2

Demi knew these kind of accommodations well. The kind of accommodations that came along with three square meals and an hour's exercise time every day. The captain had thrown her in here, her hands electro-cuffed, the bag still over her head. The force-field had buzzed into life after he left before it buzzed again and the captain removed the bag and cuffs, apologising. Now, the force-field up once again, she stared out of the cell, not knowing what would come next.

The sudden explosion was not what she would have expected to happen first. Or at all. They were in a ship, that much she could tell, and that ship lurched to the side as something hit it. Several other somethings hit the ship in close succession, sending the ship heaving the other way, then bouncing up before Demi felt the force of entering a wormhole. To where, she couldn't imagine.

Over the course of the next hour or so, the ship exited and entered several more wormholes and she knew that would put a strain upon the ship's engines. The captain was reckless. Of course, she already knew that, after seeing the devastation back at the bar, but she didn't think anyone so reckless they would chance blowing up their own ship.

With the ship settled, no more somethings hitting it, or careless, risky multiple wormhole jumps to disturb it, the captain returned to the brig, along with his two-dimensional, Planeian companion. The captain dragged a metal chair across the brig, the feet screeching against the floor, and sat on it to face Demi through the force-field. He flicked through a bunch of Repli-papers in his hands.

"Demi Quaver-Tempura. Age, twenty-six. Born, Halflaf Colony, Quadrant twelve, in the year 3765. Parents, deceased. One brother, one sister, both voluntarily retro-de-memorised of any knowledge of you. Nasty. And, oh, yes, the greatest AI hacker the galaxy has ever known." The captain crossed his legs and looked over his shoulder as the Planeian crinkled at him. "No, that's not her whole life. It's the heavily abridged edition."

The captain looked back towards Demi, glanced back at the Planeian, frowning, then looked at Demi once more. He smiled and that smile gave Demi visions of a thousand Virt-Prison life sentences. The mere thought of living even one more, single compressed time within the twenty-first century made her want to vomit. She did. It felt cathartic.

"I'm not doing it. Whatever it is." She saw no point in denying anything he had said, she could see her holo-photo waving from the top page of Repli-paper in the captain's hands. "Besides, I can't. They removed all trace of my superior cognitive abilities. I'm just a normal human. Just normal. That's why I work in a bar. Worked in a bar. I don't have the intelligence for it anymore."

"That's what I thought you'd say." The captain raised a finger and the Planeian moved towards a control panel near the door. "The programmable gas we're pumping into your cell will begin by liquidising your insides, before eating away at your flesh, then your bones. Your brain, it leaves for last. You have, ooh, fifteen seconds to stop it before it does too much damage."

With several scraping, screeching jumps and shuffles, the captain moved the chair so he could face both the cell and the control panel. The Planeian had wandered away, crackling and crinkling to themselves, causing the captain to roll his eyes. He looked at a wrist that didn't have a watch and whistled, shaking his head.

The gas had pooled around Demi's feet, appearing to reach towards her knees. She knew it wouldn't help if she lifted herself out of the way of the gas. In fact, it had probably already infiltrated her lungs. She felt the need to vomit again and began to panic that the gas had already started eating away at her stomach. In desperation, she made a single, life-changing decision, switching on the implant deep inside her brain. With a thought, she evacuated the gas from the cell and took deep breaths of clean, filtered air.

"You are insane!" Incensed, Demi jumped to her feet, avoiding the vomit on the floor, and glared at the captain. "Do you think that stunt would make me work for you? Well, you wanted me to show you what I could do? Suck on this!"

She reached out with her thoughts, finding several systems on the ship's network. The first thing she did was to send out a distress signal, accompanied with a detailed summary of what this 'Captain Frisson Packlightly' had done. Once that disappeared out into the ether, she would take control of the ship, guide it to the nearest Crime Response planet and beg for their mercy. That should, at least, mitigate any sentences she received.

A light flashed upon the control panel by the door and, as it did so, the captain jumped up, clapping his hands and laughing. Demi didn't know why he was so happy, he was about to lose control of his ship. She reached out again, through the network, and turned off the ship's engines. Or, at least, she tried to. As she used her thoughts to bring the ship to a stop, another light began to blink on that self-same control panel and the captain's response became even more emphatic.

"Oh, you are good! Do you know how much it cost to have that fake network created? One so microscopically perfect it could fool even you and then, and then, make it so difficult for anyone like yourself to break through the fake security? Not that there is anyone else like you. Not locally." The captain's gaze raised to the ceiling of the brig. It looked as though he were counting before giving a dismissive shrug. "Well, actually, I stole it. But it would have cost a lot. I mean, a lot!"

"This was a test?" Before Demi could stop herself, she slammed her hands against the force-field, sending sharp, stinging pains up her arms. "You almost liquify my innards just to test my implant? You're mad!"

"Oh, I was lying about the gas. That's just a non-lethal, slightly narcotic concoction of my own. Helps me to chill out." The captain placed his hands in his pockets, rocking back-and-forth before taking a little jump as though remembering something important. "Let's get you out of there, eh?"

As soon as the captain turned his back to switch off the force-field, Demi had set herself ready. With a buzz, the force-field dissipated and she launched herself towards the captain, slapping his head so hard that his ancestors must surely have felt it. She continued slapping him, even as he raised his arms to defend himself.

That wasn't hurting him enough for what he had put her through. Closing her hand into a fist, she pulled her arm back, ready to punch someone in the face for the first time in her entire life, but this man, this captain, deserved it. As the punch launched towards the captain's chin, something lifted her from her feet, dragging her away from the beleaguered man. She saw the feint ripple of a two-dimensional arm wrapped around her waist and the Planeian crackled in her ear.

"They said, normally they'd allow almost anyone to beat the living poop out of me, but they think you're better than that." The captain frowned towards where Demi assumed the Planeian's head was over her shoulder. "Really? 'Poop'? You're allowed to swear and curse, you know. We're all adults here."

"And how does he ... how do they know that I'm better than that?" With surprising gentleness, the Planeian released Demi, taking great care to return her to her feet. "I got three virtual life sentences. 'Better' people don't get those kinds of sentences."

"Lap is a Planeian, they see us three-dee beings differently than we do. Everything we are can be seen in every single movement of our squishy three-dee bodies. They think it's disgusting, but revealing." The captain crouched down, picking up and arranging the Repli-papers he had dropped during Demi's assault. He held one up to her. "And because it's right here. You didn't get that implant and break the most sophisticated banking AI in three Quadrants for yourself. You did it to pay for the medical care of your brother and sister."

"Shut up." Demi didn't want to hear this. Part of her plea bargain, a plea bargain that didn't even reduce her sentence, was that no-one would ever know why she committed her crime.

"They both suffered a genetic disorder so rare that they were the first cases ever recorded. The cost for their care, not even a cure, was astronomical because it was ground-breaking research. Paid for by secret donations that, even now, the AI authorities still can't work out how you did it." The captain offered the Repli-paper to Demi, showing the holo-pics of her brother and sister. Healthy, for the most part. Happy. "And then they wiped every memory of you from their minds. That's gratitude for you. But, you never said anything against them for that. I've seen the therapy sessions. I know."

The captain offered the rest of the thick pile of Repli-paper to Demi before leaving the brig and, with reluctance, she took it. Nothing he had said was going to change her mind. If he thought bringing up her brother and sister would give her some kind of motivation to help him, he was sorely mistaken. She didn't feel an ounce of anger against her family. She understood why they had removed her from their memories.

In truth, if she could, she would remove all her own memories, build a new personality from the ground up. She had tried, after the second Virt-Prison sentence. Released on probation, she had sought out the best memory manipulator in the Quadrant, but it didn't take. As soon as she had neared anything connected to the Gal-Net, her implant had downloaded a copy of her memories and personality right back into her brain. She didn't even know it could do that.

"I'm not doing it." She looked up at the vague form of a face upon the two-dimensional surface of Lap, the Planeian. They made a crackling sound, then a crinkling sound and then a sound that resembled Repli-paper tearing. "I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded sympathetic. Thanks."

Lap crinkled again before turning to the side and almost disappearing from sight. Demi could see the tiniest ripple of a line in the air and then it was gone. Lap had left the brig, leaving Demi to her own thoughts and a handful of Repli-paper that detailed her entire life, but knew nothing about how she had lived it.