Deltaview Force: An Opco Boone Adventure

The Adventures of Opco Boone, Legal Ace™ →Go uptown The diff-sensor swept for semantic content. A.J. watched the display. The hourglass flipped. Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Opco Boone Finance fiction Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

Raid

Boone made the window. He elbow-smashed the pane. He reached in, lock-snipped, pivoted and mule-kicked the door, in a single fluid motion. The door smacked on its hinges, quivered and timbered onto the rubble.

A.J. was jazzed. This was sweet.

Boone motioned the unit forward with a curt, pointed air-punch.

The squad fanned left and right. They deployed the four-eye doc-scanning technique.

J-Rod went left. She swivelled in and barked, “clear”.

Algy went right. He swivelled in and barked, “clear”.

Punchface went route one. He kicked over a drum and barked, “clear”.

From nowhere: A kerfuffle behind a plaster wall to the right. The unit spun, caught offguard: panic: fumbling with safety catches, grappling with magazines.

An ear-splitting BLAM: the plaster wall was gone. A heavy wad collapsed through it, lifeless onto the floor in front of them.

Algy cursed. “Jesus! Side letter!”

Boone took his finger off the NAV trigger and holstered his CSA, still smoking from the muzzle. “Eyes peeled, ladies. Now we are clear.”

Boone fixed A.J. with a hard stare. “All right, kid, in you go. Let’s throw a redline around the immediate area.”

A.J. followed up with a static-mount diff-sensor. The rookie unclipped the stabilisers and set the unit on the floor. He punched in the coordinates and it emitted a sheet of red light.

Okay, everyone hold still, now.

The diff-sensor swept for semantic content. A.J. watched the display. The hourglass flipped. It flipped again. After a few moments it rendered: zeroes across the board.

“We’re clean, sir. No blues, no reds. Zilch material alterations. The text-field is Delta-1 as we left it.”

Boone looked concerned. “Odd. To what significance?”

“To one decimal place, Commander.”

“Okay. Run it to three, soldier.”

The kid re-ran the analytics. The diff binoc whistled and beeped.

Janice: “There! In the schedule!”

A.J. squinted. A.J. shrugged. He ran his finger down the margin. “Point nine-nine-seven. Some quote-curl inconsistency in the defs, but that’s a routine re-type job. As good as clean, sir. You could eat your dinner off that.”

As good as clean, but not clean. Interesting. “Re-type? Who does a re-type? Recalibrate it, lad. Let’s go find those missing diffs.”

“Whatever you say, sir.” A.J. twiddled dials and hit RENDER. “Okay, team: Stand by. All material DVs should now show up.”

The redline swept a red sheet over the text-field. It burped a negative.

“Nothing, Commander.”

“What are your settings, Soldier?”

“Text deltas down to individual ascii level, sir. Can’t get more granular than that.

“Formatting?”

“Off.”

“Punctuation?”

“SMART.”

Boone shot the rookie a quizzical look. “Why so?”

A.J. smiled. “This way I pick up all syntactically relevant amendments while filtering out the noise. I’m sure we would have caught anything that made a difference. Sir. The text-field is clean.”

“Run it again, Soldier, but this time include the noise. Let’s have a gander at that formatting and punctuation delta.”

“But —”

Boone shot him a stern look.

The rookie blanched. “Okay, sir. On the double sir. Okay folks; hold real still now: max sensitivity here.”

Algy looked up. His jaw twitched.

Janice looked down. Her cap was jammed tight. A sweat drop swelled on the brim. The unit didn’t breathe.

This time two curtain beams shot out of the DV generator: one red and one blue.

They swept back and forth. The sensor chirped. The lights doused.

“Ok, lads, at ease.” The men chilled.

The DV re-rendered on the HUD.

This time some changes showed up: a thin red line through a blank half page: some dolt forced a carriage return with some tab-work. A stuttering burst of line breaks to force a new page.

Something — or someone — had tampered with the docscene.

“That explains the point oh-three deviation, I guess, Commander.” The kid holstered his DV unit and moved forward. “But — why? Who would do that?”

“Stop right there, lad.” Boone’s voice was urgent.

A.J. froze. “What is it?”

Boone intoned in a halting whisper. “It looks like — no, it can’t be that.”

“Can’t be what, Sir?” A.J. was wide-eyed.

The DV unit bleeped and re-rendered. The familiar blue/red display was riddled green.

Green strikethru.

Green underline.

Boone looked up at his 2IC. “We have movement”

The old veteran leaned in. She peered at the display. She whistled. she caught the commander’s eye. “It could be, you know, Boone.”

Even as she said it, Boone knew it. “Yeah.”

“What, sir? What?” A.J. hissed.

Algy looked on. “Cadet, you could be looking at a live Biggs particle.”

Eagle-Squad Cadet A.J. Paul looked at his commander with wondrous eyes. “Seriously? A Biggs hoson! I don’t bel —”

Boone turned furiously. “SHHHHHHH! Silent running, soldier!”

A.J. clammed pronto.

Algy shrugged. “But I don’t think it is a Biggs hoson, though”. It just looks like one. Hosons are not stable. A hoson would have degraded into entropic tedium by now. This has a much longer half-life.

At the back of the room, a dusty murmur in the rubble. Something moved. Another groan. Some planking shifted in the wrecked cube.

The kid looked up at the commander. Boone caught the yearning. The boy wanted it.

Boone nodded. “Careful, lad.” He nodded. He let him off the leash.

Cubicle

A.J. cocked his GMSLA and kicked off the planking round the cube. Revealed: rubble-showered youth in sharp suit, prone, pale face and pinned under collapsed pitch book stack. It was heavy, but not load-bearing.

“Don’t move, son. We’ll have you out off there in no time.”

“I’m fiiiine. I’m fliiiying.”

The poor little punk was in a state. Dust-caked, dehydrated, eyes red and rolling wild in wide sockets.

“I have it!” He mumbled it through a mouthful of sand and plaster. “I can get you some —”

“P.A.D. Masks! Now!” Boone’s tone was urgent. The squad masked up toute de suite.

A.J. yammered, “What is it?”

Boone held out a flat-palm that said “quiet ops”. He unholstered his Z10 commlink and jacked up a secure connection back to control.

“This is Boone to Control Room: Lecteur, do you copy?”

A static-crackled Roger said she did.

“We’ve got a damaged squidboy boobytrapped with pitch books and a red herring. We’re gonna need a wall thrown up around this unit pronto.”

Static crackle. “On it, Boone. Have your unit affirm confidentiality. OneNDA Protocol, over.”

“OneNDA terms affirmed, over.”

“You all okay over?” ABL had shi-shi French accent. She knew it and played to it like a boss.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Precautionary measure only at this time, Annabelle. Kid’s a di-Alpha-head gabbling with a draft OM. Most likely stale or public-side but some risk of MNPI infection.”

Lecteur said, “Oopsie.” she said it coquettish.

Boone yukked. The squad yukked. “That’s solid A grade material, Abster. Love your work.”

“Zis bores me, Opco”. That little “sh” at the end. It drove Boone wild. The Abster clicked off.

The Squidboy wore a lapel badge. It said “Renfield” A.J. nudged him with his boot. All the signs. Tell-tale blue/red track-change marks running up his arm. Tossed-out riders and mark-up littered the splintered cubicle. A half-done CBT module cycled lazily on his screen.

The kid hacked out a wet splutter, shook his head and staggered up. Chalk motes lifted off his suit.

Roly cocked, shouldered and pointed. “Hold it right there, tiger.”

The kid regarded Roly’s up-close muzzle and gurned. “Oh, no, I’m clean, man. I’m straight. I’m a Wickerman, through and through.”

Roly stepped back. Boone shrugged: it was plausible. The kid had the likely pedigree and squid-like air of assurance. The suit was sharp: it screamed Wickliffe, sans doubte. The kid clutched a fat book.

“Relax: I’m a ninja, too. Look.”

He bowed his head and held out the book like a votive.

Punchface stretched out a hand to take it. Boone smacked it down. “Don’t touch, Cadet Punchface. Put the red herring down, Wickerboy.”

The kid tossed the deck on the floor. It landed face down and spun.

A.J. prodded it with his piece. He scoped the back jacket. It was blobbed, de-blobbed and annotated in tight black cursive.

“Football Team checks out, sir.” A.J. eyeballed the kid. “This is strong work.”

“Entity?”

“N. A., stops correct.”

“Branch?”

“London. Acting by and on behalf of, not through through. Punctuation clear.”

“I told you, man. I’m on the level.” The kid shifted awkwardly and groped at a nearby keyboard.

Punchface freaked & squeaked. “Freeze!”

The squid kid was fly. “Chill, man. I’m just late on CBT, is all. If I don’t finish on time they will know.”

Boone said, “Stand down, Roly.” Boone looked at the kid. “Who will?”

“Compliance goons. They monitor by the keystroke. I’m on their shit-list already. I missed the OSH module last week.”

Boone did not need a gang of Wickliffe compliance heavies sweeping the building right now. He knew it. The kid knew it. The kid knew he knew the kid knew it.

Boone nodded at the screen. “Gimme a look at that.”

Kid twisted the screen up to Boone’s eyeline. It was a Wang terminal. It came standard with a warm glow and a diffuser. A smorgasbord of CUI courier orange swam into view.

Boone alt-tabbed for signs of Leisure Suit Larry. No dice. The kid’s story checked out. He tabbed back and scanned the screen. A corner-mounted timer counted down. Four minutes and falling.

“What’s that?”

That’s the goddamn deadline counter. These dudes are serious. I’ve been pulling all nighters on this goddam CDO, so I’m late again. I gotta get this done or my ass is toast.

“Okay. It’s D.”

“What?”

“The answer. It’s D. “All of the above”.”

“Oh, right. Sweet.” The kid clacked keys and hit return. The Wang went blank.

The hourglass flipped.

The count-down ticked. Thirty seconds to go.

“Come on —”

The hour-glass flipped. Twenty five seconds.

A compliance squad automated reminder popped up. It threatened disciplinary. It threatened interdisciplinary. It copied his manager and signed off with a smiley.

Roly squealed. “Let’s wax him and get out of here, Boone.”

“We do not have control room clearance, Roly.”

“But the place is going to blow!”

“Wait.”

The counter ticked down. It got to 10. A.J. gulped. The Wang honked and squawked and flashed apocalyptic red.

The counter hit 5.

The screen came up. The machine beeped & glowed. A nearby printer started chattering. The alarm died. The code red light show subsided. The lights came up.

The collective de-stressed.

Squid kid pulled a readout off the dot matrix. He scanned the readout. He grinned. “Nailed it. Eighty percent. I’m clear. Any more was wasted effort.”

The comlink crackled. “Boone, this is control room. The wall is active. Code word: Project Viper. OneNDA protocol affirmative. You may proceed.”

Boone opened up the comlink on back to base. “He’s pretty far gone, J. I think it’s stale. But he’s packing a red herring. Take no chances.”

The squid kid said, “I teach you the Superman.” He clawed back the pitch book.

A.J. tried to grab it but the squid hung on tight. He hugged it close to his heart.

Roly pressed the muzzle of his ’92 to the kid’s temple and cocked the NAV trigger. “Collaterslise this, motherf—”

The kid let go.

Boone barked, “STAND DOWN, SOLDIER. Cool your jets, Cadet Punchface.”

The kid leered at Roly, flipped bird and said, “how about you collateralise this.”

Roly bridled. A.J. snagged the OC.

It was fat, typeset small, laid out on custom narrow margins and US letter.

Lexrifyly initial public offering

A.J. goggled. “What is it?”

The squid’s eyes glowed. They rolled in their sockets. All he could do was mutter, over and over, “I have seen the future. I can get you a piece.”

A.J. flipped the pages there were plenty to go on. He scanned the risk factors. He glommed the financial projections.

“What the hell is lexrifyly?

“The future” gurgled the squid. “So clever.”

A J. screwed up his nose. He stabbed the cashflow projection. “But, it has no forecast revenue —”

“I know ”

“— let alone profit, in the next nineteen years. It’s best case break even is 2046.”

You’re all so quaint. So old fashioned.” Squidboy convulsed in bubbling, foamy laughter. “That’s what’s so clever, man.”

“How is having no hope of making money so clever?

Squidboy sat up. “Put away your Sharpe ratios. Stop with your bogus liquidity assumptions. Trouble me not with talk of concentration, convexity, correlation and duration mismatch. That’s all gone man. The world has revolved. It has evolved. We have manufactured yield. We’re best placed to make it. We syndicated risk to those best placed to take it. We are networked, we are one. We are many, not few. We scale, rail, email but not fail. we are interconnected. We are nodes, we are points. I am vertex. I am me. I am you. I am a multiplicity. I am a singularity. The singularity. My proposition is ipso facto compelling. It is swelling. They have to tools and weapons to figure it out. They will figure it out. The old rules are broken. They don’t work anymore. The rules do not apply.”

Algy said, “can someone switch him off?”

A.J. picked a random page and dived right in.

The text was 9 point Times New Roman. It bore the Sullivan & Cromwell alignment. It was deep. It was wide. There were unpunctuated tracts nor mortal lungs could hold. It had its own mad beauty. There were random underlines. Haphazard block caps. Crazy indents. The text swooned. It danced on the page. It funneled to a vortex. The physical transmogrified to the syntactic. Not the cultural units twirled. Constructions curled. They folded giddily back upon themselves. Provisos. Provusos. Inclusos. Carve-ins. Carve-outs. Lexological constants. It was bonkers. It was mad. It was deep —

Boone’s voice boomed. “A.J.! Snap the fuck out man, that's dangerous.”

But A.J. was gripped.

“A.J.! pull out!”

A.J. was hooked: The text tesseracted out to unimaginable dimensions. It twisted and bucked and exploded into a billion points of light, every one an intricate private world —

A.J.’s head rolled. Eyes out on stalks. Punchface shrugged. “What’s with him?

J-Rod clocked it.

“A.J.! withdraw soldier!” Janice slapped his chops. A.J. lolled left and lolled right. He be goneburger.

The infinitesimal ASCII points bloomed into multicoloured kaliedoscope of mark-up. Each one, its own universe of semantic depth —

“Jesus! We are losing him, Boone. He’s not ready for this.”

Punchface said, “He’ll cope.”

Boone was suddenly present. “Janice initiate intervention. NOW. I’M GOING IN.”

The air was thick. Boone grabbed the Squidboy. “And you, my friend: you’re coming with me.”

Algy snapped his other arm.

Squidster tensed.

Algy pressed his GMSLA to the boy’s temple. “it’s loaded, son. I wouldn’t want you to become collateral damage.

Squidster relaxed: “Okay, okay, my dudes.” His knee buckled. He planted on a wooden chair. Boone took the knee and clapped shoulders.

Janice cracked the red herring and aimed it at them. It showered other-worldly light across the room. She held it up straight. Boone shut his eyes tight and gripped it hard, two handed. “Call it, Janice.”

The OM threw out ghoulish radiation.

Janice said, “NOW.”

Boone cracked open his eyes and drank it all in.