The Protagonist System 536 Assumptions

Carrie looked lost as she followed out of the cafeteria and into the hallway. I brought her all the way back to the classroom and we sat on the floor at the back of the room and out of sight from the doorway.

“H-h-h-how?” Carrie asked and kept staring at with that lost look. She shook her head a little and then gained a determined look instead. “My mother told that you said everything they were doing in the labs was wrong.” She pointed at the backpack beside . “Is that why?”

“Naw, choom. That's just a prototype I built and programd on the weekend.” I answered and she looked shocked. “What I ant at the lab was their thodology and goals were wrong. There are much easier ways to achieve what they are trying to do.”

“How?” Carrie asked. “How do they make faster and better yeast? How do they harvest plant and fruit DNA the right way? How are they supposed to break into the lucrative tofu market if they can't crack the single cell production problem on a wider scale?”

I sat there and didn't say anything as I gave her my best blank stare. Did she really expect to solve their problems after how they treated ?

Carrie stared right back for several seconds, then she looked away from . “I said I was sorry for what happened.”

“Yes, you did. I even said 'well played' to your mother.” I responded.

Carrie looked back at . “She said the sa thing to you for going over her head to report on her employees.”

“I didn't go over her head. I followed proper procedure. She was the one that just so happened to be in a very important eting instead of going to work. If she had been there, I doubt they would have tried what they did to force to remain in the office and out of their labs.” I clarified and then smiled. “How did the surprise inspection go, anyway?”

Carrie slumped against the wall and laid her head back against it. “Mom was furious as the inspection team tore through every lab and specin container. They broke containnt on everything, even the dangerous stuff. They wore hazmat suits, so they didn't care. When they left, they had contaminated the entire lab and ruined months of experints.”

I didn't see it as a great loss, so I didn't feel any sympathy for them.

Carrie lifted her head from the wall and looked at . “You don't care that they lost tens of thousands of eddies because of that, do you?”

“They were going to lose them eventually anyway. That just gave them an excuse to start over sooner.” I said with a shrug.

“You...” Carrie looked angry and barely stopped herself from cursing at . She sure thought so nasty things, though.

“I told you what they were doing was the wrong way. Their experints were going to fail, no matter what they did, so stopping them now actually saves them from throwing good money after bad while they figured that out.”

Carrie fought down her anger at my words and tried to calm down. “Veder...”

“I'm not giving you anything else.” I said and she closed her mouth. “I tried that and look what happened. You panicked and brought your mother in, she covered your ass, and then she cut out any room we might have had for mutually beneficial negotiations.”

Carrie gained an embarrassed look and diverted her eyes.

“I wouldn't have minded much, if it had just been between the three of us. Instead, she also screwed out of selling my very versatile and proprietary Cleaner program to the Arasaka Corporation for an unheard of amount of money.” I said and her face went red. “Did you know that every single company employee, from all over the world, paid a nominal fee to have a license to keep using it?”

Carrie made a choking sound and shook her head.

“I didn't get one single eurodollar out of it, either. Not one.” I said and she didn't say anything. I let her think about that for a minute before I spoke again. “So, what do you think you or your mother can offer to give you the solutions to her division's problems?”

Carrie turned her head back to face and looked at with the sa kind of expression that Hanako Arasaka had before she took off her covering and showed off her breasts, as if that had been what I wanted all along.

“Veder, we're at school and class is about to start!” Carrie hissed at . “You can't expect to...”

“Shut up.” I said in a calm voice and she reared back as if I had slapped her. I stood up and hung my backpack over my shoulder.

The bell rang as I stored the food printing machine and replaced it with a small explosive device. I had a feeling soone was going to try and steal my backpack while I was in VR class and I wasn't about to let that happen without consequences. The classroom door opened and the students poured in.

“I thought you learned your lesson after the last misunderstanding we had.” I said, sadly. “I guess I was wrong.”

“I'm sorry!” Carrie gasped and looked embarrassed. “I thought you wanted to...”

“If I wanted the services of a professional joytoy, Miss Vogel, I'd go buy one.” I said and cut her off.

The gasps behind didn't deter my next question, nor did Carrie's sick expression.

“Why would you think I'd want that kind of thing when making a deal? Do I look like an oversexed degenerate to you?” I asked her and she didn't respond. “Do you think so lowly of that you believe I'll call in the favor Kei owes and I'll demand she strip off between classes and force her to have sex with ?”

The whispers behind started picking up and a surprising number of the girls thought it wasn't a bad deal and would agree to it, so because it sounded like fun and a couple because they liked it when the guy took charge.

I sighed in defeat when I glanced at the other students and saw their thoughtful expressions,especially Kei's. I walked away from them and over to my seat, sat on the reclining chair, and set my backpack down. Afternoon classes were going to be a little awkward after that confrontation.

It was a little disheartening to learn that most of the students in the class thought deals similar to that were quite common and were happening all across the city. I intentionally turned off my telepathy so that I wouldn't have to listen to their thoughts about it or about what the girls could ask for to get a deal like that.

As soon as the short lecture was over and we logged into the Green Room, I was surrounded by all of the girls in the class and not just the small group of friends Evelyn had. They were all quite eager to talk about everything and anything except for the class material. Not surprisingly, Carrie was right there with them, only she never spoke a single word or looked at once.

*

Wakako didn't have to wait for the end of the day for the normal report from City Hall. Her informant had sent a single encrypted ssage during their lunch break to watch the news. As a very observant, and usually patient woman unless you provoked her, she watched one of the main stations. It only took two runs of the stock market ticker along the bottom of the screen for her to figure out why.

There was no way it was a coincidence that the very next day after being inford of the companies Atlas had registered, that a new corporation appeared in the financial listings as a publicly traded company and had the highest rated stock on the market. That wasn't the concerning part, though. It was the initials that shocked her.

Atlas Incorporated. AI. She had possibly encountered a digital entity from beyond the Blackwall and then brought the netrunner responsible for it to the attention of the Arasaka Corporation. There had been no word of a breach from her plants in NetWatch, not even secretly as part of various corporations trying to use their own netrunners to delve into the forbidden Old Net for both information and money that had been lost long ago.

She cursed at herself for being so stupid. Being an AI explained how Atlas had so easily bypassed so many program restrictions, since he had the power of the Blackwall behind him. The question was, where was he being stored? An AI that powerful needed a lot of server space to exist without hindrance.

After a quick check of her other sources, there were no records of any large purchases of computer components. What did co up were the things Atlas had bought. An office downtown, a large warehouse, and a full size industrial printer with the ridiculously overpriced materials package that usually discouraged people from buying the thing.

Wakako compared them to the companies and the business plans Atlas had made, she now knew why he could sell in-demand resources for so cheap. He had a way of converting all that technically free garbage into viable materials. It didn't explain the food selling company, though. Where would he get them from? He didn't buy any vast tracks of land to grow anything.

She shook off those thoughts and concentrated on her discovery. What did she do about it? She had already brought the AI to Michiko's attention and she assud her old friend also spread it around to those she trusted. What else could she do? Warn her that it was an AI and not a netrunner? No, there was one involved, otherwise the AI couldn't have escaped.

Wakako cursed herself again, because she had lost out on being a part of the best sche she had ever seen. Her shortsightedness about the garbage situation had blinded her to the potential it held. Why hadn't she see it before?

That was when she realized sothing. She had been complacent and too used to the situation. The garbage had always been there and it would always be there. Everyone produced garbage, from the lowly street kid to Saburo Arasaka himself. No one had seen it as a potential resource, except for PetroChem, and they wasted millions of eddies every year trying to deal with the never-ending problem an barely had anything to show for it.

She leaned back on her comfy chair and folded her hands under her chin, her index fingers extended up and pressed to her thin lips as she thought about things. It was a pose she had used often when she was younger and things were much more dangerous. She had to think this through.

Wakako Okada had worked very hard to beco a shark among other sharks in a small pond of fish. Along the sa analogy, a dolphin had just appeared. What did dolphins do to sharks? They poked them with their noses to get them to react or to nudge them along. With enough dolphins, they could take down any shark, no matter the size.

Another curse left her mouth and she forced herself to remain calm. There was no chance that more rogue AIs would be appearing, not without NetWatch finding out. She ntally nodded and decided on a course of action. She would send a discreet word to her plant in NetWatch and have them search for any kind of breach in the Blackwall, recent or not.

Once that organization knew there was a rogue AI out there, they wouldn't stop going after it until it was either contained or eradicated.

*

Evelyn Parker slowly woke up and briefly opened her eyes and groaned in pain. She felt bruised all over and her arm throbbed, as if the blood going through it was fighting against being so constrained. Her head made a similar throb, giving her an instant headache, and she groaned again.

“It about ti you woke up, you stupid gonk.” A female voice said with both affection and annoyance.

“J-Judy? What... where...” Evelyn asked and closed her eyes again.

“You're in the basent of Lizzie's Bar, recovering from a shattered arm and being thrown around like clothes in a washer.” Judy responded.

“Wh-what? When... how...” Evelyn asked and opened her eyes. She was on a cot set up behind Judy's BD editing workstation.

“What is as I already said. When was after your last client appointnt. How was because you stupidly attacked a corpo kid!” Judy shouted that last line and turned her chair around to glare at her. “How could you be that stupid?”

Evelyn was confused for a mont, then she rembered what had happened. Her chance to jump right into the corpo world had been right there in front of her. She knew for a fact that any corpo would do everything they could to jump at the chance to impress their superiors with fruit that didn't co from Biotechnica.

How did she know it wasn't? Neither the banana nor the cherries had their corporate logo embedded in the skin. People would pay through the nose for any fruit not bioengineered, even if it tasted like drek. A few chemicals would fix that during the recreation process, anyway.

“It was my chance to finally break into the corpo world.” Evelyn said.

“You broke into it, all right.” Judy scoffed. “You've got half of Arasaka's security teams patrolling the city looking for you.”

“WHAT?!” Evelyn gasped and sat up, groaned as pain shot through her cast-covered arm that she stupidly tried to use to sit up. She slumped back down on the cot and took several panting breaths as the pain eased only slightly.

“That corpo kid you tried to murder for a fucking banana? He's one of the top students at Arasaka Academy and was already scouted for the R&D departnt. Food production, too. Surprise surprise.” Judy said and her glare didn't lessen. “Why didn't you just fuck him in the elevator and steal it?”

“He's just a kid.” Evelyn weakly protested and saw Judy's glare increase. “I didn't have ti.”

Judy tried to keep glaring, then she sighed and reached over and lightly stroked Evelyn's face. “Well, you've got plenty of that now. We're all laying low after what we had to do to get you out of there.”

Evelyn gave her a pleading look. “What did you do?”

“I'm not fit for field work. You know that.” Judy answered with a shake of her head.

Evelyn did know that and nodded for her to continue.

“I kept watch while Susie and the gang pulled out the stolen Arasaka armor we refurbished and they scrambled to get you as fast as they could. They got in and out just before the real security team showed up to retrieve you and take you into custody.” Judy told her.

“I...” Evelyn wasn't sure what to say after hearing that.

“You might not be a Moxie officially...” Judy slightly moved her arm to show off the huge MOXES tattoo on her forearm. “...but, you're one of us and we take care of our own.”

Evelyn felt tears form in her eyes and she blinked them away. She couldn't afford to be emotional right now. She needed to think and she needed to know what her options were. What was she going to do? She was a wanted criminal.

“We tried poking a few Fixers about hiring professional netrunners to scrub the security cara footage, except we were too late.” Judy said with a sigh. “As of a few minutes ago, Arasaka released the story on the news and it's all out there on the net, as is your picture and a reward for any information about where you are.”

“Fuck.” Evelyn said and closed her eyes.

“Yeah.” Judy said and caressed her cheek again. She hated seeing her girlfriend look so defeated; but, this might be the only chance she had to convince Evelyn to give up her dream of being a top level corpo. With luck, and maybe a change of hairstyle and a new nose, she could hide in plain sight and no one would recognize her.

Judy held in her sigh at how unrealistic that sounded. Being in love with soone that was so outgoing and ambitious, made her feel really stupid sotis.

She turned back to her workstation and kept working on another High-end Braindance of one of the dancer's better performances. Splicing in a secret X-Rated ending was sothing her happy custors were quite willing to pay a little extra for. It wasn't glamorous work; but, it kept her busy and living comfortably.