The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy by Gary Ballard Page B

signs of her obstinate attitude emerging. “I didn’t do anything. I sent a few guys on some fun runs, a little harmless griefing.” Bridge’s frown caused Angela to point her finger accusingly. “You used to enjoy that.”
    “That’s the kind of shit got Margie killed.”
    “Margie got sloppy. You don’t shack up with the guys you’re griefing. Look, all we did was put some recorders on these ageplay sims. Find a few pervs paying for cybersex anfor cyb with underage avatars, record their escapades then send it to their wives. We didn’t even ask for blackmail money. We just wanted to fuck with them.”
    Bridge sighed and rubbed his forehead. “And if one of those guys happened to be connected, he’d damn sure not hesitate to pop a cap in Kira’s ass.” Bridge’s mind raced despite his exhaustion. “Kira sent me an attachment, but I’m not looking at it without a clean room and a backup ID. Can I borrow a crèche?”
    Angela frowned. “I have an old one, but it’s slow.” To Angela, if it wasn’t built last week with firmware upgraded last night, it was a decrepit dinosaur slogging through a primordial swamp.
    “How old?”
    “May? April? I kind of lost track after I got this one.” Bridge was impressed, and a little bit proud. Angela really was doing quite well, as none of the stuff she was purchasing was cheap. Holo projectors and a new crèche every season cost major cash. Of course, never leaving the apartment meant she didn’t need a car, and the crèche’s nutrient drips meant she probably ate one meal a day if she was lucky. A hacker’s life was a series of tradeoffs normal schlubs never made. “It should do for watching a run replay. Just don’t use an ID that could connect with me.”
    “Got it. Now, where is this thing?”
    “Bedroom. Come on back.” Bridge shuffled hesitantly down the apartment’s central hallway. Angela wouldn’t come out of the crèche to greet him, and he was certainly unsure he wanted to walk around in the room while she lay unmoving in the little pillbox. Even proximity to her avatar was enough to bring back painful memories.
    The bedroom was as sparsely furnished as the rest of the place, and just as messy. A few takeout boxes lay on the floor. The bed was simply a mattress thrown haphazardly on the floor, sheets tousled and unkempt. The low hum of the crèche’s cooling unit filled the room. The shiny black surface of the coffin-like device was decorated with lines of neon green LED strips, a sign of heavy modification both on the exterior and the interior. “It’s that one over there,” Angela said, pointing in the corner at a dusty plain crèche. Bridge wiped his finger through the thick layer of dust. “The maid is off this year,” Angela joked.
    “Has it got the basics? Security package, mail, etc.?”
    “Do I ever work with the basics? Hell, no, that thing has custom warez. I think the defense package even has your codebase. I abandoned that tack when Freeman put out his Plat Series.” Bridge was postponing the jack in, running his hands over the console at the base of the device. He powered the crèche on, looking at the lights for entirely too long in an effort to forestall the inevitable.
    He didn’t want to jack in. He’d sworn off the whole life. Like a recovering alcoholic, he marked each day without a jack in as an accomplishment. It was an exciting life, cutting through databank security and pilfering whatever he could, battling live Net security agents in some liquid mercury duel with programs he built from the groeoufrom thund up. The full-on speed of a crèche run was so different from just jacking into the front of the crèche. If a regular jack run was a sprint, a crèche run was a drag race, an intense compression of time and speed and data folded into every erg of consciousness. That kind of intensity couldn’t be easily put down, and once Bridge had removed himself from those runs, he’d felt their absence every goddamn