***
Half an hour later Eloise lay flat on a massage bench, doing her best not to tense up in response to the strong fingers of a VR masseur digging deep into her flesh. The exceptionally hot shower had helped some, but the bruises and the sensation of having been battered were still there. It would be another four hours or so before the healing nano-meds ran their course, but at least the stims kept her mind wide awake, already working to solve the discrepancy in 2725SWIM16. She really should have gone to sleep and skipped the stims, letting the meds do their magic at rest, when they worked best, but she hadn’t really felt like going to bed.
‘Ah!’ Eloise grunted, temporarily distracted from the mental code-wrestling as the fingers dug mercilessly around her right shoulder blade, finding yet another painful bruise.
The masseur remained quiet and continued unbothered, just as the VRP’s encoded instructions told him to. Eloise needed silence to focus and wasn’t in the mood for the silly chit-chat that others apparently found enjoyable. Just like any VRP she had ever designed, 2714MASSAGE14 was fully customisable using a simple drag-and-drop interface. It also responded to verbal commands.
‘Adjust 2714MASSAGE14. Ten per cent decrease in intensity,’ she instructed. She loved a proper deep-tissue massage, but right now, between the edge of tiredness and the sore bruising, she needed something just a tad more gentle if she wanted to stay focused on work.
The intensity of the massage subsided accordingly and she closed her eyes again, imagining the code in front of her as if it were a holo-screen. She could recall any portion of the code on demand. It was her life, and the VRPs had to be perfect. In every way.
It was also important to protect her creations. While VRPs were heavily customisable within the encoded possibilities to suit various tastes and preferences, changes to the code itself were locked, and Eloise was convinced the lock couldn’t be broken. She wasn’t full of herself; she was simply the best.
Moreover, all the VRPs she had ever created had special watermarks embedded deep in their functional code. The ultra-smart portion of code not only identified her as the writer of the VRPs for legal purposes but also contained pre-programmed subroutines that would activate if someone attempted to copy or alter any part of the VRP at the code level. In the unlikely event someone was foolish enough to try to hack it, the subroutines in the watermark would automatically ping a warning to the NanoC lawyers. It would also automatically bring a hammer of biblical proportions down on the unfortunate wannabe hacker. The clauses in the contract one had to agree to when distributing or using a VRP from NanoC were ironclad, and there was a small battalion of lawyers and private investigators standing by on retainer.
Eloise didn’t waste her time monitoring the legalities of her business. That was why she paid millions of credits to the lawyers every year. Tilly, on the other hand, had constant access to all of the statistics. Sometimes, out of curiosity she checked up on Timothy Sagan, who used to be a senior manager at Cassandra, currently the biggest distributor of entertainment VRPs in the Afro-European Alliance.
Just over five years ago, the lawyers and private investigators descended upon him when the anti-hacking code in a watermark reported his flimsy attempts. One day, Timothy Sagan was an Elite from a prosperous family dating back generations, the next he woke up in Lyon’s slums, surrounded by filth and starvation and with no useful survival skills. His Elite BCC implant was gone.
It was a miracle that he somehow survived the first few days, which was why Tilly kept an eye on him. There was a one in three point four billion chance, Tilly calculated, that he would come back after NanoC, wiser for his experience. Of course, there was an infinitely higher chance he would be dead tomorrow. Tilly often contemplated helping the odds and ending his misery, but not very seriously, because her program wouldn’t allow such actions. Or at least she thought it wouldn’t.
No, for now, Tilly had much more pressing concerns. The bio-feed from Eloise’s body, as transmitted by her BCC, was suboptimal. Her master, employer and creator was pushing herself too far, which was quite typical this time of year. Not that Eloise was consciously aware of how her mood dipped, or of the underlying self-hatred that reappeared annually.
In less than forty-eight hours it would be thirty years since her grand-uncle had died. The significance of the day was lost on Eloise on a conscious level, but subconsciously her body reacted like clockwork. Subconsciously, that day still clouded her mood. Invariably, year after year, Eloise would dip about a week in advance and abuse her body until physical pain distracted her from dwelling upon the unresolved psychological trauma. Then she would take painkillers and stims and continue with the physical self-abuse.
Usually, a big VRP order would come through and drag her out of the self-destructive behaviour. Professionalism and work came first, after all. The excessive use of a myriad of martial arts and physical training VRPs would fizzle out to a steady and sustainable level as she spent more and more time working. Without the stims, the tiredness would eventually get her to sleep.
But for now, Tilly was going to monitor Eloise’s bodily functions just a little bit more carefully. Just in case this year would be any different…
CHAPTER 2
Lyon’s 4th Police Station
South-Central Lyon
Afro-European Alliance
Monday 20 April 2725
DAY 1
‘Dammit!’ Raphael Gonzalez growled as the piercing pain numbed his arm. The wall, despite taking a mean punch, showed no signs of damage and seemed to be mocking him in return. Rubbing his
