Turning On

The cues had been gone for years, probably broken beating some wiseguy, and half the balls were cracked. The table was only for show, anyway. Even when the cues had been there and the balls whole, no one had played.

He discreetly crushed a pill, dropped it into his beer, and let it dissolve. If he sensed even the slightest danger, he could just take a sip, and his sense would kick into overdrive. At that dissolution, he would be Lit for only about 10 seconds or so, but it would be enough. And he watched.

The clientele looked normal enough for the Pit. The Slows still indulged in the traditional vices, ranging from traditional mari to the new designer drugs which could have any effect you care to program for. Dealers, pushers, and pimps, to a man. Even they needed a place to relax sometimes, and here was it. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that his contact was late. Two minutes, so far, but with a client talking half a million Yen for a night’s work, you don’t dick around.

And while his attention’s turned, Logan hears something. Dull when dim, he can’t pick up what it was, and he starts, to find a man sitting across the table. Small, Asian, completely non-descript, probably a Slow agent for one of the big Zaibatsus. Rumor has it that their enhancements make Lite look tame. And in a very small, generic voice, he speaks. "Konbanwa, Logan-san. You take care of business, yes?" At Logan’s nod, he goes on, in flawless English. " I am Takawa, and I work for a large corporation. My identity, and my employers, is none of your business. You need only to be concerned with the job."

"We need you to simply pick up a package, and return it to me. The contents are not your concern either. The package may be slightly difficult to obtain, as it is in the posession of several highly armed, neuro-enhanced guards. If you die from wounds incurred, but return the package, your payment will go to your beneficiary. If you die without returning the package, you will not be paid, but the company will generously only charge your beneficiaries 50,000 Yen for your breach of contract." All in the same dead, emotionless tone. Logan idly wondered if he was an android, or just an indenture remote-controlled for his length of contract.

And then the sudden rush of revelation as his cortical implant received Takawa’s uplink, and he was, in a second, more knowledgeable. As if he’d known the place and dates for years, he knew where he had to go for the pickup, in five hours. It’d be the easiest place to nab the package. And then his vision flashed red, as the implant detected a drawn weapon in the vicinity. He quaffed the spiked beer and felt himself go quantum.

Lite allows the brain to function as a giant quantum computer. The human brain is, already, governed by quantum functions, and generally used for mundane use. The drug allows people to access that consciously, and exploit it. The crack about doing quantum physics in one’s head really is no joke, as the parallel processing capacity of a Lit brain exceeds the theoretical limits of a solid-state computer. It also slows down time perception, so Logan’s fifteen seconds could be stretched to as long as he wanted. Unfortunately, the muscles can’t keep up with the brain, but there are always tradeoffs.

He took the first half a second to carefully survey the scene, seeing the woman in the bright red dress at the bar (a Slow, but maybe enhanced), pulling a revolver from her purse.