Jinx plugged into the Datastream at 9:07 that Monday. Emerging from the drowsy, fresh-coffee sensations, he dove straight into the all-encompassing Interface to begin the day's work. Jinx was a minor transaction pilot for a middle-sized holding company. Transactions would queue up on his list, and he would race the gridlines of the Interface in order to complete them and report back to the requesters. That day was a day like any other.
Eyes closed, he saw and felt the hard, electric lines of the transaction grid as he drove his company's flashy logo along them towards his current destination, a Swiss atomic clock manufacturer, in order to unload stock shares according to a standard solicitation request from that firm. As he had done many times before, he rode the gridlines to the tall, cylindrical structure, rotating with silver and gold, with the hand-etched symbol of the large characters, "S&R" crossed with a sundial, embedded in neon glow-light. He steered his carrier symbol to avoid another pilot, whose symbol he recognized. He nudged that symbol as he passed, dropping off a greeting message, and an invitation to chat later. The double-arrow logo nudged back, acknowledging the informal request. As he approached the rotating symbol of the Swiss firm, its coating of protection software threatened. Signalling his hands to type in his security code, Jinx slowed his carrier enough to allow for his clearance to process. He was very close to contact when the opening appeared and he slipped through it unharmed.
He was quite familiar with the protection layer of Steiner and Ross, and knew how long it would take for his clearance to be recorded for each layer. With a suppleness that would be the envy of a race car driver or a fighter pilot, he swerved in and out of the clearance avenues like a bird flying through the limbs of a tree.
Once inside the Steiner and Ross column, he deposited his transaction, his dislocated body yelling "Bombs away!", and did a 180 without hesitation. Having been tagged by security on the way in, he simply slipped out through the translucent layers of protection to the freedom of the grid once more.
Jinx felt himself tap a key as a new transaction popped into the "bomb bay" of his carrier logo. Somewhere, across the digital horizon, a dodecahedron highlighted itself, allowing Jinx to plot his course without a second thought. He pulled full throttle along a free gridline, and his carrier tore through the buzzing mass of activity towards the geometric symbol which was Irish Vogue, the advertising agency.
Like lightning, a gridded sphere whipped past, pausing only to skip across a gridline to nudge Jinx's symbol, and to continue on its course. The message header read: "How many transaction pilots does it take to change a light bulb?" Jinx laughed at the memory of the pat answer, and left himself a memo on his console to remind himself to add that to his volumes of light bulb jokes, some dating back to the 1970s.
The encounter didn't cause Jinx to alter his course. He kept on the gridline heading towards the giant, green dodecahedron which glowed with an inner energy. The company's logo, the stylized shamrock, adorned each of the figure's surfaces, and they resolved themselves as he approached. Detouring around the bevelled brick-like shape of the All-Net Leasing Agency, he began to feel dwarfed by Irish Vogue's representative icon. Already, dangerous protection schemes challenged him. His codes matched, and he was through. "Bomb's away!" came his distant voice, as he deposited his query request. The dodecahedron processed his request while he waited in electronic neon limbo. He rotated his viewport in preparation to exit in the same direction from which he had entered. In microseconds, he received the information he required, and was away.
Checking his next transaction, he began to scan the distance for a very familiar tetrahedronal tower, glowing in brilliant red. He found it, and pulled full throttle on a fresh grid path. He would reach the tower of China National in a few relative moments. While en route, he re-read the light bulb joke. The answer was not the one he remembered. This one read: "It can't be done. They don't get paid enough." It was an inside joke, playing on the hostilities brewing in the Datastream over the low salaries for the highly skilled transaction pilots.
Then, from behind, Jinx noticed another carrier symbol riding the same grid path, gaining rapidly. The symbol was hazy and he didn't recognize it. It sped towards him showing no signs of veering off to perform a detour around him. As it became dangerously close, he booked another gridline and veered away, allowing the grey conical carrier symbol to pass him. It raced towards him on the next parallel grid track, and when it was equal to his position, it veered and collided with him.
Then it was gone.
Jinx reeled with the force of the data nudge. He was trying to shake the feeling of menace left by the now disappearing icon. He managed to stay on track, though, and restabilized his carrier, snapping into auto-steer. He could then concentrate on the data nudged to him, with the knowledge that if his path were to become crowded, or he was on a collision course with another carrier, an alarm would alert him.
The data mail was short and impersonal. "Your student loan is now in default. Please remit the full amount of $110,312.44 plus two months' interest to the Net-Credit Firm Ltd. within thirty days. For further information, please contact Matt Hesteen, (312,441). Have a nice day."
Jinx snapped off the auto-steer and veered straight up. His carrier climbed through the Datastream and left the grid via Zenith Offramp. Reality snapped back at him as he opened his eyes, and removed his sensor headband. There it was, on the screen. The note that informed him that despite his struggle to get by during the last two years, with this low-paying, highly demanding job, his hopes of financial security were summarily dashed, leaving him feeling empty and hopeless.
Jinx was always a very confident transaction pilot, and he took to the job like a natural. But to get to this position, he had had to study and complete his University degree in Electronic Interface Transactions. And, of course, he chose the best school, Oxford, in Great Britain, where he had earned his nick-name. Competition in the work force was stiff, and by attending Oxford, he increased his chances of securing a permanent position with any of the corporations that existed in the Datastream. But the cost had been enormous.
And since his auto accident last year, he had had to stop payment on his student loan, because he simply could not afford to live. He had intended to resume payments as soon as the hospital bills were covered. Now it was too late, and the loan had been transferred to a credit institution. And they could be tough.
Jinx got up from his desk, his terminal showing an increasingly long list of requests, queries, transactions. This contact had thrown him completely. He wouldn't be able to re- enter the Datastream until he calmed down some. He logged off, causing the list of transactions to be reassigned to his fellow pilots. Jinx left his cubicle in search of the company's senior accountant for some sage advice.
Peter Marwick sat with Jinx and listened as Jinx revealed his current financial situation. Marwick shook his head several times during the conversation.
"What you're telling me," he spoke at last, "is that you have an outstanding debt, including your car, furniture, and various other items bought on credit, of $150,000."
"Yes," Jinx said. "That's about right from what I figure."
"And they want this money now."
"Yes. But that's impossible," Jinx said. "I don't have that kind of money. I don't even know if I have enough to feed myself until payday."
Marwick tapped at his desk-top calculator, figuring in interest, and all other financial factors, then leaned back in his leather chair to say: "You're fucked. You can't make these payments."
"I know that. That's why I stopped paying. I mean, it takes several years for a guy to get on his feet after graduation from a University. Why do these student loan people expect a person to be able to pay six months after graduation? Jobs in this field are scarce, and they don't pay much. It's ludicrous."
"Yes," Marwick said. "Yes, it's ludicrous. But it's the law."
"What can I do?" Jinx asked, his stomach tied in the kind of knots they were usually in when he visited the doctor for rough scans.
"Well, look at it this way. You can arrange some sort of payment plan. After all, you can't pay it off in one shot, and no one should expect you to. What I suggest is that you contact this Hesteen person and tell him the reason your loan went into arrears in the first place, and that you are eager to resume payments."
"What if they refuse?"
"Look, what have you got that they can take? Do you own anything?"
"No, not really, just my car and a lot of junk."
"Ok, so you don't have anything that would amount to $110,000? You don't own anything that they can take away from you. You have no equity."
"Yeah, I guess so," Jinx said, feeling a little less like a trapped animal. He stood and left the office, thanking Marwick for the free advice.
Jinx plugged back into the Datastream at 12:08 that same Monday and resumed his duties in the Interface. He read the next request, and proceeded towards a soft, white, glowing sphere dotted with concentric circles of colour, which was the logo of Stellar Data Structures International. On the side, he was preparing a letter to the Net-Credit Firm Ltd., telling them that he could not afford to pay the massive student debt at this time. He worded it eloquently, and made it known that he had nothing in terms of possessions that the firm could take away from him. If they wanted their money, they would have to wait.
As he approached the sphere, he met the protection layers with proper codes, dropped his transaction bomb, and left for his next assignment. On the way, zipping in and around the gridlines to avoid heavy traffic, he saw from the rear, a familiar, hazy, grey conical carrier symbol. It was headed towards him at tremendous speed.
It caught up to him only a few sectors away from his target symbol, and nudged him. It was the carrier of the Net-Credit Firm, Ltd., making its final request for the full amount of the loan. The demand was threatening. He responded by bombing the carrier with his prepared letter, and carried on towards his destination.
As he sped away, another hazy, conical symbol approached from the front at breakneck speed. The first carrier was grey. This one was a threatening black. It connected with a visual, sensuous impact, and remained attached to his own carrier symbol. He couldn't shake it. It hung on despite evasive manoeuvers to toss it off Jinx's own carrier.
Moments later the carrier was speeding away and soon disappeared over the horizon, leaving Jinx stalled in the Interface, just seconds away from his next transaction. "Just what the hell was that all about," he asked himself.
As he neared the red, oval, iridescent gem, the protection software approached him. He tapped out the code, starting to slow down to avoid collision until clearance. When the first attempt failed to open the protective blanket, Jinx tried again. Nothing happened. He applied the "brakes" to stop himself from intercepting the protection layer. His momentum was great, and already several attempts at code rearrangement had produced no results. If he were to hit the blanket...
He came up just short of the approach threshold, and stopped. He was sitting dead in the busy, electronic medium. He fired more code attempts at the multi-faceted, glowing icon ahead of him. He wondered why the code wasn't working. Step one in dealing with the refusal of a code was repetition. No, normalization. No, it was... what was it? For a moment, Jinx couldn't remember what to do next. The sensation was similar to programmer's wall, or writer's block.
Jinx rechecked his transaction request to verify the code and destination. The code was correct, and he was at the specified grid coordinates. Again the code didn't work.
Already alert flashes were rippling throughout the grid. While the protection layer held near him, InterGrid Security were approaching fast to investigate the problem. Jinx froze. He thought about leaving the Interface to check the possibility that an error had occurred outside, in the real-time world. He gunned his carrier skyward towards Zenith Offramp, but nothing happened. His carrier had already been sanctioned by Security pending investigation.
He moved to type the security release code, a series of letters deeply ingrained into every student of electronic transactions from the very first course in the program, but found nothing. He had forgotten the code! He searched his memory only to find a hole where that information had been stored. He tried to think of the last time he had used the code, but while he could remember the incident, he couldn't flush out the code. He tried to work out the procedure for such a case, but found nothing in his memory pertaining to security procedures.
He had scored very highly, in the top five percent of his class, in Security Procedures. Now, the information was just not there. He tried to remember some of the basic principles of grid navigation, and found nothing. A blank. He started to panic. His body screamed in terror.
He forced himself to think rationally. His mind returned to the black cone which had stuck itself to him just relative microseconds ago. The answer must have to do with that intruding entity. It had nudged him, leaving a message, but he didn't read it at the time. He attempted to access it, but forgot how. His work experience cut in, and he instinctively found his way into the message left in his carrier queue.
It read:
"Net-Credit Firm Ltd. has been authorized by the World Bank, Student Aid Division, to foreclose on your education, in accordance to the Student Loan Act, introduced at the beginning of this year. This is a new procedure. Once the procedure is completed, your education will have been removed and your balance owing will be zero. Any questions can be directed to the World Bank. Have a nice day."
Jinx froze. Everything in him stopped. His carrier symbol sat still, incapacitated on the gridline entering the ruby in front of him while he could see the Security icons streaking in from over the horizon in all directions. He tried to remember faces, professors, whole days at Oxford, but found nothing. He looked around him and the grid looked subtly different. The thing he had become one with was now something other, something apart. He was no longer an intimate part of this system. He was a stranger in a strange land.
As the Security spikes attacked his carrier symbol, one after another, relentlessly, persistently, he felt utterly alone. Nothing was familiar anymore. He was irrevocably lost, adrift in a sea of confusion. His mind whirled, and he passed out.
All content of these pages © Sean Huxter.
|
|