It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter
Prologue

As another high-voltage electro dart shotpast his head, Tanner Griffen reflected on the fact that he wasn't a very niceman.

The Wichita data centre sat concrete andanonymous; a malignant growth on the landscape. Getting in was easy. Hisemployer had kindly furnished him with a temporary scrambler, which handilytransformed him into a fuzzy grey blob on a hundred computer screens throughoutthe ground-floor security offices.

These computer screens were constantlyscrutinised by a team of highly trained, well-armed security staff, paid justabove minimum wage to stop exactly the type of crime he was currentlycommitting.

A plastic holster sat snugly around hiswaist, packed with thirty slim metal cards. Still warm from being rudelywrenched from their housing only minutes before, these unassuming black sliverswere the most valuable commodity known to man. He'd stolen them, and as far asthe security team was concerned, his life was a small price to pay to get themback.

Ducking behind a huge steel rack that wasstuffed to capacity with thick wiring and countless flashing lights, Griffenpaused to run a hand through his greasy mohawk. He grinned crookedly as hepulled back his sleeve to check the progress of his pursuers. His wrist-mountedTalkRight3000 wasn't exactly cutting edge, but who would bring their bestXenius on a job where they were likely to be killed? Its sleek lightweightaluminium housing was robust enough and the holographic screen was hi-resenough to spot that two of the security detail were attempting a crude flankingmanoeuvre.

With a deft finger gesture just above thecurved screen of the device, he expanded the profiles of his foes. CyrilDefresne - 42, two kids, jazz aficionado. Griffen absent-mindedly flickedthrough Defresne's holiday snaps, looking for bikini shots of his wife Jill(35). The other guard had only started his internship the previous month.Griffen noted that Andy Baker, (19, epileptic, keen mountain biker) was on theorgan donor register, which would become relevant in approximately thirtyseconds.

Tanner Griffen was a pretty bad person. Badenough to wait until just the right moment to arm and throw a Coruscantt-40fragmentation device around the corner, where it bounced twice before eruptingwith a scream of tearing steel - eviscerating both Cyril and Andy.

A good person would perhaps consider theinstantaneous widowing of Jill (35) and the unfathering of little Ben andJessica. Griffen, however, wiped his nose on his sleeve, chuckled and steppedover the bodies.

Glancing once again at the TalkRight,Griffen noted that Cyril and Andy's avatars remained still. It would be someminutes before their own arm pieces synced with the company mainframe andtriggered further alarms. Both men smiled casually in their civilian clothes asif they didn't even know they were dead yet. Which they didn't. Technically.

Griffen zoomed out of the screen and calledup an overlay. A map dropped in front of his eyes as he sidled his way aroundthe building, keeping close to the walls of the data centre cubicles. It wasstandard practice to smoke and strobe places like this when they were under attack,and the assault on his senses began with boring predictability. An automaticanti-strobe built into his sleek, wasp-like sunglasses rendered the visualweapon useless, and the map overlay gave a better view than his own eyesanyway.

Rounding a corner, he realised thatreinforcements were on their way. It amused him to think that huge and rapidadvancements in data encryption had forced hackers like him back to the oldschool method - smash and grab. The only way to steal information was to seizethe physical storage in order to brute-force the encryption at leisure later.It was almost quaint.

Data had long been the biggest prize in thegame. Whoever owned the data owned the world. Even with just a few hundredmillion rows of personal information, the power granted to advertisers,governments, corporations and the military was almost too vast to contemplate.

The stakes were high. Many of Griffen'scontemporaries (and rivals) had been shot to pieces by security forces simplyon the word of a respected blogger or on the strength of a careless socialnetwork update. The person who pulled the trigger was more often than notpublicly lauded, given awards, and invited to appear on talk shows to soak upthe gratitude of the masses. The story was always the same: this every day Joesaved us all from having our profiles compromised. Applaud him and thank himfor shooting first and not even bothering to ask questions later.

Many years ago, back when he was a still afull time digital hacker, Griffen had made a vow. He wouldn't give anyminimum-wage sucker the pleasure of taking him out. His first big paydayfinanced an internal explosive implant. It was now permanently rigged todetonate in spectacular fashion the second he was cornered, critically injuredor just having a really bad day.

Today was not that day, however. Today hewas going to leave this building with six million credits worth of data zippedto his chest, and there wasn't a damn thing OraCorp could do about it.

Darting up a staircase, keeping a close eyeon the glowing green trail superimposed on the ground by his overlay, Griffenchecked his wrist again. The map layers separated to show him the floors of thebuilding - the disembodied heads of the rest of the security avatars milledaround like drunken bees. He was amazed that OraCorp, the largest company onthe planet, could run such poor security. True, the Wichita facility wasn'texactly their biggest data centre but still, if their sheep-like subscribersknew that a 22-year-old punk like him could gain access to their privateinformation simply by walking through an electronic pass door, they might notbe so keen to pay their annual subscription fee.

A counter at the top left of his moddedTalkRight told him that he had one hour and thirty minutes of scrambledactivity left before his identity would swim hazily into his pursuers view.Until then, multiple echoes of an empty profile would continue to baffle them,flickering in and out of existence like an old radio broadcast. Bumping into anemployee was still a possibility, but it didn't represent too much of a threat- Griffen's skills with a knife had been honed in a thousand filthy back alleybrawls. Their electro darts, should they hit, would instantly kill him but hewould subsequently explode and decimate the shooter, the facility, and most ofthe surrounding industrial complex. They didn't know this, and there were noscans they could run to reveal it, but the knowledge alone kept the lop-sidedsmirk safely plastered on Griffen's face.

Moving up level by level towards the roof,Griffen was alerted to a new communication. The TalkRight flashed orange and hejabbed it to receive. An electronic voice chirped in his ears.

"Mr Griffen, are you in possession?"

"Yup." Griffen grunted, peeringaround a blind corner to check for swivelling automatic cameras.

"Damage report?" The voice wascold, disinterested.

"Damage to me? Nah, I'm peachy thanksbabe," snarled Griffen in an affected Cockney rasp. A silence prompted asigh from Griffen. "Yeah, two guards destroyed, probably killed a fewservers and a firewall nest. The goods are fine, no damage."

"Excellent. Upon reaching the roof,extraction has been arranged. Payment will be forthcoming when the goods areverified."

"Thanks mom!" quipped Griffen.The orange light faded.

No cameras. Griffen ran around the cornerand kicked open a fire door. Another voice joined the chorus of screamingsirens, a deafening sonic attack, as if the facility itself was in agonisingpain.

Griffen found himself on the roof of thedata centre. He narrowed his eyes against the wind and scanned the blackhorizon. It was a clear night but he was still taken by surprise when the sleekwhite drone whispered over the lip of the building and padded down next to him.It was pearlescent and flawless, like a healthy tooth.

The door of the drone hissed open andwithout looking, Griffen dived inside. Footsteps hammered up the stairs behindhim. He might be invisible but his actions were not and his path of destructionleft a clear trail for the security team.

It didn't matter if Griffen was seen - aslong as his profile remained scrambled, even a visual would be useless to theOraCorp Security forces. Only a digital check-in was admissible in a court oflaw, so if he could stay alive and get out of the vicinity, he was home free.

Griffen whooped to himself as the droneshot vertically into the inky darkness, electro darts ricocheting impotentlyoff the polished bodywork.

His grey smudge vacillated on the securitymonitors, dispersed and vanished.

Tanner Griffen was gone.

Sitting back and putting his real leatherboots on the dashboard, Griffen stretched and yawned. The drone's displaywinked into life. A realistic simulation of a woman's face appeared, speakingwith the same clipped electronic tones as his TalkRight just minutes before.

"Do you have the product Mr Griffen?"

"Yes ma'am. Piece of cake."

The female face remained impassive. Talkingto computers irritated the hell out of Griffen. He liked picking them topieces, exploiting them and using them to earn money by any means necessary,but it irked him when they pretended to be people. It irked him when peoplepretended to be people, come to that.

"Place the goods on the tray beforeyou."

Griffen unzipped his jacket and pulled outthe card clip. He placed it on the conductive rubber pad of the tray, where itwas silently scanned.

"This all appears to be in order MrGriffen. As per our agreement, you have been paid one credit per database rowto a total of 50,000 credits."

Griffen shot up from his seat. "Waitone fucking minute doll face, 50,000 creds? Are you shitting me? That was 20cards - I counted 'em! 50,000 credits ain't worth my time nearly getting my assfried. What bullshit are you trying to pull?"

The face on the screen showed no emotion. "MrGriffen, kindly review the card contents."

The face disappeared and was replaced witha checksum and a window in which the obfuscated records were scrolling in aconstant stream.

"Fuck - what? Shit! That was all theyhad, what gives?"

"I'm sorry Mr Griffen. However thisamount of data is in line with the expectations of your employer. Your work issatisfactory. Your account has been credited and the cards have now been wiped.Have a nice day."

The screen went blank. The cards were nowjust pieces of plastic and metal. Somewhere, another database row had beenupdated - Griffen's bank balance.

Griffen kicked the tray shut and spat onthe carpet. Folding his arms like a truculent teenager, he settled down andwatched the city stream below him as the drone cruised silently towards thedrop off location.