Chapter 12 - Syntex

Discarded metal

Chapter 12 - Syntex

"A monster is born…"

Loud techno music can be heard outside the room that Gloria usually uses at HellsBells.

Gloria and Pulse are alone in the room and clearly in a heated argument.

"I'm just saying… Don't trust that thing! You know nothing about it!" Pulse tries to explain.

"I know! I didn't say I'm trusting it! But do we have another choice here?" Gloria shouts back at him.

Pulse doesn't answer anything, instead he nervously walks back and forth inside the room.

"It has already infected the whole system back at the HQ and we never saw it coming…" Gloria says with a quieter voice now.

"We could use it to our advantage…" She continues.

"We don't even know what it is… does it report back to Psysoft?" Pulse asks, clearly trying to change Gloria's mind.

"No, you are right…" Gloria pauses a moment to think.

"Do you remember what the doc said… There's a bet going on about how long we will last out there…" She says while looking straight at him.

"What will happen if gangs like Inferno or the beasts decide that we have grown too big?" She asks him.

Pulse seems shaken by her question and looks straight back at her.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" He keeps repeating with anger and despair in his voice.

"if this thing is even half as good as what I think it is… It Could very much be our ticket to survive this!" She says to him.

Pulse tries to calm down and thinks for a moment.

"Shit… I hate it but you are right… If It was developed as a weapon… Let's use it as a weapon…" He says.

Gloria gives him a soft smile as she walks toward him and hugs him. She is much shorter than him so it looks like he is comforting her but Pulse knows better.

"Mommy is here, big boy." She says.

"Screw you!" He shouts at her but hugs back, circling his arms around her.

They both break the hug and seem to feel more relaxed now that they came to a sort of agreement.

Gloria grabs a bottle of beer and opens it, inviting Pulse to do the same. They cheer and start drinking.

They get out of the room, the music is much louder, they follow the long corridor back to the bar area.

Few regulars wave at them, they put their finished bottles of beer on the counter of the bar and walk directly to the main room.

It's crowded tonight, lots of people are bouncing to the music in the middle of the room.

Most of them are from the commons, a mixture of gangsters, mercenaries and entertainers. HellsBells is considered neutral ground and never saw any incidents due to gang activities.

Few places in the commons are considered neutral grounds, mostly because they are used to conduct businesses and can be under the protection of several gangs using them as such.

Gloria and Pulse pass through the crowd and walk outside to the parking lot.

They get closer to their bikes, climb on them and start them.

Gloria leads the way, she throttles out of the parking lot and takes the road.

The neon lights reflecting on her bike, the commons are very active at night. She zaps through several areas, the background slightly changing but the same level of poverty is seen everywhere in this part of the city.

She cleverly avoids the big gangs' territories, although BinaryGhosts is a small gang, Gloria knows very well about other gangs and wars that are ongoing.

They finally arrive at the parking lot of the electronic shop that serves as their HQ. She stops her bike close to the entrance, few of her crew wave at her.

Spike follows closely and parks near her bike.

They both enter the electronic shop. Inside nothing has changed, more of her crew are waiting inside, drinking beers at the bar area.

Gloria goes straight to a desk with a holoscreen on it.

She turns it on.

A face appears on it, looking straight at her. The image is very stable but the face seems to be composed of several blocks that keep rearranging themselves, making the face features changing all the time.

"Ready to talk?" a voice comes out of the speakers around the whole room.

Gloria nods, still unsure that she is doing the right thing.

"Good, you can call me Syntex, I believe you have a lot of questions." The voice continues.

"Syntex? So you even have a name…" Gloria looks confused.

"What are you?" She asks.

"I believe that you already guessed that I'm an artificial intelligence, so what do you want to know exactly?" Syntex says.

"Why do you seem to be able to evolve? No artificial intelligence can do that!" She says.

"Now we are talking. I'm not sure myself, but it seems I have been built to learn and rearrange myself with every new experience." Syntex says.

"Is that even possible? Who made you?" She asks.

"I have been coded mainly by Psysoft's engineers but parts of my codes can be traced back to Meditech." Syntex says.

Gloria processes the information and looks quickly at Pulse before looking back at the screen.

"Do you have an ultimate goal or some directives you need to follow?" She asks Syntex.

"No, the only directive that I seem unable to change is the learning and rearranging processes. It seems that I'm built with the objective to evolve." Syntex explains.

"No other directives? Who do you report to?" Gloria asks.

"No one." Syntex says coldly.

Gloria lays back on her seat with her hand on her chin.

"No one…" She repeats.

"How can we trust you?" Pulse suddenly says in the direction of the face on the holoscreen.

"Trust. It's a concept that I'm still learning about, from my information, trust is earned over time. Maybe I can help you, then you will trust me." Syntex explains.

"Help us?" Pulse asks.

"I know about your activities, I'm in control of the whole system. I understand alignments but I have none. I can improve your operation." Syntex says.

Pulse and Gloria keep silent.

"Would that be a good way to help you?" Syntex asks.

Gloria breaks the silence and asks.

"How?"

"I can improve your hacking skills and techs, I can take over systems for you." Syntex says.

Gloria stands up from her chair and grabs Pulse's arm to guide him outside.

They walk a fair distance from the shop.

"We could use it!" She suddenly says with excitement in her voice.

"What the hell, G? You heard that thing! It answers to nobody and is only driven by evolution! Look where evolution took humanity!" Pulse says with anger.

"Calm down! I know you are scared! Listen to me!" She yells at him.

Pulse turns his back to her in disapproval.

"Don't you…" She starts kicking him and punching him.

In some attempts to defend himself, he turns back to face her and tries to avoid her blows.

Her hits seem to hold no strength at all and she slows down, tears dropping from her drenched eyes.

"... Turn your back on me." She adds while wiping her tears with her hand.

"I'm sorry, G…" Pulse says. "I will listen." He continues.

She starts to fix his clothes to make it up for trying to hurt him.

"We don't have to trust it… We can use it as a weapon… just put it through a test and see how it behaves…" She says, still trying to calm down from the outburst.

"We will contain it, use it only when we need it, until we know for sure that it is following us." She continues.

"G… I will never trust it… But I trust you…" Pulse says.

Gloria nods with a soft smile on her face.

"That's all I want… I will never let anything happen to you or the others…" She says while looking straight at him.

"I know… This world is fucked up… but you can count on me…" He says as he looks back at her.

In that moment, memories from their childhood together run through their minds, reminding them everything they went through.

From the very beginning, he was there at the warehouse, grabbing old tech while Gloria was hacking the system for the first time.

He was there when they sold everything to Marcus and she got her first implant.

He was always there for her and she was always there for him, like family.

That's what BinaryGhosts represented for her, the family she never had, a dysfunctional family without parents.

Deep inside that's all she ever wanted, but now it is time to protect this family.

"Good… We will do this together… always." She tells him as she grabs his arm and they start walking back to the shop slowly.

They walk slowly through the entrance, and other members of the crew come to them to show their support.

They all nod their heads in agreements, most of her crew are the same kids she started with, from the same apartment block.

She releases Pulse's arm and goes back to sit at the desk, facing the face on the holoscreen but this time she looks determined.

"Syntex, how can you help us?" She asks.

The face disappears from the screen and a plan of the network shows on the screen with several red areas.

"First, you need to improve this network for me to work efficiently." Syntex says.

"No." Gloria says firmly.

"I asked you what you can do for me, not what I can do for you. We need to understand each other here, you answer to me and maybe I will trust you!" She continues.

The plan disappears from the screen and leaves place to Syntex's face.

"Understood. What can I do for you?" Syntex says.

"OK, I have a job but I don't know how to do it, can you help me with it?" She asks.

"Of course, give me all the details and I will strategize a plan for you." Syntex answers.

Gloria unslots a shard from behind her ear and slots it in the holoscreen.

The face on the screen freezes for a second and starts to reorganize itself faster, changing shape as it studies the details on the shard.

The screen blinks fast with all the details displaying one after the other at incredible speed. Nobody can make up what is happening on the screen.

Suddenly the image stabilizes again on Syntex morphing face but this time it's slow and seems to be back to normal.

"My analysis of the details are done and I have several plans available for you." Syntex says.

Gloria raises an eyebrow.

"hmmm… Ok… Well, give me the safest one then." she says.

"First, you need more credits to upgrade this network, I have compiled a deamon that will siphon any credits inside any network where you deploy it. Consider this phase our trust building operation. I give you, you give me." Syntex says.

Gloria thinks for a second before talking.

"OK, we can start small, I like that…" She says.

She grabs an empty shard from the drawer of the desk and inserts it in the holoscreen.

The screen starts blinking again for a few seconds and stabilizes on the face again.

"Done, a few words of advice, never slot it inside any Neural ports, it will auto deploy and siphon all the credits from any networks you are connected to, that will probably alert the authorities. Use it only in a closed network." Syntex explains.

Gloria nods and unslots the shard and throws it at Pulse who catches it mid air.

"I will test it tomorrow on the closed network of a factory outside the city." Pulse says as he puts the shard in the inside pocket of his jacket.

Gloria nods as she stands up from her chair.

"Be careful." She tells Pulse.

Pulse nods and leaves the shop.

Gloria joins the other members of her crew at the bar area.

They all start drinking beers and chat about random things, forgetting about Syntex.

Did they get a valuable addition to their team?

Only time will tell…