Existence

by David Brin

  Mei Ling had heard of this. Somewhere, perhaps in the glass towers across town, or else in a rich Brazilian kid’s bedroom, or at an African university, some new kind of material or device was being computer-contrived, to be fabricated by a desktop prototyping machine—translating imagination into something entirely new. Only the software couldn’t handle every kind of design problem. There were certain things that ai didn’t cope with as well—or cheaply—as a room full of piece-working humans with good stereo vision and shape-sensing instincts that went back millions of years.

  Another rickety bridge and another fab-shop—this one making pixelated hats that flared with rocket ship images, superimposed upon Chinese flags—allowed them to emerge into a third floor hallway lined with offices—a lawyer, a dental implaint specialist, a biosculpt surgeon.…

  He’s evading all the cameras on the street, she realized. Though of course there were cams indoors, as well. They were just harder for outsiders to access via the Mesh. According to the tenets of the Big Deal, even the state had to ask permission to utilize them—or get a court order. That could take several minutes.

  Down another rickety set of stairs they ran, through a curtained niche near the back of a second hand clothing shop that catered to low-level union workers. Moving quickly along the shelves, her young guide soon pulled down a bundle and showed it to Mei Ling. She recognized the garb of a licensed nanny—a member of the Child-Care Guild.

  A good choice, she thought. Nobody will think twice about my carrying little Xiao En.

  But if I pay for them, even with cash, the purchase register will post my face on the Mesh, and all that dodging about will be for nothing.

  An answer to that was forthcoming. While she crouched in a corner, giving her baby a suckle, the boy busied himself with a small device, scanning all over the two-piece uniform before deftly plucking out a few hidden specks—the product ID chips.

  “Anybody can find them,” he said, performing some kind of incantation made up of whispers and blurry fingertips, then putting the nearly invisible specks back where they came from. “But it’s another thing to time ’em. Rhyme ’em. Redefine ’em.”

  Mei Ling wasn’t sure she understood, but he did make shoplifting—supposedly impossible—look easy.

  The boy offered another brief moment of eye contact, accompanied by a fleeting smile that seemed labored, painful, though friendly nonetheless, as if the mere act of connecting with her took heroic concentration.

  “Mother ought to trust Ma Yi Ming.”

  The name could be interpreted to mean “horse one utter,” where “ma” or horse was traditionally symbolic of great power. Shanghainese, especially, liked names that were brash, assertive, the bearer of which might turn out confident and accomplished. Someone who stands out from the crowd, heroic despite handicaps. It struck Mei Ling as ironic.

  “All right … Yi Ming,” she answered. At least that part of the name stood for “the people.” Another irony?

  “I do trust you,” she added, realizing, as she said it, that it was true.

  Little Xiao En grumbled over being denied the nipple, wanting to keep sucking after Mei Ling judged him to be fed. Still, the infant was well taught and made no fuss while she changed him. Then Mei Ling ducked into a nearby alcove to change into the new garments. Meanwhile Yi Ming busied himself with her shabby old clothing. But why? Surely they would be abandoned.

  Certain that something would go wrong during all of this, Mei Ling peered over the curtain nervously as she fumbled with the clasps. Sure enough, as she stepped out wearing the stiffly starched uniform, one of the store clerks glanced over and started toward them. “Here now, I didn’t see you—”

  At that moment, while Mei Ling’s heart pounded, there came a crash from the other side of the store. A large, hunch-shouldered man—clearly the janitor—was backing away from a store mannequin, moaning and using his mop to defend himself as the clothes-modeling puppet sputtered and squealed, waving animated plastic arms, tossing sweaters, acti-pants and e-sensitized tunics at him. Every member of the sales staff hurried in that direction … and the little autistic boy murmured.

  “Mother has changed clothes. Now face.”

  He pulled Mei Ling to the back door, in the blind spot between store and alley, and motioned for her to bend over. Drawing out a pen of some kind, he used his left hand to grip the back of her neck, holding her head still with uncanny strength as he drew across her cheeks and forehead with rapid strokes. When he let go, Mei Ling sagged back with a sigh that was equal parts anger and wounded pride.

  “How dare you—” she began. Then she stopped, upon glimpsing herself in the changing area mirror. He had drawn just a dozen or so lines. Their effect was bizarre and clownish—when looked at straight on. But who viewed other people that way, out on the street? When Mei Ling diverted her gaze, even slightly, the effect was astounding. She saw a woman at least twenty years older, with gaunt cheeks and a much lower brow … a pronounced chin, a snub nose and eyes closer together.

  “Facial recog won’t recog.” The boy nodded approvingly and held out his hand for her to take. “Next stop now … a safe place for mothers.”

  * * *

  After another hour spent dodging in and out of buildings, across upper-story bridges, through warehouses and workshops and university classrooms, they found themselves standing in front of a place that Mei Ling had always dreamed of visiting someday, gazing at pure wonder with her own eyes.

  “It … it is magnificent,” she sighed, shifting Xiao En’s sling so that he could see. The baby stopped fussing, joining her in staring at the marvelous portal to another world whose only boundary was that of imagination.

  The Shanghai Universe of Disney and the Monkey King loomed straight ahead across a broad plaza, its artificial mountain lined with cave-rides and fabulous fortresses, with fabled beasts and impossible forests that were always shrouded in glorious, perfumed mists. Here one might find the sort of fantastic things that you only saw on wild layers of virspace, but made palpable as stone! A mix of whimsy and solidity that could only have come into being through wondrous blendings of art, science, engineering, and astronomical amounts of cash.

  In the foreground, just a hundred meters ahead, loomed those famous, wide-welcoming gates of shimmering Viridium that were topped by giant, holomechanical characters who preened and posed with theatrical exaggeration. She recognized Snow White and Pocahontas and beautiful Princess Chang’e. There was wise old Xuanzang, accompanied on his epic westward journey by the mischievous Zhu Bajie and his brothers, the Three Little Pigs. A flying elephant with flapping ears flew joyous circles in an overhead dance with the wondrous dragon-horse. Below, the fabled boy Ma Liang waved his magic brush and made mere drawings come to life!

  And everyone’s favorite, Sun Wukong, the Monkey himself, capered up and down a tower decked with pennants that seemed as colorful as they were impossibly long, playing catch-me-if-you-can with lumbering King Kong.

  All of those familiar figures lined the storied battlements. But greatest of all, the central figure topping the main gate, was a friendly-faced icon with immense black-round ears and a winning smile of confident-destiny, flanked on either side by active sculptures of the two real-life visionaries who imagined so much wonder and gave such dreams to the world: Uncle Walt and Scholar Wu. That pair—one of them dressed in an old-fashioned Western suit and the other in Ming dynasty robes—seemed to look right at Mei Ling, beckoning her personally, with grins and open arms.

  Xiao En cooed with delight and Mei Ling felt herself drawn … except that the vast plaza of concrete and iridescent tile seemed so dauntingly open and exposed. No place on Earth was under scrutiny by more cameras than this.

  Surely they are watching this place.

  But there was another tug on her hand.

  Yi Ming did not bother to speak, this time. His urgent meaning was clear. If they were going to cross, it had to be quickly. Now.

  Mei Ling’s sense of dange
r mounted as they headed straight for the portal. Suddenly her new clothes and ai-fooling makeup seemed wholly inadequate, especially since there were so few people around!

  “Where is everybody?” she wondered, aloud, mostly to hear someone speak words. “I know it is a weekday. But there should be more tourists, children, visitors…”

  Indeed, only a few hundred seemed to be crossing the barren plaza, coming to or from the underground train station and parking garage. The sparseness seemed eerie, since it was still early in the afternoon. Though it feels like days since I last slept in our little shorestead. To be honest she missed the solitude. The constant lapping of Huangpu tides against her home’s rotting timbers.

  “All indoors,” Yi Ming explained. “More than two-thirds of all the normalpeople. Twelve billion, three hundred and forty two million eyes, feeding impressions to twelve billion, three hundred and forty two million cerebral hemispheres, locked inside half that many skulls”—he ran out of breath and had to inhale—“all watching space rocks that rock space. All curious about living forever. Even cobblies want to know.”

  Mei Ling only grasped part of it, but the explanation sufficed. The whole world—or nearly—had gone into immersion-mode, watching whatever was going on in America. The interview with the Artifact aliens. An event meriting worldwide greedy interest was happening—perhaps even something wonderful. Yet Mei Ling wished it had never been found and that Xiang Bin had left his own discovery in the bottom of the muddy estuary.

  “So many spacey stones from stoned space,” the boy intoned. He always seemed to be experimenting with possible rhymes or songs. It must be one of those unbearably strong compulsions that drove so many young people with the disorder. Only now he also sounded sorrowful, empathizing with lost mineral messengers, perhaps more than he would with flesh and blood.

  “Those buried at sea can’t see! Thousands, trapped underground, try to make a sound! Many more in space can barely spark a trace. Others, locked in vaults and graves, hoping to be saved—so sad. So bored! They chose their fate; now it’s too late.”

  He seemed genuinely moved by the tragedy of it all.

  “Wait a minute!” She halted, abruptly. “Let me get this straight. You mean there are many of the shining, speaking stones?” Her heart whirled with hope. If it were true, then perhaps no one would be desperate, any longer, to seek her husband.

  “Yes. Many—numerous, multitudinous … Shining—luminous numinous … Stones—crystalline serpentine olivine…” He tugged at her and skipped along gaily. “But only a rare-pair speak!”

  Hurrying to keep up, Mei Ling wondered. Only two speak? The one in Washington … and Bin’s? Then powerful people will still hunt for him. Or use me to help find him. Or threaten or coerce him.

  But … how could the child know?

  A screeching of brakes. A backward glance confirmed her worst fears. Several black vans had just pulled up onto the plaza, as close to the pedestrian barriers as they dared, and men piled out. One of them pointed and they started straight toward her at a rapid walk.

  No sense in pretending, anymore, to be strolling along—a nanny escorting two children to the park. Now Mei Ling and Yi Ming ran! Though she wondered, What will we do when we get there?

  Despite there being few visitors, the line at the ticket window was way too long. Even if she could afford the steep entrance fee, those men would arrive long before she could pay and then reach the gate. That assumed the Disney guards would not simply stop her when the pursuers shouted. After all, they had to be from some state agency. How else could they be acting like this in broad daylight? In China?

  Or else they were desperate and willing to bluff, pretending to represent some part of the state.

  Yi Ming cleared part of Mei Ling’s perplexity by steering her past the ticket booth and straight toward the broad, viridium portal, right under the shadow of scholar Wu Cheng’en, who wrote the great national classic adventure tale Journey to the West. Though five centuries had passed, it was still easily a match, in culture and excitement, for more recent stories about talking ducks and dogs and mice.

  Stopping abruptly, the boy turned and dashed over to a well-dressed couple who were just leaving the park, with a little girl who wore a cute, if retro, silken costume copied from the classic Sailor Moon. Her mouth was stained from sucking at the neck of a candy victim, from the featured ride Vampires of the Adnauseam.

  Evidently both tired and spoiled, in an era that much favored girls over boys, she gaped suspiciously, with sugary “blood” oozing down her jaw, as Yi Ming planted himself in front of the family, chattering in a friendly manner. None of his words made sense, at least not to Mei Ling or to the parents. But for a moment their surprise was such that they allowed him to take their hands and pat them while continuing to babble away.

  The girl recovered first, swiftly snarling at Yi Ming with red-stained teeth.

  What’s he doing? Mei Ling wondered. Does he suddenly find the situation hopeless? Is he abandoning me here and picking someone else to guide around town?

  The pursuers had made it halfway across the square. Mei Ling started eyeing alternative escape paths. None of which looked promising while schlepping a baby. Perhaps down the escalator to the train station.…

  The tourist couple yanked their hands away and, egged on by the girl’s screech, the father pushed at Yi Ming—who simply laughed, spun about three times, then sped over to Mei Ling.

  “Mother. Hand.”

  As the rich family hurried off, suddenly the boy was scribbling upon the back of Mei Ling’s wrist with the same pen he used on her face, half an hour ago. There was no apparent pattern at first, just a rapid series of dots that pricked and hurt a little, even on her calloused skin. The specks were all constrained within a square area, perhaps three centimeters on a side.

  Oh, she thought, could it be? Can a mere person do this?

  The men were closer now. Yi Ming let go of her hand and started doing the same thing to the back of his own. The right hand, making Mei Ling realize that he was a lefty. Somewhere she recalled hearing that the trait showed up more often among autistics. The same could be said of the boy’s misaligned teeth, his poor skin, and strange gait. Though she found none of those disconcerting anymore.

  I saw worse among the drooling old-timers at the hospice.

  “We had better—” she urged, doubting this would work.

  “Yes Mother, now.”

  They turned together, walking as quickly but nonchalantly as they could, like a nanny escorting a child and a baby toward the portico where arrivals were automatically checked for tickets. Tickets in the form of temporary, coded tattoos.

  Mei Ling made sure that her left hand was open to view, though she never saw the beam that scanned it. To her great surprise, no Disney guards or robots pounced. Instead a voice crooned downward, as if from Heaven.

  “Welcome back, Mrs. Chu and darling little Lui. My, it did not take you long to change your clothes and return from your hotel.

  “Of course, your VIP pass is still valid. A robo-carriage awaits you, down the Avenue of Pandas, on your left.

  “If Mr. Chu comes later, we’ll bring him to you with pleasant and courteous haste.”

  Hurrying onward, she and Yi Ming crossed over the boundary, demarked by a line of tiles that gleamed Imperial yellow, almost a comfortable minute before their pursuers reached the security cordon. There, the large men fumed and stomped, knowing how futile it would be to try entering without a pass—let alone armed. It might, in all likelihood, bring down upon them, from nearby hidden places, more swift force than they could possibly deal with. At least not without a fistful of lawful writs, signed by several courts and by many powerful men. Nor even then.

  Mei Ling drew a rush of luscious satisfaction, glancing over her shoulder at their frustration, before turning all of her attention the other way, toward a cascade of wonders. Ahead of them lay a boulevard of shops and rides, buildings that seemed to be alive and playful rob
otic characters who bowed or danced with pleasure when you looked their way. Little Xiao En was charmed instantly, and so was she. Though Yi Ming kept shaking his head, murmuring something about cobblies … cobblies everywhere.

  Well, anyway. This certainly beat wearing puny vir-spectacles that merely painted fantasy overlays upon a mundane city street. Nor could any full-immersion game match it. For, in this enchanted place, where every flower looked ten times its normal size and even Shanghai smog vanished under aromatic mists, all the disadvantages of real life seemed to be gone, even down to pebbles one might trip upon—and yet, the richness of reality lay all around her. It was nothing less than the world remade!

  With a VIP pass as well? Mei Ling wondered what that meant. Feeling a growl in her stomach, having missed lunch while fleeing across half of East Pudong, she hoped it would turn out to be something good, as she carried her baby and followed her strange young guide through a portico of wonders, under the beaming, beneficent smile of Mickey Mao.

  THINGS TAKEN FOR GRANTED

  What a Waist.

  I mean, have you seen how quickly the Mesh consensus settled on nicknames for every one of the ninety-two artifact visitors? Some rude, others respectful, like Longtooth, Kali, and Big-Squiddy?

  Then there’s the long list of questions for our alien guests, pouring in from a world-public that’s eager to satisfy countless individual yearnings.

  And Wow Ain’t It Strange That almost all of the questions are based on two clichés? One or the other. Either fear or longing?

  The first of these two has faded a bit, as we learn that the aliens have no physical power, and speak of welcome. So, more questions now deal with eagerness to learn from our ancient visitors, with the commonly shared assumption that they are motivated by altruism.