Simple by Dena Nicotra Read Free Book Online Page B

apologizing?”
    “Oh for Christ’ sake, knock it off you two!” joked Giz.
    Mic took a long pull from the bottle and then passed it to me.  The amber liquid burned my throat, and warmed my insides as it went down.  I passed it back and watched him as he took another swig.  He pushed the bottle back in front of me.  “Don’t you want to offer some to your friend?”  I asked with a grin.
    “I don’t drink.  Fish knows I don’t drink.  You can have my share,” he said, waving his hand at the bottle dismissively.
    “Your loss,” I said teasingly, and took another sip.
    “So tell me about the code, Fish.” Giz pushed back from his laptop and took a gulp from a can of orange soda.
    “Well, it’s something I’d been playing with on the side.  You know how we’ve been so focused on pushing out a mass update through the gateway?  I started thinking, what if we had some way of doing the same thing, only on a much smaller scale.”
    “Right, right that makes perfect sense,” muttered Giz.
    “It took me a little over a month to figure out what system held the simp master maps.” He turned to me. “Those are basically schematics that identify all of the sensors and the ports for each neurotronic cerebral mechanism.”  I nodded, although nothing he said made much sense.  He smiled at me and continued, “Once I finally found them, I started tracing evolution patterns and then, working backwards, identified each parameter.  Over time, I began to see a pattern that I could build off of, so I spent some time writing out some code that would shut down an individual simp at the cortex level.  Granted, the simp population works through distributed systems, but at an ideal nanotechnological level, manipulating the NIP should work, right?”
    “The NIP, of course, that should totally work!”  I said with exaggerated enthusiasm as I tugged the bottle from Mic’s hand.  “Oh, sorry Hailey, the NIP is the neurological IP address.”
    “Right, of course.  I knew that.”  The liquor was getting to me, and I was finding myself actually interested in this geek speak.  Well, not exactly interested in the geek speak.  It was more like I was interested in the geek that was speaking.  He continued to explain his theories and his findings, and I continued to check out his bone structure – and fine bone structure it was. 
    “So you can shut down individual simps!”  I stated louder than I’d meant to.  “That’s totally fantastic…can we go smoke now?”
    “Jesus Hailey, you’re lit!”  Giz said giggling.
    “And you, good sir, should drink more than orange soda.  It’s a lot more fun to drink this!”  I said pointing at the bottle.  He shook his head and then yawned.  “Right, because you’ll be feeling so much better than I will in the morning.”
    “Oh believe me, I’ll sleep good tonight and that is well worth the hangover in the morning, Red.”
    “Don’t call me that.  It’s Giz to you!” he said, still laughing.
    “I’m sorry to be so distracting you guys. I’m really trying to follow, but my head is fiercely buzzing, and I want a cigarette, a shower, and a pillow in that order.”
    “All right, c’mon, I’ll take you downstairs for a smoke, because I don’t want to smoke by Giz.  He hates it.  Then you can go get your shower and we can finish our conversation.”
    “Why aren’t you as buzzed as I am?”  I asked, realizing that he wasn’t even slurring his words.
    “Because you drank most of the bottle, lady.”
    “Well, fine and dandy.  Is it gone?”
    “You can have the last sip.”  He handed me the bottle and I turned it upright, allowing the last of the liquid to do its job.  I intended to sleep and not dream of broken neighbors, or scary shark versions of myself.  I didn’t give a damn if I looked like a fool in front of these two, because they were dorks, and even though Mic was very good looking, he still pissed me off just by being who he