#38: Fic: Scurry
Title: Scurry
Fandom: Arashi
Summary: Cyberpunk AU. He wakes up from a dream in which he is flying.
Notes: A companion, of sorts, to Electric Sheep (And Other Dreamscapes). Thank you again to forochel for looking through this!
ENTER / 0931 BR TOKYO
ROUTE / MIE...
ROUTE // MIE / GATE / R3SXQ19
... DENIED
... DENIED
GATE / RUNNING PROG // xbreak
---- Scurry Transcript Truncated ----
He wakes up from a dream in which he is flying.
It is a good dream; delicious. He is piloting an old but beautifully calibrated Flash 460 that turns when he wants it to and cuts through the sky in a clean and endless arc.
The dream will haunt him for weeks.
Some mornings he just lies there watching the ceiling. He is aware of movement outside his room, of his mother making breakfast and his sister already gathering up her things and heading out to work. The house is never still. Its walls tremble from the roar of the surrounding generators and the patter of their neighbours’ footsteps. The irregular thud-thunk belongs to the old man one floor above them, his cybernetic leg just a fraction too heavy for the rest of his body. The light shuffle is the young lady who just visited a Temple and purchased a new arm. Or was it a leg?
It doesn’t matter, to Nino. He hears this all from his mother; vivid word-pictures of people he will never choose to see.
“We could go to a Temple,” his mother suggests.
“We don’t have the money,” he tells her.
“No,” she says, sadly. “We don’t.”
---- Resume Scurry ----
GATE / RUNNING PROG // xbreak
... ACCESS GRANTED
ENTER / 0931 BR TOKYO
... LOADING INTERFACE
The Space is like nothing he’s ever experienced before. Back in the force, he’d met his fair share of analysts and runners, but he’s never seen the appeal until now.
It unfolds before him, a sprawling landscape of light and colour; fearfully vivid, pulse frenetic. There is only one way to navigate the Space: by charging headlong into it, turning as the path turns, touching storage points and flickergates until he arrives at his destination. There is no time to pause and think, no time to retrace his steps. This, Nino is told, is why hackers call it the Scurry.
Nino has always been a fast learner. Now he gets commissions to enter the Space, shady money from shadier dealers. Saori. Vyes Group. CaseCorp. None of these systems can remain closed to him for long.
“I worry,” his mother tells him.
“What else can I do?” he asks, and it’s a genuine question, not the bitter lashing out he had been prone to in the first weeks after they rescued him.
We could rebuild you, the Saori Institute consultant had told him, nothing in his words or demeanour to suggest any compassion or concern. The medical officer dispatched by the force had stood beside the consultant, wearing an expression of unmistakable pity. Nino hadn’t been sure which he preferred.
There are no pensions for pilots. The injury payout had been used for ship repairs he owed the force. There would have been an investigation, but after the force had given Nino a promotion and quietly discharged him, he hadn’t seen the point.
His schedule is free today. The past week has been spent hacking a new fence Vyes Group put around their prototype bank. Nino had quoted his middleman for five man days, four days too many considering that he had been the one responsible for constructing the fence in the first place. He isolates his locality to a grid of sixteen flickergate points, and waits.
Other hackers have been here recently; he can recognise their signatures. A couple are military, he knows; he steers clear of those. Many are not Japanese, but apart from a few variations in their programmes, there is largely no difference. He’s worked with a couple of them, but has never quite cared to learn their names.
GRID / 1K32Q .x 3F40W
... CIRCULATING
---- ROUTE CIRCUIT EXPIRED ----
... ABORTING
“Don’t do that again,” Nino snaps, pulling away from the Frame. For a few seconds it is all he can do to keep conscious as he blinks away the bright flare of the Space. He raises his good arm and pushes a sequence of buttons on the controls that makes its engine whirl to a stop.
“It’s time for lunch,” says his mother.
It’s a good thing, Nino thinks as he picks at his rice with his chopsticks, that he’s ambidextrous. Toma had pointed that out once, back when he used to visit.
“Think of all the things you can still do without having to spend ages learning how to,” Nino remembers Toma telling him. “Like writing letters, and jerking off...” he remembers Toma pausing for a moment, looking deeply uncomfortable. “Wait. You still can, can’t you?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Nino had replied, rolling his eyes at Toma’s mortified expression. “Would you like a demonstration?”
Toma doesn’t come by any more. Nino’s heard rumours of a reposting, of Toma running afoul of his superiors or Saori Corporation, or both. Possibly, perhaps, it has something to do with that project he had been working on, the one that had required Nino to sign five separate confidentiality contracts and swear an oath by his Force badge before they could even describe it to him. Nino doesn’t try to find out.
GRID / 1K32Q .x 3F40W
... CIRCULATING
... CIRCULATING
+ 2FWlink / CONNECT?
The person contacting him is not very good at it. He’s clumsy with his signatures, and during their first round of negotiations he manages to accidentally disconnect himself from the grid.
He doesn’t offer money, however, which intrigues Nino. Neither does he apologise for it. He doesn’t tell Nino who he is, or where he is based, neither of which really bothers Nino.
At first, it’s just small jobs. Teaching him how to erect a Fence and tear it down. Breaking a gate. Constructing a probe for the deeper system mazes. At the end of each lesson, all Nino gets are hints of something bigger at stake. He starts out wanting to think it’s a bluff, but as time goes on he begins to really want to know.
There’s only so long a person can be a tease, after all.
What exactly do you want, then?
I can’t tell you here.
I don’t see any other options.
Just wait.
What’s that supposed to mean?
+ 2FWlink / DISCONNECTED
---- ROUTE CIRCUIT EXPIRED ----
... ABORTING
It never gets easier, disconnecting. The loss feels very much like a tangible sensation of pain, like a knife to his gut.
Like a crash landing, all over again.
He fumbles around, eyes shut, for the Frame’s engine switch. When he disconnects from it he sees his mother standing at the door.
“Kazu, there’s someone here to see you.”
----------End----------
---------------
More Notes: The concept of scurrying, etc was heavily borrowed from William Gibson's Neuromancer. This was supposed to be me writing a bigbang fic for another fandom entirely... but I somehow managed to thwart myself. D: Why.
Fandom: Arashi
Summary: Cyberpunk AU. He wakes up from a dream in which he is flying.
Notes: A companion, of sorts, to Electric Sheep (And Other Dreamscapes). Thank you again to forochel for looking through this!
ENTER / 0931 BR TOKYO
ROUTE / MIE...
ROUTE // MIE / GATE / R3SXQ19
... DENIED
... DENIED
GATE / RUNNING PROG // xbreak
---- Scurry Transcript Truncated ----
He wakes up from a dream in which he is flying.
It is a good dream; delicious. He is piloting an old but beautifully calibrated Flash 460 that turns when he wants it to and cuts through the sky in a clean and endless arc.
The dream will haunt him for weeks.
Some mornings he just lies there watching the ceiling. He is aware of movement outside his room, of his mother making breakfast and his sister already gathering up her things and heading out to work. The house is never still. Its walls tremble from the roar of the surrounding generators and the patter of their neighbours’ footsteps. The irregular thud-thunk belongs to the old man one floor above them, his cybernetic leg just a fraction too heavy for the rest of his body. The light shuffle is the young lady who just visited a Temple and purchased a new arm. Or was it a leg?
It doesn’t matter, to Nino. He hears this all from his mother; vivid word-pictures of people he will never choose to see.
“We could go to a Temple,” his mother suggests.
“We don’t have the money,” he tells her.
“No,” she says, sadly. “We don’t.”
---- Resume Scurry ----
GATE / RUNNING PROG // xbreak
... ACCESS GRANTED
ENTER / 0931 BR TOKYO
... LOADING INTERFACE
The Space is like nothing he’s ever experienced before. Back in the force, he’d met his fair share of analysts and runners, but he’s never seen the appeal until now.
It unfolds before him, a sprawling landscape of light and colour; fearfully vivid, pulse frenetic. There is only one way to navigate the Space: by charging headlong into it, turning as the path turns, touching storage points and flickergates until he arrives at his destination. There is no time to pause and think, no time to retrace his steps. This, Nino is told, is why hackers call it the Scurry.
Nino has always been a fast learner. Now he gets commissions to enter the Space, shady money from shadier dealers. Saori. Vyes Group. CaseCorp. None of these systems can remain closed to him for long.
“I worry,” his mother tells him.
“What else can I do?” he asks, and it’s a genuine question, not the bitter lashing out he had been prone to in the first weeks after they rescued him.
We could rebuild you, the Saori Institute consultant had told him, nothing in his words or demeanour to suggest any compassion or concern. The medical officer dispatched by the force had stood beside the consultant, wearing an expression of unmistakable pity. Nino hadn’t been sure which he preferred.
There are no pensions for pilots. The injury payout had been used for ship repairs he owed the force. There would have been an investigation, but after the force had given Nino a promotion and quietly discharged him, he hadn’t seen the point.
His schedule is free today. The past week has been spent hacking a new fence Vyes Group put around their prototype bank. Nino had quoted his middleman for five man days, four days too many considering that he had been the one responsible for constructing the fence in the first place. He isolates his locality to a grid of sixteen flickergate points, and waits.
Other hackers have been here recently; he can recognise their signatures. A couple are military, he knows; he steers clear of those. Many are not Japanese, but apart from a few variations in their programmes, there is largely no difference. He’s worked with a couple of them, but has never quite cared to learn their names.
GRID / 1K32Q .x 3F40W
... CIRCULATING
---- ROUTE CIRCUIT EXPIRED ----
... ABORTING
“Don’t do that again,” Nino snaps, pulling away from the Frame. For a few seconds it is all he can do to keep conscious as he blinks away the bright flare of the Space. He raises his good arm and pushes a sequence of buttons on the controls that makes its engine whirl to a stop.
“It’s time for lunch,” says his mother.
It’s a good thing, Nino thinks as he picks at his rice with his chopsticks, that he’s ambidextrous. Toma had pointed that out once, back when he used to visit.
“Think of all the things you can still do without having to spend ages learning how to,” Nino remembers Toma telling him. “Like writing letters, and jerking off...” he remembers Toma pausing for a moment, looking deeply uncomfortable. “Wait. You still can, can’t you?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Nino had replied, rolling his eyes at Toma’s mortified expression. “Would you like a demonstration?”
Toma doesn’t come by any more. Nino’s heard rumours of a reposting, of Toma running afoul of his superiors or Saori Corporation, or both. Possibly, perhaps, it has something to do with that project he had been working on, the one that had required Nino to sign five separate confidentiality contracts and swear an oath by his Force badge before they could even describe it to him. Nino doesn’t try to find out.
GRID / 1K32Q .x 3F40W
... CIRCULATING
... CIRCULATING
+ 2FWlink / CONNECT?
The person contacting him is not very good at it. He’s clumsy with his signatures, and during their first round of negotiations he manages to accidentally disconnect himself from the grid.
He doesn’t offer money, however, which intrigues Nino. Neither does he apologise for it. He doesn’t tell Nino who he is, or where he is based, neither of which really bothers Nino.
At first, it’s just small jobs. Teaching him how to erect a Fence and tear it down. Breaking a gate. Constructing a probe for the deeper system mazes. At the end of each lesson, all Nino gets are hints of something bigger at stake. He starts out wanting to think it’s a bluff, but as time goes on he begins to really want to know.
There’s only so long a person can be a tease, after all.
What exactly do you want, then?
I can’t tell you here.
I don’t see any other options.
Just wait.
What’s that supposed to mean?
+ 2FWlink / DISCONNECTED
---- ROUTE CIRCUIT EXPIRED ----
... ABORTING
It never gets easier, disconnecting. The loss feels very much like a tangible sensation of pain, like a knife to his gut.
Like a crash landing, all over again.
He fumbles around, eyes shut, for the Frame’s engine switch. When he disconnects from it he sees his mother standing at the door.
“Kazu, there’s someone here to see you.”
----------End----------
---------------
More Notes: The concept of scurrying, etc was heavily borrowed from William Gibson's Neuromancer. This was supposed to be me writing a bigbang fic for another fandom entirely... but I somehow managed to thwart myself. D: Why.