Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 (10 page)

"Jason, is it? He's a moron."

Robby swallowed twice in rapid succession. "
Ahhh.
"

"Pain?" she said

"No."

"You want a gun?" Ever since the attack, he'd had a fascination with the old handguns in the house. As if having a real one might have saved him. Still, handling them seemed to relieve his stress, which then calmed the spasms.

"No."

She waited for him to say something else. This was her day to be ignored by her family.

"You were getting pretty weird on me in coop," she said at last.

"Weird?"

"Everyone for themselves. I've got the transcript in my folder. Revolutions don't play by the rules." She exaggerated a Sturm imitation, made his edges sharp enough to cut. " 'Speak for yourself, Botão. Maybe I am a terrorist.' Come on, Sturm. A
terrorist?
You're going to do other people like you were done?"

"Right wing scum," he muttered. "Assholes."

"Right wing, left wing—they're all assholes."

"Revolution." He didn't seem very interested in the conversation.

"What revolution?" She felt like he was pushing her toward a cliff. "What the hell are you talking about?" Then she noticed the edge of his overlord window in her glass. He wasn't getting hardtime credit for their conversation. "Wait a minute," she said. "You're still running your avatar?"

"Huh?" He was confused. "What?"

"This is me," she said. "Your sister." Remeny was at once impressed and insulted. It took supreme concentration to run an avatar in hardtime while carrying on a conversation in softtime. "You thought I wouldn't notice?" Then she guessed why he hadn't logged off. "You're with someone."

"No."

"I bet it's your little Button Bright."

He writhed and his right arm flung itself up, grazing the top of his head. "What makes you say that?"

"For one thing," she said, "you've got a bone like a dinosaur."

"A second. Give me a second." He closed his eyes and his body went slack. Then with a shudder, he was back. The clock was ticking. She had his full attention.

"Kind of a pervy thing to say to your brother." He gave her a grimace which she knew was a grin.

"We share the perv gene, Stormy." She grinned back. "So Botão is your girlfriend now?"

"No one is my girlfriend." His voice was like sandpaper. "She's a reality snob like the rest of them. I mean, suppose we really wanted to get together. Eventually she'd want to come over here for a visit, see me for herself. You know how that goes. Imagine her standing there, staring at this twitchy sack of meat. Romantic or what?"

Remeny wanted to say something but couldn't think what.

"I'll take a gun now," Robby said. "Kent's Glock."

Dad kept his memorabilia in a study at the far end of the house. He had been in flat movies way back, but had made the transition to flix and adventures and sims and even some impersonations. Although he had been cast in all kinds of parts, Jeffrey Daugherty was mostly known for playing bad guys: serial killers, drug lords, CEOs, stalkers and, yes, terrorists. He had won a Golden Globe and an Appie for playing Kent Crill on
The Revenger,
which was where he had acquired most of the collection of prop weapons displayed behind his desk. Kent had used the Glock to take down his arch-nemesis, the vampire Sir Koko Mawatu, in the Season Five finale. Of course, it was just a prop that didn't really fire silver bullets, but it had the heft of a real gun.

Remeny parted the ultrasmooth strands of the mesh and offered him the pistol, grip first. He swiped at it and missed the first time but nabbed it on the second try. He settled back, rubbing the steel barrel lengthwise across his cheek. She'd seen his gun fetish many times but it was still something about her brother that she didn't get.

"It's not Toybox I'm worried about," he said. "Who is this Silk?"

"I don't know, some rich kid." She shrugged. "I kind of like him."

"I don't."

"Why? Because he wants to run the show? So do you. So does Toybox. All you boys doing your alpha male thing—it's kind of cute in an annoying way."

"He's already got slogans out. A dozen floaties around town—they have to be his. No one else has the money. One keeps circling the town office."

That
was
interesting. "Fast work." She called up the satellite image on her glass and zoomed. "Hey, that's some serious signage. Maybe he needs extra credit."

"It was his idea. Doesn't that seem suspicious?"

She leaned against the wall and wished once again that he would let her bring a chair when she visited. "No, it wasn't. Botão came up with life, liberty, and..."

"Just words." He aimed the gun at the carebot and stared down the sights. "The slogan was his idea."

"So he's smart. So?" She jiggled the net. "Did you tell Botão who you are?"

"Nuh-uh." He held the gun steady and Remeny could see him mouth the word
bang.
"But she knows I'm stashed."

"She knows and she's still interested?"

"She just thinks she is."

"Then maybe you're wrong about her. You've got a crush setup here, pal. What if you were stashed in a body stack, like Toybox? Think she'd go all melty over whatever is behind the doors at the Komfort Kare?"

"She'll still want..."

"What she wants is Sturm and that's who you are, twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours. Your body is just leftovers."

His laugh was bitter. "Rah, rah, rah." He waved the Glock in a circle. "Too bad cheerleading doesn't kill the pain anymore."

Robby
was
getting weird on her. "I've got to go for a run—overlord orders." She couldn't handle him when he was like this. "You going to stay real for a while?"

"Sure."

"Want me to leave Kent's gun? You never know when your arch-nemesis is going to show."

"No, take it." He thrust the pistol through the mesh. "I'll find some other way to thwart Silk's evil plan." His hand was steady now.

"He's not your problem." She leaned in close and blew on his face. "See you at dinner then." It was as close to kissing as they got.

"Something's got to change," he said.

"Yeah, yeah," she said. "Come the revolution."

As Remeny jogged up Forest Ridge Road, the spray can of Sez in her fanny pack bounced against her back. She had queried her glass for places she could tag that would have the highest foot traffic. The list was short and most of the choices were in Bedford's modest downtown, a couple of kilometers away. That would mean her graffiti would overlap with Silk's floating ads, but that was okay.

She began to see bots on errands: delivery bots from Foodmaster and Amazon and Express-It, a MacDonald's dinerbot reeking of yesterday's fries, an empty taxi idling on Little Oak. The first pedestrian she passed was a old man in a breather walking his dog. She saw Officer Shubin's motorcycle parked at the Cocamoca but no Officer Shubin. She slowed to a stop when she spotted the floaty bobbing down Third Street toward her. The squat barrel shape floated at eye level and the slogan scrawled continually around its circumference.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness Life, Liberty, and...

"Stop," she commanded. Its top propeller rotated one hundred and eighty degrees until it faced in the opposite direction from its bottom propeller. "I have a question."

"I will try to answer," it said.

"Who paid for you?"

"I was hired by PROS, which stands for Protect the Rights of the Occupants of Softtime." It played a short musical flourish.

"Never heard of it."

"The organization is less than two hours old."

Her overlord nagged that her metabolic rate was falling. She began to jog in place.

"Who's in it?"

"Membership information is confidential."

"How long are you contracted for?"

"I will be proclaiming the new world order in this area through Tuesday."

New world order?
Silk was having delusions of grandeur. "What do you mean: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?"

"What does it mean to
you?"

"I don't know. Nothing."

"PROS would like to change that. If you were to google it...."

Rememy stopped paying attention and pinged Silk instead. When she got no reply, she queried her glass about floaty rentals. Rates ran between two and three hundred dollars a day depending on the size of the floaty, the sophistication of the pitch and the choice of sales route. She was impressed. Rich was rich, but what teenager would spend two thousand dollars a day on a coop project?

"Do you have any other questions?" said the floaty.

On an impulse she reached into her fanny pack, grabbed the Sez can and sprayed
call me
on the floaty. As it tried to dodge away, it jiggled her "e" into looking like a mutant "p."

"At 1753," the floaty said, "I identify you as Johanna Daugherty of 7 Forest Ridge Road. Per the Defacement of the Bedford's Commercial Speech Ordinance, you will now be charged the standard rate for use of this device for as long as your unauthorized commentary persists."

Remeny wasn't worried; the Sez had been in draft mode. "Make sure Silk gets my message."

"What is Silk?"

Her graffitti was already fading, so she brushed by the floaty and jogged up Third Street.

"Your total charge is sixty-seven cents," it called. "Have a nice day."

More than half of the stores facing Memorial Square had gone out of business. To keep the downtown from looking like a mouthful of broken teeth, the town had paid to have the buildings torn down but had preserved and restored the façades. Behind these were empty lots converted to lawns, gardens, and patios with picnic tables, all tended by bots, all deserted. There were spaces downtown designated for civic tagging as long as the message conformed to font, color, and content guidelines. She sprayed slats of the benches that faced the Civil War monument, the windows on the façade of the Post Office and the abutments of the pedestrian bridge that crossed Sperry Creek. She set the Sez can to a 158 point Engravers font, which she thought looked suitably historic, and set the duration for Tuesday. Same as Silk.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
fit nicely alongside
silence is golden but duct tape is silver, We are not a bot,
and
Think More About Working Less.

On the way home, she took the shortcut through the grounds of the Gates Early Learning Center since there were designated tagging surfaces at its playground. A handful of little kids milled about in their bulky, augmented reality helmets, pulling up grass, tripping over the balance boosters, hitting trees with sticks. One of them came up to Remeny while she was spraypainting the slide.

"What's your name?" The girl had an annoying squeaky voice.

She didn't have time for this—where was the teacher? "Ask your helmet to look me up."

"Why? You could just tell me."

Remeny glanced over and saw black curls framing a face pale as a mushroom. She was five or maybe six, wearing a Dotty Karate T-shirt. "Johanna."

"I'm Meesha, but my real name is Amisha." She pointed at the tag. "What does that say?"

"Read it yourself." The kid was breaking her concentration.

"Don't know how."

"Your helmet does."

She put her hand over her mouth and whispered the query as if she didn't want Remeny to hear. "I don't know pursuit," she said at last.

"Your helmet could..." Remeny looked around for help and saw Joan deJean headed her way. "It means to chase after."

Meesha considered this. "Is that why you're all sweaty? 'Cause you're pursuiting happiness?"

"Hi, Johanna." Ms. deJean had been Johanna's teacher when she was a kid. "I see you've met Meesha." She put a hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Hi, Ms. deJean. Yeah, she's not exactly shy."

"You can say that again." Ms. deJean turned the girl gently and aimed her back toward the other kids. "This is learning time, Meesha. Not chatting time."

"Chatting can be learning," the girl said.

"Scoot." She gave her a nudge back toward the center, but Meesha squirmed and skipped away in a different direction. "So what's this?" Ms. DeJean bent over the slide and read.

Remeny slipped the Sez into her fanny pack. "Coop."

"Already?" Her old teacher sighed. "Seems like yesterday you were toddling around here, talking back like Meesha." She lit up with the memory. "You and your brother. How is Robby?"

"He doesn't get out much."

"No." Her light dimmed. "The Declaration of Independence? You breaking away from something?"

"I don't know," said Remeny, then she laughed. "Maybe the EOS."

"Good for you." Joan deJean laughed with her. "It's a train wreck, if you ask me. All software and no people."

Remeny usually walked Forest Ridge Road to cool down at the end of a run but when she saw her mother and Emily Banerjee sitting on the Banerjees' lawn, she broke into a sprint. Her mother had her arm around Mrs. Banerjee's shoulder and was speaking softly to her.

"Everything okay?" Remeny pulled up in front of them.

"Emily isn't feeling well," said Mom. "She's confused."

The Banerjees had been antiques when the Daughertys had moved in, crinkly and cute as Remeny and Robby grew up. Sadhir Banerjee had died in March and his wife had been lost ever since. Mom had called the son Prahlad last month when she had found Mrs. Banerjee sorting through the Daughertys' garbage at night.

"I am not confused," said Mrs. Banerjee, "and I will never lie in those coffins."

"Nobody wants you to, Emily."

"I watched it on the teevee—just now. Those coffins are small." She spread her palms. "This wide, maybe. And not much longer even." The way her hands shook reminded Remeny of Robby. "They lie awake in the coffin so they can always call other people on the internet but there is no room. Not for everyone. The internet is too small, too, even for an old woman."

Teevee? The internet? Remeny didn't want to laugh because this was sad. But talk about oldschool.

"Don't worry, Emily," said Mom. "Prahlad is coming soon."