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The Puzzle was located on Pepper Street in the Isle of Dogs. The pub overlooked a black expanse of toxic hydrogen oxide along the Millwall Docks in the dilapidated East London area called the Dods. The Isle of Dogs, a water-bound tongue of marshland inside a dramatic u-bend ihames River, had at oime been transformed from historical wharves, dockyards and warehouses to swanky riverside residential plexes with stunning views of the river. That was a long time ago. Rising crime had seen a steady flow of residents bail out of the area as the surrounding black zones encroached from all dires. The area had since degeed into a haven for squatters, other forms of human parasite and Union freelancers boating or driving in from the ti.At the docks, a few yards in front of The Puzzle, a few dilapidated-looking boats bobbed atop thick-looking oil-slick water. Most of them didn’t look seaworthy. Round the back of The Puzzle, within a perimeter of linked fence, Caldwell could make out a ramshackle cluster of mobile residences. He walked through the pub’s fake wood doors into a humid cloud of stale beer, cigarette smoke and rotting pub food. He wrinkled his nose and fought to suppress the urge to gag.
It was barely 7.00 AM but already a row ulars was already lined up along the expaal bar celebrating the New Year by knog back alcoholic breakfasts on Union social security money and staring at the pulsating pixels of a holographic stripper. Caldwell sed the unfamiliar faces and wondered if one of them was Glyph. None of them looked like hacker types. None of them had that hungry look of the digital floating world.
Caldwell moved towards a raised area at the back of the pub and slid into one of The Puzzle’s mock oak seats, away from the tele. He couldn’t stand idle versation or prolonged tact with people. He had to get a message to Glyph as quickly as possible. There was a burly Indian-looking guy behind the bar trying to look like he was keeping busy. Caldwell placed the knapsack between his legs, the bulk of the sole strangely reassuring.
The Puzzle was obviously a neighborhood pub. There was a disible sense of familiarity among its patrons. The man behind the bar was engaged in small talk with one of the ers who addressed him as Ram and requested a fresh pint of dark ale. The slur of the er’s voice suggested that his membership of alcoholionymous was long overdue. He looked like the seafaring type, an assortment of tattoos adorned flaccid white skin, captain of one of the fine vessels outside. Caldwell wondered whether Ram was short for Ramesh.
The man called Ram aowledged the er’s order with a nod of his head, the smoke from the cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth creating a temporary question mark in the air. He then disappeared behind the bar. A few seds later a robot shaped like an ied bucket came to life on the bar ter with a shudder and rows of blinking lights. There was a small army of the things parked to one side of the bar, their cheap pseudo-metal bodywor<bdi>.99lｉｂ.</bdi>k glinting. The robot blinked and whirred and something whined deep within its chassis. Its midriff was surrounded by a row of shot glasses of various shapes. A light sensor at the end of its miniscule antenna started blinking as it figured out the location of the er. The robot grabbed a beer mug from a rad proceeded to pull a pint of brown ale, much to the er’s amusement.
“New robot bartehe only thing it ’t do is juggle bottles,” Ram the bartender explained proudly to the wide-eyed man, all the while scratg absent-mindedly at his hairy arms. The er watched the robot make its way towards him a a perfect pint of ale down on a coaster in front of him. Its wheels aallic silver body spun round to present the er with a LCD read out of the bill. The men at the bar momentarily lost i in the dang hologram and looked over to see what the otion of whirs and clicks was all about. They gawked for a few seds and then turheir attention back to the gyrating pixels.
“More skullduggery from the Far East,” the podgy tattooed er said, still slurring. “Those guys would be the death of us if we are not careful.”
“Helpful little buggers though, these Automated Bartender robots. Free me up to spend more time pig my nose,” Ram said, pulling a moist finger out of one of his nostrils. The er started laughing.
“They’ll put you out of your job if you are not careful. Some union glomerate will roll out a whole <abbr></abbr> of automated pubs, not a human in sight. The whole fug gig run by these dumb maes.”
“One pint of lager, Fifty Union Euros.” the robot said in a female voice, its ser searg for a credit chip.
“Put it on my tab,” said the er to the robot. The man took a large swig from the glass and licked his lips feverishly to rid them of the froth.
“One pint of lager, Fifty Union Euros,” the robot said again, this time the female puterized voice had gone up an octave. The man looked like he was going to pummel the robot into the ter with his fist. Ram reached out and pressed a button to override the robot, which promptly retracted auro join its brothers at the end of the bar.
“Bloody puters, you present them with a problem that requires human judgment and they crap out on you,” the man said to Ram who just shook his head.
To the right of where Caldwell was sitting stood a bunch of slot maes and some decidedly grubby-looking cyberspace terminals. Clutg the knapsack, he walked apprehensively over to one of the terminals and typed the address of his base. There were no new messages. He fired a short reply to Glyph’s message. At desired locatio’s meet. He logged out of the base a back to his seat. Now, he just had to wait. He wondered what Glyph looked like. He would not be surprised if the hacker turned out to be some ae-challenged fourteen year-old whiz kid. Strahings had happened.
Ten minutes later, the doors of the pub flew open and it just took Caldwell a sed to clude that it was Glyph. The thing that came through the door was a rigged up wheelchair with peared to be half a man deposited on it. Despite his obvious disability, there was something majestic about the way he carried himself, that air of fidence possessed by hackers w oting edge of teology. He looked around thirty-five and sported a ruddy plexion and a rugged black beard. What looked like trodes where set on each side of his head and they seemed to be hooked up wirelessly to the wheelchair. He was wearing a shiny white shirt which trailed off the end of his legless torso.
Glyph was half man, half mae, willing the wheelchair forward with his brain waves. Gyros in motion as the wheelchair ly iated the steps that lead up to the raised area at the back where Caldwell was sitting. It looked like the hacker had spotted him too as Glyph made his way towards where Caldwell was sitting. Hackers had an uny way nizing one another.
The wheelchair glided up to Caldwell’s table and a pair of emerald green eyes sized him up and then broke into a smile.
“I am Glyph. I’m glad you got my message. Obviously you are still alive and lookiirely nothing like what I imagined,” said Glyph in a matter-of-fact way. The voice was cool, unflustered. For someone delivering bad news, Glyph seemed very relaxed and that helped knock the edge off Caldwell’s fear, which was still <kbd></kbd>there, blob-like and unshakeable. Glyph’s white shirt had some unlikely frills down the front. It was obviously bought at some thrift store. He looked as though he’d had just stumbled out of a New Year’s ball after a particularly heavy night of alcohol abuse.
“Thanks. It’s great to finally meet you in the flesh. Who’s after me Glyph?” Caldwell asked breathlessly, instinctively looking around the pub to see if anyone aying unnecessary attention to them.
“I think you better have a drink first. Yoing to .”
“I am out of credit, out of a home. I am sure you uand my impatience,” Caldwell said, instinctively knowing that pushing the man to spill before he was ready would be futile.
“Drinks are on me. What are you having? I don’t know for how long I am going to have a tab here,” said Glyph, ign Caldwell’s insistehere was a trace of desponden his voice.
“In that case, I’ll have an XO,” Caldwell said, w whe he’d be able to afford his own drinks. He didn’t much care for XOs either but the cheap ese eleic displays set into the tables said they were on “Special”.
“XO ing right up,” said Glyph, affeg a mock bow. His wheelchair reared itself upright and the gyros that kept it balanced kicked in. Caldwell watched Glyph key in the order, his podgy thumb leaving smudges on the plastic touch s.
“How did you do that with the wheelchair? You didn’t use the joystick.”
“Had a mate down in Surrey Quays rig this baby up with the latest neurosensor system from Taiwan. Had four sensor chips one huh the size of a postage stamp ied just uhe skin on my skull. This baby reads the sensors iime,” the hacker explaiapping a gray enclosure on the side of the wheelchair.
“Must have been painful,” Caldwell speculated.
“Not really. The real problems start if the chip is blog the growth of your hair follicles. Then you really mess yourself up.”
“Teology, ’t live with it, ’t live without it,” Caldwell said, studying the hacker’s heavily puterized wheelchair with its multiple displays. Glyph was obviously mulling something over in his head, the banter aails of his wheelchair’s teology a thinly-veiled smokes. The bartender brought over two glasses of XO, said hello to Glyph and promptly returo the bar. Caldwell took a sip and then looked at Glyph willing him to get on with it. The hacker drained half of the glass in one single gulp and grimaced.
“Kenzo Yamamoto, The HUB’s largest t is dead. The men who are after you are his Yakuza ies,” Glyph said casually.
“He ’t be dead. I just had a versation with an avatar that purported to be him just over an hour or so ago. Besides, how do you know he’s dead and how do you know that there are people after me?”
“The avatar could have been a recorded puter struct. Kenzo was killed two days ago.” Caldwell’s heart skipped a beat as his last ray of hope disappeared under a thick bla of gathering storm clouds. The Slav’s vial may yet be called upon again today.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“Kenzo was The HUB’s biggest t. Our relationship with him goes way back. Of course, when you have a t that big and with those kinds of financial resources you do what you to check him out. Follow up on him, if you like. Dealing with the Yakuza is risky business so you do what you to make sure that you don’t suddenly bee dispensable. You take your precautions. Let’s just say we are tapped into their unicatioworks. We found a way to access their satellites, discovered exploits in their intrusioion AIs, so we know a little about what’s going on in Tokyo. Uand what I am saying?”
“And they discovered you out and are now ing for all Hub members?” Caldwell suggested.
“That’s not it at all. It appears from their internal unications that Kenzo sent out two packages retly from Tokyo. Oo New York and the other to the Union.” Glyph eyed Caldwell quizzically. Did Glyph know what was in the packages?
“I ’t see the correlation.”
“I think you . Yamamoto’s death has unraveled his opera<a></a>tions, which I suspect were not part of the Yakuza’s master plan. The Yakuza want very badly to retrieve whatever Kenzo sent you and the Ameri to make sure that anyone who has set eyes on it is taken out of the picture.” Caldwell received another intense lolyph.
“Who was the uy?” Caldwell asked, his mind rapidly digesting all the new information. Glyph seemed particularly well-informed, a man with his digital ear to the ground.
“Professor Joplin of Harvard Uy, deceased as of yesterday. They are ing for you .”
Caldwell’s worst fears came true with that oence. On the MagLev, it had dawned on him that the sole could be the only reason why there’d be someone on his tail. Kenzo Yamamoto’s death offered a ve explanation for way too many things. The man on the platform was not after him just to retrieve the sole. He was bent on taking his life.
Caldwell watched Glyph closely, w whether the hacker would demand to see the sole and if he did whether he should show it to him. His only option it seemed was to sell the thing and to disappear deep within the fabric of the Union. Glyph might be able to help him locate a buyer. Glyph punched one of the many buttons on his wheelchair’s arm rest to reveal a small display s.
“So, why do you think he sent the package to the professor and to me? I don’t uand,” Caldwell said after it became clear that some response was expected. Glyph was not sure whether he was being sarcastic or not.
“You said that you talked to him or his struct today. Didn’t he or it tell you?”
“No. He said he would get in touch soon.”
“Word in cyberspace, the Yakuza seems to suspect this too, is that he poked his fingers into ooo many pies and the ese made him pay.”
“The ese? I thought Kenzo was into mostly Japanese corporate stuff,” Caldwell said.
“So did I. At any rate, he was found dead ooilet at the Cherry Blossom hostess club in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It’s a popular Yak hangout. Apparently, he was killed by some kind of toxipound, one used for assassinations predominantly in New a. Ooilet seat you imagine? He died in a hurry acc to reports. Loaded nanobots gained access through the pores in his skin.”
Caldwell thought about the vial and wondered whether he should drink its tents right then and there.
“Kenzo’s associates know about the soles and want them back,” said Glyph, smirking as he took an gulp of XO and looking at Caldwell as though daring him to deny that one of the said soles were in his possession.
“So you know?”
“A hato DHL’s declarations mainframe in India. The puter handles eleic declarations for all of DHL’s Unioions.”
“I see. For the record, I was quite cut up by the fact that I was no longer part of the core team on The HUB. Kenzo said he orchestrated that, obviously with your participation.”
“Yes, on Kenzo’s request. Said he needed you out of the picture for a while. Off the radar if you know what I mean. You are one of The HUB’s best so I was a bit relut to do it but Kenzo’s pockets are deep. Sorry.”
“No offeaken. I received the sole in the post just this m and still don’t know what to do with it.”
Glyph rapt in thought now, scratched his beard.
“Have you jacked in with the sole yet?” Glyph asked.
“Only to my base.”
“They probably trace <code>九九藏书</code>that.”
“So what exactly do you know about the soles and what Kenzo intehem to be used for?” Caldwell asked.
“If I khat, I’d probably be dead.”
“Fair enough, but who were his buyers?”
“Anybody he wanted. As I said, Kenzo made markets in information. His expertise, if you could call it that, was to find information on people anizations, valuable information, not the crap anyone get in cyberspace, ahat information to those people anizations, or their enemies, overs, whoever was the highest bidder. Some people prefer to call it blackmail.”
“And he operated through freelancers like us, a virtual global work?”
“That’s just part of the story. Kenzo had an army of gameboys, hackers, phreakers and information dealers around the globe on the payroll, from Helsinki to Moscow to Beijing. They operated anonymously, delivering the data through a series of intricate routio ehat her souror destinatio any trace. Yet rest assured that Yamamoto had data on the backgrounds of every hacker who pulled a job for him. Having an ad hoternational hag work meant the Yakuza and the major zaibatsus he shook down in Tokyo could never directly ey of this to him.”
“Eleic spying and blackmail.”
“Correct, and like a physical world spy he subverted certain insiders such as gover officials, bank employees, academics, programmers and so on. Sometimes he singled out people who had no history whatsoever,” said Glyph, downing the rest of the XO, leaving droplets in his beard. Caldwell sipped from his glass, grimag at the foul taste.
“People with no history, like me?”
“Correct. It appears that somewhere in his massive database, Kenzo had stumbled on some information about you. Perhaps about your past. Information that made you valuable to him. Word has it that the other recipient of the sole, this Professor Joplin, was one of the world’s leading minds in artificial intelligence. Why would he send soles in the post when they are readily available?”
“We’ll never know because he’s dead.” Caldwell was still relut to tell Glyph that the sole in his possession was unlike any other. He wasn’t sure how much he could trust the wheelchair-bound hacker.
“Yes, but I think we deduce the answer. Kenzo sent the soles because he wanted you two to hato a work inaccessible to ordinary soles. The fact that he chose an artificial intelligence expert and a hacker for the job ot be ce. Also, the suspi that he was killed by the ese has some substao it. We all know that they have a history of creating alterworks to cyberspace itself. They are unwilling to depend oworks that are effectively created, evolved and managed by the Uates.”
“By the way, how did you find out they were ing after me today?”
“We found out that the Yakuza in Japan had discovered the last known addresses of everyone who received one of Kenzo’s soles. And the death of the professgests they are already in the process of doing something about it. We eavesdropped on unications that indicated that Yakuza had been dispatched to the Union.”
“They found the capsule address?” Glyph’s story sounded like too much of ce, but he didn’t look like he was lying. His eyes were opaque green pools of siy.
“Probably sario analysis structs. Lucky for you, the Japanese Yakuza officially pulled out of London after the Bayswater massacre. They formed some kind of truce with the Union gover and they agreed to pull out.”
“So?”
“Kenzo art of the most powerful Yakuza work in Japan, but he was a rogue element off on a ta doing his own stuff,” Glyph explained. “It appears that they found out what he to after his death. Pulled all the systems offline and decided to do some ing up first. Fortunately for you, they had to fly people out from Tokyo. The Ameri professor had no such luck. The Boston Yakuza are still very much active.”
“So you’ve got an AI guy and a ... what, a loser? And they just want to wipe us off the face of the pla for being on the receiving end of DHL’s package delivery service?”
“I am sure Kenzo didn’t see it that way. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent you that,” Glyph reasoned, pointing at the bag. “Got to go to the loo. Will be right bad we take a look at that sole.” The wheelchair moved off on its own accord towards the toilets, rubber wheels squeaking oiling.
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