who ran this off-grid Data Node should swing from the gallows.

"Uh! Smells ripe! At least a month old. Maybe longer." I hear the DockMaster fiddle with her VacSuit's controls and call up Atmospherics to filter the air inside her helmet. Of course, she can't smell anything inside that thing. You'd have much bigger problems if you started smelling anything while strapped into a Vac, but no use telling her that. It's a thing with the local Law in this sector; they don't like outsiders telling them how to run their own crime scenes. It's bad enough that an Out-Cloud, blue-skinned Centauri bitch like me is here stirring up trouble with the humans.

"This what ya looking for, na'san?" her question has bite to it, voice grated impossibly rough by anger and too much hard living.

"Yes."

The DockMaster tilts her head as if listening to something in her audio-pack. Perhaps, one of her deputies giving an update. She growls back, "firewall it and bring it up." Then she turns to me and says, "we found a rogue processor."

"A survivor?! Why are you firewalling the poor thing?"

"For your safety, na'san." There's that nasty word again. Fucking Dyeuans! How would she like it if I called her a p'twav? My forehead's bone sacs grumble, but I keep my peace. This case is bigger than some causal human racism.

In the meantime...

"Why're ya really here?" she asks when the silence and her own mistrust finally get to her.

"It's just a standard security check for all IDNs on the network, Officer Itzuao."

"Bullshit! ATK sent ya, didn't they? Corporate assholes never trust us."

Sigh. "Security is paramount for every Data Node across the Heliosphere..." so don't flatter yourself is what I want to add. Humans can be so exasperating sometimes.

"Like fuck it is," she growls beneath her breath. Can't say I blame her. Gaians, Martians, Dyeuans, Kuiperians, if humans can barely stand each other, then how can there be any hope for Centauri-human relations? Too much bad blood and planet-destroying Quant-bombs mixed together. No Peace Accord could fix that mess in just a few generations.