There was a knock on the small plastic hatch leading to Caldwell’s capsule and the sound of scurrying feet. The sudden interruption caused him to spill part of the vial’s contents down his chin. What the hell? Who or what could that be? It was definitely human. His capsule was at least six feet off the ground on the third rack no less. At first, he couldn’t quite believe his ears. This was the first time anyone had ever knocked at the capsule door. There was an unspoken code of privacy among the clientele and capsule hotel staff, such that they existed, he’d never seen one, would never knock on a capsule hatch when it was occupied. That was tantamount to a gross invasion of privacy and a sure way of reducing life expectancy.

Caldwell had a decision to make. Should he just ignore the intrusion and go ahead and drink the contents of the vial or should he see what the commotion was all about? He reluctantly opted for the latter. It could be important. He placed the vial gingerly on the side shelf, wiped the droplets of death liquid from his chin with the back of his hand and slowly twisted his body until he was facing the entrance to the capsule. He reached for the hatch. The capsule’s plastic hatch felt cold and awkward on the palm of his hands. Caldwell moved his hand away from the hatch.

He pressed the button next to small LCD screen in the ceiling. It displayed the image picked up by the security camera outside. There was nobody there, but on the overhang outside the hatch was what looked like a package. He released the latch and peered outside. The miscellaneous sounds of various states of sleep grew louder. Caldwell could hear the muffled din of Europorn emanating from one of the nearby capsules. Whoever had left the package there had already disappeared into the Byzantine maze of corridors. He wasn’t surprised. With its proliferation of cheap capsule hotels, Angel, despite its name, wasn’t the nicest of neighborhoods. And the Angel Capsule Hotel, one of the area’s better establishments, was still the kind of place that could give even the most hardened courier palpitations.

Caldwell stared at the package, an expensive looking gray box bearing a DHL Japan logo. There was a small sticker attached to it with his name, capsule number and a return-to-sender anonymous postal box at Union Mail. It was obviously not a wrong delivery. He wondered who could have sent him the package and perhaps more importantly how the hell did they know he was holed up at the Angel Capsule Hotel? What was in the box? He had made countless enemies in cyberspace, disgraced many a sys-op, computer technician or security expert. One of them could have tracked him down and sent him an explosive package of revenge but that was close to impossible. At any rate, they would be doing him a favor. He prodded the package with his left hand, expecting it to do the vial’s job in a much quicker and messier way. Nothing. The box felt heavy against his fingers. He picked it up carefully, holding it as though it contained uranium rods and retreated crawling backwards into the capsule.

Caldwell placed the package on the futon, slid the hatch shut and turned his attention once again to the half-empty vial on the side shelf. He wasn’t even sure if what was left would do the job effectively. At least he should see what was in the box before proceeding with his suicide mission. If he hadn’t heard the knock on the door he probably would have been dead by now. That fact was not lost on him. Destiny? He proceeded to open the package. Inside a protective bubble of Styrofoam was yet another black box made out of a ductile synthetic material.

Forgetting for a moment his preoccupation with the question of how whoever had sent the package had found out where he lived, Caldwell removed the black box from its Styrofoam nest and shook it. The contents of the box did not make any sound but it had a weight that bore no relationship to its perceived size. Whatever was in the box was dense. Then his eye caught the edge of a triangular plastic card half hidden below the clutter of Styrofoam in the outer box. It was a holographic tag from a Kenzo Yamamoto and it read: A window into your future, Caldwell-san. The letters, written in some calligraphic font, seemed to float in mid air. The name meant nothing to him but it was Japanese and Caldwell felt a bubble of hope start to form. He rubbed his hand over the black box and for the first time noticed that it was made out of minute geometric shapes held together by some invisible force. He lifted the cover off.

Inside the box, wrapped in a smart protective skin sat a smooth black computer console and an expensive-looking set of virtual reality goggles and gloves. He was no console expert but he had seen state-of-the-art consoles before and nothing came even close to what he was looking at. A cyberspace console.

Hands trembling and his mind looping through all the possibilities, Caldwell picked up the console and examined it carefully. There was no power socket, no standard input device interface, just two triangular optical sockets of a shape and type he had never seen before. The gloves where made of a translucent material that may or may not have been some kind of plastic polymer. This was a closed system console designed not to connect with any other hardware.

Embedded within the material of the gloves was a thin layer of resin. Transparent optical cables floating in the resin disappeared into small sensors at the tips of each finger which were crowned with LEDs. There was circuitry embedded within the resin, etched on a thin layer of plastic. The goggles were a shiny oblong of black optics behind which sat six tiny devices, three for each eye, and a bank of small LEDs. He donned the gloves and the goggles and plugged them into the console’s triangular sockets. The sockets looked identical. Despite the black coating on the goggles he could see just as clearly as if he wasn’t wearing them. These were no mirror shades. There was a low whir and a switch illuminated with green light emerged from the front of the console.

Caldwell held his breath and pressed the switch. The LEDs painted a wall of pixels on his retina. A virtual keyboard appeared before him, virtual fingers at the ready. Millions of luminescent pixels swirled around the screen and then congealed into a digital rendition of a human face. It was an oriental face, a Japanese face. Kenzo Yamamoto?

“Caldwell-san, I see you received the package,” said the face, in a voice not too dissimilar to talons scraping on an antique blackboard, modulated slightly not to grate the nerves. The movement of the lips on the face was in perfect symphony with the voice. There was no discernable lag.

“Yes I did. Who are you? And why did you send me this?” Caldwell asked. There were powerful microphones and speakers embedded somewhere in the goggles. He could hear the speaker and himself as though they were both in an acoustically enhanced room.

The face broke into a smile.

“You can call me Kenzo, Caldwell-san. Yamamoto is the surname if you wish to be formal. In answer to your other question, you’ve proven yourself over the months Caldwell-san, with the exception of Sumitomo Bank of course. Now I am about to give you the biggest freaking score in all of Europe, a ticket to the big time.”

Caldwell was speechless. It knew about that. He eyed the mask suspiciously.

“How do you know about Sumitomo?” was all he could muster, dreams of cyberspace rising phoenix-like in his mind. Kenzo Yamamoto, or his associates, must have been behind many of the scores coming out of Japan.

Peals of laughter emerged from the goggles, attenuated to a high pitch.

“Caldwell-san, Caldwell-san. This is no time for questions. This is a time for answers. I have been your benefactor for quite a while. Of course it’s all quid pro quo. You do for me, I do for you. Sumitomo Bank I stacked against you, I set it up so you would fail. Failure, Caldwell-san, hones the senses like nothing else.” The mask paused for dramatic effect.

“That was a setup?” Caldwell asked incredulously. It was all starting to make sense now. What looked like a routine score, turned out to be a huge failure and what’s worse the result was broadcast all over the hacker boards of cyberspace resulting in his most severe hacking winter.

“Yes. I was prepping you for the real deal Caldwell. The biggest freaking score in all of Europe. You have a talent, Caldwell-san. But it is wasted on the kind of stuff you used to do. How does three million sound to you? Union Euros, not the currency of the black market.”

Caldwell couldn’t believe his ears but he knew he had heard Yamamoto right. Three million Union Euros was a small fortune. He could buy a mobile home, boat or vehicle it didn’t matter, outfitted with the latest cyberspace decks and spend the rest of his life getting lost in the ubiquitous black zones of the Union.

“What do I need to do to get it? And what does this console have to do with it?”

“A thing of beauty isn’t it? There is currently only one other like it in the world. It’s expensive beyond your wildest dreams, priceless. The artiste responsible for creating these takes his time but it’s worth it so we tolerate it. Unfortunately, he is currently, shall we say, indisposed.”

“What is it exactly or is that a stupid question?”

“Caldwell-san. I can see that you recognize the cutting edge when you see it. This is not just a computer, Caldwell-san. This is a work of art. But let’s talk about science. Console and peripherals linked to each other through a high-speed proprietary closed wireless network. Transmitters and receivers to the same all built in, range is fifty kilometers. Encrypted of course. Impressive, yes? The console itself is linked to cyberspace and beyond via encrypted high-speed satellite links. Take the peripherals on the road, leave the console at home, still connected. I’m sure you can see the power of this. Paradigm shift no less. This is one of the most powerful consoles available, Caldwell-san. The satellite-enabled goggles makes it truly portable. Consider yourself a lucky man to be looking at one now. Let alone touching one.”

“Satellite link is always on? Who pays?”

“Yours truly. My satellite. Stratelite to be exact. Low-flying bird. Rest assured you won’t be receiving any bills. What you’ll be receiving are instructions. I’ve been impressed with your work so far Caldwell-san. Consider this an investment in your future. I’ll be in touch,” the Japanese said, voice diminishing into white noise, pixels reconstituting into black screen.

“But wait ...” Caldwell protested, his voice echoing back from the depths of cyberspace. Kenzo or whoever the face was had disappeared.

Caldwell removed the goggles and stared at the black console. Was this the lifeline he needed so badly? Had he really been snatched back from the brink of suicide? This Kenzo Yamamoto had apparently engineered his downward spiral, spread news of his failure all over the hacker domains of cyberspace culminating in his exclusion from the deal flow of The HUB. All this just to set him up for this three million Euro score. The biggest freaking score in all of Europe, Kenzo had said. Of course he was referring to the Union, which had subsumed Europe completely a long time ago.

Kenzo Yamamoto had said he’d be in touch, but when? Caldwell reckoned he’d be hearing from the Japanese soon. After all, he still had possession of the expensive console and the satellite uplink worked allowing him to boot up and jack in to cyberspace from anywhere he chose. If Kenzo didn’t make contact soon, he could fence the console and disappear. Custom job like this would fetch tens of thousands of Union Euros on the black market. Not quite the same as three million Union Euros but an OK living for about a year or so. Enough time to land something that would keep him in credit. The console represented a renewed lease on life.

He donned the goggles again. This time, instead of a barrage of pixels he was greeted with a simple command line. The console appeared to possess no user interface. Caldwell suspected that it created interfaces on the fly depending on what job it was called upon to do. It was the state of the art no less, the cutting edge.

Caldwell entered the address of his netbase and crossed his fingers. The netbase came up lightning fast with a totally different interface from what he was used to seeing. The console had rendered a visually-rich three-dimensional space on the fly that he could walk around in. The goggles had an embedded motion tracking device.

He looked around the netbase. In the room was a meticulously rendered antique writing desk, his read messages represented in the virtual space as opened letters complete with postage stamps. There was one unopened letter, a new message. He picked the letter up with his left hand, the tactile functions of the resin in the gloves faithfully reproducing the feel of coarse paper.

He felt a sudden flash of pain. Today’s quota of migraines had started early and was proving unrelenting. The quotient was almost intolerably high, the pain rising rapidly and peaking violently like the finale of a particularly upbeat musical performance. He wiped the blood trickling from his nose with the back of his hand.

Caldwell ignored the pain and used a silver letter opener on the writing desk to cut through the envelope. He understood perfectly. The letter opener was the console’s rendition of his personal encryption/decryption module which stopped his communications from getting into the wrong hands, decrypting the contents of his message so he could read it. This console was some piece of work.

Ignoring the mounting pain that was gradually cresting deep within his brain he began to read the message. It was a message from Glyph, owner of the underground hacker space known as The HUB. The message was brief and to the point.

Cad, get the hell out of wherever you are. They are after you. Your life is in so much danger dude. Message me from The Puzzle pub, Isle of Dogs.

Caldwell stared at the simple paragraph. His headache was suddenly unbearable. He had to get out of the capsule. His credit was almost up anyway. He removed the goggles and gloves and started to pack the console away in his rucksack. Glyph was no practical joker and he only ever sent messages when absolutely necessary. They had not communicated in a while. He had to find Glyph and he had to not blackout from his headache. He logged on to the capsule’s terminal and quickly white paged The Puzzle.

Feeling that his migraine was rapidly reaching the point where a complete blackout was imminent, Caldwell mind-warped back into another memory space, one of the few he kept handy to stop himself from succumbing to the pain. In that space, he found himself sitting in a decrepit illicit coin-up launderette in his underwear watching the industrial laundry machines churn the hell out of his last threads. Kat’s blonde head was bobbing around to the rhythm of the wash cycle. She was sitting next to him in her floral underwear, eyes masked by a scratched up old personal video display.