Hacking the Sun - The Re-Remake

Chapter 6 Hunting The Lynx 2/3

A pizza wrapped in a tortilla like a taco, the symbol of the great restaurant header Tacquizza, where the taco-wrapped pizza also served as the letter A. The shtick did not work as well for the Burger Queen across the street, for the B-shaped burger did not fill the seats.

Jessica entered Tacquizza from the back corridor, as a recycle bot tossed a hamburger in the Organic canister. Entered to white smoke, the sound of sizzling and rap battling then weaved through the kitchen line, where her boss, Eva, sang Italian while filling tacos. It may as well have been gibberish, rhyming gibberish. She could understand coworker Gus, who rapped his Spanish row and rolled pizza dough. Whether or not Gus and Eva understood each other was anyone's guess.

Eva hailed Jessica over heaps of sizzling meat. "Hey, Chetah! Primi ordini sono pronti!"

"Of course, they are!" Jessica replied. "Only thing faster than my delivery is your cooking!"

Italian laughter.

"Hey, Jess!" called Gus.

Jessica turned to meet the big grin on Gus's oily face.

"A priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a vegan enter a bar."

"You already told me that one, Gus!" She continued toward the counter.

"Ey, it's still funny!"

Per routine, Jess extracted two carriers at a time. Insulated packages and the occasional backpack cooler. Eva did not want to spend money on a stasis cooler, which meant no skate tricks when soda was involved

Navigating the suburbs was a fluid race. Jessica leaned on memory for GPS. Her goggles added x-ray vision, the lenses highlighting law enforcement and placing their red outlines against the blue of civilians. Red's proximity was all she needed to gauge whether or not she could skip roads or grind rails. The ability to see through walls definitely helped.

"Play 'Crash' by The Primitives."

The sight of an Azarean guard brought her to a screeching halt. A member of NSS: New Sumer Security had appeared around the corner block. He was idle on his bike, outside the McDonough's restaurant. No one seemed to pay him any mind as he sat there, drinking whatever Azareans drink from his plastic bottle.

A sense of irony simmered in Jessica's stomach as she stepped outside the McDonough's restaurant, but there were more deliveries to make. Apparently, one of those deliveries required an excursion into the inner city.

Break time.

"The thing about questions is they need answers," Jessica mused. "Unless you're like Adam, equations need solving and encryptions need breaking." The apple in her hand, she took a bite and savored the juice. Man is the retarded scrivener grasping at recollections of perfection. "You only need one off-note to bring down the symphony. So, imagine how the story would change if God was the Snake and the Devil made Eden."

Her black hair fluttered in the wind as she leaned on the edge of an inner-city roof, a delivery box at her feet. Her eyes swept unadulterated sky and fell on the skyscraper directly across, the word Goliath specular and bright. She thus descended the building, steadily, and checked both sides of the street before crossing.

Within the megastructure, she found an immaculate white lounge. A crescent counter controlled the rear wall, where staff sat glued to their terminals. Everywhere else, propaganda decorations: a loop of advertisements, AEF posters, and silent holograms broadcasted human-alien homogeny. And of course, the symbol of Goliath was emblazoned on the mysterious leviathan of a spaceship that nobody recognized. It lived within a great green banner; the first thing people saw upon entry.