I think the reason you're not allowed to have your playthings at work is connected with them being connected with your other job as Canada's premier assassin, and the fact you probably have an electrified deer gate.... ;-)
The unicorn "Under? I'm not dressed for crawling around in the mud!" My protests seemed to fall on uncaring ears. "What do you wear when you're going to be crawling around in mud then? You got special clothes just for that?" Mac's voice seemed more gravelly than usual and there was a wet, choking sound after it that I slowly realised was laughter. "I don't crawl around in mud!" "Yeah well, the alternative is learning how to fly," said Mac. I looked at the chain-link fence and saw the point: I wasn't climbing it, and even if I did I'd stand out like a sore thumb to the AIs and the security force. Not a sensible option. "Where's this tunnel then?" The tunnel, as I suppose I should have guessed, was a fox-hole of some kind that someone else had widened out in the past. I was relieved there was no running water in it, though there was a puddle of something near the start of the tunnel that I wriggled and writhed to try and avoid. It probably made my shoulders muddier, but at least my stomach wasn't wet. The tunnel was a tight fit but I'm not a big guy and I pulled my shoulders in, held my breath, and got through with just a little bit of panic that I was stuck, right at the end. "Not bad," mused Mac in my head. "You might be alright in a fire-fight." I decided not to ask him what he meant by that, or how many of them he'd won. Another thought crossed my mind about his many deaths, but before I could ask he was talking again and I could feel a twitch in my thighs that meant he was trying to control my legs. "Need to get over there," he said, and I felt my head nod towards some large industrial-sized waste bins. They smelled, even from this distance, like they contained a lot of organic waste. There were unicorns painted on the side. I sneezed. "Really?" "Sure," said Mac. "The dogs don't patrol round there so there's only the camera to worry about. And we're not going inside the factory, so they'll identify us and mark us out as odd but unimportant. And that means we get a clear look at the building. We're after Jenny's hidey-hole." I'd been preparing my question again but Mac distracted me expertly. "Hidey-hole?" "Sure," he growled. "Jenny was a friend of mine, you think my friends live in posh places like that?" I hadn't thought of Mac as having friends at all, but now that he'd brought it up I realised that I knew very little about him. Just that he was in my head, and a more active passenger than I'd been led to believe then they implanted him. "What kind of friends do you have then, Mac?" I said. "They told me nothing really about you, just that you could help out. I thought you were more of a...." "An AI? Hah. I had a couple of friends, most of them the kind of people you'd ignore as you walked past them, or would ignore hoping they wouldn't bother you," said Mac. "But we were friends out of shared hardship, not common ground." "That sounds lonely," I said without thinking. I actually thought he sounded like a unicorn himself: asocial, vicious, possibly guarding something of value. We were behind the waste bins now and the smell was vile: like three-day old lobsters after a lobster boil abandoned in a park for someone else to clean up. My question reasserted itself. "Mac, you said you died a lot? How many of those deaths were when you were just a chip in someone's head?"
2 comments:
I think the reason you're not allowed to have your playthings at work is connected with them being connected with your other job as Canada's premier assassin, and the fact you probably have an electrified deer gate.... ;-)
The unicorn
"Under? I'm not dressed for crawling around in the mud!" My protests seemed to fall on uncaring ears.
"What do you wear when you're going to be crawling around in mud then? You got special clothes just for that?" Mac's voice seemed more gravelly than usual and there was a wet, choking sound after it that I slowly realised was laughter.
"I don't crawl around in mud!"
"Yeah well, the alternative is learning how to fly," said Mac. I looked at the chain-link fence and saw the point: I wasn't climbing it, and even if I did I'd stand out like a sore thumb to the AIs and the security force. Not a sensible option.
"Where's this tunnel then?"
The tunnel, as I suppose I should have guessed, was a fox-hole of some kind that someone else had widened out in the past. I was relieved there was no running water in it, though there was a puddle of something near the start of the tunnel that I wriggled and writhed to try and avoid. It probably made my shoulders muddier, but at least my stomach wasn't wet. The tunnel was a tight fit but I'm not a big guy and I pulled my shoulders in, held my breath, and got through with just a little bit of panic that I was stuck, right at the end.
"Not bad," mused Mac in my head. "You might be alright in a fire-fight."
I decided not to ask him what he meant by that, or how many of them he'd won. Another thought crossed my mind about his many deaths, but before I could ask he was talking again and I could feel a twitch in my thighs that meant he was trying to control my legs.
"Need to get over there," he said, and I felt my head nod towards some large industrial-sized waste bins. They smelled, even from this distance, like they contained a lot of organic waste. There were unicorns painted on the side. I sneezed.
"Really?"
"Sure," said Mac. "The dogs don't patrol round there so there's only the camera to worry about. And we're not going inside the factory, so they'll identify us and mark us out as odd but unimportant. And that means we get a clear look at the building. We're after Jenny's hidey-hole."
I'd been preparing my question again but Mac distracted me expertly. "Hidey-hole?"
"Sure," he growled. "Jenny was a friend of mine, you think my friends live in posh places like that?"
I hadn't thought of Mac as having friends at all, but now that he'd brought it up I realised that I knew very little about him. Just that he was in my head, and a more active passenger than I'd been led to believe then they implanted him.
"What kind of friends do you have then, Mac?" I said. "They told me nothing really about you, just that you could help out. I thought you were more of a...."
"An AI? Hah. I had a couple of friends, most of them the kind of people you'd ignore as you walked past them, or would ignore hoping they wouldn't bother you," said Mac. "But we were friends out of shared hardship, not common ground."
"That sounds lonely," I said without thinking. I actually thought he sounded like a unicorn himself: asocial, vicious, possibly guarding something of value. We were behind the waste bins now and the smell was vile: like three-day old lobsters after a lobster boil abandoned in a park for someone else to clean up. My question reasserted itself. "Mac, you said you died a lot? How many of those deaths were when you were just a chip in someone's head?"
Greg - lol
Was enjoying this voyage of discovery right up until you reminded me of the lobster fest.
Now I'm just trying to picture you falling into a pit of dog poop.
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