a.k.a Red Butterfly
Hi, my name is Gabriel, but everyone calls me Gabe.
Tell you about myself? Well the best place to start is the beginning as my mother always used to say. My parents split up when I was very little, I never saw my father. My mother brought me up, she was the greatest mother ever. She always said I was mummies little girl. We were poor but everyday was fun. Mum could make the most fun out of any situation. She was the most beautiful person you have ever seen. I know men come up to me all the time and use that line on me, but I am a pale reflection of her. She was statuesque and womanly whereas I am doll-like and feminine. In the twilight you could see the tints of blue in her raven black hair, which made her look like a goddess. Fortunately I inherited this, her alabaster flawless skin and her generous bosom. Though I think on my small frame I look a bit top heavy don’t you think?
Are you alright, you were choking on your drink? About my inspiration, my mother, she was a seamstress. I spent most evenings watching her sew by the firelight as she told me tales of her time in the resistance movement.
While I untangled thread that she needed and measured out bolts of cloth I learnt how to tailor clothes. As I grew up I became more proficient and helped out much more:
Oh, lookie at my leather jacket I sewed this design on myself. See it is a red butterfly because it’s my nickname when I race. This is because when I race all you can see is my taillights dancing in the nights sky like a red butterfly. ‘Cause I am fast see.
With the extra income I generated we even had more to spend on food and other such luxuries. Those were good times, but as mum always used to say “times change, seasons turn and everything dies in the end”. When I was 8 my mother got very ill, I had to look after her. But the amount I made taking over her sewing work was just enough to get her food, we could not afford any medicine. Even in these circumstances she managed to make jokes and retain her optimistic persona, making me smile even when I felt sad. So from that day henceforth I decided that it would be best to make the most out of life and be positive in all situations. By seeing the best in people it allows them to see the best in me and through mutual understanding we can create our own utopia. Even when my mother died she was smiling with her last breath, she did not get to see the summer that she so loved.
Then my father re-entered my life, he had been travelling around space as a professional gambler. Darnel told wild stories of how he made and lost fortunes at the card tables of Bespin and Kesler, the money he owned and how lady lucks favour was fleeting. Darnels cuts a tall, lithe, graceful figure and he stalked the halls for the next mark to sting, in fact I inherited my pale grey eyes from him. Yes I know they are bright blue now but that is due to my electro-chromatic contact lens. They can change my eye colour at the switch of a button: see brown, green, and red!!! Do you think I look good with scarlet eyes?
Anyway back to the story, for the next two years we journeyed to casinos gambling and conning the marks out of their money. Darnel using his cunning and me my innocent visage we managed to lead exciting adventures like my mother had told me about. It was not the homely life I knew but still the adrenaline rush was addictive. Sometimes I felt sorry for the rubes that we worked, but Darnel gambled the money as soon as we earned it. In some ways I had less money living with my father than I did with my mother, but I did get to experience the best hotels and food when Darnel hit a winning streak. It was the most unpredictable lifestyle I had until I started living on my own. Then as suddenly as it started his winning streak ended, in a bid to regain his form Darnels gambling soon got frantic and he ended up owning some bad men a thousand credits!! To save his life Darnel sold me to them.
That is how I ended up living with Uncle Peter. He was an associate at an electronics firm, aged 27 and he had a beautiful apartment full of the modern appliances that I had only heard about. The first thing Uncle Peter did was give me a computer, he taught me how to use it to programme. He was a quiet reserved young man, who loved to spend a quiet evenings tapping at his keyboard. Soon after I arrived a comfortable domestic schedule was formed. When Uncle Peter came home from work I had a hot meal ready for him and during the evenings we sat each programming on our computers with the reassuring tap of the keys the only sound and on a night I would sing him to sleep with a lullaby.
I have a great voice you should hear me sing some time. I learnt so much from him, my skill with computers was entirely down to his precise teachings. The software we created during the long winter nights was ground-breaking and I designed my first artificial intelligence programme. When I look back it was rudimentary but then I was so proud and Uncle Peter bought me a teddy to celebrate, I still have Mr. Snuggles with me today. He was always very generous, I don’t think he knew want to do with this enormous wages so he bought me tons of presents. It was then that I developed my love for software. It might give me a thrill to physically fix machinery and built computers, ensuring that they work perfectly and are as good as new. But I am a software specialist, there is nothing better than designing a system, surfing the web or having your ICE crack into a top secret, secure server and retrieve information. Currently I am working on an artificial intelligence programme that can feel human emotions and even fall in love. Thus I am also creating the body shell and armour that it will fit into to be indestructible. Anyway enough about my side projects I was telling you about Uncle Peter, it was approximately year after I moved in with him that there was some sort of scandal at work. Each evening he came home looking sadder and thus each subsequent day it was harder to put a smile on his face. Then one day he did not come home anymore. I did not know what to do. I had not been out of his apartment unsupervised before so I just stayed there waiting, then the bad men came and took me away.
I was put in a small dark room, I was really lonely but I still had Mr. Snuggles so everything was alright. Then the bad men visited me. They regularly hurt me a lot. My arms and back are still badly scarred. DON’T LOOK. Sorry I am really self conscious about them. I don’t even wear T-shirts or them nice summer dresses. Anyway it was after they broke my hip that I decided that I had to escape. It was actually quite easy getting out of there. I spent four years in their care.
Anyway I was now a fifteen year old girl on the street with no money, but things were looking up. I started squatting in this old warehouse, it is amazing the things people throw away. I scavenged what they did not want and fixed it or converted it. In fact I built my first laptop out of parts I found in a recycle heap and some of the nano-circuits are in my current one. With this I was able to spend my days hacking and providing on-line services, but I did not need much money just for my food and medicine. Unfortunately my hip was never healed and I still am in constant pain from this and a number of other old injuries. You may have seen I have a pronounced limp. But some days are better than others, especially if I take my medicine. I discovered this nice young man on a nearby street corner was selling pain relief medicine. So I ought some of his heroin, it is quite effective in small doses but I tend to use it sparingly because some people can get addicted to it. I sometimes use other pain relief pills like somas and I keep them all in my little black goodie box. I only really take them if I need to do some strenuous activity, because I am used to the constant pain, it’s like an old friend.
You want a drink. OK, barman one whisky for my friend here and a pint of water for me. See I don’t really like alcohol that much I prefer to keep my body pure.
Where was I? Oh I am now famous on the internet, as 'Red Butterfly' my pseudonym is on all the best message services. I am one of the best code-breakers and hackers out there that are independent from the Imperium. I am in demand from numerous sources for my cutting edge programmes at reasonable rates. Once I even hacked into an imperial base and changed all the screensavers to say “FEEL THE FORCE”. That was a laugh although dangerous, but now in the community I am famous. Anyway a few of years ago I found this old bike, it had wheels and everything. All the parts were old and rusty but I was so beautiful I fixed it up. It took me ages to repair and replace the machinery it was an interesting exercise. I decided to use all the latest technology as restoring it using old parts was much too costly. It is the fastest thing on two wheels in the system, as proved by my races wins. The shell is black friction free polymer with leather seats, power is transferred through a electromagnetic inductance box to the wheels and the power source is a work of precision art requiring extreme processing power just to run. The suspension is variable allowing it to move over any surface with a minimum drop in speed output. The ride is incredible; I enjoy the feel of the wind rushing through my hair, the touch of the road as I speed along. Even the pain of the bike on the tarmac and the vibrations going through my hip are forgotten, I feel elemental. I can see the interconnection of the world, how we all work together as part of a bigger organism. As my mother always used to say “live for the day, the rest will take care of itself”.