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Chapter 1:
((Law and Order))
"It was as if an infinite number of frequencies had converged at one single point in space and time, their combined vibrations forming a seemingly coherent structure out of an apparently random disarray. Order out of chaos...
The red lighting of the surrounding garage projected onto Marc McCready’s face like a dull, unfocused laser sight. He eased back into the soft Gelaform™ cushioning of the driver’s seat, placed his left thumb upon the dashboard scanner, and apathetically spoke his current password.
“Whatever.”
The uniview screen mounted in the car’s central console glowed to life, quickly resonating into the Ordosoft™ logo–the Greek letter alpha melded with the “r” in the word “Ordosoft™.” The corporation’s symbol then morphed into a cartoonish image of Marilyn Monroe in a white dress.
“Biochip scan and password/voicewave confirmation completed,” she said in the digitally sampled voice of her famous likeness. “Good morning, Agent McCready.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” McCready said with a yawn. He placed his tongue behind the bridge of his teeth and sucked in a few times, tasting the bitter aftertaste that the instant latté had left in his mouth. “Voice-rec on.”
The shapely toon batted her lashes and smiled. “Voice recognition activated.”
McCready rubbed his face with the palm of his left hand, attempting to wipe away the drowsiness that he had been feeling all morning.
The attempt failed. He wasn’t surprised.
“Patch me through to HQ,” he said.
“Connecting to Freemon Headquarters–Seattle division.” The cartoon morphed into an image of the department’s logo–a circle around the iconic face of a spotted owl, its pitch black eyes staring out at the viewer. “Secure satellink confirmed. One moment, please.”
“N.J., deactivate vocal confirmation,” McCready said, his gaze remaining fixed upon the owl’s accusatory eyes. “You don’t need to tell me everything you’re doing.”
“That’s unusual, Marc,” breathed Marilyn’s voice, “you normally prefer vocal confirmation.”
“Well, sweetheart,” McCready said to the car, “I guess things change, don’t they?”
The Freemon logo transformed into the head and shoulders of fellow agent Erik Takura. He was seated in front of the uniview screen at his desk, the usual cheshire grin stretched wide across his face. “McCready,” he said with a subtle laugh, “you supposed to be up yet, slick? I don’t think your face is quite ready to show itself to the world today.”
“And yours is?” McCready asked, as he looked over Takura’s appearance.
Multiple piercings on his ears, eyebrows, nose, and lower lip. Raven black hair to his shoulders, the ends dyed pumpkin orange. Implanted green eyes the shape of a cat’s.
“Always,” Takura replied, his grin widening to reveal his perfectly straight, immaculately white rows of teeth. “What’s goin’ down?”
“You’re the one with the satellink in his head, you tell me.” McCready shifted in his seat, molding the Gelaform™ to the contours of his back. “Any freeker activity I should check out before I come down there?”
“I’ll take a look,” Takura said.
McCready could always tell when Takura went online. The slight twitch of his head, the momentary droop at the corners of his mouth, a dilation of his feline pupils...then Takura was back to normal. Or, McCready thought, at least as normal as someone with a microprocessor and a modem in his brain couldbe.
“Okay,” Takura said as he mentally surfed the data waves, “accessing freereads...scanning for freekers, crossreferencing location...
Wetwyre™ in Kirkland has some activity, but Ignacio’s already responded...”
Ignacio was on a case. Now McCready had something to look forward to. Even if his day turned out to be as sh*tty as his morning, at least he could count on a twisted tale from Ignacio.
“...Boeing®, no,” Takura continued, thumbing a gold lip ring, “Microsoft®, no... Okay, wait–here we go. I think I got one for you. Farmaceutical Solutions™ in Redmond... An employee there...Lee Samuels... Doesn’t look like he’s voicing his thoughts yet...but there are a lot of employees around him if he decides to get chatty...” Takura nodded. “Yeah, this one’s worth checking out. I’m sending the GPS coordinates to Marilyn.”
A falter in the grin, pupils constricting, and a jerk of the head, Takura was offline.
McCready stared at him, wondering what it would be like to experience cyberspace that intimately, to immerse yourself within the digital matrix just by thinking the thought. No external cables, no screens, no gogs or contacts...all of it occurring within the confines of your cybernetically augmented mind. What would that be like?
“What?” Takura asked, noticing McCready’s pause.
Nothing, McCready thought. But the feeling expressed itself anyway. “I don’t think I could ever do what you do, Tak. Have all that shit installed in my head.”
Takura’s grin became a full-blown smile. “That’s because you’re a relic, McCready! Look at you. You got a car named after a twentieth-century movie star, you pack a weapon with bullets, you have the most archaic piece of bionic hardware on the entire squad... Face it, slick,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders, “you’re just not ready for the future yet.”
McCready glanced down at his forearm, then back to the uniview screen. “F*ck you, borg-boy,” he said with an uneasy snicker. “I’m as ready as anyone.”
“Hey, don’t convince me,” Takura said. “Convince yourself. I’ll see you when you get here.” Takura’s image morphed into the owl logo, then the Marilyn toon.
McCready pulled the black leather glove from off of his right hand, revealing the mechanical prosthesis beneath. He wiggled his five artificial digits, each of their motions producing a barely audible whirring sound.
“Archaic, huh?” McCready grumbled.
Well, he had to admit, it sure wasn’t state of the art. He could’ve chosen the model with near-perfect neurological stimulators and a grafted, gengineered skin. Or the luxury option–having a clone grown from his DNA, storing it in cryo, then harvesting the parts as needed. An arm here, a liver there...
But both of these possibilities required some type of direct brain stimulation, either through implants or neurochemical injections–and McCready didn’t want anything or anyone f*cking around with his head. It was bad enough already that everyone in the technologized nations had freereads grafted onto their skulls. Anything else only added insult to injury.
“Marc,” Norma Jeane said, “the necessary coordinates have been programmed into my global positioning system. I’m ready to engage the frequency emissions violator when you are.”
“Right.” McCready pulled the glove back over his bionic hand, then flexed it into a fist a few times to make sure the fit was tight. “Time to get to work.”
“Manual or automatic?”
“Manual, Norma Jeane. I’m definitely feeling manual today.” He cracked a few of his knuckles. “Hope you weren’t in the mood to drive yourself.”
“Considering that I wasn’t programmed with moods,” the Chevy® stated, as the cartoon Marilyn pulled a chair out of thin air and seated herself, “I don’t think that will be a problem.”
“Well, alright then, everybody’s happy. N.J.,” McCready said, “pop the roof.”
The garage roof parted open. Shafts of sunlight cut through the dull red glow. McCready winced.
He reached into the inside pocket of his trenchcoat, pulled out his Obsidians™ sunglasses, placed them onto his face. Just like the commercial–immediate glare reduction, with no color or vision loss. He relaxed his eyes. Perfect.
Wrapping his left hand around the soft rubber grip of the steering wheel, McCready said, “Let’s fly.”
The car activated its GS systems as the Marilyn toon, now dressed in aviator pants and a leather helmet, climbed into the cockpit of a biplane and fired up its propellers.
McCready reached down with his right hand and grasped a lever which resembled an RPM throttle on an old military fighter jet. He looked up at the sky through the Plexiglas® section of the vehicle’s roof, saw no airborne traffic overhead, and smoothly pulled the lever backwards.
The Chevy® Polaris™ lifted silently off the ground, up through the sunlit opening. As McCready emerged from the garage adjoined to his Bellevue residence, he panned his head from side to side, taking in a 180 degree view of his environs. The unusually sunny March day allowed for a crystalline view of the surrounding area.
To the east were the iridescent, mirrored, and gleaming con-temporary skyscrapers of Bellevue’s corporate district, set against the backdrop of the snow-capped mountains of the Cascades and the glimmering waters of Lake Sammamish. To the south, Mount Rainier perched upon the horizon like an angry god, its partially exploded top serving as divine testament to the quake of 2022. Hovering majestically in the heavens above Lake Washington to the southwest, was the sky-city of Mercer Island, while across the lake and to the west, downtown Seattle’s formidable–though somewhat antiquated–skyline juxtaposed itself in an awkwardly beautiful way with the Olympic mountain range behind it.
McCready watched a green Lexus® fly by in front of him, checked the holographic rear-view screen, spun the steering wheel to the left, and faced the car in a northeasterly direction that would put him in line with Redmond. “Music, N.J.,” he said.
Norma Jeane hopped out of the biplane and dashed behind it. “Do you have a particular selection that you would like to hear?” She slinkily walked out into view, now attired in a red evening dress.
“Nope.” He popped a caffeinated peppermint into his mouth and began to suck on it, thankful to be rid of the latté’s lingering aftertaste. “Why don’t you surprise me.”
The cartoon danced a few steps sampled directly from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, as the opening drum beat of Maxwell’s “Gravity: Pushing to Pull” started to pulse through the stereo speakers.
“Nice choice,” McCready said, running his fingers through his spiky, uncombed hair. “Let’s get this show on the road.” The bass dropped, keyboards blended, and McCready pressed down firmly on the acceleration pedal.
The car shot forward, a midnight black bat out of hell.
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Unless otherwise noted, all contents of this website ©1999-2004 Omega Point Productions™. All rights reserved. No portion of this excerpt may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means without written permission from the publisher.
"THIS IS THE END. THIS IS THE BEGINNING...," "WHAT'S THAT BUZZING SOUND?," "((FREQUENCIES))," and "ORDOSOFT™" are trademarks of Omega Point Productions™, as well as the Omega Point Productions™ logo(an omega with a dot in its center), the "((FREQUENCIES))™" logo(an omega resting atop a delta),
and the "ORDOSOFT™" logo(an alpha melded with the "R" in the word "Ordosoft").
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