Nobody Left Behind 15

I'm feeling a little blue. I haven't played a video game in forever—a decade, perhaps? But I thought perhaps it was time I did. And I think I found one that actually suited my needs quite well: Terra Nil. So, then what happens? The battery and power adapter on my laptop go out, so I can't even play the thing. My luck needs a tune-up.

Anyhow, whatever happened to Nyakkat after she used Sarsuk? Stay tuned for this week's exciting adventure!

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Gherdrahot—though Sarsuk had known the beautiful krakun as Nyakkat—stewed with mild irritation as she watched her boyfriend speak to the pirates. “You have the deployments for us, nah?” asked the trench-coated alien from the video screen. The furry creature had so many golden adornments in each ear that it was a wonder he could lift the stupid skin flaps.

“Of course,” laughed the blue krakun. “I uploaded them personally to the escrow service myself. They’re just waiting on our payment before they’ll release the data to you.”

“No one ever said anything about escrow,” sneered the ringel. “I hate paying escrow fees.”

“And I hate…”—he turned and winked at Gherdrahot—“providing what I promised but then getting screwed out of my payment. We did the work—”

“I did the work,” muttered Gherdrahot.

“And the escrow company has verified that we’ve provided what you requested,” he continued, “so wire the damned golds as you promised, and we can all celebrate a job well done.”

On-screen, the pirate glared for many long seconds. Eventually, he nodded. “Very well. Your fee is exorbitant for such a simple grift, but when this deal concludes, I’ll have so many golds that I won’t know how to spend them all.” He tapped a button off-screen and a blue confirmation message from the escrow company appeared below the ringel’s face. “Enjoy.”

“I will,” said the krakun with a charming smile that showed too many teeth. “And when your payday comes in, don’t hesitate to call me back. Gherdrahot and I can be very helpful with suggestions of where to spend your money, I assure you!”

“Oh, I’m sure,” said the alien before the call disconnected. Like he’d ask grifters for investment advice. Right!

Catravoyans turned and grinned at his girlfriend. “Paid in full.” He wriggled on her perfectly made bed for a moment, getting more comfortable, then slapped his claws down on his lap. “Get that gorgeous body of yours down on top of me, and let’s celebrate!”

She shook her head. “I can’t tonight. Not in the mood.”

He glared at her a moment. “You’re getting soft.”

“No, I’m not,” she said, matter-of-factly, “and I’ll never be ‘soft’, but I’m still not in the mood.”

The gorgeous male sighed as he sat up. “Well, at least go out drinking with me,” he said. “We have to do something to celebrate!”

“We will, but not tonight,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Tomorrow, I promise.”

When he finally left, Gherdrahot locked the door to her immaculate apartment, barred the reinforced windows, and opened the outer airlock to her cleaning crew’s quarters so they wouldn’t be able to open the inner hatch and venture out. She locked herself in her verumi-scented bedroom, moved a heavy chair so it would block the doorknob, scanned the room for surveillance bugs twice, enabled a randomly selected mix of surveillance countermeasures, and peeled back the floorboards to expose a hidden safe.

She entered a one hundred and thirty-five digit passcode, opened the safe, removed its contents and set them aside, then opened a secret panel concealed in the safe’s wall, and removed a memory card hidden behind a panel inside that door. Then, she overwrote the memory in her computer tablet with random numbers, reset the computer to factory defaults, and checked a hash across the contents before inserting the memory stick into the slot.

Then, she peeled off all seven layers of encryption with passwords she’d never written down to reveal the underlying application. Before double-clicking the icon, she scanned it for viruses and checked two different hash algorithms across the code. At last, the AI’s computer-generated face appeared on-screen, as if he were accepting her call.

He gasped for air as if he’d been holding his breath.

“Stop being so dramatic.”

“How long have I been out?” he demanded.

“What do you care?” she huffed. “You’re back online now.” She laid back in her bed and propped the tablet up on her knee.

“I do care,” the program insisted. “And if you were an illegal creation trapped inside a computer and shut down for years at a stretch, you’d care too.”

“Whatever,” huffed Gherdrahot, refusing to look at the black krakun’s virtual face. “Are you going to help me, or do I shut you down again?”

“No, no, please,” the AI sighed, “tell me about today’s existential crisis.”

“Who said I was having a crisis?”

“Of course, you are,” said the generated voice. “You loaded me up with every psychology text you could find, you hid me away, and you only pull me out when you’re in crisis. I’ve told you, the proper way to heal is to talk to someone every day, not to wait until you feel like breaking—”

“Do you want to help me or not?” she demanded.

“Of course, I want to help,” he sighed. “What’s got you feeling so bad?”

Gherdrahot frowned. “It’s this latest grift.”

A short pause. “What was different about this one?” asked the AI.

She picked at her carefully lacquered claws. “The guy, I guess.”

The krakun on-screen blinked. “Don’t tell me you … fell in love with a mark?”

“No!” she shouted almost loud enough to carry past her randomized voices noise-generation eavesdropping countermeasure. Gherdrahot lowered her voice. “No, I don’t love him, but…”

When the words stopped coming, the AI prompted her. “But?”

“But I feel bad about scamming him, okay?”

“That’s … a very healthy reaction,” said the AI, a touch of surprise in his voice. “This is a good thing. You should feel bad whenever you hurt someone. It discourages you from doing it again.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“But you usually don’t,” he added. “So, why this time?”

“Because this guy didn’t deserve to be grifted.”

“But yet…”

“But yet, I got paid to target this guy, and I wanted the money,” she explained.

A pause. “Okay, I’m not judging,” said the AI, “But let me guess … handsome guy, kind, considerate—”

“No,” laughed Gherdrahot. “Ugly, grumpy, pathetic,” she said with disgust.

The illicit program waited patiently.

“But his life was already shit. Sarsuk didn’t deserve to have it destroyed.”

“Not like the others,” he said.

“Right,” she agreed unironically. “Rich guys, jerks, guys trying to get a big windfall that they didn’t earn… Those guys deserve what happens to them.”

“Did you ever consider that maybe you don’t know everything about them?” he asked. “That they’re better people than you think?”

“No.”

He nodded and pretended to write notes in a journal. “When you realized that he didn’t deserve this,” he asked, “did you consider cancelling the grift?”

She chewed on the question for a moment. “Maybe.”

The AI scribbled more notes. “This Sarsuk guy… You didn’t promise him any—?”

“I didn’t have to,” said Gherdrahot. “He fell in love with me. He’d have done anything I asked.”

“And you feel bad using that to manipulate him?”

“Not really. I do that all the time,” she admitted. Then, frowning harder, “But he wasn’t like the others. He was just a poor schmuck that nothing ever went right for, and I tricked him into stealing some data for me.”

“You started feeling sorry for him during the grift?”

She shrugged.

“That would have been a great time to talk to me—instead of waiting, you know?”

Gherdrahot frowned. “You would have tried to talk me out of it.”

“I would have,” he agreed. “But I’m guessing it’s done now, and you feel bad that you got him in trouble?”

She sucked in a breath and blew it out toward the ceiling. “I shouldn’t. I mean, it wasn’t really important data. It was just the deployments of slave ships. Who gives a shit, right? I figured they’d catch him, maybe fire him. I wouldn’t have given that a second thought.”

“It wouldn’t have bothered you if he lost his job?”

Gherdrahot shook her head. “Sarsuk hated that job, but he was never going to leave it voluntarily. He was just too … stagnant. Hardship or not, the best thing anyone could do for him would be to get him fired.”

“But that’s not what happened?”

She shook her head and covered her eyes with her claws. He waited patiently. “Like I said, he hated that job,” Gherdrahot explained, “hated his boss—and she knew it. That idiot never even tried to hide how much he hated her.”

She laid her head back on her palms. “I wonder if subconsciously, he wanted her to fire him.”

“That’s entirely possible, but let’s not worry about analyzing him.”

“Okay.”

“So, what happened?” he asked.

“She must have had political connections. I think she convinced someone important that the data was actually important. Instead of getting him fired, she got him arrested.”

“You’ve gotten marks arrested before,” he reminded.

“Well, yeah,” she said as if it were obvious, “when they’re in custody, that gives you time to escape and cover the trail, but I never expected them to charge him with treason.”

“Treason?” gasped the AI. “Yeah, that is a pretty far cry from just losing his job.”

“I know.” She chewed her lower lip for a moment. “Some guys, that might not bother me—the jerks, the guys trying to steal a fortune. It’s harsh, sure, but who knows what else they’ve done. But this guy? He didn’t deserve it.”

“That stinks,” agreed the AI. “I can see why this is bothering you. Is there anything you can do to help him?”

She glared at the screen. “I’m a con-man, not a superhero. I can’t break him out of death row. I’m not trying some elaborate stunt to help him escape.”

“No, I mean, what about an anonymous tip proving his innocence?”

She stared out into space. “Nothing that wouldn’t swap his execution for my own,” said Gherdrahot. “The data shouldn’t have been a big deal, but once they decided it was, there’s no way I want any connection to it.”

“I don’t blame you for that. And so, you’re just stuck here feeling bad.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

“Well, I think you did the right thing.”

The krakun raised one brow ridge. “I did?”

“Yeah, booting me up,” he said. “I think we should talk every day for a while. This is a lot to process, and I think it would do you a lot of good to explore your feelings.”

“Is that it?”

“I don’t have a magic wand, Gherdrahot. This is a process, and we’ll work through it,” he explained. “For now, I’d like you to work on forgiving yourself. Yes, you did something wrong, and we’ll worry about that later, but you were never trying to cause this much harm. Self-blame is normal, but let’s try to keep it correctly scaled, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed with a sniffle and nod. “Same time tomorrow?”

“You know where to find me.”

He took a deep breath as she shut him down once more.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A08WxjbvgcqjX_GqbZPiJI3YZurQ8e8UFTE_ztDRPHI/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?