were, but I know you better than to even ask.”
“Between us we are. Besides, I can hook you up with his sister. That’s worth the price of admission alone, since you're girl enough to ride.”
She hands me the disc and slumps back in her seat. “She better not have a baby tongue.”
Scott smiles. “I still can’t believe we ever got in this mess. I told him to save the warez on a separate partition in his memory- could have kept them isolated in case, well, they did what they did. You’re lucky they didn’t have ‘fiery colon explosion’ coded into a subroutine.”
I’m hardly listening. I’m spinning the disc around in my fingers, thinking. I hold it over my wrist pad, and it scans the files. I can see into my life, like it’s someone’s house and I’m peeping in the windows. It feels familiar, but it doesn’t feel quite like home, either. “Can I… can I keep tonight?” I ask finally, and I’m surprised when I’m back in the car.
Cass sighs, and her fingers start working across her wrist pad. “Here. I’m pinging you. Give me administrator access to your systems. I’m running you through Scott as a firewall, so you don’t get any brain damage on me.”
“Though you’re bound to get some perve on you,” I said.
“Heh. Yeah, but my system runs a sleaze filter automatically every time I see him, so it shouldn’t do any permanent damage.”
“You’re a pair of assholes,” Scott says, almost telling the drive-bot to turn too early and take us into a pole, before realizing it, then slumping into his seat.
“So that’s why you’re so comfortable around us, then?” I think I had a follow-up, but my brain hiccups, I think it’s Cass in my system files cleaning house. It’s harder to talk, but I manage to get out, “I think I want to merge my files.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You sure? I can run a third partition, with both systems combined- probably the safest way to go- then you can just boot to whatever, depending upon how brain dead you feel like being.” She’s being cautious, but cold, but behind her eyes, a pink-orange color, there’s genuine concern; I think I’m going to ask her out, if my brain doesn’t melt.
“Fuck it.”
“You only get uploaded once,” she says, and starts flicking her fingers over the wrist pad. My mind shuts down and I flop back in my seat; I hope my BIOS is functional enough I don’t lose control of my bowels, but it’s a strangely abstract thought- one that seems less and less important as I try and remember what it was. I can vaguely hear speech, though I’m not really able to understand it.
“You’re not really doing it, right? I mean, there’s no real reason to overwrite his older memory files, besides maybe a twelve second performance gain over the entire operation.”
“No, of course not. I’m not completely fucking retarded, like he is- though I think I saw why- he actually had a corrupted dll.”
“One of those ancient Windows files? Wow. That’s fucked up. File had to be older than he is.” I moan a little as my lungs finally work when I ask them to. “Oh, he’s up. Morning, sunshine. Stop.” The car abruptly halts, and I smack into the back of the driver’s seat, because in my headwoundedness I’d forgotten to put on a seatbelt.
It’s a full minute before Scott stops laughing, and there are tears in his eyes when he gets out and says, “First round's on me, after that it’s him- unless he can’t remember his pin.”
“Get us some beers, we’ll catch up.” Scott gives me the creepiest grin another man has ever given me (though now I actually can remember other men and previous creepy grins) and a thumbs up, then goes inside.
Cass is nervous in the front seat, and gets out. I lunge out of Scott’s open door, because I don’t want her to make it inside before I can talk to her. “Thanks for fixing my head. Would you like to go out some time?"
She thinks a moment, long enough I frown a little before she says, “Maybe. Buy me a beer, and we’ll see what it feels like.” I’m still standing there, waiting for my brain to catch up, when the door into the bar closes behind her.
Thanks From The Author
You have my sincerest thanks for helping me continue writing. Below is a list of my other work. Some is available for purchase now, others will be available soon. I also encourage you to check my website for other projects of mine, including RSS feeds of stories that are updating weekly and to sign up for my newsletter, so I can let you know when something new is coming out.
Nic feeds off your thoughts, attention and the odd crudely-drawn erotic fan-doodle. Feed Nic by leaving a review at your favorite e-tailer, or emailing him at
[email protected]. Additional contact methods and stalking opportunities are available at NicolasWilson.com.
Other Works by Nic
Available Novels
Homeless
Humanity has been decimated by a violent new species that nests in enclosed spaces, and slaughters everything unfortunate enough to come indoors. Mitch is a 'Wall Banger', an explosives expert who 'cracks' buildings, exposing them to air and sunlight to kill the invasive organisms. When a friend of Mitch's asks for help tracking down a murderer, Mitch recruits Cori, a 'Shadow Runner' who races through infested spaces to gather supplies and saleable loot. But this terrifying contagion isn't the only danger, as their world descends into a harrowing marathon against oversupplied militias, murderous gangs, self-righteous survivors, and all-out starvation.
Banksters
It’s a profitable time to be a bastard, one of the most profitable in history. Mark Dane intends to take full advantage of that and be the bastard at the top- if he can make his way past his fellow predators, through a concrete jungle of murder, sex, greed, and revenge. Ride shotgun with a sociopathic social climber, as he lies, cheats, and manipulates his way through the ranks of the fourth largest financial firm in the country, and revel in the bastard on bastard violence that follows.
The Necromancer’s Gambit (The Gambit #1)
The sheriff of Portland, OR’s magical community is known as Knight. His bosses run the mage government, called "the Gambit." On a rainy night, he recovers a mutilated body, tainted with dark magic and dumped at a local haunt. When the corpse is identified as a close associate of the Gambit, it threatens the safety of the community he protects, and those he cares about most. As the fragile peace amongst the city's magic-wielding factions disintegrates, Knight must track down a cadre of murderers before his friends are picked off, one by one- with each death used to strengthen the spells cast against the Gambit.
Nexus (The Sontem Trilogy #1)
Captain Anderson Grant of the corporate starship Nexus boldly explores alien worlds (and occasionally the alien women, too). Grant and his crew struggle with the company’s version of manifest destiny, as well as its attempt to coerce them through military force. They begin to question whether the largest threat to their mission and their safety will come from outside the Nexus or from the company that respects them more for their genetic possibilities than their individuality.
Dag
Dagney Morgan, a sarcastic Department of Agriculture employee with an affinity for paperwork, has a chance run-in with a farmer covered in toxic chemicals, and walks away with a genetically modified baby, along with the seeds of a conspiracy. Before she can learn how to change a diaper, Dagney and her makeshift family are thrown into an international web of corruption and intrigue, and hounded by murderous, artificial soldiers. Their only chance at survival is to expose a plot that stretches into the highest echelons, and could start both an international arms race, and a revolution.
Whores
In the near future, women's rights are eroding. Those who buck the system are hunted as gender criminals by the authorities when they're lucky, and rogue militias when they aren't. Alex Harmon, a newly minted gender crimes detective tasked with bringing recalcitrant 'feministas' to justice, pursues a woman cast into a resistance group by circumstance. The tactics of his peers and growing violence force him to question his goals and allegiances, as he finds himself dragged into a b
rutal guerrilla war for the minds and bodies of a generation of women.
Selected Short Stories Collections ebooks
Ghost Dust
Cinderella Shoes
New Corpse Smell
Cockfight
Analog Memory
Save As
Visit NicolasWilson.com for retailer availability.
Adam West Naked, and other somewhat titillating journalism from Dangerous Ink
A free ebook collection of all of the writing Nic did for the international arts magazine, Dangerous Ink, for the first time together in a single place. Out now.
Coming Soon
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Nexus: Past Sins (The Sontem Trilogy #2)
The sequel to Nexus, following our intrepid crew fleeing their employer's long arm, and initiating first-contact with alien civilizations. Tentatively due Summer 2014.
Kindred Spirits (The Gambit #2)
The sequel to The Necromancer's Gambit, in which Baldur and Knight face off again. Tentatively due Fall 2014.
Sanctuary
Five pets escape from the shelter to find a home out in the wild. Proceeds to benefit animal shelters. Expected mid-2014.
Singularity
A physicist investigates a temporal distortion, and how it might be related to a football player's progressive dementia at a remote rehab clinic on the Oregon coast. Out in Fall