Episode 1 - The Beam

given what had happened back at his apartment, he was afraid to use it. Luckily he knew where to go without Beam guidance. That was unusual these days. Most people couldn’t find their asses without The Beam showing them where to wipe. Doc saw both sides of the tech coin. Selling add-ons — some of questionable legality — had made him rich, but dependence on machines was fucking society six ways from Sunday. The Enterprise, at least, still had a work ethic. But the Directorate? If their Beam connections blitzed out for a day, a handful would be despondent and panicked enough to commit suicide. You could set your nano-tattoo watch by it.
    Doc exited at A14, then banked like a maniac down toward the AP41. Noah Fucking West was the air map complicated. No wonder people couldn’t find shit up here.
    The AP41 was packed. Autocops were patrolling a stopped line of hovers jammed in tight as if they might catch the dead line of vehicles for speeding. Doc almost rear-ended a Daimler Sport, veered to the side, and crossed the buoy line. The car behind him, which he’d just cut off, laid on the horn. The line inched up and he jockeyed back into the column of cars. Doc swore. Back when hovers were new, they were few enough that District Zero had let them simply float up and go where they wanted. But after hovers went from novelty to seeming necessity and there were enough mid-air accidents, the skyroads were built. Now there was barely an advantage to driving above the ground. Gridlock was officially everywhere, even on a Saturday.
    Duly halted, Doc looked down at his dashboard’s small screen, where his guidance map would normally be. He had to get onto The Beam, if for no other reason than to figure out who might have broken into his apartment. It had to be because of what he’d seen at Xenia. He remembered Vanessa’s and Killian’s reactions when they’d realized that Doc was where he wasn’t supposed to be. He remembered how the guards had moved to block the door. He remembered the implication that he was going to have his mind wiped whether he was willing or not. Doc wondered what people so paranoid might do if they knew about his wipe-blocking implant.
    Of course, it now seemed likely that they did know.
    He put himself in Killian’s shoes, or the shoes of whoever Killian reported to. Would they simply let a man leave after having seen classified wares and chalk it up as a mistake? Would that be enough? Or would they do some research to find out if the man might be a problem? Doc knew he would, and Xenia had deeper access to The Beam than Doc’s official level — maybe even deeper than Doc’s actual level. Xenia could probably find out that Doc sometimes bought wholesale from a man in Little Harajuku named Ryu. They might be able to find the rumors that Ryu dealt in illegal wares… such as autocop jammers, anonymous routers, and implants that could deflect handheld memory wipers.
    If they knew that, they’d know that Doc hadn’t forgotten the upgrades he’d seen. Doc knew that biological enhancement ability had far, far, far surpassed public awareness. What might the people in charge of that dangerous secret do to preserve it? And how good might their own tracking ability be, given their superior technology? Might they be able to trace a connection even through one of Ryu’s routers?
    Doc looked down at his dark screen and resisted the urge to log on. He took a deep breath, telling himself that he wasn’t like the fools who couldn’t be disconnected from The Beam for more than a few hours without their worlds crumbling. He was able to walk to the wall and flip his own manual light switch. He could use a match to start a fire in his apartment’s fireplace. He knew how to write letters with a pen, on real fucking paper.
    And he didn’t need to know who’d broken into his apartment. He only needed to know that they hadn’t been coming to say hi, that they had the ability to hack (or force) their way into a highly secure building and an even more secure penthouse apartment. And, of course, that they were surely still somewhere behind him.
    Doc swore at the line of traffic, then made a decision.
    He decreased altitude, submerging below the line of hovers. The car behind him honked, as did several others. But Doc was already gone, speeding through the open air off the skyroad like a land car crashing through a barricaded highway median. Several autocop cars broke from the buoys and descended after him.