The extractionist, p.1
The Extractionist, page 1
Praise for The Extractionist
“Unger (Nucleation) makes hacking come alive in this fast-paced techno-thriller centered on the Swim, a virtual reality accessed by uploading a “persona,” or a copy of the users mind, then downloading it again to retain the memories of the experience. Eliza McKay relies on her quick thinking and the computer system wired into her brain to make a living extracting people who’ve gotten stuck in the Swim. When the government hires McKay to extract agent Mike Miyamoto, it appears to be a normal job—except Mike’s in the Swim on a criminal investigation, and what he’s discovered has changed him so much that his persona refuses to reintegrate into the self he left behind. McKay must race the clock to extract him—but she’s not the only one who wants what Mike knows, and her adversaries are willing to go to any lengths to stop McKay from reaching him first. VR programmer Unger mines her expertise to create all too believable scenarios and creative solutions, and the novel’s at its best in the vivid, evocative descriptions of how hacking feels to a mind fully immersed in VR. The story dances between two worlds just as real as each other, pulling the reader along to an explosive conclusion. Cyberpunk fans won’t want to miss this.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Hooray for author Kimberly Unger’s detailed vision of a cybernetic near-future in the technothriller, The Extractionist! We need more heroines like Eliza McKay, who are tough enough and smart enough to withstand the convergence of raw emotion and technology.”
—Sande Chen, video game writer, The Witcher
“The Extractionist expertly harnesses the author’s deep immersive knowledge of current and extrapolative technology to provide a comprehensive and realistic view of the future of the Internet, the Swim, and the future of nanotechnology. The novel is ably centered and grounded around a complex and well-drawn protagonist.”
—Paul Weimer, SFF reviewer and critic
“Our heroine is a business consultant, but we live in her cyborg brain, we see every detail through her augmented eyes, and the future world she haunts is crammed with invention to the point of psychedelia. I quite enjoyed this.”
—Bruce Sterling, author of Schismatrix
“Kimberly Unger reimagines cyberpunk from the ground up to deliver a smart, fully immersive thriller.”
—Wil McCarthy, author of Rich Man’s Sky and the Queendom of Sol series
“Kimberly Unger’s The Extractionist is next-generation science fiction. It fuses cyberpunk attitude with diamond-hard science and alarming plausibility. Unger is one to watch.”
—James L. Cambias, author of The Godel Operation
Praise for Nucleation
“VERDICT: Unger’s (The Gophers of High Charity) video game credits are well matched to this space adventure. Dialog among rivals, teammates, and machine interfaces keeps the story moving quickly. Recommended for fans of technothrillers and those who appreciate a strong lead character navigating readers through the technical bits.
—Library Journal
“As a lifelong fan of science fiction, I’ve read it all. But it’s always a surprise to be captivated by a new work and for her first novel, Unger’s Nucleation delivers a rich world-building experience on top of a narrative that grabs at you and satisfies that urge for something fresh. I'm so looking forward to more from this author.”
—Kate Edwards, Executive Director of The Global Game Jam
“Author Kimberly Unger has created an absolutely inspiring main character who demonstrates on how believing in one's conviction and own intuition will always lead to truth. Nucleation is an immersive tale that has blockbuster scale and emotional story-telling you won't soon forget.”
—Terry Matalas, showrunner, Star Trek: Picard
“A superb, smart debut! Love this woman who has to fight her way back to the top using her intelligence and expertise. The confident, sharp details made me feel I was there, in Helen's head, at each step of her remarkable journey. I can’t wait to read more from Unger, a welcome new voice in science fiction.”
—Lissa Price, author of the Starters series
“This smart, gripping debut weaves technology, embodiment, and corporate espionage into a tense vision of the future that readers won't be able to put down.”
—Jacqueline Koyanagi, author of Ascension
“In technology we so often look to science fiction for inspiration. Kimberly Unger is the rare author with a foot in both worlds and it shows as she gives a thrilling glimpse into the future with Nucleation.”
—Andrew Bosworth, Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality, Facebook
“Nucleation delivers top-notch suspense, deftly weaving together industrial espionage and first contact in a futuristic world that is all too plausible. Unger brings to her world a special sensibility for human psychology that gives realism to futuristic nanotech and corporate politics alike.”
—Juliette Wade, author of Mazes of Power
“Unger weaves real-world insights about virtual reality, technology, and art into a space opera packed with high adventure and dastardly intrigue.”
—Eliot Peper, author of Veil and Breach
“A near-future, tech-driven thriller marked by grounded characters, wondrous discovery, and a compelling mystery at its core.”
—Joseph Mallozzi, Executive Producer, Dark Matter, Stargate’s SG-1, Atlantis, Universe
Also by Kimberly Unger
Nucleation (2020)
A Note from the Publisher About Piracy
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The Extractionist
Copyright © 2022 by Kimberly Unger
This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and the publisher.
Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story
Tachyon Publications LLC
1459 18th Street #139
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.285.5615
www.tachyonpublications.com
tachyon@tachyonpublications.com
Series Editor: Jacob Weisman
Editor: Jaymee Goh
Print ISBN: 978-1-61696-376-7
Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-377-4
Printed in the United States by Versa Press, Inc.
First Edition: 2022
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ONE
“Eliza McKay, I take it?”
Oh, perfect timing. . . .
Eliza Nurey Wynona McKay could have sworn that the red warning triangle on the side of the cup wasn’t flashing a minute ago, but you never could tell with cheap paper circuits—they failed just as often as they worked.
McKay was in Singapore to meet with a potential client. A reference from an old friend, a message through a cheap “secure” service, and a meeting location delivered via self-destruct messenger—all suggested inexperience and overkill. In McKay’s line of work, discretion was standard. Nobody ever wanted to admit a boss or a family member had gotten themselves trapped in a virtual world. Still, the reference had come from a colleague she respected, and it had been years since she’d spent some quality time in Lion City. So she’d made the trip.
Finally. McKay took a too-eager sip of coffee—and promptly drenched the table as she tried to spit the scalding mouthful back through the lid. She shoved her chair back just in time to avoid getting the coffee all over her lap.
The surge in movement kicked the Overlay into gear, clouding McKay’s vision with data on everything—the temperature of the air, the coffee, the chair she was about to trip over, the distance from and mass of the table, as well as information on the coffee shop’s history, advertisements, local alerts and police systems. The coup de grâce was a pop-up that obscured her last sliver of normal vision to inform her of the client’s arrival. So much for looking cool and collected. McKay spun the computer in her head back down into sleep, restoring her normal line of sight. The Overlay, an emotive AI that ran the computer systems wired into her skull, was at her disposal on a moment’s notice.
They sometimes disagreed on just what those moments should be.
It took McKay a moment to register the woman standing across the dripping bistro table with a helpful handful of napkins. The woman was probably taller than McKay even without the heels—a catastrophically red twist of hair and a teal blue overcoat meant she stood out in a crowd. Not what you’d expect from someone trying to stay under the radar. But that might be the point.
The Overlay slid one last reminder into McKay’s field of view, telling her that the meeting was about to start.
“Erm . . . yes,” McKay answered awkwardly. She took half the offered salvation and between the two of them the table was mopped and righted in a moment. “Sorry,” she continued, “the coffee had a real kick.”
One of the ever-present voomer robots bumped insistently against her shoe until she dropped the sodden napkins into its wide-open maw. The blue enamel paint on its leading edge was scarred from the overeager pursuit of dropped trash, and probably from the boots of a few local kids as well. McKay suppressed a flash of irritation at the idea of its casual mistreatment as it scooted away, burbling delightedly to itself in the satisfied tones coded into service robots everywhere.
“It must be a Monday,” the woman opposite McKay said conversationally, and then took a seat without being asked. “I nearly took a caffeine shower on the MRT on my way here.”
The smile she offered was more along the lines of I know how you feel than my, what an idiot, which suggested McKay had kept a touch of professionalism intact.
The Overlay did its job and told McKay the client wasn’t carrying one of the encoded MRT passes on her person, suggesting she was lying. You could still buy a plastic pass at the train station. The Overlay might not see it, but her personal AI tended to deal in absolutes. It was McKay’s job to interpret the results. Lying to conceal how she got here? Making conversation? Setting up a backstory?
The other woman displayed none of the nervousness that usually came with an inexperienced client. It suggested the roundabout connection hadn’t been overkill at all. She was a professional of some sort—guns, information, or the silver needle of political intrigue—McKay wasn’t sure just yet. She was reluctant to risk the distraction of a background check during a client meeting, despite the Overlay’s eagerness to get on the job.
McKay asked the Overlay to stay in the background so she could focus on her assessment. Already this woman was throwing up contradictions that suggested this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill assignment. No freckles. Eyes entirely human, and green to boot.
“Can I get you something, Miss. . . . ?” McKay paused for the other woman to fill in the name, but the woman’s attention was elsewhere, rummaging around in a handbag that McKay hadn’t noticed a few seconds ago. It was a risk of keeping the AI in the background, the human mind could get distracted, miss things. The Overlay could have provided the information in the space between eyeblinks, but the connection, the human connection, was critical. McKay sometimes had to remind herself of that.
“Unfortunately, Ms. McKay, I am already short on time this morning. I’m part of a group that specializes in the abuse of new technologies. . . .” She casually touched a spot on her neck as she rummaged, just below and behind the ear. Tympanic speaker. Her casual competence, the matter-of-factness, affected a good ten-foot radius around her.
“I need an extraction done, here in the city. . . .” Her eyes narrowed a fraction as something McKay couldn’t hear got her attention. “Excuse me, I think we’re going to have to reschedule.”
McKay had just parted her lips to reply when she felt the all-over kiss of something very powerful charging up through the miteline that connected all the computers in her body. She recognized the feeling and had to stamp out the panic that threatened to follow. The woman’s green eyes met hers, and everything about her expression told McKay to avoid what was coming next.
As if it had been rehearsed, they both got up from the table smoothly and headed in opposite directions. They each walked quickly, but not too quickly. McKay was already locking everything down in her head, making sure the Overlay was off, and not just spun down but OFF off. In a city like Singapore, it wasn’t guns and bombs you had to worry about. Any attack would be digital, virtual, it would come from a place where Eliza McKay was uniquely exposed. An EM pulse could wreck every component in her head and nobody else in the room would be affected. She briefly weighed the risk of jail time for jaywalking against the cost of repairing her own internal computers, but the light was in her favor.
McKay hit the far side of the crosswalk just as the EMP went off in the coffee shop. No sound, no explosion, just the unearthly silence of electrical death.
TWO
It was inevitable that the client would pop up again. There had been a meeting scheduled, after all, and she hadn’t come across as easy to rattle. There were only a half dozen people in the world who could perform an extraction, who could pull a person’s mind out of the virtual space of the Swim, even if they didn’t want to go quietly. It meant this potential client’s options were limited. If she’d gotten all the way down the list of experts to Eliza’s name, it meant she was serious.
McKay’s first action, once safely away, was to ask the Overlay to pull all the woman’s salient details, and the AI had come up empty. Contradictions. No presence meant she was likely covered by one of the Big Three intelligence agencies. Anything involving those guys means you’re back under the microscope again. Having US InfoComm breathing down your neck was no fun, and they were the “good guys” of the lot. If they were involved, you could bet that Euro InTech and the Ministry were keeping tabs as well. It had taken her years of staying under the radar to even be able to leave the US without a check-in or a phone call. McKay wasn’t interested in revisiting that state of affairs if she could help it. Back when she still had all her programming licenses intact, she’d been able to afford the lawyers to save herself. That effort had burned through almost every asset she had saved up. Extractions didn’t pay well enough for her to survive a second round of deep investigation.
Spread-eagled on the hotel bed, Overlay open wide to the Swim, soaking up the aircon and catching up with her billing, McKay felt the woman enter the lobby nearly thirty-five stories below.
Found me already? She reached out with just a corner of her mind to tap into and fiddle with the hotel’s guest registry. She shifted the dates here and there to make it seem as if the woman had just missed her. She knew McKay was in town, and there was only one flight a day to San Francisco. It would be foolish simply to wipe herself from the registry entirely. She’d had a number of interesting clients in the past, a few missed connections, but it was rare that anyone pursued her outside normal channels. Big Three, she reminded herself. A simple extraction isn’t worth tangling with the Big Three again. That allure was still there, though . . . working on something important, something game-changing. They just never tell you that changing the game too much is as bad as not changing it at all. Critical success as failure point.
But that reminder lost some of its power every time she said it. Her natural curiosity, her desire to find a way to fix things, to perfect the system, kept bubbling to the fore.
She closed her eyes and slipped a little further into the Swim of digital space. There were limits to what the computers built into her head could do, but she was going for subtlety. This was information gathering, not online warfare. Yet.
The Client stopped at the front desk, and McKay felt the computer systems giving way. Access probed, guided, caressed, and set free again by someone else’s invisible hand. Oh, interesting. The numbers and connections paraded across her vision made the Client seem surrounded by a hard-edged halo of information. You could tell a lot about any given person by the nature and composition of that halo. In the Client’s case, the halo wasn’t hers; she was borrowing it from someone else. People moved through the world adding to and altering the flow of data, like fish in a river, sometimes moving with the current, sometimes against, but every languid flip of the tail or swipe of a credit card made changes. Someone like McKay, intimate with the flows and currents of information invisibly pervading every square inch of atmosphere, couldn’t help but see that halo streak in from elsewhere, wrap her in a protective cocoon, and return to its source. So who are you supposed to be today?
