the thief and the ark----

The console told me for the tenth time that I was entering an unsecure location, anyone could piggyback and ride along with me but it was a chance I had to take after all, this public hookup was the only thing I could find in short notice.

The stained and chipped walls of the booth vibrated and closed in as the sting of the long needle prepped me for the sudden fall through the cement and into the alpha grid.

The landscape that stretched before me was an intricate pattern of green lines and pulsating red cubes, shifting orange pyramids and winking blue diodes, every piece of the real world was represented in this strange place. I floated in the black sky and breathed imaginary air, somewhere in that vast grid was the piece of information that I needed, a small opaque read out to my left ticked down how long I had before the job was over, a few short hours and the funds would be drained from my account, a million holo-creds, already spent and owed a few days ago.

Rent, speed, and food, all the things a cowboy needed in this perverse world. My employers would be very angry to find out I had already spent pay for services rendered, an imagining of a smile stretched across my flickering avatar. A little stress was good for a job.

I flew through the shining equations and spun as I veered close to a bright white cube, the ice a few hundred meters thick, that was one nasty AI, luckily I didn't have to tangle with anything that scary just yet.

Hovering over an alleyway I watched a race between two hackers, glowing blue comets that moved faster than my eyes could perceive them, a deadly dance of twisted mathematics that would prove one winner and one very dead kid, slumped and smoking in his hookup booth. Another dead body to be shoved into the streets come evening.

The clock ticked down and I moved on, a binary eagle in a metaphysical forest of numbers and equations. The alpha grid was an awe-inspiring place, mankinds answer to a reality of pollution and slavery, the only escape left to a species that thrived on freedom. But it wasn't the only world of it's kind and in order to find what I needed I had to dig deeper, or fly higher, I never could tell which.

The rain started to fall, precise lines of zeroes and ones, so small that they appeared to be glorious green raindrops, it was the only way for the moderators to clean the excess information from the already cluttered streets of the grid. The irrelevant mathematics rolled off my avatar like water off a duck, I was protected, even if the booth was unsecured I had programs running twenty-four-seven that insured my invisibility and cleanliness. I would need both where I was headed.

The binary rain continued to fall around me as I climbed higher into the blank, black sky, a small hole, a tear, a rotating window, it was always different but always constant. There off to the west, a cracked spider web of shimmering red, only one thing it could be. I thinned myself to a beam of dim light and shot towards the widening crack.

The spiderweb tried to catch me, hold me back, filter me out in case I was a virus or malignant program, I was too slick for that kind of fire-wall. And just like that I was through the alpha-grid and into the heaven of hackers and cowboys, the Omega-grid.

Shining white, a burning brilliance that threatened my avatar and my sanity, pure information, no filters or avatars, just a great and powerful intelligence. Both the worlds grandest librarian and library, god in a machine, worshiped and feared by everyone who wore the goggles or jacked in with a needle. I had to be careful, any deviation and I would be burnt out faster than I could jack-out.

Appear innocent, just a searching program, an allowable invasion. An outside  engine that only wanted a small taste of the pure white info that pulsated like a collapsing sun.

I could feel my meat-sack start to sweat, this was tricky, a shortcut that was more dangerous than diving into lava or riding a lion through the jungle.Searching and shifting, making sure to see and touch as much as I could perceive so as to appear to be a harmless, brainless 'bot. But I had a destination and I made sure my path took me down the invisible burning grid towards the correct info.

Schematics for a new cruiser, a low orbit cargo ship that could transport billions of pounds of trash, someone wanted the patent before it was processed, I didn't ask who or why, leave the deep questions for the Feds, I just needed to make some quick 'Creds.

It was there before me, a shimmering rolled scroll, I tucked it inside myself and moved on to the next piece of useless info, just a harmless search engine.

A blaring horn made me jump in my seat and I knew I had been found out, the scroll had been trapped and in my haste I had overlooked the simplest of alarms. Too late for beating myself up I had to get out of this information heaven before all the Angels descended.

 No more need for a disguise so I shifted and warped myself into a burning crimson comet, destroying and deleting files on my helter-skelter flight. Sow confusion and hopefully buy myself a few precious seconds, just long enough to find the exit.

There, a large white door that blended into the ivory light that pervaded everything in this place. I pulled a sharp barrel roll and whistled at the beam of energy that barely missed my avatar, I risked a glance backwards and saw the Angel, a horrific monstrosity that resembled a hundred crying infants melded into a flaming bull that tore a rift behind it like a juggernaut through a forest. I put on some more speed, flattened myself like a dead mans EKG and raced the nasty monster to the pearly gates.

My form fractured and burnt as I hit the doors and burst into the alpha grid, the light gave way to darkness and the flat grid seemed so far below me. The portal behind me exploded and I heard the wailing of a hundred rage filled babies. I grabbed the jack and ripped it from my ear so fast I heard blood splatter against the foggy window of the jack-booth.

I leaned against the corrugated desk and tried to find my breath, hot blood dripped down my neck and I looked at the thin metal needle in my fist. I checked my wrist and saw that I had the info stored safely in V.A.U.L.T.

I laughed as the adrenaline slowly took over and I couldn't stop the shakes that followed.