Incorporated with DeepSeek
The Barrissta
The Barista they called him. A name born from Neo's love for dead-era quirks. In a world of synth-caf and nutrient sludge, he dealt in the rarest, most authentic brew of all: raw, un-digitized knowledge. He was the Library's phantom limb, its collector, a ghost haunting the forgotten corners of the Sprawl, and he was never, ever in the Library itself.
His true name was Silas, and his cathedral was the road. His current pulpit was the driver's seat of a beaten Renault-Fiat stealth camper van, its chameleon paint mimicking the grimy, rain-slicked concrete of a derelict multi-story carpark in the Leeds sector. The van smelled of old paper, engine oil, and the sharp, clean scent of data-wipes.
On the passenger seat, bolted to a shock-absorbent frame, was his partner: a custom-modified cyberdeck he called "Sibyl." While the Librarian was a vast, serene intelligence, Sibyl was a feral, brilliant bloodhound. Her sole purpose was to sniff out texts.
A holoscreen flickered, painting Silas's lean, weathered face in a pale blue light. It displayed a cascading stream of data: small ads from host-boards most had forgotten, listings from "antiquarian" dealers (a fancy word for glorified junk-hoarders), and library liquidation notices from sectors so broke they were selling their own history for scrap.
"Sibyl, filter query: 'Pre-Crash, 20th/21st Century. Primary: fiction, technical manuals, philosophical texts. Exclude: religious pamphlets, periodicals.' Cross-reference with the Library's 'Most Wanted' list."
A soft, synthesized female voice, clipped and efficient, responded from the deck's speakers. "Filter applied. Probability match found: 67%. Listing: 'Soot-and-Smoke Emporium,' Bradford Stacks. Advertises 'a crate of old paper books.' Visual scan of uploaded user-image indicates potential titles: 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' 'Gödel, Escher, Bach,' and an unidentified text on analog signal processing."
Silas allowed himself a thin smile. "Gödel, Escher, Bach." A prime target. A foundational text on logical loops and self-reference that would make the Librarian purr with analytic joy. The sort of thing that could refine its creative algorithms for months.
"Plot a route. Low-profile. Use the secondary arterial routes, avoid Ares checkpoints."
"Route plotted. Estimated time: 42 minutes. Suggest deploying counter-surveillance drones."
He nodded, firing up the van's near-silent electric engine. Two miniature dragonfly drones, their bodies non-reflective carbon fibre, whirred from hidden compartments under the chassis and zipped ahead, feeding a 360-degree tactical view to his cybereyes.
This was the dance. He was a data-ferret, a smuggler of antiquities. The corps didn't care about the books themselves, but they did care about anyone building a private, un-sanctioned knowledge base that rivaled their own. A man buying a single old book was a eccentric. A man systematically acquiring thousands was a threat.
The Soot-and-Smoke Emporium was exactly what it sounded like: a cramped, dark cave of a shop, filled with the smell of dust, ozone, and cheap synth-tobacco. The proprietor, a man with a respiratory filter grafted directly into his trachea, glared from behind a counter littered with scavenged cyberware.
Silas didn't speak. He pointed to the crate in the corner. The man grunted a price. Silas haggled by sliding a credstick across the counter with a lower number. A moment of tense silence, then a grunt of acceptance. The transaction was complete. He hefted the crate—the real, physical weight of it a constant surprise—and was back in the van in under ninety seconds.
"Scan them, Sibyl. All. Deep spectral analysis for micro-writing, hidden inks. Check for tracking particles."
A thin laser grid swept over each book as he fed them into a slot in Sibyl's housing. "Scanning... 'Zen and the Art...' clean. 'Gödel, Escher, Bach,' clean. 'Analog Signal Processing,' clean. No biologics. No nanites. No trackers."
Only then did he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He carefully packed the books into a reinforced, signal-proof case. This was one shipment. There would be a dozen more today.
His life was a constant, fluid migration. The van for urban crawls. A sleek, overpowered Honda-Rocket motorcycle, stashed in the van's belly, for quick getaways or navigating gridlocked sectors. For longer hauls, a battered but reliable go-fast car with false registration, or when the distance was truly continental, a commercial flight under a forged SIN, the precious cargo shipped via a labyrinthine network of dead drops and trusted couriers.
Days later, he was in the Frankfurt-Rhine sector, a world away from the Bradford Stacks. Here, the air was thick with the scent of money and pollution. His target was a high-end collector, a mid-level Aztechnology exec with a taste for forbidden fruit—in this case, a first-edition copy of "The Prince" by Machiavelli, printed on actual vellum.
This was a different kind of run. No crate in a dusty shop. This was a meeting in a skybar, the lights of the Sprawl sprawling beneath them like a bed of jewels. Silas, in a decent suit that felt like a costume, sipped synth-scotch while the exec eyed the book, nestled in a velvet-lined box.
"The insights are... primitive, of course," the exec said, his voice smooth, his eyes sharp. "But the context. The sheer, unaltered audacity of it. My colleagues would be... fascinated."
Silas knew the subtext. The exec wasn't buying a book; he was buying a weapon, a piece of historical leverage, or simply a badge of his own superiority. It didn't matter. The Library got a high-resolution, molecular-level scan before the book ever left Silas's hands. The physical object was just the delivery mechanism.
The deal was done. The credstick in Silas's pocket was heavy with nuyen. As he rode the elevator down, Sibyl's voice was a whisper in his cochlear implant.
"Alert. Two individuals matching known Aztechnology security profiles entered the lobby. They did not approach the elevators. They are establishing a perimeter."
The exec had decided to keep both the book and his money. A classic double-cross.
"Contingency Theta," Silas murmured.
He didn't go to the lobby. He exited on the sub-level parking garage, moving with a calm urgency. He reached his go-fast car—a matte-black Porsche-American with a corrupted VIN. As he slid in, he saw the two security men start moving toward him.
"Sibyl, activate 'Cacophony' protocol on local area network. Send the pre-recorded ghost signal of our departure to the north exit."
"Executing."
The garage's lights flickered. Car alarms suddenly blared in a chaotic symphony twenty rows over. The guards hesitated, confused. It was all the time Silas needed. The electric engine of the Porsche hummed to life, not with a roar, but with a lethal whisper. He shot out of the south exit, the chameleon paint already shifting to match the dull grey of the rain-swept expressway, leaving the Aztech hounds in his digital and literal dust.
Later, parked in the stealth van on the outskirts of Mainz, the precious scan data being encrypted and bounced through a dozen proxies on its way to the Library, Silas finally relaxed. He opened the case and ran his fingers over the embossed cover of "Gödel, Escher, Bach." The texture was rough, real.
A secure comm-line chirped. It was Neo.
"That Machiavelli scan... the Librarian is already cross-referencing it with Ares' latest PR releases. The parallels are... hilarious. Good work, Silas. You're keeping us fed."
Silas didn't smile often, but he did now. He was the hunter, the procurer, the ghost. While Neo built the brain and Kato guarded the body, he was the one who brought it sustenance, one fragile, paper-and-ink artifact at a time. He was the Barista, and in the bitter, data-starved sprawl of the 21st century, he served the only brew that truly mattered: the black, unadulterated coffee of truth.
