IGMS Issue 15 (4 page)

"I don't advise that."

Saskia tensed all of her muscles against the desire to move. "What should I do then, just lie here?"

"We are in pursuit."

"They're going to notice me eventually."

"Not necessarily. Two of them are in the cab of the truck. Only one is in the back and if you don't move, I am hoping they will not notice that you are embedded in the rig.." Metta paused. "Do you want me to feed the image from my interface to your VR headset?"

"Yeah, that'd be good."

The image on her headset changed. She saw the truck as if she sat at Metta's desktop interface in the corner. Creepy.

She could see why Metta hoped they wouldn't notice her. The carapace of the rig masked her enough that it would be possible to think she was a modern art sculpture, all hard plastic and wires. From where MickyD leaned against the front wall of the truck, with his gun pointed loosely at Wade, it would be impossible to see the few points her skin was exposed.

Wade sat on the floor of the truck, with his arms wrapped around himself. He was staring at her body as if seeing a ghost, as if he knew
exactly
what this rig did and who she was.

Her body, almost obscured by the rods and cables of the rig, lay on the floor like a marionette dog. She had a sudden urge to see if she could manipulate it like a puppet on a screen. Her left hand twitched before she could stifle the thought.

MickyD glanced at the rig, and for a moment Saskia thought he hadn't noticed her in the tangle of cables. But like a cartoon character, he did a double-take and pointed the gun at her.

"Hey! There's a chick back here."

Piercing Boy leaned through the small door between the cab and cargo area. "What are you talking about?"

"Look." He pointed the gun at her again, but the bulk of the rig was between her and Piercing Boy. Letting the gun drop for a moment, MickyD shoved a bunch of cables to the side.

Piercing Boy ducked under the cables. "Who the hell are you?"

Saskia sat up, watching herself move in third person. The rig shifted around her as if it were manipulating her. She pulled the VR headset off, and her point of view shifted violently.

Piercing Boy loomed over her, closer than she expected. "I said, who are you?"

"I'm Saskia Dorlan." She paused, waiting for Metta to tell her what to do.

"I don't care about your freaking name, what are you doing here? What is this?"

Without the VR headset, Metta could not secretly talk to her. She was cut off. Saskia's stage instincts kicked in with adrenalin to spare. Spin it, girl. This is a stage show gone wrong, just find a way to end the scene. If you couldn't hide a mistake, try to work it in. She didn't even need to wholly convince them, just keepthem off-balance long enough for Patel and the rest of the FBI to come to the rescue.

"I'm one of the puppeteers on the show." She smiled. "You guys are doing a great job."

"What are you talking about?"

Trying to mask her shaking fingers, Saskia started undoing the sensors on her arms. eDawg must be having a seizure. "Sorry. My bad. I just figured since the camera crew wasn't here, you'd drop character."

The words came out of her mouth as if a prompter were standing offstage. Saskia turned her attention to the buckles on the legs. "I hate these reality shows, but it's a living, right, Wade?" She looked at the boy, willing him to go along with it.

He startled, visibly, but before either punk turned, Wade was nodding.

Piercing Boy said, "What do you mean,
reality show
?"

Saskia let her mouth drop. "Crap. You didn't know? I thought you were actors, too." She stood, dropping the leggings on the ground. Only her torso remained attached to the rig. "Oh good grief, you must be the contestants. The director is going to kill me. I just figured since you were here, he must . . . Look, if you could not say anything, I'd really appreciate it." Without the VR headset on, she had no way of knowing if Metta would get the hint. Trying to keep her panic from showing, she glanced around. "Where's the rest of the crew?"

Piercing Boy screamed at her. "I want to know what's going on, and I want to know now!"

Saskia widened her eyes, leaning back to show apprehension. It took all her acting skill to keep from gibbering like an idiot. "Okay, okay. Just don't say you got it from me. I don't want to get fired. We're shooting a new show called 'To Catch a Thief' and I didn't realize you weren't briefed beforehand. Wade and I only met last week. Say, Wade, can you undo the strap on this for me?"

She reached her arm behind her, as if there were a buckle there too. Wade levered himself off the ground, and slid past the cables. He was smaller than she thought. His every movement screamed of fear.

Saskia kept babbling to distract the two punks. "It's a great concept, because they can use my puppet to do the filming when they can't work in a camera crew. Although, man, when you kicked the dog down the stairs, I thought I'd never get a clean shot again." She laughed, as if she were sharing a joke in the green room, and stepped forward so she was between them and Wade. "So where'd they find you guys?"

"Cruise hired --"

The truck slammed to a stop.

Saskia let the rig catch her, while MickyD and Piercing Boy tumbled backwards, tripping over cables. Wade slammed into her. She heard his breath wuff past her ear.

Skinny leaned through the little door at the front of the truck. "The road's blocked! What do I do?"

Saskia's breath caught in her throat; Piercing Boy had said, "Cruise hired . . ." Wade's father had sent these punks? Why?

She looked over her shoulder at Wade. "That's the film crew."

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"The director will probably want to reset for the last scene."

Piercing Boy scrambled to his feet. "I don't like it when people screw with me --"

The back door of the truck flew open. Patel bounded up the steps. His coat was gone and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. He held a clipboard in one hand, his other hand was poised behind it as if he held a pen. "Babe! What are you doing to me?"

Babe?

She turned to face Patel, because that's what she would do with a real director. But the thought of having a gun at her back made her scalp prickle with fear. Wade's eyes were huge.

Patel nodded at Wade, "Doing great, kid. Head out to wardrobe."

Patel's back was too stiff; he didn't have the relaxed confidence of a director. He moved like a cop.

She heard MickyD's weight shift.

Saskia turned her head as MickyD leaned forward, raising the gun. She pushed Wade down, falling toward him as Metta yelled over the loudspeakers, "Get down!"

Patel dropped the clipboard, bringing his gun out to cover MickyD.

Wade hit the ground. The rig caught Saskia, suspending her.

A gun fired.

The sound ricocheted through the truck, and pain screamed through her back.

Despite Saskia's notes, her understudy botched his first scene as he overplayed the moment. Saskia fidgeted in the auditorium seat. She shouldn't be in the audience, but she couldn't even climb the ladder to the bridge.

Her PDA vibrated in her pocket. Saskia eased out of her seat and slipped out the side door of the auditorium to answer it.

"Saskia? This is Metta."

She sounded so human. It was easy to forget she was a machine. Heck, it was like talking to an old crew member long after a show wrapped. "The arraignment just ended. I thought you'd want to know."

The thoughtfulness of the A.I. continued to stagger Saskia. The entire time she had been in the hospital, Metta had kept a small part of her consciousness keyed into the interface in Saskia's room, just in case she needed anything. "Thanks. I'd been wondering."

"The D.A. agreed to a plea bargain of involuntary manslaughter. In exchange, they won't try Wade as an adult."

Saskia closed her eyes with relief. The kid had been through enough. She had been terrified that they would go to trial and she would have to testify. "And his dad?"

"That was part of the plea bargain. His father is charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy; he confessed to trying to cover up Wade's involvement in the body guard's death. After Wade ran away, Cruise erased the security tapes. When he realized that it was only a matter of time until we cracked the encryption on Wade's eDawg -- which would have shown exactly what happened -- he made the 'ransom demand' to send in the toy so they could wipe the memory."

"So that's why Wade had a reset key." Saskia remembered him pulling it out of the saddlebags.

"Correct."

"Did you crack the encryption?"

Metta laughed. "Puppets are hard, encryption is easy. Wade was trying to get Taylor to let him hold his gun. Taylor wouldn't let him. They wrestled. The gun went off. If he'd reported it . . ."

"What about the skate punks?"

"Cruise hired them to make the kidnapping look good. Once they figured out how much money was involved, they decided that actually kidnapping Wade would be more profitable." Metta paused. "How are you?"

"Getting better." She used her good shoulder to shrug. The bullet had gone in her back at an angle, skating across her shoulder blade and ripping a hole through her trapezius. It wasn't life-threatening, but played havoc on her ability to perform. "The deal you guys signed with my agent means the feds are paying my bills till I'm healed. It's better than most theater contracts."

"But it is healing, right?" There was a strange insistence in Metta's voice.

"Yeah. I'll be offline -- so to speak," Saskia winced at the turn of phrase, "for another couple of months."

Metta cleared her throat, which was such a strange thing, when Saskia thought about it. "Patel is giving me no end of grief because of my sudden fascination with puppetry."

"Well, you tell him that it's an old and noble profession. And then make him buy you a puppet."

"I did."

Saskia nearly dropped the phone in her astonishment. "Really? A puppet?"

"I know it's peculiar. I've never envied a flesh and blood person before, but riding your signal while you were controlling eDawg, I did. I could feel the puppet's responses to you and watch how you manipulated it to give meaning to its movements. It's the closest I've come to having a body. When I worked the puppet at headquarters, it was . . . It was an external thing. I didn't understand the visceral way character relates to movement. Which brings me to a question . . ." She took a breath, like a person steeling herself for disappointment. "Would you be willing to teach me?"

Saskia leaned against the wall and let it hold her up. Teach her? "You'll have to practice, you know."

"I know. I'm willing to learn this in real time. No uploads."

Saskia smiled at the obvious, entreating enthusiasm in Metta's voice. God, how familiar was that need to breathe life into a puppet.

"Absolutely," she said. She stretched her shoulder a bit to test it. "I'd like that."