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The Hologram by Chaki-O5

The Hologram

Mangolf disliked interrogations of digital persons. Sure, legally they were second class citizens and could be shoved around if necessary, but that didn't stop the uneasy feeling when you talk to someone who in essence is just a few lines of code without a brain - even a cybernetic one - behind it. Were they people or where they not? The Wolf fought back on these thoughts and readied his equipment. An Agency issue holographic projector to give him a face to talk to would make this whole thing easier.

After entering the parameters, he loaded up the files and launched the program. With a quiet whooshing sound, a transparent androgynous feline appeared, from what Mangolf could tell, a Siamese breed. No clothes, but also nothing clothes would hide. Agency loved to keep their agents focused. Immediately, the holographic person blurted out, "...and if you think you can double-cross me... wait what is this?"
Mangolf leaned back in his chair, waving his gloved hand towards the hologram. "Good day. Please continue if you wish," he answered with his raspy voice.
The feline looked around, which was interesting to Mangolf, since there is only one camera giving her vision, and it was pointed at him. After a few seconds of silence, they looked at the Wolf and growled, "I want to talk to my lawyer. I have a Class-4 Legal Contract with HeroStar Unlimited."
Mangolf tilted his head to the side, feigning surprise. Sure, they might have had this, but they lost those privileges due to the nature of their incarceration. Time to make sure they knew who was in charge, "You do not have a lawyer. Burrow Station standing law considers digital entities non-persons with limited rights and are to be assigned to a handler. None of the limited rights allow the signing of a contract, as the handler has to sign it in the name of the entity. It was decided that i would be your handler for the time being, as you boarded this station illegally and tried to stir an insurrection by selling illegal code to loyal citizens of Burrow Station."
He loved this part and watched the hologram intently for a reaction, but the hologram seemed unfazed. This was irritating. Normally, they started whining about their innocence at this point. Not this one. Time to bring out the big guns.
"Since you were caught in the act, with plenty of evidence and a citizen of the station even confessing that you tried to turn him... well let's just say that you will have plenty of time thinking about your crimes while looking at menial digital labor for a few years after which you will be..." the lights faded out for a moment, which made Mangolf trail off. Usually this was caused by solar flares, but the hologram was still running and there were no solar flares predicted. He shook his head, leaned forward and continued, "After which you will be sent back to whatever shithole corner of the system you claim you came from. Did you understand this?"

The feline looked away from him, and with a chipper tone in their voice, responded, "Yes, yes, i hear your mutterings clearly. Your emitter makes sure that my own thoughts are drowned out, which makes what i'm about to do a bit harder." The Siamese snipped their fingers and the lights went out again, replaced with red warning lights as klaxons gave warning of atmospheric pressure dropping.
With a snarl, Mangolf pulled up his augmented reality interface, deactivated the projector and looked what was going on. That bitch turned off life support in this section of the habitat! How was she even connected to it, the projector wasn't connected to the stations network by default. He got out of his chair, slid over a table to the emergency breathers. Who knows how quickly the oxygen would fade? After he secured the breather to his mouth and nose, he pinged the emergency services who were already working on getting life support back. Curiously, they found no resistance in the systems and after not even a minute, life support was running again.
Securing the breather back into its cradle in the wall, he sat back into his chair, looking at the holo-projector. He would need to find out how she did that exactly. Waving his arms, he ran a diagnostic and made sure, that the projector was disconnected from the network and booted up the hologram again. The transparent feline appeared again, looking at him amused. Time to break them.

"Listen up, bitch. You just earned another ten years, if not more. I wanted to get easy on you, show that not everyone in the core is prejudiced against infolifes, but you fringer scum apparently want to destroy us obviously, one way or the other. So i will personally see to it, that your file gets so fucked with during your time here, that when they get you into a biological body again, all you can do is drool!"
He has risen up again during his speech, claws digging into the console in front of him, hackles raised. But the hologram didn't react. Now he tilted his head and it was real surprise. He checked the projector and noticed that the file has been tagged as a recording. He investigated the logs and sure, this was not there, five minutes earlier. Did she record a message in less than a minute? Reluctantly, he played it back.
"Hi Agent, so by now, you probably ask yourself several things, none of them questioning the bullshit you just spouted at me or how its ethical - but hey! Whatever lets you sleep at night. Did you like my little diversion? That was fun. By now, i should be back home, safe, sound and in a body too. So, good luck catching me? You probably thought about lobotomizing me or something like that. Cute. I'd watch my back if i were you. Also, you might want to check that upstanding citizen a bit closer, but don't make an effort in finding her. She's a bit... gone. On that note, i recommend that you really switch to a better database encryption because this is just embarrassing. So now i ran out of insults so i guess its time for goodbye? Well, not good. I actually hope that you kinda run out of air, but i don't want to get my hopes up. So... hopefully someone throws you out of an airlock? That sounds reasonable. Over and out!"
Mangolf looked on in disbelief and after his mind computed what he just heard, he roared and smashed the holo-projector.

The Hologram

Chaki-O5

I wanted to write more, at least for an hour per week. To get ideas on what to write, i use a generator for random prompts and select one where i got an idea for.

This is the first try at this and i like how it all went. I also used a new tool to write that is similar to Word, but less cluttered and lets me export stuff better. With MS Word (or OpenOffice) i usually start to format the crap out of the first few lines until i'm happy and then the actual energy to write is gone.


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