Original Science Fiction

We Can Fix Anything

An original short story
Copyright (C) 1995 by Nate Cull

The laser door sentry gave a brief warble again, but there was no movement inside. I sighed, put down the ultrasonic welder, and tuned my audio sensors back into bat-blip mode.

"It's really quite all right," I repeated. "Come on in. I don't eat visitors, you know."

The static resolved into a human form in the doorway. I scanned more closely, linking in my old visual and IR receptors as well. A girl, about thirteen or fourteen perhaps, surely no older. She stood just past the threshold, warily, looking at me with a hunted-animal expression that I recognised. Her eyes widened in sudden shock.

"It's all right, lassie. You may as well see me for what I am. I'm not embarassed, and you needn't be afraid. It's only old model hardware, after all."

I laid my worn extensor arm on the work table and tried to coerce some colour into my visual spectrum. Her hair shimmered into an array of copper- gold pixels, underlined by stunning electric blue eyes, before the image lapsed back into monochrome again. She approached cautiously, touched my arm, and stared into my metallic face. I was expecting her to flinch, but she didn't.

"You're a - cyborg?" The voice was flat, free of stress inflections, though her body language was radiating fear. This girl was a survivor, at least. Well skilled in the art of staying alive.

"Not quite. This is just my working shell. A basic telepres 'droid, just like they used in the war. No, I've got a meat body just like yours, 'cept it's a little more beat up. Keep it out back, in a medi couch. I stay wired up most of the time, though, 'cos it's easier to serve customers. And I can do most of my own nursing, so I don't have to hire an assistant. It's a good compromise for a tired old vet like me, don't you think?"

She was still running her fingers over my robot skeleton, not quite believing it. I don't know what else she expected.

"A real telepres vet," she said. "Wish I had one of these things. It's so dorky being just a meatware kid. You can't even stop a few MD rounds."

Whoa. This girl was wishing she didn't have a body? What kind of trouble was she in? I locked all my sensors in on full enhance, and quietly toggled the door sentry to screen all visitors for weapons.

"Hey, it's not that much fun living in a 'droid all day," I replied, playing for time. "You keep having phantom itches in limbs you don't have, for one thing. And there are other problems. But anyway, any decent mass driver rifle these days can put holes in combat 'droids. Where do you think I got these dents?" I motioned to the scars on my drive torso and power pack. While she listened, I scanned her clothing.

Yep. Sure enough, I should have noticed earlier. She was wearing a casual synthetic jumpsuit, standard street wear, but the inner fabric of her shirt and trousers was lined with some kind of carbon-ceramic fibre. Lightweight kinetic armour, probably superconductive too so it could repel beam and plasma weapons. Originally military in design, but these things were becoming standard issue on the streets. Especially in the spider gangs. I tuned her audio in again.

"Well, I still think a 'droid'd be cool," she was saying. "But what I need right now is a working spider. I think the fusion plant's running hot. Can you take a look at it?"

I pointed to the bitmap on the wall. "We Can Fix Anything Except Broken Hearts" said the caption, alongside the old Norman Rockwell painting of a doctor examining a doll with a stethoscope. "You've come to the right place. What I can't fix, probably ain't broke. Bring 'im in."

The girl nodded, and made a short melodic whistle. There was a skitter of legs outside, and the spider sidled in through the main vehicle entrance. I gave it a critical scan as it approached. All eight legs seemed to be cycling in the right order, but there definitely was a hot spot under the seat. Something about its jerky movements made me wonder if the command AI needed tuning too. Picking up the Yamaha toolkit adapter, I attached it to my extensor arm and took a closer look.

"What's the name?" I asked the girl, just to make conversation.

"Mine or his?"

"Well, both, I guess. Not everyone names their spider, you know. I could use an owner's name to put on the maintenance file though."

She tensed, and paused for several seconds. "The spider's Joey. Call me Helix."

"You wouldn't believe how many people have spiders called 'Joey'. But 'Helix'? Is that what your parents dumped on you?" I was pushing, but figured she might want to talk about whatever she was into. Maybe.

"It's an alias, okay? Iron Helix. My street name. Like I'm gonna tell you my real name, like I even care? You maybe want my State ID code too, and my Net encryption password, so you can go run a search on me?"

I activated another tool and tossed her a casual shrug, or the closest my metal shoulders could manage. "Not necessarily. I run a cash-only, no-questions-asked repair shop here. But it might help explain some things, Helix, like why you're wearing a FlakMaster jumpsuit, or what this Winchester plasma rifle is doing cross-linked to Joey's main power cable?"

The Yamaha 9200 spider is a fairly reliable one-person all-terrain vehicle, and the internal cold-fusion reactor produces enough kilowattage to power it for life, give or take a few refits. But linking heavy energy weapons into the power system is not usually covered in the manufacturer's warranty. This girl was definitely in some deep tofu, FlakMaster or no FlakMaster.

Helix paled. "Well, it isn't illegal is it?"

"Depends what city you're in. It's not a chargeable offence, if that's what you mean. Not since the military deregulation committee and the Private Defence Act. But you probably shouldn't have one of these things unless you intend to use it. And it's melting your reactor down. Looks like you've remapped the power control AI's assertion base to stifle any overheat warnings, too. That's smart, but not that smart, Helix. Reactors can blow if you draw too much current from them."

"I thought it would have stayed cool. Like, y'know, why else is it called 'cold fusion'?"

I laughed. "Compared to the surface of the sun, it is. But that doesn't mean you can stress it too far. I'd better take a look at the palladium inserts. And the control logic. It could need a serious overhaul, at least a week's work, I figure. Unless you want to tell me just what this is all about, and why you're in the wrong city, and on the run from your gang?"

Bingo. It was an educated guess, but her body language told me I'd hit paydirt. She slumped, and what looked like a tear vibrated in the ultrasound scan on her left cheek.

"Well, Helix?"

"Okay. I uplifted this chip, see? Hid it from the gang. I figured it'd be worth a bit on the Net, so I plugged it into my own pocket interface, uploaded it to some friends I knew, we tried to analyse it. Turned out to be a major product spec for a big arms company in Germany. They had a tracer in the code, too, it tripped an alarm and they sent agents out to get it back. By the time the gang found out it was too late for me to warn them. Now they're both after me. I'm so scared, man. I mean, normally I'm cool, but what can you do with something like this?"

Good question indeed. Very good question.

"Well, blackmail would be one answer, but it can tend to get very messy. And somehow I don't think these guys want any loose ends. Who are they, anyway? And what can you tell me about the product?"

For an answer she fished down the collar of her jumpsuit and pulled out a black metal pendant from around her neck. Good thinking, kid. An anti- magnetic chip case on your person. She found a thin flatscreen panel in another pocket, snapped the chip into the universal data socket, and handed me the viewer.

I squinted at the screen for a moment, then flipped the chip out and slotted it into my extensor arm. Helix boggled. "You can, like, read data chips direct? Wow!"

"Yep, it saves a lot of time. Besides, most screens are designed for human eyes, not 'droid scanners. My visual spectrum sight isn't that good at best." I didn't tell her about my other senses; the girl might freak if she thought I was too advanced. And it wasn't _that_ impressive, anyway. "Let's see... oh darn."

The information flashed up on my inner eye. Great. Just great. This was bad news, all right. Armscor International, proud makers of the plutonium fragmentation grenade, was now hard at work on a new project: an antimatter weapon. Primary configuration to be hand-held, not requiring heavy transportation. Fuel and containment technology: cryogenic ferrous salts in a carbon lattice, electromagnetically suspended in vacuum. Destructive potential, sorry, 'Expected Yield', variable, in the multi- megatonne range, 'with significant personnel lossage due to radiation aftereffects'. Deployment method, 'variable, but optimised for covert usage'. Target market, 'high-profile special interest groups'. Read, terrorists. Profit margins 'well within acceptable investment parameters, even allowing for maximum research expenditure.'

Ouch. These guys were serious. But something still didn't add up.

"They're building an antimatter nuke in a suitcase, and they let the specs just drift out onto the street, not even encrypted? How did you say you got hold of this again?"

She winced. "Someone I used to know was hired to courier it for Armscor, 'cos they didn't trust the Net. He got smart and ran away with it. But this isn't the original. We burned that. This is just a cracked copy."

It was my turn to boggle. "Cracked? A military code? You and what alien invasion fleet?"

Helix actually smiled. "Hey, it wasn't that hard to break. Like, they were still using that outdated RSA-3 algorithm. Everyone knows there's a flaw ten klicks wide in its polynomial regression factors. The whole encryption community's been running scared ever since Dobson and Hyde demonstrated the universal prime factor theory, anyway."

My real skin was starting to crawl. Helix just shrugged.

"I wedged some online time at MIT, okay?"

Yeah, right. Sure you did. This kid was so smart, she was a danger to everyone on her continent, but she still couldn't program a spider power plant correctly.

"Well. Leaving aside the question of how you managed to crack an Armscor internal file, we now have one highly incriminating data chip, one black weapons project which could quite possibly spell the end of civilisation as we know it, and one annoyed mega-corporation which probably cares enough about its secrecy to send a small army of assassins in your general direction. Not to mention your ex-gang, who are understandably disturbed by this. Does that about cover it?"

She nodded. "I guess so. So what are we going to do?"

It's times like this that I almost regret leaving the Special Forces. Not often, you understand. Just times like this.

"Do you think you could get back into MIT again?"

Helix looked bored. "Of course. Why?"

"Well, I have an idea. Just give me a line to whatever mainframe you used to break that chip. Oh, and a copy of your decryption algorithm would come in handy too."

She was starting to cotton on. I fired up the Net terminal I keep in the back room, next to the medi couch with my old, scarred, meat body. It took about half an hour to do what had to be done. When everything was ready I went back into the workshop to finish Joey the Spider's reconditioning. The Norman Rockwell seemed to give a conspiratorial wink. I wasn't sure if he would have approved, but I hoped so.

The laser sentry chirped as I walked out the door. The man was there, just as I knew he would be, standing a few metres down the street looking idly at a window full of tri-D sets. He glanced up at me, then away, bored, satisfied I was no-one he knew. Every inch the perfect stranger. Except that my IR vision showed nothing but a faint blue smudge. Cold as steel.

The man, just like most Armscor agents, was a telepresence android. Not an old vet like me, but one of the new models with realistic skin and limbs. At a casual glance you wouldn't know that he was a fully armed combat machine, optimised for covert operations, with enough composite alloy in his chest to stop a plutonium grenade without breaking stride. A true professional, guided by an operator somewhere on the other side of the planet. With nothing to give his cover away, except perhaps for a slight coldness about the eyes.

He turned at the sound of skittering metal legs, to see Joey the spider step out of my workshop door, with Helix perched atop the small seat, alone and vulnerable. Time seemed to slow down. I watched as he snapped open a leg compartment, pulled out a heavy mass driver pistol, and fired a trio of neat, precise shots. The girl fell without a cry.

The spider's Winchester rifle tilted towards the assassin, stuttering sound and fury. The android fired again, effortlessly dodging the white plasma bolts. Steadying himself in a firing stance, he locked onto the hot-spot beneath Joey's seat, ignored a bolt of plasma in the chest, and made another calm shot.

He needn't have bothered. A blue wisp of smoke was already rising from the spider's heatsink fins. The wisp became a cloud, then a flicker of red, then suddenly with balletic grace, a fireball. Joey the Yahama 9200 exploded in a cloud of debris worthy of a prime-time tri-D miniseries.

By the time I refocused my scanners, the assassin was already halfway across the empty street. He found there what he expected to see: wreckage, one small body, and a data chip in a magnetically shielded pendant. With a single movement he picked up the pendant, cracked it open, inserted the chip into an arm socket, and walked away. He didn't even give the girl a second glance.

I staggered back into the workshop, and locked the door. There was a quiet rustle from the back room. "It's all right," I called. "You can come out now. They're gone."

A figure, this one real, jumped out from behind the medi couch. Helix.

"That was, like, really cool!" she giggled. "I watched it all on the sentry monitor. But why did he think it was _me_ riding Joey?"

I laughed.

"Well, like I said, there are problems with using telepres 'droids. One of the biggest is, someone can intercept your data stream and make you see false images. Superimpose the figure of one person over that of another, for example. It's especially easy if the person eavesdropping is a 'droid operator themselves, and they happen to have the right encryption key."

"But he took the chip. That must have been real."

"Of course. Mind you, it does have a slight error in one of the materials tolerance tables. An error large enough to make any antimatter device built from it quite unmarketable. I've no idea how that could have crept into an encrypted chip, have you?"

She grinned. "None at all. Nobody could have re-encrypted the chip without cracking the algorithm first. Oh, by the way... I've been wondering. You wouldn't be needing an assistant, would you?"

I tried to give a casual shrug, but my arm was loose. I settled for a nod.

"I think perhaps I, like, do."

My head fell off.

The End