The Glamour Thieves by Donald Allmmon

Author:Donald Allmmon [Allmon, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2017-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

There were disadvantages to working with humans and orcs, and the stink was one of them. The four of them were crammed into the cab of JT’s truck with the AC blasting, but that only went so far. Austin was wedged against the passenger-side door, Victor straddled the middle, and Buzz might as well have been sitting in JT’s lap. Wasn’t that just fucking adorable?

Buzz’s eyes were open and kept focusing on things no one else but he and JT could see. JT’s eyes were closed. He kept flinching or grimacing as if whatever Buzz was doing to the network of his truck physically hurt him. Buzz talked while he worked, like whatever he was doing was nothing more difficult than walking and chewing bubble gum.

Austin sat there and glared at Buzz and JT and thought vague dark thoughts.

Buzz was saying, “So the Electric Dragon Triad contacts me, says they have this ghost problem, and right off I’m thinking like you guys are: you got a ghost, you find a necromancer or a holy man, not a hacker. But they didn’t mean that kind of ghost. They meant a ghost in their network, an AI fragment.”

He paused and no one said anything, which apparently was not the reaction he wanted. “An AI fragment,” he repeated. “No one knows? Really? This is what happens when you get everyday magic: no one learns about technology anymore. An AI fragment is what you get sometimes when an artificial intelligence breaks, or when it’s forming and it gets a trait it doesn’t want; it sheds it. It’s like glaciers and icebergs. Pieces of its mind break off and go floating around cyberspace and sometimes they get washed up on beaches and people find them. The fragments are barely sentient, usually just a clump of bad memories, and they’re kind of obsessive. So: ‘ghosts.’”

“Whales,” Victor said.

“What?”

“Whales. Whales used to get washed up on beaches, not icebergs.”

Buzz’s eyes focused on Victor. He blinked a couple of times. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

JT cracked a smile. One of JT’s huge arms was propped across the back of the seat behind Buzz. He shifted so that his fingers brushed against Buzz’s hair. Real slick, Austin thought. Not subtle at all. Austin tried to imagine JT and Buzz having sex. What would they have done? Handjobs? Blowjobs? Had they actually fucked? Austin couldn’t imagine Buzz on top (like Buzz would know what to do with someone like JT under him), and he couldn’t imagine Buzz on bottom (like Buzz would be walking after JT finished up). Austin couldn’t imagine any of it.

Victor nodded at the data cube in Buzz’s hand. “So that’s what you’ve stolen? This ghost? This must be very valuable to go to all this trouble: my apartment ruined, a gunfight over the city . . .”

“They’re valuable to some people.” Buzz’s eyes lost focus again as he went back to work. “We’ve got no idea how many unregistered AI’s there are out there—not even 3djinn

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