It was so random. One minute I'm walking along with my camera then, running towards me I recognise one of the hit pornstars of the vidspace. She sees me with the camera trying to take some shots as she goes by. She stops short, right in front of me, “I need your help! Just act natural and it will all be over soon.” Stunned. As her lips lock with mine.
Three very scary guys run by and she thanks me. That should have been the end of it. Five seconds later and it might have been. Now I'm hurtling along behind her, my camera like a leash or maybe it's a fishing rod with pornstar bait to catch gangsters, 'cause those three scary fish are hot on our heels. She's shouting something about new technologies and platforms, I haven't a clue.
Twisting and near slamming into corners, people and walls we gain a slight edge over the grunts. Finally, we loose them. Her phone is out and she's quietly shouting down it.
Hangs up. Introductions, instructions.
Taking time to breathe before the next rollercoaster. (On it's way, should be here in five...)
We sit there, I'm now inextricably mixed up in this mess, feels like a bad action movie, not what i was hoping for, given the lead actress...
“so are we clear?” Nadia snaps me out of my fantasy. “what? Oh, yeah,now I am on a list of known associates of yours. I'm in danger of being shot at those grunts next convenience...” It sinks in. Any thoughts that may have been hormonally stirring are flushed clean out of me. I could have been shot! I'm gonna be shot!
“Right, now that I see you're listening and out of fantasy mode. Welcome to the party Jones.” Her arms spread out over her head as she lays back into the plush hotel foyer's chair. Oh! We're in a hotel foyer?
I tentatively enquire, “Why are there gangsters chasing you? Also, why are they chasing me? And while we're at it,where are we going and how are you going to stop me being shot?” She eyes me carefully. I sit trying to make myself look big, like a threatened cat. She looks right through me and makes wither.
“I don't think the folks up in the penthouse heard you...” Cold.
“okay. Come here.” She pats the chair next to her. I comply. Whispering she says, “Those men are chasing me because I just stole something from them. What I stole is very important to them. It's a prototype App for phones and things like that. Strange as it may seem I have a degree in nascent technologies, futurology, that kind of thing.”
“I thought that was crap they invented when you modelled...” Bad idea, scathing look, hair writhing like snakes.
“Yes and one of my pet peeves is idiots who don't know when to stay quiet. The tech they were working on is linked to spambots, things like that. What it does is turn on whatever devices, and i mean whatever devices, they want. They have total control over it.”
“Shit!”
“Yes. Shit. They take out the data they want if there is anything useful they use it, keep it, keep you. If you happen to have a camera, they could if they wished, turn that on. Compromising, eh?”
“Whoa! They can do that? The stealing data thing?”
“Oh yes, I see you read the newsfeeds as much as most village idiots. Don't you remember a few years back all the hassle that the early E-readers caused?” Blank look, my face.
“Well what I'm saying is the tech is old news. The use is new. Turning whoever they need into puppets, using blackmail, it's fucking cheesy. Taking freedom from folk like that, it's seedy, distasteful and evil.”
“well, surely it can be dealt with by the authorities? I mean, don't we have police for this kind of thing? Wont they help us?
“Not to sound like a cliche,but those guys were the police.”
“Wait, what do you mean? Those lunks were cops, as in full fledged officers of the law?”
“Sheesh! You really don't pay attention to the world around you do you?
Those idiots Chasing us were not so much cops as surveyors of online crimes, peer to peer filesharing, child porn, all the important stuff. Worse than that,they were given powers with very vague definitions. Now those definitions are being used to 'keep the nation safe'. My arse they are.” Ping, her hip said. “Right more later, the cars in the parking lot, come on.”
Reckoning that a lift with a criminal pornstar was safer than a bullet while I slept. We were out of there. Twenty minutes later and two traffic jams down, we were nestled into comfy armchairs in a porn moguls empty mansion. I say empty, i mean more that the mogul was not there and the whole place was decked out like a Christmas tree. Screens, humming computers, folk working on telephones and on tablet PCs, cables running to other rooms of the house and at the head of all this in the main hub, there were four maybe five geeky looking twenty-somethings. Beards, glasses, homemade skirts and trousers, the works. There was also one guy who had way to much Kung-Fu in his veins. All I'll say is, ouch. My fault for walking into a room unannounced.
It was then that I realised. I was in Scifi-trope, cliche-ville.
“oh crap, this means that i must be a badly characterised protagonist!” I said, looking at the pornstar freedom fighter and her geek force.
“YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST MADE ME A 60's HERO, THEN WE COULD HAVE HAD A WILD PARTY!”
I screamed out at the 4th wall.
D.E. SYNNOTT
JAN 7 2010
