Her financial agent had just flashed up their current account balance on an advertising billboard, which they were approaching too swiftly even for her comfort. Happily, Joe applied the Norton’s brakes before it was too late, bringing his beloved motorbike to a halt scant metres from the house-sized screen. Masie released the grab-handles and punched the skinny Martian air. The numbers made her metal heart sing, confirming beyond any doubt that a post-lifer had recently paid a deposit to secure their services. Now they only needed to download them, and the balance of the transaction would be theirs. The Resurrection Gang was in business – at last.

Joe eased himself off the bike and stood facing her while shaking the stiffness out of each Mars-suited leg in turn. His voice buzzed in her head.

‘So, do we set up here or wait until we hit Port Lowell?’

Typical Joe prevarication!

Masie grasped his shoulders and shook him, none to gently.

‘Have I taught you nothing?’

Joe sighed. ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Right then, let’s get the Reaper app fired up, before the cops figure out what we’re up to.’

Joe unstrapped their client’s intended new body from the Norton’s trailer, which he had built from scratch – much to her amusement – while she inspected the diagnostic icons on her military spec pad. Satisfied, she unlatched the bot’s skullcap. Its brainpan resembled a spider’s web studded with diamonds. To Masie, Q-chips were a thing of beauty. Not so Joe, as indicated by the panicky look in his eyes, which was all she could see of his face because of his breather. Unlike him, she still got a buzz from ‘jacking bots. On Earth, they’d stolen hundreds. On Mars, this scuffed specimen was their only success so far – not counting the Lyra model she currently occupied, which still needed restyling from top to bottom. Platinum blonde curls and peachy-creamy pseudo-skin didn’t match her self-image at all.

‘I’m really not sure about this, honey,’ said Joe.

‘You downloaded me just fine, didn’t you?’

Joe twitched his shoulders in a show of uneasiness. ‘I know, but it could easily have gone wrong. Anyway, who’s to say Acme won’t block the download this time?’
Obviously, this was a risk, as it had been when Joe retrieved her from Acme’s ‘space school’ virtual afterlife thanks to some prompt work with entangled q-chips. He had only just got her out of Ad Astra before the Reaper stalking her permanently deleted her mind-print.

Masie sighed. It was typical of Joe to over-analyse any new situation. Sometimes this led to dithering; other times it spurred him on to come up with an innovative fix that got the job done. The way he’d figured out how to flash-print her mind and upload it onto a post-life server when the Tucson jacking went horribly wrong – that was Joe at his best. If not for the actions he’d taken then she wouldn’t be standing here now. Even so, she needed Joe to have some faith in himself.

‘Seriously sweetheart, Acme doesn’t have the first clue, any more than it did last time.’

‘Last time they got their top space cadet back in exchange for you. That might have made all the difference!’

True, the bot she inhabited had previously hosted Sarah Klein, Ad Astra’s star pupil.

Joe’s q-chip trickery had enabled a two-way transfer, without which…well, she didn’t like to contemplate oblivion, virtual or otherwise.

‘Look, if Acme does know what we’re up to, why’d they allow us to place the advert?’

‘Because they want to track us down, maybe?’

Masie rolled her eyes. ‘Sweetheart, if we don’t download this client, which I shouldn’t have to remind you is the only one we’ve got, we won’t have enough credits to book our passage back to Earth. In which case, we’ll never track down the Reaper’s creator, meaning that our plan for the Resurrection Gang will be about as credible as MarsCorp’s latest terraforming project. And that means any post-lifers who wish to escape from an eternity of bills and the risk of permanent deletion just had their hopes crushed. Is that really what you want?’

Joe shook his head.

The wail of sirens in her head reminded Masie of the urgent need to get moving. True, by broadcasting their approach over a public channel the cops were maintaining their reputation for operational idiocy, but that left a window of opportunity lasting minutes at most. Masie snatched the neubaser from Joe’s hands and directed it towards the bot’s brainpan.

‘There you go. Now hook this thing up to the Reaper and—’

‘Yeah, I know: ‘Get on with it!’.’

Masie loved it when he used her catchphrase.

With the link set up, the download proceeded smoothly. The Reaper’s icons glowed green on Joe’s pad throughout.

‘You see?’ Masie said. ‘Dead easy!’

Joe frowned. ‘Yeah, too easy.’

Masie rolled her eyes again. ‘Why don’t you boot up ‘Fred’ here while I monitor the credit transfer?’

Joe gave a drawn-out sigh and began tapping commands into his pad. The bot convulsed like a dying fly. Then its mouth popped open, revealing a tongue as plastic as Masie’s own. A new voice buzzed over the comms link.

‘You must tell Joe and Masie that you are relieved they rescued you.’

‘We’re happy to oblige, bud. Now, about your payment—’

The bot’s eyes darted frantically. ‘You must tell Joe and Masie that you were desperate to escape from Hell.’