The Protagonist System

Atlas invited the Interpol agents to sit inside the small command room he had installed beside the reactor core and power generator. He had an appointment he couldn't miss and then needed to prepare a few things for the next stage in the station's build queue.

Fortunately, they knew Atlas wouldn't have let them in the control room without locking everything down first, so they accepted his offer and sat in comfort as they watched the many monitors he had for everything, including well placed security cameras in key areas.

“He is var too trusting.” The lieutenant said as she used her prodigious computer skills to browse through the files on the console in front of her. “If anyone else but us had come here, they vould have taken advantage of him.”

“And we're not?” The corporal asked as he ate one of the many delicious snack foods he claimed he was testing for the department's report, when it was really just him enjoying the junk food that had actual nutritional value inside while also tasting the same as they had when he was a kid.

“We're not.” The commander said and observed a replay of their host as he quickly built the floor around the reactor core. Since Atlas already had the central base in place, adding more floors was going to be as easy as stacking the materials on top of it. Well, he made it look easy, anyway.

The commander had seen some of the other corporations struggle to build even the simplest of structures, and that was when they had already built the components beforehand and only had to assemble them. Atlas took that idea and made it even more versatile. The station plans alone would easily earn him billions of eurodollars if he wanted to sell them.

“Our reports are going to take forever to write.” The corporal stated and bit into the black licorice wand and barely stopped his drool from escaping. How the hell did he manage to reproduce the taste so well? The process of making licorice had been lost years ago, along with many other mass produced foods.

“That is a problem vor later.” The lieutenant responded. “Sir, I have vound a database of sensitive information.”

That comment gained the attention of both of her companions.

“Explain.” The commander ordered.

“I see plans for sending out automated shuttles to gather up defunct and outmoded technology in orbit, both here in his high orbit and down near the Arasaka Orbital Space Station in low Earth orbit.”

“I don't see how they can do that. A shuttle only has enough fuel to make a few trips between habitats before it has to be nearly completely dismantled and checked over.” The corporal said. He knew this for a fact, because it was his job to do it to their current vehicle, which was now tethered to the outside of the space station near the temporary airlock.

“That is another bit of sensitive information.” She told them and brought it up on one of the viewscreens.

“What the hell is that?” The commander asked before he could stop himself. The thing on the screen looked nothing like their current transport vehicles and it baffled him that something like it could operate in space.

“It's vhat he calls a shuttle, sir.” The lieutenant answered. “It has a standard docking ring like all space vehicles; however, it also has a rear hatch vor loading and unloading and does not require a space suit to pilot or to ride in it.”

“Then how can you load and unload it?” The corporal asked. “What's the point of having cargo capacity if you can't use it in space?”

The lieutenant changed the image to a video instead of answering. The three of them watched as the shuttle entered a room like the one where the airlock was, only it was on an elevator that dropped down, then the back hatch opened and the people flying the thing came out and unloaded crates of goods as if it was just an ordinary day.

“He wasn't lying when he said that room would become a shuttle dock.” The commander stated. After a mental check of the recording he had made, he saw the rails on the walls where the elevator could be set, which meant the ceiling was going to remain on the outside of the space station to allow shuttles to land on it.

“Here is vhat the station vill look like vhen it is done.” She said and the viewscreen changed to show it. “His verbal description was accurate and lacking at the same time. The scale alone...”

“That thing is massive.” The corporal whispered. “It's a ring almost a mile wide and those three pylons have to be at least three quarters of a mile, easy.”

“There's a lot of empty space.” The commander added. He knew that at the pace Atlas was working, easily adding a new room every few minutes and an entire central floor every hour, the thing was going to be done fairly quickly and everyone in the area was soon going to know about it. “I need to make a few private calls. Excuse me.”

Neither subordinate said anything and he retreated to the barracks and sat on the surprisingly comfortable bunk bed. He had a superior to contact and then had many more calls to make, depending on what his boss ordered.

At the very least, the Interpol Space Police were going to make a public announcement about their new neighbor that was moving in.

*

Atlas checked with clairvoyance and nodded at the clerk taking the initiative and getting his appointment settled and ready. He stepped from the space station to the alleyway beside the downtown storefront, out of sight of everyone and the cameras, and walked around the building to enter through the back.

The female clerk smiled when she saw him and Kiwi kept her expression blank. Clearly, she doubted he could do what he claimed and he was going to thoroughly blow her expectations out of the water.

“Thank you, Sandra. I can take it from here.” Atlas said and the clerk left the surgical area and locked the door. He sat down beside the bed on an adjustable chair and rose the height to match Kiwi sitting up on the bio-bed. “First off, I think you need to see all of the options available to you.”

Kiwi nodded and Atlas handed her a datapad. As a netrunner and hacker, she immediately went through its operating system to look for exploits and workarounds. Atlas let her play with it for a couple of minutes before he guided her to the medical section and she dove into the mods and fixes like a starving woman finally getting a meal.

After almost ten minutes, Kiwi lowered the datapad to her lap and stared at him.

“Yes, I can do all of that.” Atlas said without bragging. “If you want a real working digestive system, with your actual mouth, tongue, and throat back, it's just a simple cloning technique using your own tissue, so there's no chance of rejection.”

“Why...” Kiwi stopped herself from asking a stupid question. “How can this be done so quickly?”

“Preparation.” Atlas said and walked over to the supply closet and cast an illusion of a small tank filled with amniotic fluid and a woman's chin, tongue, and esophagus. He turned back towards her and Kiwi made a gasp sound. “I started this after our meeting, in anticipation of your enthusiastic acceptance of my offer.”

It was all a lie, though. He would actually use Panacea's power to knock her out and numb her body to regrow her missing parts, then he would Overhaul her to make sure her body accepted the changes without freaking out.

“Is there anything else you want worked on?” Atlas asked.

“Yes.” Kiwi answered and decided that she would keep no secrets from this man.

She had always wanted to fix things on herself and only occasionally tried to, since she had concentrated on making enough money to escape from the kill or be killed life she had been locked into for so long. Retirement was all she thought about. That was when another thought occurred to her.

“How much will all of this cost?” Kiwi asked after giving him a list and she started to feel a little worried that he was going to bleed her savings dry by the huge smile on his face.

“I'd make a joke about discussing the price after you're done; but, we both know you won't laugh or would appreciate making light of your situation.” Atlas said and she nodded. “Then how about you retire from mercenary work and take a high paying job with my company? This can be your signing bonus and you'll have a nice cushy office in a remote location, all of the food you could eat, and full net access to anywhere on the planet.”

Kiwi knew that deal was too good to be true. “What's the catch?”

“You'll be in charge of monitoring all the computer systems inside the facility I'm building. It's not that difficult of a job and a VI could handle it...”

“You want human eyes to be on overwatch, just in case.” Kiwi guessed. “Understandable.”

“You can consider the offer while I work.” Atlas said and walked over to her with the illusion in his hands. “I'll put you into a VR simulation to keep you distracted and you won't be able to log out until I'm done.”

“How long will it take?” Kiwi asked and laid down. She wasn't going to refuse everything she ever wanted, just because a corpo wanted to hire her on a more permanent basis.

“Time's relative. I can speed up the simulation and your perception of time will slow down because of it.”

“By how much?” Kiwi asked.

“A factor of 100.” Atlas said, a little proudly. It was a subtle use of his Chronomancy powers combined with his technomancy.

Kiwi stared at him and wondered if he was suffering from cyberpsychosis. That number was insane! How could an hour of real time be seen as 100 hours in VR? Would a person's mind be able to handle the transition?

“It won't take that long, I assure you. About 10 minutes or so. You'll receive a prompt when it's time.” Atlas said and sat down beside the bed. “Are you ready to begin?”

Kiwi wanted to ask many more questions and held them back, then she thought of something important. “What kind of simulation is it?”

Atlas couldn't stop a satisfied look from appearing on his face, even if he wanted to. “It's based off a recording of the Maelstrom Gang being wiped out.”

Kiwi made a digital sound like a gasp again and her eyes went wide. She had suspected something had happened to the tech-obsessed gang and her discreet inquiries with her contacts were all met with negative responses. No one had seen or heard of the gang since before the riots.

“Trust me, you're going to enjoy it.” Atlas said and patted her hand as he knocked her out.

He connected her to the cyberdeck in his office and loaded the modified holodeck program, which easily worked as a VR simulation, since there was no need to physically create everything and it was just data sent to your brain. His time in the Matrix had shown him quite a few tricks and tips for interactive program creation, too.

All he had to do now was keep her body alive as he removed a lot of her cybernetics to replace them with real human parts once more. He suspected she was going to thoroughly enjoy tasting real food with her own mouth and he looked forward to seeing her first reactions.

*

Hanako Arasaka spent a little more time comforting her brother than she usually did, mostly because she was putting off the very important things that they had to do. She knew that once they started, there was going to be no spare time for them to spend together like they had been for the last few weeks.

But, she also knew that if they didn't handle the current situation before anyone found them, then they would have that much more to work to do than they already did. At her gentle urging, Yorinobu eventually calmed down and the weight of what he had done hit him.

Instead of letting him rant and rave about it, Hanako put a hand over his mouth. “We need to cover this up. No one can know what happened here.”

Yorinobu started to nod, then frowned and shook his head. He mumbled something and Hanako moved her hand to let him speak. “He died of a heart attack. His medicomp has the proper emergency codes in its log registry.”

“What? How did...” Hanako stopped herself from interrogating him and thought about it. “Your quick hacks?”

“Yes, they actually worked. His body was choking and it thought he was having a heart attack, so it administered the proper treatment.” Yorinobu explained.

“Which caused the very thing it was trying to prevent.” Hanako said and nodded. “Then we need to scour his systems and make sure there's no traces of your coding or ICE programs. Even a stray bit could be disastrous.”

“Agreed.” Yorinobu said and the two of them connected to their father and went to work.

Since everyone knew their father was there and had caused some chaos, they weren't going to hide that from anyone or tried to cover it up. What they would do was tell them he had come there to make his last wishes before he finally passed away from heart failure due to his advanced age.

They even carefully peeled off his RealSkinn neck pieces and replaced them, just in case. No fingerprints or any other evidence would be left to cause doubt. He was an old man and they would play it up as a sad fact of life that he was suffering from slight dementia and thought he was under attack, which caused the building's current state.

They would have to handle that, too. It was well past lunchtime and none of the academy students had been let out of their classrooms and none of the office workers had been able to leave their offices. They just had to make sure the current crime scene was cleaned up first and then they would issue new orders to the guards and security personnel.

Hanako also hoped the maintenance department could somehow cobble together something that would let them contact the outside, which she doubted after her father's adamant orders to wreck everything that could produce or relay a communications signal. It galled her that they needed to call for help and she suspected that the Arasaka Corporation would never regain the loss of respect this would cause them.

*

I stayed with Denise and her friends, even when I felt Hanako and Yorinobu come to their senses. They would clean up the mess and would start handling things, so there was no need for me to do anything.

When the maintenance crews and security teams eventually started going from floor to floor to rescue people from their offices, starting at the top of course, I still didn't react or made any move to do anything to help.

They eventually reached the floor we were on and they were surprised to find us out of our offices. Instead of explaining how I had rescued them, Denise said they had been on a coffee break and had been in the lounge the entire time.

This mollified the security team and the maintenance crew started going through the various offices to free the other people. We were all directed to remain where we were and that full functionality of the building would be restored soon.

I found that extremely funny and couldn't hold in my laugh, so Denise had to kiss me to muffle the sounds that escaped. Luckily, the security team and the maintenance guys didn't notice. I knew the servers had been smashed and the VI's control programs were shredded, which I had relayed to Denise and her friends. They knew the truth and didn't think the men lying to them was funny at all.

I did help Denise distribute coffee and snacks to everyone that was freed, which they were grateful for, and we all sat around the lounge and continued our conversations as if nothing else was going on. Thankfully, the security team didn't stay for long after the last person was freed from their office and we were left unsupervised.

“How long do you think this is going to go on?” One of the other women in the secretarial pool asked Denise, since she was the only supervisor on their floor that hadn't been trapped in her office.

“Until they either call for outside help or realize Veder is right here.” Denise answered and several people turned to look at me. “He's the one that came here long before the maintenance crew. If anyone here can fix this mess, it's him.”

“Then why isn't he doing that?” Someone else asked.

“He's not allowed.” Denise's first friend answered. “If he does it on his own, unsanctioned by his boss or anyone else in authority, then it's considered corporate espionage.”

That earned a lot of understanding looks from everyone and they went back to their conversations. I leaned over and kissed her cheek, whispered a heartfelt thank you for what she said, and promised I'd do that thing she liked when we eventually went home.

She blushed and looked like she couldn't wait to get home as soon as possible. Anticipation really was a good aphrodisiac in certain circumstances.