Cerebral Exchange :: Chapter 5 :: MOSQUITO

Rays of neon pierced through the shutter blinds of Residential Block T57, Apartment 5305 and spilled out over its metallic surfaces. They overpowered the room’s dismal interior lighting with their own hues, from green to blue to pink and back to green again. The colours flooded over everything - the heaps of cables, the racks of humming computer processors, the floor littered with trash and microcontrollers. A cheap apartment in a cluttered sector of the city; exactly what its inhabitant had been looking for.

Doremy Quartz slouched in her recycled pod-chair and contemplated the wall of monitors she’d so callously rigged up. Their glitching displays and overlapping audio rendered them completely incomprehensible to understand, but it made Doremy feel powerful to have so many streams of information beamed directly into her living quarters. She was a hacker - one of the few brave enough not to retreat down to the safety of the lower city. With her straight, black hair and augmented, pink eyes, she looked more like an upper city socialite than an insidious data criminal. Information theft had simply been her calling, and right now business was good.

One particular monitor out of the sea of intelligence kept her attention. A simple, black console with an infinitely scrolling wall of text in a particular pink hue. This was Doremy’s gold mine, and a mere glance at it would quickly give away why. HexCorp R&D Schematics, HexCorp Innovation Plans, HexCorp Drone Deployments, HexCorp Inventory Records. So much data, completely laid bare for her to slice up and sell to the highest bidder. Her expression always twisted so smugly at the thought of how easy it had all been.

She lazily reached above her head, grabbing the keyboard she’d balanced precariously on the crest of her pod chair and bringing it down to rest in her lap. Tabbing her way across to the HexCorp console, she drummed out a command into its awaiting input bar.

ＨｉｖｅＭｘｔｒｅｓｓ＠ＨｅｘＣｏｒｐＲａｎｄＤＤｅｐｔ ~ ％ ｌｏｇ －ｐ

The text in the console ground to a halt and the input cursor started to flash rapidly, as if it were eager for new commands. “Shhh… it’s okay. You’ll be with me in a moment.” Doremy reassured, gently stroking the keyboard before typing another instruction.

ＨｉｖｅＭｘｔｒｅｓｓ＠ＨｅｘＣｏｒｐＲａｎｄＤＤｅｐｔ ~ ％ ｅｎｄ ⬡－Ｄｒｏｎｅ ＃３１４１ ｃｈａｒｇｉｎｇ ｐｒｏｃｅｓｓ

A hiss came from behind Doremy, the accumulated sound of several valves releasing all at once. Latches unbolted mechnically, one by one, as Doremy spun her chair around to greet her favourite toy. There, at the other end of her meagre living space, was a stasis pod. A purple gas coiled at the edges of it, flowing down from the plexiglass doors that were gradually parting. From out of the mist, a slender, feminine figure righted itself and stepped out into the open. Its body coated in a shimmering, black rubber that reflected the many coloured lights from outside like an oil slick. A helmet so securely sealed that it gave away no identity nor emotion. Any upper city resident would immediately recognise the cat ears that protruded from it as marking it as HexCorp property. A HexDrone. Certainly not an item usually found in someone’s residential living space.

It remained in the center of the room, standing perfectly still and to attention. Upon first acquiring it, Doremy had hardly believed that there was a living creature within that cold exterior. She had analysed it thoroughly, uncovering a heart rate so slow that implied the entity within was deep in a meditative state. It had taken her a while to decipher its programming, but attach enough security overrides and code augmentors to anything and eventually it’ll break. Her handiwork was plain to see, with neural-disruption units crudely attached to the side of the drone’s helmet to keep it docile and compliant. A stem of thick cables stuck out from the back of the helmet and trailed across the ground, leading a swerving path through the cluttered apartment to the rack of monitors where Doremy had been harvesting its intel.

Doremy didn’t even need to look back at the monitor to type her commands. She had memorised them a while ago.

ＨｉｖｅＭｘｔｒｅｓｓ＠ＨｅｘＣｏｒｐＲａｎｄＤＤｅｐｔ ~ ％ ⬡－Ｄｒｏｎｅ ＃３１４１ ｓｔａｔｕｓ ｒｅｐｏｒｔ

There was barely a delay between Doremy hitting the return key and the drone’s vocoder buzzing into life.

“HexDrone #3141 status report commencing. HexDrone #3141 charging percentage at 97%. HexDrone #3141 resistance levels at 0.001%. HexDrone #3141 scanning for operational abnormalities… no abnormalities detected. HexDrone #3141 Hiv/*e st//ttAt[.uU;’’us--- --- HexDrone #3141 Queen Doremy subroutines fully operational. HexDrone #3141 status report end.”

Doremy sighed with relief. They’d been a couple times where it had glitched too much when the override kicked in, teaching her how quick-fingered she could be when utter panic took hold. Letting the momentary anxiety cool, she calmly typed in one more command. Whispering under her breath. “Come to me, kitten.”

ＨｉｖｅＭｘｔｒｅｓｓ＠ＨｅｘＣｏｒｐＲａｎｄＤＤｅｐｔ ~ ％ ⬡－Ｄｒｏｎｅ ＃３１４１ ａｃｔｉｖａｔｅ ｋｉｔｔｅｎ ｍｏｄｅ

There was no hesitancy in the drone as it dropped down onto all fours. Not a shred of humiliation as it swayed its body, crawling towards Doremy. The cables, its leash, scrapped across the metallic floor behind it. Its actions exaggerated, sometimes even robotic. The hacker had done the best job she could programming in this functionality, but there were still little imperfections that needed ironing out. She leant forward, the keyboard sliding off her lap and clattering onto the floor. As her now-catlike drone approached her, she started to make light clicking noises with her fingers, beckoning her pet closer.

“Here, kitty kitty who makes me so much money. Come to me! Good kitten.” As the HexDrone drew closer, its vocoder started to hum. The frequency was strange, but it was the closest Doremy had been able to get it to imitate purring. Upon reaching the pod chair, the drone curled up its hands into adorable, rubbery paws, batting them past its helmet as though begging for attention. A prerecorded mewing noise interrupted the purring, and Doremy knew it wouldn’t stop making it until she showed it the fuss it was so artificially after.

“That’s a good kitty cat. Here you are! Good kitten.” Her fingers traced along the rigid rim of the helmet to its neck, letting her fingers scritch roughly against the thick, protective rubber. The purring immediately grew more intense, the drone nuzzling its helmet gently into Doremy’s thigh. She sighed contentedly, watching her pet act in such an enchanting fashion. With a careful hand, she gripped the underside of the drone’s helmet and guided it in a circle, swiveling her chair back around slowly to once again confront the wall of monitors. With their ambient glow bathing over her, and her pet calmly resting its helmet into her lap, Doremy allowed her eyes to drift closed and fell into the most relaxing of sleeps.