It was rainy and dark in the shipyard. It wasn't really night but the early, early morning. In one of the container apartments, a faint and rapid clicking was to be heard. Inside sat a young woman typing at a highend PC. The young woman had clear signs of not having slept in a while with bags under her red eyes. "Just a little more and then it is complete! A program update for the MOdUx cybernet modem. With this even new users should have better protection from hacking and viruses and it only costs them half a credit!" The woman said and got up looking in the mirror. Seeing the effects of six days worth of sleep deprivation, she exclaimed: "We will have that! Just a boost from the neural booster and I should be looking like a week ago within the next hour! Luckily I just recharged it!"

The woman went to the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine. She poured herself a glass and went back to the PC. She continued to write the rest of the update. It only took her 20 minutes to finish up. After uploading it into her store online, her headed to clean herself and throw on a fresh set of clothes. On her way to the closet, she said: "I! Amal Leblanc, have created my best security update yet!" Immediately after, she let out a creepy giggle.

Soon customers would be ringing her doorbell, most wanting a modem upgrade or a video game. The few that bought the less legal stuff such as Amal's home manufactured MOdUx 2.0 Platinum high functionality modem, needed to be run through a background check to make sure that they didn't work for the cyber division of the national security council. The last one that tried anything stupid was found in a ditch with no memories of the past week the day after.

River had passed out the night before still wearing her maid outfit, waking up with her blue wig askew and the sting of having left the contacts in while sleeping. She hadn't even made it to the bed instead falling fast asleep on pillow pile in front of her TV. She didn't have room for a conventional couch so the pillows served their purpose. River pushed herself up with a reluctant grown, and looked down at herself. With a moan and growl she headed to the bathroom, a flush and then the sound of the shower going, she wasn't in there long when the alarm on her mini modem started going off letting her know she had to be at Medical Mechanica in a couple of hours. As much as she appreciated the better pay she got at the factory than she did being ogled by perverts in a maid outfit it being a sorter was boring as hell. Luckily she had the night off from the Cyber Maid Cafe tonight, so she could spend a night not being randomly groped on the rear.

Stepping out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, River walked over to her small dresser and puled out her clothes for the day. It was her typical attire it was her skirt and zipper vest. She had been looking forward to getting sorter glove attachment for her mini modem. It had been over a month, and judging by the waiting list, it could be months or years before she got it. So much for enthusiasm, she pulled up the zipper of her vest and headed to the kitchen. She waved her hand over the sensor of the holopod sitting on the small kitchen counter. A three dimensional image of a news casters face appeared in a holographic beam from the pad. He started to babble on about the weather... like that was anything new it rains vast majority of the time in Ademus.

River sighed as she looked through the various cabinets in her kitchen, finally after searching she pulled a box of dehydrated meals. After choosing her 'poison', River tore away the foil packet revealing something that looked a kin to a hokey puck but a mishmash of colors. On her counter was a food rehydrator, something that kind of looks like a microwave, after pushing the number three on the control panel int started to make a noise that sounded as though someone was boiling water. After just a few seconds the rehydrator dinged, River reached in and pulled out a whole meal from the machine, and the sat at the small table in her living room to eat her meager, bland meal.

Just as the new's was ending another alarm sounded from River's mini modem telling her it was time to head to her job at Medical Mechanica. Grabbing her tram rail pass she glanced over at the picture of her mother and younger siblings sitting on an end table next to her door.

"Well guy's I'll see you when I get home... don't make a mess while I'm gone." and with that she made her way out the door.

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For some other residents of the shipyard the day had began and hour before River had even thought of waking up. Darius and his sister Karmandy were getting ready for the day, they had managed to get by without Darius flipping out over the fact that Karmandy's shoes were each tied in opposite directions in stead of even and symmetrical on each side. Maybe it was the fact that the six year old just decided it would go more smoothly if she just tied the shoes herself as opposed to asking her brother to tie them for her. She sat at their small dining table nibbling on a piece of toast with a lovely fried egg perched on top of it, she watched her brother intently as he sat at his laptop scrolling through what his assigned duties would be at work today. He glanced up feeling her eyes on him.

"Is something wrong sis?" he asked looking over the top of his glasses.

"Are we going to be able to go to town this weekend... or are you going to do something else?" she asked before taking another bite of her breakfast.

Darius blinked a few times, pulled his hands from the keyboard and then pushed his glasses up he bridge of his nose.

"Well I don't see why not... when have I ever cancelled anything that I promised I would do with you?" he said wondering were the idea had come from.

Karmandy set her food down on the plate in front of her, "Well just other kids in my class always talk about their mommies and daddies changing the plans for the weekend and then they're stuck at home. I just wondered if you would do that too, they seemed to not believe me when I told them my big brother always takes me where I want to go. Some of them even got mad at me." she got a somewhat solemn look on her face as she stared down at her plate.

Darius, closed the lid of the laptop in front of him and gave a gentle smile at his sister. "Sometimes kids say things that they don't mean to be hurtful sis, I wouldn't worry about it too much. They'll forget what they were mad about and things will go back to the fun and learning. Besides, I'm not a mommy or a daddy." he gave a reassuring wink at her.

Karmandy smiled brightly at him, her spirits obviously lifted, "Yeah, I'm special cause I have the best big brother in the world!"

Darius couldn't help but smile, this little girl that he had cared for the the past couple of years was what made the world worth wild. After a quick clean up the pair was on on their way to the tram rail station, after Darius would get Karmandy to school he would head to his IT job at Medical Mechanica.

" A wee man stood atop a hill, a kitchen knife in hand, first he slashed then he jumped....Then he learned the meaning of Moore's law." A voice emanated from the glow of multiple screens, their plasma high definition showing rapid scrolling numbers. To most the random strings of binary code would have been utter gibberish, far too many people knew only the idiots GUI interface. But the long hand of raw code spoke in more detail then such crude methods. And the figure bathed in the screens glow wanted to know everything this system could teach. His long and lean face twisted in utter contempt at the mocking words coming at him from the screens. His hands flew over the the keys activating programs designed to aid him in the digital rape this infiltration was.

" And a second class AI will cease to exist." He snarled back as the code flew ever onwards throughout the screens. The quiet purr of his custom built rack cabinets filled the small space as he called upon their considerable computing power. With the boost to his offensive capacity the hacker smiled with the joy normally associated with victorious warriors. The frenetic drumming of his fingers against the keyboard did not slow in the least. Killing the guard dog was one thing, getting what he was here for was another thing.

His eyes scanned the raw code feed looking for the telltale signs of obvious cover up. So many idiots subscribed to the philosophy of hiding a tree within a forest. A good tactic but paths were carved underneath a hiker every time a walk in the forest was undertaken. And the same fools insisted on checking on that hidden tree so often the path might as well been a paved road. First came filtering the daily traffic according to various keywords and algorithms used. The higher the security clearance needed the less any file or document would be accessed. Then came checking date and identification of digital signature.

" That's right you bitch born whore it's time to get on your knees." The hacker spoke with a laugh as the first files began to download. The hard part was over and fifteen minutes later an automated sweeper program was erasing any trace of his digital signature from the system. Most would view a fifteen minute download as unacceptable but such was the price of security. Passing data packets though low priority channels and mirror servers was a slow but surefire way to avoid traceback.

But why such a third rate medical corporation had such in depth security as to require the brute force of both of his cabinets piqued the slicer's interest. Furthermore why one of his contacts would pay so much for data on a second rate prototype was beyond him. But then again it didn't pay to ask questions in the business of selling info. Seeing the download was complete the tall and lean hacker switched over to a data transfer program.

Got that bunch of recipes for you Joe, enjoy. Yours sincerely Living Dead Guy. He typed adding a short message as more encryption then most military missives could boast was added to the file.

Signing off the net the slicer powered down his set up, it chewed through power and coolant when the damn thing was left on too long. Getting up he dug a packet of cigarettes out of his jeans pocket. Seven Stars they were the only smokes from home the unruly dressed man could get here in this rain soaked corner of the world. Walking out the door he was just in time to see the sun crest the horizon, dimmed by the rain it still bought a rueful smile to his lips.

Another sleepless day huh his inner voice chided as the hacker lit a cigarette inhaling deeply of toxins and nicotine. Breathing out a second later he only laughed in reply.

" You sound like my mother you know."

One of us has to be the adult in this relationship.

" Your one to talk I remember a certain desire to.."

That topic is forbidden the inner voice replied with the mental equivalent of a blush.

" Hah." The slicer spoke as he once more took a drag of his smoke.This was the best time of day, the early morning rain had a zest to it unmatched by the afternoon rain and night rain. The music of it's falling was also unpolluted by the hustle and bustle of the work day.

An update vid went out to all MOdUx users will Amal in it: "To all customers that have bought the MOdUx 2.0: The newest update to your MOdUx has been released. For only half a credit, you will have far better anti-virus and anti-hacking protection than any current commercial product. Just log into the store on the cybernet. For only a half a credit you pay only a tiny fraction of what you would usually pay for a product that is of less quality!"

Within the first five minutes around 200 sales were made and they came in at a secondly frequency. It was quite satisfying to Amal. She then left her apartment to get groceries at the convinience store just a few buildings away. She needed milk, beer, eggs, butter, bread, some veggies and some sausages. Maybe she would get some sweets too. Maybe she might meet new people there.

River was running on auto pilot as she sorted, before her was a wall of bins reaching almost to the ceiling of the warehouse. She and the other sorter all sat upon a motorized chair that drove on tracks between each bin, and they would use a small joy stick to move along the tracks going from bin to bin sorting the parts that would move on to the assembly line. Not much was said in fact most of the sorters were jacked into their mini-modem listening to music or catching up on their local sports team. However River didn't do that, she always lived in fear that if she wasn't paying complete attention to her work she would mess up and loose her job, something she couldn't afford to happen.

There was a guy that was several feet away who was in his seat drumming away in the air paying a little more attention to his music than his job. River shook her head, if that had been her she would have been fired already, just then several other sorter's to her right had moved close to each other and were chatting. She side glanced over at them as she sort of eaves dropped on their conversation.

"Are any of you going to get that new MOdUx update, it's only half a credit?", one asked.

"You guys are crazy, don't you know you can get in trouble for not using official Pear Corporation products.", said another.

"Oh please nothing's gonna happen, not like Pear Corporation has some elite police force out to arrest anyone that doesn't use their official products. Besides, their stuff is waaaay over priced and break really easily, I'll stick with MOdUx, may not be made by some huge business, but their app's and stuff are always half the price as Pear or any of the others." one said waiving away the other's concerns.

"HEY YOU SLACKERS GET BACK TO WORK OR YOU'RE GONNA FIND YOURSELF LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB, FORGET HALF CREDIT UPGRADES. WONT MEAN A DAMN THING IF YOU'RE NOT MAKING CREDITS!", yelled the supervisor from the warehouse floor.

The group quickly dispersed and got back to work, and River put her attention back on her own task trying to ignore the amateur air drummer next to her.

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"Hey Darius can you take a look at this, my computer froze up again?", she asked.

Darius sighed this was the third time that day Ms. Trudy Carmichael had asked him for help, but not like he could say no to the head tech designer for Medical Mechanica. But you'd think she would be a little more computer savi and wouldn't need him to come bail her out every time she messed something up. Darius assumed she just kept getting into the zone of her creativity and didn't realize she just opened up too many things at once.

He stepped into the woman's office, she had to be at least five years older than Darius, maybe more. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun at the base of her neck, she wore a skirt suit that in Darius' opinion was way shorter than it needed to be. She pushed her chair back as Darius came over to her desk and stood in front of the computer. He could feel her eyes staring at him behind his back, and here the clack as she drummed her manicured fingertips on the arm of her chair. He took hold of the mouse and started to go through the steps needed to unfreeze her computer.

"Sooo... Darius what do you do when you're not saving the world one computer at a time?", she said in an almost seductive tone of voice.

Darius tried to ignore the intonation in her voice and do his job, "Well I spend most of my free time with my little sister.", he spoke as his fingers skillfully moved over the keys on the keyboard.

"No... girlfriend?", Trudy reached out and brushed her finger tips across the back of Darius' neck.

This action made Darius' eyes go wide and he flinched at her touch. Now he realized that Trudy really wasn't having as many computer problems as she kept saying and was just trying to get him alone in her office.

"Well there you go.." he chose to ignore the touch and moved to the side of the desk to show that her computer was now running smoothly once again. She looked at him with a sort of aggravated glare, as he smiled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. "Just like new Ms. Carmichael, well I really got to go I just got a message that I need to got to the third floor to accounting, seems their computer is spitting out number at random and adding them in to their totals and they don't know why."

Darius could tell by the look on her face that she didn't believe anything he was telling her, and rightfully so cause it was a load of BS. But he had to come up with something to get him out of such an uncomfortable situation, he quietly left her office as the door slid closed behind him he gave a deep sigh of relief as he went back to his own cubical.

Amal on her way to the convinience store got a warning that a hacker from the Pear corporation was trying to get to MOdUx information and was intending to down the update servers. She decided to pull out her mobile device and counterhack. She plugged a cord into a port behind her ear and started working. "A bit paralysis should scared then him off." Amal said and found out to which rate the users modem was connected to his brain and neural system. She used a hacking technique that would temporarily make his muscles go haywire and screw around with his brain.

Meanwhile the hacker was aware of it, but it was too late as he fell from his chair and started to shake as if he had epilepsy. It scared him and hurt and at the same time he wasn't able to think clearly. During the two minute of his epilepsy, Amal remotely formatted the hackers entire PC to keep him from doing his work for the next couple days. She left a message, that if Pear corporation was to interfere with her business again, far more dire consequences would come and even a lawsuit. She was now able to make one as the MOdUx was finally licensed and patented.

She then put away her mobile device and continued to the convinience store.