As it turned out, the programs I stole off of the vending machines weren’t able to keep my attention for very long.

  The slums vending machine ended up being the same model as the outer district one, just several generations older. Still, that in itself let me observe how packaging, trimming, and optimizing code had improved between the two. I could actually apply some of that to my own coding attempts.

  The thing was, I would basically have to rewrite the quickhacks from scratch.

  At least the exercise would provide me with a much deeper understanding of the quickhacks. That could inform my work on those possible improvements I’d spotted while actively using them. Nothing major or groundbreaking in the improvements, of course. Just preventing some memory leaks and shaving off inefficiencies I’d noticed, which were probably the result of redundancies put in place to help less advanced coders get the quickhacks up and running.

  Less advanced than me, anyway.

  It felt a bit... stuck up, to consider other beginners as beneath me, but I honestly couldn’t pretend that my progress was normal anymore. Even just the shortcuts I got thanks to my eyes would have blown that out of the water. Then there was the sudden improvement to my learning itself, post simulated-reality trauma.

  Idly, I brought up my stats again.

  I kept locking onto that one line at the end. Growing Instability.

  Hell of a thing to see in relation to your own mind, let me tell you.

  Still, I didn’t have time to get all scared again. Before I could dedicate myself to a total quickhack overhaul, I needed to wrap up my studies.

  After all, how many times did I want to rewrite those quickhacks? If I started from scratch every time I learned something new, I’d be stuck in a constant loop. So, I needed to absorb as much coding knowledge as possible. And fast.

  Naturally, that meant taking a peek at the best examples of coding available to me: the apps I’d recently downloaded. Maybe even my eyes.

  Totally not terrified out of my brain at the prospect of that. No, sir.

  Once I was done lying to myself, I blew out a breath and settled down on my bed once more.

  Technically, I didn’t really need my deck for what I was about to do. I should have been able to access my own optics after all, and fiddling around with app code shouldn’t have been that hard. Still, I connected myself to the deck all the same, then made sure to position it on a chair in a way that would prevent it from catching anything on fire if it somehow overheated again.

  Not that overheating should have been possible, what with me staying in the real world and not fully diving into a shard or the code. Better safe than sorry, though.

  Depressingly, I got nowhere trying to access the coding of my eyes or my apps. I tried asking politely. I tried brute forcing it through commands. Three hours later, even my thick skull hurt after running into the proverbial wall for so long.

  So, I did the only thing I could think of. I booted up my deck, selected the RE app as my first target, and loosed the breach hack.

  It was profoundly uncomfortable to do that. My eyes didn’t flicker or anything, but I did get a million pings about incoming data packets, all trying to swamp my ability to recognize the ‘threat.’ Finally, I shunted those notifications into ‘silenced’ mode and waited for the breach to do its thing.

  It became apparent rather fast that my quickhack was really not optimized for dealing with cyberware. The thing was trying its damnedest to bombard my eyes into dysfunctionality, and it was failing. And that was me targeting my own app. If I actually tried to target someone else’s cybernetics, they’d know something was up the second I started. The hack would fail immediately. Unless they were generous enough to lie down and wait for me to finish, of course.

  I pushed a little more of the deck’s resources to the quickhack. Then more, and more, until the entire thing was dedicated to the breach and nothing else. The RAM usage was extreme enough to make the cooling system start whirring away loudly. I kept looking at the deck with more than a little trepidation as images of it being cherry-red from heat flashed through my mind.

  Eventually, I called the breach off, resisting the urge to curse up a storm. Seemed like the traditional use of the quickhack wasn’t going to cut it. Unfortunately, that meant that my only other option was something far, far more risky.

  A proper deep dive, the way actual runners preferred to operate.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I debated with myself for a while if I was really going to be dumb enough to try it. I had access to exactly zero pieces of equipment to facilitate the process, unless you counted my eyes. For one thing, I didn’t have a deep dive port. Those typically came with the dive chairs well-off runners used, or as an implant for those who liked the idea of leaving their meat suit lying around in the middle of the street. Neither did I have one of those ice baths favored by full-implant runners, which seemed like a horrendously bad idea to me on so many levels.

  I didn’t have the RAM boosters, or the heat sinks, or any of the other toys. I didn’t even have someone watching over me while I conked out.

  Of course, since I was only trying to deep dive into my own bloody cyberware, I technically didn’t need any of that. It just would have been nice to have.

  You know, on account of the eldritch shadow things that kept trying to scramble my brain.

  Growing Instability.

  The words practically haunted me as I squirmed on the bed. Finally, with a curse, I got up just long enough to connect my deck directly into a net port. Then I lay back down and rifled through my cyberdeck options. A few seconds later, after I’d set my eyes to serve as runner goggles on default, I got the prompt I was looking for.

  I hit yes, and in less than a blink, I was somewhere else.

  The experience was deeply disorienting, to say the least. It felt like I’d been violently and abruptly jerked to a new location, even though I found myself standing in a remarkably decent simile of my apartment.

  But the differences were glaringly apparent. The room was completely empty, for one thing. Then there were the glowing lines that stretched across every available surface, with several particularly thick ones running to the various net ports in my apartment. There weren’t many, only three, and even that was a luxury in the slums.

  At the same time, I felt like I could easily peer ‘beyond’ the walls around me. I tested it out on pure instinct, and my view shifted, outlining the entire building in glowing lines that all sank down and into a central orb. I could see a single line stretching from that, leading out of the building, but my odd sight didn’t extend that far.

  At the same time, I couldn’t actually look inside the other apartments. The lines that led to them all cut out at the door, which was honestly a nice surprise. Sure, I had a feeling I could force my way past those doors with relative ease if I had to. I just didn’t expect a slum apartment building to have even that much protection in place for their renters.

  For just a moment, I focused on the glowing orb down in the lobby of the apartment building. It was almost magnetic to me, shining with a bright, coruscating light that pulled me in.

  Maybe I should go take a closer look…

  I snapped out of it the instant I took the first step towards my door. A deep sense of wrongness welled up in me. I shook my head, though that didn’t really mean anything in the netspace.

  Whatever my attraction to the net node was, I was not indulging it then and there.

  Not that it was a smart idea to mess with nodes, ever. From what my study material told me, nodes were a form of tech developed only after the fall of Terra, when whatever caused the fall of humanity’s cradle also sent waves of memetic plagues rampaging through the net.

  It was then that it became necessary to set up strict divides between netspaces, and nodes were the answer to the problem. Anything or anyone undesirable, including corrupted data, would be caught by the security checks of the node. If possible, the threats would be blocked. If that wasn’t sufficient, the node would shut off, instantly denying access to any memetic plagues, enemy runners, and other threats.

  Of course, the effectiveness of such defenses depended heavily on the quality of the node in question. In a place like the slums? Yeah, I seriously doubted that a netrunner would be stopped from accessing the apartment building, even if they weren’t registered with the node as a resident.

  On the other hand, supposedly all nodes could detect memetic plagues and shut down to deny them further access. But if that was true, then why were horror stories about mass infections still a thing?

  Shaking off that mystery, I turned my view ‘inwards’, for lack of a better word. Basically, I was investigating my own digital body. That was how I realized my avatar was only a white, humanoid shape with no discernible features.

  Funky, I thought. I’m sure there’s a way to change that…

  Then I gave myself the virtual equivalent of a wrist-slap. Focus, Adrian.

  I eventually managed to bring up several menus, one of which gave me access to my apps within the netspace.

  The second I brought up the RE app, the space in front of me rippled. An ornate handheld mirror materialized out of thin air. Then my right arm moved with no input from me and gripped the mirror’s handle steadily. Black swirls of some unknown script stretched all around its silver surface, leaving only the glass unblemished. Instead of a reflection, a neat summary of my stats greeted me, with all the regular options and tabs of the app outlines along the edges of the mirror.

  “Huh. Well, that’s neat, I guess,” I muttered, toying around with the mirror for a bit. I had to poke the various options using my fingers to do anything with the app-turned-mirror, which was novel enough that I didn’t mind wasting time.

  Focusing again after a few minutes, I tried to feel out my connection to the mirror, still relying on my inexplicable instincts. There was definitely something there. I sensed an actual cord tying me to the mirror, even if it was more a feeling than a physical reality.

  At least it was a feeling, until my vision flickered and everything was briefly reduced to code. When things snapped back to normal, I could see the string of light linking me to the mirror in my right hand.

  I bit my lip, wondering again if any of this was actually a good idea.

  Then, simply to prove I just might be an idiot, I gripped the cord with my free hand.

  Instantly, the mirror changed, swirling into a mass of opaque light. Then it fell right through my hand and clanked down onto the ground in the form of a massive safe. It looked ridiculously outdated, like a cartoon exaggeration from before humanity left Terra. Its coloring was the same as the mirror, and that black script still shimmered over the surface. But it was most definitely a safe.

  I cautiously stepped around the mirror-turned-safe, watching the golden link that still connected us. The cord of light went straight inside the safe, passing through its walls like they weren’t even there.

  I gripped the cord in my hand again, and even tried tugging, but no changes swept over the safe. Sighing, I reached out for my quickhack instead. Another item materialized in the air in front of me. I grabbed it automatically before it could clatter to the floor.

  Then I just stared at it in disbelief.

  I was holding a shotgun. Simple, single barrel, and kind of banged up, but it looked to be a functional gun. I tried to check where ammo would go, but quickly failed to find any seams on the weapon. It didn’t even have a safety.

  Just a trigger. Which, after hesitantly pointing the thing at the safe, I pulled.

  With a loud retort, the weapon disgorged a buckshot round, bombarding the safe with deadly pellets. To my immense relief, they didn’t ricochet. They just hit the safe and winked out in sparkles of light.

  The safe stood there, totally unblemished, like it was laughing at my pitiful attempts to breach it.

  My frustration mounted, and the world glitched as code began flowing all around me.

  I hurriedly inspected the safe. Sure enough, code stretched and coiled around it, forming what looked to be an impenetrable barrier. I groaned, trying to resist the urge to shoot the thing again as the code faded.

  Then again… why not?

  I shrugged. After all, nothing implied I had limited ammo!

  Just to make myself feel better, I shot the safe again, and again and again. At least that’s how things started. When my view glitched a second time and I was afforded a view of the safe’s code, I noticed that it rippled and stretched around the shots. That was a whole lot more reaction that I got out of the safe’s physical representation.

  Suddenly quite convinced I could do something about the stubborn app after all, I got ready to really put my patience to the test.