Hard Vacuum: Short Episodes In The Future

Electric Coronation

The beat was pounding, primal. The bass dropped so low that you felt it more than you heard it, rolling beneath the scintillating high tinkles of the sporadic melodies and the latest musical trend of procedurally generated nonsense lyrics.

The Electric Coronation was in full swing.

Bodies pressed and writhed to the music, the entire court was packed tight. Six bars served hallucinogenic drinks to the high society of Gorm. The air was thin and secondhand. Up on the dais set the throne, and King Welder sat overlooking the throng. Above his head, illuminated in an anti-gravity field, his new crown slowly descended, picospans at a time.

One by one, courtiers were permitted to ascend to his side for a brief greeting, the exchange of a few words that wouldn't be heard over the music without the audio focus provided by nanites to their auditory nerves. A superficial greeting and a single holo-image shot was all each was allowed. Then they were escorted away by power-armored guards, as quickly as they arrived, only to be replaced by the next in a long line of political parasites.

Crypt watched the affair from the club box she shared with Nax and Spanner. What strings the old spy had to pull for them to get one of the most desired seats in the universe, she had no idea. Nax played bodyguard, as they were constantly interrupted by nobility attempting to network with anyone important enough to have such a position overlooking the event. Spanner handled most of them: He seemed to revel in playing the part of aristocrat and socialite. He was definitely in his element, and thankfully so. She barely had to pay attention the the visitors except for the periodic and brief introduction, and she was happier for it.

She mostly looked out over the Dionysian sea of dancing and revelry below. The air was polluted with artistically crafted, abstract, mass hallucinations. They were transmitted over the gala and received via nanites, which in turn affected them onto the optical nerves of everyone in attendance who allowed it. It was the same channels Crypt used to interface with her deck, her portal into the alternate reality of the Astralnet.

She adjusted a dial on a bejeweled silver brooch, which she wore on the lapel of her gown. The device adjusted the visual feed to her optic nerves and the artistic hallucinations faded from her own view. They were replaced with a feed from a custom program she ran which showed her all the unencrypted metadata transmitted and received by the individuals in the room. It was a lot. Few people took the effort to maintain current on their personal information security, it seemed. All over the gala, superimposed on each reveler, was the data they leaked to the Odessa clairsentients. Names and biodata. Incoming and outgoing messages. Financial and political transactions on the dance floor.

She looked back at Spanner. She expected to see pretty much what she saw when she tagged him in the Astral. Indeed, he did leak metadata, but to her surprise it was completely different. Well, she thought, it looks like you cover your tracks better than I thought. She had a newfound respect for her partner. It was a classic trick: It's impossible to hide all of your data from a determined hacker, but if you provide easy to access false data, they might just take that and not dig any deeper.

Crypt looked back out over the crowd and adjusted the filter on her brooch. Her mark was in here somewhere among the madness and the pulsing beat. The data of everyone dimmed due to her adjustments, and the spy, Gaffer was revealed, illuminated in red. He was just stepping down from the dais bracketed by two royal heavies. He had just met the king. His data glowed red, but there was nothing there: just his identifier. In stark contrast to most people in the room, he had himself sealed up tight.

Then she saw it, a message came in. She took a closer look. Deuce! Encrypted. She would never get at the contents without his key. However, she did have the header, and in it she could find the sender. At least it was something. She opened it up to take a look.

Archimedes Constructerson was listed as sender. Now that was interesting. What would the corporate CEO of one of Gorm's largest corporations have to say to an interstellar spy in a heavily encrypted message?