Tunnel Rat

Milo had chaotic memories of his early years, all of which had been spent in the large room he was now monitoring. He remembered the pods of course. Long cylinders that held a person, either for medical purposes, or for long-term interaction with the internet. Or gaming. Pods were becoming more and more popular as the price went down, and gamers grew to love being logged into games for hours and days at a time.

Milo had learned a lot about the pods in the past years. He and his siblings had been hooked up to Mark II medical pods. What was being moved into the empty warehouse was a mix of Mark III and IV pods. But one was much larger and more intricate. A quick trip to the data-net gave him the specs on the new Mark VII medical/gaming pod. Interesting, why just one of them? All they could steal or buy?

Milo and his family had spent most of their lives in pods very similar to the Mark III's he saw in the warehouse. His playmates had been the other twenty-four children, who like himself had been modified with sockets. Many had visible birth defects. His 'parents' had been an assortment of technicians and doctors who didn't think of the children as people. They were just part of the machines.

They were only unhooked from the computers and their pods for two hours a day when they did exercises for muscle tone. The computers they were hooked into were their schools. Their classes were in security systems, running manufacturing remotely with waldos, moving funds in accounts, and most of all in not leaving a trace when moving about the internet.

This became much easier as the Wildfire virus decimated much of the internet. It trashed security systems, pushed data to the public domain, and erased knowledge. Milo and the others were like scavengers feeding on the left overs of a predator.

By eight years old Milo and his siblings were raiding corporate data bases and stealing millions each day. But their 'parents' were getting sloppy. The original group was rich now and hired help oversaw the dingy warehouse with two dozen children who rarely left their pods and never talked. Or rather, never talked out loud. They communicated constantly with each through the machines, played games, and shared everything they knew.

By the time Milo was nine, there were only two guards in the warehouse for most of the nights. The children lay in their pods doing their assignments. But they were getting bored. They started exploring the systems directly around them. They easily bypassed any of the security that would let their overseers know what they were doing. Milo had discovered the security systems for the rest of the building their home was in. He and some of the others wondered about trying to escape the warehouse, but they didn't know where to go.

Still, just thinking about it was fun. Milo started sneaking out of his pod along with Nimez and Ordo, the other two children in his row. The guards were always watching videos and paid no attention to them. They found an access hatch that led to the ventilation and maintenance systems and began exploring the areas around them. It was tough, as they all had physical problems. Nimez only had one hand, and Ordo had bad eyes. Still, they managed. They were finishing their work in a fraction of the time and hiding the fact.

Plans were made to escape. Milo still wondered if they could have gotten away with it, but they never got the chance. Something happened. Something changed. A dozen people rushed into the old factory one night, surprising the two guards on duty. Pods were locked down and sedatives administered to the occupants. The pods were unhooked from other machines and carried one by one out the doors to waiting transportation. Within a half hour twenty-four children in pods and one empty pod were gone. Only Milo remained.

Milo had been exploring that night. He wasn't there and when he returned it was to a room full of half destroyed machines and nothing else. Hard drives were ripped from the computers. No paperwork remained. Whoever had taken the children had left no clues to incriminate them. Milo never found out where his family was taken. He was still looking for them two decades later.

But now someone was back who he recognized. Facial recognition told him who it was: Andrew Kominski. He'd been a technician during the day shift. Milo would have to research the man and learn why he was here. The shiny Mark VII pod on his monitors kept drawing Milo's attention. It would solve a lot of his problems. He made plans and watched.

Two weeks later, Milo knew why Kominski and the others were here. Kominski had some scheme involving a new VR world. The Mark VII would give him access. The occupants of the dozens of Mark IIIs would enter the game, but bypass some sort of security measures. The Mark VII pod was set up and connected with the data net. All the Mark III pods were in a separate room, and slaved to the Mark VII. Milo couldn't care less why this was being done. He only wanted two things from Kominski: information on what had happened to the rest of his family, and his Mark VII pod.

Once all their information systems were hooked to the data net, it was easy for Milo to break into their machines and get all of their data. They were using communications systems he repaired and controlled. He barely had to do anything. The information was disappointing though. This was just a way to scam a game and nothing to do with his family. But he was able to get one lead: Kominski had been working for almost his entire life for Tricorp Biotech. That gave him a place to start looking. Having learned all he could from watching, Milo decided to pay the old warehouse a visit and go pod shopping.

The first indication that something was wrong was when the two men fell to their knees and the room started spinning. The gas Milo had introduced to the ventilation system worked quickly. They were out cold for hours. The video feeds would show nothing except the two of them sitting at their desks watching pornography. Milo got to work.

Milo had cleaned out this area long, long ago. For the first two years he had lived in the duct work near the room and slowly explored the habitat. He tapped pipes for water, and the food delivery system for sustenance.

When he had started his first workshop and needed materials, he'd begun to raid what was left of his home. He had an idea that maybe he'd find clues to the others somewhere in the defunct machinery and broken computers. He hadn't, but what he had done was create a system for lifting loads of machinery from the room, and up to a large horizontal shaft that ran one hundred yards to a Big Drop.

Two ceiling panels moved aside and Milo lowed himself into the room with a winch. He carefully unhooked the Mark VII and two Mark III pods. Cargo nets enveloped each one and the winch took each them slowly up to the horizontal shaft. The final load was a pallet of nutrient sacks and medical supplies used in the pods to keep their users alive.

Getting the pods up to the horizontal shaft was the first step. Milo had to cover his tracks. Ceiling panels were replaced. The winch was retracted. He'd come back and take it out entirely as soon as he could to leave as few clues as possible. The metal sheet he'd removed from the side of the horizontal shaft was replaced. Then came the long slow process of moving the pods and supplies up top. Each Big Drop had a winch and pulley assembly for exactly what Milo needed now: Moving heavy loads up many stories to the top of the habitat. Even if someone figured out how he had stolen the pods, finding out which level they had gone to would be difficult.

An hour after he had finished covering his tracks, Milo was standing on the Mark VII pod as it moved up to level 48 where he would store it. Below him was a drop of many stories, but he trusted his systems. A motorized pallet jack moved each load deeper into the habitat to where he could take them down to the Pipeworks. It took the rest of the night, but eventually Milo had all three pods and the supplies hidden in the Pipeworks. Tomorrow he would begin the task of moving the Mark VII into his home. The Mark III's were just extra salvage. He wasn't sure what he'd do with them, but it never hurt to have more parts.

Back in his home, Milo went ahead and added his modifications to the security tapes. He'd spent hours doctoring a sequence where the two guards slumped over unconscious , and then the doors opened and masked thieves entered the room. In this tape the pods were loaded up and taken out of the room. Other security cameras would show the thieves moving the pods to a nearby storage room. No one had used that room for years, leaving a convenient and confusing dead end.

Heist done, Milo relaxed a bit. He checked all of the systems that he monitored, and made a list of repairs to do the next day. His stomach growled; it had been a long day. He sent a command to the food processor and a moment later a large container of food appeared in a pneumatic tube. He opened the container, seeing the tasteless cubes of yellow 'food' that everyone in the hab ate unless you spent real money. And no one had money. Supposedly they tasted like chicken. Milo couldn't judge. It was just something you chewed and swallowed to stay alive.

Basics taken care of, he set his alarm. Two hours of sleep would be enough to recover his energy and then he was going to get the Mark VII pod set up and take it for a spin.