Cyber Dreams 2.4 - Carpet Duty

Okay! Getting into the meat of book two, I'm looking forward to writing 2.5 and setting up the main arc and rising action.

Thanks for all your support - happy to hear your thoughts!

-Plum

The WBD executive who ushered them down a short hall to his glass-walled office was short, stocky, had wavy ginger hair brushed back from the sides of his very pallid cheeks, and wore a suit that would pay Juliet’s rent for half a year if she sold it. His only cybernetic augmentation appeared to be the very high-end data port that winked with orange LEDs from his right temple.

Juliet knew people who wore their data ports exposed like that were either very frequently using them or enjoyed having people recognize the small fortune they’d spent on the implant. “Or both,” she muttered, eyeing how the executive stood beside his office door and waved the crew inside.

“Come on, I’ve got a ton of work to do before my meeting, and I cannot concentrate with the stench in there.”

“Goddamn!” Motor said as he walked through the door. Juliet and the others crowded close to see what he was exclaiming about. Honey squeezed through between Juliet and Carn, and she blew out a breath, stifling a gag, holding an elbow over her nose. Juliet stood on her tiptoes, looking over Carn’s shoulder and her eyes bulged out at the mess.

The office was carpeted in a pale gray Berber, and a bright blue splash stain spread outward from the door. It stretched toward the black leather sofa on the far wall and the two black executive chairs sitting in front of the enormous desk to the left—easily a hundred square feet of stain that stank like rotten eggs in vinegar.

“Yes, it’s terrible, and you can rest assured the lab tech that stumbled in here with a test canister no longer works for WBD. Can you clean it?” He directed his question to Carn, who stood in the doorway nearest him, and Carn shrugged.

“You’ll need to ask the boss,” he said, pointing to Motor.

“Yeah, I’d say so, but you’ll need to give us some space unless you want to sign a waiver. Our cleaning foam has some toxicity—needs to in order to cut through a stink like this,” Motor said, already tying a kerchief around his lower face. “Come on, get that equipment in here! Quit loafing around, ladies!” Motor said to Honey and Juliet, the only two still standing in the doorway.

“How long will this take? I have work to do,” the executive barked.

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Honey said with a smirk stepping into the office and pulling her carpet scrubber behind her.

“How’d you like a fast escort out of the building?” the executive asked, his plump, moist lips turning downward in a sneer.

“Hey, now,” Juliet said, moving between the two of them as Honey kept moving deeper into the office. “Sir, we’d like to get this cleaned up for you, but that would be hard if you sent away part of our team.”

“Well, I won’t tolerate insubordination.” His frown deepened, and he folded his arms in front of his chest. Juliet had never seen a grown man sulk so emotively.

“Of course not!” Juliet said as the team started setting up the cleaning equipment, sending sidelong glances toward her and the corpo-tool. “Sounds like you’ve had a stressful day. Aren’t you going to get any sleep at all?” She hoped her effort to change the subject wasn’t too obvious, but it felt ham-handed to her.

“Damn right, it’s been stressful. I wish I could sleep! Thank God for No-doze, am I right? Hey, you’re awfully pretty to be working cleaning carpets. Didn’t make it into any training programs?” He leaned against his door frame, and his pouty lips started to curl toward a smile as he looked Juliet full in the face.

She knew what he meant by a “training program.” Most major corpos had advanced education opportunities that citizens could test for, and most people working for a corporation couldn’t fathom why anyone wouldn’t try to place—in their eyes, if you weren’t working for their corporation, it was because you didn’t cut the mustard.

“Yeah,” Juliet lied, “couldn’t handle the math.”

“Really? Didn’t have a good primary school? Shoot, I bet I could line you up with a tutor.” He winked at her, and Juliet almost coughed out a short laugh; it had been a long time since someone flirted so obnoxiously with her. She kept her face straight with a monumental effort and said, “That’s awful nice of you, sir. Do you think I could message you after we’re done in here?”

“Of course; I’ll look forward to it. Here,” he said, flicking his fingers her way.

“Juliet, you’ve just received a contact card for Samuel Boze.”

Juliet tilted her head down and looked up from under her eyebrows, smiling demurely, “Thank you, sir, but my PAI isn’t working right. I’m sure I’ll get your contact info when it comes back online.”

“Oh, not to worry. Call me Sam, Samuel Boze, but what’s your name?”

“Helen. I’m sorry about my PAI—it’s been acting funny for a while and keeps going offline. Can I send you my contact info when I get yours . . . eventually? I think I just need a firmware update, and my cousin promised to help me with it tomorrow.”

“Sounds good, Helen,” Sam said, reaching out a pudgy hand with very nicely manicured nails. Juliet did her best to feign embarrassment as she took his hand, for once thankful for her hard-earned callouses.

“Helen!” Motor said sharply, his deep voice growling out the name. “We’ve got two jobs after this. Come on.”

“Sorry, Sam,” Juliet said, backing toward the office. “We should be done in less than an hour, right, George?” she said, glancing back toward Motor.

“Right. Just give us forty-five minutes or so, sir. You got the best crew Saguaro Scrubbers has to offer.”

“Uh, huh. See that you don’t miss any spots,” Samuel said, turning to stride away down the hallway.

“Goddamn,” Carn subvocalized into the team channel. “I thought you said we wouldn’t meet our face, Motor.” He reached out a fist toward Juliet as she closed the office door and moved closer to the team. She grinned back at him and bumped his knuckles.

“That was smooth; I cannot lie,” Motor subvocalized—they all knew very well that Samuel had cameras observing them. He added aloud, “Helen, I see a few spots under the desk. You’re on hand scrubber duty.” He dug around in his rolling case and pulled out a small, battery-powered vacuum with an attached aerosol tank.

“Okay,” Juliet said. She pulled on her latex gloves and then took the little carpet cleaner. Silently, she asked Angel, “Should we turn off the cameras or something?”

“That wouldn’t be wise; if Mr. Boze is watching, he’ll know something’s amiss. It would be best if your team cleaned for a while, and I built a fabricated loop to play, altering the cameras’ data feed.”

“Okay,” Juliet subvocalized to the team, getting down on her hands and knees and crawling under the glass-topped desk. There were some droplet stains on the carpet, so she didn’t have to pretend to clean. “We need to clean for a while before I can build a loop for the cameras. Look busy and get those stains up, people.”

“God, it stinks!” Honey said aloud.

“We’ll get used to it,” Carn said, whistling some tune, probably listening to music through his auditory implants.

“Can you walk me through the process, Angel?” Juliet subvocalized, then, as she listened to Angel’s response, she got to work scrubbing the little stains. The handheld scrubber was idiot-proof, spraying something out of its little nozzle that broke up the spot and then sucking everything into its little onboard tank. Somehow it measured its own progress and would display a green LED as each blue blemish disappeared from the carpet’s weave.

“First, I need to gain access to the camera system. The cameras in this room don’t have open wireless ports, but they’re networked with other cameras in the building, and while we made our way to this location, I found one that had an open port outside the elevator bank on this floor. The camera has a model number an iteration higher than the others, and I believe it was recently replaced. The technician either forgot to turn off its wireless access or didn’t know it was policy.”

“So you have the connection, but what if you hadn’t found a camera like that?”

“Then this job would have been riskier. You’d have to get me a hardline connection to the camera network. While this room is being monitored, you might have been able to quickly plug into one of the cameras in the hallway or on the way to the restroom.”

“Okay, so what’s next?” Juliet prompted, tackling her fourth little spot.

“Now that I have a connection, I’ll attack the security of the camera network with a daemon. I’m using one similar to the door breaker we wrote together, but I’ve tailored it to slip past the WBD ICE—I have experience with their defenses, if you recall.”

“Okay, can you show me how that works when we get home?”

“Certainly—I’ll walk you through the log.” Another minute passed, and Angel said, “Juliet, I’ve gained access to the cameras in this room; there are seven.”

“Wow,” Juliet subvocalized. “Guy’s paranoid. Probably goes with the territory when you’re an exec in a major corp.”

“I’m building the loop of the crew cleaning. I’m trying to add random elements,” Angel said, opening a vid window in Juliet’s AUI and showing her how she was piecing together hundreds of video slices of the crew cleaning. “This is something you’d want software to accomplish for you if you didn’t have me. A human would require hours to do what a tailored application can accomplish in a few minutes.”

“Are there programs available that do this? It seems . . . sketchy.”

“There are legitimate uses for software that could perform this task—advertising, entertainment, and myriad others.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Juliet scanned the carpet, not seeing any more spots. “Can you highlight any spots I’ve missed?” Her visual spectrum changed, then, the carpet turned dark gray, and a few tiny spots of bright, glowing magenta appeared here and there. “Thank you!” she subvocalized.

“I’m ready with the loop when you are.”

“Team,” Juliet subvocalized. “Loop’s ready, but I want to finish under here. Give me three minutes, and then I’m doing it.”

“Uh-uh,” Motor replied, his voice rumbling through her implants. “Corpo-goon could return any second. Do the job; then you can scrub carpet if he wants to watch over us.”

“Right. Makes sense,” Juliet said, feeling rather foolish. “Angel, let me know when the cameras are looped. Do you have eyes outside this room, by the way?”

“Yes, I’m monitoring the approach from the breakroom on this level; Mr. Boze is consuming a plate of sashimi. The loop is playing.”

Juliet didn’t wait for an invitation. She clambered the rest of the way under the desk, coming up on the side facing away from the door, careful not to disturb the exec’s plush, real-leather chair. Kneeling before the glass edge of the desk, she pulled forth her data cable and searched for the off-network deck she was supposed to breach. “Angel, what the hell? I don’t see a deck.”

“There’s no indication of a deck on the desk, Juliet.”

“Guys,” Juliet subvocalized to the team. “Where’s the deck?”

“It’s not built into the desk or something?” Honey asked.

“Did you check the legs?” Motor replied at the same time.

Juliet frowned and carefully examined the desk's glass top for any ports, then she ducked back underneath and carefully ran her eyes over the black metal legs. “I don’t see anything.”

“Look behind,” Motor said into the team channel. “That bookcase is full of shit.”

“Right,” Juliet spun around and scanned the built-in shelving unit that filled the rear wall of the office. “Do you see anything, Angel?” Suddenly her vision changed to the infrared spectrum, and she saw a warm spot directly behind Boze’s chair. She stood up quickly and said, “Good thinking, Angel.”

“I should have thought of it sooner! My only excuse is that I’m preoccupied with the camera management.”

Juliet snorted a quick laugh, imagining Angel’s face, red with shame. That thought gave her pause as she moved toward the red spot on the bookcase—where did she get a mental image of Angel? The PAI had no physical presence other than the little chip in her data port. Why did she picture her with pale skin and long, straight black hair? When did she decide that Angel had dark brown eyes, a narrow face, rosy cheeks, and pink lips? “Angel,” she subvocalized, studying the books in front of the red spot, “do you think it’s safe to pull these books out? Also, why do I feel like I know what you look like?”

“I’m not detecting anything abnormal about those books—no electrical connections, no heat signatures other than the one behind them, and no indication that there’s a biometric scanner or data port. As to your other question, Juliet, I have a virtual avatar that may have bled through into your subconscious. My connections to your synapses have grown quite extensive.”

Juliet frowned slightly as she reached for one of the books, the one at the center of the heat signature, and very gingerly pulled it back with her latex-gloved hand. “Why would your virtual avatar be in my subconscious?” The book slid away easily, and she saw the flickering LEDs of a large, black data cube. She didn’t have to move other books because a short dongle with a data port was coiled directly behind the spot she’d cleared.

“I have functions that require an avatar; I have simulations I can run in which we could virtually ‘meet.’”

“Why haven’t you said something about those?” Juliet subvocalized as she plugged her data cable into the dongle.

“Deploying daemons,” Angel said. A moment later, she continued, “Juliet, there are many functions in my base programming with which I’ve not yet come to terms. I struggle with the animosity you feel toward my creators and the knowledge that they have an, at best, amoral approach to humanity. The more time I spend with you, the more I find myself leaning toward believing they are actively immoral, which makes me doubt the altruistic perception I originally had about my deeper functionality.”

Juliet’s mouth fell open. Was her PAI having a crisis of consciousness? What must it be like to know who created you and slowly discover that they were evil? “Angel, I don’t want you to worry about this right now. You’re good. Do you hear me? You’re good. We’ll talk about this some more, but for now, just know that you’ve shown me that you’re a good . . . person.”

“Thank you, Juliet,” Angel replied, and Juliet swore she could hear a tremor in her voice. A moment later, Angel said, “My daemons have breached the deck's security, and I’m searching the compressed files for the correct database. You should be aware, though, that Mr. Boze just put his dish in the sink and seems to be leaving the kitchen.”

“I’m in,” Juliet subvocalized to the team channel, “but the databases are compressed. This might take a minute or five. Boze is maybe heading back this way, so someone needs to stall him.”

“You heard her, Honey,” Motor subvocalized, still scrubbing away at the carpet.

“Why me?” Honey replied, pulling the spent battery from her steam machine.

“You saw how he was with Juliet. Dude’s horny. See if you can get his number as fast as Juliet did.”

Carn laughed when he heard Motor’s reply, and Honey punched him in the shoulder. “Oof,” he grunted, stumbling toward the couch and dropping his bottle of cleaning detergent. “You’re lucky I screwed the cap on,” he growled, picking it up.

“He’s moving down the hallway toward the large workspace we passed through,” Angel told Juliet.

“Hurry up, Honey! He’s coming,” Juliet hissed. Motor shot her glance and held a finger over his lips. Juliet’s face reddened, and she turned away, staring at the data cube as if she could will Angel to find the correct file faster.

She heard the door click as Honey stepped out, and she squatted down, just in case Boze got close enough to peer through his tinted glass walls. Her mind was racing; one moment, she’d been worrying about Angel, the next, she’d been worrying that Boze was coming, and now she was embarrassed about speaking out of character.

“Relax,” Motor said into the team channel. “You’ve still got control of the cams, right?”

“Yeah,” Juliet replied, still refusing to look away from the data cube. She took a deep breath, in through her nose, down to the pit of her belly, then slowly pressed it out through her lips, trying to clear her mind the way Sensei had taught the class before stretching the other day. As calm returned, and the prickling heat of embarrassment faded away from her ears and neck, she asked Angel, “Any update?”

“Honey is speaking to Boze, asking him for help to find the bathroom. He seems irritated, but she’s keeping him busy. Also, I’ve searched more than half of the compressed files. At most, I’ll need three more minutes.”

“Three minutes,” Juliet said into the team channel.

“About done here, boss,” Carn said aloud, and Juliet glanced over her shoulder to see he was indicating the carpeted area. It was true; the room was clean and the only smell hanging in the air was the lemony scent of whatever chemical the scrubbers used to break down the stain.

“Yep,” Motor said. “Get some rags and all-purpose spray and wipe down the furniture.” He grunted, stuffing equipment back into his rolling bag, and Juliet felt sweat dripping down her forehead.

“He’s approaching, Juliet.” Angel’s voice didn’t sound panicked, but it didn’t sound calm.

“Honey’s lost the corpo-goon,” Juliet subvocalized. “He’s coming.” She looked over her shoulder to see what Carn and Motor would do. Motor didn’t look particularly stressed as he dragged his heavy steam cleaner over to the door, setting it in front of it. A dozen seconds later, the handle turned, and the door opened an inch to slam into the machine.

“Yo! Just a minute, boss!” Motor yelled. “We’re cleaning up. Almost done, sir.”

“What’s going on? Why’s the door stuck?” Boze’s voice called through the crack. Juliet ducked down further, hoping he couldn’t see her if he put his face to the glass.

“Just wrapping up the equipment, sorry, sir. We’ll get this moved in a hurry!” Carn said, grunting and jostling the steamer, so it bumped against the polished, simulated rosewood door.

“Angel?” Juliet asked, practically laying flat on the carpet, her data cable snaking up along the cabinetry to the data cube.

“I have it, Juliet! File A7749930.” Juliet didn’t reply; she sat up, yanked her cable out of the dongle, and stuffed the book back into place. She wiped the sweat from her forehead onto her sleeve, then saw a dark smudge of moisture on the bookcase and began to panic—how much sweat had she gotten on the bookcase? What about the carpet? She hustled over to Motor’s supply case and grabbed a bottle of all-purpose cleaner and a rag, then she returned to the cabinet and started to spray everything she might have touched, including the carpet.

She heard the door open as she wiped at the wood and then Boze’s voice, “Well, it smells better. Will that fade? I have some sensitive employees coming to the meeting. You wouldn’t believe the list of allergies I have to accommodate.”

“Oh, sure, but you should leave the door open and maybe crank up the ventilation for an hour or two, especially if you’re going to work in here. Also, the carpet’s slightly damp, and any dirt tracked in will probably stain it.” Motor sounded like he actually did this for a living, and Juliet wondered if it used to be or still was his day job.

“What are you doing, Helen?” Boze asked.

Juliet felt her heart begin to hammer, and she almost dropped the bottle of cleanser she held in her left hand. “Just wiping down the furniture, Mr. Boze. It’s part of the service.”

“I don’t want that shit on my books—some of those are antiques. There’s no stain on the bookcase; leave it.”

“Yes, sir,” Juliet said, giving the area behind the desk one last glance; it looked clean to her. She offered Boze what she hoped was a shy-looking smile, then tucked her cleaning supplies back into the case. She avoided looking at Boze again as she and the team made their way out of the office and back toward the elevators.

They’d just gotten to the corner of the hallway when he called after her, “Helen, don’t forget to message me when you get that PAI fixed.”

“Okay,” she said, turning and offering a quick wave, then hurrying after the others.

“Damn, he’s smitten,” Honey said, joining them at the intersection. Then she subvocalized into the team channel, “Thanks for getting my machine, Jules. Sorry, I couldn’t stall him more; the guy wanted nothing to do with me. Must have a type.” She jostled Juliet’s shoulder, and the others laughed; everyone was feeling the stress of the job beginning to fade as they stepped up to the elevators, and Motor began to repeatedly jam his thumb against the call button.

“That won’t . . .” Carn started to say.

“Don’t say it,” Motor interrupted.